RB Pitboss #2 [SPOILERS] - Speaker and Sullla

[Sullla]

The main reason why you create a 2-move axeman is so that it can protect your horse archer stack from being hit by spears. We all know that that's the one big weakness of the horse archer stack, to move fast you have to give up any defensive terrain bonus and chariots/horse archers both lose badly to spears (which are cheaper units to build too!)

But if you slap a 2-mover axe or mace on top of your horse archer stack, you can make it practically invulnerable to spears. Even better, if you end your movement on a forest tile, the Great General unit gets a huge defensive bonus too. Just to give a concrete example:

6 horse archers vs. 3 defender spears = 3 dead HA, attacker crippled
6 horse archers + 1 Morale axeman vs. 3 defender spears = 3 dead spears, defender crippled

That's often the difference between success and failure in MP. Even more so in your typical ladder game, where 2 city elim will be on, and losing just one or two cities can spell the end of the whole match. Now this didn't matter against Jowy earlier, because his units were caught out of position, but we did have the axes to protect our horse archers if he had had a spear or two on hand. And the upgraded maces will serve as strong cover for fast-moving horse archers/knights for a long time to come against spears/pikes.

But yeah, we created the General axes because we were in desperate "throw anything you have at the enemy mode" earlier. If we had had our first choice, we probably would have used at least one as a specialist in our best military-producing city, or possibly for a Medic III unit. You do the best with what you've got on hand.

[sunrise089]

I don't know how to respond to Jowy either. Give me a little while to think things over. Have to work on one of those regoarrarr emails that has tons of words but doesn't commit to anything in any direction.

Oh snap!

[Axiis]

Geeze the other side of the map is close. Does that impact your plans for dealing with Kathlete at all?

[novice]

But yeah, we created the General axes because we were in desperate "throw anything you have at the enemy mode" earlier. If we had had our first choice, we probably would have used at least one as a specialist in our best military-producing city, or possibly for a Medic III unit. You do the best with what you've got on hand.

Yeah I remember at the time, you even considered using a GG to distribute xp on a stack of axemen to promote them to shock. Not the most common use of a GG, but it did make sense in that situation.

[darrelljs]

Yeah I remember at the time, you even considered using a GG to distribute xp on a stack of axemen to promote them to shock. Not the most common use of a GG, but it did make sense in that situation.

That was a lurker suggestion post facto if I recall correctly. I filed it away for future use .

Darrell

[timmy827]

That was a lurker suggestion post facto if I recall correctly. I filed it away for future use .

Darrell

Yep. I'll probably forget it if the situation ever comes up in one of my own games though. I guess if you could plan for it optimally, you could give up to 10 barracks-only units a 2nd promotion which does sound like a lot...

@Sullla - how about just copying an Aidun email verbatim for Jowy?

[Speaker]

Our scouting Trireme came across a battlefield over the city of Fetret Devri. The city has been slaved this turn, so I'm guessing it will have another Longbow next turn. It looks pretty safe to me, unless there are several more HA in range to hit it.

[Speaker]

I took a picture of Fetret Devri this morning, but Photoshop was acting up, so I wasn't able to crop/edit it. A spear was finished between turns, and all four units were damaged, but the city held, and the fur/forest was empty. It is impossible to tell, however, how many units Kathlete actually lost, or whether he just hit with the catapults and then didn't like the odds and pulled back. We'll have to shoot off Slaze a quick email congratulating him, and asking him how it went.

[Sullla]

I took a picture of the exact same thing, and fortunately MS Paint generally runs pretty stable:



Kathlete definitely sent in one catapult; judging by the amount of collateral, I'm going to guess that he sent in the second one too, and then didn't like the odds and pulled back out. Honesty though, he never should have tried attacking in the first place, unless there were a lot more units we couldn't see in the fog. Even though Fetret Devri isn't on a hill, those longbows were getting 25% innate city defense bonus plus 60% cultural bonus = strength 11. Seriously, horse archers and axes against 11 strength defenders? Come on. :neenernee

Here's the quick congratulatory email:

Dear slaze of IKZ,

Our trireme saw this morning that Fetret Devri was still standing, with no losses and some damaged units. Congrats on holding the city! What was the body count on the other side? *grin*

Sullla
The Killer Angels

Speaker, if slaze asks for the trireme to be gifted to him, would we say yes? I'm not going to bring up the issue myself in emails, but we probably should think about what our answer would be.

Other exploring units have found all of Jowy's cities. Here's the location of Kushans:


There it is, just across the water to the north. Both Kassite and Kushans are former barb cities; Kushans is listed above Corinth in Jowy's city list, so apparently it's been around since ancient BC times! Now we know where we have to go to eliminate Jowy. Also, wow that's a lot of jungle on the center island! I sense that will be a very longterm project for down the road. We look to be in good position to claim our chunk of the central landmass.

Jowy's other city (Mycenae) is located on the offshore island north of Athens. Our exploring galley snooped it out, and now should probably come back home so we can pick up troops and send them over there. It's a nice spot, we may end up keeping the city. Jowy just founded this one, expanding out to eight cities once again. He's playing the game the right way, bluffing that he won't be attacked and expanding to a larger size to get back into the game. And if everyone else left Jowy alone for 40 turns or so, he could rebuild back into a player again, like plako did earlier. That would be really dumb from our point of view, so we will attack and kill Jowy now before he can recover. But I don't fault his strategy at all, this was the best move he could make given the situation his civ was in. We just have to be the "bad guys" this time around and strangle his rebuilding civ in the cradle.

Speaking of that...



I upgraded 2 shock axes to maceman as we agreed on earlier, at 125 gold per upgrade. We still have 160 gold left in the bank, and even though unit upgrades are generally a poor way to spend gold... I think we should splurge and upgrade the final shock axe too. (We have three of them, at 7XP, 5XP, and 5XP.) I would feel better having another strong unit on hand, and we should get a lot of pillage cash from capturing/razing cities anyway. I'm inclined to take the military route in the hopes of winning the war faster. Speaker is unlikely to disagree here...

Right now, we're looking at something like 10 maces, 7 horse archers, 6 catapults, and a couple of spears for our attacking force, with of course more units being built during the war for reinforcements. Hopefully that will be enough for the initial wave.

I thought about whether we should whip the mace in Chancellorsville - but now I think it's better to let the city build military naturally. It will grow to the next size in 2 turns, where it can grab the plains hill tile and produce 17 base [21 forge] shields/turn. Once you reach that much production, whipping is pretty counterproductive. With the city at size 12, it takes too long to grow back whipped population; better to just build things the old fashioned way. What do you think, Speaker?

One last city micro thing - look at Shiloh:



I know Speaker wants a trireme here for inner sea defense, but I would really like a library. Not just for the research bonus, but because we are in a cultural race with the borders in Dantski's city (which will steal away some of Shiloh's second ring tiles soon) and could use the extra culture pretty badly. We'll have to discuss and figure this one out.

Group email on Nakor's research:

Dear plako and Broker of Korea, Dantski of Romali, and slaze of IKZ,

Quick update on Nakor's research: he finished Alphabet research, used a Great Scientist to lightbulb Philosophy (and found Taoism), and is now going after Paper. That's listed at 3 turns, but it might take a little longer because 3 turns is the 100% deficit research ETA. plako suggested that Nakor may be going for an early Liberalism, and that's certainly possible. We'll keep all of you informed.

Also, Jowy is trying to get us to sign a new NAP, but we are not going to do it. We will be starting the war in just a few more turns.

Cheers,
Sullla
The Killer Angels

Now, the last and hardest thing to do is responding to Jowy. Here's my stab at a regoarrarr conversational email:

Dear Jowy,

Good to hear from you again! We've certainly witnessed all kinds of excitement lately from the other teams in this game. I wonder what it was that compelled athlete and Whosit to decide to launch this major war with slaze. You've probably seen that slaze discovered Feudalism and kicked off a massive whipping spree of longbows, right? I have to imagine that that will make it very difficult for either side to take much ground, at least once they start reaching each other's core cities. It's a little like the medieval version of trench warfare once those longbows get employed on both sides!

Meanwhile, Whosit has to deal with a hostile plako on his other border as well. Do you know why your friends are so determined to embark on this course of action? We know from plako that he simply wanted to raze a Roman city which was an aggressive placement next to his capital. I wonder if our teams would be able to serve as mediators of some sort in the current conflict going on, since we're the only ones not engaged in some kind of warfare. (Aside from Dantski, who never posts in his spoiler thread and seems pretty unenthusiastic about the game right now.) There's no denying that we've both benefitted from rebuilding over the past 30 or so turns; our economy was in total shambles earlier, and you're back out to 8 cities, congrats! The possibility of sitting back and teching ahead while the other teams continue killing each other is one that we've been considering for some time. What would you think about something like that?

Cheers,
Sullla
The Killer Angels

That email is beyond disingenous, but I tried my best to avoid any outright lying. Naturally, it doesn't really say anything at all, and I think Jowy will correctly view it as a non-response. But hey, it's the best I can do right now. Any thoughts or comments are welcome.

I'm sending off the emails to slaze and the group, but NOT sending the Jowy one, in case we have any further thoughts on that one. Interesting times indeed for this game right now!

[Speaker]

I'd rather not be so disengenuous, only to declare war on him in 4-5 turns. That doesn't sit terribly well with me. Let's just keep it simple and tell him that we are not inclined to sign a longterm NAP at this time. He'll read between the lines, but it's not like there's much he can do about it. I'm fine with upgrading the 3rd axe as well. After that, let's not delay Guilds any further. Can we please get the Trireme first out of Shiloh? The library won't be worth squat if a couple galleys shows up out of the darkness and raze the city. We are currently defending it with two axes and an archer, so the choice is either build more units to defend it, or build a Trireme to sentry it. The city will have plenty of food to slave with, so it can get both pretty fast, but I think we really need the trireme first, as we are about to declare war.

The people of Shiloh have already suffered so much, suffering the indignity of watching their city burned to the ground by the philistine Malinese. Give them a chance, Sullla man! There will be plenty of time for reading books after the city is safe.