[Spoilers] Ibuprofen and Eyeglasses: Thoth plays a Middle Aged game

[Thoth]

1) Catapults have much much lower collateral damage caps than I remember.  I could only damage maces 40%. 
2) My Xbowmen had horseshoes inserted in intimate places.  4 of them won at 45% odds.
3) The rest of the fights that I won were at 90+% odds.
4) I've now ganked and kept 7 workers this game.
5) It wasn't an amphibious war elephant that took the city but it was a unit off a galley.
6) I had 2 units to spare (hence the ganked workers, covered by HA and Longbow)


Pics to follow.

Correction:   I had 3 units to spare.

[Thoth]

Imgur is working again so here you go....

Final assault:





Aftermath:





Ending turn brought this:





End of turn demos are looking nice:





Obligatory Bec de Corbin hammer porn:

[xist10]

[Qgqqqqq]

Nice one! Post-Yuris plans?

[Krill]

Looks like you need some more cats again...

[Thoth]

Nice one! Post-Yuris plans?

  Still need to finish Yuris off first. 


Then expand a bit and see about getting some caravels into the outer sea.   Control of the inner sea means controlling the game so most of my naval focus will be there.


Scooter just settled three cities and whipped 5 pop this turn so he may need to be pruned back.

But Pindicator is currently looking like my major obstacle to victory.   Unfortunately, he's had Citadels for awhile and Barracks + Vassalage + Citadel = Barrage 3 cats with an effective bombard strength of 10.  So a slow moving stack won't fare well on an invasion.

Gunpowder is a priority at this point.

[Thoth]

Looks like you need some more cats again...

Yeah, I didn't expect to keep any of them going into this but in retrospect the damage cap meant that while my cats dealt big bites (1.2 points off a Mace per collateral hit) they didn't do as much damage in aggregate as expected.   Yuris's ships and Pindicator's scout also soaked up a fair bit of collateral (I was getting less than 6 collateral spashes per cat consistently otherwise I could have saved 2-3 cats.     OTOH, the first three cats got zero hits on the top defender which was starting to worry me.   But then I started getting some hits in.

Damage on the maces was capped after reducing them to 4.8/8, wellies went down to 4.1/7, I'm not  sure about the crossbow, and the archer was at 50% health.


I'm still well pleased with the results:  8 cats, 2 swords, 1 crossbow, and 4 horse archers to take out 6 Maces, 3 wellies, an archer, a GG Crossbow, a cat, and a trebuchet on a hill behind a river and protected by a castle is ok.

Note that the only real defenders were the maces the wellies and siege didn't benefit from the castle or hill and were easy meat.  And I think I was right about what Yuris had on his galleys:  2 maces, a wellie, and a trebuchet.  I had 2 cats promotable to B3 plus a pair of swordsmen on galleys that were in range to move, unload and strike if Yuris had made a landing on my island.   Other option is he was hiding them pending the completion of a road on the wheat tile and then running a stack up against my Christian holy city.   And if I had left the forested hill outside of Fauchard unoccupied (as it was) he could have occupied it and been a royal pita.

But Yuris wasn't the only one hiding units on galleys.        And I got there the firstest with the mostest.    

And now I've got Zerks and I'm 5-6 turns from Engineering as I used 110 gold (worth 1 turn of 100% teching) to upgrade a C3/Shock swordsman to a Zerk last turn so I'll be unable to tech straight to Engineering. It will be nice to have tech parity on the battlefield for a change.

[Thoth]

Before I forget: the redlined elephant in the "Aftermath" screenshot is an Amphibious War Elephant.

[Thoth]

We're racing through turns today. 

Yuris is stacking longbows and crossbows in his new capital.  I finish engineering next turn and start pushing out Trebuchets.  I've advanced a small force against Engineer which is guarded by an elephant and a pike so I might be able to take it next turn.

In the meantime plans are afoot.

Capital of the Beast:





And it is a pretty sexy beast too. 

Rival best is size 12.


Otoh, Scooter has been whipping up a storm and settling everywhere presumably prior to grabbing Hanging Gardens and/or MoM via GE.  And Pindicator has 1 GS on hand and could Lib Astronomy unpleasantly soon and beat me to the Blacksmith quest by a good solid 10 turns.  I am working on some more forges and should have 4 more by Golden Age time.

Commodore has captured a barb city on the central island which I'm not happy about given his 4 move galley (which implies the existence of a 5-move galley somewhere).  He's also in builder civics so I'm guessing he's building a wonder, probably UoS given his recent teching of Paper.

My exact plans depend on a number of factors:  What GP am I going to get?  Am I going to get Great Library or a nice chunk of failgold?

If I get a GE and MoM is unbuilt, I'll rush that and plan on using next GP for a 12t golden age.  If MoM has been built, I'll tech Guilds and then bulb towards Gunpowder (finishing ~t97) and manually tech Astronomy while generating another GP for a Golden Age and using a GS towards Chemistry

If I get a Great Merchant I'll tech Philiosophy and aim for an 8 turn Golden Age starting t 94/95 and aim to produce 3 great scientists to part bulb Edu, Printing Press, and Astro.  (In the unlikely event that Lib is available I may make a run at that after University but I expect Pindicator to beat me there).

Astro is 2392 beakers and my max tech rate is currently ~230 beakers at -110 gold per turn.  So it's a heft 10 turns and 1100 gold to tech.  A bulb would knock ~1700 beakers leaving ~700 to tech naturally which is onl3 3 turns and ~320 gold.  But Paper, University, and Printing Press all have higher bulb priority than Astro.  If I'm bulbing I'll need to delay Gunpowder as Chemistry has a higher bulb priority than Astro as does Sci Method.

[Thoth]

Scooter decided it would be a good idea to burn down my southern barb city.


So I killed his GG war elephant and a trireme this turn and I'm going to see about burning down his latest expansion city towards me which is on flatland.


Got my GG and settled him in Bec de Corbin and I'm pushing out a few 9 xp hitters and trebs.


Nothing quite like a good old-fashioned 2 front war.