[SPOILERS] - social distancing with pindicator

[GeneralKilCavalry]

Yeah I made the map and there wasn’t much of an input as to what the map would be besides some vague promises I made. Unfortunately only Ramk have any comments on the map - he actually suggested I nerf your start

But yeah, balance and naturalism is a tradeoff

[pindicator]

Yeah I made the map and there wasn’t much of an input as to what the map would be besides some vague promises I made. Unfortunately only Ramk have any comments on the map - he actually suggested I nerf your start

But yeah, balance and naturalism is a tradeoff

Oh yeah, I've only been talking about the stuff that isn't good about the start and have been leaving out the great things.  Like as soon as I get to Calendar it's fantastic.  The problem is I don't have a lot going until I get there.  And while it's not great that I have neighbors on 3 sides and 2 of those neighbors have only me to worry about, some of that might also be Gira's questionable settling decisions.  And I certainly don't have all the knowledge of other people's starts to see how mine is better.

But don't you worry, I'll still keep complaining about the stuff that bugs me

[pindicator]

Well that was an awful day at work. Let's not repeat that. Instead let's take it out on our opponents.

092

Time to show my hand.




The chariot came all the way over from Clackamas and is now in Yamhill. Next turn we road the tile that the main stack is on and if the axe hasn't moved we'll use that back chariot to take it out. Otherwise it's going to be road and advance.

Last I saw, Osaka was minimally defended and I haven't seen anything to make me think that's changed. So the plan is to take Osaka and then race all the other units up to threaten Kyoto, skipping that axe/spear pair that is protecting Gira's worker on our border.



I really wanted to overflow into another Numid at Coos - and then I thought about doing a Monastery there instead to get missionaries because really Coos is a great city for building those. But I'm a little wary of Superdeath and his horse archers so I put the overflow + chop into a spear there and we'll get a second archer + walls in that city before anything else. Actually, that spear is better than a 2nd Numid too because did I mention that I'm wary of Superdeath? I really want a quick war against Gira and then we can move everything back to my capital and have a proper cold war against Superdeath.


PRO: 9 (302)
FIN: 12 (228)

[pindicator]

093

Superdeath knows how to draw out that suspense, doesn't he?

One of the nice benefits of Numids starting with Flanking 1 is that it only takes 2xp to get a sentry unit. So I started out with a little bit of map knowledge, promoting one of the 3xp Numids to Sentry. I had the workers a tile back finish the quarry and then road the tile the stack was on, and moved up the Sentry unit to Gira's border:



and then some units behind the main stack that i forgot to label.

Gira made a questionable call to move a 2nd spear up to protect his chopping worker on our border. It's questionable because the worker is not the target of my attack. A stack of this size in this part of the game can only be going for cities, and I plan on ignoring those spears as much as possible and just capturing cities. I'll fight them if I have to, but at C2 they are going to get odds on Shock Numids.

Also note that he 2-pop whipped Kyoto on his end of the turn, but did not whip anywhere else. So potentially 1 more spear to deal with next turn.

When I checked last turn, an unpromoted Numid was getting 90% odds of killing an unpromoted axe on flatland. I kind of like those odds, so Osaka's defenders of Axe and Warrior didn't really phase me any. I just was worried I was going to lose units to unlucky rolls. Against the axe inside Osaka my unpromoted Numids were showing 80% odds, and I wanted to improve that a bit, so I promoted another 3xp Numid to Combat 1



Looks much better! Except the 88% is a lie. Why is it a lie? 2 reasons. For some reason, the tooltip will not count river crossings in its estimates unless you are right by the river. And secondly, it's not counting the -10% that horse archers and Numidian Mercenaries get for attacking into a city. So the real combat odds are actually 71.0%, as the combat log showed me after.

Because I forgot all about this and sent in the Numid anyway.

Thankfully he won. But I perhaps should have sent a shock Numid instead.

Following up against the warrior, I sent an unpromoted Numid. It showed 99%, was really 96%, and I won that too.




Quite the haul, but sadly no infrastructure survived. If nothing else, I'm counting on the capture gold from this war to push me along to Currency. Sadly this isn't enough - I'm still about 10 turns away from finishing Currency. But if I can capture Kyoto then that should let me turn on the science!

Taking Osaka gave me some additional sight and an axe on the hill to consider. This was a really good tile for Gira to put a unit on. It is right in my conquest path - and unfortunately it would have been a tough spot to have to deal with his spears. But instead I'm able to use a chariot to take out the axe and then move everything up unscathed. Which I did. I only promoted to C1 on the chariot because while C2 would have gotten me around 95%, I wanted to be able to promote to Medic after this.

After winning this, I moved up the sentry Numid and saw nothing else dangerous. So I moved everything up.




Next turn I expect a spear out of Kyoto as well from its whip. So I promoted 4 of my Numids to Shock, and only have 2 left that haven't been promoted at all. That should give me a couple 50% flankers to use if I really need to bust through something tough.

I'm a little sad to see there are too many forests around Kagoshima. If some of those forests were chopped by now then I could have possibly taken it after the culture from Kyoto was taken out. I would also suggest that Gira needs to have more workers and to have chopped more forests. Look at how many hammers that he's just left lying around. But hey, we all played like that once.

Speaking of all those forests... I'm trying not to count my chickens too early but that could be a nice wonder out of Kyoto, wouldn't you say?

I also used the straggling chariot to kill Gira's warrior north of Osaka. I guess that chop from Clackamas had a good point after all!


Edit: I keep forgetting!

PRO: 9 (311)
FIN: 11 (239)

[GeneralKilCavalry]

 

No units lost for 138 gold!

[pindicator]

094

This turn started pretty straight forwarded and ended up being really complicated at the end.  I'm getting increasingly worried that Superdeath is not just trying to match my power but is going to be actively moving against me.  So the need to wrap up Gira as quickly as possible has potentially caused me to take a couple risks, but I think they are warranted.

First off, some world map insights:



That's a second Gira work boat I spotted, coming from the other way.  Looks like Gira has done the best out of anybody in scouting out this map, and this tells me we're all on 1 pangaea.  I am willing to bet that Mjmd, Jowy, and Charriu are all in the southeast in their own corners of the world and we're just now seeing Gira's first work boat make it all the way around.  So circumnavigation is not going to be possible before Optics.

Okay, on to the war.




Gira did attack with the two spears, and scored two kills - winning with the C2 spear at 68% and the C1 spear at 63% - but both of his spears are very badly injured now. He then failed to cover the spears with the healthy axe so they should be cleaned up this turn.  Kyoto whipped a spear, promoted to C2, and kept it in place - we're going to have to just zerg through that.  So that's what I started with.

My shock Numid gets 9% odds to win, so we're going to try a Flanking 2 Numid first.  It lost, but it did 1 hit against the spear which was enough to give the shock Numid a more respectable chance to win: 22%.  And here I scored my first lucky win of the game, winning against the spear!  After that it was cleanup against the warriors.  And I got another bit of good news when I made that first attack, because thanks to IMP we got our first Great General:



He's all the way back in Multnomah, but we're moving him up.  Actually he may not make it to the war, but more on that later.

After that there was just one more warrior at 97% odds to kill.  And no problems there either:




Kyoto has a forge!  Oh that's why I've been seeing someone with Metal Casting:  It was Gira going for the Japanese unique building.  While I certainly approve of shiny things like unique buildings and unique units, you've got to make units then to make it count!  All those trees- he could have chopped out an army and gone after me!  Or with a forge maybe even gone after Colossus.  Also- spending full price for a 120h forge - yikes that's a lot of production.  That could have been 3.5 more spears, and I know there's another forge in Satsuma.  I don't have nearly as much success if you replace those forges with 7 spears.  In fact, I run into a brick wall and don't get anything.  (Keep this in mind for later in the post.)

Here's the full log of attacks for the battle of Kyoto:

F2 Numid vs C2 spear (1.2% / 49.4% retreat) - loss
Shock Numid vs C2 spear (22.7% / 23.2% retreat) - WIN
C1 Numid vs Warrior (96.2% / 1.1%) - WIN
GG Oliver Cromwell born
Sentry Numid vs Warrior (97.0% / 0.9%) - WIN

The capture gold from Kyoto is also now enough for me to get to Currency.  That is due in 5 turns now and will be immensely helpful:  it'll give me something like 30c of commerce from additional trade routes.  That'll be a 30% jump.

After Kyoto, I decided to clean up those wounded spears.  I certainly did not want them to get back to safety and promote or heal up.  So I started with the chariot



Naturally, he died.  But thank goodness I got my low-odds loss out of the way here and not with a Numid!
Most unfortunately, this loss caused Gira to get a great general of his own.  I much would have rather he not gotten that, at least not without having to attack on his own first.

I did clean up with 2 of the farthest back Numids, so my forward Numids could continue pushing forward.  I also decided to ignore the axes.  On forests they get good odds against even Shock Numids, and I would much rather make them come off the defensive terrain.  So I moved everything up and kept things off defensive terrain as much as possible so that he would have to leave a unit exposed if he did make an attack.  Forgive the lack of tags on this screenshot, but here is how I ended things:




There were 3 workers to the south of Kyoto that I was tempted to grab, but decided to leave alone.  More important is to figure out just where Gira's metal is.  It has to be in the fogged tiles of Satsuma.  So I ended up with 1 Numid threatening Kagoshima - the one that killed the last spear.  And down by Satsuma we have 2 Numids and a chariot in range.  No defenders in either city.  I'm a little worried what he could do with that Great General, especially if a spear comes out of Satsuma at end of turn.  I really would like to take Satsuma next turn but we'll have to see what comes out.  I intentionally left a spear in range of his axe so he might waste an attack against that and not one of my Numids - but I would also like it if he just retreated everything into Kagoshima and made a last stand there.

Honestly, I'm not too concerned with being able to wrap up this war.  I'm more concerned that I won't be able to wrap up this war fast enough.

Why?




Superdeath just passed me in power this turn.  I'm starting to worry this is more than responding to my power increase.  His scout has not followed my numids south and instead has stayed around the capital.  Units I might have brought south to ensure that the war finishes smoothly are now being moved to Coos because I'm afraid of a Horse Archer attack.  I was thinking of putting infrastructure builds in my core next, to anticipate hooking up the gold at Satsuma - and I do want a settler to get the fur in the tundra south of Kyoto - but we need to put about 6 units in Coos and either Walls or hit 60% culture first.


PRO: 9 (320)
PRO: 12 (251)

[scooter]

I think your next to last screenshot is the wrong image? It's just a repeat of the pre-turn picture rather than post-turn.

[pindicator]

Aha! That's because I didn't even upload the correct image

Thanks scooter!

[pindicator]

EDIT: Just one more time complaining about this and I guarantee it won't be the last...

BUT HOW NICE IT MUST BE TO ONLY HAVE TO WORRY ABOUT ONE NEIGHBOR

[pindicator]

095, part 1




I just needed 2 turns to bring everything back north. So of course I don't get that.




11 horse archers, and we don't even worry about Coos here - we worry about the capital and everything else falling.

Anyway, feeling extremely frustrated here. I wanted to attack Superdeath and keep him honest because the map pretty much demanded it of me! But no, Gira had to go and make me his blood enemy, so naturally I have to kill Gira otherwise risk a 2v1 on me. And then I get a 2v1 on me anyway. That's my biggest complaint with this map and I'm not nearly done complaining about it, no matter how it plays out from here.

Basically this was a 2v1 from the start because Gira decided to throw his game against me instead of playing this like a 3-way standoff. Maybe Cairo will decide to jump on and make it a 3v1? Wouldn't that be swell?

At least Gira's given up, but honestly that just makes me more upset:




He settled the GG in Satsuma and left it blank, then retreated everything into Kagoshima. Gira, I would love to finish you off here but Superdeath insists we drag this out. So I'm going to leave him in Kagoshima. At least he doesn't have metal there. But I would gift all Gira's cities back to him for peace right now if I could (to teleport units back).

This map was a GIFT to Superdeath's start. Even if we swap Gira with someone with more experience, there's no way Superdeath doesn't get into a 2v1 situation because of all the jungle acting as a natural shield.


Anyway, I'm too heated to play the turn. I need to cool off and figure out how I save my capital.