[SPOILERS] Scooticator and Pindooter give a sporting try

[scooter]

Turn 220

Ok, before I get to the stuff you care about, Lewwyn did this.



As always, I owe my response to that. On one hand, trading a city for peace is always legitimate. On the other hand... he only technically did that, so if his argument is that he trade the city for peace from Azza, that argument is actually pretty disingenuous. Azza hasn't moved a unit out of his capital in 50 turns. That city has been virtually empty for about 15 turns. Azza was not threatening it, and Lewwyn knows that. So eh. It's technically an OK deal so I'm not going to make a public fuss about it, but I still reserve the right to roll my eyes over it in my thread and say that I think it's dumb/cheesy . As for what I'm going to do with those units, i'm still thinking about it. I'll probably retreat them through Azza's territory and upgrade them into infantry once they're back in my culture, then use them as part of the assault on his cities once I'm ready to counter-attack.

OKAY. That's done, moving on. He used 4 accuracy cats to bomb the defenses down into the 30s, then he sent all of his collateral to their death.



Barely scratched my units. I actually had 1-2 unpromoted infantry come out of that at full health. The infantry that only received collateral had health in the 17-20 range. The city garrisons that actually defended took a few more hits, but not as many as I would have expected defending from 20 suicide units. He opted to park the rest of his units on that hill.

At this point I've got a decision. I could sit for 1 turn, and nearly all my units would return to full health. Then start counter-attacking. However, he's sitting on a medic3 AND he'll start accumulating fortify bonus. Also, a great deal of my infantry could get favorable odds on his top defenders immediately. In the end, I decided it's best that I take good odds if I can get them, and sit on the rest. I ended up doing a lot more attacking than planned. Kicked it off with this guy:



And kept right on going until the odds started drying up. Here's all that I did.

pinch infantry vs rifle 78% - win
pinch infantry vs rifle 76% - win
c1 infantry vs rifle 84% - win
c1 infantry vs rifle 85% - win (gg spawn in Expos - west coast)
c1 infantry vs rifle 86% - win
c1 infantry vs rifle 86% - win
c2 infantry vs rifle 87% - win
c1 infanry vs rifle 85% - lose
19.2h infantry vs rifle 73% - win
c2 formation infantry vs rifle 85% - win
c1 infantry vs rifle 85% - win
c2 infantry vs rifle 86% - win
c1 infantry vs rifle 78% - win
drill 1 infantry vs pinch knight 75% - win
c1 pinch infantry vs knight 80% - lose
18.4h infantry vs rifle 73% - win
18.4h infantry vs rifle 73% - win
18.8h infantry vs rifle 74% - lose
17.2h c1 infantry vs rifle 75% - win
17.0h c1 infantry vs rifle 75% - win
17.2h c1 infantry vs rifle 86% - lose

Quite a demolition. 4 losses, sure, but that looks like roughly an expected outcome in terms of odds. So here's the final T220 death tally:

FINAL TALLY:
Units lost: 4 infantry
Units killed:
* 7 catapults
* 13 CKNs
* 17 rifles

Killed 37 units at the cost of 4 infantry. Here's what we've got left:



(look at all those green health bars!)

I didn't counter-attack with any of the city garrison guys, so those will all heal significantly (some completely). Crucially, I'm going to get a ton of second promos on all these infantry I attacked with, which will be extremely useful.

A tad over-aggressive, probably. But another factor here is I want this demolished as quickly as possible to signal to the potential vultures that I'm not about to collapse under this attack. I think this turn showing up on the power graph 2T from now should signal that pretty clearly (although Mack and Commodore both have units here watching, so I think they see it anyway).

I didn't get a picture of this, but Lewwyn sent a mini-stack at Gators, which is actually a bit of a problem for me. Annoyingly, I somehow missed seeing a few of those units with my airships last turn, so he had a couple more than expected. He sent 5 CKNs and 4 Rifles at a city that's sitting on 1 pikeman. The city completes a cannon EoT, I can upgrade the pike to an infantry, and I can get a grenadier into the city (3 tiles, so no upgrade for him). That's not enough to hold it, though. However, I can ALSO get my morale super-infantry into the city. Now, that should be enough to save the city barring some bad luck, however there's a strong chance that particular infantry would die. I ran a quick mini-test, and it showed me holding easily 5/6 times, but that morale infantry died in most of those tests. I'm kinda loathe to lose him, but in reality, hanging onto Gators is more valuable.

Now, I did get that GG this turn. He's too far away to figure in this turn, but I could attach him to one of those elite grens down south and basically replace my super-infantry that way. That would ease the pain a bit. I'm a little annoyed at this mistake, but I uses fewer airships than usual to scout his land last turn because it was all hands on deck to air-strike Lewwyn's main stack.

Another thing I'm thinking about is teching Military Tradition this turn and sending Knights south. Then I would do some serious Knights -> Cavs upgrades, which would be awfully useful - my Knights have more or less reached the end of their value for me right now, but Cavs would be pretty helpful. That would help me finish Lewwyn off a lot more quickly.

[scooter]

Scooter, how many units could u have gotton into the city if Lewyen had not waited to heal?

Hardly anything. I had one archer in Trailblazers on the turn he razed Timbers. If he had immediately started marching on my capital the turn after razing Timbers, I probably could have scraped together... maybe 10 Grenadiers, 20 Knights, and 1-2 cannons. That's honestly about it. I'd have to go back and count turns to be sure, but I think he could have gotten there before I even had infantry. Pants were around my ankles. Trailblazers absolutely would have burned. His units were shot up, but given the obscene amounts of collateral he had and my lack of Str20 units, I would not have had a prayer.

I know I didn't devote a lot of time into reporting it, but I really did squeeze every ounce out of what I had to get that garrison into Trailblazers. IIIRC, I had a few Grens in particular that traveled over 20 tiles in one turn due to the glories of boat chaining. I had units on my western islands (TBS islands and Utah) that didn't leave until he entered my land that made it into Trailblazers in time to be upgraded into infantry. Maybe later tonight I can use a few screenshots to illustrate the kind of stuff I did to get those units in there, which should give you an idea of how little I would've had if he was attacking 3T ago as was possible.

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

Nice job. Thanks for the report!

[NobleHelium]

Pretty sure I would just declare war on Azza and demand the city.

[scooter]

Turn rolled, Lewwyn played immediately. So now I'm up. So, about that 115 unit stack.



Scout has died in combat.

[scooter]

Turn 221

This says it all.







Lewwyn attacked, and I lost 5 infantry, 1 Gren, 1 Knight. I'm not going to bother trying to total up how many units I killed. Also, I got my second great general in two consecutive turns, so I now have two of them to play around with. I'm actually not sure what I want to do with them. Also:



Lewwyn retreated, meaning my super infantry is still very much alive. Anyway, here's what he had left on the hill:



15 shot-up units. I got easy odds on the rest of those, so I went through each unit picking and choosing battles to get an extra promo (whether that was 2xp needed, 1xp, etc). Liiiike this:



That guy's gonna be a beast. Last battle against medic scout.



Lewwyn brought along a single worker for whatever reason, so I captured that too. I also asked for that city back from Azza.



Anyway, I need to heal a tad before heading into Lewwyn's land. YES, I understand the irony. However, it really is the right choice here . Anyway, I gave one of my infantry medic, so a good deal of them will be ready to go next turn. If I do that, that means I attack his border city on T225. If I wait one more turn I add several more units. We'll see if that's necessary. Probably not. I upgraded a few Knights to Cavs. I will probably upgrade a few more units, but I'm going to need to hold back a bit soon, because Mackoti is on the fast-track to Destroyers, and he's a few turns ahead of me on that. I can't let that happen, because that's the one thing that could put me in serious danger. That sucks because I'm really hurting by STILL not having Biology, but I don't have a choice. Hopefully I can start picking up some capture gold to help me out.

[scooter]

My life is now complete.

[SevenSpirits]

Nice job saving your city!

[Evel Kanyevel]

My life is now complete.

Why? Because some IMPOSTER thinks he can READ? HE CAN'T READ! HE'S NOT A GENIUS! I'M A GENIUS! I'M YEEZUS!! YOU KNOW WHAT THAT RHYMES WITH?

GENIUS!!!

Anyway, nice job beating up that other guy. He is clearly not a genius.

[scooter]

I'VE DONE IT NOW. Kanye and his various imposters are descending upon the Vikings.

Nice job saving your city!

Thanks! Granted, when you have to say things like "boy I sure am glad my capital had walls!" in the age of factories, something has gone horribly wrong. But it's nice to save the capital.


Lewwyn has been logging in as "Poked Bear" for the last month or so. So of course I logged in as "Poked Viking" last night just for fun. Couldn't help myself. I'll revert to normal next time my turn is up.