[SPOILERS] - social distancing with pindicator

[pindicator]

152

Superdeath seems to think I care more about winning than I do about eliminating him. Although it's still a shit offer from him.




And to think I was ready to give him peace 20 turns ago. If he would have countered my 15gpt for peace deal with a flat peace I probably would have taken it - I was weary of the war at that point and ready to build infrastructure. But then he started making outlandish demands - remember that 50gpt demand? - that he had no way of backing up, and before he razed a first-ring city. Three's only one way out of this war now.

Mjmd has Alphabet now and we can all see he's up Banking, Alphabet, Aesthetics, Literature, and Code of Laws. I am up Compass.




He also built Parthenon this turn, in the same city as MoM.

I did send another overture to Mr. Cairo, first sending him fish for fish so he doesn't get alarmed by my spiking power. Then I asked him to start getting ready:



Will it be 20 turns? I have no idea.

11 knights this turn. I've set up a number of cities to be 2-pop whipped for another round next turn - mostly cities on the far edge of the empire - but every city that can will whip a second knight in short order. Unfortunately its just going to take a long time to get all of them lumped together. For instance, at the eastern edge Lake is 4 turns away from my border with superdeath. Klamath in the south is a bit better at 3. So I'm going in with what I have next turn:




4 knights will be able to join 25 slow-movers, 12 catapults, and 17 two-movers for a total of 58 going in next turn. If my 2-movers aren't able to take the city or if everything is wiped out then I'll have 5 or 6 more knights that can join the stack as it moves up against Boil It.

Power is really noticeable now.




If he waits until I walk up to the city gates to launch his counter-attack then we might see me get close to 900k

PRO: 43 (2225)
FIN: 49 (2020)

[pindicator]

153

Okay, I've gone from insulted to just plain confused




So I get why he would ask me for peace and say that I should declare on Mjmd. But why does he now demand more money from me? Why would you want to make it less likely for me to accept a peace deal? I didn't take the first two, which were both really obvious that you thought I should go east, but now you think I'll be more inclined to accept if you demand more money from me? Did Superdeath forget which side of the diplo window his stuff goes and which side mine goes? Did I?

Mjmd has a slightly higher strength than Superdeath but his border cities are so weakly guarded. I really could have success there. Sadly we won't know, because I just can't trust superdeath not to stab me in the back again.

I ignored his - whatever kind of request that is - and pushed everything in.




I half expect to be wiped out here, but i figure it's a good sign that he cold-whipped Boil It for another pike.

Then I messed up on a number of cities that are whipping out my next wave of knights




I forgot about the bug where if you have a forge and you whip at exactly the amount needed for 2 pop then it will actually whip 3 pop. Not wanting to whip 3 in multiple cities (I had a lot of places at exactly 15/90 into a knight), I decided that this next wave of knights is going to be more of a rolling wave of whips from the back up to the front of my empire. So Lake whipped it's knight out, and next turn we'll whip at Multnomah and Clackamas. Clatsop whipped because it can now and also again when the rolling wave comes up in 2 turns. Down south we 1-pop whipped at Belisarius and then will whip at Klamath and Crook next turn; Josephine the turn after.

Expecting failure, but I really threw this game when I based my economic strength off Mjmd's empire forgetting he had a shrined religion. If i wouldn't have made such a big mistake I would have realized that I couldn't compete with him economically without conquering Superdeath first.


Oh, and finally I got open borders from AT. Jowy then responded asking for my sugar and 3gpt. And now why give him that? Still, I'll give him OB for Sugar. I offered that to him at least. But he should see now that only he and Mjmd are holding out on the Open Borders for me now.

PRO: 43 (2268)
FIN: 52 (2072)

[pindicator]

154

Superdeath threw all of his collateral into my army and killed 22 units while losing 10 catapults and a pair of war elephants.  Earned 2 great generals.




Honestly, I think he needed to be a little more patient here and wait 1 more turn.  Stuff all his defenders into Boil It and then he could hit me next turn where I wouldn't have been able to counter his stack quite effectively.  He also gets another turn to move up units and whip more defenders.  But perhaps he expected his attack to go better than it did?

Except his stack is badly wounded, my catapults are relatively untouched, and I am perfectly set up to destroy his stack.  Which was exactly what I had hoped for with pushing these units in ahead of the knights.  And this is exactly what I had hoped for - maybe a few less units so I could also capture Boil It this turn! - but here we lost mostly spears and longbows (though more Numids than I expected).  My slow stack cancels out his slow stack and now my knights are free to clean up.

I promoted the catapults on the drill line to get the best combat odds possible.  In some cases Drill 2 catapults going up against his CKNs went from 20% battles to odds-on winning battles.  I only lost 4 out of 12 catapult attacks, so I still have a lot for going forward.  His units were then very badly injured - and while so were mine, my numids were still relatively healthy and I had the three knights in my territory that were now in range and fully healthy because he attacked here and not a turn later.



There were a few relatively healthy war elephants and CKNs left, but they were in the minority.  Believe it or not I did not lose a single battle after this.  Most of my fights were in the 90s, although I had a stretch near the beginning where I think I got lucky by winning a stretch in the 60s and 70s.  My worst luck of the fight was having a numid fight a pike with 50% odds and 25% retreat odds and it retreated without doing any damage.

I even got another GG, which spawned in Tillamook and let me bring in another attacker this game.



I even was smart enough this time to save the last attack for my GG medic so it can upgrade to level 5 and let me unlock West Point!

Full combat log in spoilers

Code:

93hp Barrage Catapult v CKN (8.2%) - loss, 2 hits, 5 collateral hits
98hp Drill 2 Catapult v C2 War Elephant (19.0%) - loss, 1 hit, 5 collateral hits
96hp Drill 2 Catapult v 83hp C2 CKN (47.7%) - Withdraw, 3 hits, 5 collateral hits
96hp Drill 2 Catapult v 85hp C2 War Elephant (39.9%) - loss, 3 hits, 5 collateral hits
96hp Drill 2 Catapult v 90hp CKN (53.6%) - Withdraw, 3 hits, 3 collateral hits
96hp Drill 2 Catapult v 75hp C2 War Elephant (46.7%) - No Damage Taken! 3 hits, 4 collateral hits
93hp Drill 1 Catapult v 65hp C1 CKN (72.1%) - Withdraw, 2 hits, 2 collateral hits
94hp Drill 2 Catapult v 82hp C1 Pike (66.4%) - Withdraw, 3 hits, 3 collateral hits
93hp Barrage Catapult v 55hp C2 CKN (85.5%) - Withdraw, 1 hit, 1 collateral hit
86hp Catapult v Catapult (55.3%) - Loss, 3 hits, 1 collateral hit
96hp Drill 1 Shock (don't ask) Catapult v 58hp C2 War Elephant (90.8%) - Withdraw, 1 hit

With the last few catapults not doing much for collateral I decided not to throw my last catapult in but instead to go with the attackers.


C1 Knight v 58hp C2 War Elephant (95.9%) - win, 3 catapults flanked
Knight v 58hp C2 War Elephant (94.5%) - win, 2 catapults flanked
Knight v 55hp pikeman (95.2%) - flawless win, 2 catapults flanked

A crossbow is the top defender and my cat will go after that so I send it in now

86hp Catapult v 55hp C1 CKN (85.7%) - withdraw, 1 hit
87hp C1 longbow v 54hp C1 CKN (90.6%) - win
62hp C1 D2 crossbow v 49hp C2 CKN (76.0%) - win
98hp C3 F1 Numid v 58hp War Elephant (66.3% / 10.1%) - win, catapult destoryed in flanking

Noticing there's only 1 CKN over 40hp left, so I'm going for it

76hp C1 sword v 40hp C1 CKN (63.3%) - win
88hp C1 axe v 32hp C1 CKN (84.1%) - win
78hp C2 axe v 40hp C2 War Elephant (79.6%) - win
81hp C2 F2 numid v 81hp C2 pike (49.1% / 25.5%) - withdraw, no damage, but killed a catapult with flank attack

GG born in Tillamook!

F2 numid v 85hp pike (41.7% / 29.2%) - win!  1 flanking hit
86hp CR2 sword v 58hp axe (72.6%) - win
88hp C2 F2 numid v 40 war elephant (75.6% / 12.2%) - win, 1 flanking hit
85hp C1 F1 numid v 25hp C2 war elephant (92.2% / 2.3%) - win, 1 flanking hit
95hp F2 Sentry numid v 25hp C2 war elephant (92.5% / 3.8%) - win, 1 flanking hit
74hp C2 F1 numid v 24hp C2 war elephant (92.0% / 2.4%) - win, catapult killed with flank hit
81hp C2 Shock F1 numid v 24hp C2 war elephant (93.5% / 2.0%) - win
69hp C1 Shock F1 numid v 25hp C1 pike (94.8% / 1.6%) - win
78hp C1 Shock F1 numid v 25hp C2 CKN (99.0% / 0.3%) - win
71hp C1 F2 numid v 25hp C2 CKN (96.3% / 1.9%) - win
81hp C1 F2 numid v 25hp C1 CKN (99.3% / 0.4%) - win
68hp C1 War Elephant v 25hp C1 CKN (99.1%) - win
35hp C2 Knight v 15hp war elephant (98.0%) - win
74hp C1 Swordsman v 25hp CKN (91.8%) - win
GG Morale Knight v 16hp C1 CKN (99.9%) - win
25hp D2 Formation Longbow v 4hp C1 CKN (98.7%) - win
73hp GG Medic Chariot v 5hp C1 war elephant (99.9%) - win

And his stack is gone!

Here's how things were left over after I was done




Superdeath is broken now.  Notice how the power ratio in the score went from 1.4 to 2.4 after I attacked?  (Yeah, Charriu should fix that - it should not update in real time.)  And to drive the point home I whipped a lot of knights again.  I might stop whipping after this turn.  But I might not, because honestly if this gets wrapped up as quickly then we're not stopping, we're just going to turn everything south next.

And then I made a mistake - I forgot to promote units after fighting!  There's a lot of HP left on the table.  I dont' think he has anything he can reasonably attack with but hopefully he does not.

Demos:




Top rival in power is Mjmd now.  I need to watch this guy, he might stab me.  Another reason to just keep building units!

Jowy agreed to my open borders for sugar btw.

PRO: 43 (2311)
FIN: 48 (2120)

[Cornflakes]

96hp Drill 1 Shock (don't ask) Catapult

Hey, nothing wrong with Shock catapults! I promoted a half dozen catapults to Shock in PB49 and used them as city defenders at a critical moment in the war vs. Commodore, and they turned the tide in my favor.

[NobleHelium]

I think you would have done slightly better if you had sent in some flankers earlier to clear out the catapults that were soaking up the collateral damage, as soon as they started getting good odds.

[pindicator]

I think you would have done slightly better if you had sent in some flankers earlier to clear out the catapults that were soaking up the collateral damage, as soon as they started getting good odds.

I'm so entrenched in my "siege before attackers" philosophy I didn't even think of this. It's probably why I had so few collateral hits towards the end of my catapult attacks, as more and more of his units hit the max threshold then I probably started getting catapults as my collateral targets. Will definitely keep this tucked away for future stack v stack battles.

96hp Drill 1 Shock (don't ask) Catapult

Hey, nothing wrong with Shock catapults! I promoted a half dozen catapults to Shock in PB49 and used them as city defenders at a critical moment in the war vs. Commodore, and they turned the tide in my favor.

I thought I would need the shock and then I totally changed my attack order and then didn't need it any more. But he's still around so maybe we'll get to use him against a pike or something later on!

[NobleHelium]

Flanking is just another form of collateral damage, except it only targets specific units (and can kill) and is thus more powerful when it's available.

Sometimes you promote to Shock and then the defender changes and you can't use the promotion in the actual combat.

[Kurumi]

What worries me the most is that while we're 1st in Power, other important players (Mjmd, Cairo) seem to not be that far away from us in these terms. Hopefully we can sucker punch Mjmd and get good results off that later.

As for superdeath's peace treaty the only thing I can think of is 123+4*30 = 243 and that meaning "peace till 243". The earlier could be "peace for 100 turns", but honestly... there had to be a more sensible way telegraphing that, right?

Thanks for unyielding reporting btw, enjoyed gobbling all of the thread at once today.

[Zed-F]

Glad to see your successful attack, here's to continued good luck in the future!

[pindicator]

155

Thanks everyone! And welcome aboard, Kurumi!




Demos here again because now Charriu and Mjmd are out of their golden ages.

I'm not too worried about our power because we're still pushing out a lot of units. I whipped a LOT last turn - something like 20 population - just to get another wave of knights out. And as much as I'd love to switch to infrastructure and build markets and grocers right now ... we need to keep putting out units. So my demos are falling a bit behind as I lose all that population but my power is staying high. And we will need all of those units to push through superdeath, because while i may have broken his stack he still has units around and can still whip or chop in defenders.




Moving up everything. The castle makes any attack really difficult. I might try throwing all my siege into first and then suiciding things, but first I'm going to bombard with catapults and heal with my GG medic. If I get an opening I'll go for it, and if I don't I'll heal up and then go for it.


PRO: 43 (2354)
FIN: 49 (2169)