[SPOILERS] Out of retirement and into the fires of war. yuris125, Pitboss 68

[yuris125]

Welp, Commodore's stack is back




He's back in slavery as well (and in representation over HR). Will he try to take advantage of my mistake and the power dip?




Commodore used the golden age to save up cash for Machinery, due in 4 turns now. But if he's attacking us, he may well attack before then.... we'll know next turn

[naufragar]

Sorry for the rough couple turns, and sorry I've been incommunicado.

It looks like Commodore can just waddle up and take Boros Burn? What's Miguelito been up to?

[yuris125]

No worries, I see that you're busy, hope all is well!

Yes if Commodore moves in Boros Burn almost certainly falls - only question is how much effort we want to put in defending it. It's not the most important city, but if he takes it he probably can also take Gruul Smash - we will have to choose between defending Gruul Smash and the capital, and the capital is obviously more important. But we may want to defend it to get rid of at least some of those 16 catapults

Miguelito's golden age just ended, by him building Hanging Gardens and switching to Theocracy. He also claimed the Music great artist. So basically he's busy winning the game

I'll log in after Commodore plays and see what's up and what we need to react to

[yuris125]

Yep, we're indeed being attacked




I said that I was willing to take this risk - well, it didn't pay off

As you can see, our defences in Boros Burn are pitiful, but we can whip a unit (either a war elephant or a spear), and reinforce with the stack currently on the oasis (probably not the catapults, they're better left behind to use on counter attack), as well as the crossbow in the north

I'm inclined to defend, since as I said, we do need to get rid of Commodore's catapults if we're to hold the rest of the cities. If we just abandon the city, he can threaten both Gruul Smash and the capital with his mobile stack, and our stack is heavy on single-movers, so defending will be a pain

The main stack, beat up as it is, needs 2 turns to get to the oasis

I do think this seals the game for Miguelito, not only is this attack going to weaken Commodore and me both, but it opens an opportunity for him to grab Thoth's land for himself. That's why I was willing to take the risk. But I guess Commodore believes he has a chance of catching up if he takes a bunch of our cities

I wonder if this plays out differently if I don't throw away 6 catapult for no value, and our power dip is not as severe.....

[yuris125]

Alright, I had my emotional reaction, now let's have a rational one. Less of "man, 16 catapults sure is a lot, let's hope Commodore follows my example and throws some of them away", more thinking about what he actually does with them

The problem is that we have quite a unit mismatch. Since we've been building up against Thoth, we neglected building war elephants after the initial wave. The strongest unit we've been building are crossbows, which don't fare that well against Commodore's stack, which is so heavily skewed towards mounted units. Arguably, crossbows are the best defensive units we have period, since war elephants don't get defensive bonuses

Anyway, 16 catapults is a lot. So many that Commodore can use 6 catapults to bombard away 48% of Boros Burn's 50% defences, and then we're fighting on flatland, with unit disadvantage, and with him still having 10 catapults in reserve. That should be more than enough to destroy whatever units we use to reinforce Boros Burn, especially with reinforcements not having fortification bonus

So I think what we do is whip a war elephant, leave a CG bowman and a C2 spear in the city (so that Commodore doesn't have it too easy), and withdraw the rest towards the capital. Capital needs extra defenders more, as Gruul Smash will be reinforced by the main stack

Commodore probably wants to keep the city (since razing it doesn't advance his position in any way), maybe we'll find a way to consolidate our units and take it back

[yuris125]

Boros Burn abandoned (with 3 units left in as I outlined yesterday). Crossbows with guerrilla promotions are still holding hill positions; the northern one prevents Commodore to move units in via the northern route, the southern makes it difficult for Thoth to strike at See-Scape while we're busy elsewhere. 2 wounded crossbows moved into See-Scape for healing and to be ready to defend in case Thoth does want revenge. Everything else moving to fight Commodore's stack, and I'm building catapults everywhere (although still would rather not whip Gruul Smash and take a shot at birthing a great engineer in 8 turns and bulbing Engineering)

That's about all I can do. Don't think Commodore can safely move deeper into our territory, and Boros Burn is not a huge loss. Obviously I would rather us have it than Commodore, but I didn't invest much into it, and with our strong culture it will be difficult for Commodore to hold

[yuris125]

Boros Burn... well... burns




No losses for Commodore, sadly. He used 3 catapults, all of them withdrew (tbf his worst odds were 75%), then cleaned up

What I still can't figure out is his goal. Razing a filler city can't have been it. If all he wanted a canal into the inner sea for 4-move galleys, I showed willingness to allow it when he had 3 unprotected workers in range of my horse archer and I didn't do anything about them. If he moves deeper into our territory, he's at risk of us getting first strike on his stack. Right now we only have 6 catapults in the stack, but more completed this turn, and our reinforcements are easier than his, borders aren't going to shift right away. And if he retreats, we just resettle Boros Burn. There has to be a follow-up to his plan, but I don't see it

Anyway, we'll know more next turn. The 4-move galleys are currently in the canal, 2S of Blue Moon

[yuris125]

Commodore retreated

So yeah, I guess it was just a matter of him wondering if there was an opportunity, seeing we still have a stack to reckon with, and choosing not to push further

I guess our play now is to rebuild catapults and go finish the business with Thoth, before resettling Boros Burn. If it's even worth resettling; an extra production queue is valuable, but we would need to rebuild granary / barracks / forge - not sure the game will last long enough for it to pay off. Plus building a settler is a cost as well, I had to whip across the empire to rebuild catapults and ensure Commodore can't make more progress, and now cities need to regrow. Big Red Dragons could do it, but I kinda need it to either focus on Heroic Epic, or support the economy with wealth build

Miguelito's power is steadily rising btw - we're at 0.8 his power last turn, compared to 0.9 last turn. He could start pressing unit advantage with samurai. Commodore I think finished Machinery research, so there's crossbows on that side to oppose samurai; feels likely that Miguelito will try to take out Thoth very soon if we don't

[yuris125]

I just realised.... Miguelito's golden age ended, and he stayed in caste system. But his power growth is not slowing down. He has reasons to be confident... and I want to see his production cities, which allowed him to build all the wonders, and now allow to build units faster than civs in slavery

A nothing turn. Our stack finally has a chance to heal, and I'm whipping catapults all around the place while waiting to see what Commodore does next

[yuris125]

It's turn 150. 50 turns ago I was saying that I thought we were neck and neck with Miguelito and were very much in contention. Now we find ourselves a city down, probably neck and neck with Commodore, and basically waiting for Miguelito to close out the game. It's too early for concession, there's always a comeback possibility, however small the chance it. But it's not looking good - if Miguelito plays well, I don't think we will get to T200







The annoying part is that I can stand by every decision I made in the game. The attempt to take advantage of Thoth's weakened defenders in the capital obviously ended up in a disaster, but apart from that... some decisions can be questioned in hindsight, but overall I think I played fairly well. But also it's fair to say that Miguelito was able to take advantage of his traits and the land he had better than everyone else. I did not expect him to get as much as he did out of Ind on this map

Other graphs for completeness







Commodore cleared our crossbow between the capital and Blue Moon, attacking with a guerrilla 3 longbow at 11% odds - the longbow withdrew - then killing with a horse archer. I killed the horse archer with ours, but he probably can reclaim the hill if he wants it. We didn't have a proper major fight with Commodore, with him withdrawing after razing Boros Burn, but he did win some low percentage combats in our skirmishes. Not that it had a major impact on the game, just adds insult to injury