[SPOILERS] Athlete and Lewwyn are SHAKA OF THE VIKINGS

[Lewwyn]

Quick update, just to let you know I will be doing a full update this afternoon. For the last 5 days I've been in bed barely moving, feverish, so thankfully there haven't been many turns. When there have I have simply shuffled some units according to earlier plans I'd made and gone back to sleep. Some things have happened though, and judging by the the looks of the other threads you should be able to guess what I'm talking about.

Suffice to say, I played today's turn and I'm feeling pretty good on all fronts. It's also the (so far) the first day I haven't had a fever, weak legs and nearly fallen down trying to go to the bathroom. I'm feeling so good that I'm sharing too much information!

I'll update the last 3 turns in full, with screenies from each after lunch.

[spacemanmf]

For the last 5 days I've been in bed barely moving, feverish, so thankfully there haven't been many turns.

This is simply not good enough. PBEM6 has been the funnest PBEM to follow recently (PBEM13 excepting, of course).

[Rowain]

I'll update the last 3 turns in full, with screenies from each after lunch.

Looking forward to it

[Lewwyn]

Well my earlier post ended up a bit of a lie. I got tired after lunch and fell asleep again. On the plus side I'm feeling much better this evening and now its later at night I'm wide awake, ready to get caught up here.

So without further ado,

Turn 155:

I was greeted by this when I opened the save:



Sonofabith. Well, it wasn't outright gifting but it was as close as it comes to that. Check out the log:



Right so on the turn before TRD happens to move his units out of the city but for one bowman. Then you say tasty, declare war and then TRD offers peace the next turn? Oh and by the by, he also "captures" all of TRDs workers, 3 or 4 of them.

Now at the time I wasn't feeling so hot, it was the first turn in a while and I was coming off a high of razing TRD's cap. SO I just wrote a quick "sometimes youo gotta do what you gotta do" missive to Nakor. I'm regretting that now that I'm in full control of my senses again because I would have liked to have played it a little more hardlined. I fear Nakor not anymore... at least the current Nakor. He's tecking up a storm though so I fear "rifles" Nakor more than anything else. but phracts Nakor is "neutralized" by a standing army of 8 - 10 ish pikes, 5 - 8 ish cats and walls and castles in all border cities (working on the castles, not finished yet.) But not to get ahead of myself plenty of good stuff left in turn 155.

I explored TRD's Humility and found:



That looks like a Caravel... TRD is going Naval defense as predicted. That trireme is looking dead, but I will be able to avenge as you can see the galleon is close:



Also you can see my timeline based on the landed cat. I'm still on schedule from last update. 5 turns to humility. I'll get into more details as we progress.


I ended turn and got a little shock:



TRDs Xbow and bowman that had emptied from temperance were RIGHT THERE. I didn't see them earlier because Hel's border hadn't popped. Turn ended, it did and I can see that the half dead zerker I had unloaded quickly in order to move the galleon within range of the trireme was in death range of this xbow. Great...

The only upside is TRD did not have vision on that tile because of the hill so depends which direction he goes. Guess you'll see next turn.


Turn 156:


Annnnnnd....



SUCCESS! Well, lucky is more apt. TRD wanders from an easy kill towards inevitable death. You can also see Nakor's spoils and his new workers. Well this turn was quick. I don't remember much because I was feverish, but here's a good surprise:



Well not so much good as funny really. TRD had an Xbow this far East on his island? Can't believe it was hiding. Its all good though! I moved the cat along its designated path, dropped the treb and 4 zerkers off on top of it. My GG has 67% odds on the crossbow even though the crossbow is on a hill. So it probably has 80% odds defending against the Xbow. No worries.

Then the galleon hit TRDs Caravel... no damage! No interruptions. Time to see what the next turn has in store.



Turn 157:


Now this is the turn I played today. I scouted Nakor a bit, no phracts are marching towards me. I decided to start markets on my two island cities. My capital doesn't even have a market. Crazy.

Anyway, the only real interesting thing was the continuation of the naval invasion:



Sorry, but my screenies came out blank so I couldn't put all the units on. I tried to list what was in the stack, but I forgot one zerker there too. There's actually: 1 cat, 1 treb, 3 zerk, 1 GG zerk

On the boats are 1 cat, 1 treb, 2 zerk, 1 longbow.

You can see the yellow line is next turn. The orange is the following turn with the orange circle unloading siege and longbow. Red is full attack, zerkers from boats.

Now the crossbow could get ahead of me on TRD's turn, but it end up on flat land and my GG would probably beat it. I don't WANT to have to deal with that though because then even if I kill it I have one less unit to take the city with. Ah well at least he'll have one less unit and it won't be in the city.

That's pretty much the end as of right now. All caught up.

But what this? The turns in my inbox. Unfortunately, its almost 3 AM now. I will play it, but the update will have to wait till tmr morning.

[Lewwyn]

Played the turn last night as stated, and I'm feeling pretty good about the assault:



Here you can see TRD has his crossbows and bowmen. He did NOT move the one crossbow, instead left it behind! So I left it behind me and I'm not worrying about it at all. If he doesn't want to lose it by attacking or getting in front of my units then awesome, one less unit for me to worry about in the humility assault.

Next turn I unload the galleon and move everything to the staging tile. I will keep the galley and caravel there though and have the last 2 zerkers attack amphibiously. The Galleon will head back and pick up a longbow, zerker and settler .

Note, I sent the longbow off and put another zerker onboard. The longbow had no xp or promotions and I felt it was a waste no to go with another zerker. The zerker has combat 1, cover and another promo ready. When attacking a city it already gets 10% bonus too. Its just a stronger city raider even against crossbows.

In other news, TRDs wandering units moved towards an improvement I didn't want vandalized so I:



They have odds defending. If TRD moves off of defensive terrain, those units will die. But to do anything to hurt me he has to either move off of that type of terrain or attack a city(fail). Moving the longbow here pretty much neuters the threat (unless he get luck rolls).

That's fairly close to everything for now. I wanted to show you guys power and GNP graphs of everyone. They are of the last 50 turns for viewing convenience.

Power:



GNP:



In power Nakor appears to have leveled off a bit, though still ahead of Seven.

The GNP graph is the scary one. I may have warred myself into a bit of irrevalency here. Going to have to really consolidate build courthouses, markets and just generally get my economy moving again to catch up. Note though that its not so much my economy tanked, as theirs exploded.

For reference, I have 294 GNP, Seven has 800+


Market, market, market....

[NobleHelium]

Why are you choosing to have two berserkers attack from a ship rather than unloading them? Can't really see a reason for you to choose to do that.

[Lewwyn]

Why are you choosing to have two berserkers attack from a ship rather than unloading them? Can't really see a reason for you to choose to do that.

Yeah, and I bet neither could TRD. Which is why I'm hoping he believes everything has been unloaded and he won't do an extra whip or feel like he needs to upgrade the last bowman. I could start sending the galley back, but I'd only gain 2 movement and I'll sacrifice those to movement to screw with TRD's head. Who knows what he'll think? That's the reason.

Sufficiently crazy enough?

EDIT: Actually I may even have the galley hang back its full movement away from his city to make it seem like its dropped all of it units off too. I may even move it forward and then back so it facing the opposite direction... Mind games baby. I've been using them all war, don't wanna stop now.

[Lewwyn]

Turn again, turn again, jiggity jig, I smell a war and its gonna be big:



SO you can see here that, A) I've discovered guilds, B) Seven's popped Lib from under Nakor's nose, C) Nakor's GA has finally ended. D) Nakor has declared war on Ruff, which is about what I thought he would find to be his easiest and most profitable option. Oh and E) TRD popped a GS in Humility which I'm taking next turn

Nakor still has more land then me and it's driving me crazy. I had to work SO hard for it. I'm thinking about marching my army up to Temperance and demanding he gift it to me or I'll declare war. I can defend myself from him. He only just got the revolt done this turn so I have 3 turns before his borders pop. If I'm going to do this I need to make my move next turn.

The more I think about it the more I think I'm gonna do it. Temperance gives him straight up borders with 4 of my cities. I have to take it so that he only has borders with Temperance and Forseti (which is heavily defended). Well, gonna see what Seven says. Also I think it may be a fake war for Ruff to gift Nakor all his cities. A war not unlike the one where he "conquered" Temperance.


As for Humility:



I didn't give you guys the attacking army because its the same. 7 zerks, 2 cats, 2 trebs. You can also see that TRD hasn't whipped or reinforced by sea yet. I am wary of his ability to use his last galley to ferry a unit behind during the turn. Also, he could whip. He cannot, however, upgrade. He has 20 gold and is teching Feudalism 7 turns.

So the best he can do is 2 Xbows by sea and one by whipping. That gives him 5 Xbows and 2 Bowman. If he does do this, then I will be unable to take the city if even one of my zerkers fail. Talk about getting close... Good to have 2 trebs along... When I see what he gets next turn I'll calc it. If it looks bad I'll start bombarding while my galleon goes and gets 3 more zerkers...

[luddite]

I had to work SO hard for it.

Just to recap... you used Athlete's berzerkers and Seven's galleons to massacre TRD's bowmen, right? :P

Anyway, looks good. What's the last city that TRD has after Humility? Is it really irrelevant?

[Lewwyn]

Just to recap... you used Athlete's berzerkers and Seven's galleons to massacre TRD's bowmen, right? :P

Well, Athlete hadn't technically made any zerkers beyond the GG yet. :neenernee

Anyway, looks good. What's the last city that TRD has after Humility? Is it really irrelevant?

It's his capital, Patience. Its out on the single island by itself. Its not that relevant beyond the fact that its his last city and I want to rid all my newly conquered cities of "FOR THE MOTHERLAND!" unhappiness.