[SPOILERS] - social distancing with pindicator

[NobleHelium]

Well, if our military is too big that means it's time to get rid of some units.

[Old Harry]

Turn 232

Well, if our military is too big that means it's time to get rid of some units.

Let's see what we can do about that...

We only lost one of our scouting frigates - and she took out one and injured another Indian frigate on her way out. Unfortunately the galleon had a flawless loss so we can't pick off a wounded frigate.


Anyway, Mixed Drinks has three rifles in, one is injured from the fight last turn, but promo-healed to pinch. I didn't think the fight would give him enough xp to do that. We hit the top defender with an airship which does 17% damage. This means our amphi grenadiers get 79% on the top defender and 90%+ on the others. Will this work?

- Amphi grenadier vs rifle - 79%...


LOSS

Well we can't take the city this turn, but we can kill a couple more rifles.
- Amphi grenadier vs injured pinch rifle - 89%... LOSS

LEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEROOOOOOOOOOOY!!!

- Amphi grenadier vs injured CG1 rifle - 96%... WIN! (injured to 6.2/12 though, so probably not taking the city next turn )


Noble pointed out in chat that unloading the gren rather than attacking last turn would have been a better move. I think that it might even have given us the city, but with the way the dice rolled maybe not... We're probably going to try again at Mixed Drinks next turn if he doesn't add another rifle. If he does then we'll go burn Bomber instead. The capital only has one rifle in, so that's a possibility too, but not having any healthy grens left means we're probably not going there. I expect the cap to get another defensive unit next turn.


Mr Cairo's stack (10 rifle, 10 muskets, 11 cats 6 trebs) is at a loose end now. I'm going to follow it and see where it ends up. But Cairo shouldn't want to take on the #1 military power. He's putting 30 EPs a turn into us right now, probably trying to keep research visibility on us while we try to get graphs on him.


Protectors War is going to be our best hammer city - so should we spend 15 turns building the ironworks here?


Demos and power. Mjmd is getting Physics this turn after all, so pulling our frigates back out of airship range might become necessary over the next couple of turns...

[Old Harry]

Turn 234

Last turn we burnt the size one island city of Bomber at the cost of a knight. Other notable events were our golden age starting and Jowy making peace with Mjmd then declaring on Charriu. Good work Jowy, let us and Mjmd drag each other down while you claw your way back into the game...


This turn we'd set up a hit on Mjmd's inland sea fleet. He's just got physics and I was worried that he'd be able to airship us and clear us out of here, letting him free up units for the western front.

First up our airships knocked 20% off four frigates.


Then we needed some volunteers for the tricky first two battles:

- C1 Frigate vs frigate - 50%... LOSS - down to 6.4/8
- injured C1 SOTL vs frigate - 38%... LOSS - down to 6.2/8

It's unfortunate we didn't do more damage in either fight, but things should get easier from here on.

- C1 Frigate vs injured C1 frigate - 80%... LOSS
- C1 Frigate vs injured frigate - 84%... WIN!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (6.6/8)

- C1 Frigate vs injured frigate - 84%... WINNNNNNNNN! (5.1/8)
- C1 Frigate vs injured frigate - 84%... LOSS
- C1 Frigate vs injured frigate - 84%... WIN! (0.8/8)

So we won 3 out of 7 fights... only one of which the odds were against us. I guess the RNG is trying to keep things interesting. These guys will be able to heal up in one of his cities over the next few turns, so hopefully we'll have a bit of breathing space to bring in more galleons and pin some more units up here.


Demos and graphs. We temporarily get Cairo's graphs, so here's where we all stand. AT's cities all have room to grow, so Cairo does have a better position than these show, but not by much.

We'll get a load of overflow from Music next turn to take advantage of KTB from Jowy and Mjmd on Steam Power.

[Old Harry]

Turn 236

Mjmd offered 500 then 1000 gold for peace. If I'd accepted the first, would I have got the second offer? Anyway, while the cash would be nice we thought the opportunity to remove a thorn (and avoid any first-strike issues at the end of the peace) would be much better.

We put all our airships and knights in range of Foam last turn, which provoked Mjmd into withdrawing all but three rifles.


That's pretty good for us - I didn't think we'd be able to take the city with 8 rifles, 3 longbows and 4 cavalry in it. As it is we can send in grenadiers with a good chance of winning thanks to our airships.

- CR2 C1 grenadier vs injured G1 rifle - 46%... LOSS - down to 3.6/14
- Amphi grenadier vs injured C1 rifle - 83%... WIN!!!!!
- Amphi grenadier vs injured C1 rifle - 83%... WIN!!!

Then we have a morale GG knight take the last fight to get 2XP closer to commando...
- Bernard Montgomery vs injured Cav - 98%... WIN (35/37 XP)


The city comes with granary and lighthouse. We've decided to keep it to see if we can provoke some more hammer trades since our MFG is double his and our XP is getting close to that next GG.

We also have a chance to clean up some straggling mounted units and get some more XP. The airships go in first, then some more commando candidates.


- C4 knight vs injured c2 cav - 48%... WIN!!!!!!! (1.6/10 and 21/26 XP)
- C4 knight vs injured c1 cav - 54%... WIN!!!!! (4.0/10 and 20/26 XP)
- C3 knight vs injured c1 knight - 90%... WIN!
- C3 knight vs injured c1 knight - 90%... WIN!

You know, I think our combat luck might be turning.

Demos and power. We're crushing the food and MFG stats, but GNP remains annoyingly even. Damn FIN leaders.

[DaveV]

Is that a workboat in a fort east of the captured city?

[NobleHelium]

There used to be one there, yes.

[scooter]

Mjmd offered 500 then 1000 gold for peace. If I'd accepted the first, would I have got the second offer?

I'm pretty sure if you had accepted the first, the second "offer" would have through as 1) a gift of 1k gold IF he still had enough gold left in the bank, or 2) a blank diplo window.

[NobleHelium]

Yeah I told Harry that we would have gotten the 1k gold as a gift offer if Mjmd had 1500 gold total, which he didn't, so we'd have gotten a completely blank offer.

[Old Harry]

Turn 238-9

Apologies for the silence recently - turns have been busy but without much time for reporting.

I've spent the last fifty turns banging on about commandos in the chat, then all of a sudden an opportunity opened up a couple of turns ago thanks to airship-vision and the ridiculous number of empty galleons that are swarming towards the north coast of India, accompanied by a massive and ominous airship force. The southern and central Indian cities have sent all their defenders up to protect the northern cities, which leaves us a unique opportunity.

A regular commando knight can move 6 tiles on roads, but Pindi was good enough to leave me a C4 morale knight, Bernard Montgomery, who's been picking up XP here and there as I've played. Jeanne d'Arc and another knight are also less than 5 XP from commando status, so what can we do about getting that great general we need?


Last turn: Bingo. We're IMP so just need 14XP from battles. Anything between about 50% and 88% odds gets 3XP, so we need five wins. We have four amphibious grenadiers and two 5XP grenadiers (and a knight that won't get anywhere against rifles).


Mixed drinks is our farming target. We bombard with 8 airships so that our amphi grens get odds:

- amphi gren vs injured pinch rifle - 71%... WIN!!! (down to 2.9/12)
- amphi gren vs injured pinch rifle - 85%... WIN! (1.2/12)
- amphi gren vs injured CG1 rifle - 88%... WIN!!!! (7.7/12)

Two more wins for the great general

- amphi gren vs injured CG1 rifle - 88%... LOSS
- pinch gren vs injured C2 rifle - 55%... LOSS
- pinch gren vs injured C2 rifle - 55%... WIN!!!

We're one fight short of the GG we need.

Oh, hang on...

- injured frigate vs privateer - 54%...


WIIIIIINNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN!!!!!!

This was genuinely lucky - we had another boat if this guy missed, but if the privateer was too injured the other boat wouldn't have gained the 3XP we needed, and there weren't any other options for a winnable battle this turn.

Hamilcar Barca appears, excellently, in Clackamas. Which leads to this little plan (thanks to Noble for suggesting the inovative combat settler beachead ). There's a slight snafu in that I forgot to take the free upgrade to cuirassier that Military Tradition enabled. Hopefully that won't cost us next turn.

Also will Mjmd have any suspicions about how our attacks stopped the moment we got our great general? All it would take is a rifle in each city to wreck the plan totally.


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Turn 240 dawns and the coast is clear. 20 XP is shared out among four brave knights (one comes up 1XP short and jumps back on a galleon).


Monty mounts up and charges the execrable airships of Evaporator.


Then he chops down a Few Trees.


As the first morale commando I've had the privilege to use I can't bring myself to delete him, so he'll stand guard over the ruins.

Our brave unnamed knight throws himself at the dark mace roaming the battlements of Sap.


Laying his life down for the miraculous Jeanne d'Arc to sweep in and crush the Sap from the dark mace's veins.


The loss of core cities like this is crippling, look at all those unworked towns. Oh, if only we had a force to pillage them into the ground!

This picture makes things clearer. I make it over 40% of his GNP accounted for in those three cities...


GG?

[NobleHelium]

I hereby dub Old Harry the Zhuge Liang of RB. He was an ancient Chinese strategist perhaps best remembered for his bluffing tactics. (He's also a name for a GG in the game and the inventor of the chu-ko-nu.)