[Spoilers] Old Human Tourist: Empress of Azteca

[Old Harry]

Anyway, the turn has rolled and the clock is ticking on Azza's turn 128. In an ideal world he'll play tonight, although it is a Friday, so no guarantee of that. Depending on what he does we probably won't be on your schedule to play the turn THH, but if we are I'll try to catch you. This one won't be the big turn though - that's t129 (Monday perhaps?)

As I was writing this Azza logged in to play so I'm planning to log in about four hours from now, perhaps even with a live stream as this is all so exciting...

He's whipped about seven points away over the last two turns, but I didn't get an overview shot of his land to figure out where . Hopefully all infra!

[Fintourist]

Ha! Times change! And Azza has played, so catch me on chat!

[Old Harry]

Turn 128 - T minus Zero - Prologue

I just logged in to have a look around and sort out builds before the others can join me for the main event. First up Dtay almost got all the way through Whosit already. I hope Cheater Hater has some cats lined up... Dtay's Bureau revolt is almost ten turns behind ours, which I'm taking as a good sign. Also Pindicator is finishing the job against Barry and TBS built the Confucian shrine.


Next up our EP spending has given us visibility on Azza's core, and the great news is his defences are all over in Dental Plan (unless he's done something very clever with his fog). Only an Axe and a Warrior in No Homers, a spear in PMW and some other stuff that we don't have to worry about yet (the signs are pretty accurate, if hard to read). The great news is he has 12 gold so he won't be upgrading that Warrior to be a spear . We could invest EPs for another turn and a bit to get sight on Dental Plan. What do you think?


Pre-attack Demos


BTW, make sure we declare before moving anything in...

[TheHumanHydra]

I'm around now if you guys are still playing. If not, that's all right.

[Old Harry]

Turn 128 - T minus Zero - Main Event

First we move in up north. We remembered to declare before moving in, which is a pretty good start.


Dig up has a C1 25% fortified spear and an Axe. No Homers has a Warrior and an Axe, but Azza has no money, so he can't promote to a spear, so we'll use our C2 Knight here and our green Knight against the capital next turn.
- C2 Knight vs C1 Spear... WIN down to 2.8/10
Then our chariot should get good odds on the axe. We want a morale super medic chariot with 26 XP eventually, so we promoted the chariot to C1:
- C1 Chariot vs Axe 79% (2% withdraw) LOST Axe down to 31HP
(FT: at least it was a cheap chariot)
The other chariot will get the 1XP that will give it 26XP eventually from this fight...


- Chariot vs 1.5/5 Axe 99.9% WIN


No infra in the city, but 92 gold is good (and if we'd been taking our new capture gold economy into account properly we'd have Engineering eot129 ).

Then we look at Zzzap


- Chariot vs Axe 88% (2.4% withdraw) FLAWLESS WIN!
We got 20 capture gold and Granary survived .

Next we moved a mace to check out Hello Joe


He's added an axe so now has two axes, a spear and a warrior, which means we're one axe short of taking the city without needing knights. We unloaded our Galleys and moved up the next wave of Knights, leaving the situation like this. No Homers, Prove Me Wrong and Hello Joe should fall next turn. We'll have to see what happens to Zzzap, whether Azza brings his stack to Boo-urns and if Mardoc will pile on .


We do need to be sure not to underestimate Azza - I hope we aren't making too many Missionaries or not whipping hard enough - his force of 16 Axes, 3 Spears, 5ish HA and 5ish Cats shouldn't cope with our 16 Knights 11 Horse Archers, 2-4 Maces and 3-4 Cats (depending on upgrades) out in the open, but if he holes up in a city on a hill with 40% culture we'll need more Cats.


We could whip a couple of cities this turn, but it'll be better for growth to whip them next turn. I didn't end turn yet, so suggestions please!

[TheHumanHydra]

Ach, I may have misadvised you, Harry. I forgot it was just the one chariot, nothing else landed, at Zzzap. I do like having the forces concentrated regardless, but you were right that we are vulnerable to counterattack there. Good thing it's a sideshow. As for whipping ... I'd err on the side of units sooner in a hot war. Less units built now might mean more built later if he stabilizes his defence.

[von Adlercreutz]

Finally! Thanks for high quality updates OH and FT!

How do you plan to attack Hello Joe? Mounted or melee first?

[Old Harry]

Finally! Thanks for high quality updates OH and FT!

How do you plan to attack Hello Joe? Mounted or melee first?

It's taken a while hasn't it .

We have three Knights (2 are 3XP), a 5XP Horse Archer, two C1 Axes, a 3XP Mace and an Archer in range of Hello Joe. Azza has a 25% fortifed Axe, a 5-10% fortified Axe, a 25% fortified Spear and a Warrior (which he can't afford to upgrade).

Against the Spear
- a green Knight gets 34%
- a C1 Knight gets 64%
- a C1 Axe gets 72%

Against the top Axe
- a green Mace gets 36%
- a C1 Mace gets 66%
- a CR1 Mace gets 68%
- a C1 Axe gets 9%
- an Archer gets 0.1%
- a green Knight gets 73%
- a C1 Knight gets 78%

Against the second Axe
- a green Knight gets 78%
- a C1 Knight gets 89%
- a green Mace gets 66%
- a C1 Mace gets 71%
- a C1 Axe gets 20%

So we could go Mace (66%) vs Axe - Axe (20%) vs Axe - Axe vs Spear if the first Axe does enough damage that the second Axe can hit the Spear. If it doesn't then we could use the Archer to scratch the second Axe or Spear enough to get Axe vs Spear or Knight vs injured Spear.

Alternatively we could go Knight (64%) vs Spear - Knight (73%) vs Axe - Mace (71%) vs Axe if we want to get experience onto our Knights quickly to get them on their way to 10XP.

I'm assuming we'd kill the warrior with the Horse Archer.

[retep]

Loving it all

Is the plan to stop after next turn or to completely kill azza? If you are going to stop at Prove me wrong I think you are fine, if you want to push I'll said you need more units.

[Old Harry]

Is the plan to stop after next turn or to completely kill azza? If you are going to stop at Prove me wrong I think you are fine, if you want to push I'll said you need more units.

The plan is to carry on going, but the way we do that sort of depends what Azza and Mardoc do... This was the situation on their border five turns ago.


Dental Plan is badly exposed to Mardoc's Catapult and Chariot force, especially if he hasn't claimed that tile back yet. Also the distances pre-Engineering for Azza are quite lengthy. Boo-urns' culture will still claim the Copper at the end of next turn, but we'll be able to pillage it the turn after leaving him with only horses.


Worst-case scenario - Azza moves his stack to turtle in Boo-urns with the 5+ Catapults he's built since, allowing Mardoc to have Dental Plan and Nothing At All. We'd then need maybe 10 Cats to break him down.

Moderate scenario - He could station the force half way between the cities, but I think he loses Dental Plan pretty quick that way and he doesn't build up any fortify bonus.

Intermediate scenario - He splits his force between DP and Boo-urns allowing us to take half and Mardoc to take the other half. This becomes a better case scenario if Mardoc takes enough losses to allow us to pile on through into him. I don't see us taking Mardoc's capital easily unless he throws away all his Catapults somehow, but he's backwards enough that (barring other problems) when we get Cavalry we should be able to take his land as well .

Best-case scenario - Azza throws the whole stack at No Homers in which case we pick him off and eat him easily (if we can hide the number of Knights we have I think that becomes more likely, but we already showed him five and all the Horse Archers we can upgrade ).

Did I miss any other scenarios?

Anyway, Azza hasn't played yet and there are only about fifteen hours left on the clock. I was assuming he'd see that we'd attacked him and taken second half of the turn timer from Pitboss Portal, but it's possible he doesn't check that as obsessively as we do. Should I PM him just to let him know?