[Spoilers] Elkad thinks catchy thread titles are silly.

[spacetyrantxenu]

I'm always in favor of burning everyone's cities, you don't need context for that.

[Elkad]

T129
Joey took Delft. I killed 3 units defending (including the jumbo), but then lost the next 3 battles as expected.
His Trireme by my capital attacked mine and I got a flawless victory.
My 2 Triremes cleaned up his last 2 galleys, leaving that stack by Lieden all alone (HA, 5x sword)
He dropped that stack on the forest silk last turn. Should have put the HA on the stone to pillage it and moved it to catch up, but I'll take the cheap walls in Leiden since he didn't.
My galley is shuttling troops over to try to hold Leiden.
So other than the desperate holding action there, the island is done.

Well dragging along waiting to die is getting me nowhere. Lets go big.



I did make a small mistake and leave that jungle chariot uncovered (meant to put an axe on top of it).
Discounting the soon-dead chariot, I'll have 11 units to hit Apache on T130 (5 chariots could go early on T129, but likely won't), and 11 more on T131
I offered Joey an out, but he won't like it.




I want the entire island, or the Pyramids. (or die trying).
Joey didn't whip at all, and didn't upgrade the archer in Apache, so I think I've got a good shot at this. Depends how big a stack he has on his border with Gavagi, and when it started moving.

[Elkad]

Having an internal discussion with myself.
Do I move my stack to the jungle hill (better defense, and leaves a chariot fork open for Creole Osceloa) and attack over the river?
Or drive straight in on the grass?

Guess I'll see what troops I can see next turn to finalize that decision.

[Elkad]

Well that went poorly.
My last island city fell with his last attacking unit. Dice were kind to him too.
22%, GJ loss
26%, GJ win
26%, GJ loss
26%, GJ loss
29%, GJ win
41%, GJ win
75%, GJ win
92%, GJ win
34%, GJ win

On the continent, he had a stack hiding behind his city. Lost a fair portion of my stack to Joey, retreated. He hit my stack, and when I logged in after him, I was unable to even promote my winners. My catapults got nowhere against his top longbow, so I had to run. Did throw away a 0.2health chariot to catch 2 unprotected worker (deleted workers and chariot both). Necessary anyway to keep them from roading the tile I retreated from and allowing his stack to catch me that turn. I'm back in my territory. He moved a couple more workers up, but even with a new road only a bunch of lightly damaged Impi and a single HA can reach my stack. It'd be a bloodbath for both sides. I have 3 shock jumbos and 3 shock axes (all at about 75% health) to stop Impi, plus the rest of my stack (spears and archers).

He keeps making weak peace offers. 75gold, etc. I keep declining them. He's got 610gold in the bank, and cities he just captured from me he could return. My land is in no danger, even if I can't advance on him, there is no benefit to taking a weak peace offer.

And this turn Commodore declared on him. Burned one of my former island cities, and dropped 10 units off. Mostly knights with a couple stack defenders. Since everything GJ has on the island is either at the north end or limping around at 10% health (or both), he is going to lose it all. Dropped a couple units off myself this turn, and I'll load 4 more next turn. Maybe I can recover a bit of my land.

GJ has a couple galleys I can see near his capital. But I have 5 triremes headed down his coast (whipped out of my north coast cities and moved across to my capital via fort-chain), burning and blockading. He might get 6 units across before I get to his capital, maybe a couple more if he is willing to sacrifice just-unloaded galleys. If they are all longbows he might hold his last island city, but he is going to lose the rest. And all his seafood. And anything else I can burn.

[GermanJoey]

Hi Elkad, sorry about the war, I just felt pretty desperate to expand with Commodore snowballing like he was. I hope there's no hard feelings. Two questions for you... first, regarding your comment here:

Oddly, Agg+Org is so good, I don't really need the courthouses immediately. Only saves me about 1gpt per city. 60t payoff in hammers (vs building wealth), more like 45t with a whip in there. Plus the opportunity cost, minus whatever value I put on EP points (some, but not a lot with the massive mission price increase). Guess I should have thought of that before I researched it. More reason why I need to quit playing by the seat of my pants and sim stuff occasionally.

Why did you still build so many courthouses even after you realized they weren't saving you any money?

Also, why did you end up building so many triremes?

[Elkad]

Triremes: Either Commodore was going to attack me with his new Knights, or I was going to go kick Commodore off my continent (and take Colossus). Either way I needed them to hold the crossing to his land. My stack was already headed that way when you declared on me (leaving me uncovered vs both you and DZ, a gamble). I'd have had the whole stack I invaded you with, plus the stuff I was ferrying into Leiden to try to hold it, to attack Commodore with. 25+ units vs his 2 units per city (and whatever he could whip in 1-2t). So my north coast cities were building/had built Triremes to keep Commodore from reinforcing. When you declared, I whipped them a couple turns early and sent them south instead (had to build one more fort-bridge). Oh, and the turn after you took my first island city, Commodore gifted one Trireme to me as well. I could see him loading galleys, so I hoped he was going to attack you, it just took a couple turns longer than I needed.

Courthouses: I'd added 3-4 more cities since CoL came in, so costs went up. Courthouses were saving me 2+ gpt per city, so more like 30 turns payoff vs building wealth. And that doesn't count the value of the free EPs. Border defense is easier when I can see into everyones cities. Visibility on HAKs cities got me contact with 2 more civs I'd never met, getting me known-civ bonuses as well.

When you declared, I was about 2t from having visibility on Commodore (I'd had research on him forever, so I knew his Knights were going to be headed for someone). After I got that (while my stack was rushing your way), I did set the slider to 20% EPs for a single turn, which got me visibility on your pyramids city (and a few others).

I saw your stack behind Apache and pushed the attack when I shouldn't have, but I knew you had just finished Feudalism, so I had to either do it immediately, or you'd have a stack of longbows there. When you attacked out of the city, it went about like I predicted. But then when I logged in after you the same turn, I had a whole pile of redlined units with enough XP to promote them, but it wouldn't give me the option to do it. (and I either counted wrong vs your Impi or missed some of your workers who could support them, so I'd moved the chariots to a vulnerable spot giving you free wins vs them). So faced with a turn roll giving you the opportunity to promote your own units and clean up my stack, I had limited options. Burned my catapults hoping to get a couple hits on the top longbow, but didn't, so retreating was the only thing left.

Disadvantage of playing 2nd in a war. You deny the opponent a single whip opportunity at kickoff, which is often crucial, but you have a tactical penalty for the duration.

Incidentally Delft was 2t from finishing Maoi when you took it. My first general was already on the island (where he spawned), and I was considering settling him there (instead I ferried him off and made a medic). Delft would have worked green hills and water and built troops until the end of time.

[GermanJoey]

Geez, if I knew you were going to attack Commodore like that I'd have never attacked. That's very surprising to me because the main reason I attacks was because you were carrying a low, level power for such a long time, and I could tell you were building courthouses because your EP graph was trending up. So, I thought you were just buildering away... well, looks like that was a very poor read on my part.

[Elkad]

Thanks to my lazy start (and your very early attack, which cost me several turns), I had to gamble on running a lower power level than I liked. My economy was decent, so leveraging that was the way to go. Stall for time until I can build quality troops. So I just had a single stack trying to defend 3 borders. Or 5 borders if you count the island.

But with no diplo, it's hard to stall...