Aurorarcher plays again

[Aurorarcher]

Here's the power graph situation. It's not great. Together me and Mig are pretty much same as mack.



I have top production though so there's that. Mack has top food and is in Conquest so yeah, so much for that production #1 spot...

Currently recovering from that hit earlier. I've calmed down a bit since but that was annoying to happen. Building ships again and Dwarven Druids. Me and Mig are pretty much allied at this point. No reason to do anything else than work together against greater threat I think. It's just hard to coordinate an attack. I've got Hawks now which should be handy to use with Druids.



This spot is likely the best spot where we could attack together with enough ships. I can hit Mutanbo from Idris (or wait, not quite but I can use Crush from there). My Frigates can be 6-movers with Air I. Mig is surely building Frigates of his own now because I gave him Iron. Mack only has Privateers. The problem is how to get here. Mack will see everything many turns in advance with floating eyes. But this likely the only spot where we could work together so...

Mig also got hit quite badly recently (all of that not showing in power graph just yet). Not sure where that happened. He offered Copper for Copper trade earlier maybe to say something. Probably not sign of "friendship" anymore as we've sent so many of those earlier and I believe we understand the situation in similar way. Or maybe his Copper city is in danger? And that is Idris. I sent the Copper for Copper back.

[Aurorarcher]

Well, Idris just got razed.



Here's what Mig had inside it T132 (he played his turn after this before mack went in).



And another city north too got burnt. A lot smaller city though. These ships could be full of mages, so in theory 21 (hopefully not even close to that). I got maelstromed twice so I assume two mages with Air II, rest probably Death mages. Maybe some fireballs. I had a chance to hit one of his Privateers (not in the stack) so I did.



Flawless win. Unfortunately that ship had nothing on board because rival best power went down by 15k. I had another Firgate nearby but I'm just one tile off from hitting those Mage carriers... dang!

Spectres like this might explain how easy the attack was.



Here's where the 2nd city was razed.



Mig is likely capturing Hyol soon.



Decent stack but if it'll face those Mages it can't survive too long.

[Aurorarcher]

Game is pretty much over. Mack razed Mig's cap with clever play from boats. His Mages are amazingly well promoted! Like these guys.



Best of them have 9 promotions! 3 of those are free promotions but after that still 6 levels! Wow. When these guys reach my cities I'm officially dead. Anyway, while I'm on it I might actually take a city!



The city was empty last turn but he put a super spectre in it this turn. Good thing Elementals are immune to Death, otherwise no chance of taking it... so here we go.



Won and took the city. Kept it of course because if I can hold this I might be able to do some tricks... I have now 4 Earth Elementals in the city + 4 Druids. He has billions Privateers around with zillion fireballs or whatever. But. Those are 13 str units immune to Death + 4 10 str Druids with Magic Resistance. So I like my chances. At the end of turn I realized I had forgotten to give my Druids C1. Well, I hope that doesn't bite me. My 3 privateers will sink of course.

Finished Elementalism at the end of turn. Going to turn all my manas into Earth to boost my only units that can match mack's units.

[Aurorarcher]

T135 opened with some good news and terrible news.



Let's see what happened, well I see I lost the ships (expected) but what else? It's annoying to play against an opponent that you always question his attack orders. Here's what I mean:

I had two axes + worker on the jungle where it says "my axes were here". Both +30% strenght + 50% hill defense +20% death resistance. So that makes my str 6 axes str 12 against his Spectres. I got maelstromed down to 0.70 hp. Okay, makes sense. Also my privateers got hit my malestrom. Makes sense. However, what does not is the part where his Satyr killed my scout. Why would he suddenly jump elsewhere and kill my irrelevant scout? Then he comes back to this area and kills one of my Privateers that was 1SW of the captured city. He "lost" one fireball in the process. Then he goes after my Axes. Kills them and and only afterwards kill my Axes with Spectres? He is choosing the order of attacks carefully... and the order doesn't seem to make sense to me.

Okay, the good news? Well, as he got close enough I had a chance to hit his Privateers near Granite Village and kill some of them. I had 4 ships nearby to hit those 3 privateers. First I tried to hurt the top defender.



Retreat! And his Privateer is now down to 52 hp. It still acts as a top defender because there are Mages in other ships.

So I have odds to kill it.



Won. Top power went down by 15k so the Prviateer was empty as expected.

This is where the better news start. I figured I could kill one of the other Privateers (I had one Privateer and Frigate left, both str 9). Against the C1 I didn't have odds but I went in.



Won barely! Top power went down by 51k. Mages are 12k so there goes 3 Mages to the sea! Ha! Better to be happy from small victories before he walks to my doorstep...

Can I kill the last one?



Won that one too and top power went down by 51k again. So another 3 mages.

He'll kill my ships for sure but that's fine. He has 4 Privateers nearby with 3 cargo, so probably 12 mages (a bit further away, found them with my Hawk). Those could theoretically hit Granite Village but I should have odds. The plan is to bring ship into the captured city. Then I can fork his coast.

Power situation is not great.



Even with killing 100k of his power the graph goes up. Mine goes down a bit... and Mig's, well I hope you still have some units to slow mack down even a bit... Mig lost another pair of cities too so...

[Aurorarcher]

T136 I managed to bring my 7 speed Frigate into the city.



Only to see that mack's bringing in Satyr. He was already preparing heavily against a fork. He was summoning skeletons in all his coastal cities, even in his cap that was only defended by a scout a turn earlier! Okay. I was happy, I thought I could survive with 4 Earth Elementals (not shown in pic, summoned them eot) + 4 Druids. Turns out I was wrong. I actually forgot he could bombard down the defenses with fireballs... so many things to remember and easy to forget. Well, here's what happened.

Part 1:



Part 2:



Not good. This time no complaints for the order of attacks as everything makes sense here, so well done there mack... for once I guess you play fair .

I can upgrade new Druids so not a problem there. But losing this spot hurts as it was probably my only chance to do something before the game is called. I was going to use Druid's ability to move on Mountains (I think mack didn't know this). Oh btw, if others want to end it that's fine. I'd rather play a new game than keep playing against mack. I'm sure Cairo would like to play a little bit more now that he has Mages (finally!), Mig surely wants to move on (down to 3 cities). If a lurker sees Cairo ready to move on then yeah, that's game.

[Aurorarcher]

That's 12 Privateers full of nasty magic. The end is near...



Or is it?

Time to use Crush!

I used it twice.

Wanna know the result mack before your turn? Well, keep reading! (this is partly a joke and partly not... very often I see mack browsing this forum, then when I post suddenly some "Guests" appear and mack disappear...). For that + replaying turns for better combat results I find it impossible to play against mack in the future (if new games will be played). I can't prove anything of course, nor do I have time or will to do so. Here on RB we trust others to play fair in general... yeah but here just the feeling that you're getting fooled makes it impossible to trust the guy to play fair. It's actually a shame because you're a very talented player, why would you need to ruin the fun? Curious to read after the game how things went on Dave front, and by that I mean "lucky wins".

Okay, here's some Crushing stuff.



This is after the first Crush.



Then retreated to a hill. I also killed his top defender at very good odds. All his Privateers are hurt very badly.



I also now know his full cargo. That is:

- 5 Mud Golems so he has taken advantage of Blasting Workshop, nice play there. Cheap mages. Those are promoted with empower V as his Barnaxus is C5 IIRC. So that's 6 str fireballs (4*1.5).
- 2 Satyrs
- 5 Mages
- 1 PoL
- 2 Chariots
- 4 Warriors
- 2 Skeletons

Total of 21 units + 11 ships (not that I killed 1).

Not sure what kind of Mages he has but certainly at least 2 Air II, couple Death II for sure ... so yeah he can definitely kill my ships + Druids if he really tries. I promoted my Druids to +50% fire damage defense. Never used these much but I believe it makes his fireballs only 3 strength against me? Or maybe it gives me +50% strength while defending against them. I always forget which way this works.

I have a lot of ships nearby for next turn if he doesn't move carefully and I believe he'll be unable to take any cities with his units that are so badly hurt (not summons ofc but others). Or if he does I can kill some of his ships. Interesting.

[Aurorarcher]

Well, he moves in and wins some very lucky fights and razes my most important port city. Just look at this stuff.

First part:



He starts by killing my ships nearby that I brought last turn. But look at the order of attacks!

1. He starts by attacking my Privateer (I retreat)
2. Shoots my Firgate with a fireball (loss, obviously, eh...). That was str 11 Frigate!
3. Only after that meaning... (on purpose switching targets) kills my Privateer that retreated.
4. Then attacks my Firgate again and finally kills it.

Eh... yeah. Does this attack of order make sense?

Then he moves to attack Rockhomme. Let's see what I had in the city the turn before.



Well, not too much I can say now. But I have Bambur. 8 str, 130% strenght, +25% fortify, +55% defense +20% against spectres +40% when he attacks from boat...

So mack had very injuried units remember that from last turn. He moves in and uses Maelstrom twice. Okay. My Bambur is hurt only 7%! So Bambur is down to 93 hp.



Rest of my units probably down to 70 hp or close. Too lazy to calculate.

So first he carefully puts the city defense down to 28%. Then the attack begins. Remember he is also attacking from boat so that's +40% defense for me. So all my units get +68% defense bonus + 25% fortify for total of 93% defense bonus. Axes also +30% to that so 123%.

That warrior against my Bambur must've been like 5-6 vs. 25 or so. Must've been close to 0% odds. Shame that mack hasn't turned combat log on so I can't see the odds... He must've made some hits with his "luck" as we know. Then I lose an Axe against his Chariot that was down to 50 hp last turn. Maybe those healed some as he had PoL on board though. Not 100% sure how that works.

It continues.



Bambur kills one Spectre. That fight must've been close to 13,5 vs 25... Not likely to get very many hits in. But probably did. Then later beats another warrior. Again not likely to get many hits... Then kills Bambur with PoL. You can see that Bambur was quite badly hurt at this point as weak Paramander defended before it against an adept! I sure hope you report this battle in deatail mack.

Here's the rest.



So yeah...

I don't even know why I'm posting all this to be honest. Maybe just to remind all of you why it's not the greatest idea to play with mack.

[mackoti]

First of all I am realy sorry I didnt let the combat on, actualy I didnt changed anithing just reinstaled FFH some tiem ago and the callback thing disapeared, I entered in game cause i wanted to gave you an answer and i seen your was on, i should had put them back, I belived were on as last time we played with them on  our agreement.

So I will try to answer as i rememer at few batles here.

First atacked privateer at 84,7% odds and yours retreat(dont think i was crazy lucky here)
Second  batle, Well i was getting mud golems from continent and i was sorting units i take with me so that remained home so i shoot with its so i know he wa used, logistic was very complicated for this batle as i let many units which were in boats home and get new ones..., so yeah just finished that part with those units.I think my firebal scored one hit there and I had a near healthy privater and if  i had better luck i would had tried directly on second frigate(for me has alot of sense)
So after i finish your privateer at i think 96%, so no crazy luck just yet.
Get a second firebal whcih makes enough damage and kill  frigate at some 90% odds if I remeber right...I think everithing right to here...

Well, not too much I can say now. But I have Bambur. 8 str, 130% strenght, +25% fortify, +55% defense +20% against spectres +40% when he attacks from boat...

So mack had very injuried units remember that from last turn. He moves in and uses Maelstrom twice. Okay. My Bambur is hurt only 7%! So Bambur is down to 93 hp.

Well  many things from here are juts not true, I had 4 units which had amphibious, and some had promo and healed, and some were fresh units with no damage ,7 of them(yeah casting haste in boats and gain the move is stupid).

So first he carefully puts the city defense down to 28%. Then the attack begins. Remember he is also attacking from boat so that's +40% defense for me. So all my units get +68% defense bonus + 25% fortify for total of 93% defense bonus. Axes also +30% to that so 123%.

That warrior against my Bambur must've been like 5-6 vs. 25 or so. Must've been close to 0% odds. Shame that mack hasn't turned combat log on so I can't see the odds... He must've made some hits with his "luck" as we know. Then I lose an Axe against his Chariot that was down to 50 hp last turn. Maybe those healed some as he had PoL on board though. Not 100% sure how that works.

Again not for all was 40% from the boat atack and to I had strenght 9 spectres with enchanted blades.So i moved my units near, casted dispel so no buffs on the units, and at the beggining my chariot with the hammer and amphibious atack hat 72% on the defender unit(paramander). And a spectre had even better so i didnt felt like risking a a chariot so I think atack started by you killing a spectre which had 78% or something like that(I supose this was lucky from my part). The problem was i had just 4 spectres and if Bambur left not dead and i finish my spectres, might be imposible to kill him.  So after that axes defended against spectres and  bambur apeared to defend against anithing else, best odds at that point was one of chariots around 5% i think so what to do one of the wariours takes the hammers and try and gets a hit, at this point bambur doesnt defend against the other units so i kill few and after he apears again so we use a spectre at 27% odds which does  alot of damage. Btw all the other kills were over 60%, even lost a mage at 89%. the priest of leaves had first 47% odds on bambur but didnt take it preferd to get in a wariou with the hammer which had something like 20%, and final kill was over 75% if I remeber right.

I understand your frustation as I remember in the game with Ethne I had same reaction you winning 14 out 15 batles and i was making math in some of those you had under 60% odds.

So I realy dont think here were any lucky batles, i think I even could get better outcomes.

[mackoti]

Well I got shot down. Look at those ships with all those promotions. That's plenty, I forgot Air I giving +1 movement. And of course mack won all the meaningful battles. Notice the order of his attacks. Why not use all fireballs first to collateral my Frigates? I guess it was worth risking his Privateers first? Oh well... I would be very curious to know the odds of all the combats because he attacked with str 7 privateers. Maybe you can tell me after the game mack? I'm just curious because after Maelstom my Frigates were down to 90 hp so still very strong. Regular Fireballs only get around 3% odds against them (unless his mage had some combat promos)!

Unfortunately in those ships I had 3 Dwarven Druids . All of which had 5 xp (could summon Earth Elementals). This is a big hit but we're not giving up.

If you tell me the turn i can tell you exactly but from i remembere, I went with first firebals and next one was tagetting still the weak one and the big ships were near the maximum colateral damage they could take, so normaly i killed that one and  next firebal to atack a more healthy one.First i didnt know why that happened but after looking at combat  was becasue you had units in boat and thosse never defend if other boat s there, so my order of atack makes perfect sense but I see saying nasty things is a custom lately.


Edit : I found the save odds were 88%, 97%, 95% and 96%

[Aurorarcher]

First of all thanks for the replies. There might be chance to discuss this further. Some things I said earlier might've been a bit too harsh (obviously during game the emotions take over as you well know) but some of things I said still stand. The two battles that you explained:

- the 2nd one (where you drowned my Druids) makes perfect sense. I actually wasn't complaining about the odds (I knew you had odds) but the order of attacks. I found it out later that units with Chanelling I or II make the ship less likely to defend (just like you explained). So your order of attack makes perfect sense!

- the 1st one (the last battle where you razed Rockhomme) is still a bit mystery to me. Can you show a picture of your units and their health? Because unless they healed a lot (like did you have Regeneration?) all of them must've been injuried. I did double Crush spell on your units and it hits all of them hard. The attack order against ships and your "reason" for the odd order is that the game moved to different units is something that I find very odd. I'm not sure I'm buying this explantation. But okay. Possible.

Then there's this one battle that is actually the one that made me most worried that you're cheating. And I didn't want to believe it but some things make you worried, and after that it's all downhill when new battles prove yet again to be very questionable. Okay what is that battle? It's this one:

T135 opened with some good news and terrible news.



Let's see what happened, well I see I lost the ships (expected) but what else? It's annoying to play against an opponent that you always question his attack orders. Here's what I mean:

I had two axes + worker on the jungle where it says "my axes were here". Both +30% strenght + 50% hill defense +20% death resistance. So that makes my str 6 axes str 12 against his Spectres. I got maelstromed down to 0.70 hp. Okay, makes sense. Also my privateers got hit my malestrom. Makes sense. However, what does not is the part where his Satyr killed my scout. Why would he suddenly jump elsewhere and kill my irrelevant scout? Then he comes back to this area and kills one of my Privateers that was 1SW of the captured city. He "lost" one fireball in the process. Then he goes after my Axes. Kills them and and only afterwards kill my Axes with Spectres? He is choosing the order of attacks carefully... and the order doesn't seem to make sense to me.

I quoted my own post and marked the combats that I question. You first maelstromed me which makes perfectly sense. But then you move to your Satyr that is nowhere close here? The game won't choose that unit (Satyr) to be next moved automatically as your mages still had moves left after casting their spell... so what is that? Why? Then you alter the attacks between my privateers/axes. That is also something that makes me suspicious of replaying the turn for better results...

But yeah, I think some things I said were, well, not quite in the spirit of these games. And for that I apologise, not meaning anything bad to you in person. I still have my doubts about the fairness of some combats you take (last game as well, maybe even more there). And for that reason it's likely impossible to play against you again. And that is such a shame as you're a big competitor and you played a very nice game here (and by that I mean how you handled the civ and your start etc.). So I guess I can say good game and goodbye.