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

[spacetyrantxenu]

Logged in and paused it, grabbed a few pictures while I was at it and added builds to cities that were missing them. Placeholders for now, will review them later when I play.

Tech screen from this turn:




William didn't research anything we could see and he has the exact same amount of gold as last turn, so break even research? I'm guessing William's whips are either a result of needing more units to kill off Kuro, or because he panicked when he saw this turn's graphs...




...and then checked demographics and found his power had dropped to second.




I'd crap my pants if my neighbor did that while my army was far, far away too. But since he knows we're attacking Sisub I don't know why he'd be too worried, unless it's because he sees how quickly we've begun rolling up Sisub and he wants to have extra defense available at home while his army is abroad. No need for speculation, I'm sure he's explaining it all in his thread.

I'll play when I'm able to tomorrow, but I'm not incurring wife agro to play a war turn in a hurry.

[spacetyrantxenu]

I'm in game and having a look around, noticed something. One slight problem with our moves from last turn, you were supposed to move our work boat back into our territory so it could hide in port at Revival. Halvgud is going to pillage our fish since we don't have any navy in this area and our scouting work boat was going to be the ticket to repair the pillaging after the war. I've offered open borders to Suttree so we can hide in his territory next turn. The only downside is that Suttree doesn't have open borders with anyone so he'll get an economic boost from both foreign trade routs and ICTRs with our island cities. A positive way to spin this is he will hopefully see it as a friendly gesture. That will be helpful if we decide we want to attack him later, perhaps he'll relax just a bit and give us a small advantage. Probably not though.

More reporting soon as I play through the turn. I'm working through a simulation on unit healing/GG mechanics right now.

[spacetyrantxenu]

T175 - Game board prior to moving any units this turn:




Looks like Halvgud upgraded some units to longbows, that's annoying. He spent 285 gold, so that's three upgraded archers to longbows. He only has one more archer he can upgrade to a longbow so I'm not going to rush forward on that account. I expected he would whip walls into both of his cities but he did not whip this turn. If he whips next turn he'll have either walls or more units in both of his remaining cities when we attack again on T177. The addition of these longbows means we don't have enough units to press forward immediately and take the city on the first turn we attack it.

I don't want to spread the attack over two turns and have to deal with Sisub's units healing between our turns, so it's better to prepare to move everything forward for a single turn attack and capture. Considering we need to heal the Thesis stack and reposition it to attack Lesson before we can do this, I don't think it's a big deal to wait an extra turn and have all of our units in place to attack the capital. This will also give us time to get our two catapults in place to do some minimal collateral damage to the city before we throw in all of our cataphracts. If we get lucky we'll soften up the G2 longbows, if we don't get lucky we'll have an even easier time murdering ancient age trash at the bottom of his stack after we lose a few cataphracts killing the top of the stack. Either way, this is why we have catapults and it is no delay to use them since I'll move them forward this turn. This plan takes into consideration that we will lose units attacking the capital to kill the longbows, and that we'll have enough attackers remaining after those losses to win the remaining battles and claim the city in one turn. Once the capital is gone Renewal will fall as soon as we can reposition the phracts that will have by then attacked and killed the bottom of the Lesson defenders. Since those units shouldn't take much damage killing off the bottom stack trash they should be immediately available to wheel east and finish off Renewal, hopefully by T178.

NOTES:

Our medic chariot is at 11/13, has C1, Medic 2. So only 2 XP needed to get medic 3 (must attach GG). We can move 4 wounded phracts and 1 wounded chariot onto that tile to split XP. Who else should move there? Looks like:

Thesis stack:
medic: 11/13 | 2 xp needed for promo
deacon: 6/8 | 2
barkeeper: 12/13 | 1
stagehand: 11/13 | 2
negotiator: 7/8 | 1

Learning stack:
senator: 12/13 | 1
rodeo clown: 11/13 | 2
milk man: 11/13 | 2
dealbreaker: 6/8 | 2
roughneck: 6/2 (promote, 6/8) | 2

That's 10 units, 2 XP each so they'd all heal and get a promotion and we get our medic chariot to medic 3. Sounds good to me.

Questions to answer regarding healing:

Can we move a GG and then attach? I'm off to the simulator to find out, and to see how much healing these promotions will do. I think a promotion heals half of the missing hit points, right? And so even if we move all those units this turn and they don't heal this turn as a result, they'll still heal up next turn when I take their available promotions. I'm assuming that promotion healing isn't effected by the presence of a medic unit in the same tile, is that correct?

I haven't moved units yet, so this is subject to change pending what I find in the world builder.

[spacetyrantxenu]

Answers: Yes, yes, and yes. Time to play the turn.

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

Looks good, and I agree they you shouldn't just plunge in this turn. You should be able to move the GG 5 tiles and then attach it with whatever movement the new combined unit has left. I like the plan to promote/heal where possible. Place emphasis on getting as many combat4 phracts as possible, if it doesn't delay our attack.

[spacetyrantxenu]

That part is done, I'm having to wait right now because Plunder is trying to join.



Still in progress.

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

Ok, good. Also, I meant to comment on the open borders with retep idea. Last I checked, he was in mercantilism, so he won't benefit from the trade routes. Longest turn ever here.

[spacetyrantxenu]

Yeah, long turn. But short report, wife agro because I took so long. Southern front:




Notice the slap dash paint edits, rush rush rush. Up north, WAAAAAAAAAAAAAR!




If Steve Jobs is poorly defended and we can capture it this turn we'll be able to reinforce with the crossbow and axe, and then send the remaining phracts after Bill Gates. Do we know if that city has ever been size 2? If it hasn't been before I doubt it will make it now. Anyway, if we think it has been size 2 before we may be able to grab it next turn as well. Once the culture is gone from Steve Jobs we can move N/NE/attack into Bill Gates. If it is poorly garrisoned (and why wouldn't it be, way up here) maybe we can grab it the same turn. As far as I know Kuro hasn't sent any further units east aside from what's labeled on the map from T166 (spear, 3 chariots), so the most we should have to worry about is getting our workers sniped if we are careless.

Demographics at the end of the turn:




And at the start of the next turn:




Rival best power is up 14,000, our power went up 125,000. I don't think William whipped a bunch of units last turn, do you? Nine whips for him against 14,000 gain to rival best power (which should still be him -- I lost graphs on Retep this turn but will get it back next turn), that isn't a lot of units. Interesting to see what it was. What was the most recent tech I had him researching? Maybe a new economy building, I dunno.

Do you have the next turn? We're waiting on Sisub of course, so no rush.

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

Sorry I didn't reply until now. Still haven't boarded. If you can play when you get home please do so. I'll check after I get home and eat something. Only a one pop whip for Kuro and a single whip for Sisub.

[spacetyrantxenu]

Sisub's is probably walls though, which will be annoying. Playing soon, have to finish up something for work.