[Spoilers] luddite tries to remember how this game works

[luddite]

Thanks chumchu! Yeah I'm actually surprised how light this damage was, considering how little I had to defend with. Maybe I can get away with leaving two ATs half-finished in the queue and only whip them out when needed.

I'll definitely resettle Dulle Griet in the east when I can. Even if I lose it again I supposed that's not the worst thing, if he loses at least 1 80-hammer musketeer for my 66-hammer settler. I'll slowly work towards settling north, but it'll be tough.

I wonder if he would sign a peace treaty with me at this point? He's already slowed me down, and this war slows him down too even if he wins. a 10-turn unbreakable peace would be nice.

[chumchu]

Peace would be good but I would not think he will accept. If not, I would finish the AT:s

[luddite]

3rd musketeer incoming. Also I screwed up my worker micro on the last turn... I thought I'd be able to make roads and hit him this turn but no dice.

[luddite]

I think he's going to pause to heal. I could possibly hit him next turn, but with a 3rd musketeer it really makes things dicey. And unfortunately I can't guard both cities at once because the lake is in the way. So I think I'll still have to rely on warriors to tank city hits while my AT sits in the middle with the axes.

edit: scooter and mr Cairo both founded a city this turn. Scooter is up to 6, Cairo is tied with me on 4. I'm wondering if at some point I should just take whatever dice roll I can get. Like, it's 1.5% to attack his guerilla musketeer on a hill with my axe. That might be as good as my odds get, because he can just outproduce me from here on.

[luddite]

Some thoughts on the overall situation-

I don't think there's any way I'm going to win this game. Maybe there never was a chance, but as soon as my neighbor decided to rush me, that chance vanished.

On the other hand, I don't think he's hitting me with his full strength, either. If he was, I would have already been dead, and he wouldn't have made a settler. He still has to keep up with the other players, after all. Even if Cairo takes all my cities, it doesn't really help him that much. Scooter is already up to 6 cities plus TGL. Oxy likely has more. So Cairo will still have to focus hard on settlers and workers if he wants to keep up.

Which is to say, I can probably *survive* a long time, but might not do much except maybe slow down Cairo and spoil his game ?.

[T-hawk]

Yeah, one might argue that the game wasn't winnable for you just based on the map layout. You happened to start next to the one of your four opponents who could rush you faster than you could get arty/anti-tanks for defense. If your neighbor is any of Oxy or Scooter or Yuris instead, that doesn't happen, in fact you're probably doing the rushing.

If you have any path, it's to eventually turn the tide against Cairo with artillery, while the others fight between them.

[luddite]

Yeah. I called it out in an earlier post that I thought Mr Cairo had the best picks of any if us, and I still think that's true. Or at least, he had the picks best designed to counter mine.

I guess it's true that, if this goes on long enough, we will both eventually build up big stacks and then I'll have some advantage from artillery. Or if scooter starts raiding him with berserkers...

[luddite]

Ok, finally played my turn and this one was a tough decision.

Here was the situation as I saw it from the start:

   

He was still camped on that hill, healing. 3rd musketeer will presumably join his stack the next turn. Thanks to a half-finished road on the tile my AT is on, and my 3 fast workers, I had to the option to build 2 roads and attack him this turn.

I spent about 2 hours agonizing over what to do here. Attack, or not?  Here's what the odds looked like.

   
Not great odds, but not terrible either. Very low odds that I could beat all 3 of his musketeers with my one AT, but not zero either.

Of course I could also just continue to defend. But the way I saw it... it would take me another 6 turns to build one more AT. in that time he would most likely loop through the hills to my east, south, and destroy my 2 southern cities. With the river in the way it's hard for me even to move back and forth, since I would still have to defend the capital. Or he could move west and destroy Rodman. And that's assuming he doesn't just build more musketeers, which he probably will, since his production is way higher than mine.

So... I went for it. Took my shot, and one the first battle. I took heavy damage, and now he's at 24 HP, rather worse than average luck but at least I won. It's also kind of a blessing in disguise, since now I can cover him with axes.

   

Next turn he'll presumably attack and kill my axes, and hopefully take a lot of damage in the process. My AT can promote. If I'm lucky and his musketeers are damaged enough, I could kill one with the AT and swarm the other with my 5 warriors. If not, I guess I'll just move back into the capital and heal.

[luddite]

Once again Mr Cairo surprises me! He didn't attack my axes. Instead he moved onto the plains hill north of Big Bertha. From there he can attack Big Bertha, or Rodman in 2 moves, or Tsar Cannon in 3. But now that he only has 2 musketeers, and I didn't take any losses, it's a lot easier for me to buy time by stuffing my cities with warriors/axes. and an axe defender is not trivial for a musket, it has a decent chance to win or at least do heavy damage.

Overall, I'd say my attack last turn was a great success! :D.

I could try to stack wipe him this turn even. Ram's combat sim tool (https://civ.zulan.net/vodka) is extremely useful for me this game. It tells me that my force of 1 wounded AT, 2 axeman, and 5 warriors would have a 25% chance against 2 musketeers on a hill. Without that tool, I would have absolutely no idea how to even guess my chances... this game does produce some interesting situations at least.

One thing I don't understand. His musket named Latrine was at 8.8 strength last turn. Now it's back to full, despite the move. And it doesn't have march, or any promotions at all. How did it manage to both heal and move on the same turn? It's not a huge amount of healing so it doesn't really change anything, but I didn't think that was possible.

[RefSteel]

One thing I don't understand. His musket named Latrine was at 8.8 strength last turn. Now it's back to full, despite the move. And it doesn't have march, or any promotions at all. How did it manage to both heal and move on the same turn? It's not a huge amount of healing so it doesn't really change anything, but I didn't think that was possible.

Units heal at the beginning of their turn. So if I'm reading this correctly, what happened was:

1) Mr. Cairo plays T58 with Latrine at 8.8 health, and he leaves Latrine in place to heal.
2) You play T58 with Latrine (still) at 8.8 health, and you kill a different Musketeer.
3) Latrine heals at the beginning of its T59.
4) Mr. Cairo plays T59 with Latrine at full health, and moves Latrine and the new musketeer to the plains hill.

Does that track?