[SPOILERS]yuris125 looking for inspiration in Pitboss 73

[yuris125]

Another peace offer from Scooter. As I said, I'm no longer opposed, but not right now. I would like to use this peace treaty for aggressive settlements, meaning I want to have settlers ready before signing it

Here's the approximate locations I want




The idea here is to have cities much closer to Scooter for when hostilities recommence, while also claiming all the resources in sight

The eastern dot is resettling Adrianople on the hill, claiming all the same tiles, but being a little safer from an amphibious attack thanks to the hill bonus

The middle dot I'm not sure on the exact location, but want to lay claim on the sugar cluster, and settling non-riverside gives potentially better tile yields longer term

The western dot just claims a double food spot

Honestly, if I didn't feel compelled to put so much effort into building a phract stack, I would've made a move for these spots ages ago. Then again, if not for fear of phracts, Scooter probably would've claimed them for himself ages ago

Also pictured: a couple of war elephants on the road I built, which I might get a chance to kill off, depending on what Scooter does

I have to keep wondering if I could've played this differently after letting Scooter burn my cities and losing so much of the initial production, but I do feel I was compelled to at least try to make things happen with phracts as soon as I unlocked them. But, well, this ends up being another game where I fight valiantly to come back from behind and push myself into a relevant position

[yuris125]

Scooter whipped **a lot** last turn. Wonder if he's tired of sending me peace offers and wants to get peace by other means

[yuris125]

Found this




I ran the numbers, and the conclusion was that 4 phracts vs 3 elephants gave me about 70% of wiping Scooter's stack, with me likely losing 1 phract. Plus the border shape suggested Scooter settled a new city I could threaten. Felt like an opportunity I was waiting for

Combat went along with the odds, 2 phracts won their encounters, the 3rd one died, but brought the elephant low enough that I could finish it off with a chariot, and cover it with a healthy phract

Confirmed that Scooter did settle a new city, it is undefended this turn, with axe + spear on the way (who probably can't stop the phracts). Maybe Scooter offers me this city for peace, who knows.... maybe I'll even take it if he does - not a great city by any means, but would give me a foothold for when hostilities resume

Moved the axe + spear stack at Gerri north, now that Scooter knows all my phracts are in the east and that mini-stack could be a free kill

[yuris125]

Now we know what Scooter has been whipping

He actually got unlucky here, as can be seen from the combat log. He tried attacking my phract with a spear + a zerker, calculator shows that he had an 80% chance of killing it, but he only managed to land one hit

I brought all the phracts to the border, then went ahead and sent him an offer of peace for Stewy. The idea is that it's a baby city with no cultural defences yet, I can threaten it, Scooter can probably hold, but he would lose a lot. Or he can get that peace he's been asking for for the last 15 turns. It's probably not a straightforward offer - and he might well reject it out of hand, depending on how important he sees this city for his plans - but it's worth a try

My biggest concern is that with triremes beyond my land, and me unlikely to sign OB with him, he risks getting his ships stranded. I'm not actually sure what he's planning to do with them, not like coastal blockade would affect me much, I'm not working any water tiles (hooray for orphaning the fish). Unless blockade makes land tiles unworkable as well in base BtS?

If he doesn't take peace, it's likely he thinks he can kill me, and is going to stop me from ever trying to expand beyond my 3 initial cities

Oh, and I didn't take the worker bait, I expect there's an elephant stack in the fog. Which could be another reason for him not to take the peace - but again, I think he can hold the city if he puts the mind to it, but how much would he lose?

[yuris125]

Scooter did not take peace - curious if it was a close decision or if he was outraged at the very thought of me offering it




The top defender was the elephant, despite being wounded, and I was getting 83% odds on it. Not all my phracts were healthy either, but this still felt like a chance to eliminate a bunch of his units

I had two concerns. Firstly the galley sailing along the coast. If Scooter had units on it, and they landed next to Constantinople, and I had all the phracts fighting at Stewy, the city would be in trouble. Secondly, what if Scooter had a significant stack 2SW of the chariot? I knew I wouldn't take the city, and a catapult + 3 elephants out of the fog would be devastating

After much deliberation I decided to sacrifice the chariot, move SW, and see what's there. Saw an elephant and 2 zerkers - not as big a stack as I feared

Decided to go for it. Felt like when I'm fighting an opponent with so many cities, I have to take opportunities I'm presented with

4 phracts won. The 5th one - the most wounded one - lost at 60%. Covered the stack by a healthy phract from the backlines




Left the chariot where it is, it will die easily, but will block one Scooter's attack from that stack this turn

Not sure if this was overly aggressive. Felt worthwhile on my turn - we'll see how many phracts Scooter will be able to kill off on his

To make sure I don't lose Constantinople, I moved defenders from both cities towards it




Next turn I will have two more phract whips if I want them. Probably most annoying thing Scooter can do is land on the iron and pillage it, thus pausing phract production. But with the two new ones coming up, I likely will be able to kill the pillaging units, and with 5 workers who are largely done with their current jobs, it won't take long to re-improve

Undecided for now what I'm doing with the great general I got this turn. Probably build a new chariot and make it medic 3?

Anyway, the most important question is how many phracts Scooter can kill

[yuris125]

Well, this went about as poorly as it could




Scooter had the combat luck this time, winning 3 50/50s this turn, including killing the half health chariot with a warrior and not with a real unit. Two of the berserker attacks were also 50/50s

Sent a white peace offer. Time to try to expand. Still unsure if I was supposed to expand sooner, or try to make something happen with the first phract stack, as I did. Although tbf Scooter might not even take white peace at this point

[yuris125]

No peace

Good news - Scooter didn't have a worker to rebuild the road, so the phract that was outside his borders with 0.2 health is still alive. Bad news - he landed a zerker on the wheat farm, he can hunt it down and kill from there

He did start blockading my cities with the triremes - not sure why, I'm not working the coast, and I'm sure he knows I have cottages to work. Just to stop me from doing anything unexpected with ships? Not like I would be able to do much against 4-move triremes at this stage of the game

All in all, I'm probably on the way out, just because wars cannot be won with 3 cities vs 12, and Scooter has the means to counter my trump unit. Looking forward to lurkers telling me what I did wrong in the aftermath (other than letting Scooter raze my 2 cities, definitely shouldn't have done that)

[yuris125]

I said elsewhere that I think neighbour luck plays a huge role in this game, and I'm very curious how the game would've played out if Oxy (the other game leader at the moment) started next to me rather than Scooter

On the other hand, I said before that I couldn't understand how Oxy was allowed to get in this position. Don't want to criticise without knowing what was happening on the other content, but I'm equally curious how I would've fared playing Mr. Cairo's start

All in all, it's clear that in my initial analysis I severely undevalued the power of techs which help with fast starts; I think it's very likely that Civil Service is the most powerful tech to start with. By contrast, I think that taking a civ with starting techs which slow down the start is never worthwhile - there might be a start which would make Guilds a good tech to start with, but one would have to forgo knight-based unique units, since Byzantium and Arabia both have awful starting techs

I think this is an interesting variant which could be worth exploring more, but I would like at least our circumnavigation rebalancing to be added to the mod

[yuris125]

Question. Scooter unloaded a GG-led zerker with morale on my iron and pillaged it on the same turn. How does one do it? I know it's possible to unload a unit and then promote to morale to give it an extra move, but you have to have a GG on land already, don't you? Does amphibious promotion let a unit to get off the ship with a single movement point? Or is there something else I'm missing? If it's not spoilery

I managed to kill the zerker flawlessly, but didn't have workers in range to rebuild the mine (because I didn't realise it could be pillaged this turn). Now Constantinople is defended by 2 phracts and an axe against probably 4 zerkers (depends on what Scooter has on the ships). If it doesn't fall, I should be able to rebuild the iron mine next turn and whip at least one more phract (as long as invested hammers didn't disappear when I lost the required resource)

[Qgqqqqq]

It's not spoilery. A unit that can take a mobility promotion can use an extra move after taking it. This is the case even if all their moves are used up, such as a unloaded unit. In BTS this only comes up with GG. In FFH2 (almost) every unit can take a mobility promotion.