RBP3 [SPOILERS] - Friendly Kittens (Ragnar of Maya)

[RefSteel]

If you'll have civ access, I'll just leave it to you (and your judgment if Cull doesn't say anything in the interim) if we can't connect. I'm back for now, but have to go in less than half an hour, and then will not have any kind of net access for several hours at least. Weekends, as has been noted, are difficult.

[Maniac Marshall]

Well, the good news is we avoided the bear. Ref calculated we were only about 75% to win against it even on a forest hill.

THIS is the bad news.



Ref calculates we're about 89% to survive this one... Cross your fingers.

Oh, and for intel benefit:



Assuming we survive the lion, we have 2 choices. We can either move to the hill the lion is on to heal up if it's just a turn or 2, OR if we're badly damaged, we can retreat into our culture to heal safely.

[Maniac Marshall]

Well, I woke up to go to the bathroom, checked and noticed the turn rolled over, and I just had to know so...

Here's the good news:



Now, here's the BAD news:



Had we not been Agg or on the hill, she likely would not have survived

So what to do with her now?

As I see it, we're 2 moves from the safety of our cultural boarders, and with her in this condition, we should retreat her to safety there. But what route to take? There are 2 alternatives:



If we we take the red route, the only way we're in trouble is if there is a 2 moving barb on the red dot. If we take the white route, we're vulnerable to a 2 mover on the white dot. I think it more likely that there is a barb on the red dot than the white, although barbs DO sometimes clump up, so it's entirely possible that there is one on either of the white dots, and likely the aggregate of the 2 dots is more potentially dangerous than the one.

I have NOT done anything this turn but take the screenshots because I wanted to give everyone a chance to weigh in on what to do.

[Cull]

I prefer the red route over the white route.

[T-hawk]

Had we not been Agg or on the hill, she likely would not have survived

FWIW, in single player, when I have an early exploring unit that gets that badly damaged, I usually just send it to keep exploring anyway until something does kill it. Healing fully would take 10 turns in place, or 9 by first moving into your culture borders (but then the warrior is two tiles farther away from continuing to explore.) That is an eternity in the timeframe of early exploration, you can just build another warrior faster.

Of course, that's single player, I don't know what impact a damaged warrior has on MP relations.

editing - Actually, the best option might be to let the damaged warrior take over police duty in the capital, while the one you're building now swaps out to go exploring.

[Cull]

FWIW, in single player, when I have an early exploring unit that gets that badly damaged, I usually just send it to keep exploring anyway until something does kill it. Healing fully would take 10 turns in place, or 9 by first moving into your culture borders (but then the warrior is two tiles farther away from continuing to explore.) That is an eternity in the timeframe of early exploration, you can just build another warrior faster.

Of course, that's single player, I don't know what impact a damaged warrior has on MP relations.

editing - Actually, the best option might be to let the damaged warrior take over police duty in the capital, while the one you're building now swaps out to go exploring.

I like the idea that we send the Yalara back to the capital, and send the other warrior to explore.

[Maniac Marshall]

FWIW, in single player, when I have an early exploring unit that gets that badly damaged, I usually just send it to keep exploring anyway until something does kill it. Healing fully would take 10 turns in place, or 9 by first moving into your culture borders (but then the warrior is two tiles farther away from continuing to explore.) That is an eternity in the timeframe of early exploration, you can just build another warrior faster.

Of course, that's single player, I don't know what impact a damaged warrior has on MP relations.

editing - Actually, the best option might be to let the damaged warrior take over police duty in the capital, while the one you're building now swaps out to go exploring.

I actually thought the same thing as far as the MP thing, and was about to say so, but I find you already have. I'd say great minds think alike, but, well, that would imply that I have a great mind.

I don't want to risk sending her out to get killed. I've done the same thing in SP on smaller maps, or when I've gotten several contacts already, but, for anyone doing extensive C&D that, could just broadcast weakness, especially if we were to lose a second unit. Half of them probably think we're planning to be a rush civ (We're not! We took Ragnar hoping to get England for Aggressive Redcoats for the late game, and it was picked ONE pick ahead of us, ARGH!), and this might just be an invitation for them to strike while we're weak.

It wouldn't save us very many turns to do this, but it would save us a few ~4-6 off the top of my head, and that is better than none.

[Maniac Marshall]

Yalara's Night Out - A short story by Maniac Marshall.

[SIZE=2]What, you ventured into the thread that includes RefSteel and Maniac, and you didn't think there would be stories?

OK, so, I should have incorporated this into the post just upthread, but hey, I'd just woke up!

This short story is rated PG (Mild Suggestive References) The referenced are mild, but, if that kind of thing bothers you, just, stop reading now... and no, I haven't been saving this for weeks, it just came to mind when I went back for a little, uhhh, cat nap earlier. It also contains more than a fair share of REALLY bad puns... you have been warned!

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Yalara was the cute and cuddly leader of the army of the Friendly Kitten Empire, who, as I'm sure you all know, were 100% Friendly. For years now, she had been hard at work, digging up all sorts of info about the local terrain for her triumvirate of leaders, Cull, RefSteel, and Maniac Marshall. As a reward for her great many years of spectacular service, the triumvirate felt that it was only right that she finally got a chance for a little R&R, so thus, on the interturn, our cute and cuddly heroine decided to... um... go clubbing.

It just so happened that the world famous Blueberry Hill Bar and Grill was in the neighborhood, and that Josie and the Pussycats were playing there that very night. She'd loved them since she was just a tiny kitten, so she couldn't resist! She got there early, and had a great time watching show. Things couldn't have gone any better... until the nefarious Simba showed up, that is.

Everyone in the neighborhood knew about Simba. That cat was bad news from the get go. He had a criminal record with a list of priors as long as your foreleg. Well, as you might expect of a character like this, Simba had come to town with the idea of getting himself a little pussy-cat for the evening. When he entered the club, he quickly noticed our heroine, the beautiful Yalara. She was stunning. He couldn't take his eyes off her. She was the cat's meow, the very definition of physical purr-fection out on the dance floor, so he wasted no time making tracks for her.

Yalara, being neither in heat, nor that kind of a kitten to begin with, wanted absolutely no part of him, and she tried to tell him so nicely. Shady characters like Simba were just not her type, even if she had been interested in that sort of thing. Yalara wished he would just go away, and she continued to tell him so, but he was very persistent.

Well, as you might imagine, some very catty remarks were eventually exchanged, finally leading to a full blown hissey. Simba leapt upon her, trying to maul her, like he had done to so many innocent kittens in the past. The fur was really flying. Believing in the old adage that the best offense is a good defense, she threw the whole kitten-caboodle at him, holding nothing back. The results could have been cat-astrophic, but in the end, our heroine used her natural aggression, an inerrant trait among the people of the Friendly Kitten empire, to narrowly beat off her attacker.

Yes, she won in the end, but it was a very close shave for our little... (no, wait, I'm not going there) cute and cuddly kitten of doom!

Playlist: (OK, a couple of these would have been a better fit if it had been a jungle hill... just, play along with me...)

Josie and the Pussycats - Themselves
Eye of the Tiger - Survivor
Bungle in the Jungle - Jethro Tull
I'm Still Standing - Elton John
The Lion Sleeps Tonight - R.E.M.
Don't Cha - The Pussycat Dolls
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[Maniac Marshall]

See, I can tripple post too!

Umm, yeah, so we're getting ready to leave, and I didn't know what everyone's availability was for today. Many of the teams had already played, and, since Cull and I agreed on red path, I went ahead and played the turn. Worker moved 1W to the hill, and warrior retreated 1SW. Here is the obligatory screenie showing our dead last military , which was almost LITERALLY a DEAD LAST military.

[RefSteel]

Thanks for moving us! And Yalara's survival is great news - even if we DID have ~90% odds, and even though she got redlined. As T-Hawk noted, we can just send her back to the capital for garrison duty, and potentially send her out again to fogbust once she's healed, depending on how it fits our schedule. And for the record:

Maniac: we've got +25% for the hill so it's likely 90% or so to survive
assuming we survive, this might be a good thing

10:52 PM

me: Right. Finally an XP

Maniac: the lion is on a forrested hil

me: Also we're close enough to home that if Y is badly injured we can basically just send her home and let Shandra scout

10:53 PM

Maniac: IF we survive I say we move there to heal
it's also got a river and mountians around.

me: Depends on damage.
And whether the bear's in the neighborhood

Maniac: well, if it's REALLY bad we could retreat into out boarders.
10:54 PM

me: Right.

In the meantime, I'm not concerned about whether you took the red or white path: I'm almost completely sure 2-move animals still get held up by forests/hills, so nothing could come out of the fog to hit the one out-of-borders spot on either path.

AND FINALLY: Maniac, I have a very serious problem with that story: I was going to write one until I saw it! Instead, I'll try and put something short together to send with our first diplo e-mail if we meet someone who might appreciate that sort of thing. (More serious comment: Thanks for posting the story! Good heavens, with the sole exception of our very first post, we'd been talking nothing but STRATEGY!)