[spoilers] Pindicator and Regoarrarr - Bismark of Ethiopia

[pindicator]

Adding on to Rego's report...

We have 15 knights in the tile SW of Matt Foley. Yuris has 2 knights and 1 axe in Zharkul and no units completed at end of turn. So i barring a mass of yuri knights (which we keep looking for every turn) we should be able to burn that city easily. If we have enough knights in good shape after burning Zharkul, I'm going to advocate pushing on to the Kansas tile.

With the galley units (i.e. Operation Funyon) Rego is still pushing for us to drop off the units on Inferno Island. I still think it's better to push along his south - in fact, if we do push on to the Kansas tile then some combination of knights from the north and dropping off units from Funyon could make the defense of Bal'shir really difficult. But I think we need to see how the battle of Zharkul goes before making that decision.

Inside of Matt Foley we have 4 healthy knights and 3 wounded - 2 of the healthy ones are formation promoted because the only thing that could possibly hit Matt Foley are knights to the south. And if they go after Matt Foley then we'll burn Zharkul. NE of Matt are our injured knights from the Tarsonis attack, but the only tile that can reach them are a few fogged tiles between Monolyth and Xil - in other words, not too likely that a stack of knights are there. But to prevent the stray knight from picking stuff off we did promote a knight in that stack to formation and into the 90s for hit points.

We are also getting together a stack to hit Xil. Rego's been doing the turn playing lately and he says that we should be able to round up 4 knights, 4 cats, and some assorted other units to hit Xil within ... I think 3 turns? I can't find that in the chat log though I know Rego mentioned it. Anyway, that's what we're doing with the knights we left in Nat X (formerly Char) - keeping them around for the push against Xil.

Finally, there's Gunpowder. 3 turns away (now 2); we are timing builds to finish so we can get a fresh wave of Oromo Warriors once we do land gunpowder. At that point I image we would just make Oromos, Knights, and catapults until we get higher tech.

[regoarrarr]

We are also getting together a stack to hit Xil. Rego's been doing the turn playing lately and he says that we should be able to round up 4 knights, 4 cats, and some assorted other units to hit Xil within ... I think 3 turns? I can't find that in the chat log though I know Rego mentioned it. Anyway, that's what we're doing with the knights we left in Nat X (formerly Char) - keeping them around for the push against Xil.

2 turns - this one and the next one. Well I said 2 turns till it could make it to the jungle tile 1NE of Xil, so it will be 3t till we can attack.

Yuri has played and ended turn without any score changes, so it looks like he did not whip anything (nor retake any cities ). If you're available, it would probably make sense for me to play around noon or so my time (so in ~2 hours), rather than tonight.

I think our plan of knights, oromos and cats is a good one. One side effect of the RB Mod is that the tech pace is crazy slow. I would imagine it would speed up once everyone gets Paper and we can trade techs, but at this point, the age of knights and muskets seems like it's going to have a pretty long shelf life.

[pindicator]

I'll try to be online in an hour - going to be at work, so let's hope for a slow Monday morning

[regoarrarr]

Logged into the game.

Nakor offered white peace, which I declined (for now).

Yuri hit our stack with his 2 knights from Zhakul, at 34.8% and 43.6% odds. Naturally, since we're us, he won both Just those 2 knights (both injured and should be easy pickings) and the lone axe in Zhakul.

[pindicator]

Yuri hit our stack with his 2 knights from Zhakul, at 34.8% and 43.6% odds. Naturally, since we're us, he won both .

Naturally it helped that we left the formation knights behind.

I should share for the lurkers that last night our battles started off really favorably: we won a few battles in a row in the 70s, and i was thinking "dont say a word in chat, you'll jinx it." The next battle was losing at 81% to the damaged longbow.

On an overall note: yuri is done. No whips and he is simply lashing out attacks piecemeal? He is showing the signs of someone whose heart just isnt in it. Maybe we need to expand our objective, but i like our odds to continue making gains.

Oh shit, i said 'odds' - we're screwed now

[regoarrarr]

Naturally it helped that we left the formation knights behind.

I should share for the lurkers that last night our battles started off really favorably: we won a few battles in a row in the 70s, and i was thinking "dont say a word in chat, you'll jinx it." The next battle was losing at 81% to the damaged longbow.

On an overall note: yuri is done. No whips and he is simply lashing out attacks piecemeal? He is showing the signs of someone whose heart just isnt in it. Maybe we need to expand our objective, but i like our odds to continue making gains.

Oh shit, i said 'odds' - we're screwed now

Actually I think one of our knights was a formation knight. Or maybe it was a C3 knight - it was at like 97HP. Anyways....

I agree with your 2nd point - I was actually just thinking the same thing and wondering if we should consider keeping Zhakul. When I saw he attacked out, that made me think that he does NOT have any type of standing army. Because if he was gathering his forces to try and defend, then he'd wait till he had huge force and only THEN attack us.

[pindicator]

Even if he doesn't have a standing army he should be gathering his forces - whip up an army, trade land for time, and then counter-attack. It's basically what we did when Commodore attacked us, except thankfully we were only dealing with 1-movers then.

Edit: It'd be nice to keep everything, but anything we do keep is going to require a garrison and that is just going to sap troups away from the attack. I kind of wish we had Funyon around just for that reason now.

[regoarrarr]

Even if he doesn't have a standing army he should be gathering his forces - whip up an army, trade land for time, and then counter-attack. It's basically what we did when Commodore attacked us, except thankfully we were only dealing with 1-movers then.

Yeah. What he is doing is definitely the outward symptoms who, let's say, hypothetically, is in a large number of games and is not putting a whole lot of effort into this game.

Reminds me a bit of when sunrise, Dreylin and I got a huge army of rifles and MGs to take out Exploit in PB1. We were going super cautious, protecting our stacks, etc., waiting for him to counter attack. But he never did. He just waited in his cities for us to slaughter him.



That's what we're looking at right now.
* Orange square - 2 knights that he attacked out with
* Inside Zhakul - just one axe.
* Green square - 13 knights and 3 horse archers
* Inside Matt Foley - 7 knights (5 100HP, 1 96 and 1 88)
* Green Circle - 5 knights (2 100 HP, 96, 1 83 and 1 46)
* Green Triange - Longbow and spear that we can move into Matt Foley
* Blue circle - Operation Funyun - plan is to move SE-SW this turn I believe. Threatens Belshir next turn (though doesn't threaten very well)

Also in other news, Krill has teched Banking - that's the only new tech that I see. We are also in position to have a monopoly on Gunpowder when it finishes in 2t. Of course, we're currently at war with our hoped-for trading partner

[regoarrarr]

Here's another view on the area in the last post - with the cultural borders of his cities marked out - so we can figure out where borders might fall once Zhakul falls



* Korhal - 20%
* Zhakul - 60%
* Shakuras and Belshar - can't see but I would assume 60%

Unfortunately if this is accurate that puts us in a bad spot. The 2 key tiles (hill 1E of Zhakul) and the marble 2S of Matt Foley are likely going to stay in Yuri's control even if (when) Zhakul falls. That is going to prevent us from moving most of our stack to the Kansas fork tile (TM Noble).

[regoarrarr]

Okay - turn 192 has been played. We played it out mostly via chat but here's some of the highlights.

After seeing Yuri's "spirited" defense, we decided to keep Zhakul, which we named "Superfans"

Naturally we lost a knight v injured knight battle at 91%, but won the other 2 ~70% battles (and one at 99.9) to take the city.



We piled 17 knights and 3 HAs in Superfans, with the idea to move them to the Kansas fork tile (yellow arrow) next turn. That tile is currently staffed by a Yuri longbow, which I assume was built in Shakuras last turn, headed for Zhakul but did not make it.

Our spy did make it to Shakuras, where he spotted the intimidating garrison of

1 axe

So anyways next turn (T194) we move most of those 17 knights to Kansas, and also move the 6 units (4 elephants and 2 xbows) from Operation Funyun (blue circle) next to Belshir. Actually after looking at the picture, we may unload those on the other side of Belshir, so they can be protected from anything out of Aiur (Moai city in GA). Plus that way they're next to THE VITALLY IMPORTANT CITY OF KOLHAR

In addition, we have a motley crue moving to the red tiles. Slow movers (5 cats and 2 WEs and maybe a LB or axe or spear or three) that were shuttled over from the mainland will move through the "1t road" sign (after it's roaded) onto a jungle tile next to Xil. Mounted units will join them on the red triangle - I think we'll move units out of Nat X - maybe 4 knights and 2 HAs.

So if all goes well, the turn after THAT (T195) we might possibly take Xil, Belshir AND Shakuras. Crossing the fingers....

I'll also leave you with a note of what our civ is building



We are trying to slip in some infrastructure while still building units, both to continue on into Yuri as well as keep Krill honest.