Oxy changes his naming scheme to Community... and inexplicably doesn't get cancelled

[Cheater Hater]

Glad you asked--here's what the theater looks like:


Eight units in BK--the Guerilla 2 Longbow, 2 Cats, an Axe, and 4 Archers (2 that were just moved into the city). You can also see my large stacks (the two tiles not called out have just the single unit)--unfortunately I mis-moved a single Cat into xenu's range; hopefully xenu either doesn't notice it or thinks it's just standard troop builds.

The other pictures are in the folder as normal (except the demos picture I forgot to take ), but there's nothing spectacular there.

Regarding your specific points BaII, the main reason why I think we could make some progress is that Zuckerman only has a single Archer in it--we might not be able to keep it, but if we burn that and either keep or burn/replace BK, we should be in decent shape.

The other thing I'm worried about is that we won't have nearly as many Knights as I want if we declare on T148 like I'm thinking we should--I'll be able to upgrade 6 HA's next turn I think (about half the stack), which gives us 11 or 12 Knights, 5 HA's, 17 Cats, 2 WE's and 5 Phalanx--I'm thinking I'll move the stack of Phalanx to guard the workers on the "Maybe C" square--should I move all 5, or something like 3, the spear, and an HA? I like that varied plan better thinking about it, but I'm not sure--don't forget it's still a forest tile.

Also, I'm assuming we'll be on the front side of the turn split, based on recent play patterns--I'm not going to play the turn tonight even if the turn rolls (mainly since I'll be waiting/hoping for your input), but xenu played after us the last couple turns--heck, he could we waiting to declare on us (though I don't think he'd get anywhere--the north is relatively well defended, but we did just switch out of Slavery). I'm curious--is there any chance you could be available to chat when I actually play the war turn on T148? (based on current trends, the turn would be played either Thursday night or sometime Friday)

[BaII]

Sure we could probably do a Friday chat, at like 3:30 PM EST for me. So I think what we should do is have everything on tile on the C tile I marked on Turn 147 or is Turn 148 better. Regardless I think we have to be on that tile at turn 148 at the latest. Then the next turn bombard with all the cat's, the only real defender in there is the LB, the other bits of it is trash. We might want to sucide 1 or 2 cat's but otherwise I think we're good for the most part. Be careful that it's not a bait.

[Cheater Hater]

Why do we need to put stuff on the C tile the turn before we attack? If we put them 2 tiles away from that tile, they can stay out of xenu's range, then move up and bombard/attack right away on T148 (that's why I researched Engineering). Is there a reason why I shouldn't attack on T148--just to upgrade more HA's, and maybe a Phalanx or two?

Edit: I've played the turn as planned; the biggest development was seeing a pike in Zuckerman--just the one, but it's worrisome to see any pikes when I have an army of knights. I'll do a full report before the turn rolls at least

[BaII]

No point in having workers road it because that also gives away the attack, so we can't land their and attack on the same turn without giving it away to xenu. Bleh pikes will be difficult to deal with.

[Cheater Hater]

I'm giving away my attack either way though--either I road the tile allowing my 1-movers to attack on the turn I declare, or I don't and he still gets a turn with BK after seeing my stacks (since I'm obviously not taking it with just my 2-movers ). My trick with the workers is that I actually have 3 workers in the stack, so I could give the appearance of chopping the forest (and guarding it since it's on the border, just like xenu did with his worker stack). Even if he does assume the worst and load up on troops in BK, the difference here is even if xenu assumes an attack is coming, he doesn't know what it consists of.

My report is still coming--hopefully before the turn rolls still

[Cheater Hater]

T147 Report:
Yeah, it's a little late--and by a little I mean a lot
Still, here's the important picture:


The total number of troops that can hit BK next turn if necessary:
20 Cats
11 Knights
8 HA
2 WE
4 Phalanx
1 Spear
46 units total, 26 non-siege. My plan assuming no drastic changes (nothing more than the pike moving to BK) is to do whatever with the Cats (15-5 bombard/suicide I'm guessing), then suicide/hope for retreats on some HA's, do the bulk of the attacks with Knights (and the 2 WE's), then clean up with the remaining HA's and 1-movers. My plan is to log in and check things out tonight, make sure things are going well enough (BK doesn't have 20 units in it, xenu hasn't declared with overwhelming forces in the north), then hopefully run some sims. Assuming all goes well, we'll play the turn together tomorrow--do you have a Google account? That's the easiest way to chat for me.

Speaking of xenu's counter-attacking chances in the north:


A bunch of units, but not that many attackers--I didn't get a picture of the troops in the northern cities, but I moved some to Chang so I was more-covered in that case. Next, here's how the domestic situation looks:




Not much new here--I should be focusing more on military soon. Next, let's check the foreign situation:


Obviously we're missing Paper on the people we know techs from--we can also backfill Monotheism if we feel like it whenever, and we'll get good known-tech bonuses on Banking. No sign of Nationalism yet, so if we decide to head that direction it will be close to a monopoly presumably. We can decide on the next tech once we solve the xenu problem


Average isn't that good considering the golden age, but I'm not focusing on production at the moment (instead maxing commerce/gold to upgrade as many HA's as possible) and GNP is almost always worse when not researching since you don't get arrow bonus or known-tech bonuses--for comparison, last turn if we turned on max research towards a widely known tech like Banking or Monotheism, we were second or third in GNP (almost certainly behind dtay, but I'm not sure who else is researching fastest).


The power graph lets you see how close xenu's power is to ours--we're both on an upturn, but this graph doesn't have my sudden upgrade of Knights which should turn the tide in our favor.

GNP/Production graphs are available too, but I don't think they have the golden age in them yet, so I'll get them next turn.

[Cheater Hater]

I took a look at the new turn, pictures are here
Not much new--xenu actually offered open borders (which I declined), and BK only has a HA in it. Edit: I'm blind, the pike is in there as well
I'll start doing some sims, and update when I get some results:

Edit: Results (sandbox here)
Run 1: No promotions, no fortify (just Walls/Castle), all Cats bombard
4 HA's lost redlining Pike/Longbow, rest is easy
Run 2: Promotions on xenu's units, fortify on Longbow only, all Cats bombard
7 HA's lost, along with a Knight--extremely bad luck (notably 3 HA's failed to dent the Pike)
Run 3: Promotions on xenu's units, fortify on Longbow only, Cats 15/5 bombard/attack
5 Cats and 3 HA's lost--this is better than 7 HA's and a Knight right?
Run 4: Promotions on xenu's units, suicide Cats promoted CR1, fortify on Longbow only, Cats 15/5 bombard/attack
5 Cats and 3 HA's lost--it seemed better than the last one, but I got a bit unlucky :/
Run 5: Promotions on xenu's units, suicide Cats promoted B1, fortify on Longbow only, Cats 15/5 bombard/attack
5 Cats and 3 HA's lost--I feel like this has more variance than the CR1 promotions (since you don't always collateral the Pike), so I think CR1 is better, though it is close--any thoughts BaII?
Run 6: Promotions on xenu's units, suicide Cats promoted CR1, "suicide" HA's promoted C1, fortify on Longbow only, Cats 15/5 bombard/attack
5 Cats and 1 HA lost--good luck at ~30% odds wins against Pike and Longbow
Run 7: Promotions on xenu's units, suicide Cats promoted CR1, "suicide" HA's promoted C1, fortify on all xenu units as appropriate, Cats 15/5 bombard/attack
5 Cats and 1 HA lost--good luck again

Overall, things look good--we promote 5 Cats to CR1, bombard the 15 non-promoted cats, suicide the promoted Cats, promote 3XP HA's to C1 and suicide them in until the Pike and Longbow are redlined (until other units start defending), then clean up using Knights. Assuming average combat results, we should lose about 5 Cats and 3 HA's--if I hadn't already asked for BaII to play the turn with me, I probably would play the turn right now. Actually, there still is one unresolved question--do I raze BK and replace it (likely on the "Maybe C" spot), or keep it? The "Maybe C" spot is a better spot overall I think (especially if xenu still has lots of borders around), and we do have the settler waiting patiently in Jeff. I think part of it depends on what survives when we capture the city, and BaII will be around when I capture it hopefully.

[Cheater Hater]

Well, BaII didn't appear to be around, but I decided to stop holding up the game and play the turn. I declared as expected, and took BK with minimal losses (4 Cats and 3 HA--I forgot to attack with one of the Cats apparently). BK had only a forge in it, so I decided to burn the city. I didn't see much resistance--there's a stack of 4 HA's nearby we couldn't see before, but nothing else important. We both spawned GG's, though his unfortunately spawned in Zuckermais. I have the pictures taken (general pictures here, combat logs here), and I hope to get a full report done soon--if you have any questions before then, just ask and I'll try to answer.

[BaII]

Sorry that I wasn't around. I think you should of promoted the HA's to flanking instead of C1 would have been the better play to keep everything alive. Later if one of them retreats we could turn him into our sentry unit. Our power is pretty close together and with the GG so close to the next target I don't think we can possibly run in there and take it out without losing most of our army. Is their a pathway in the North that we can carve?

[Cheater Hater]

T148 Wrap-up/T149 Pre-turn:
Well, the T148 report didn't get written, but we're here at the start of T149 wondering where to go next. Importantly, xenu didn't do much last turn other than a bunch of whips (some troops were shuffled around, but certainly nothing like how I assumed Chang was getting burned--it should be safe now unless xenu has a similar number of Knights to us hiding somewhere), so I'll use the T149 pictures in this post (noting differences where important). We'll start with where our troops ended last turn (since I was trying to get out of the save quickly and thus didn't frame the screenshots properly for a full breakdown of the south theater):


As you can see, I split them into three stacks in an effort to lessen the effects of Cats coming out of the fog/making sure to protect all my units. Next, let's see what troops we can see of xenu's:


Yes, that's a surprisingly low number of troops--that WE/Cat mini-stack appears to be from SS in the north (it's missing those from last turn), and a stack of 4 HA's we could see last turn has disappeared into the fog. There's also no sign of the Great General, and that pike appears to have been whipped (dry-whipped even, at a cost of 4 or 5 pop--which would it be?).

Right now I think I want to move most of the troops from my 3 southern stacks to the square I put the blue dot on--that gives me the option to hit Zuckerman if xenu leaves me the option (though if we see even just the WE/Cat stack and HA stack join the Archer and Pike in the city, I don't think I try an attack--I think I could win, but it would require basically all the knights and would incur heavy losses) while guarding all my 1-movers. The other thing to consider is how many Knights to move to the northern front--let's take a look at that front now:


Not much new here--I'm shuffling stuff around, and there's another Knight coming this turn (I didn't move anything yet). I also am planning on doing some upgrades of the 1-movers up here to solidify the defenses--I just don't know how many knights I would need to make inroads to taking/burning SS (note the Castle).

Any thoughts BaII? I'll play the turn sometime tomorrow; hopefully I can get some input before then.

Edit: Turn played, basically as I described--I'll write the report soon (the pictures are even ready and in the Dropbox, I just don't feel like writing it this moment--expect it sometime tonight).