[SPOILERS] Small Wunders and Izzy of Inca: The fat lady sings

[WilliamLP]

Ah, never mind that plan anyway, I forgot we'd lost culture 2S of La Boheme before the war.

[MindyMcCready]

Since nothing will change in the area over the turn roll, here's the tactical situation:

Wow,....looks like we're pretty much ready to wipe that stac.

A dream tactic is: we take Boheme back, get culture 2S of Boheme restored (I have no idea if this happens immediately). Move the siege stack to the horse T168, with an eye to send all of it to the hill NW of Withered Fields T169, and threaten to raze it T170.

The sentry chariot is in Hoffmann right now, keeping an eye out for Bacchus.

After figuring out that his power is well over 1100K we'd best focus on getting back LaBoheme and/or keeping WT. Not sure that we should delve into his culture while that 67 unit stack wanders around.

Right now we have all the advantages and can calculate to hit or not. Diving into his culture brings in a lot of question marks that we probably can't afford until that stack is gone.

[WilliamLP]

Right now we have all the advantages and can calculate to hit or not. Diving into his culture brings in a lot of question marks that we probably can't afford until that stack is gone.

Thanks for the vote for sanity. We shouldn't be too tempted by the smugness we could imagine having after razing Withered Fields.

[WilliamLP]

Observations from testing:

- The third promote on knights is a really big deal here, particularly Formation. Unfortunately we have a hard time getting that. We'd need, e.g. a barracks, a stable, a settled GG, then also Vassalage and Theocracy. Ichabod has a way to pump these, probably with the above civics, and I'd assume in his HE city.

- The attack on Boheme is looking good. C2 knights even have decent odds (around 66%) on the RBMod-nerfed shock elephants. At then end maybe we could get some more knight promos too.

- The armageddon fight isn't looking bad either! But it's not nearly as decisive. We lose all our cats and then some knights attack into coin flip battles. But then after all that trading and softening our 25 longbows, 11 pikes, even the 11 axes can get in there and do damage.

(Note though, if we went for the big attack immediately, he could see the danger and merge the knights from Boheme into his north stack which could move 1S.)

- 17 cats vs a stack that big doesn't do as much as I'd hope. The cats do an average of 1 strike and 3-4 collateral hits each which is just over what it takes to do 1 hit to everything in the stack. It would be 5 collateral hits every time but Ichabod's cats and trebs absorb quite a significant number of them. But the good news of this is that Ichabod will also have a hard time weakening pikes and longbows to where he can get statistical odds for his knights to equal out hammer for hammer.

- We can just forget about flanking down cats in the open. 10 or even 20 successful knight combats doesn't do that much to 17 catapults in RBMod, apparently. They get wounded but not close to dying. And wounded cats still deal their maximum collateral anyway, apparently.

So our move is almost certainly to hit Boheme right now. That may even give us some more useful knight promotions. We move our stacks in range so that if he wants to suicide his cats and grind down the city his wounded stack will be a target.

[MindyMcCready]

I'm working on my response,....

Short version: I don't think that we can hold WT while simultaneously taking LaBoheme. We may have to choose.

More details to come.

[WilliamLP]

Well what's done is done now! Sorry for not giving you more time, I didn't know you were working on more tactics.

[BaII]

So can we get pictures

[MindyMcCready]

Well what's done is done now! Sorry for not giving you more time, I didn't know you were working on more tactics.

Actually I'm reconsidering my statement anyway. :LOL: The defense of WT looks a little dicey without those Knights. Dicey, but not one-sided in any way.

[MindyMcCready]

Well here's what I was writing up. Some of it is probably still useful for planning your defenses.

And,....I also really want pics!

Observations from testing:

- The third promote on knights is a really big deal here, particularly Formation. Unfortunately we have a hard time getting that. We'd need, e.g. a barracks, a stable, a settled GG, then also Vassalage and Theocracy. Ichabod has a way to pump these, probably with the above civics, and I'd assume in his HE city.

- The attack on Boheme is looking good. C2 knights even have decent odds (around 66%) on the RBMod-nerfed shock elephants. At then end maybe we could get some more knight promos too.

The Knights vs Elephants surprises me! I though that the elephants received 75% bonus vs Knights. The 66% odds suggest that they're only getting 50%. Well that's even better than before. Yeah! Glad you didn't build too many of these. :LOL:

The armageddon fight isn't looking bad either! But it's not nearly as decisive. We lose all our cats and then some knights attack into coin flip battles. But then after all that trading and softening our 25 longbows, 11 pikes, even the 11 axes can get in there and do damage.

- 17 cats vs a stack that big doesn't do as much as I'd hope. The cats do an average of 1 strike and 3-4 collateral hits each which is just over what it takes to do 1 hit to everything in the stack. It would be 5 collateral hits every time but Ichabod's cats and trebs absorb quite a significant number of them.

This was pretty much my back-of-the-envelope result. Cats seem a little disappointing - not quite the magical defense that they're reputed to be.

Especially against Knights. Lets say that with strength 5 they do direct damage of 40-50HP against a Knight. Really it would be less because of the Knights promo types + higher base strength. In fact, 84% odds that you do less than 40HP direct damage and 69% chance that you do 26 or fewer HP of damage. And then you splash 7HP on 3-4 more Knights of indirect damage.

So a reasonable estimate of "Strength damage" to a mixed stack including Knights + cats would be 26HP + 7*4HP = (54 HP x Str=10 Knight) = 5.5 strength damage to a stack of Knights. So in general, unless you can start retreating you don't deal nearly as much damage as a Knights direct damage (let alone its flanking however nerfed).

They're worth it once you get a enough critical mass that they start pulling back from each battle of course as well as bringing down walls and swinging close battles. But not quite the singular solution that they're reputed to be in my mind.

But the good news of this is that Ichabod will also have a hard time weakening pikes and longbows to where he can get statistical odds for his knights to equal out hammer for hammer.

- We can just forget about flanking down cats in the open. 10 or even 20 successful knight combats doesn't do that much to 17 catapults in RBMod, apparently. They get wounded but not close to dying. And wounded cats still deal their maximum collateral anyway, apparently.

I had figured that this was a tough sell as well. I don't have the RB-mod so do you recall seeing 10HP of damage to each cat?

So if we can't kill them in the field then we have to options:
1. Try to absorbe the collateral inside a city. WT with it's hills is about as good a place as any to plunk all of our LBs and Pikes.
2. Retreat, until we can kill the cats with collateral.

Since #2 sucks so bad, #1 seems like the right choice. :LOL: But can we survive his collateral? And/or can we survive his collateral while simultaneously taking back LaBoheme?


If we can get 11 axes + 11 pikes + 11 spears + 15 cats + 17 LBs + 2 archers + 1 ele = 68 units inside the city,....
-Suggests that he'll land about 4.5 splashes per cat.
-19 trebs/cats hitting with 4.5 splashes = 85 splashes across 53 eligible units. So only 1.6 splashes per unit on average.

Short answer:
-11 pikes will largely be only slightly better than coin-flips against his C2 Knights.
-17 LBs will be a little banged up by direct damage from his cats. How damaged? Enough so that we can't count on these guys winning battles against Knights.
-Spears won't save us since even a full fort would only have 25% odds of defending vs a C2 Knight.

So battle should look something like:
-roughly 15 dead cats
-11 Knight vs Pike coin-flip or better for us.
-14 Knights killing LBs or spears. Maybe we kill 4 Knights here.
-3 phants killing whatever
-10 Axes vs HA coin-flips.
-10 more battles involving attacking sword, axes, CG, chariot probably fighting our cats.

So it's going to be pretty close. He shouldn't be able to take the city before our wounded Knights make a return but he's going to cost us most of our defense.

Long answer:

-->Trebs deal 11 HP damage to a LB. A BII cat would do the same amount.
-->Regular cats deal 9HP damage to a LB and same to a Pike.

So any Knights (probably none) or LBs will take the direct damage leaving the pikes with 1-2 splashes of 9-11 HP of damage.
-A C2 Knight vs C1 Pike (hill, no fort). Odds for the Knight:
-->91HP = 33%
-->89HP = 47% for Knight (what a difference here!)
-->82HP = 52% (little difference between 1 splash and 2. Whew,...)
-->78HP = 55% (still little difference)

A C2 Knight vs C1 Pike (hill, 10% fort). Odds for Knight:
-->91HP = 31%
--> 89HP = 45%
--> 82HP = 50%
--> 78HP = 53%

Can our LBs win battles?
-Probably not since they'll be taking the direct damage from the cats. An unpromoted cat should do at least 12HP damage + 1-2 splashes of collateral. So our LBs are likely to be in the 60-80Hp range.

C2 Knight vs CG2 LB (hill 10% fort). Odds for Knight:
--> 100HP: 25%
--> 91HP: 42%
--> 82HP: 46%
--> 70HP: 79%
--> 60HP: 92%

Spears aren't going to save us as even with full fort and full HP the Knights will still have 73% odds.

So:
11 Knights vs Pike coin-flip or better for us
14 Knights vs LBs or spears where Ichabod have 75% odds.



So the way I see it right now:
-Put every defensive unit + every cat inside of WT + every Knight.
-LaBoheme will have to wait.

Other points:
-Once Ichabod sees the kind of defenses that we can mount he should pull back.
-Ichabod's stack looks scary in that he has 35 fast movers. But the other way to look at it is that he has 32 slow movers that will get completely destroyed if he separates his stack. So his stack mobility is a bit of a paper tiger. In a strange way, he's more capable of razing a city once his cats are gone.

[WilliamLP]

World events:




The Black Sword got a general. We don't know who he's fighting because he's one of the few who didn't get contacted through the Apostolic Palace. I'd assume he's either trying to finish Suttree or piling onto HarryTourist.

We got a random Buddhist spread in Faust! Awesome, now it just needs to live 10 turns for more trolling.

Plako is eating more of Dhal.

Now to the game-within-a-game tactical microcosm on the northwest island:

Commodore attacked the cash-upgraded pike in Magic Flute with his knight at 22% odds! He lost, thankfully. He's moving in a lot of units to try and take Magic Flute now, including the Krilliphants right next to the city.

He also sunk our C2 galley (at 70% odds - that was risky for him!) and moved out of counterattack range. So that was a 1 for 0, but the carrack is out of the picture for a few turns. A longbow and a spear were hiding in the C1 galley underneath. So we could actually unload the spear and attack at 75%:




C1 Spear vs Krilliphants (75%): Win

In the same turn, the spear moved in the boat, unloaded, killed the Krilliphants on a road, returned to the city, and cash upgraded to a pike. Quite a turn for that guy. I gave the longbow Medic 1 because the redline pike will get 2 turns of healing and the new pike will get one turn (and a promote) before Comm can hit the city.

The worker will finish spite-chopping the deer next turn.

Are there any other annoying tactics we can do here? If we do nothing Comm will have 2 knights, a mace, a longbow, a crossbow, an elephant, and a cat ready to attack Magic Flute in two turns. This is more than enough to take it since we can't get sea reinforcements in there next turn.

The longbow and cat on the hill seemed like a weak point. So I tried to get a 1 for 1 trade attacking from Faust!:

C1/Medic LB vs C1/Shock LB on Hill (10%): Lose w/ 2 hits. (Not a terrible result, but lower 50%)
CG1 LB vs wounded LB (58%): Win
C1 Axe vs Cat (68%): Win

All told, in this turn Commodore killed a galley and a longbow, and lost a knight, and elephant, a longbow, and a catapult.




I covered the winning axe with a G1 longbow. Faust has wounded units, but it shouldn't be possible to take it next turn. We had a shot on the mace at 29% odds with a slightly wounded shock longbow but I didn't gamble on that.

Next turn he has 5 units that can move to attack Flute. Before he can attack we'll have a longbow and 3 pikes in the city - and 3 of his units are mounted. The turn after that we can reinforce it again, maybe even with 4 units from 2 galleys. Note the northwest fort is finally done.

We're going to lose this island but I'm not going to mail it to him.

War number 2:




Retep has been showing those 2 workers, and this turn he left them hanging. He doesn't even have horses in Hariharalaya to threaten to attack Rigoletto in one turn... So this seems like an obvious trap, and he wants to hurt us by spearing a knight. I'm not biting and the paln is still to just ignore him for now. If his only threat is to attack into longbows with spears and archers with no siege I think we can handle it.

War number 3:

As discussed, the battle for Boheme looked so favorable that I didn't turn it down.

Knight vs Elephant 66%: Win
Knight vs Elephant 66%: Win
C2 Knight vs C1 Knight 67%: Win
C2 Knight vs C1 Knight 67%: Win
C2 Knight vs Formation Spear 72%: Win
C2 Knight vs Knight 73%: Win
C2 Knight vs Knight 73%: Win
C2 Knight vs Knight 73%: Lose
C2 Knight vs Knight 73%: Win
Knight vs Sword 97%: Win
Knight vs Sword 97%: Win
Knight vs HA 98.7%: Win
Knight vs HA 98.7%: Win
Knight vs HA 99%: Win
Knight vs Phalanx 99%: Win + Great General!
Knight vs Phalanx 97%: Win
Knight vs Cat 99%: Win




Amazing luck here! The expected losses were about 2.5 knights and we only lost 1 in an absolute rout. The UI shows Boheme's culture as 99% us, 0% Ichabod, and 0% Bacchus. (Remember this was where Bacchus originally razed the barb city of Cherokee.) But it expanded again immediately!

The south units are a phalanx and a treb (or cat, I don't remember). I was tempted to suicide the sentry chariot to see inside Withered Fields, but I didn't, so we don't know what's in there. In theory there could be a massive knight stack in the city to counterattack (and Boheme was a trap!), but I really, really doubt it.

The stage after moves:




WT has 19 units. I don't think he can take the city except in a bad hammer trade.

The siege stack is 1E of Manon. I'm not sure if this was a mistake: they could have simply been in Manon. My thinking was to be in range to attack if he moves 1E, but he also could think about attacking the stack itself with his 25 knights. If he does that though, the longbows, pikes and spears in that stack are as useful as they ever will be, if they're defending against knights with a bonus. As discovered, in RBMod I don't think flanking isn't actually going to kill siege units with these numbers.

The general is hanging out. He'll almost certainly merge with Turandot.

So that went... well!

I wonder at what point we start playing as if there's a game for us after this war. I've stopped multi-pop whipping Boheme at least. I'd be willing bet on what Commodore's first move is after getting Astronomy and Rifling. (Hint: he's Commodore.)

I seriously spent some time considering whether to send an offer of peace to Ichabod for Withered Fields. He would refuse, obviously, and the reason to do it would be psychological warfare! To try and get him to rage hard or be despondent that nobody would replace him, back when he didn't want to play anymore. And maybe he'd play on tilt and make more mistakes. But he also might buckle down and consider his turns for hours trying to find every small play to screw us, kind of we're trying to do.

Question: would you take or offer white peace right now? He might actually want it since his north stack is in some serious danger. And we could go and finally take out Retep. I'm undecided.




The power gap has narrowed!




Hello Harry and Fintourist, meet the 800 pound gorilla of Civ. Mackoti has such an aura of mystique about him that even the very best players here must feel it. Here's this guy who can barely write a coherent sentence in English but can single-handedly swat aside armies of micromanagement geniuses every day before dinner.