Burning Down the House [Mr. Cairo Spoilers]

[Mr. Cairo]

Well, more blood for you this turn as I took Market Garden.

Dave left only a single warrior in the city and evacuated most everything else:


I used a Shock PZ to take the city at 95% odds, but here's a question for any lurkers familiar with FFH2. Why did I gain so much XP from sucha  high-odds battle:


5 xp for winning a 95% battle? It seems a bit excessive. I thought the formula for xp gain was related to the odds of victory. Do units just get that much more xp in FFH2/EitB?

Anyway, I also wanted to kill that other lone Warrior, but in case of a trap I decided to use one of my Warriors (who can all take Shock, thanks to Aggressive+Apprenticeship). And it turned out to be a good call:


If I put all my units on that tile with the Warrior I'll probably be ok, but losing even one PZ would then damage all the units in the city and force me to wait and heal. So I just left the Warrior there. I don't know if one of his unpromoted ones can kill it, but hopefully he wont take the risk and use one of the Shock ones, which I can then kill with a PZ. In either case I'd happilly trade 1 Warrior of mine for 2 of his. Once I get Bronze Weapons I'll just go straight in. The PZs will just be too strong for Dave to fight against without a huge number of Warriors, which I don't think he has.

Speaking of Copper, the Spider attacked last turn and my Warrior killed it. So one more Warrior than planned, but no captured Spider.


2 Turns till Bronze Weapons, unless I have to delay the advance anyway for some reason, in which case I'll settle 1N of it.

I'm going to build a few workers next, and the next couple PZs I'll leave at home for insurance. I don't want to have all my military in Dave's land only to lose my own to a surprise attack (not that anyone else is likely to blindly attack the most powerful civ in the game, although Mack does have the Giants).

[Mr. Cairo]

The economic struggle is real. We'll see how things shape up as I throw down cottages everywhere and Market Garden gets out of revolt, but moving that huge stack out of my terriroty is going to be an expensive prospect, and I'll need a few turns worth of cash to support it before I can take Dave's capital.

Let's hope my copper city wont be too expensive. I'll definitely found on the copper tile itlsef, otherwise I wouldn't be able to work any tiles with commerce. Having Fishing right now would be nice...

[Mr. Cairo]

No time for that, got to go now and surive on the capture gold from Dave's cap. I can't build my copper city and once Market Garden comes out of revolt I'll be sinking fast.

So first I sent my Griffon on a suicide scouting mission to see this:



That's a lot of Warriors, but most are unpromoted, and the ones that are well promoted will not fair that well against my top PZs. In fact, my C3+Sh PZ gets 70% odds on his C3+Sh Warrior on a hill.

Just a C1+Sh PZ gets 96% odds attacking an umpromoted Warrior in the city despite attacking from across a river.

So, in goes the army (to join the barb Warrior), one Warrior stays behind to pillage that farm for some extra cash, my workers are heading home to start build cottages everywhere. My settling party is not doing anything atm. I did some testing in a sim, and it looks like Pyre Zombies get disbanded during strike before anything else, so I need to avoid that (although the first turn of strike no units are lost, so I can survive one turn).

When I hit end turn and Market Garden came out of revolt I had 19 gold in the back and was losing 10/turn. I'll be able to build 1 cottage next turn, so I'll go to -9/turn with 19. So that's three turns (other cottages will come in but wont change that arithmatic) before strike and one turn of strike in which I need to take Dave's cap. I'll also be able to pillage to get money once I've taken his cap (I'll be replacing the farms around his capital with cottages and my happy cap is lower so I won't need the food).

If I go straight in, It'll take me three turns to take his cap probably, attacking across the river (I don't have enough units to take it all at once). Or I use the full 4 turns (I can always delete some units back home if I have to) and move across the river before attacking. It will depend on what Dave does and what my odds look like. I can also use a revolt to gain a turn before strike hits (I could revolt out of Agrarianism to save some cash on civics expenses if I need to, but I don't think it'll be necessary).

My GNP is now in the negatives, so I can't imagine that Dave is happy to see me apparently destroy two civs in this game, but personally, with two civs' worth of territory, I think I can recover from this economic hole (especially once I get City States). And well, from my perspective I would have already lost had I done nothing, as the -10% beakers compounds upon itself, and eventually my PZs would have been outclassed and I wouldn't have been eble to get to Mobius Witches quickly enough.

But thinking about it, going for City-States instead of Bronze Working while continuing to spam settlers might have worked out.

[Mr. Cairo]

Dave only killed the barb Warrior that was coming along for the ride, and pulled back all the rest of his Warriors. At the very least killing that barb warrior took one of his top Warriors out of the fight for the near future.
I moved on to the hill NE of his cap, which still has only three Warriors in it. I imagine the rest of his army moved to the tile 2S of my stack.


I'll find out next turn whether he's going to pile everything into his cap or leave just a few in his cap and the rest back to retake it once I've done so. I now have a little more time before strike (more on that later) so I'll probably move across the river to the hill 1S of my current position. Also, I don't know why I thought my C1Sh PZs had good odds against his regular Warriors in his cap, across the river at least, they don't (~35% odds). Those odds will improve if not attacking across the river.

Also, I found this funny:

My Griffon apparently was worth quite a lot of soldier points
Sure to confuse the hell out of everyone else.

Finally, as I hit end turn, I got very lucky indeed with the apperance of Gems in my core:

For a nice +6 commerce and +1 happy (not that I'm going to grow any of my cities right now, to avoid increased maintenance costs)

[Jabah]

From my limited experience when pretending to attack from 2 tiles away, the river penalty is not taken into account ....
It is indeed the explanation from looking at your previous picture (no river crossing penalty )

[Mr. Cairo]

From my limited experience when pretending to attack from 2 tiles away, the river penalty is not taken into account ....
It is indeed the explanation from looking at your previous picture (no river crossing penalty )

So it is, very strange. Thanks. Also, only just realised the river crossing penalty is 40% in EitB.

On to the turn, I only have a screenshot of the end-state, but suffice to say I moved one Warrior south to have a look around, and saw his army arranged in an interesting fashion. I decided to stick with my plan and moved the rest of my army down to follow:


His larger force with the best Warriors will have to cross the river to attack, and if they try and go around my stack back to Market Garden, well, sure, go ahead. I'll take your cap, upgrade that warrior in MG into a PZ with the capture gold and have two C1Sh PZs in the city on a hill. And once you've sacrificed many Warriors to get through them, the barb city blocks his way forward to my core.

I turned that trailing PZ back to MG because my friends the barbs destroyed the road connection to me cities, which I need to get copper there to upgrade my PZs eventually, and I'll need to cover my workers against barb animals.

If instead he tries to through everything at my stack, well, he's had the opportunity before and hasn't gone for it, and I was fairly sure my PZs would do just fine. But I did after playing the turn go and set up a simulation of this situation and see what would happen if Dave threw every Warrior at my stack, and it wasn't pretty. For him. Every time in every combination all the Warriors died and all the PZs survived.

If he does nothing I attack his cap. The question then is what do I do afterwards, and how (if at all) do I split my army. I think I'd put one healthy PZ and the Warriors in the city (assuming no losses capturing it, which the odds do support) with the one that cook the city, and leave the rest where they are. That should be enough to hold off that stack of 6 unpromoted ones that can attack LBH, but not effect too much the outcome if he send everything at my stack.

Another option is he merges his two stack onto the tile marked "6". I think I'd still do the same thing as above, but the outcome wouldn't be as favourable (probably). I did some testing for that option and found he could retake his cap, but would lose most of his Warriors, and my PZs left on hill would mop up afterwards (and get some promos to heal). I'd be stalled a bit at his cap, but hopefully the capture gold will be enough for me to tech Cartography and revolt to city-states, at which point I'll have Bronze Weapons and an economy that can actually function, letting me build some more PZs to finish the job.

Hopefully my testing was accurate, I'm pretty sure I recreated it properly, but I guess if I was wrong I'll find out when I open the next save to find my entire stack destroyed  

[Mr. Cairo]

So Dave did this:


I guess the two he moved up are so he could attack the city with them.

I needed the capture gold so I took Little Bighorn, but only put my two Warriors in there to defend. In my tests, the Warriors do quite a good job defending against unpromoted ones, and I'd prefer to see Dave spend all those Warriors of his on my own Warriors than my PZs. I'll probably lose the city (and the PZ in there), but if I put another one in the city, my stack outside the city is vulnerable. I could also have moved everything else into the city and deleted the PZs outside the city, but I really want to make Dave actually attack me, and I'd rather lose 2 Warriors and a PZ than 2 PZs. And when I retake the city I'll get some capture gold again.

So I ended turn like this:


Next turn i'll rebuild that road and found my copper city (probably) so that my units are upgraded when they retake LBH.



In retrospect I shouldn't have upgraded any Warriors into PZs, then I would ahve ahd the cash to afford to build a few more and get my copper city.

[Mr. Cairo]

I think, at last, I've reduced Dave's Warrior count by enough to let me safely keep his capital, without deleting the leftover units from my stack. I got lucky in the attack and some of my units won their battles without taking much damage. That, plus some promotions I'd been saving up, has let me put enough units in the city, and on the hill, to prevent a deadly counter-attack by Dave.

First, a recap:
The turn between this one at the last Dave retook his capital with less losses than I would have liked, but did leave a number of Warriors around my stack in groups of two or more, that let me kill 5 Warriors on my turn without moving any of my PZs out from my stack.

This turn he pulled back some and left the customary three Warriors in his Cap, and I decided to go for it.

Here's the situation at the end of turn:


I have two PZs on each stack at 3.6/3.3 health with C3+Sh2. That plus being on a hill should make those stacks pretty much safe from Dave's band of 5 unpromoted Warriors. The other one at 2.5 health could take some promos, but with the river crossing penalty, I don't think that and the scouts will be able to tip the balance. If he sends everything against the stack on the hill, he might get lucky and kill 1 PZ, but I don't think he can retake the city or wipe out my stack on the hill.

Also, you can see on that screenshot that I'm two turns from finishing Cartography. Once I revolt into City-States my economy will be much better and I'll actually get to benefit from these additional cities, as well as finally found my copper city and get Bronze Weapons on my PZs, which will spell the end for Dave.

In other news Auro is at war I think, or perhaps fighting lots of barbs since his power spiked then dived. Bob's power is also going up. I still haven't met Mackoti.

[Mr. Cairo]

I was wrong, or Dave was lucky, or both.

After the game, when you read this Dave, perhaps you could tell me if you did get lucky wins. My testing, although far from perfect, suggested I should have survived quite a few more attacks from unpromoted Warriors. Perhaps I underestimated how much effect being damaged had. In fact, I think that's almost certainly where I went wrong.

Either way he managed to kill 3 of my Pyre Zombies and still have a good number of Warriors ready, including a couple highly promoted ones. So I'm forced to retreat for now. I'll retreat back to Market Garden, where I'll have some reinforcements and should be safe to build up once more, this time with Bronze Weapons, and finish the job. I will also burn his capital if he gives me the chance (he might position his Warriors in such a way to try and intercept my retreating stack, but doing so would leave his cap relatively undefended).

I got to Cartography however, thanks to the capture gold, so I'll be able to revolt to City-States and found my copper city next turn.

Auro and Mack are also fighting, both firing off their Worldspells in the same turn. So hopefully one of them doesn't win quickly and prevent me from eventually conquering Dave. This was my first ever rush in a MP game of civ and I don't want it to be a complete failure

[Mr. Cairo]

I founded my copper city and revolted to City States. My income at 0% science went from -4 to +25, and my GNP isn't in the negative anymore:



The barbs keep destroying the road connection to the front line city, so I'm sending a captured lion there in order to pop it's borders faster than building a monument would. I'll regroup with Bronze Weapons and probably try again. The final results for that first invasion: 2 Warriors and 4 Pyre Zombies lost. 22 Warriors killed and 1 city gained. Let's hope that in round two I'll be able to actually keep his capital. I think the best way to go about it is with a large force of Warriors to garrison the city the turn I capture it. That way all my PZs are in a single stack and I can avoid splash damage.

Now that I can tech again I'll go for KotE. But I think first is Fishing. I have some cities than can work coastal tiles for much needed commerce.