[Spoilers] Bacchus debuts on RB showing unmatched vision and slick dice-rolling

[Bacchus]

Wow, retep is taking just four minutes per turn.

[Bacchus]

So, to no-one surprise (just see the lack of activity in the lurker thread), mackoti began a well-planned war against mostly_harmless, taking two cities on the very first turn, IIUC. Soon Ottomans will have these lovely wonders that Sumerians were busily building. Also, check this out:



Retep moved 1S again. Looks like he is just going for the capital (hill, 60% culture defense). Funnily, even before he gets there I will have something like the required amount of troops to take him out in the field.



Another axe and Numidian complete on the theatre this turn, and this will probably mark the end of military building, hopefully for a long time. Well, not a complete end, I do want to build a steady stream of Numidians, but that will be in 1-2 cities max. Depending on the amount of losses that I suffer, I might have to come up with a use for this army. Options are taking retep's capital and immediately getting into conflict with Inca over a highly incovenient front and against catapults, going for a revenge strike against Inca whilst he is himself busy taking retep, or teaching Dhalpir a lesson in the importance of logistical support for your far-flung empire. I like the second option best. On the other hand Dhalpir brought up a guerilla archer to my borders. I wonder whether his behaviour on plako's border is as midleslly annoying, and I hope it is.

[Bacchus]

So, I decided to amuse the lurkers in this game. After thinking about it, I am pretty convinced that William will take retep out as soon as he sees the power plunge. In fact, I'd give even odds that he is already repositioning his army to do so, SHOULD he see retep's power plunge. I have two choices. One is to offer retep peace now, after he has seen my HA's, and hope that he understands the message (and cares) -- his army will be thrown back in time to defend, whilst I can take on the Inca on their southern front. The problem with this is William probably won't attack until he sees the plunge, and once he sees peace, he will quickly prepare for defense. The problem with attacking post-plunge is that my own army will probably suffer at least some damage in the hands of the attackers. I do have a medic to heal-up quickly, as long as there is something left to heal. Now, as you can see from the shot above, the unit ratio is highly favourable, in fact, once you account that retep lost one chariot and withdrew another from his original 21-unit stack, you'll see that he has no hope not just of achieving significant gains, but even of killing that many units. Also, this turn he took even less time -- just three minutes from login to turn end. I'd imagine he's given up on tactics and will just through all he can at my capital. If so, with the hill and 60% culture defense, at the current ratios he is hopelessly lost (I think he already had a similar episode vis-a-vis William). I, by contrast, will have an experienced army and a general. A Combat3 Morale Flanking2 Numidian would have decent harassment potential and won't come up on the defense against axes if covered by C1 Shock Numidians.

[Bacchus]

Or I could just whip some triremes and go upset Plako. Share the spite, as it were, why should it be just us three involved in pointless wars?

[Bacchus]

Retep continues his advance:



Meanwhile, I found a better island to settle. Close to Plako, though :/

[Bacchus]

BTW, I was bored and tineyed dtay's avatar — as it looks, it's a representative of the "mysterious knight" trope, specifically The Black Knight, a glorious warrior and a the final boss of a GameCube installment of Fire Emblem, one of them japanese tactical RPGs. The Black Knight's identity gets revealed in the sequel, he is also a general. So yeah, overall I'm pretty sure it's no accident he's first.

[Bacchus]

Logged before the turn roll to see that retep has moved.... 1NW. He really has. I have no explanation for this, except that he is going to retreat from my lands altogether -- if he is going to try and take Forever Machine, why do it across a river?

[Ceiliazul]

is he even pillaging as he goes? lots of gold he's giving up if not. well, better for you, right?

[Bacchus]

Nope, he is not pillaging.

Sure, better for me, and I've given up on treating this game as resembling anything like real cIV anyway I'm just not sure what to do in response to this level of crazy.

As an aside, this turn I will be moving troops into position so that if he does take FM, I can counterattack. I need to consider what to do with Numidians -- I have two that can go into FM as garrison and I'm tempted to put them there, as they will still get the bonus defending across the river, if I understand correctly. By contrast, on the counter-attack they will be facing spears and doing the least useful work.

He also moved a chariot within striking distance of C of Conscience, so my Formation chariot will get to see some more action.

[Bacchus]

Either retep's units are on strike, or he is randomly deleting them. Sure could have used that pillage gold! He also switched researched into Writing away from Iron Working. Not sure whether that's him trying to signal something. If he takes a swipe of desperation against Forever Machine, he can do a bit of damage -- he has 7 HA's, 6 axes, 3 spears and a chariot. I have 3 Numidians, 2 axes, 2 spears and an archer in the city itself, and 8 axes, 2 chariots and 2 spears available for counter-attacking on the next turn. Also, most of my axes have combat over his.

I have to say it was a difficult choice whether to try and hold on to the city at all. My logistics are so crap because I had to defend three cities from a stack at the same time, no real way to improve on this, except by accepting that at least one city is gone. Why didn't I? Maybe because I fucked up, but my thinking is just that he is not going to throw out his entire army, and let's face it — this is his entire army right here, just for a spiteful razing of an irrelevant city belonging to a player who has really done nothing to piss him off. He can, if he wants to, but even if something of his is left standing after the counter-attack, it's not going anywhere nor doing anything useful.

I guess we'll have to wait and see.