41 Vice: Commodicator/Pindore

[Commodore]

Turn 51: The Battle of Doubtfire
Behold, the galley was indeed a turn late. But it's coming; possibly with just a single axe, but maybe even with an additional warrior, too. I have three hale 0XP skirmishers and three damaged cover skirmishers. Initial odds are about 27%, so I don't expect to win but the healthy drill 1 thing means I expect a nice pair of first strikes even as they die, and it's my best chance to burn this silly flatland city.

So, I size up the odds, opt for battle. Results are (remember, read bottom to top):

That was sure a thing, eh?





























Hey, Pindicator?

















Feel good to ride the Commodore odds?













Ooh baby.

The victor who burned Doubtfire is vulnerable, of course, but I expect Superdeath will continue his cautious-to-a-fault vibe and land his axe on the forested plains hill north of the ruins. That isn't amazing, and would be extremely annoying, if wasn't for the fact that our wounded stack will be joined by our own axe. We're sitting pretty, and after healing a bit, this stack is going to go murder his capital. 25/30 Great General points. Six skirmishers, one axe. MEGA KARMA DEBT.

[pindicator]

I mean ... heal up and march on, right?

If he didn't have that galley I'd say we just bottlneck with skirmishers on the hill and REX, but he can still be a nuisance.


....So weird being on the nice end of early combat odds.

[Commodore]

What is Burr building after the worker?

Edit: nevermind the second question, it's moot now. Congrats on the victory.

Sorry for missing this in my excitement. Burr is slapping out a quick granary, then a chariot, then a skirmisher for happy. Gotta grow up to work the cottages.

I'm reasonably sure that Superdeath is fleeing overseas; he just whipped and chopped, which would have gotten too much overflow on an archer. He's going to go a-Zulu. Feel weird to be on this side, Pin?

Reasonably sure we have the muscle to just charge in a capture his capital. We're going to need strong garrisons on the coasts, but we need to look at our dotmap. Here's mine, Pindicator, have disagreements?

Any lurkers are of course welcome to play along at home.

[Zed-F]

I don't think SD is going to be able to Zulu properly unless he takes out another player, grabs their wonders, and makes a viable empire out of it. But he could certainly become a pirate nation.

[pindicator]

My dot map is the same. I'm happy Mr. Crab will no longer be forced to live a lonely existence.

As for any Zulu-ing by our opponent, he will have a considerably harder time of it with no army and only 1 city to whip mercilessly from. It may be that he just intends a last hurrah strike against Clinton by sea. At least he only has 1 galley. I think a settler and overseas fleeing is more likely as that would prolong his game by the most.

It's about time to REX. We can probably use our current and planned forces to take the capital, but after we need to scout and spam cities

[pindicator]

Turn 057

Superdeath has already played, so this is what Commodore will see when he wakes up on the morning:




Seems that there isn't any way of breaking through this turn unless we get super lucky again. But we may be able to just sit and stall him out until we come in with swords or something. He's hopelessly lost in this position, although better to capture earlier.

EDIT: I think Commodore may also be trying to sneak his way into a worker steal, assuming there is one on the flood plain west of the city. Note the 5xp skirmishers.




Workers and settlers hopefully following the scouting unit builds.

I don't show demos because we are really far back. Except for MFG - we're #2 there.

[Commodore]

What Pindicator didn't list was cheap library build in Burr. In honor of our first (turn 58) cottage, let's build ourselves a library.


There is a CRAPTON of information contained in this image. Encouragingly, I think one bit of information is "Superdeath might take the axe away". That's...basically all the good news.

Even if he takes the axe away, odds aren't good enough to attack. Just pillage and choke.

[Mardoc]

Even if he takes the axe away, odds aren't good enough to attack. Just pillage and choke.

What, you need odds now? I thought you could just attack and win with any unit, any time

[Commodore]

Even if he takes the axe away, odds aren't good enough to attack. Just pillage and choke.

What, you need odds now?  I thought you could just attack and win with any unit, any time

Hush you. I've officially used up all my luck this game.


Well this is extremely interesting. Alt-C is going to be an excellent Panama location, and probably our Moai. What's more interesting is that it seems that the land widens to the north. This might very well be the Big of the Big and Small up there; I'd been expecting a tiny peninsula due to the lack of barbarians, but this might be a path to new friends.

[pindicator]

Comm and I spent a bit of time trying to plan our next tech route, and look into the feasability of going after Great Lighthouse.

The only spot that made a lot of sense to go for Great Lighthouse would be one of the newer cities, because neither Burr or Clinton need a regular lighthouse and neither of us felt like spending an "extra" 60 hammers on a city that won't ever need one. Plus, I want to keep the settlers and workers coming out of those larger cities as we try to catch up to the leaders. In the end, it seemed that the Copper-Clam city west of Gerry was the best chance, with the copper being right there and 4 forests able to chop, but the fastest that I could get the city up and running and the wonder built was end of t89, which seemed way too slow to either of us with other players out there.

We are still going to tech with a goal of Sailing to get a galley and some ICTRs, and then Masonry to hook up the stone for the Pig-Wheat-Stone city and enable cheap walls / discount Moai. After those two we think we're going to beeline Metal Casting and try to land the Colossus. Hopefully we can get Metal Casting in under 20 turns, but all our troops in foreign territory right now are a bit crippling on military costs. There was some talk about offering peace to superdeath, but it doesn't seem like a possibility until we at least get the land around him settled.