[Spoilers] Old Human Tourist: Empress of Azteca

[Old Harry]

Turn 159 - the rest

Just realised Gertie can build a pretty quick University too. It'll start the Library next turn. Veggies is our best other bet, but I'll try to get Ophelia in the race too.


Hazelnut is in its max hammer configuration now. It will get three more hammers from Caste, three from Replaceable Parts and three from Railroads for an eventual base of 42 and a total of 94 (before Factory and Drydock).


We resettled Mardoc's capital. Orinoco is our 41st city. It'll struggle to get the fish back from Blue .


Looks like Giedi Prime falls next turn. Odd decision to leave a Knight in there. Cynheard has three Knights in Stich Tabr, which isn't really enough to be a counter attack.


Here's another odd thing - this tundra won't let me build a farm, cottage or workshop, while the one south of the city will. Is that something to do with fresh water?


Our tech path isn't yet decided. We'll research Optics this turn to give ourselves options. The Democracy/SoL vs Massive Navy question can be kicked down the road for a couple more turns.

Glad I gave you a good fight. Out of curiosity - how long would I have been tied to the game yet if Boldly hadn't taken my island?

We had a Galley poised and a bunch of Knights able to take Amphibious. IIRC you only had an Archer behind walls when Boldly grabbed it, if you'd built some LBs there or your galley had won attacking ours it could have been a long time...

[Mardoc]

3. Your attack with WEs against our knights outside Infrared was an absolute disaster for us. I don't question your move here, it was probably a good use of those elephants, but your WEs killed at least 3 more knights than they should have.

Um...every single battle was 69% odds or better. I won four out of five. Perhaps your 'should have' didn't account for me spending my GG on Formation promos.

4. You sent a random WE against our knight in Carrot with 20 % odds and won. In PBEM I would have probably considered that as cheating (perhaps I'm missing something), but here it of course was just a gamble move that paid off

Don't remember this. I probably intended to sacrifice the WE and clean up the survivor with a reinforcement, then got lucky.

6. I don't want to be too critical or unfriendly here - overall you did a great job defending but that counterattack on T142 was surely your biggest mistake of the war. It was really a battle with very weak expected result from your perspective. I can see why you feel that it was a bad RNG result for you, because you got really an amazing set of rolls in the first 7 fights and after those you in fact had a chance to do real damage for that stuck. Thank god from our perspective your luck changed in the middle of the fight and the 2nd half of rolls went our way and the end result was probably close to expected outcome (us losing couple units). (Detailed analysis of this can be found in post 775) This battle made real aggression again possible for us and it kind of made up for the bad luck I described in points 2-4.

Amazing rolls? You've got to be kidding. If you thought that battle was what the RNG should do, then no wonder you were disappointed with the rest.

2 wins, 5 losses, out of seven battles with an average odds of 24% is just a smidge better than expected value. True, I didn't count on winning any of those, but the real goal was to redline your stack defenders and let me get some decent fights with the survivors. And once I finally did that...I not only started losing, but I started losing without even scratching your units. That one knight who soaked something like four longbows without a scratch, saved you at least three units. When I got even-odds against your HA, I couldn't even scratch him!

That said, I was expecting to go maybe even on hammers with you. That attack was motivated mainly by the realization that cats would never let me have a fair fight later on.

Anyway, it wasn't the biggest mistake of the war. Third, at best. Worst mistake was smashing into Azza even though I knew you'd be the one to benefit - pure emotion there. I'd do it again, but I won't claim it was an intelligent move . Second worst was that time I had a HA/cat stack behind a city which would fall, in the worst possible location: you could hit it, and I couldn't hit you with the stack. I guess I just assumed your stack would occupy the city, but I wasted my units for no gain there.

Arguably I made a substantial mistake building WE/longbows instead of HA/cat, too. Hard to say how that would have done without engineering to let me out manuever you, though.

7. Rest of the war until this turn went pretty close to expected results,

Won't argue here. Wasn't paying attention, anyway.

You seem to be prone to rounding. You argue as though 90% odds = 100% odds = no damage, and therefore every win from the defender is an insult from the RNG. I think it's reasonable that a 9% attack should lose but redline the defender, and you don't. I'll have to pull out a combat calculator and double-check my intuition here.

Probably a good while, I can't remember what you had in there, but we only have currently that one galley nearby. WW from fighting against you is significant, but our luxury resource situation is good as well --> We would have wanted to finish you fast, but it would not have been such a priority that we would have made big sacrifices for it.

I was constantly ferrying longbows to the mainland. Give me two turns unmolested after you took control of the local cities, and the longbows would have started to stack up. It was a mistake to not upgrade that archer, I had the gold on hand, but had mostly lost interest by that point.

So I guess I'll have to thank Boldly for that

I have one question too regarding our opportunistic attack: If we had not done it and just eaten Azza first I assume that you would have had your eyes open and built military (i.e. we would not have been able to really surprise you after consolidating our Azza gains)? Or do you think there was a chance that you just go all-economy for 30 turns and we could have just steamrolled you if we had been more patient? :P

I would have gone all-military, but spent that military on Azza. I consider the Dental Plan battle to be a success, even including your attack on me. Azza had pissed me off that badly by then. You'd have had plenty of similar opportunities later on.

So...realistically patience would have let you steamroll me, yes. I wasn't getting more tech, and I'd have spent my population on killing Arabian units instead of on longbows and war elephants.

[Fintourist]

3. Your attack with WEs against our knights outside Infrared was an absolute disaster for us. I don't question your move here, it was probably a good use of those elephants, but your WEs killed at least 3 more knights than they should have.

Um...every single battle was 69% odds or better. I won four out of five. Perhaps your 'should have' didn't account for me spending my GG on Formation promos.

Ouch, Mardoc killed four of our knights - at 67%, 69%, 77% and 77% before losing a 67% roll.

- C2 Knight vs C2 Welly - 63%... LOSS with only one hit
- C2 9.9/10 Knight vs C2F 5.8/7 (83HP) Welly - 53%... LOSS but so close - down to 7HP
- C2 HA vs C1 6.8/7 Welly 9%... LOSS BY 1HP
C1 Knight vs 5.6/7 C2 Welly 81%... WIN (down to 8.1/10)
C1 Knight vs 4.6/7 C2 F Welly 74%... LOSS (down to 9HP)
Green Knight vs C2 F 3/7 Welly 96%... WIN (one hit)
Green HA vs C2 F GG 1.7/7 Welly 97%... WIN (no hits)
Sentry HA vs 0.6 Welly 99%... WIN no hits
6.0/10 C2 Knight vs 0.5/7 Welly 99%... WIN no hits

Above is the full log
- Winning 4 out of 5 was already on the lucky side, but the real blow was the way those 4 won. Your winning WEs did not only win they took very little hits by doing it
- Overall you killed 7 knights and 1 HA with 6 War Elephants. I can guarantee you that if you sim the above scenario the average result is way below that what you got

4. You sent a random WE against our knight in Carrot with 20 % odds and won. In PBEM I would have probably considered that as cheating (perhaps I'm missing something), but here it of course was just a gamble move that paid off

Don't remember this. I probably intended to sacrifice the WE and clean up the survivor with a reinforcement, then got lucky.

There were other units inside the city, which makes this scenario unlikely.

6. About T142...

Amazing rolls? You've got to be kidding. If you thought that battle was what the RNG should do, then no wonder you were disappointed with the rest.

2 wins, 5 losses, out of seven battles with an average odds of 24% is just a smidge better than expected value. True, I didn't count on winning any of those, but the real goal was to redline your stack defenders and let me get some decent fights with the survivors. And once I finally did that...I not only started losing, but I started losing without even scratching your units. That one knight who soaked something like four longbows without a scratch, saved you at least three units. When I got even-odds against your HA, I couldn't even scratch him!

Yes, I totally agree that the latter half of the battle was unlucky for you, which evened it out. But the fact is that you should not have got that far at all. You really need to understand/check Cyneheard's combat calculator if you want to get an overview of these battles
- Getting those 2 wins at 36 % and 67 % was obviously already nice
- Your HA getting our pike down to 10 HP or better happens only 1 time out of 20. (there is a 40 % chance that your HA gets 0/1 hit only in) Try that attack in sandbox again and you will see that in many cases that pike will kill multiple HAs or the WE, which got one of your 2 kills if you decide to send that in instead
- Your HA gets 5 hits or better against our knight only 1 out of 4 times
- Your LB gets 5 hits or better against our knight only 1 out of 6 times

Combine the above together and you realize that you got a really lucky start and it should not have come down to situation where we need to really for our wounded knight getting couple flawless wins at 78-82 % odds (happens 1 out of 8-9 times)

Anyway, it wasn't the biggest mistake of the war. Third, at best. Worst mistake was smashing into Azza even though I knew you'd be the one to benefit - pure emotion there.

Yeah, this war would not have started unless we would not have gotten such a nice opportunity to kill your stack. You did not know that we were so well positioned to attack, so I think it would also be fair to say that this was not a huge mistake in decision-making sense, just a risk that happened to backfire.

Second worst was that time I had a HA/cat stack behind a city which would fall, in the worst possible location: you could hit it, and I couldn't hit you with the stack. I guess I just assumed your stack would occupy the city, but I wasted my units for no gain there.

I remember this, obviously that was not good, but at that point Infrared had already fallen so it was always going to be difficult to pick good battles after that.

You seem to be prone to rounding. You argue as though 90% odds = 100% odds = no damage, and therefore every win from the defender is an insult from the RNG.

No, I expect to win 9 out of 10 battles when I have 90 %. And I'm sure you know it, but this gives a pretty good idea of how highly you think of me.

I think it's reasonable that a 9% attack should lose but redline the defender, and you don't. I'll have to pull out a combat calculator and double-check my intuition here.

Combat calculator is always a good idea. I checked some of the math already above for us.

[Commodore]

Tundra needs fresh water to be improved, ever, yes.

[TheHumanHydra]

You seem to be prone to rounding. You argue as though 90% odds = 100% odds = no damage, and therefore every win from the defender is an insult from the RNG.

No, I expect to win 9 out of 10 battles when I have 90 %. And I'm sure you know it, but this gives a pretty good idea of how highly you think of me.

Don't take it personally, Fin. You're just both arguing from different expectations, both of which were disappointed. That always rubs. But yeah, Mardoc, once you've been able to look through the thread (and especially if you'd been able to be there in chat, where a lot of this stuff gets hashed out), I think you'll see these guys are incredibly thorough with the combat odds and simming. They have to be among the most diligent on the site in that regard. Fintourist does tend to be a pessimist about these things, while Old Harry will take them a bit more in stride, but their grasp of the potentialities of combat in this game is impeccable. Having seen them at work, I'll accept their analysis ten times out of ten - and in this case, I was there when it happened (or rather, when we learned of it and worked through it).

[Mardoc]

Above is the full log
- Winning 4 out of 5 was already on the lucky side, but the real blow was the way those 4 won. Your winning WEs did not only win they took very little hits by doing it
- Overall you killed 7 knights and 1 HA with 6 War Elephants. I can guarantee you that if you sim the above scenario the average result is way below that what you got

Ah, I'd forgotten about the luck on the defense on your turn. Yeah, that was definitely above average.

Don't remember this. I probably intended to sacrifice the WE and clean up the survivor with a reinforcement, then got lucky.

There were other units inside the city, which makes this scenario unlikely.

It's quite possible I was over-optimistic and then lucky.

- Getting those 2 wins at 36 % and 67 % was obviously already nice

Yes, that should have been one kill and one redline, on average.

- Your HA getting our pike down to 10 HP or better happens only 1 time out of 20. (there is a 40 % chance that your HA gets 0/1 hit only in) Try that attack in sandbox again and you will see that in many cases that pike will kill multiple HAs or the WE, which got one of your 2 kills if you decide to send that in instead

Sandbox again? There was no sandbox. Just gut feel.

10 HP or better was not required, though - anything below 30 would have sufficed to make the pike irrelevant. The way binomials work, I would expect that to be about 30-40% likely, and at most require 2 HA instead of 1.

- Your HA gets 5 hits or better against our knight only 1 out of 4 times
- Your LB gets 5 hits or better against our knight only 1 out of 6 times

Again, I didn't need 5 hits or better on these. Just had to knock them below the cats - probably 3 hits would have sufficed. I guess, technically, that was luck - but it was luck on the rounds where it didn't matter.

Combine the above together and you realize that you got a really lucky start and it should not have come down to situation where we need to really for our wounded knight getting couple flawless wins at 78-82 % odds (happens 1 out of 8-9 times)

Lucky start, yes. But I would have gotten to the same point without nearly as much luck. From my perspective, it didn't matter if your knights had 10 hp or 30 hp at this point in the battle. I got my luck when it didn't really matter, and then you got the luck when it did.

Perhaps I was only likely to get five-six kills instead of the eight I expected. But two was still ridiculous. That alone evens out the war elephant luck.

Also, what the heck do you mean '1 out of 8-9 times?' For each flawless win? Making three in a row more like 1 in 500?

Yeah, this war would not have started unless we would not have gotten such a nice opportunity to kill your stack. You did not know that we were so well positioned to attack, so I think it would also be fair to say that this was not a huge mistake in decision-making sense, just a risk that happened to backfire.

Risk? But the only upside was pain for Azza! There was no way I was going to get any land out of my rage. Maybe if your army was elsewhere, it would have been five turns later that my army died, inside a revolting city or outside the gates of the next one.

And sure, knight vs. axe is good odds, but you'd still have lost some units if you had to kill his units instead of me doing it for you.

Even if you chose to ignore me, that attack was never a good idea. Just a catharsis.

I remember this, obviously that was not good, but at that point Infrared had already fallen so it was always going to be difficult to pick good battles after that.

At least I should have left the units in the city to soak collateral and let the longbows have a better chance.

And I'm sure you know it, but this gives a pretty good idea of how highly you think of me.

On the contrary. Part of the reason for that counterattack we're arguing was a firm belief on my part that you would never give me a better chance. I knew it was a big risk with variable payback, but it still seemed better than fighting on your terms.

I still can't see what I could have done better, anyway - just sat there and waited for you to walk to the city, sacrifice three cats and slaughter my army anyway? It wouldn't even have bought me any time compared to how it turned out!

Combat calculator is always a good idea. I checked some of the math already above for us.

Yes. And I'm not willing to put in the time it would take to gather evidence to argue any further.

[Mardoc]

I guess that's what's really frustrating me. You say that battle was a mistake - but you'd put me into a spot where I had no good choices. And then you write off the strategic mistakes that I see.

[Fintourist]

10 HP or better was not required, though - anything below 30 would have sufficed to make the pike irrelevant. The way binomials work, I would expect that to be about 30-40% likely, and at most require 2 HA instead of 1.

Chance for that HA for getting that pike below 30 HP was ~8 %.

In order to get odds for the next HA you would have needed at least 3 hits, which happens 25 % of the time. (assuming you had C2 HAs available). I think sacrificing 2 HAs and then ending up with a redlined pike is the most expected outcome. Requiring 3+ HAs is more likely than knocking the pike out with 1 HA though (remember that there was a 40 % chance of getting zero or only one hit in).

I guess, technically, that was luck - but it was luck on the rounds where it didn't matter.

Lucky start, yes. But I would have gotten to the same point without nearly as much luck.

I got my luck when it didn't really matter, and then you got the luck when it did.

Of course that luck did matter. The way I see it we can expect to get at least couple of decent rolls out of those first 7 fights and that pike and at least some of the other units should have been able to take down a 2nd attacker with clear odds.

So I think the situation where you have sent in 10 attackers got ~2 kills and then find yourself in a position where you can take couple of battles with ~50 % odds with LBs is closer to a base case. I guess it's fair to assume that you get couple of 50 % battles in the end and you should have killed at least an additional HA. But even if the expected outcome would have been 4 kills (I'm afraid we really should test this properly before we can agree here), the fight wasn't really a good idea especially as it included LBs attacking outside the city.

Also, what the heck do you mean '1 out of 8-9 times?' For each flawless win? Making three in a row more like 1 in 500?

Yeah, exactly, the odds of us being so lucky with that knight are even worse than 1 out of 500.

(btw, that HA vs pike, LB vs knight, HA vs knight -combo gets so good results also only once out of 500 tries)

And sure, knight vs. axe is good odds, but you'd still have lost some units if you had to kill his units instead of me doing it for you.

Yep, it was great for us that you did the hard work there for us.

Even if you chose to ignore me, that attack was never a good idea. Just a catharsis.

Fair enough. My point is that had you done the attack e.g. 2 turns earlier, you would have had time to heal some of your units, consolidate your troops in one stack and most importantly scout out surroundings and react to our stack properly. Just saying that the events around Dental Plan attack went as bad as possible for you.

At least I should have left the units in the city to soak collateral and let the longbows have a better chance.

Yeah, or if you had been able to retreat a bit further it would have worked too.

I knew it was a big risk with variable payback, but it still seemed better than fighting on your terms.

Fair enough. At that point we had gotten too much out of our expansion + Azza war and you had suffered enough from your conflict so that it becomes really hard/impossible to pick good battles. You don't get to see a wounded stack too often in range.

I still can't see what I could have done better, anyway - just sat there and waited for you to walk to the city, sacrifice three cats and slaughter my army anyway? It wouldn't even have bought me any time compared to how it turned out!

I think you would have gotten more time, because those LBs that you lost in counterattack (along with enough units to soak collateral) were something that we would not have been able to dislodge in the coming turns.

The above point still applies though and I understand the decision to pull the trigger and try something instead of just sitting tight and waiting.

I guess that's what's really frustrating me. You say that battle was a mistake - but you'd put me into a spot where I had no good choices. And then you write off the strategic mistakes that I see.

And what frustrates me was the claim that my complaints about our RNG luck are not based on facts and I'm just groundlessly bitching.

I tend to express my emotions in our thread, which possibly is not always the way to go, but I would like to see myself as someone who does not take undeserved credit when one really just has been lucky (your conflict with Azza) or claim being unlucky when that has not been the case (combat rolls in our war).

Anyways, it's a bit pity that the discussion started circling around this RNG thing while the strategic stuff that you mention is of course more interesting.

I also apologize for being provocative/unfriendly/untactful. Yesterday was a really shitty day for me because of out-of-civ reasons, which is surely reflected here. I hope I haven't driven you off our thread, because I would be happy to discuss this game and civ with you in a better atmosphere. The big picture from my perspective is still that I appreciate the way you played until the end, made our life difficult with your defense and the stuff we are arguing here are just mostly details.

[Old Harry]

We're all friends here right? Lets just agree that when we make Civ 6 we'll ensure there is a deterministic combat system...

Its interesting that you thought our attack on IR was a forgone conclusion Mardoc, we were sure that our lack of cats would leave us sitting in your culture bombarding down the walls for ages while you built units that could take out our stack. I wonder which of us was right? The different ways we can view the same situation is remarkable - presumably you saw yourself as a whipped-to-the-bone civ only able to produce a couple of longbows a turn while we were looking at a civ with small whip-efficient cities able to produce a couple of bloody CG3 longbows every turn!

We certainly made a mistake only bringing one Pike along with us, but perhaps that was just the temptation you needed. I don't think you made a mistake building Wellies and LBs - once we had IR's culture cleared away HAs and cats would have been easy for us to pick off. With the size of our (evil?) empire behind us you really could only put off the inevitable (which you did very well ). I'm really surprised BGN took that island though - had he eg donated you a LB or two instead we'd never have taken it off you and would have had war weariness forever! (Although perhaps unit gifting isn't okay in this game?)

I'm curious about the bad blood with you and Azza. We saw his traditional early pink dot and then the traditional early pink dot removal, but was it the capital raze that pushed you over the edge or something that happened earlier?

Also thanks Commodore - I guess that after PB13 we should come to you with all tundra-related questions...

[Old Harry]

Oh, and just to inflate my post count a bit further. I dunno where Jowy's QOTM is from ("I am A GOD at Civ compared to the filthy casuals, just let THAT sink in!!" -Jowy) but I'm going to guess he's one of those drunken boisterous gods (Thor?) who gets into fights all the time and wakes up next day wondering what he's done...