[PB25-SPOILERS] The Lunacy of the Reign of HAK Continues

[MindyMcCready]

Looks like some good news/ bad news during the turn flip.
-Donovan DOW'd Retep and took 2 cities. So there likely goes our attempt to keep Retep on life support. I imagine that that's the island, rather than Donovan rushing into the maw of cannons?
-MC captured another Retep city. Not sure whether that's the one you already pointed out.
-8 whip/drafts from Ruff! With any luck, that will replace the soon-to-pass Retep's war weariness.

Hopefully, Donovan and Ruff realize that they're soon to be on the menu and put aside any past differences and put up a united front against any foreign aggression. If MC ends his city accumulation (or better yet loses 4 cities) and we end our city accumulation with Gavagai we'll be ahead on that one.

And hopeful again that Ruff realizes how devestating cannons are and how effective protective muskets are and comes prepared.

[HitAnyKey]

Looks like some good news/ bad news during the turn flip.
-Donovan DOW'd Retep and took 2 cities. So there likely goes our attempt to keep Retep on life support. I imagine that that's the island, rather than Donovan rushing into the maw of cannons?
-MC captured another Retep city. Not sure whether that's the one you already pointed out.
-8 whip/drafts from Ruff! With any luck, that will replace the soon-to-pass Retep's war weariness.

It almost looks to me like one of the cities Donovan took, that he razed it. Which I'm not sure why he would do that to one of the cities on the island.

Also, don't you only get war weariness if you are the one to DOW? So if Ruff DOW on Commodore, I don't think that will affect his war weariness. At least not as much as if he were the one to start the war.

[HitAnyKey]

Man....I so want to log in right now to take a look to see what Donovan & Commodore each did...but I have to wait for Gavagai. Blargh.

[HitAnyKey]

University of Sankore,...

31 cities -1 recent capture - 24 granaries built -1 granary in production = check for 5 missing granaries next turn.

LongJohnSilver went organized LH first which explains 1 of them. That screen captures "built" or "built and captured"? Burning Spears we didn't build one,... Maybe some of Borsche's cities or Gavagai captures?

The "Statistics" screen only tracks buildings you have constructed. Buildings captured do not count toward this total.

Just to expand on this and as reminder a note for myself, Mindy, and any lurkers that care....

Every city has a Granary except for LJS & Bedazzled. The new cities, and Bedazzled will finish its in about 6T. LJS will build it's Granary after it finishes the Lighthouse (though may have to consider doing a Rathaus before the Granary).

I have right now 8 cities that do not have a Rathaus (though 3 of them...Bouncy, Rollin, & Happy get theirs end of this new turn).
LJS & Bedazzled are obviously brand new, and Tacape was captured without one.
Popeyes is slowly building it's Rathaus, which will continue to be slow until/unless I let it keep working one of it's Mines (which would keep it from drafting almost every turn).
Taco Bell just finished it's Lighthouse this new turn, and then it's going to spend 3T building the Work Boat for Fortress of Solitude (the 1-tile ice island we'll be settling soon). And then after that it'll be about 10T to build a Rathaus.
That just leaves Hungry, which still doesn't have a Rathaus and currently no immediate plan for one.

[MindyMcCready]

It almost looks to me like one of the cities Donovan took, that he razed it. Which I'm not sure why he would do that to one of the cities on the island.

Yeah, maybe it's one of Retep's mainland and he's trying to create a buffer between himself and MC. Probably won't work out but it's a good idea.

Maybe Retep left his last 2 mainland cities vacant and put all units into that last MC city grab. Then Don grabbed the last 2 cities. That would be the best outcome for us.

Also, don't you only get war weariness if you are the one to DOW? So if Ruff DOW on Commodore, I don't think that will affect his war weariness. At least not as much as if he were the one to start the war.

No, I think that you get war weariness regardless of who DOW'd. I don't even think that the aggressor factors in.

You get more WW if you kill units in foreign territory or if your units die in foreign territory.

I don't think that you get WW when your units strictly defend. So if foreign knights smash into your city garrison LBs I don't think that you generate WW. However if you spear those knights with pikes by attacking out, then you would. And the worst of WW comes from capturing a city with culture that's not your own.
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That F1 screen,...the draft unhappiness. I'm not sure why we have any. There are 12 unhappy while we have quite a few cities that can draft for low cost with available happy: Alex, Adventuours, Overworked, Anxious, Sad.

Drafting into that much unhappiness is like MC losing Dragon Judge which, making him lose that city, is a pretty big objective. It's worse that losing a Size 12 city since you still have to pay all the maintenance while losing all the output. We can draft into unhappy if we're in imminent, dire danger. But otherwise it's very painful and should be avoided.

We could choose to lay off the draft for a few turns,...but drafting to support Ruff/Donovan/Retep would be the counter-argument. That, and Rifles soon showing up at ours and everyone's doorstep.
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Good news: That tech rate of 6T to Printing Press while saving gold,...that will still be there when the GA ends. Our GPT from tiles will drop off but that will stay. So we might be closing in on MC's tech rate. But just to be sure, we should probably build some libraries.

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SIM Results: I managed to run a SIM last night about Gav attacking into our stack. Attack style was Cats+Trebs, then WE to soften the LK, then Knights. Gav lost 30 units, we lost 19. 12 of Gav's losses were seige units, then all his WEs (I think that I simmed 9).

So once that was all done, Gav probably lost 9 Knights while we lost 19 Cuirassiers/Muskets. All of the Knights-Cuirassiers battles were coin-flips since the formation Knights ended up attacking into Muskets. Not at all surprising, our green muskets did not stand up very well to C2(+Formation) Knights as the Knights were getting about 70% consistently. But we've got a bunch of them so who cares?

At that point, further attack by Gav would be deemed pointless as there was still enough reasonably healthy muskets to chew up his CBs. The LBs also had not played into the battle other than to absorb collateral. No cats were flanked to death either.

So, while the outcome will be determined largely by the RNG gods, the odds still favour us for now if only slightly. We will need to try to pressure Had to keep the last of his WEs out of the conflict and/or see what we can do to add a few units to the stack. The surviving cuirassiers and/or 3 LK for example and the priceless but mythical G2s that we might have.

[MindyMcCready]

That just leaves Hungry, which still doesn't have a Rathaus and currently no immediate plan for one.

A rathus is worth it even in Hungry.

For 60H (or 48 base hammers with Forge + OR) you would generate 2 EPs + save 75% of the maintenance. Back on T170 the maintenance was 8 gpt,...so 6 gpt + 2EPs for 48 base hammers (6-10T to break-even) is definately a reasonable investment.

The return on a 120H courthouse might be different, but we're talking about an organized Rathus here.

[HitAnyKey]

Just a quick post:





Gav did not attack and he's moving to protect Utica. Going to need to wait until morning to fully figure out what we're going to do in this area though.

[HitAnyKey]

And here are the demos and such:

Only city not shown is Taco Bell that is 2T from finishing a Work Boat

I'm not doing any Drafting this turn, unless I decide to draft something out of either Alexandria or Thebes, but since this is the last turn of my Golden Age I figure I may as well wait until next turn.
That's it for now. Anything else I do will need to be done in the morning.

[MindyMcCready]

So quick update for the lurkers.

We've realized that Gav is going to try to make a fort 1N2E of Utica. That is going to be a problem for us since it gets 25% defense bonus plus the CBs will get their CG bonus. This is worse than a city battle since our cats can't remove that extra protection.

HAK and I had been debating about waiting 1T for the 3LKs to catch up to the stack. Those 3 LKs make a pretty huge difference to the outcome of the battle since they effectively shut down 6-9 WEs. Unfortunately, we need to prevent that tile from becoming a fort so we're moving forward. So that's going to make the battle very interesting. With those 3LKs I was pretty confident about the outcome, without them we're at the mercy of the RNG gods.

The other issue that we debated was whether to move our stack in Tacape onto the hill since 29 knights can reach it. We decided against that, despite Gav's likely succcess there, since it's much more likely that Gav will throw everything at our stack threatening Utica. I'd be surprised if he doesn't take that battle.

If the battle turns out even,...our Utica stack will have to heal up and meanwhile Tacape should come out of resistance meaning an instant 25% chitzen Itza bonus + 1T (Sistine) for artists to generate a 20% culture bonus. At that point we should be able to push forward towards Thaspus.

We're definately a little light. Gav seemed to have a few more units and a few more promotions than I had been tracking. That's at least 12 formation knights.

[HitAnyKey]

I expect to be able to play this afternoon once Gav plays. Hopefully he does so early enough so we can coordinate our tactics.

On another note, from civistats I see retep lost 2 more cities. So I'm guessing he's down to like 1 or 2 cities right now. But it's getting rather annoying having to wait 2 days for him just to log in to hit end turn. Maybe a lurker can poke their head into his thread to see if he has his password in there and/or get ahold of him to see if people can help him end turn in a timely manner? It would be best if someone could log in at any point today so that Donovan can play and we can keep the turns moving. At this point, I don't think it even matters if a fully spoiled player logs in to do so. The most they'd likely do is whip cities and/or make sure that military is being build for defense, or something.