[Spoilers] Old Human Tourist: Empress of Azteca

[Old Harry]

Turn 205 Executive Summary

Thank you to THH and Fintourist for attending the strategy summit yesterday, we put together an exciting and forward-thinking prospectus which will help us focus our inspiration on the key deliverables that should be achievable within a multi-modal framework of interdisciplinary forward movement. The mission critical aspects of yesterdays work involved touching base with Dreylin and re-purposing his outer areas of influence to be more Aztec-focused through a program of military downsizing. We hope over the next few turns to get our naval ducks in a row and evangelize our solutions on land using our recently discovered golden thread of connectivity (edit: Railroad).


We actioned our first action at Madrigal, starting from the south with Amphibious Infantry over the river:
- C3 Amphi Inf vs C2 Cav 89%....LOSSS (3 hits)


- C3 Amphi Inf vs CG2 Rifle 89%... WIN! (5 Hits)
- C3 Amphi Inf vs C1 Cav 91%... WIN (4 hits)
- C3 Amphi Inf vs C1 Cav 91%... WIN (3 hits)

Then units from Tallow, Otter Ferry, Gate of Storms and others, all railroaded in:
- Inf vs CG2 LB 87%... WIN! (6 hits!)


- C2 Inf vs Cav 95%... WIN ( 4 hits)
- Inf vs Cav 78%... WIN (5 Hits)
- Inf vs Cav 78%... WIN (5 Hits)
- Inf vs Cav 78%... Lost (2 hits)
- Inf vs Cav 78%... WINNNNNN (2 hits)
(8/10 wins at this point is slightly below projection, and we seem to be taking a lot of damage in the process )
- C1 Inf vs Cav 89%... WIN! (6 hits!)
- Inf vs LB 95%... FLAWLESS WIN
- Inf vs LB 96%... WIN (5 hits)
- C1 Inf vs LB 96%... WIN (4 hits)
- Inf vs C2 Mace 96%... WIN (one hit)
- Inf vs Musket 96%... WIN (2hits)
- Inf vs Mace 97%... WIN (1 hit)
- Inf vs mace 99%... WIN (4 hits)
- Inf vs Musket 95%... WIN (1 hit)
- Inf vs Musket 95%... WIN (2 hits)
(18/20 wins is getting better )
- Inf vs Musket 95%... WIN (1 hit)
- Inf vs Knight 96%... WIN (2 hits)
- Inf vs Knight 96%... WIN (2 hits)
- Inf vs Knight 99%... Win (1 hit)
- Rifle vs CB 96%... WIN (2 hits)
We saved our one (ONE!) catapult until we'd killed as much stuff as possible that wasn't pikes, because our Cav vs Pike battles were one of the bottlenecks in the refocusing project.
- Cat vs Knight <1%... 3 hits - two on Pikes!
- Rifle vs Pike 96%... WIN!

- C4 Cav vs Pike 90%... WIN! (2 hits)
- 14.6/15 C4 Cav vs Pike 90%... WIN (4 hits)
- C2 Cav vs Injured Pike 90%... WIN (one hit)
- C2 Cav vs Injured Pike 90%... LOSS (2 hits)
(27/30 wins - it turns out that that collateral hit on the pike )
- C2 Formation Cav vs Welly 96%... WHAAAAAAAAAAAT! LOSS (2 hits)
- C2 Formation Cav vs Knight 99%... WIN (5 hits!)
- C2 Cav vs Knight 97%... WIN (3 hits)
- C2 Cav vs Knight 96%... WIN (3hits)
- Rifle vs Knight 88%... WIN (2 hits)

- C3 Cuir vs Knight 91%... WIN (1 hit)
- C3 Cuir vs Knight 91%... WIN (4 hits)
- Injured C2 Formation Cuir vs Knight 92%... WIN (1 hit)
- C4 Commando vs Knight 98%... FLAWLESS WIN
- C2 Cuir vs Knight 89%... WIN (5 hits)
(36/40 wins. Are we nearly there yet?)
- C3 Cuir vs 9.2/10 Knight 95%... WIN (1 hit)
- C2 Gren vs Injured Cav 97%... FLAWLESS WIN
- C2 Gren vs Injured Knight 97%... WIN (1 hit)
- C2 Cuir vs Injured Pike 99%... WIN (1 hit)
- C2 Cuir vs Welly 99%... FLAWLESS WIN
- C2 Cuir vs Injured Cav 99%... WIN (1 hits)
- Cuir vs Cat 99%... WIN (2 hits)
- Injured Commando vs Cat 99%... FLAWLESS WIN
- C3 Knight vs Cat 99%... WIN (1 hit)
- Cuir vs cat 99%... FLAWLESS WIN!
(46/50 wins - looks like our ducks are all in a row now, but my little finger was starting to cramp up at this point.)
- Cuir vs Cat 99%... WIN (1 hit)
- Gren vs Cat 99%... WIN (3 hits)
- 14.4/20 Inf vs Cat 99%... WIN (2 hits)
- Cuir vs cat 99%... WIN (1 hit)
- LB vs Treb 78%... WINNNNNNNN

And we take Madrigal, getting 7 gold with only the academy and University of Sankore surviving. We used 56 units to kill 52 defenders, which was approximately as expected, but I feel like we took more damage than average.

In any case we're still moving forward to Willow Creek with a exciting and dynamic force. Before that though Dreylin has an exploring chariot that could cause trouble if not defenestrated:
- LB vs War Chariot 73%... WIN!!!! (3 hits)

Willow Creek. The aim here is to destroy all the 2-movers so they can't threaten our now-empty cities:

- C1 Inf vs C2 Cav 73%... LOSS (cav down to 1.8/15)
Okay, that changes the focus somewhat. Now we want to injure and kill all the 2-movers such that they couldn't get past the Longbows, Archers, injured Cavalry and Cuirs we can put in our exposed cities...
- Inf vs Cav 68%... WIN! (2 hits)
- C1 Inf vs C2 Cav 73%... LOSS (cav down to 8.4)
And that negates our new aim almost straight away. The chances are that the two injured cav can't promo-heal, but this one will be a pain.
- Inf vs CG Rifle 70%... FLAWLESS LOSS
and now we can't kill the Knight either
- Inf vs CG Rifle 70%... WIN (1 hit)
- C2 Inf vs C1 Cav 90%... WIN(4 hits)
- Inf vs CG2 LB 87%... WIN (3 hits)
- C2 Inf vs Cav 95%... WIN (1 hit)
- C2 Inf vs Cav 95%... FLAWLESS WIN
- Inf vs Cav 78%... WIN (5 hits)
- Inf vs Cav 78%... WIN (4 hits)
- Inf vs Cav 78%... WIN (5 hits!)

These last three battles put a decent shine on this result - we've killed all but two of Dreylin's Cavalry (we have EP-sight on his core, so while there may be a few hidden in the dark zones, its very unlikely that it'll be enough to impact our long-term asset value). Using 12 units to kill 9 is about in line with projections. However he's got a Knight and two injured Cavalry that could burn several of our nearby cities. We decided that this was a risk that we couldn't take, so we used our Great Artist to prevent it (note that we killed the last full-strength Cav after I took this pic). This will delay our 3-man golden age by a couple of turns, but the major effect is the delay to the 4-man GA. We'll have to see how bad that gets.


The majority of the fighting is over, but we had a little task force in the west too. Our units fancied a trip to Alexandria, with the aim of taking the far more impressive Memphis in a couple of turns time.
- Inf vs LB 70%... WIN!


65 gold for such a small city isn't bad .

Then there was just a bit of naval action to finish off with.
- Frigate vs Caravel 99%... WIN (3 hits)
- Frigate vs Galley 99%... WIN (1 hit)
- Frigate vs Galley 99%... WIN (1 hit)
- Frigate vs Galley 99%... WIN (1 hit)
In amongst all that fighting we gained another great general, so we now have two floating about wondering what to do. Commando Infantry might be useful against the Rifles that seem to populate Dreylin's interior cities...

We expect Dreylin to revolt to Nationhood next turn and start drafting Rifles, so we want to get our Amphi Inf hitting his coastline ASAP. Meanwhile the still healthy land-based Infantry will push to take his other two Pindi conquests next turn, then we'll figure out how to make progress on the two or three cities (including the capital) that are well inside his cultural control .

Power and Culture graphs. Note that TBS seems to be making his move on the culture victory - he's got five religions in his capital now, creating a new paradigm in cultural achievements. And now that we're top of the scoreboard we probably need to do something about it...




Meeting length: 4h30. Biscuits eaten: all

[Mardoc]

I always appreciate your wars

Well, except perhaps that one against Spain . At least it seems I held out longer than most.

[TheHumanHydra]

OH: what was in that cake your wife fed you? Oh, right, alcohol.

[Old Harry]

Mmmmmm, yeah, I had to take a break about halfway through for cake. I'm sure all the top generals do that . It wasn't boozy though - marmalade and ginger mixed together somehow made it taste like it, and after I ate it I suddenly started acting massively aggressively and making very little sense - but there was definitely no booze .

I miss playing turns drunk.

[pindicator]

Pindicator, did we ask you why you moved your stack two turns before we attacked you?

No.

Where did I move it from again?

[Fintourist]

If OH's recap was tl:dr for you, here are the end stats unless I'm mistaken:
Killed 66 units
Lost 7 hitters + cat

That's a very decent trade, but as OH said we weren't quite lucky enough for managing the situation without an artist bomb. We can live with that, our next GA will start couple of turns later which isn't really a problem. Maybe even good as we get pindi's cities out of revolt and we can also draft some of them before giving up Nationhood (which is still our hypothesis). And I think our 4th GA will also come in at a competitive timing. I'll update our GPP plan once I manage to solve my logging issues.

I always appreciate your wars

Well, except perhaps that one against Spain . At least it seems I held out longer than most.

I think this Dreylin war will be more like our war. The fights against Azza and pindi were based on carefully planned alpha strike. Against you and Dreylin the reasoning for declaration was more opportunistic (chance to attack a stack in the open). This time we should have easier time with the follow-up than in our war, but we need to be more careful about our other neighbors (e.g. protect our shrine from dtay in 9 turns).



Pindi: You moved your zone defense stack 2 tiles east. You can check our thread from a bit earlier ~t198-199 I believe. Our attack was supposed to be a decent bit more brutal :P

[Old Harry]

It was where the "stack" sign is, then you moved it to 1SW of the shrine. If you'd left it here we'd have killed everything in it and made our defence of the Shrine/Avernus vs dtay much easier. But we wouldn't have brought so many workers and our progress in the west may have been slower. In fact one thing that really slowed us down was you adding a spear to GoS - without that I was planning to take Madrigal on the first turn of the war . In any case it all seems to have worked out okay so far .

[pindicator]

I like to move stacks around for exactly that reason. I didn't do it as much this game because I was pretty checked out after fighting off dtay, but something must have reminded me about it then.

[Old Harry]

Turn 206

I thought this would be a relatively quiet turn - just heal up and put ourselves in position to hit Dreylin again over the next few turns - but he made some very good and some slightly odd moves, making things a bit more lively .

The best move was revolting to both Slavery and Nationhood last turn, so next turn we expect to see at least five more rifles hanging around the place and we suddenly have an incentive to capture cities this turn, no matter the risk. Another theoretically good move was attacking out of Willow Creek, hoping to clean up some injured infantry with units that couldn't effectively retreat due to our railroads, but the one full-strength infantry covering our red-lined troops managed to win six battles - 2 Catapults, a Rifle, 2 Muskets and a Mace. Then a badly injured Cavalry deleted two of our workers. He retreated two muskets and a pike from Tyr and it looks like he's going to gather everything he has into a stack just by his Capital.


The odd moves are that he emptied a bunch of cities.

Anyway, we started off nice and easy with a caravel nosing around our south coast:
- Frigate vs Caravel 99%... WIN (1 hit)

Then the worker-killing Cav:
- Injured Inf vs Injured Cav 99%... FLAWLESS WIN!

One of the empty cities is Pi Rameses, meaning that the one Infantry we'd already got loaded on a 6-mover nearby could walk into the city this turn, getting 131 gold and a granary for Ceil . Then we unloaded another Inf and a Machine Gun, just to ensure he can't take it back.


Next there is only one Rifle in Kaitain, so our galleon full of Infantry should again be able to capitalize:
- Inf vs CG Rifle 20%... LOSS (3 hits)
- CG1 Inf vs injured Rifle 90%... WIN (1 hit)


232 gold, a Lighthouse, harbour and forge and a size 18 city so it doesn't need a Granary! That's pretty amazing .

Next up we have some Cuirs on the north coast facing a single rifle - we need to get a bit lucky with the number of hits to take the city, but if we can take it then we can railroad a bunch of units in to defend the city, so:


- Amphi Cuir vs CG Rifle 3.5%... LOSS (2 hits)
- Amphi Cuir vs injured CG Rifle 38%... LOSS (3 hits!)
- C2 Cuir vs Injured Rifle 98%... FLAWLESS WIN


209 gold, a Market and a culture bug . The tile 2E of the city should now be blank, perhaps we should have taken Tyr first, but that doesn't make any sense. We debated razing it in the light of this, but even recaptured, whipped and drafted its still a good city that we'd like to own... Then I noticed the Galleon still had three moves, so after pausing to capture the empty Willow Creek (13 gold and a Granary), we built yet more railroad and loaded three Infantry onto the Galleon to unload in the city .


Hero is the guy who won six battles defending the hill outside Willow Creek .


Then we took Tyr, getting 13 gold, a settled GG, some handy multiplier buildings and the Spiral Minarette, Hagia Sohphia (obsolete) and ToA (obsolete). Should we go monk-economy now?


Now the planning for next turn - there are two Muskets and a Pike on this hill, so:
- C1 Inf vs Musket 99%... WIN (3 hits) :/
- C1 inf vs Musket 97%... WIN (1 hit)


- G1 Inf vs Pike 98%... WIN (2 hits)
Wait - why a G1 Inf?

He can promote to G2 and hit the city of Filler next turn .

Then we thought about killing the retreating cav with a commando, but these Rifles put us off that idea, so we just loaded stacks of 1- and 2-movers onto the hill and covered all our workers. We also used our injured cuirs to cover a bunch of cities in the east and put some Infantry in Tyr as our new northern neighbour, WilliamLP has a Galleon and a roaming Chariot that could cause some trouble. Paranoia FTW!


Then we shuffled a bunch of boats around in the south, so that we have 2 Amphi Infantry, 4 Infantry, 2 Amphi Grens, 1 Amhpi Cuir and 3 Commando Cav in range to hit Giedi Prime next turn.

If Giza is left empty next turn then after we (fingers crossed) take Giedi Prime we should be able to get it, then it's only two tiles to the capital..

Normally I'd wonder if we were going to get interference from BGN, but his war with Krovice still seems to be tying up a bunch of units, so he has no Galleons anywhere near Dreylin's land . My main worry right now is that TBS's culture attempt is properly getting off the ground, with five religions in the capital. We don't have sight of any other cities with more than two religions, but there are a bunch of cities I didn't uncover when exploring him, so we need to get back over there to find them and then perhaps try to get investigate city to track how quick he's likely to be. German Joey just got the capability to build Infantry and asked us for a loan, as TBS's most advanced neighbour we thought we should help him out . TBS hasn't appeared on the victory screen yet, Krovice's double-artist bomb sees them still top of the pile. Also we are still some distance off Domination or Conquest .


Domestically Biology is great! We've got a lot of Factories and Coal Plants completing this turn and next, so we'll get back to producing units the normal way (instead of drafting). Some cannons might be a good idea (I believe we only have two). We're getting Physics next, but then we're not sure. Do we want Tanks, Destroyers, Fighters, Bombers or the Internet (+15% research in this mod)? It probably depends how secure we feel in our new island holdings and what dtay and BGN are up to.

Demos and power.

Post end-turn script: Dreylin played and whipped and drafted away approx 40-50 population. I have a feeling we're not getting any more size 18 cities . He didn't take back any of our gains though.

[TheHumanHydra]

Very good work, guys (I wasn't around for this one ).

40-50 population! A draft and a whip everywhere?