[SPOILERS] Stonehenge First: scooter's thread

[Bigger]

things are looking up!

You left off the most important detail though .

Did you get elected pope?

[scooter]

things are looking up!

Yep! The plan has come together just fine, now I just gotta not get Commodore'd. His power is still rising. Thankfully his position is the hardest out of anyone to hit me, but he's still got Catapults I believe which combined with his Phalanx I'm still slightly undermanned for. Theocracy switch is about to happen as the timer is about to wear off.

You left off the most important detail though .

Did you get elected pope?

I could have sworn I took this screenshot, although I have a few unreported turns so it might be in there? I'll check at lunch when I intend to stick them in my dropbox and report this afternoon. But let's just say the election... wasn't very contentious.

[scooter]

T85-86 continues staving off execution

We now have fancy horse archers.



As nice as it would be to play some zone defense with this guy, I'm keeping him in the capital for at least a few turns so that Commodore is crystal clear that I do have HAs and attacking me would be painful. The next turn demos:



Well, still last in soldiers, but yet again, less pathetic. I know, same story. Commodore though is making me a little nervous:



Hence my caution with him. I also realized I need to stop queuing up techs after I finish one because it's nice to see my GNP artificially dip by not having a tech selected. Surely people will realize I'm taking over the teching lead, but I don't want people to realize just how strong it is right now. Having no tech selected really dampens it down to a more reasonable level. Once I get a couple more key techs (like Feudalism) I may shut off research for awhile because an academy is around 10 turns away or so, so it'd be nice to make a nice long run after that comes in and I don't have too many immediate tech needs.

I also played T87 after this but didn't take any pictures. This was the first turn I could've revolted to Theocracy and I had HAs available to finish, but I elected not to just yet. Instead I queued up some catapults too in the cities that could have finished HAs and I'll try to cascade them a bit to make the most of my 5 turns in Theo. I'm slightly tempted to wait til Feudalism gets in to combine it with a revolt to Vassalage, but I'm not sure if I can afford that really. I didn't actually bother trying to figure out how long Feudalism would take me though, so I'm not 100% sure. I'll decide next turn. Abed is the exception as it continues sinking hammers into the Parthenon while I'm in OR. Pretty sure I can afford that, we'll see. Would be really nice to get a barracks + Theo + Vassalage promoted longbow into Abed though.

Oh and why yes, I do have research visibility on Commodore.

[scooter]

T89 ponders death

Am I about to meet death? Not sure. Why? Last turn I went back and forth and figured I'd wait ONE more turn to flip the switch. That was 1 turn too many.



Sigh. Went ahead and revolted to Theo and finished HAs in my other cities. More importantly though, what's his game here? He has 2 catapults, 2 phalanx, an xbow, and 2 spears. He's, uh, not taking the city with just that. However, Commodore knows this. He's had visibility on my capital for eons. He also has horse archers. Do the math. He's keeping HAs behind in Norvos. Now, I have two plays here and I thought about this for awhile. I could sit back and just hope, which means suiciding both of the fur axes into his stack and just doing as much damage as I can (not much, there's an xbow and shock phalanx in that stack). This means gambling that he doesn't have enough HAs. I'm guessing he has quite a few though. Since I'm most concerned about those being added to the group of "hitters" I have another option. I could try to kill his phalanx on the forest and park my axes there and force him to use up hitters killing those axes. I have a shock HA in my capital (Phalanx only get bonus vs Chariots, not HAs). I can def kill the Phalanx with a couple units and get onto that forest I think. It's only a gamble if I think I'm safe if I stay put, and I don't. If I'm dead by not doing it, it's not really a gamble. So I took a deep breath and hoped for luck:



Just need to redline please. I lose and the HA doesn't survive despite 50/50ish odds to do so. That's a bummer, but that's left me 87% odds on the first axe:



But I lost!! Arghghiosdoip. I know, even a win means he's redlined, but that's an extra unit he has to waste clearing a path for his mounted units. Argharghargh. I started really regretting my choice after this luck. I don't know, I think the thought was good, but this tasted sour. Cleanup went as expected:



Won that. Thankfully I didn't get hurt:



Argh, he has a Phalanx in here. Man I wish I could take this all back. Ok think positive. If he has to burn a HA to kill the Axe, this is a success. Well maybe, I really don't know. Probably not actually. The plan was to have 2 axes on here so who knows. He'll likely suicide the Phalanx (it's formation and not shock thankfully) but then have to burn a HA to kill the axe. So end of turn situation looks like this:



Well, the good news is I have 5 defenders all of which are in 60% defenses on a hill across a river. Bad news is I'm in terrible shape promotions wise. He's got 2 catapults and as many as 8 units capable of hitting the city (I'm hoping 7 as a result of my axe being a pain). That's going to be pretty tight I think. If I had to bet I'd say the city falls, but I didn't care to do a sim really since I had no idea how many HAs were in his city before I started attacking anyways. Ideally I would have used a worker to run into his land and suicide scout, but this ONE turn they were out of range (they were around last turn). Figures right?

/popcorn

[scooter]

My capital stands. Despite my bluster in the thread, I don't think I'm necessarily out of the woods quite yet. I'll have to take a look at what I can do when it gets to me.

[scooter]

Ok, Abed will stand barring some horrific luck. I had a few minutes to take a look at the save. I didn't actually try any attacks because I want to wait til I have a few minutes to make absolutely sure I'm not missing anything.

I tried to document all the attacks and odds, but the combat log got really screwy and things were named all wrong. The attack would tell me a phalanx was attacking an archer or something, then the "____ has defeated ____" message would be different units, then the round-by-round log would even be different. It was weird. So I gave up on that. The odds were still there though, so in general Commodore got good results on his odds. He killed my axe on that forest at 25% odds so that sealed that as a gamble that didn't pay off whatsoever and put me in far more danger. He then got moderately lucky results on the attacks on my capital, but I survived with a single redlined spear. Amazing.

I thought that still sounded pretty precarious, but looking around I think I'll be ok. His stack is pretty ravaged, and I do have a fresh HA + chariot who are able to hit the stack, both with shock available. The main thing though is that I'm 2 XP away from a great general. That means I win one battle and I can spawn a GG and attach to units for XP + healing so I'm definitely fine. It's mostly just a matter of trying to clean out as many units as I can so he has fewer promotions and fewer units get to run home. That's what I need to work out.

I also didn't get to peek at his stone city. I may suicide a worker scout to make sure there isn't another half dozen HAs sitting there. If there was, I'd be fried. Seems unlikely though.

[Bigger]

yay, I was worried!

[scooter]

T90 gets some luck back

Alright, here's the situation upon logging in and moving in my horse archer from Troy:



Not as scary as it looks. So I need one unit dead for that great general, and anything other than that Formation Phalanx is going to be a high-odds attack. So I'm hoping for a redline at minimum and a win at best here:



Same odds as my attack on the forest last turn, but this time I win . Makes up for losing at 32%, 86%, and 75% consecutively last turn and then Commodore getting slightly better than expected results on his Abed attack. Anyways, that spawned the GG in Abed, but I wanted to do this first so I'm not attacking amphibiously:



I win that. Next it's great general time:



I could have moved the chariot in too to be included in the XP, but the chariot is practically obsolete and therefore not a great unit to waste XP on, so I split it evenly with the HA and Spear. This means the spear gets promotions and health so this is opened up:



Another win. That means end of turn looks like this:



And yes, add a fresh archer at EoT. I actually should have chosen Spear. Whatever. So that's now survived. Catapults rolled off the line for the first time on this turn too btw. So for the remainder of Theocracy I'll try to get more units, then back to OR for a little bit. Maybe Caste too as I'd like to hurry up and get the Academy in Abed.

That was a close one. Let's try to make it a little less dicey next time .

[Bigger]

lets raze Norvos so we don't have to worry about it!!

[scooter]

lets raze Norvos so we don't have to worry about it!!

He's been stacking it pretty high with units, but in theory this is still possible. There's a few ways to go about it really. The obvious is to keep that forest clear and bring in a stack with catapults and hope he doesn't have enough cats to counter-attack. There's a much slicker way to hit the city though. I've had it in the back of my mind for quite some time, but it just hasn't been plausible yet. See what it is?