Gavagai's part-time Pitboss

[scooter]

Well, we're in rough shape, but not nearly as rough as Mjmd expected us to be. Peace with Superdeath means we can throw our entire military at him. Will it be enough? Not really, but maybe in some spots as his stacks are split.





This for example was a bit optimistic, but I guess it's the thing you can do with overwhelming numbers. I used two Formation Knights to get two easy kills here at light damage to myself, and then stuffed a couple more warm bodies in here to ensure it holds for another turn barring crazy GG shenanigans.





The north is likely lost. I'll do my best to set myself up to punish if he oversteps. He's going to have to leave units behind in Giza to advance, but I think he can do so. I could stop this force rather easily if I committed, however, there's a big huge reason I cannot commit.





This is the real fight. No way around this, I do not think I have the numbers to stop this, but I am going to try. I massed enough units in Thebes to likely dissuade him from blitzing it. We'll see if he gets impatient and tries to fork Thebes/Memphis, or if he's patient and just keeps them all together. In general his Knights are not that great because I have tons of Formation Knights, not to mention a healthy stack of Elephants joining the fray. It's the Rifles + Siege that will get dicey, although he will have to stick them on flat ground unless he intends to go the long way. There is one other small thing I have going for me.








Ironically, he can probably hold that city because I warned him SD was lined up to potentially take it. That was very kind of me. SD also asked for OB with me, which I accepted. If he uses his Knights to run through my territory and attack Mjmd, that might be the wildcard. I would be surprised if he did it, but Mjmd should be a bit worried about the possibility. SD is the type of person to do that for fun, and it probably would be fun.

[scooter]

And with that shiny update, Gavagai you owe us a PB78 update.

[scooter]

We're on track for some fireworks. There are 3 fronts. The first two are simply buying time.





This is the mega Shrine city, without which I would be losing significant gold at 0% science. I cannot realistically hold it, however I can buy myself a turn by sacrificing some outdated units. 1-movers cannot reach the city, so I stuffed in outdated 2-movers and fled with my Knights. They will mostly get slaughtered next turn, but the city should hold another turn unless Mjmd has a bunch of G2 Rifles. Which he definitely might. If so, golf clap.





This is the other front where I'm buying time. Again, here I just want to make it so his Knights cannot blitz the city this turn and he's forced to spend another turn walking. I could save this city, but at the expense of my capital, which is no bueno. There might be a path to saving this city actually, but it all depends on the real show.





There's the death stack, numbers notes in signs next to it so you don't have to count. 55 units plus a couple stray Chariots. I've got plenty in the city to prevent it from being Knight-blitzed obviously, but nowhere near enough to hold the city. However, I pulled a bunch of Knights OUT of the city, which he knows about. In their place I stuck Elephants in. Here's the reserve crew.






~15 Cats and a bunch of Knights. And also, The Wildcard. Superdeath is coming. I played before him, so the order will be myself-SD-Mjmd. So if Mjmd lets himself get collateralled, his primary stack seems like it will melt between the combined force of hitters. The big question is how he will actually use these Knights, because I have no idea. Will he really commit them? Will he just flash them as deterrence? Maybe he'll help me save Elephantine? No clue.


My general hope here is I can damage the main stack well enough to then turn and save/recapture the shrine city. If I have to sacrifice the north, so be it. I sort of suspect Mjmd will get spooked if he sees any sign of SD and bail, but I really don't know. My raw numbers look really good here, but it can't be overstated how useless many of my units are on defense. It's a lot of junk. I haven't simmed even a tiny bit, but if he gives me the chance I'll fling my units at his main stack and live with the results.

[scooter]

Oh I almost forgot.





Good luck with that, Mjmd.

[scooter]

Mjmd stepped forward, and I did sling my stack into it, and it didn't go great. Unfortunately, SD did not advance and sent me a very weird diplo message. I could have done a bit more if he had defended my cities, so I'm not super sure what he's waiting for. Capital will hold another turn, but shrine city is lost. Those cities being 4 tiles apart and not 3 really made things difficult. Heliopolis is also lost too, so sadly there's not a lot of time left. It's mostly a question of whether SD can bloody Mjmd's nose or not, or whether he'll bail. Mjmd's stack is extremely wounded, so he can probably do enormous damage to it if he plays his cards right. But I really don't know what he's aiming to do given that he didn't advance enough this turn.

[scooter]

Well, Mjmd did indeed capture the Buddhist Holy City. I was trying to mentally figure out how I could even hope to recapture it. But then I logged in.





Oh my. Keep in mind, the turn order is me -> Mjmd -> Superdeath. I think Mjmd was not prepared for this possibility at all, otherwise why capture. This holy city was quite good - 50-something base gpt plus multipliers. Honestly, capturing it was probably the entire aim of the war. So this is definitely a setback. That wasn't the only place SD attacked too.





That is one very wounded stack. He is reinforcing it with a fair number of healthy Rifles/Cannons. So I had a window to do some more damage, and I took it.





Didn't keep track of damage, but I killed another 10-11 units - an assorted blend of Knights/Rifles and a Cannon or two. Unfortunately I could not get odds past the Knights/Elephants/Pikes. I even had a couple combat-promo'd longbows, and I couldn't get odds. I think if I was more confident SD was going to attack, I would have waited a turn on my big attack and let him wound himself on my defenders first. But I'm not spending enormous time on these turns, so whatever.


Unfortunately the party is very much over. I'm extremely gassed with very little left in the tank, and Mjmd is bringing more. But I'm not sure he's going to get to Thebes. Hard to predict honestly.

[Gavagai]

Superdeath is wondering why I attacked him and as I cannot answer without spoilers, I decided to leave the answer here, so that it will be easy for him to find after the game.
The plan was to dogpile him together with Nauf but one turn before the planned war declaration GT distracted Nauf by attacking him - so the dude ruined my game not once but twice. At that point I was so heavily invested into this war that I decided to go for it anyway, hoping for a miracle to happen. And it sort of did in the sense that I came out of the war with modest territorial gains somehow.

[scooter]

Mjmd did eventually break through, and I have played my last turn. Heliopolis is about to fall any minute now, and the Egyptians will be done. Knights just don't do much against Machine Guns I'm afraid.

[Mjmd]

I'm curious how you decided for HA rush with Egypt, and then against Mjmd over the tasty newbie in the west. Just because nobody would see it coming?

The natural distances on this map are large and Ricky did almost no expansion, so he was rather far away. Mjmd, on the other hand, settled right on my border, in the spots where I wanted to settle myself.

This was something I was also VERY curious about. Both my border cities were pretty clearly on my half of land between us. It was all brown, Ricks land was green, and he was a much easier target. We also had a food desert between us so the likelihood our border would be that tense was pretty low in my eyes.

You probably didn't read my thread, but I was going to give you the option to keep living due to our good relations (well after the attacking and razing a city thing). I tried to signal as such to Scooter, but with SD deciding to fight me instead of splitting you that war got much hairier than anticipated and I just had to get rid of the culture.

[Gavagai]

In hindsight attacking Ricky was obviously the way to go, I just was very unfocused in the early game. As it happened, you settled a city in a spot which I already dotmapped for myself and this is the sort of thing that tends to irrationally piss me off. You have beaten me to the Oracle by a turn afterward and it sealed the deal. I invested failure gold into HBR and rammed my HAs into you.
There is really no excuse for the way I played the early game, it was a sequence of impulsive, poorly thought out decisions. I didn't bother to micro my Oracle, could have built it at least three turns earlier and steal it from you. That already would be a different game.
And congrats on the victory, you played this incredibly well.