Eng bulb and double trade mission for merchants.
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[SPOILERS] scooter Reruns Bluey
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(April 10th, 2024, 09:04)scooter Wrote:(April 10th, 2024, 08:50)Krill Wrote: Die. See, this reply by me is looking even better because both answers probably fit still.  Time to deal with the product of losing much of my stack. Thoth is accelerating, so I'll have to do the same. I sent some detailed diplo "messages" to both Pindicator and Commodore asking them to join against Thoth - doing my best to note the sea advantage by including a bunch of seafood. It seems silly not to in this narrow window where the Viking edge will disappear. We all have Astro, he doesn't, and all his cities are on the interior sea! But I can't rely on others. The original plan was both Merchants on trade missions which would net me a lot of beakers of science + Engineer bulb. Specifically, the part of the first trade mission would fund Guilds, the Engineer would bulb Gunpowder, and the other 1.2 trade missions would go towards teching Chemistry. It felt like a special window to rocket down to that power spike. However, that will all take too long. So, modified plan. Bulb 98% of Guilds now with Merchant 1, finish it, then bulb like 85% of Gunpowder next turn, finish it, and then the second Merchant is a bit more flexible. Probably still trade mission. But mostly just giving myself the tools to try to stalemate Thoth.  The lack of Theocracy really hurts, but I just haven't been able to afford Theology given I really went all-in on Astro. So we make do with this. Round of Knight whips coming next turn along with the completion of Galleons #3 and #4.
The end is nigh. I was briefly hopeful when Commodore/Pindicator peaced out and Pindicator did a bunch of whipping. But it does not appear it was units. Meanwhile.
 Commodore's Knight stack is also coming towards me unsurprisingly. Our NAP technically has like 3T left. I'll be shocked if he doesn't join right then or maybe even early. Here's the thing. I can defend only one side of this, and even that will ultimately fail. I've thought about this scenario a ton. And I've made my decision which side that's going to be.  And this is Thoth's last chance to change my mind on which side I defend. Well, next-to-last.  I sent this one second. If we're doing the 2v1, I'm defending the Viking side. The reason is simple: he's ruined my game far more than Commodore, and also my units are already over there. Also, Commodore's army is almost entirely Knights, so he would be able to fly through my land. Up to you Thoth if you would like to take peace, consolidate your huge land edge, and join the Astro party, or if you would like to finish in 3rd place.
Yesterday I ran my Trade Mission in Commodore's island city. I intended to stretch to Pindicator's island city which I believe would have netted me 200g more, but I decided to take the cash in hand given the situation. Honestly the cash means very little at this point. I then declared on Commodore for two reasons. One, it teleported my boats backwards towards home a little bit. But more importantly it was my way of more or less letting him know that I was letting him out of his NAP 4T early. More on that in a sec.
As for the main front, Thoth hasn't made many tactical mistakes in this game, but he finally did make one. I neglected a Before picture, but here it is mid-stream.  He brought the second group of units this path thinking they were safe. However, I have a decent sized Knight group at this point + Engineering, and it was generally just a lot more than he anticipated. More importantly, it spawned a GG. This was incredibly valuable, and it was one of the things I was hoping to get soon.  I had a ton of units sitting at 3/5XP, so this sprinkle over exactly 10 units gained me 9 extra promotions. Technically 10, because while the Knight did not get an additional promo as a result, it did give me a better promotion.  This Knight was going to be 1 tile short, but Morale gets me there. This allowed me to take one more free win, plus it does give me a second promo the next turn if the Knight survives. This allowed me to think out 4 good units while also damaging the Trebs badly via flanking.  I took a gamble here by covering the Knights with a pair of C2 Pikes. His main 1-movers in his stack cannot reach the Knights. His Knights can, but the hammer exchange would be decent in that situation, and it would open him up to a follow-up the following turn. So this gives me a chance at ensuring the Knights underneath survive. This falls apart if he has Zerks 1N of the Catapult, and there's no real way for me to know if he does or not. Like I said, it's a gamble, but I'm fine with that. Plus, if he damages all his Knights attacking that stack, it buys me an enormous amount of time.  Here's his main stack. Born Yesterday will die next turn. I stuck a longbow in just because it forces him to use up a real unit (or two if I'm lucky) on it. I assume the rest of his units will move next to Quiet Game, where I intend to make a stand as best as I can. I don't think he has enough, but that could change fast if he's got a ton of units in the fog streaming in.  On the other front, Commodore wasted no time. He had a bunch of units already on Galleons, which means there's a good chance he intended to break the NAP anyway - hard to say. I hope he waits one more turn to attack Keepy Uppy. There's a Mace/Longbow/Knight in there end of turn, and they're all headed west next turn. I thought about sending two of them west THIS turn, but I really wanted to dissuade him from going in this turn because I wanted the Knight out of it. We'll see if he brute forces or not - depends on how many units are still on Galleons. Overall, I think I can stop Thoth at Quiet Game, but it may depend on what he's got coming from the fog. My general guess is Thoth eventually cracks Quiet Game, but Commodore will capture virtually everything else most likely. Also, Thoth mostly has to raze and replace. I would expect Commodore to keep everything. Think he's the obvious big winner here from this situation.
My gambit last turn paid off bigtime.
 In the sense that Thoth could not attack a single one of them. He killed the city in one shot with a Knight, but it appears he deleted the Knight after? Doesn't matter. I eyeballed this, and it sort of looked like a fight I could take. So to double check, I spent a good 10 mins sticking this into Vodka. It said I wasn't going to stack wipe, but it estimated 10 dead on both sides. I figured that was actually a very worthwhile trade for me, plus I figured I could be more strategic in attack order than Vodka and get better results than that, so I liked my chances to do enormous damage. The 9 promos picked up from the GG last turn is the only reason this was remotely plausible - a huge coup for me. So I sent in 3 Barrage2 Catapults, and then started swinging.  And to my surprise, my odds were almost immediately palatable. His units were so heavily promoted and down every specialist line imaginable, that I had the most luck by just spamming Combat promos and hoping for the best.  I won a couple of these and lost a couple of these. The thing about Thoth's stack though is there's very few incredible defenders in it. So even a loss takes the defender off the board given that I had quite a few more hitters than he had defenders. So the odds started improving fast and I started getting wins.  And that + IMP got me another GG. At this point it was clear I was going to break this stack, and I badly needed more hitters. So I did the only sensible thing.  And split 20XP across a longbow/crossbow, took Morale, and got myself an extra win. This was especially important because I needed to clear this final Zerk in order to bring the Pikes into play who were otherwised being blocked by it. This sort of thing is why I was more optimistic than Vodka - I could adjust my attack order on the fly once I started taking the top defenders out of the fight and could start getting better matchups.  Once I did that, the rout was on.  Absolute destruction of his invading stack. Thoth is not going to get a single city capture + hold out of all of this. I hovered his two remaining units so you can see them in the bottom-left corner. I expect he'll simply delete them next turn, or maybe his longbow promotes enough to get a kill on the crossbow, who knows. My running tally of the kill count which may or may not match the event log (event log is correct): Dead Units Wrote:me This does not count anything that died last turn, on his turn, or the two remaining units he'll likely delete. It's been incredibly difficult to trade with his absurdly well-promoted units, so this was especially satisfying. In fact, this is such a demolishment, that I actually ought to be able to turn and defend against Commodore here and live a few turns longer than expected. Speaking of which.  I was shocked to see he went for this so aggressively. He didn't even keep Copycat! When I first logged in I had a sort of WTF moment wondering why he threw away 6 Knights by attacking amphibiously when he could have simply landed and taken them the next turn at half the losses, not to mention the fact that Keepy Uppy had units earmarked for the western front. It made me wonder if he thinks I intended to defend against him more aggressively than I was going to? But then why would I wardec him without actually attacking any of his units - especially his boats which I very clearly elected not to attack. Very strange! To be fair I did not attempt to signal to him that I was exclusively focused on Thoth. But I figured me wardec-ing without even a hint of a real army a few turns before the NAP expired would make it clear. That said, with the way the turn shook out and the number of survivors I've got, maybe it'll work out OK for him. However, I'm not sure he's got enough now to crack my capital with all those Knights dead/wounded, so who knows. Fun turn! I thought my Civ was going to die this coming week for sure, but a fun weekend means I may see another weekend barring a turn blitz. I'm still SUPER dead, don't get me wrong, but my army is still alive, and one attacker is out of the picture for a few turns. Looking forward to some shark fins.
So there were some weird quirks in this attack where units that I did not expect to defend ended up defending. The biggest one was how his Knights kept defending early on in the fight. I was somewhat surprised to see that despite the fact that he had a well-promoted Pike on a hill, when my first Knight attack, it was his uber-Knight with a million promos but 0 defensive bonuses defending. I promptly won that fight, which was somewhat fortunate, but thanks to collateral it was still a very winnable fight.
It highlights a potential downside of giving your Knights Formation that I had not really considered. I think if he had given it other promos, the Pike probably would have defended, which likely would have been preferable because it saves the Knight for a later fight where it would be more effective. As a result, those high-strength units that weren't otherwise defensive units were no longer around when I was beginning to use xbows, which they would have eaten alive due to the raw strength discrepancy. Nothing shocking - I understand how it all works. Just thought it was worth highlighting the way an attacker can manipulate matchups due to promotions/odds in a way the defender cannot. If Thoth could have picked, he definitely would have had the Pikes defend against my only two full strength Knights rather than waste his Knights on those given what it would have meant for the rest of the fight.
Seriously, that yielded no comments? I've spawned like 3 GGs in the last few turns!
Anyway, I had this optimistic idea that maaaaaaybe I might be able to now turn and handle Commodore. But uh, the Mongol Horde approaches.   Boy it sure would be nice if I could get my Pikes back to deal with those Kni-  Yeah. So Thoth decided to instead of recognize he was beat, to continue killing units of mine which will prevent me from saving my capital most likely. Of all units to kill, you wanna kill my Pikes? Anyway, I was going to pull everything back, but I decided to counter-attack because he was trying to escape with the Treb/Longbow. Net result is what's seen here - I was able to pick off the Treb while also killing the 3 units he attacked with for no real reason. Maybe just tilted, I dunno. But this exchange greatly reduced my chances of holding off the Mongols for awhile. I thought for sure Thoth would back off, lick his wounds, and force Commodore to bear the brunt for awhile. I'm just about spent now.  So is Thoth. He's got more units coming, but not nearly enough, especially considering he just threw away 3 strong veteran units. (I spent EPs on him for a couple turns because it was clear I was not going to be able to get another tech this game, and sadly nothing upgrades to Muskets, so there was nothing left to spend gold on.  215b towards Chemistry is cruel given the alternate reality in which I'm teching it right now.  I also asked Pindicator again to join the war. I don't really know what he's doing. This is a golden chance for him to use his best-in-game navy and very large army on a guy that's very distracted. Either he's got some plan I'm not seeing, or he's a little checked out on this game. Not sure what's going on there because this game is totally winnable for him still, but he has to be involved in the current war to some degree.
Apologies, I've really appreciated these but don't have any intelligent questions!
Erebus in the Balance - a FFH Modmod based around balancing and polishing FFH for streamlined competitive play.
I think Pindicator just told me to STFU.
 I have no idea what happened here. The only other thing I can think of is he sent me a gold for gpt deal, and then he made changes to his empire after that made the gpt impossible, which resulted in this offer. So I guess I do have an idea of what happened here! I declined obviously. I thought about counter-offering, but given that I don't even know what his request was, I just let it go.  Uh, capital may be toast. He's got 10 Knights in range. Technically I can get 11 bodies in here, but many are not serious/healthy defenders. I guess the hill + 60% will help here. I hope he doesn't attack for another turn, in which case I can stuff a few more in. Not much more though - this is about all I've got now. I gave a veteran crossbow March out of desperation because it was not going to heal in time for the next fight. Anyway, wanna see some very ugly city screens?   The things you do to eke out a couple more real units. If he chooses not to max-blitz the capital, Grandad will burn. One of his Knights is Morale, so it's possible it'll do something annoying. I'm also likely to lose some workers, but who cares really.  Game taunts me on back to back turns.  Biggest battle of the game by far! I think Thoth lost the game these last couple turns. I'll take my solace in that. More accurately, if neither Commodore nor Pindicator can win from here, that's on them. |