RB Pitboss #2 [SPOILERS] - Speaker and Sullla

[Rowain]

Oh wait, it's "coastal blockade", the single worst feature added in the last expansion.

While I agree with your assessment of Alexman I find the Spy-system worse. Besides if your trireme is afraid to attack the enemy it is logical that the fisherman are afraid to sail out to work too

[Dr. Nomadic]

I rarely see the AIs use the blockade feature. In my last game that I played (first on Prince difficulty for me woot) they just destroyed my ships and pillaged my resources, and nothing more, even though I had next to no navy. Maybe Alexman missed it due to such?

Darn why do you developers have to tear apart our beautiful multiplayer limb by limb?

[Sullla]

Short pictures after reloading and replaying the turn again:



We opted not to use the XP Sprinkle ability on our Great General, instead going for an uber-Medic III horse archer. Clara Barton already had Medic II promotion, with the new experience going for Medic III and Morale, for 3 movement points. Now we have a super-fast unit which should never defend and can serve its role as a great healer. Sunrise the 2-move GG musket will heal 40% of its total strength this turn, and be ready to move out next turn with the rest of our stack.

We did capture the undefended Mos Eisley, and moved more units up to attack the (surprise, surprise!) undefended Clak'dor next turn. Shouldn't be an issue unless slaze would have units in the area to grab the city first. Our big stack is going to start moving on Endor next turn for the final push now that healing is done.

Five turns into the war, how are things faring? Let's do a Before and After picture:





Pretty big difference! Even on the eastern border, slaze has taken a bunch of cities. Not much green left now...

We were the last to end turn this time, so after the turn roll I was able to see the news for Turn 212. Great information there: Nakor's Golden Age has come to a close! Awesomeness.

Will post more tomorrow, very tired now... :zzz:

[WilliamLP]

What are the plans for that settler being built in The Wilderness?

[Sullla]

The idea was to get a city at the Corellia spot, those city ruins southeast of Hilton Head. There's enough food and production there for a very strong city - have to wait until after the current war ends, of course. And if you want to get those disputed locations, you want to make sure to start building settlers before the war itself is over!

Kathlete chose to do something a little bit different this turn, and attack out of his capital:



We knew that he could take Hilton Head if he wanted to, since it was only 3 tiles from his massive stack inside Endor. We just wanted to make it more costly to him than it was to us, having to attack muskets across a river in a city on a hill. That's pretty much what took place, with us trading two conscript muskets for two catapults and a horse archer. This was a very unlucky result for us, as the first catapult had 0.5% odds to win and managed to get FOUR hits on our defending musket. (With combat odds that low, the expected result is one or zero hits.) Then the second cat had 2% odds and still managed to get three hits on our other musket. The rest of the combat results were entirely predictable.

Really, the only mistake was leaving our Sentry horse archer inside the city, where it was also killed. That was our error, although in our defense we moved the unit out of the city before the reload and forgot to do it again afterwards. Just a mistake, but one that hurts our intell here. And Hilton Head instantly re-expanded borders to 40% culture, one of the little irritating things about this game. Sigh. Generally unimportant in the larger scheme of things, since we can replace our units and Kathlete cannot (trading units is a good thing for us), but definitely irritating for the moment.

Of course, we were able to grab another undefended city:



I will not be around to play the rest of the turn tonight, so here are my thoughts for Speaker. I already moved our workers and fooled around with our city builds/micro.

Main front: Our top initial priority is using our remaining Sentry horse archer to get sight into Endor. Last turn, Kathlete had 7 knights, 8 janissaries, 12 longbows, 4 cats, and 1 pike in his capital. Subtract out the units that were killed this turn, and you should be able to tell from looking in the capital how many units Kathlete moved over to Hilton Head. I don't think we can get vision into Hilton Head this turn without suiciding a unit, which isn't worth it. (If we have a horse unit in range that can take Sentry promotion, it would probably be worth it to see into Hilton.)

I don't really have any more recommendations here because I have no idea where Kathlete has positioned all of his units. Just use your best judgment here. Hopefully we can protect all our cities and also start moving forward against Endor. (These kind of shenanigans will just keep going until we take that capital!)

Western Island: I whipped caravels in both Vicksburg and Big Bethel. Vicksburg needed to whip to prevent starving anyway, while Big Bethel was about to start growing onto unimproved tiles. (It was a classic size 4 to size 2, regrows next turn to size 3 double whip.) I also whipped a caravel in Atlanta, and Hampton Roads finishes a caravel next turn. With those ships, plus the caravels that plako gifted us coming down from the north, we should be able to clear out the Kathlete infestation over the upcoming turns. Move these ships as you see fit.

Central Sea: We have 2 triremes and 2 galleys in there, which together can probably start moving against Kathlete's 1 trireme and 1 galley. They have instituted a coastal blockade against Shiloh, sending it into temporary starvation. Well, we can whip a caravel there next turn, and that should be enough units to clear out those Ottoman ships. I've already started queuing up some work boats in other cities to replace destroyed nets.

Drafting: Spartansburg is the city to draft this turn, which is why I have it set to max food. Globe city Chikamauga can also be drafted, of course. 10 turns ago we drafted Vicksburg too, but it's not a candidate right now because of the coastal blockade. If you want, feel free to draft The Wilderness - it will come out of draft anger next turn (so only having to suffer a single turn of double unhappiness) and we can surely use the extra rifle up on the front lines!

I didn't draft any cities, so pull the trigger and move the new units as you see fit.

Research: Astronomy is due in 3 turns at 50% science. Because we had some excess gold from the Clakdor conquest, I ticked us up to 60% science for Astronomy in 2 turns. If we can't support that after moving our big stack into Ottoman territory, feel free to dial it back down to 50%.

As best I can see from GNP, Nakor is getting roughly the same amount of beakers as us right now. (His GNP is higher because he's researching Military Tradition with 20% pre-requisite bonus and 3% bonus from us knowing the tech. Astronomy actually has no pre-req discount at all, which hurts our GNP.) Of course, Nakor is not fighting a war with units in enemy territory, and Nakor continues to get bankrolled 150 gold/turn from Kathlete... When this war ends, we should be able to out-tech him with ease.

Umm, that's all I can think of. Good lucking kicking some Kathlete behind this turn.

[Sullla]

Hey Speaker, what did you do at the end of yesterday's turn? You could leave some kind of notice for me here. I'll be back this evening to cover today's turn, after Kathlete's half of the turn window is over.

[Speaker]

Hey Speaker, what did you do at the end of yesterday's turn? You could leave some kind of notice for me here. I'll be back this evening to cover today's turn, after Kathlete's half of the turn window is over.

Sorry, I got home from work at 1:00am and banged out the turn, then passed out, woke up at 7:00am and had a quick peek in game before going back to work. Nothing too important happened, so...

[Sullla]

Busy, busy weekend for both of us - thus the lack of posts. Just playing the turns was a bit difficult at times. And yet, hardly any of the other teams seem to be posting anything either in this forum! Looks like Nakor is the only other one updating with great frequency, and, well, they've got plenty to be excited about right now! Moving on with it.

After our discovery of Optics tech, we built/whipped quite a few caravels in our coastal cities. Kathlete responded by giving up his coastal blockades and sailing away:



He did the same thing in the central sea, moving away the Ottoman galley + trireme away to the south. We think that Kathlete is going to gift these units away to Nakor, not that triremes are particularly useful anymore at this stage of the game! Just kind of funny how these guys have continued to treat their units/cities/gold as linked parts of the same team.

Vicksburg and Hampton were set to Weath for one turn so that their whip/build overflow can go into galleons once we discover Astronomy. In the meantime, they add about 50 gold to our income this turn, helping us get to the new tech. Then we also need to build a bunch of workboats to fix our sea resources; we need 5 work boats just in the center sea! Still, that won't take too long and then we'll be in great shape again.

Lurkers reading all threads will already know that Nakor finally declared war on Dantski. If you're just reading our thread, here's what that stack looks like:



It's a strong attacking force: 15 rifles, 9 maces, 8 cannons, 9 catapults, and a bunch of assorted older units. The real danger there comes from the siege units, which can take down just about any city if they all hit it together. Nakor's weakness here is the lack of mobility - that's a really dangerous stack, but it is also very slow moving. All one tile units, no ability to fork multiple enemy cities at once and blitz through weak defenses in the back lines. Hopefully that will limit the damage that this wrecking ball can do.

To oppose those units, Dantski has 2 rifles, 11 muskets, 5 maces, 10 catapults, and a LOT of useless outdated junk. He gifted us gold enough to upgrade two more skirmishers to rifles, which we did, and we gifted him another 2 rifles and a musket, which were three tiles north of Kumbi Saleh in the above picture. Can those three units do much of anything to stop this attack? Uh, no. But hopefully it will slow Nakor down just a little bit, and help keep up Dantski's morale. We want him to defend like slaze, not throw in the towel like Kathlete.

Although I note that Dantski hasn't even posted in his thread that he was attacked, probably not a great sign... Here was his take by email to us:

Hey KA's

Yep KS [Kumbi Saleh] is doomed to fall. I am interested in your input on how I should handle my defence though.

My first thought is to promote my catapults with barrage, suicide them all into the stack and then hit the stack with everything I have. On the plus side I can attack slightly wounded units with full health units as opposed to hitting the stack with catapults then letting him hit me with far more collateral. Anyway if I don't hear from you, I'll be throwing the kitchen sink at his stack.

Oh and my score decrease was HRE taking my furthest away island city. I was scared they'd boated my Statue of Zeus city as I'm hoping that will hurt HRE considerably.

-Dantski

I don't have any real ideas. Sounds like as good of a plan as any to me. Speaker, feel free to chime in if you've got any thoughts... although we both talked this over yesterday, and we both pretty much agreed on "Dantski is totally screwed."

We also asked plako if he would Close Borders with Nakor as a way of hurting him economically. I guess it's not a surprise that plako refused to do so, saying he "wanted to keep a low profile." Disappointing, but expected. These No Tech Trading games highlight how no one really gives a crap about anyone else in the end. Everyone pretty much does whatever is best for themselves (or they quit and spitefully try to throw the game to other teams, which is no better). I'm not excluding us from that description either, of course, just pointing out how cutthroat the games become without tech trading. You don't need anyone else for research, so all of the other teams are basically just allies of convenience.

Over on the Ottoman front, we've just been moving up our attack force towards Endor. We moved in on Turn 212, moved up one space on Turn 213, and we'll be next to the city on Turn 214, ready to attack Turn 215. Here's a current shot after the turn rolled over this morning:



At least now we have a solid ring of culture from cities that have come out of resistance. I was able to micro Dantooine to get 11 shields and a cultural expansion on the first turn via "Build Culture". That claims the horse tile 2N of the city, and protects Endor from being attacked by knights. Shouldn't be too much longer here. Just one more turn of movement, then we can start the attack on the capital...

[Sullla]

Short update: Dantski engaged the Nakor super-stack during his turn, hitting it with all of his catapults and then attacking. He had pretty good success overall, as much as could be hoped for anyway:



Nakor's Units Before:
16 rifles
8 cannons

Nakor's Units After:
11 rifles
6 cannons

Unaffected (Mostly Outdated)
2 Praetorians
3 Axemen
9 Macemen
1 Spearman
2 Landsknecht
1 Longbowman
9 Catapults
4 Trebuchets

Overall, not too many units killed, but that Nakor stack has a lot of injured units now. You can see on the right side of the screen in the box how Dantski's own units were decimated in the fighting as well. It's a shame that our main stack wasn't in the area, as we could have hit with our cavalry and flanked every single one of those siege units out of existence. Maybe we'll be able to set up something along those lines before this war is over.

At the very least, other teams are fighting and killing each other's units, which can only be a good thing for us.

[Adlain]

Out of curiosity, once your war with athlete is over (and from the speed you have gone sofar, its wont be long) what are your plans regarding future wars??