[SPOILERS] Pindicator as Qin Shi of China - Boring Ol' Vanilla

[NobleHelium]

Since you're getting into the business, I offer you this:

[pindicator]

That was pretty much how my weekend went with getting my homework done for my Web Development class.

For the next assignment I need to find an API, research it, and create a tutorial / user documentation.

[pindicator]

Turn 161

I probably shouldn't have played the turn at midnight last night...



That was kind of an all-in move when I didn't need to make one. If Cyneheard has more stuff in the fog then I'm in trouble.

[pindicator]

Turn 162, Part 1

I didn't want to make this decision late at night, so I took a ton of screenshots and we're going to haggle it out in this post.

Before that, we played nice with GermanJoey. Maybe I'm making a friend; maybe I'm making a bad deal; maybe both?





The happy for happy trade is superfluous for me. I don't have any city even near the happy cap right now. And the gold trade is a return at a rate somewhere slightly north of 1% so it isn't all that great either. Well, hopefully it pays dividends in how Joey uses it in slowing down the remainder of the world.

Later on I'm going to need to reevaluate my trades; and maybe having some Tier 2 or Tier 3 civs to trade with will help keep options for trading without helping a competitor. But as the smaller civs get gobbled up that will be harder and harder to do.

I finished my caravel in Strand and got my first looks at hte island to my southeast:



Odds I beat both Old Harry and dtay to that island: very slim.


Enough window dressing; let's get to the meat



Something else to keep in mind; here's the cultural borders if I do capture the city:



I'm guessing that if I attack with the knights against Sieteh I'm going to lose 3 knights to take the city, and I'm going to strand another 3 on the tile N of the city as they finish off units and stay in place. That will leave me 4 knights & 1 chariot left to move into the city, along with the main stack of 1 knight, 2 war elephants, 1 pike, 5 CKNs, 6 swords, and 7 catapults. A total of 26 units. I could potentially pull a few more out of Geidi since it will be more secure.

Cyneheard will have 8 knights, 2 war chariots, 1 regular chariot (!?!?), 3 macemen, 1 spear, and 3 catapults (assuming the longbows stay in the capital). Need to assume he'll be able to upgrade all 3 of those mounted units to knights next turn, giving him 11 knights plus 1 for moving units forward.

I'm not so worried about him trying to clean up my knights outside the captured city; that is going straight into the teeth of my attack. I'm worried more about him moving north with the catapults and knights and taking Caladan back and then being able to move against my core(!!!). Or that he may have time to move against Caladan and then return with everything back to the capital thanks to the movement advantages of the defender. Ugh, that's why attacking sucks in Civ4 so much. You're always on the backfoot with mobility; you have to have overwhelming numbers to really accomplish anything. So the units in Caladan are stuck in Caladan to prevent him from getting that back for free.

The units that take Sieteh will then take 3 turns to get to the capital, assuming I just move straight up: 163 & 164 to move against the capital, and 165 to attack. Thankfully due to the positioning of the cities he can only attack straight into Sieteh with his knights; the 1-movers will have to go through my stack; plus, any knights that do attack are going to be stuck outside the city having expended their movement point to attack.

Ideally I'd like to have 5 or 6 good defenders left behind in Sieteh; not enough to prevent him from taking it if he used all his knights, but enough to prevent him from committing those forces. But I'm a little short; committing that kind of defense would mean no anti-knight units for my main stack. But I still will have my knights; I don't think he'll attack out to mop up my knights after attacking Sieteh because that would leave his knights available for retaliation, and 1-for-1 trades help me more than him.

Okay, I think I've decided. I'm going to attack and capture the city.

[Ceiliazul]

[pindicator]

You just can't count on culture to do the right thing in this game...



I think I need to burn it now

[Commodore]

Wow...that's sarcastic.

[NobleHelium]

I think it's even less reliable in Pitboss. And that's a 12.5% return, not 1.25%.

[pindicator]

Turn 162, Part 2

So we burned the city; without the ability to move my stack inside to aid its defense I don't see how letting it stand can be done. Cyneheard could recapture and then we'd be back to the same lack of movement. The city had a forge, a granary, and a market -- 2 of those buildings I get a discount on -- but of course the biggest loss is having to replace it. If I win this war I'm going to need to queue up a lot of settlers to fill the open lands.

We had a lot more success in taking the city than I thought:

• C1 Knight (11.0) v C1 Cover Maceman (14.0) - 24.1% - WIN! 78hp remaining!!!
  
• 96hp C2 Knight (11.52) v Spear (11.4) - 62.95% - Loss. No Damage Done!
  
• C2 Knight (12.0) v Spear (11.4) - 65.4% - Win, 43hp remaining
  
• C1 Knight (11.0) v Elephant (10.5) - 65.13% - Win, 24hp remaining
  

I moved the remaining knights onto the same tile as my attackers and pillaged everything away on both the tile i came from and the one I'm moving to. So we're set up like this now:



Elephantine is empty; I can nab it with a knight next turn. Perhaps a lone sword would have been better but I wanted the flexibility of moving the knights north to rejoin the stack.

We'll just have to see what Cyneheard does. He could potentially eliminate my knight stack and get away clean with it though, especially with those catapults.

[pindicator]

Turn 163

In the end the cost was high:



7 knights lost, 1 knight and 1 war chariot killed, plus a great general birthed in a far away land. Not too great. Add in another knight lost making a not-so-advisable attack (66% odds!) against the war elephant in his stack and I lost 10 knights to burn that city.

I'd do that again. I'm grinding him down. His knights are wounded now, but sadly that GG knight is going to give him some healthy ones shortly. So we're pushing on. We just have to push through the catapults now...



30 unit stack and 8 knights behind them. I also burned elephantine because it seems to be what I do now.

And then there was one more battle to fight:



It went well