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

[HitAnyKey]

I'm sure that units upgrade in queue when you tech the appropriate tech, such that you wouldn't be able to build the old unit anymore. People get burned when a) they misjudge the amount of beakers and fall short of the tech or b) they haven't gotten the upgrade right - for instance, caravels upgrade to Frigates, so you can't auto-upgrade them to galleons by researching Astro.

Thanks. I also decided to stop being lazy and spent 10 minutes in a WB sim to test it out. So confirmed that the Muskets & Cuirs would upgrade appropriately. It's just that LK I was finally finishing in one of the cities that would not upgrade, since it also upgrades to Grenadiers. So I'll put that build back on hold and work on something else in Sad in the meantime.

[HitAnyKey]

For this mornings discussion, here are the military screenshots in GavLand:

I kept a good amount in the north for the moment while we try to decide exactly what to do and to make sure I have all my bases covered for defense for at least the next couple turns. Can always send more stuff SW once we feel our north and northeast in this area is safe enough.

[HitAnyKey]

Quick post for the Demos at the turn roll:

[MindyMcCready]

Hey HAK,

You are summoned to the war room to discuss something extremely obvious that we both missed.

It can wait until tomorrow, but you might find it interesting.

[HitAnyKey]

Houston, We Have a Problem....

As I had feared, he hit the stack on the hill by Sore and massacred it. He may have already been planning to do this, but I have a feeling him seeing me get Rifling this turn triggered him to definitely do it this turn. And as you can see from the other screenshots, he has moved a whole ton more cannons and rifles to the hill north of his horses such that he can get them onto my hill next to the city next turn.

Which means our whole plan of trying to get Rifles and units into Alexandria via the Galleons now goes completely out the window. I'm going to have to Draft three Rifles near Sore this turn and then again next turn. Going to have to think carefully about which ones to draft this turn vs next turn.
Also going to have to send all the Cavalry there, and start marching my Catapults south from Hungry. At this point, Sore is a way more important city than Hungry and I should have had more units inside it. I foolishly hadn't been adding more to it and maybe even took one or two things out of it since my core cities were getting threatened by those galleys of his. If I didn't get units into those cities, he would have taken advantage of using his galleys against those rather than just unloading on the island.

If we lose Sore, it's going to be almost game over since that has all our important Wonders in it. Also means AP is now on hold unless we find another city somewhere that can build it, as I certainly can't try to build it in that city as planned. Sore finished a Caravel this turn anyway, so no hammers wasted on it.

I'll finish up tonight by posting the screenshots at Alexandria, but at this point I feel I just need to get those Galleons to safety and let that city fall by keeping whatever units are in there, hoping they kill at least a couple things before they die.

Also, as you can see in the first screenshot....Donovan & Gavagai signed Peace. I guess this was expected, since with Donovan in heavy conflict with Ruff there was no way he was going to be able to go against that massive stack of units Gavagai ferried over to the island. Also means I need to be very careful to keep my new captured coastal cities properly defended so that Gav doesn't take advantage of just screwing me over by taking one of them back.

[HitAnyKey]

And here is the situation at Alexandria:

So also as I suspected he might two, he positioned 2 Caravels in each of the spots S & SW of Alexandria to stop my ferry capabilities. So this definitely means it's time to get them out of there. The tough part is where to send them. If I just send them straight SW, the furthest the non-Nav1 can get is the tile 2N1W of Burning Spears. His two westernmost C1 Caravels can reach that spot, and he'd absolutely risk the odds to try to kill one of the Galleons. Not sure I can take that risk.
So does that mean I send them NW to Ruff's coast? And then hope next turn that I can move them inside Athens? But by then he'll likely be able to just block that port as well.

And with the MANY additional Rifles I see coming SW from the rest of his core.....along with all those Cannons returning from the retep fight....he'll be able to move on Hungry even while he's attacking at Sore.
Here's what his military looks like right now based on what I can see:

I just took a quick look and if I draft from Sleepy, Adventurous, & Dancing this turn and then Stressed, Frantic, & Sore next turn....that will put 6 Rifles into Sore next turn. Plus this turn I can upgrade one of the Muskets that are in there right now. Plus upgrade another couple next turn. So Astronomy certainly ain't coming anytime soon at this point either.

Ok, my head hurts...time for some sleep.

Oh, and he has over 1000 gold in his treasury right now...earning like 300+ per turn. So he can easily upgrade a whole ton of his Muskets to Rifles if he wants. I probably should have been building Rifles and not Cavalry. These Cavalry will just get eaten alive by the Riflemen.

[MindyMcCready]

Houston, We Have a Problem....

As I had feared, he hit the stack on the hill by Sore and massacred it.

If you notice and fear this I do wonder why you leave your units there? We've talked about this many times,...we can leave a couple of cheap drafted units on hills to try to get odds on his cannons for a cost effective battle. But we never, ever make it worth it to use collateral. And yet, we've done it again,...

We're going to have to tighten our game a bit. You didn't need to leave units in Thebes to get massacred. You didn't need to leave the units on the hill in sight of that many cannons. Noticing a worker on that hill is a flag for some strategic thoughts or discussion. You didn't even make this a topic for discussion until after the turn rolled.

We had a very good chance of saving Alex (and we still might),...but this is certainly going to make that much more difficult. We need to react to moves before we see a battle log of red. If we react to MC's moves earlier we will win this game. If we keep waiting until MC's had a nice first strike on cannons on us we will lose. With all of the economics on our side,...it's now our game to lose.

Anyway, this is very disappointing that we're letting MC have his way on very obvious things like this. This didn't need to happen at all. Hopefully we can do something to salvage this situation.

[MindyMcCready]

I hope and don't think that you've shown the whole picture,...

On T204 we had 90 units in the Sore-Hungry theatre.
On T204 MC had 81 units in the Sore-Hungry theatre.

On T207 MC had 79 units in the Sore-Hungry theatre.
Based on our T204 count and MC's current T207 count I assessed that we were ok here.
When I felt that we were ok,...that's based on the ability to draft + the notion that we're not going to let MC simply kill off 9 units for nothing and without reacting to his movements.

T208: MC had 94 units in the Sore-Hungry theatre. You've hinted, that there's more to come. So 15 units appeared out of nowhere + the 1 cannon that MC lost.
T208: You've only shown that we have 64 units in the Sore-Hungry theatre. Certainly we lost 9,...where are the others?
Worse MC will have 51 units next to Sore in the next turn, while we currently have only 12 unit in Sore.

As for Cavs/Cuir vs Rifles,...Cavs will destroy any attacking Muskets. Given that 35 of his attacking units are muskets,...the Cavs are a decent investment since they can protect either choke point. In this particular situation where we're rushing Cavs into Sore to get obliterated by collateral,..it might appear and actually be a bad use of units. In most other situations they're very useful.

[HitAnyKey]

Quick Demos shots after rolling the turn:

[MindyMcCready]

Quick update for the lurkers,....

Last turn we foolishly contemplated holding Alex and even storming the rest of Battle Island since we had a fair chance of being able to bypass MC's costal blockade with our pair of traded galleons. The second part of this plan involved teching Astronomy in 3T, building galleons in every city and breaking MC's costal blockade and then moving the units up to MC's costal core. We had hoped to do this before MC got to ironclads and even if he did, we hoped to put him on the defensive by forcing those ironclads to guard against our galleons.

This turn we're completley on the defensive trying to save Sore. We've managed to rush Cavs/Cuirs + draft Rifles + planned cash upgrading Muskets-to-Rifles + galley chained a bunch of units into the city. So we'll have 41 units including 14 rifles + 4 Cavs + 18 Cuirassiers to face off with MC's 55 odd units at his first opportunity to attack. So the city will hold for the first possible turn of attack and probably look like an even trade. I'm hoping anyway. If MC actually proceeds with the attack we'll have more reinforcements + catapults for our counter-attack.

To make this happen we had to sacrifice some planned moves of getting units into Alex. We also had to empty some of our costal cities of their Cuirassiers/Cavalry. We are taking a bit of a calculated risk that MC only has muskets on those galleys and nothing amphibious. We're assuming this based on the number of Rifles that we've been watching him build/draft + his gold reserves. We're also gambling that MC believed that he would get an easy win at Alex and that the galleys are there to move the Alex assault force over to our mainland.

Alex is going to be a touchy battle. We've cash upgraded a musket to rifle in Alex and will build another Rifle shortly. If MC waits too long, or doesn't advance on Sore, we'll have enough cash to upgrade a bunch of units. The Alex assault force will be ineligible for mainland invasion. Given that MC has fewer cannons than our last few painful battles,...this shoudn't be as one-sided.

If we're wrong about all this it's going to be a little painful for us. We also just lost 25% cultural defense everywhere.

MC's definately got a win out of all this since he's forcing us to burn through a full turn of tech which we had really wanted to give us a temporary naval advantage. Next turn we'll probably putting out more fires as MC directs his 21 Rifles + 34 canons + a good chunk of his 70 promoted muskets in our direction. Not sure how desperate MC's attack is,...he's still far ahead in tech but if he sees us saving 750 gpt he might get a little desperate. Maybe as desperate as we are. :LOL: