[SPOILERS] Yossarian blames Caledorn

[YossarianLives]

Turn 132

So with that new information, I set out to play T132.




Here is our army that I was originally planning to send against Rome. DT recently asked for screenshots of what is happening on our side of the world, and I could send him that picture.




However, we could turn the whole thing around and have it arrive at BowAivo's doorstep on T140, the same turn our current NAP with them expires.




That is our current army. We have 8 more turns to bulk it up before the BowAivo NAP expires, but for now I have shifted a lot of cities over to infra builds




That is what is happening in the wider world this turn. Rome actually got a GS, and could actually acquire a new tech for the first time in some 50 turns!

[YossarianLives]

GG had some axes too, shock axe attacks cat before non-shock axe...

Right, but DMOC was claiming that even the Shock praets attacked his cats before his C1 axes.

[Cheater Hater]

Well, that certainly changes things...

How good would Rome be if we let them devour DT? Would they become a threat to win the game?

[YossarianLives]

Well, that certainly changes things...

How good would Rome be if we let them devour DT? Would they become a threat to win the game?

Rome's last tech was 37 turns ago, and they're losing gold at 0% slider. The toroidal maintenance on this map is brutal, and Rome will have no way to deal with the costs of enveloping DT. There is no danger of them ever competing for a win in this game.

We pulled the trigger on peace with Rome. NAP to T190, OB, carte blanche against DT. This is the best thing that could have happened for our team. We lost absolutely nothing in this war, but get to disguise our build-up against BowAivo. It does suck for DT. We didn't explicitly tell them that we're bowing out of the war, but we say that we've honored the NAP so far, war failed, there is nothing more we can do. Sorry guys.

Barteq,

Would it be possible to follow this plan?

1. You sign peace with us starting next turn. (EggHeads have offered peace already.)
2. We both offer an NAP with you to turn 190, effectively until the end of the game.
3. You have carte blanche with England
4. We both sign open borders with you and keep them until the NAP (helps your economy)
5. Once Antium's silver comes into EggHeads' culture control, we will gift you the silver.

This way, we move on from the war and can try to catch up to suttree/Oxyphenbutazone. =)

One more thing ... EggHeads badly need a Heroic Epic unit for our future wars against India and other nations (not you guys, of course). We see that you have a Great General warrior in Antium. May you gift us that Great General warrior on turn 137 so we can unlock Heroic Epic? We will immediately gift the warrior back to you on the same turn or the turn after. We can offer 30 gold as payment.

Regards,
DMOC of the EggHeads team
Yossarian of the Blame Caledorn Team

DT,

I know that you're not happy with the war so far, but I believe that both of us have helped extend your time in this game. Without the NAP, Rome might have eliminated you many turns ago. Neither of our teams has any unit that can stop praetorians in the open field, and we have no defensive bonuses on the way to Rome's cities, so our stacks will get wiped out even though we have catapults. The only way we could theoretically stop Rome is if we had better tech rates to get macemen ... but that would have required us to not build our axemen and catapults!

Both of us have honored the NAP and we are also upset that the war isn't going well.

Regards,
DMOC of the EggHeads team (I wrote this)
Yossarian of the Blame Caledorn team

DMOC composed both of these after we chatted, and sent them on behalf of both our teams.

[Old Harry]

So what's the attack plan? Can you afford to keep bowavio cities?

[YossarianLives]

So what's the attack plan? Can you afford to keep bowavio cities?

We should be able to afford new BowAivo cities. They may be somewhat costly at first, but we can get courthouses in them to help out.

Here's the current plan of attack:



Nothing too complex or fancy. I think we'll get about 13 axes, 4 spears and about a half-dozen cats on the T139A tile, and 3 axes with a spear on the T139B tile. From there, we just move everything in and start taking cities. It'll be a slow trudge through their lands, but they don't really have anything to stop us. We can make those stacks bigger if we keep whipping out units near our western front, but about that...

I've been playing pretty distracted recently. Most of my focus has been on the Rome war, and I've been paying way too little attention on any city micro. It seemed like our cities were growing way too slow, but I didn't pay much attention until recently. A couple turns ago, I verified that our cities had stopped growing completely. I could not figure out what was going on. Well of course I can Blame Caledorn for this. When I took the turns back over, I never realized that 8 of our cities had "Avoid Growth" turned on. We have literally lost dozens and dozens of food just letting our cities sit with full food boxes I finally turned that off last turn so we can grow again.

[YossarianLives]

Turn 136




So here is our army. We will have a little more to attack with than what I estimated in my last post. We have 19 axes, 8 cats and 4 spears to send against BowAivo. We also have a chariot that should be able to catch up to the rest of the army. I still want to send 3 axes and a spear south to Nongoma. However, if BowAivo fails to reinforce the city, I will attack it with our lone chariot. Hopefully it will grow to size 2 before T141 so we can keep it. The rest of the army (16 axes, 8 cats and 3 spears) will set-up behind the mountains there, hopefully to reveal themselves T140, the same turn our NAP expires. I should worldbuilder it, but can any of the lurkers confirm whether BowAivo has vision on the circled tile? If they don't see us before we DOW, then we can take Bulawayo pretty easily, since it is garrisoned by a lonely worker. Even if they catch wind of our attack on T138, then the most they can have in the area on T140 is 7 axes, 5 impi and 2 chariots (assuming axes whipped out of uMgung, Nobamba and Bulawayo). We should still be able to take care of that easily enough with our axes and cats. I know, I know, this should be simmed out. I'll see if I get time to do so...




Here's an overview of our lands. I'm basically just putting hammers into infrastructure everywhere while we grow back up to our happy cap. I've marked a few city spots that we could still get peacefully, but I don't want to stop growth in any cities right now to build settlers. I doubt that Rome is going to challenge us to those cities between us, since they still seem to be going all-in against DT.







Now that we're growing again, our food graph will be able to recover from my earlier round of whips. The power graph shows that Rome isn't letting up on the praet builds. Oh well, that is DT's problem now. Sorry guys

Demos:

Looks pretty sad Hopefully that will turn around following a successful war against BowAivo.

[Old Harry]

They can't see the northern circle unless their borders pop. Have they got library or monuments in either city?

Also how many shock axes will they have? You've only got 3, which you should hold off attacking with - to make sure your cats are defended.

[Old Harry]

I made a quick test to see how your stack will behave in BowAvio territory. Essentially they'll attack your axes as long as you have the same level of promo (c1 vs c1 and shock vs shock) or are on defensive terrain but will attack your cats if they outrank you, or the rank bonus is better than the defensive bonus (ie c1+shock = +35% > hills = +25%).

Do you know what tech level they are at? How far away are Longbows?

[YossarianLives]

They can't see the northern circle unless their borders pop. Have they got library or monuments in either city?

Cool, thanks. No infra in either city. I actually decided to take a look at all their cities, and this is what they have:

Cities - 9
Granary - 7
Library - 6
Market - 5
Ikhandi - 3
Forge - 1

Alcatraz (7) – Palace, Granary, Market – garrison unknown (Impi, Warrior on T119)

Cosa Nostra (6) – Granary, Ikhandi, Library, Market, Forge – Warrior (on T133)

Nobambo (5) – Granary, Ikhandi, Library, Market – Axe, Chariot (promos unknown)
North of Nobambo – C1 Axe, C1/Shock Chariot, C2 Impi; C1 Impi, Axe

uMgung (5) – Granary, Ikhandi, Library, Market – Warrior
West of uMgung – 2x Impis (promo(s) available)

Ulundi (6) – Granary, Library – Warrior (on T132)

Vandal (5) – Granary, Monument, Library – C1 Axe, Axe, Impi (on T130)

Bulawayo (5) – Granary, Library, Market – Warrior, Workboat

kwaD (2) – Impi, Axe (promo(s) available)

Nongoma (2) – C1 Axe

Also how many shock axes will they have? You've only got 3, which you should hold off attacking with - to make sure your cats are defended.

I went back and looked at all my screenshots of Moiraine scouting them out. This is what we have seen:


Army
Known Axes - 7 (3 C1, 0 Shock, up to 2 promos available)
Known Impi - 7 (1 C1, 1 C2, multiple promos available)
Known Chariots - 2 (C2 Shock, promo available)

A lot of that is pretty far from the front, and wouldn't be able to provide any immediate defenses against our stack.

I made a quick test to see how your stack will behave in BowAvio territory. Essentially they'll attack your axes as long as you have the same level of promo (c1 vs c1 and shock vs shock) or are on defensive terrain but will attack your cats if they outrank you, or the rank bonus is better than the defensive bonus (ie c1+shock = +35% > hills = +25%).

That is awesome. Thanks so much Old Harry! Hopefully our three axes will be sufficient.

Do you know what tech level they are at? How far away are Longbows?

They have been teching even worse than us. They have Calendar, MC, and IW. They are missing Monarchy, which is a pre-req for Feud. It currently takes us 10 turns at breakeven to complete Feud, so even if they are about to complete Monarchy, they are still 10+ turns away from Longbows.

In other news, our scout has found the southern edge of SuttOxy's territory:







They didn't stack GA's for some reason, so their first GA just finished