[SPOILERS] Pindicator promises brighter days ahead

[Lewwyn]

If you are both on the same side of the turn split with Gav, then AFAIK you only need to observe turn split with Plako if your troops could interfere with one another e.g. racing to capture the same city, raze tile improvements, etc,  or any other situation where war could potentially be declared. If your forces are well-separated then you don’t need to observe turn split with Plako.

Okay right now we can't see plako so we should be fine.  Looks like comm has entered the war before our turn as well now. We will have to be mindful.

We started the turn but haven't finished yet, still have stuff to do, but we need to eat.

[pindicator]

Turn 133

Surprising us both, Gavagai has retreated.  Not a tactical retreat of last turn, but a full-on retreat with his units out of our vision entirely.

Not surprising, Commodore has now invaded with the stack that we saw last turn.




As a result, Elephantine is secure enough that we sent 5 units over to threaten Abydos.  Should he try to reinforce we have 11 units on those galleys.  But if Abydos falls as easily as I hope -- Gav is in anarchy this turn, so he can't produce any units this turn -- then those galleys are going to try to sail south for Heliopolis.

I also wanted to start a settler for wherever the 3 warring -- but forgot to actually begin building it anywhere.  That should be a priority next turn, I think - a defensive city in the right place can make holding our gains a lot easier.

Demos





And current military...

[Lewwyn]

Wow Plako got 2 more cities and he settled a 3rd last turn. Gav has lost 5 cities so far and we'll likely take a sixth this turn, Comm might take one too? That is a pretty efficient dogpile.

[pindicator]

Woke up to find everyone has played and Gav lost 3 more cities - making that 8 total now:  Commodore took 1 and plako took 2 more.  So I took a peek.  Haven't made any moves yet, but things are certainly getting interesting.  Actually, I'm out again because I just woke up and I'm going to get some coffee and try to clear my head and wake up a bit.

Plako, btw, offered us open borders.  I accepted.  After this war we can just continue sending a chariot south.

And then I have to try to figure out what Gavagai's decision making process is right now.  The best I can come up with is he's trying to keep our armies from advancing farther south at expense of letting plako run rampant ... though I'm not going to go far enough as to say it's a screw you move, it certainly feels a little like one.  (For instance, we dont' know the sizes or value of the cities that plako has been gobbling up.)




Looks like he is waiting for when we take Abydos so he can then attack Elephantine and attempt to defeat us in detail.  However, I think there's an easy fix to this:

1) use 2 chariots to pillage the road on the rice.  They are lost but we need to buy a turn to concentrate our forces. (Edit: or do this after we take abydos and the chariots may be able to retreat after pillaging b/c the culture may go away)
2) use the workers in the area to road the landing forest tile so we have a connected road.  Use 2 more workers to road the tile we moved our detachment to attack Abydos with
3) take abydos, then move the boats up.
4) everything else into Elephantine

Power graph shows Gav has taken a hit, but still is above our power



I'll come back in a bit to play, but I'm going to go for a run and try to wake up first.

[pindicator]

I had no idea that Fish for Fish was such a sacred thing:




He emptied the city that Commodore took - note the archer running east on the bottom of the pic - and he's moved all his 2 movers up north so now that plako is running through his south easily grabbing cities. If he's making a stand at his capital that's one thing. But coming straight for us feels like it's personal.

[pindicator]

Turn 134

Well Lewwyn must have heard my cry for help through the ether of the internet, for it wasn't long after I posted that he came online.  And while it was something like 2am local time for him, this is pretty exciting stuff and he and I ended up hashing out what we were going to do for the turn.

First of all, the big mistake was that we didn't move the sentry before taking Abydos.  If we would have spotted that huge HA stack before I think we would have burned Abydos to the ground and then just concentrated everything together.  Instead we decided it was worth it to leave some forces detached to defend Abydos - but then leave Elephantine with a sparse garrison and pull everything else onto the forest NE of the holy city.  I also did some scouting in the southwest with our chariot by Buto to see if we could get more intel on just what was going on, maybe decide if Gav was just gunning for us out of vengence or if there was some other reason for his deployment.  And again I wish I had moved the damned sentry first because we ended up getting sight on the capital - which explains Gav's movement more.



So Gav was clearly trading cities for time and concentration of force.  And while it is still possible that Gav has just decided to gun for us, if that's the case there just isn't anything we can do about it.  At the same time, it's also possible he has just decided that Elephantine is so strong of a city that it is worth all the cities down south that he has lost to plako - or perhaps he feared that between Comm and plako that he had to pull everything back in order to not lose the capital -- it is hard to tell without knowing how the land plays out to the south.

With that in mind, our plan is that if he comes inot Elephantine in force we are going to counter with everything ... or maybe just run ourselves.  This whole attack was based on Gav being too tied down with multiple threats to send his entire army after us.  And if he's decided to send his entire army after us there just isn't anyway that we're strong enough to take it all on.

Here's how the units are deployed:




As you can see, we only have 20 hitters on that forest tile. If Gav were to just move EVERYTHING into Elephantine -- that's 50 units at his disposal. So the more logical idea is that he is hoping to move quickly north and defeat us and then turn around and take on plako and Commodore. Our hope is that he hasn't decided to just rage at us and that he is wanting a quick victory around Elephantine so he can turn around and then send his units south to recapture cities from plako.

I whipped everything that was about to finish a unit - even the capital. If Gav were to do the big "screw you" play, then there's really nothing stopping him from going straight ot our capital right now, except for the fact that he may want to defend his remaining lands against Commodore and plako. We're also hoping he is more emotionally upset at those two and would hope for an opportunity to stick it to one of them.

So with that in mind, I offered peace. Even if he doesn't take it now, perhaps it can signal to him that we're not interested in pushing further south? Regardless, we need to offer him some kind of way out so that if he does want out from our conflict to focus on the other armies that we can give him a way that doesn't involve him losing a lot of his army. In this game of musical invaders, you don't want to be the last one still at war when the other two parties have peaced out.




Look at how few cities he has left...

[Lewwyn]

his capital is right there...

[pindicator]

Well I'm shocked he didn't at least capture the lightly defended Elephantine ... perhaps Gav took peace?

[Lewwyn]

Well I'm shocked he didn't at least capture the lightly defended Elephantine ... perhaps Gav took peace?

I'll go check

[Lewwyn]

Gav didn't accept peace, but he did re-offer it.




I accepted. I figured if we offered it before we should accept it now. Fish are sacred. I checked his army.




He moved the death stack up, there is a sentry in there. I'm betting he decline peace, moved up to check it out. Saw all those units ready to fall back into elephantine and knew we'd crash into him if we had to. Gave us one chance. If we decline the, I bet he would have attacked us. He left that big ass stack there in case.

I started a settler in Gliecser? Do we still want that settler now we know his cap is there?

I can't play the turn right now, its almost 1. I can play in the morning. Maybe 8 hours.

Congrats to us. We got a bunch of workers, three cities and a shrine and we didn't lose a lot of units doing it. We've also reached 5th in power in demos. We will be a lot less vulnerable with a large standing army now.

Mono in 1t. Then GA?