[PB79] MirOh No, what am I doing?

[Miro]

You probably hit on one front instead of splitting up. Its too bad Lixus is over a river. That being said your tanks get to take city raider 2 and you can reduce the defenses via fighters. In general he can hit two of your cities there after softening up. I expect movement on that front at bombers if nothing else.

BTW air battles are a little easier. Just have more for the area attacking. And you almost never want to intercept. The reason being is the attacker can overwhelm the point defense of the fighters pretty easy. IE if you have 3 fighters on intercept in 3 cities across the front and your opponent has 6 fighters, they can order the 6 to bomb a tile only 3 of your 9 can reach. Fighters keep trying to intercept even when damaged (although they aren't 100% to intercept), but point being even if they win they will almost always lose the 2nd fight. Attacking fighters live and promote making future battles easier. This is part of why carriers are pretty good. Other is added mobility. And you don't feel compelled to fort over tiles although you may have to do that too.

Did you retake that southern naval city?

Yesyes, that's Salem I was talking about. Got it back T256. Xist reinforced it and cleared my island invasion force, but my loaded Transports were still able to take the city afterwards.

Ok, I'll send the 100 across NA again and hit Oea next turn!

[Miro]

T262 (start):

We razed Oea last turn!


Then I began my retreat into NA and wouldn't you know it, NA wants me off his land.



Damn, dude. I gave him a city! I didn't push back into NA after he DoW'd and didn't hit DoW on his easy target southern cities when xist DoW'd him some 100 turns ago. 
After losing my main eco city to the surprise attack, I even threw most of my eco aside to fight xist, basically guaranteeing I'll fall behind.
And he still takes xist's side.



I'm guessing xist sent out "please cancel borders with Miro" messages to both coldrain and Gira. Thankfully, Gira didn't cancel borders with me and I'm in his land right now.
I know there's more to the unit placement after border canceling than just bumping them outwards, but I'm surprised it moved me 2 spaces into Gira's land instead of 1 space into xist's land. (I was 1NE of Okran's Gulf)

Checked out DanF's teleportation mechanics discussion to learn how that works.

Jump_Cost = 2*Jump_Distance + Distance_To_Nearest_City

Their home city must be Smash Up. This tile is 9 tiles from Smash Up (IIRC PlotDistance).
So this tile:
2*(2) + 9 = 13
Xist's forest tile:
2*(1) + 11 = 13

Hmm.. Maybe we just got lucky then? Maybe tiles calculate from West to East rather than North to South. Also lucky that it truncates for PlotDistance, otherwise it'd be 2*(2) + 9.5 = 13.5 while xist's forest tile is a true 13.0.

I've never done a teleport, so I'm gonna go test the teleport below in WB. Plan is to move to the "North Pole", then cancel borders with Gira since I have no other way to get army home anytime soon.

[Miro]

Oh shit. OH SHIT. Now we have a rules question: Can I teleport and then attack a city?

My units could pop out next to Sarim Batim and they preserve movement! Normal invasions lose movement when you enter territory of a rival you're at war with, but my quick teleport tests showed they could still attack that turn!

In the test pic below, Explorers all make it home safe, the Tanks end up in xist's forest and have a sad day, but the Catapults all move to the tile next to Sarim Batim (Carthage in pic) and can still attack.



EDIT: This also brings us back to the "coldrain is a secret genius" idea from before. Maybe he planned this as a way to rocket me into xist's other city!

[The Black Sword]

 Now we have a rules question: Can I teleport and then attack a city?

Yeah, it's considered fair game, been done more than once in the past.

[Mjmd]

I should note its also possible the opposite is true that Xist and or coldrain wanted to get your army trapped in Xist's culture. I do still wonder about Coldrain this game. Being so good to someone who took cities off of you and then turning on the person who gave some of them back is an alien concept to me.

It is considered fair game, but teleporting is notoriously fickle. Some few like Ref understand it in detail enough to predict with certainty, but most of us mere mortals do not.

I personally do not like it and have added it to my voting spreadsheets recently (to mixed results). While I agree there isn't another way for your army back, I should also note that it isn't a guarantee someone will reopen borders.

[klops]

gratz for the destruction. were the fight in your favour?
Maybe you have enough tanks available to take the second city even without closing borders.

[Miro]

Now we have a rules question: Can I teleport and then attack a city?

Yeah, it's considered fair game, been done more than once in the past.

Ooooo this put a smile on my face right before I went to sleep last night. Was thinking about it all day and built an Excel tool to try and mimic the jump mechanics to be as sure as I can be about where I'll end up.

I should note its also possible the opposite is true that Xist and or coldrain wanted to get your army trapped in Xist's culture. I do still wonder about Coldrain this game. Being so good to someone who took cities off of you and then turning on the person who gave some of them back is an alien concept to me.

It is considered fair game, but teleporting is notoriously fickle. Some few like Ref understand it in detail enough to predict with certainty, but most of us mere mortals do not.

I personally do not like it and have added it to my voting spreadsheets recently (to mixed results). While I agree there isn't another way for your army back, I should also note that it isn't a guarantee someone will reopen borders.

I'd probably vote against using offensive teleport, but I'm glad to have had the chance to use it here when they were trying to trap my army! I thought my tool was doing a great job when it mimicked all of the jumps according to what I saw in testing yesterday, but when I tested it even further I got 80 / 81 jumps correct. Not sure what caused the different jump.

You can see the expected results (unit on tile with black text jumps to corresponding tile with red text), but the m1 above NA's lake jumped to the tile south of m1 instead. Weird stuff.

gratz for the destruction. were the fight in your favour?
Maybe you have enough tanks available to take the second city even without closing borders.

I thought about it! But I had too few tanks, 20 or so, while xist's Sarim Batim had 19 units. I also wasn't sure what the northern edge of Gira's border with xist looked like and didn't have recent enough screenshots in this thread, so all day at work I was trying to figure out if there was a way to get Tanks to xist's northern hill and 2-tile blitz his north-most city 
No such luck though.

There wasn't really a fight for Oea, xist evacuated all but 1 Infantry. He hit me a bit on the retreat, though.
All-in-all, the Oea raze wasn't too costly:

[Miro]

T262 Update:

After razing Oea and beginning my retreat, we suffered a few losses followed by coldrain closing borders with me to trap my army in with xist.

Thankfully, China unlocked 2 techs in quick succession: Flight and Teleportation.



Guess that kinda obsoletes Flight, but we can still try flying around for fun.

My army teleported into Gira's land instead of xist's land and Gira (former bestie) welcomed us! I suppose xist might have only considered asking coldrain to close borders and Gira never got the message, just saw an army appear without knowing xist was on the hunt.



I could go home by moving closer to my border and closing borders with Gira, or use my newfound technology to teleport into xist's land and take another city.
I went with a little column A, a little column B.

I split up the forces and after all my testing I was confident that my units would teleport to my land and to xist's land. Can't tell you how many times this game I did some testing, got confident, then got completely floored to find out the tests were wrong 



BUT THIS TIME IT WORKED! I even went with a bold placement for the army going home so that they could preserve more movement and start heading west.

Took out Sarim Batim without much trouble and now that army is doomed to fall to xist's reinforcements. I know he has some 13 - 20 Cannons that left our border on the other side of the world to come help him fight on this side that should be able to hit my army by now.



Casualties:
This turn went well, but I'm sure to lose that army soon. I asked Gira to reopen borders and offered xist peace. Doubt he'll take peace before wiping that army and I haven't thought about whether I want peace after he clears that army. I know Mjmd wants peace so I can get my tech going again. I'll post tech update next turn.



Also could these two icons not be the same.

I didn't mean to upgrade my Airships to Fighters. 

Charts/Dems:

[Mjmd]

 
 I know Mjmd wants peace so I can get my tech going again. I'll post tech update next turn.

You make me say the strangest things. I said you might have to build some wealth. Stay at war if you think you can do more damage.

That being said, ya that army is dead. Very very risky. He could have had a stack coming over anyways. Even successful its a high price.  Hopefully Xist has nothing and Gira reopens borders and you can retreat. If he doesn't go 1N and pillage rds where you are and on old city site. Maybe the rd on Gira hill too.

[greenline]

Do the city razings help you catch back at all in GNP?