It's good to see Tularean Forest in our hands in spite of the cost!
(October 27th, 2017, 06:55)JR4 Wrote: The Oromos took very little damage.
This is where the bad luck hit us, by the way. I want to take the blame for this, as I didn't realize how to insure ourselves against it until too late, adding my late edit above. There wasn't really any chance of our cats scratching his top Oromo (well, no significant chance anyway) and after they rolled the wrong collateral targets (and we had none left to suicide) the losses we suffered were well within the expected range. Definitely on the low end even then, and I definitely can't pretend we've had good combat luck overall anymore but y'know.
Quote:I didn`t offer peace yet.
I assume we're still moving on to Mist? (Also: Is Fountain Head on the mainland?)
Of the cities I can see in the report, I would be building Cats in Shkodai, Budashri, and Chabui, though I'm hoping the Cats for the attack on Mist already exist and just have to be transported.
(October 27th, 2017, 07:05)JR4 Wrote: Earlier in the turn Dark Savant recaptured his border city with Gavagai (at least that what I think). What is going on there? Gavagai has 3 Galleons incoming so I think he`ll get the upper hand again soon. As long as dtay stays out of the conflict, that is.
I'd get out the popcorn, but we're not exactly watching this one from the sidelines. Dark Savant seems determined to make me look silly for my controversial call ranking Gav's chnces to win the game above Krill's. We'll see if he can keep it up! (If he can, and if we can get peace with him after claiming all the islands, there are some islands to our west we might start thinking about again too....)
Oh, I don`t blame you in the slightest. Losing 4 Knights and 3 Catapults probably were in the high end of expected losses. We killed 7 land units of DS`s plus a Galleon so hammer-wise it wasn`t too bad. I still like trying for Mist as our next target, though we need a few turns to set up an attack. Our Frigates can bombard down its defenses (and blockade the city so that DS can`t reinforce it). Iiirc Mist is the only island city that we could capture, Fountain Head is indeed on the mainland.
As we have a bunch of injured Knights in Tulerean Forest (and still need to keep a garrison there if we attack Mist), we probably have to ferry over more troops from our main stacks near Borte and Muqa. We have some units on boats still but we`ll need a lot to break through Mist`s Oromo defenses. He`s likely building more of those in the next few turns - though they`re pretty expensive and Mist isn`t as big as it once was. Perhaps one of the Oromos we encountered in TF came from Mist?
I can`t log into the game just yet, will change the builds in those 3 cities if I do get a chance. Having a few more Catapults is surely a good plan.
(October 27th, 2017, 11:02)JR4 Wrote: I still like trying for Mist as our next target, though we need a few turns to set up an attack. Our Frigates can bombard down its defenses (and blockade the city so that DS can`t reinforce it). Iiirc Mist is the only island city that we could capture, Fountain Head is indeed on the mainland.
Cool. An overview picture of the front would be really neat.
Quote:As we have a bunch of injured Knights in Tulerean Forest (and still need to keep a garrison there if we attack Mist), we probably have to ferry over more troops from our main stacks near Borte and Muqa.
I'd do this, yes. Also though, if we have an unpromoted Keshik (5+ xp) that can be ferried to Tularean Forest by the end of turn 178, it can be promoted to Medic to help with healing.
Quote:We have some units on boats still but we`ll need a lot to break through Mist`s Oromo defenses. He`s likely building more of those in the next few turns - though they`re pretty expensive and Mist isn`t as big as it once was. Perhaps one of the Oromos we encountered in TF came from Mist?
Very possible, unless he promoted multiple Oromos to Pinch + Formation for some reason. (I can't think of a really good reason to do that with one.)
Quote:I can`t log into the game just yet, will change the builds in those 3 cities if I do get a chance. Having a few more Catapults is surely a good plan.
No worries. Looking again at those cities, Shkodai is probably the only one that's worth changing immediately anyway. Chabui may even have whipped its Market this turn(?) and looks to be completing it, so will probably be able to complete (whip) a Cat just as soon with the market as without it, and Budashri looks like it's going to take a year and a day to build anything at all, so I might swap to a Buddhist Temple, but a Cat might not finish soon enough to matter for this war anyway.
Nice . A win is a win, a city a city. Given that you weren't pulling off a true surprise, I'm just glad that teh last-minute reinforcements didn't throw a complete spanner in the plan.
Is it worth promoting a unit to medic 1 or shipping one over (maybe an HA with a spare promo if any are left?) to get things healed up a tick faster?
It may have looked easy, but that is because it was done correctly - Brian Moore
- Killing Galleons is very valuable. It's great news that we burned one in that city. Blockading Mist's ports (as in blocking the relevant tiles, not using the "blockade" action) so reinforcements can't arrive would indeed be very helpful, especially if it's poorly garrisoned right now.
- We should figure out when our troops are going to hit the ground at Mist, so we can deploy our Frigates optimally while letting them bombard the city's defenses down to zero by the turn we attack.
Also note that Tularean Forest's "kelp beds" (the undersea forest) may have other unusual effects. I don't remember if it gives a +50% defensive bonus to ships, or if it slows movement through the tile like it would on land though; I'd have to check....
As requested, here are some overview screenshots. We need 5 Frigates around Mist to make sure that no reinforcements arrive. If DS lands one or more units next to the city we can consider letting some Amphibious Knights take a shot at them. Vertigo`s garrison is 2 Oromos and an X-bow. The city has been whipped massively the last turns and is down to size 4 iirc.
Yes, let`s send down a Medic Keshik to Tulerean Forest next turn. Having those Knights healed asap is vital for keeping the momentum in this war.
Skhodai is now building a Catapult instead of the Forge. It could be whipped next turn. Chabui is finishing a Market eot. It was slow built. I think having the option of hiring a Merchant is good so that build was kept.
EDIT: I just managed to take those screenshots and log out before Gavagai logged in.
Thanks for the pictures! It looks like we may not need to fully "blockade" Mist actually, depending on what we see of his ships. I like the idea of sinking his Galleons wherever we have the chance. That said, if Mist is only defended by two units right now, it could well be worth trying to prevent it from being reinforced and take it ASAP: We would expect to see a third or fourth unit there from the city itself by the time we could attack, but if we can bombard the defenses to zero with Frigates, something like 2-3 Cats, a Musket or two, and 5-6 Knights should be able to take the city against 4 Oromos and garrison it quickly.
I notice there's some cultural weirdness going on too; the tile SE of Tularean Forest (between the fish and the "kelp bed") shouldn't have MMian culture as I understand it, as it's 3 tiles from Dark Savant's closest landmass. My guess is that it (and the deer and the kelp bed itself) will be Cathaginian this turn when the game hopefully figures out what's going on in the area.
At Tularean Forest, the city itself should be fine with a couple of (hopefully CG2) Muskets, at least while the Knights are healing in the city. I would also want a Musket on the deer tile because an Oromo occupying that tile would be very annoying.
If we move our ships in such a way that Dark Savant will be able to tell our next target is Mist (which ... we should probably assume he knows anyway) and there aren't any targets of opportunity for our eastern Frigate (or other more-important things for it to do) it might be worth getting a head start on bombarding Mist with that ship, depending on when we plan to land our units....
One more note on the war in general: When actively at (or expecting imminent) war, I'd rather have another one-promo Cat than a Barracks. I'd rather have two one-promo Cats than a Barracks and a two-promo Cat.
Dtay is now in his third Golden Age. He swapped to Free Religion so he`s researching at an alarming speed.
Here is the situation near Tularean Forest. We`ve got a CG2 and a CG1 Musket guarding the city. The Pinch Musket moved out to defend the Deer tile. It`s probably best to do that in advance, before Dark Savant tries something. He`s got a Galleon in Fountain Head (as well as a high-promo Oromo and Knight). Our Frigates are blocking him off nicely. One Frigate started to bombard Mist`s defenses, the other 5 will join in next turn. It turns out that there is only 3 units in Mist still. If he doesn`t reinforce his city we can block it off on t179. We have a massive superiority in numbers so we might consider using brute force to break through asap. There are 2 loaded Galleons in Vulcania and Radnashiri respectively, so that`s 6 units. The rest will be moved into striking range next turn.
On domestic news we got another GP this turn.. it turned out to be another GE. I`d rather have anything else but it`s still nice to be able to rush.. something. Toregene started a Missionary, heading for TF. It could have been built in basically any city but Toregene had 41 hammers and is close to the city. Borte is 1-turning another Knight! We really need to build up our power again because the power graph shows some interesting things. I`ll get back to that later. A few smaller cities are building Catapults now.
We`re finishing Literature at 0 % science. Our gold saving rate is looking pretty good. The big question is - which tech target should we head for next? Paper- Printing Press is good for our economy. Steel for Cannons and Drydocks would allow us to stay at relative parity on the sea and at land militarily for a time.. It`s very hard to decide. Thoughts?
Graphs and demos: Well, Joey is building units again. His mfg is almost off the charts. Does he want a chuck of Ethiopia? Or perhaps he`s just waiting for our fish-for-fish deal to come to an end? Let`s build another few defenders in Oghul Qaimish and Nambui. Also, dtay has a bit more power than us.
The culture near TF is still behaving very strangely. Maybe it`ll be fixed on the interturn. There is no reason why Dark Savant should have culture left on the tile near TF.
- I may have missed a Wonder being built in there somewhere, but if Sankore is still around, paper is pretty cheap (we have both "or" prereqs) and we have a spare Engineer. UoS would be worth two base beakers for each Buddhist Temple almost indefinitely, and two base beakers for each Buddhist Monastery until SciMeth, plus 2 free beakers in Muqa for the Shrine. Put that through our libraries, and it might not even delay Steel if we tech that next! (Also, unlike the AP, the beakers only apply to us.)
- I suspect we'll see at least two more Oromos by the time we hit Mist, and will need to wait for a real stack (Say 4 cats, 2 muskets, and a bunch of Knights?) but by all means, if we can land a smaller force early that's capable of defending itself and can threaten the city, it could increase our tactical options!
. A win is a win, a city a city. Given that you weren't pulling off a true surprise, I'm just glad that teh last-minute reinforcements didn't throw a complete spanner in the plan.