[few spoilers] Fortified settling party Boldly Going Nowhere, dies in place.

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

Ugh. Screw this game. Chew through several unfavorable battles to set up a shot at a 50/50 against the GG medic, which I get. Then I lose. Not even close. Also, the chewing through bad matchups to get the next GG works, until the GG spawns on an island city at the literal furthest end of the empire. I thought they spawned close-ish to the action? I'm so over this. Come and get it, G. I resisted the urge to just stack attack but I'm done.

Edit: This on the heels of losing every possible combat roll against barbs (just lost another recently that cost me a loaded galley which was headed toward G. Maybe my 4 units could have claimed the city, maybe not, but at least two galleys demands some sort of response. One is easy to ignore. This game has been horrible with rolls for the last 50 turns.

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

Password is walter. All that remains to do is whip an archer or whatever. Next turn should allow upgrade of a spear to a pike, if the spear is still alive. Gawdzak finally dropped off his invasion force. I attacked out with a few cats but still have more defenders than he has attackers. This shouldn't take longer than 3 turns under any circumstance, and fewer if G is able to reinforce.

I can give a postmortem at some point in the future but I didn't play well and decided to risk dying early to having to build up massive power to match Gawdzak when he first swapped into Police State. I have some map complaints (long, snaky area to settle compared to others with fatter, rounder opportunities) but really I didn't scout well enough to push into islands and Darius didn't give me enough early advantages to counter a very good Gawdzak, who used IND to produce a vastly superior military-industrial ability through forges and Mids. GG for him, not great for me. I also wasted resources skirmishing with all of my neighbors when I should have been settling islands I didn't know were A Thing. Bad on me.

See you next time.

[Fenn]

I can play the last few turns. You have the second half of the timer, right?

[Fenn]

Okay, managed to log in and end turn. Unfortunately my internet is cutting out every 2minutes atm so I wasn't able to whip the Archer. Will try again tomorrow morning.

Okay nevermind. This time I managed to whip the Archer and upgrade the Spearman.

[Fenn]

Instead of bombarding, it seems Gawdzak attacked immediately with all of his forces. It didn't go too well for him:



I'm not sure why he attacked with every last unit, but I'll take it. Perhaps an accidental right-click?

His remaining HA's and Elephants were so beat up that I was able to wipe them out flawlessly:



And so China's borders are finally free from the invader scum! Surely this state of affairs will last indefinitely.

In all seriousness, I expect it won't take too long for Gawdzak to put together a second force capable of taking Shanghai, but in the meantime the survivors can heal up and promote. I also moved our Galley/Trireme flotilla north into Nyles's borders. Gawdzak's fleet only has a single Galleon in it, so perhaps I'll be able to sink some ships before the end comes.

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

That's great/terrible news. I was hoping that G would finish this off so no one would have to mind the shop for too long. I guess all you can do is just save money and upgrade the surviving archer to a CKN. If/when the city hits size 3 whip it back so he'll only ever get one pop on capture. But really it won't matter. He's just going to come back with rifles since he'll finish rifling this turn.

I'm very surprised he attacked so soon, knowing this is my final city and that the best I could likely do in 3-4 turns is to add a single unit. Unless unit costs are hurting him, and I don't see how that is possible, it makes very little sense to risk his units. He had three cats and could see my available defenders, on a hill, behind castle/walls. He knows I wouldn't attack out more than I did with the few cats. That was just to buy a few more turns as his forces healed. Time is/was on his side. Another possibility is that he took some pretty bad odds rolls throughout the attack, but in that case why attack to the last man when you know you no longer have enough units to take the city.

Maybe he just wants to let a couple of rifles train exp on my units? Otherwise this makes no sense to me.

Thanks for keeping this going.

[Fenn]

I can't imagine why he'd do it on purpose, so my theory is it was a mistake.

Turns out Gawdzak has about four Galleons...most injured, but there's no way I can sink any.