[SPOILER] [PB38] OT4E plays this one because lurking around takes too much time

[OT4E]

Oh chumchu, where are you when you are so needed?

[chumchu]

You seem to be doing fine with the combat rolls on your own =)

About strategy: GJ:s game seems to be beyond repair now. We should push on to finish him as soon as possible to avoid fighting too many defenders. After that we should have enough land to be competitive if we can hold on to it. Archers in border cities and a central placed force of numidians should work for now.

I would hold of raiding Elkad for a while unless there is a perfect opportunity. We need to finish GJ and absorb his cities and build economy. I think we will be attacked OH when he have converted his better economy into a technology lead. It may be as early as elephants and catapults but it will probably be at knights.

About tactics: what are our forces available to attack spirit stream in two turns? Taking it for cheap would seal the deal.

I'm going to check the game this weekend and see if I have any ideas.

[OT4E]

We can have 6 full hp numids attacking it next turn and 2 wounded. But 4 of the will be across river unfortunately. Also we have 4 chariots at various amount of hp.
He will most likely have 4 swords and archer with 40% hill and river. I dont think that there is much chance to breakthrough.

If we want to push forward we need to pull him on exchanges and cut surrounding cities from capital. But in any case he can sit in capital and fortify for pretty long if he just wants to deny us well being

[OT4E]

I moved some numidians to Polarity Sect, it is the bird in hand and we need to take it with minimum loses. I also unloaded axes there.


Wounded numidians are healing and I am planning to make a raid on the city which is currently concealed by fog.

Some more pictures:




And here is Elkad stealing the last city site he could:


You must be right, it is not good time to open another front, though I am pissed off by what is this guy doing. But I realized that with Machinery we will be able to make trebutchets. So we will just whip 4 and visit those cities. And I now think we dont need his backline cities because we will be unable to maintain so much land . Hope we will finally get out of this economic hole we have fallen in. 31 GNP against 310 is so nice, yeah?

[OT4E]

This turn we had moderate luck.


GJ may think different because of 2 withdraws but for us withdrawns can promote or get involved in combats effectively, and if we wait for them to heal we will hardly be able to take anything else

Here is the overview of GJ's lands


I didnt finish turn because I am not sure what to do now. You are welcome to take a look and make your input

[OT4E]

I have to take back my words about luck in fear to anger random gods. The luck is very good so far and we are doing hammer effective war so GG havent even got GG despite of being imp and fighting in his own lands. Thought he will get one very soon.

Time is not working for us and GJ's cap can produce spear in 2 turns and after he whipped it I believe he can get 3 spears consequently. Also making spears is much better thing for him than actually making swords. Other cities are big and have high production in addition to the plenty of forests he can chop.

I will make some kind of maneuvers around but I dont believe we can get anything before trebutchets. Out primary goal is to keep exchanging units because huge stacks are hard to beat even with trebs. The secondary goal is to make potential threats for several cities so he will have to make different kind of units and will be unable to consolidate.

10 turns till GE. If we make some overflows and prechops we can pop out a circle of trebs in 2-3 turns.

In 2 turns our furs must let our cities breathe better for a little while. I also rely on islands to recover our economics.

[chumchu]

Now I have looked at the game.

Micro: My first suggestion is to let some of the core cities that are growing into unhappiness produce workers. Maybe Hadrumetum, Kerkouanem, Leptis and Carthage. We are at 9 workers for 13 cities atm and have a lot of tiles to improve. We will need a lot of worker labor soon for water mills as well.

Tactics: do you think that we can break through anywhere? Maybe we could ferry two city raider 3 axes to attack the spears in blood stream. Canwe set up a fork on the hill north east of Spirit stream.

Strategy: can we push for more right now? Our forces are spread out and healing while GJ is scrambling defenders. Neither of us are ready for combat but who is the the least ready? With trebs we should be able to take his cities with less risk but it is very slow: 10 turns for the tech, then build, then movement and then bombarding down walls.

[OT4E]

Strategy with trebutchets is horrible to be honest. In 15 turns we have serious risk to get attacked with knights from back or to lose all the GJ's land. But what are other options? I dont see... Do you?

So imho all we can do now is to reduce the time we spent on building and delivering trebutchets.

What do we need to do in the addition to this is to continue dragging his army and exchanging. Otherwise he will bring 30 units to his cap and we wont take it.

Sending 2 axes by water will not do anything. He has 1 archer there now and he will whip another even from scratch. Against archers on hill our axes will not have positive odds unfortunately. But the plan is to deliver 4 trebutchets there from our the back cities which will not reach his capital by foot in measurable time.

With workers I agree I will try to schedule them somewhere and may be include in overflow for trebutchet schema.

[chumchu]

I think so too. But it has to be stated.

I think our position boils down to a series of questions.

1) Can we take out GJ with only numids?
If yes, continue numid production. If no go to question 2

2) Have we claimed enough land to be able to get an advantage over our neighbours if we can hold it and develop it?
If yes, we should aim at building economy, infrastructure and defenses so that we are ready to counter any attack. If no go to question 3

3) What are the best ways for us to get more land?
Is it more settlers? Is it choking GJ and then going in with trebs? Is it sneak attacking Elkad?

4) If we can get more land how do we defend it against an attack later on?
Is it a preemptive strike against OH? Is it construction for elephants and catapult? Is it feudalism for protective longbows? How do we afford those techs?

[OT4E]

1) We cant break him down with only numids unless he continues making mistakes. The chance to take his capital before trebs is low but if we stop making pressure we wont get any chance for sure. However making pressure supposes a stream of fresh units invading mongolia. My experience says that people do mistakes and GJ is not very attentive.

2) Ridiculous question considering we have 21th land count in demographics among remaining 22 civs. We need more land.

3) I count Elkad's land as ours. The reason for that I didnt commit on attack on him is that that land is not good for us. It has no rivers, moderate food count and no coasts. For now it would only drag our economics down. Elkad will get all the chops but I dont really care.

Deep inside of my black soul I think that the best play for us would be to withdraw everything immediately and attack OH. He is pushing population, making huge commerce and making some wonder. But I will not do it because we have fish to fish deal and because of personalities. I know GJ plays pretty passive when starts losing while OH fights till the very last unit and ready to put all efforts to break someone's game in response.

Answering your question 3) I think the best way is to collect land from GJ and hope that his neighbor DZ will be happy with his early conquest and will not bother us much. After taking GJ's core we can return to Elkad and restore the justice.

4) The main problem is that OH can get golden age and rush to knights while we are on the way to maths. I dont see how to deal with it effectively. We must prepare our own golden age thats why I will make library in Colossus city as soon as we get writing (~2 turns). This means that in like 20 turns we will be ready to run GA.

The main strategy will be to continue building units. High power is the best demotivator for invaders. OH has other neighbors too, whom will he attack? The least equipped one I think.

No matter where this power is because aggressor knows that 30 numids somewhere else will once come for him if he enters open war with us. But we will start stacking numids and trebutchets in the middle of our land once we launch the first cycle of trebs. If everything goes well we attack Elkad with them if not we use them to bury some knight stacks. Numids hit 3rd promotion quick and we can promote them against mounted to get appropriate odds.

Our economics is also 21th in the world. But I cant say it was unexpected. We focused on military and production. We are catching up in food and now we are slightly below average. Our hammer output is decent (#6 if I remember correctly) and I am preparing more mines. So we dont need to whip much to continue climbing up in power. Now we are 2nd with 300k soldiers against 320k for #1.

I hope a cycle of trebutchets will be our last sacrifice of population and further on we will only grow on watermills, farms and coasts till we will be ready to rework mines into windmills.