[Spoilers] Old Harry's Game

[Bigger]

I like the police state plan, if you can be certain altincham is the only city he'll take, and you can rebuild it at a later date.

I don't think you can choose your new capital, but I don't know the algorithm it chooses to pick a capital. you can always build a palace in a preferred spot.

[Old Harry]

Turn 86?

So this seems familiar but subtly different... You can see a small number of units in the south of this picture. Crewe is actually empty, but I'm not going to take it back until he's more than a tile away.


So I'm going to go with the same cat-first attack on Exeter as last time. This time I'm going to put promotions on only a couple of the cats (as barage II seems pretty good) and a couple of Horse Archers (for shock). I'll send in the promoted cats last, when the odds hopefully improve a bit.


Yay!


Yadda yadda yadda, I don't think I did as well this turn, but I cleverly finished off the last unit with a spear who is now sitting unscathed in Exeter, eying up the horses in those there hills... Noble - I made the lines all the same size, over to you


So the Lower League empire is back up to seven cities, should be eight next turn, then possibly back down to seven the turn after I'm packing Exeter and Forest Green with spears, and I want to hit Serdoa's stack with HAs next turn to flank away the catapults. Unfortunately he'll be on a hill, so I don't know if it'll be worth it. I'll have two chariots (to hurt the spears) and about 10 HAs in range next turn...


Demos - note my power went down about 25k more this time than last


Oh, and I nearly forgot to revolt to police state, but caught it just before I ended turn.

[Old Harry]

Turn 87

Aha ha ha ha ha! No.


Looks like Darlington and Altrincham are in danger.


So some simming means I don't think I can keep either. Nicely done sir. I hope I can take out at least some of his units next turn, but its still not looking promising...


I'm essentially leaving both of them empty. An archer will be ready in Darlington and there will be two archers and a warrior behind the walls of Altrincham. Maybe I should have given up Exeter for peace, but I'd rather try to make this more costly for Serdoa now that I've no chance of winning. The most important thing about this turn is this:

Serdoa just whipped hugely! I'm expecting another big stack on Exeter's doorstep very soon and I don't think I'll be taking part in the game much past turn 100. But at least Azza and Hydra both have a chance now...

[Qgqqqqq]

Why'd you whip walls and not a defender?
(Especially considering the cultural defence...)

[Old Harry]

Because my only hope is to kill a couple of units, so I thought upping the strength of the defending units would be more likely to do that than adding another fairly weak unit (also catapults mean that more units aren't necessarily better). I don't know if that was the best move, didn't sim it out. I could have built an archer or whipped an axe or spear - which would you have gone for?

[Qgqqqqq]

Depends on his composition - archer if mixed, spear if horse, axe if melee.

The point is that a) walls multiply the strength of defenders, so only useful if there's a decent defence within and b) you have 60% cultural defence (walls provide 50%) meaning that your only benefit from them is the slower bombardment - and if your army isn't yet in place he's very unlikely to stop and bomb.
This (probably) makes the walls functionally useless, and definitely of less use then another defender.

[Bigger]

Depends on his composition - archer if mixed, spear if horse, axe if melee.

The point is that a) walls multiply the strength of defenders, so only useful if there's a decent defence within and b) you have 60% cultural defence (walls provide 50%) meaning that your only benefit from them is the slower bombardment - and if your army isn't yet in place he's very unlikely to stop and bomb.
This (probably) makes the walls functionally useless, and definitely of less use then another defender.

oh I didn't realize you had 60% cultural defense... walls add 50%, but culture and walls don't stack, so Q's right, there's no real point to building walls when you have 60% culture defense.

[Old Harry]

Turn 88

So my cunning walls didn't do much good Only killed a couple of axes and a cat (ignore the one at the top, I just did that).


And he still has a bunch of catapults in that stack, so I'll send in the horse archers... I lose a couple of horse archers and a chariot. And the horse archers flank away 7 out of 8 catapults. Will that be enough?


That leaves him with 11 units that can attack Crewe, while I'll have 13 defending units. So I'm keeping it, but I'd like to keep as many horse archers as possible...


I'll only have two axes, an archer, a catapult and a horse archer that have any chance of winning a fight. But he's only got four axes that aren't redlined, so hopefully he won't kill many defenders...

I hope to mop up the rest of his axes next turn, then I'll concentrate on getting plenty of units into Exeter. And Ipswich. And resettle Altrincham.

I really like this power graph. And I can't wait to look at it next turn too!


Because I've finally got him down to around about my level (I assume Serdoa is rival best):

[SevenSpirits]

Looks like Darlington and Altrincham are in danger.

Hey Harry, someone in the lurker thread pointed out there was a different move of horse archer out of Darlington done in these two screenshots. It doesn't look like a big problem to me, but would you mind explaining?

Very exciting war here btw!

[Old Harry]

Oh, it looks like I didn't replay a move right after a miss-click - usually I've been working out my domestic stuff, taking stock of the situation, saving, doing some simming and then coming back to the game. I miss-clicked shortly after taking the first pic, then re-loaded to my post-domestic stuff save.

I thought I'd played the same moves but obviously the HA that couldn't escape Darlington on the Galley must have attacked, withdrawn, then run away first time round, while when I replayed I moved him 2N instead. I do remember wondering where he'd gone when I looked at the turn last night. In my defense it was pretty late, but that's still pretty bad. I don't think there were any subsequent fights, but I'm not sure what the implications for the RNG are.

I'd offer to delete the HA, but Serdoa killed it already... Any thoughts on how/if I need to make it up and more importantly how to manage complicated war turns? I do want to be able to re-load if I miss-click, but perhaps I shouldn't let myself, and should play with more of a pitboss mind-set? (Although I'd love to have re-loaded several worker moves I've screwed up for Gillette too, so maybe I just don't have one...)