TheHumanHydra Falls Behind [Spoilers]

[Commodore]

Thanks for the update! Yeah, Duel League 2.0 here had some odd effects. Nobody really expects to have fun in an ancient-era duel with Egypt.

[TheHumanHydra]

Part II

Edit: I felt bad leaving this unfinished, so I initially was just going to say I had found it too much work to try and go back through all my old screenshots and reconstruct a detailed account of what had happened here, and write a brief summary instead, but that summary turned into this essay-length monstrosity, and then I decided to go back and add all the pictures in after all. Unfortunately, they cut out partway through; I knew I had stopped taking pictures at some point, but it turns out to have been sooner than I hoped when I started going back through them. In any case, I hope this sheds some light on things:

Preparations for war; the forces assembled to hit Weeks:








Basically, my plan to hit dazed's offending city of Weeks out of the fog with chariots fell through because he garrisoned his city with at least one spear [Edit: it was a stack of war chariots and axes]. I moved my chariots to a central defensive position. I had stuffed spears in all my border cities to forestall an attack by war chariots, but he smartly built axes and moved to attack my easternmost city. Sadly, my front was something like one tile too wide for my chariots to cover both ends at once, and he razed the city. I cleaned up his stack with my chariots, but that was still a blow.

The dazed stack defending his city. You can see how my borders popped to conceal my massing units and place the route to Weeks in my hands - alas, for nought:




Dazed steals a march on me:




Battle:













Aftermath:




Next dazed moved on my northwestern city, and I don't remember if it was because my units were still in the east or what, but he took that one too, and kept it. There was some attritional fighting up there. I believe this was the moment when, with his forces displaced toward that city, I saw an opportunity to try and hit Weeks with my chariots while it was lightly garrisoned. Unfortunately, even my rather large stack of chariots was insufficient to dislodge just an archer and a warrior on a hill, and I angrily jammed all of my chariots at his city without effect (the 'anger' definition of tilt again). Yeah. From here on I was doomed. I did manage to retake my northwestern city again briefly, and build some more units, of course, but from here on it was just a slow attritional grind downhill.

Skirmishing in the northwest (as I recall, those results were not predicted by the odds):




Dazed captures Beijing, but I see my chance at Weeks (sorry for the bad angle):




Understandably, it appears I did not take a screenshot of the aftermath of my rage-attack.

Dazed retook my city, and advanced on my exposed copper and horses. I was able to stuff enough units into my capital to keep it safe, but from here on I was only able to build archers - so the stuffing largely continued. His fast units moved past my capital into the centre of my empire. I don't remember in which order it happened, but he burned my central city, Greener Grass, and I attacked his stack with a pile of units. I also don't remember if this was the instance in which I wiped out another of his stacks, or if it was the instance in which I repeated my tilting attack on Weeks and wasted another army. Both happened at some point, forcing both of us to build up fresh forces.

Dazed advancing, and the full extent of my empire:




Dazed refounds Shanghai, and cuts my copper:




I make ready to retake Martin/Beijing briefly. You can see how weakly Greener Grass was garrisoned (mea culpa):




Unfortunately, it appears this is where I stopped taking screenshots. I'm very sorry about that.

I stacked huge numbers of archers in my most threatened city, High Point, and some in my capital, too. Eventually I remembered to beg the other players for resources. Commodore's horses unfortunately weren't that useful (but thanks for them, Commodore). Ichabod's copper helped me build a couple more spears, but at some point my trade connection to him was cut (I remember not quite understanding how). Further, at some point, as you can see in his thread, Ichabod, my vulnerability obvious, attacked my city abutting him with a small number of units and took it. I was not exactly taken by surprise by this; my forces were simply stretched thinly enough that I could not afford to seriously garrison that city and had to hope he'd leave it be to produce units to drag down dtay. He didn't. I wasn't really upset about this, though; I don't think he noticed, because there was a long delay between the turns in question, but I even declined the gold he proffered in his peace request and offered white peace instead.

It was back to archers, and the small number of better units I had managed to preserve. Dazed took my smallest, southwestern colony-city, next to Pindicator, across the map-wrap (I had been watching for this for some time, but by the time it came, there was nothing I could do about it). This is when Pindicator commented in his thread on my workers weirdly dancing away from dazed, only to be deleted. This forced me to garrison my now-southernmost city as well. (Nb. this actually happened before Ichabod attacked me. I recall sending a force of archers from this city toward the threatened one, but they would have arrived a turn too late, so I recalled them.) For those keeping track, I now had three cities, the capital, High Point, and the southern one, all threatened to a greater or lesser extent and stacked with archers.

Dazed refounded my old northeastern city he had razed, and laid siege to nearby High Point. I was able to sally out of here a couple times successfully, using my few preserved axemen and chariots to destroy isolated units or underdefended units, including the first catapult he brought up, slowing his effort. I somewhat recall attacking out with large numbers of archers at some point in here, to good effect; perhaps it was this instance. I believe he launched an abortive assault at one point, too. He was also able to destroy some of the archers I was bringing up from the capital and the south to reinforce, however; his units ran rampant through my land. Finally he stormed the city.

My attempts to reinforce the capital from the south were again impeded. He killed all the units therein in a turn, but one, a warrior. I contemplated deleting him to deny dazed the experience, but decided to keep him around (I never deleted a military unit this game, and a worker only when it was absolutely 'checkmated'). He fought defiantly, and slew a war chariot on the 1% chance before being destroyed. The capital fell.

The units circled around my southern city, my last fastness, but it never saw the day of battle, except for previous skirmishes in its approaches, because the game was called. It was only a matter of time before it fell.

Well, I fought steadfastly, mustering every last hammer and point of population in my defence, and at times skillfully, but at other, far more decisive, moments was wrong-footed, and twice too often went on 'tilt' tactically, believing all was lost. In truth, seeing how long one can hold out even with the scantest of resources, all was never lost (in the short-term), and I could have prolonged this struggle possibly to the Middle Ages. Mea culpa. Of course, the greater fault was to twice go on tilt strategically, in acting blindly to potential derailments to my plans for development, and in planning for offensive war at all, before all this, as detailed in Part I of this report.

I'm not sure anyone will read this, since the forum is now archived, but there, I finished what I started (which is a big enough thing for me these days), and hopefully I have learned something from all this debacle. I am sorry for the lack of pretty pictures or a more precise report, but as I said, that's just too much work for a dead game. Hopefully any readers will have referred to previous images for the geography. Finally: I'm not sure what the overall rate of hammer exchange was; maybe I'll have to load the last save and look that up, but a question for any readers - did I demonstrate myself to be a 'spikey' or a 'soft' target by all this? I can see the judgement going either way, as I incompetently threw away two armies and all my chances, but at the same time fought hard, with all the resources a civilization can muster, to the bitter end. You don't have to answer if you don't want to, but I'd be interested to know, and won't be offended.

Thanks to anyone who read!

THH

[retep]

I was not exactly taken by surprise by this; my forces were simply stretched thinly enough that I could not afford to seriously garrison that city and had to hope he'd leave it be to produce units to drag down dtay.

Dtay?
Maybe you are thinking about another game.

I read everything! Thanks for the post-mortem analysis.

[TheHumanHydra]

You're welcome; thanks for reading! I actually distinctly remember trying to type 'dazed' there (because I blanked on his name for a second, derp), but obviously it came out as another 'd' and 'a' name. Sorry, dtay!

[Old Harry]

I'd love to hear dazed's verdict. Did he feel like you ruined his game too or was he just having fun?

[TheHumanHydra]

Dazed made the following comments to us when he sent everyone his empire's last save:

don't expect much... the war with THH was not good for my civ and I knew it. but it was more fun.

my only comment on this game is to say that my mistake was offering THH a peace treaty instead of a cease fire that allowed him to replant a city and another one on my border. If it wasn't for that mistake, i would have been able to pressure him more effectively. maybe worse long run if he'd held a grudge, but would have let me focus elsewhere during key expansion time.

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

I enjoyed the read. Thanks THH.

[TheHumanHydra]

You're welcome, and thanks!