RB Pitboss #2 [SPOILERS] - Speaker and Sullla

[VoiceOfUnreason]

It will be difficult for them to pillage and keep pillaged roads because our workers move extra tiles, and can easily re-road. Or that will allow us to pick off their units.

If the 2 movers stay with the stack, pillaging is basically free. Plus they get a free shot on the tile south of Chancellorsville because of the immediate threat.

Shrug, maybe I'll have better understanding when I see it play out.

[Speaker]

If the 2 movers stay with the stack, pillaging is basically free. Plus they get a free shot on the tile south of Chancellorsville because of the immediate threat.

Shrug, maybe I'll have better understanding when I see it play out.

Right, but if they do that, they can only pillage one tile per turn, and since we have many roads into and out of our cities, one pillage doesn't accomplish much. If they split up the stack to pillage more, we can kill it bit by bit.

Pillaging with two-movers works really well in "live" multiplayer, where you can pillage and then try and capture your enemy's workers as he tries to reroad. But in non-simultaneous turns, I don't think it will work very well.

[Sullla]

When you're outnumbered, the only option is to ATTACK!!!!

We couldn't let the horse archers run free in our territory, so Speaker cooked up a plan to hit them and either destroy them completely, or damage them to take them out of the fight. The battle log looked like this:

C1 horse archer vs C1 spear 24.1% LOSE spear 1.28 health left
chariot vs C2 horse archer 3% LOSE 0.6 health
chariot vs C1 horse archer 4% LOSE 4.2 health
archer vs C1 horse archer 0.6% LOSE 5.2 health
archer vs horse archer 0.9% LOSE 3.5 health

These were good results for us; we sacrificed a horse archer and the chariots/archers (who were all fairly useless) to damage the remaining horse archers. Then we sent in the remaining horse archers:

C1 horse archer vs 5.2 health horse archer 70.6% WIN 1.4 health
C1 horse archer vs C1 phalanx 73% WIN 2.8 health
C1 horse archer vs C1 phalanx 73% WIN 3.8 health

Awesome! Unfortunately, then the dice luck abandoned us:

horse archer vs phalanx 73% LOSE 1.9 health
C1 axeman vs phalanx 68% LOSE 1.0 health

We really would have liked to win one of those last two. Guess that's life though. So even though we lost 7 units to kill 3, we took Kathlete's horse archers out of the fight and crippled or killed 4 of the 9 phalanxes, including both of the ones with Combat 1 promotion. Speaker will post screenshots in a little bit showing the current situation.

All in all, a pretty good turn.

Now our attempt to get Kathlete out of the war:

Dear Rebel Alliance,

Battle was joined outside Chancellorsville! We were able to defeat one of your horse archers, and crippled several of the remaining ones. Indeed, 'twas quite entertaining on both sides.

But seriously now.... you guys have had your fun. You got us to whip our cities, you pillaged a couple of cottages, and you earned a little more experience for your units. It's time to put this to bed and sign peace between our teams. We've got enough spears up that you're not going to take any cities off us. Should the fighting continue, we *WILL* hunt down and kill your remaining units. You two said that you wanted to return to friendly relations with our team after the war ended; well, now's your chance to do so.

If you insist on continuing to attack a team, on the other side of the world, who did nothing to provoke you, it's going to do permanent damage to our relations. We're anxious to get back to friendly terms; hopefully you feel the same way.

Sullla
The Killer Angels

Message sent!

[Speaker]

As Sullla mentioned, we got a bit unlucky at the end of our defensive attack, which cost us two units at 73 and 68% battle odds.

After we lost the second battle, Sullla said that maybe we pushed our luck too far, but I disagreed. That's a results-based analysis. Always analyze the process, not the results! We're not going to get much better than 70-75% odds, so we need to take those battles when we have them. The fact that we lost doesn't make it the wrong play. It just means we made the right play, but got unlucky.

And I have to say, this was one of my best bits of combat analysis. I wish I had the time to do this in a live multiplayer game! My simulations showed me that the first horse archer had a 24% chance to win outright and an 18% (I think that number is about right) chance to withdraw. That's a 42% chance to damage or kill the spear and keep the unit! In every sim I ran, the HA would at least damage the spear enough to keep it out of the battle.

After that, the Horse Archers would defend against any Horse Archer, Chariot, Axe, and Archer. The Phalanxes would defend against Spears and Warriors. The beauty of the plan was that by landing just 1 "hit," a Chariot or Archer would wound the Horse Archers enough so that they would still defend against our Horse Archers. As long as they had more than 5.0 health, that would be the case. 1 hit from an Archer would bring the HA to 5.2 health. So in many of my simulations, the 4 unpromoted chariots and archers would would the HA just enough so that they would still defend against our Horse Archers, but we'd have greater than 70% odds to win! I liked those odds.

Funnily enough, our first Chariot came 1 hit away from killing the 2-star Horse Archer outright. So we didn't get a chance to finish him off, but he won't gain a promotion, and he's out of the fight with just a tiny bit of health left. The second chariot did "too much" damage as well, dropping the Horse Archer down to 4.2 health. The first Archer did his job like the third bear's porridge--"just right," landing exactly 1 hit, and knocking the Horse Archer down to 5.2 health. This gave us a tasty 70.6 odds later, and we won, taking it out. The final archer also did "too much" damage, dropping his opponent down to 3.5 health.

So our 4 HA attacks were at 70.6, 73, 73, and 73% odds, so I guess statistically, we should have lost 1 of them. But it still sucks to lose with such good odds! And then losing the Combat 1 Axe to the unpromoted Phalanx was just a kick in the nuts. I hate it when the game rewards people for poor play, and whipping all those units without a barracks was definitely poor play by Greece, but the game doesn't punish him for it, and instead, he'll gain a promotion for winning a battle with poor odds.

If the dice roll had gone our way, we'd be sitting pretty with our "toes in the water, asses in the sand, not a worry in the world, a cold beer in our hand..."

As we are now, we are down 2 units which would have both gotten shock promotions next turn, but I think we'll be just fine.

Here's the now current situation:


They have 5 healthy Phalanx, 5 healthy chariots, 2 damaged Horse Archers, and a bunch of crippled units.

We have 4 Axes, 4 Spears, 1 Archer, and 3 crippled Horse Archers (who all receive promotions). Hampton Roads is now pretty safe from all the mounted units in our land. If they try and move to the forest deer, we have 1 spear with maximum fortify. We could then hit those mounted units with 3 units out of Chancellorsville, if necessary. And we have an Archer finishing in Hampton this turn. I think it's pretty safe, for the time being. If Greece sends in a fresh chariot from Sparta, we can move a Horse Archer or two up there, if needed. Same deal if they move to the horse, toward Gettysburg. We'll slaughter them with our spears, and have plenty of workers in the area to make a path.

Here's the most dangerous place the mounted units can move. I've made a pretty good defense plan over there:


The three most dangerous tiles Greece (4 Chariots), and Ottomans (3 wounded HA, 2 wounded Chariots) can move their mounted stack are the dots I've highlighted in red, blue, and pink. Pink is the most dangerous, being a "fork" tile, where they could hit both Fredericksburg and Antietam. For that reason, I have protected it with 2 spears. They would have to attack across the river to do so, which would probably cost them at least 3 or 4 units. Blue is less dangerous, because it only has one possible avenue to attack Antietam, by moving S-SW. And we could then block the S tile next turn with the two spears. The red dot is not nearly as dangerous either because we could hit those units out of Chancellorsville with our spears in there. You can't see it in the screenshot, but we have another spear halfway between Antietam and Shiloh (to the southeast), which could cover the more-important Antietam in the event of that mounted movement. Otherwise it is free to defend Shiloh. Antietam will also finish a HA on the turn it could be attacked, and the HA E of the city can move in to cover it, as can any number of mounted units from Chancellorsville, and an Archer we have stationed between Gettysburg and Antietam. So I think it's pretty safe. Fredericksburg is actually building a spear, which it can slave next turn, if needed. If they somehow managed to slug their way through the spears on Pink Dot, they would have attack Fredericksburg across the river, so it would be safe with a Spear, Archer, and Horse Archer.

The defense of Shiloh is going to be a lot more prickly, and will depend on what all the units do next turn, so I'll wait to explain it until then.

[Ruff_Hi]

FYI and because it is fun ... with 4 units all having 70% win probabilities, chance of winning:

4 is 24.0%
3 is 41.2%
2 is 26.6%
1 is 7.5%
0 is 0.8%

So, I would say that you were on the negative side but not horrendously.

[Shoot the Moon]

I'd also like to thank you guys for posting such detail on the war effort. I know things must be pretty busy for you guys with a 3v1 and all, so taking the time to post such detailed and insightful analyses for the benefit of us lurkers is appreciated.

[antisocialmunky]

Wow, Bravo guys. Your writeup is very much appreciated. Very definitely the correct move since you can reinforce faster than they can.

To be honest, I didn't see that coming.

[scooter]

Thank you for writing that all up in such detail. I feel like an echo but it is very much appreciated, I learned a lot from that and it was very entertaining.

[Mr. Nice Guy]

"toes in the water, asses in the sand, not a worry in the world, a cold beer in our hand..."

"Need more Mullins!"

Betcha' didn't know he co-wrote that song... /obsessed fan

And by the way, I am in awe at how well you are handling the situation at hand. Keep up the good work. And thank you so much for the continuing great reporting, all of us are learning so much! /obsessed fan <---I really need to get my "/obsessed fan" fixed...

[Krill]

When you're outnumbered, the only option is to ATTACK!!!!

We couldn't let the horse archers run free in our territory, so Speaker cooked up a plan to hit them and either destroy them completely, or damage them to take them out of the fight. The battle log looked like this:

C1 horse archer vs C1 spear 24.1% LOSE spear 1.28 health left
chariot vs C2 horse archer 3% LOSE 0.6 health
chariot vs C1 horse archer 4% LOSE 4.2 health
archer vs C1 horse archer 0.6% LOSE 5.2 health
archer vs horse archer 0.9% LOSE 3.5 health

These were good results for us; we sacrificed a horse archer and the chariots/archers (who were all fairly useless) to damage the remaining horse archers. Then we sent in the remaining horse archers:

C1 horse archer vs 5.2 health horse archer 70.6% WIN 1.4 health
C1 horse archer vs C1 phalanx 73% WIN 2.8 health
C1 horse archer vs C1 phalanx 73% WIN 3.8 health

Awesome! Unfortunately, then the dice luck abandoned us:

horse archer vs phalanx 73% LOSE 1.9 health
C1 axeman vs phalanx 68% LOSE 1.0 health

We really would have liked to win one of those last two. Guess that's life though. So even though we lost 7 units to kill 3, we took Kathlete's horse archers out of the fight and crippled or killed 4 of the 9 phalanxes, including both of the ones with Combat 1 promotion. Speaker will post screenshots in a little bit showing the current situation.

All in all, a pretty good turn.

Now our attempt to get Kathlete out of the war:



Message sent!

Don;t you ever bitch about how Memphus analysed combat again.