[SPOILERS]The Tyrant realizes that once the world burns it gets really boring....

[spacetyrantxenu]

I wonder where he put it. He had a settler in the border city south of Beside you, so it must be close unless he had a second settler somewhere else. Let's hope he didn't get aggressive with the plant and try to steal tiles that are about to be ours.

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

I wonder where he put it. He had a settler in the border city south of Beside you, so it must be close unless he had a second settler somewhere else. Let's hope he didn't get aggressive with the plant and try to steal tiles that are about to be ours.

WilliamLP captured and razed something like a size 4-5 city from Kuro. +/-10 on the capture/raze. I hope Kuro is putting up a spirited defense.

[spacetyrantxenu]

That sounds like the other front city to the west of C. Vanderbilt but I'm not sure. That should make his capital the front city now and probably the last that will see any significant defense as it if a choke point and his best city. After that Kuro will probably be gassed unless he isn't even moving his defenders around.

I guess we'll know about that soon as we find what units he has left in the east.

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

[spacetyrantxenu]

I thought you said there was a mid turn report? Are you actually going to write one? The song is perfect, though.

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

The previous post was a brief mid-turn report explaining, essentially, Cataphracts vs ancient trash holed up in cities yearning for freedom. Or, at least, a different version of thralldom. Before diving in, a quick look at Sisub's info:




Nothing new here. He's saving gold, so no unit upgrades over last turn. Good. Time to fight. tl;dr version: Pure Massacre.




I declared war. I should have taken a shot of the defending garrison but I missed that. It's the same as last turn. Elsewhere, Sisub's layout was pretty much what we expected, except for a border expansion and wall finishing in Thesis that either just finished or I somehow missed. Whatever, this changes nothing. I'm not stacking up units forever just to look at them. After Xenu cries about how we don't have enough units and finishes knitting a Christmas sweater, I just go ahead and attack anyway because he's a pansy and I've been beating him up my entire life.

Well, the battle plan was to promote up the combat line and ram them in from top to bottom until we faced archers, so I did that. At archers, I used the 2/2 and 0xp phracts so they could each get an extra promotion. The results were awesome.




Read bottom to top, as always. Perfect!

Whadjya expect? Although, I have to say, I'm very pleased that the Ole RNG didn't bend us over the barrel again. Thumbs up, RNG. Thumbs WAY up, if you take my meaning. As in, don't stop till you get to the back of the teeth way up there, pard, because you've already been there and I guess that makes us friends. I would have loved to do this ~10-15t ago before we got two low odds GS and had to scramble and starve Swamp People for the GM. Oh well. Anyway...






I'll take it, especially the forge.






Here's what Sisub has left. I'm thinking we'll take a turn to consolidate our stacks of phracts and then just plow straight ahead. We don't have any cats to speak of and I'm not worried about sacrificing a couple of phracts to get through the two longbows and get at the meaty, tasty trash units beneath. Look for us to attack again in ~2t, unless Xenu chickens out since he'll be covering this weekend as I travel. Xenu, don't be a chicken.




I didn't draw in anticipated completion times like last turn, and I made a change in our border city with WilliamLP to double whip a library for the culture. We should have enough overflow to 1t the phract next turn, but I didn't crunch the numbers super close. Dirt Road got changed to another LB too, IIRC.

Here's what we have to work with going forward:




An ever-growing stack of phracts (and some juicy, FREE settling opportunities for wetbandit....sheesh). We're going to keep building phracts and see what other opportunities are available after Sisub. Here is one immediate opportunity.




I should have had this tile roaded already, but we'll road next turn and then road the flat ice the following. Next turn we will advance the phracts to the marble hill and take Steve Jobs the following turn, then send our phracts to mop up the backfill. It's not worth our time or potential conflict with WilliamLP to go further west. Xenu, do as you will up here, there shouldn't be any problems.




Demos from before the killing/capturing, but I don't think it makes much difference from before the turn. We're roughly where we were before, until we get these cities out of revolt. As a bonus, and as if this wasn't long enough already, we finally have graphs on everyone.

Edit: Bonus pic courtesy of Xenu.




Could be worse, I guess.

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

I thought you said there was a mid turn report? Are you actually going to write one? The song is perfect, though.

That WAS the mid-turn report. Just a song. Here's the dance.

[spacetyrantxenu]

You, sir, are full of shit. You may lead in the category "Scars Responsible For" but I'm a runaway in "Broken Bones Caused" and don't you forget it. Have you ever sent me to the doctor because of an injury ? Nope. I've sent you twice. How's your hand, by the way? No more broken fingers? Great! Oh, hey why is that one a little crooked?

I know I've used this one before but...

Anyway just because the RNG didn't betray you doesn't mean I was wrong about not having enough units for the attack. If you had lost any battles we wouldn't have been able to take both cities. As it was we didn't even have a single spare unit to whack a chariot guarding a worker on the border which you'd obviously want to do before Sisub deletes the worker. So no, we didn't really have enough units, you can't count on the RNG breaking your way. That all said, I'm glad you attacked and won. I hate Nick Saban's approach even as good as it is, so I'll analyze the results and not the process here.

Yeah, those graphs are disconcerting to say the least. Retep is impossible to attack and is verging on being a runaway, Wetbandit is going to be a clear economic #2 by the time it's all said and done, and William probably can't win without us helping him to do it (by us foolishly attacking Retep -- we need Astronomy to play that game, but why would we trade one leader for another?). Everyone else, sorry, you are no longer in the running to be Realms Beyond's next pitboss winner. So let's all have our fun for a little while during the consolidation phase and see what place everyone shakes out in. I think we'll be fourth at the end.

On WilliamLP vs. Kuro -- So William won the battle at Kuro's other front city, Sam Walton, and then burned it down. I know it wasn't a great city and there wasn't much population, but there had to be at least some infrastructure right? I don't see how razing and resettling can be that much of an improvement to the dotmap, that seems like a waste to me. Those 100 hammers William spent on the settler could have better used in other ways. Also, I don't know why he hasn't just pushed on and grabbed the capital. That's a lot of population Kuro can whip into units (irrespective of whether or not Kuro is actually doing it, I'm not keeping close tabs on it), seems it would be best to squash his capital as soon as possible and come back to sack Sam Walton later. It can't be reinforced anyway in that scenario. But take this analysis with a grain of salt, I don't have visibility on the tiles in question.

I'll do what I can with the turn tomorrow but I have family over so I don't know how much time I can give it. It's a bad time for the war turns to fall this weekend.

Regarding the tech screen, wetbandit added 489 gold this turn. Not a bad haul at all for one turn. Internal fail gold I hope? William added 407 gold but some of that is city capture cash. The real pisser is Retep, though, who exactly doubled his cash from last turn, adding 564 to his total. No visible tech completions from this screen this turn (I'm not doing score analysis, I'm too tired for that -- have I mentioned I was up all night with my kid puking at hourly intervals last night? Yeah. ). Molach has shown a nice spike in GNP so he's spending his cash on something, but it doesn't matter to us. His useful role in this game for us is to be a counterweight to Wetbandit and I don't think he'll in any way be up for the job. Should have used those big Roman pocketknives to kill someone, Molach. Too late now, unless Oxy's rear defense is unreasonably weak.

Finally, regarding unit names, we're producing a lot of units and my creative juices are failing so if anyone wants to claim a name go for it. We will stop at nothing to win the post count war and if this phract invasion is successful we may even overtake the lurker thread in views. Watch out!

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

WilliamLP has whipped a lot this turn. Can you see what he just teched? Also, Sisub, let's play already. I guess ask for a pause if he doesn't play soon before you're ready to go to bed. I'm out of the picture completely for the weekend.

Also, Vanderbilt? Really? With a nice fourth down conversion by the zebras, we officially suck. I really wish I didn't care so much.

[spacetyrantxenu]

Yeah I'm not staying up much later tonight. I'll pause it myself if I have to. Will get the tech screen when I play.