[Spoilers] Lazteuq and RefSteel's PB51 Adventure

[Lazteuq]

Thanks for the insights, RefSteel.

As long as the enemy has catapults, everything is relevant

I hadn't fully understood this until now.
It's even more meaningful when I consider the hammer costs. Praets and cats both cost about half as much as knights and 2/3 as much as maces.

About Plemo: we do have open borders and we have 2 work boats patrolling around his core. So far I've seen nothing suspicious. This makes me think he is probably content to leave us alone for now. However, if he did stealthily assemble the invasion fleet far from our workboats' vision, it would still only be ~4 turns away from hitting us, because those East Indiamen have 6 movement. 

Infrastructure: I chose to do a Grocer in Enchilada because it was 2 knights worth of hammers for ~15gpt. I'm reconsidering the Bank in Quesadilla. Otherwise, I agree that grinding out units is the way to go.

When I suggested opening borders and letting him scout us so we could watch for his units too, I didn't realize we were going to be plotting war with him soon!

I didn't realize it either. I should have planned more for what would happen in a post-Gira world.

Taking him on will be a great learning experience no matter the outcome, and I doubt if we can beat Plemo under any circumstances from here - and I've not been able to spend enough time thinking about the game to really judge anyone's position, so take all that with a grain of salt.

I agree that our odds are slim, so it's time for some high-risk, medium-reward decisionmaking!
I'm still not convinced that peace would be any better, and war is more fun  

Superdeath is now asking us for cities and gold in return for peace anyway, so I believe the point of no return is thoroughly behind us.

He showed up with 12 praets, mostly triple promoted and lightly damaged. That's less scary than I expected. There are probably more units 1 or 2 more turns away.
Superdeath won't be able to hit Plymouth Cuda this turn. He'll have to move those praets at least one more tile forward. I'm hoping that he moves them 2 tiles forward, where we can hit them. But that would be stupid.
If he does move those praets toward Plymouth Cuda, I don't think he has the strength to take it. He would need more catapults.
Now that I've split off those 4 maces and 4 cats, he is forced to do something, otherwise we'll just send some more units west and take Firebird/Miata.

[Lazteuq]

T156
I logged in to see a frustrating surprise: The cultural borders changed! I wish I understood those mechanics.

Now Superdeath has a huge mobility advantage again.

He's up to 13 praets basically fully healed. However, Plymouth Cuda is on a hill, our maces are fortifying, and there is a Great General to give them even more Shock promotions on 1 turn's notice. so that helps a lot if he tries retaking it. I doubt he will try such a direct approach though.
What I know for sure is that we can't afford to be entirely defensive. If we let Superdeath's stack of Classical Trash keep us bottled up on defense in Plymouth Cuda, that's effectively losing the war.

I used a worker to check if he was hiding a reserve in Dodge Viper. He is not! There might still be reserves 1SW of Dodge Viper, but I doubt it. So I decided to keep the western advance going! He won't be able to chase down the western stack fast enough to stop them from taking Firebird. If he does send his army west, we can respond with knights, and/or threaten Dodge Viper to force him back. If he keeps his army in the east, he effectively surrenders two cities to us. Hopefully...
I'm hoping he doesn't move to the grassland 2S of Plymouth Cuda, because that would threaten us in 2 ways. I should have thought more about pillaging his roads earlier.
I would prefer to have those units in Plymouth Cuda doing something, but I'm not sure if they can afford to leave the relative safety of the city. Going 1 tile south would be the obvious aggression option, but I worry they would just die, just like how he shredded our 5 knights earlier.

I'm wondering if Musketeers are worth it.
Whipped Quesadilla for 5 pop to get the Bank done.
Concerningly, Plemo started dumping a ton of espionage into us, so if he keeps that up, we won't ever get research intel on him without a lot more courthouses. I put intel on El Grillo instead.

[Lazteuq]

T157:
Vanrober asked 80 gold for nothing. This would be a very weird threat, instead I believe he is offering to attack Superdeath. So I accepted! 80 gold isn't the end of the world if he just takes it and leaves.

I re-founded Gordita and will found a city by the desert copper in 2 turns.

Those praets disappeared, and I think they are almost certainly 1SW of Dodge Viper.
This gives us the flexibility to strike Mazda Miata now: 

I'm not sure if he's making a mistake here, or if I am.
Here's the expected course of events:
T157 SD's turn: His praet stack probably moves into Ford Mustang. He might hit us with the newly produced cat from Mazda Miata.
T158 our turn: Move the Northern Mace+Cat Army to 1NE of Mazda Miata. Bombard Pontiac Firebird.(maybe capture it?)
T158 SD's turn: His praet stack moves to 1E, 1SE, or 2E1S of Firebird.
T159 our turn: Capture Mazda Miata and Pontiac Firebird, leaving a huge area of neutral territory. Bring remaining units from the north to the tile 1NE of Firebird. Probably use the General to distribute a lot of Shock promotions.
T159 SD's turn: He might recapture Firebird. Or he might hit our stack 1NE of firebird. Either way, we'll have a number advantage over his stack. There may be a few catapults, but I expect no more than 3. So I think we can just accept the battle on flat ground if he wants it. I think him recapturing Firebird is more likely. It might be bloody, but unless he conjures up a lot more praets, I think we'll win.

I'm thinking about assembling ~4 knights and hitting Grand Pre in about 5 turns. That road going right up to the border means he won't have much warning.

Enchilada is 2-turning knights and we're #1 in production now.
The cities captured from Gira are starting to become really useful.
Research rate is still pretty bad, about 150 at breakeven. We're about to get some nice capture gold though!

[Lazteuq]

T158
As expected, Superdeath attacked with that one catapult and moved his praets to Ford Mustang. He has only 10 praets and 4 cats there, not as tough as I suspected. We can easily beat that stack as long as we can consolidate all the maces.

I bombarded Firebird but did not attack. I saw no need to take extra losses. It isn't capable of whipping anything anyway, being already size 3.

Fun fact: Plymouth Cuda kept its Forge, Colosseum, and Market!

Superdeath appears to be making 10-15 gold per turn. (I'm assuming he's at 0%) I bet I'm having more fun than he is...It will be fun to read his thread in a few months.

We got a great scientist, so no golden ages any time soon. Quesadilla will take a stab at generating a Merchant next.

Our scouting sentry knight saw that El Grillo has a stack of 15 knights at Vanrober's border. Vanrober only appears to have classical-era tech somehow. And El Grillo has twice his power. Oof.

[Lazteuq]

T159
I don't know what Superdeath is doing anymore: He didn't move the praets and cats forward from Mustang. They have vanished. That was probably smart.
The simplest explanation is that he could be letting us have Miata and Firebird, but all those praets must be doing something. Maybe he'll send them back East. If so, we can push Mustang.
I debated whether to bombard Miata or just bruteforce it this turn. It has walls, meaning bombardment is half speed. So I decided to just suicide 4 cats for the sake of speed. That was a loss of 200hammers, but it paved the way for only 2 maces to die against 4 longbows on a walled city with hills. Pretty good! It kept Granary, Lighthouse, Forge, Monument, and Courthouse.

Meanwhile, I bombarded Firebird down to 2% and directly attacked with knights and maces. No units lost! Firebird kept exactly the same buildings as Miata. Is that a hard-coded thing, or just random chance?
The 4 catapults are still on full health, meaning they can move on Mustang next turn. We definitely have a shortage of siege weapons, but cities have already been working on fixing that.

Meanwhile, I assembled a small stack outside of his vision near Fajita. It can move toward Grand Pre next turn. I'll move the worker first to check how well-defended it is. I don't want to scout this turn because it would telegraph intentions. There is a risk of him trying to retake Plymouth Cuda if we go after Grand Pre. But in doing so, he would be giving up Mustang and Grand Pre. So I doubt he would try to attack Plymouth Cuda except out of spite.

Here are the beautiful results:

Hopefully that weird finger of Superdeath's territory goes away next turn.


I am loving the 3-move roads from engineering. I couldn't care less about pikemen and castles, but that road movement has enabled a large part of the success so far in this war.
We have enough courthouses now for forbidden palace. As RefSteel mentioned, it could be in Gira-land or, more optimistically, we could wait to put it in Superdeath-land.

I think Vanrober is about to get absolutely stomped by El Grillo. I don't understand how he doesn't have longbows yet!
At least we'll get research intel on El Grillo next turn.

Assuming this war continues going well, we're going to need Astro. I think on a map like this, navies will not be optional. I just realized having Astro 10 turns ago would have made this war against Superdeath much more efficient. Too bad I didn't think of it then. It would have been probably possible if we hadn't gone for Banking.

Edit: There's a mountain on his side of the border! So my sneaky stack in the east isn't actually hidden from view after all.

[Lazteuq]

T160: It's 1000AD. Is this a normal tech pace for the game overall? Or are we greens slower than normal?
I decided to finally go for Literature. It's about time we got a national epic, although I'm not sure where. Maybe Persepolis, because it has such a huge food surplus and it has +4gpp from Stonehenge.
Superdeath revolted into Vassalage and Hereditary Rule. Otherwise, I saw no immediate actions from him. I guess Vassalage means his newly produced praets will immediately get access to the Anti-Mounted promotion, which definitely will cause extra trouble.

I finally founded Flauta at that desert copper spot we've been talking about for the past 140 turns.

Vanrober survived El Grillo's knight stack without losing any cities this turn. Good for him. However, El Grillo is also threatening naval invasion with Galleons now.
El Grillo is sitting at 0%slider on Gunpowder right now. Next I'll invest EPs into Ramk. Maybe we'll have research visibility on him in ~5 turns.


Invasion prospects in the eastern part of the front look good, but it's really bothering me that we can't see those 10+ praets and 4+ cats.
I didn't move the knights up toward Mustang because Superdeath might be hiding a stack on the plains hill 1SE of mustang. Even a sentry knight can't see that tile because Mustang is on a hill. If only we had a boat nearby to see it!
There is certainly a threat of him pushing a stack toward Plymouth Cuda, but I'm not even sure I care if he takes it. If he really wants to invest hammers into (temporarily) retaking Plymouth Cuda, I'm fine with that. I don't think he can afford to push north while also defending Mustang and Grand Pre. And the constant stream of reinforcements from our core should be able to protect against any half-hearted attacks.

Hopefully Mjmd is causing some extra headaches for Superdeath. Demographics says the lowest power is still about 100k. Thats 1/5th of ours. However, I don't know how much of that 100k would be tech, so it's hard to say how much his power is real units.

[Lazteuq]

T161:
I don't know if our western army just walked into a trap or not... Still can't say for sure where that praet stack is, but we do know where it isn't. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bZe5J8SVCYQ
The good news is: The eastern army definitely didn't walk into a trap. We know this thanks to a couple suicidally aggressive workers. After seeing that there aren't many units nearby, I split the stack to reduce the impact of his catapults. Of course we will also be able to take Pontiac GTO.


Notre Dame is still available! It's sped up by stone and a forge so it's a good hammers to gold rate. I started working on it in Enchilada. It's only 9 turns to build, but I still expect someone else will get it first. If we do actually get it, that would be excellent considering that the whole map is one continent and we will have unhappiness issues as war continues.
Next turn we'll get some exploration of Mjmd's land.
Next turn Persepolis will start on the National Epic and then it needs a Market to run merchants. Not optimal, but no other city has 3 loaves of food.

[Lazteuq]

T162
It was most definitely a trap. That whole western stack was obliterated. 5 knights, 4 maces, 4 cats, and a general.
He suicided 11 catapults in the process. I didn't realize he had that many, but I guess I shouldn't be surprised.
I feel stupid because this really wasn't a surprise at all. I knew he might attack from the fog like that, and I foolishly moved up the units anyway. Now we've lost momentum and this war might turn into a stalemate.
The good news is, we still have some presence in the west. He moved all the praets back into Mustang afterward, so he clearly plans on at least letting them heal first.

In the east, the situation is good. We should be able to take Grand Pre and Pontiac GTO next turn. The question is: Then what? I don't think we can push the capital yet, because those praets can reinforce it. However, we can at least threaten the capital with some knights, reducing his ability to go on the offensive.

On this picture, the white dots are known to be empty. (I scouted them before taking the picture and then moved the knights back)

[Miguelito]

Still happy with your decision to attack superdeath over GKC (I don't know enough about the game to judge myself, just interested in your opinion)?

[Lazteuq]

Yes. It hasn't gone as well as I hoped, but that's mostly because of tactical mistakes. I still do think my reasoning for choosing a target was sound. GKC would have put up a serious fight as well, and there would been competition with Ramk (and probably Plemo) for the scraps of his land.

If I hadn't made the following mistakes, I think this war would be going much better:
Mistake 1: Not building enough siege weapons.
Mistake 2: The 5 knights on a stupid suicide mission toward his capitol.
Mistake 3: The battle massacre of Ford Mustang.
Mistake 4(debatable): Not using naval attacks effectively.
Mistake 5(?): Not building enough units during the Gira war (If that war had been sped up, the superdeath war could have started earlier)

I don't see any serious chance at winning anymore. Plemo is surely pushing toward Rifling, and I expect him to snowball into an unstoppable position from there. That won't discourage me from fighting this war against Superdeath though!

Superdeath's praet stack is still in Mustang. Currently my goal is to stall him. If he is able to push back with those praets, he could threaten Firebird and force us to retreat. To prevent this, I applied pressure with Knights. They are threatening Dodge Viper, but they are also threatening Toyota Supra. He'll be forced to do something, because those 7 knights stand a decent chance of taking Dodge Viper otherwise.
If he calls the bluff and moves most of the praets toward Firebird anyway, I'll have no choice but to retreat and give him Firebird back.

The sentry knight in the south should cause him some stress, because his cities have single archers down there.

Grand Pre being on a hill means the knights won't get good odds until the defenses are brought down further. Unfortunately, I suicided one of the trebs on it before realizing this. So thats another 70 hammers and more time wasted.

I certainly should be learning lessons about MP warfare from this experience.

Ramk asked for a world map trade. I accepted. Our combined knowledge shows the world almost completely mapped!