[SPOILERS] Small Wunders and Izzy of Inca: The fat lady sings

[WilliamLP]

Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen, to this delightful always-war experience!




East: Ichabod is threatening to invade with 2 phalanx and a warrior. Mindy will hate this move but I moved the east mini-stack back 1NE. He took a risk my stack wasn't there already because if it were I would have roaded out with the workers and hit him. Right now I have almost no hesitation in running 3 axes + archers at 2. And I don't think we can afford to have both golds denied.

West: 6 axes are on the corn, 3 with level 2 or higher. Retep will probably pillage the gold. If he moves 1W to block the retreat into Barbiere he will get 6 axes striking his 5. (There is a spear and an axe in Barbiere.)

The spear will have to hold out against a barb warrior in Traviata. I anticipate having 2 more axes in 2 turns, one more from the whip in Barbiere. 8 with 4 promotions against 5 is probably good enough odds to take him on the hill, if he's still there.

[WilliamLP]

I need to think this turn over a bit:




East: Ichabod invaded with 2 phalanx (shock and C1). I am probably going to attack first, the question is whether it's statistically better to attack with the archer first to weaken the shock phalanx. An alternative play would be to just pile on the gold and look for a truce but I could actually use the GNP gain from losing a couple axes!

West: No surprise that retep is throwing the kitchen sink in: 2 axes in the SW, and an axe + 3 chariots in the NW. The 5 axe stack pillaged the gold.

It's pretty obvious that I need to whip basically as much as possible.

The spear from Barber needs to move to Traviata.

Can I set up to counterattack the 2 axes from the SW on the hill with odds and still be secure elsewhere? I'm not sure.

[WilliamLP]

Facing a shock axe, trying answer whether it's better to attack with an axe first then an archer, or the other way around:




Using Cyneheard's calculator, I get a total chance of 62.6% that an archer + axe will win, and a 58.9% chance that an axe + archer will win. These have rounding errors and assume nothing - that I'll follow up with the attack even after doing 0 damage.

Also the value of an axe winning at the end is higher for the promotions. So it sort of seems like the suicide archer is worth it, though if I had four axes it might be better to just attack with all.

Maybe I'll write my own Monte Carlo calculator for stack vs stack combat... (Assume that at each step the attacker chooses the attack where the chance against the top defender is highest, which is not a correct assumption as seen above...) And simulate this N times...

[WilliamLP]

Battle in the east:

Suicide archer VS Shock Phalanx (1.8%): LOSS and 0 hits!

We had an 89% chance of getting at least 1 hit, so this sucks.

Axe vs Shock Phalanx (21.3%): LOSS and 2 hits.

We had a 64% chance to do better than this, (and a 62% chance to actually win with these two units).

Axe vs Phalanx (32.2%): LOSS 3 hits.
Axe vs Phalanx (70.0%: LOSS!
Archer vs Phalanx (74%): Win
Archer vs Phalanx (99.9%): Win

So this was a disastrously bad set of rolls in total. We lost 3 axes + 1 archer to clean up 2 Phalanx, so nearly 2 to 1.

Still, I don't think I made a wrong move. This may have been our only chance to hit those units (which would forever annoy us) in the open. Ichabod is going to be pretty far away to send more units up to us, and Cheetah is massing up and will see a decline in his power.

The west:




I moved the 6 axe stack out of sight of retep across the river. I wanted to prevent the 2 axes merging with his 5 as the first priority. He has many options but at least has chances to make a mistake. His 2 axes could get stuck over a road if he isn't careful.

For his 5:

He moves NW or N: We need to move axes to the corn to fork-defend.
He moves W: Split stack to defend Barber
He moves SE (!): More chasing around.

However he does it, unless he makes a mistake this is going to last a long time, I'm afraid.

[WilliamLP]

Welcome back to another day in my education in ancient warfare and coping with a neighbor who has absolutely no goals in the game other than seeing me dead!




Go Cheetah!! And he's going to love seeing a 2-axe drop in Ichabod's power. The balance of power around here sure is precarious... I wonder if any other sub-continents in this game are half as hellish as the one we're living on?

Someone got a scientist already... wow. Ah the luxurious life where such niceties as libraries are buildable isn't the one for us!




So retep has:
- 5 axes on the farm
- 2 axes W-SW of Barbiere
- axe + 2 chariots W-SW of Traviata
- 1 more wandering chariot.

Traviata needs at least an axe that can get there next turn (mayyyybe an archer but it's dicey).

What are my options?

We could have axe-geddon right now! We have 8 axes (4 promoted) against 5 (1 promoted). But 7 of them would be across a river. Does this get us a 1-1 trade or better on average? I have no idea! I'll have to do some sims.

If I just passed, 5 axes moving NW would be a problem. So that's not an option.

4-5 axes on the corn? He might then go SW, threatening Barbiere with 7 axes and a chariot. But then I'd have the same option to attack as before, except with 3-4 axes on the same side of the river instead of 1. If he moves NW then I need to attack out too (at -25%) but there would be an additional promoted axe available.

[WilliamLP]

Ok, I ran some WB sims of the all-out axe attack. And I'm glad I did because I thought a river gave +50% when it's actually only 25%! (I'm still a noob.)

Out of 25 trials of 8 axes vs 5, assuming the one on the same side of the river attacks first:

(wins-losses): times
-----
5-1: 1
5-2: 6
5-3: 10
4-4: 4
3-5: 3
1-7: 1

It seems pretty clear that most of this curve is in a good place. So I'm going to go ahead with it, and if my luck is as bad as against Ichabod we'll go 1-7.

[WilliamLP]

The first attack is pretty critical in the sims:

C1 Axe vs C1 Axe (50%): WIN!

And we got a Great General in Turandot! I should have seen it coming in F5 but I had no idea. This changes everything. The GG can promote 4 axes to shock immediately by giving them 5xp each! I moved the spear and already promoted axes to make this happen.

Shock axe vs Axe across river (68%): WIN!
Shock axe vs Axe across river (68%): WIN!
Shock axe vs Axe across river (68%): WIN!
Shock axe vs Axe across river (68%): WIN!!!

Oh snap! I can't complain about our luck ever again in this game. The odds of this result were about 11%! (Including the 50% win before these four wins.)

But wait:




The great general axe himself is still unpromoted and can get morale. And he can destroy a worker and interrupt a chop. I don't mind if I do!




I deleted the worker since he'll probably counterattack with a chariot this turn. If he doesn't though or loses the odds, we have a Woodsman 1 GG running around his land with Morale.

I'd say Retep is going to be a little disappointed when he logs in. This might even register on the Regoarr-scale. I wonder if he has unhappiness from war weariness yet.




We're 27 out of 60 experience to another general!




And... 21k in the lead in power again.




We have an axe and 2 spears to defend Traviata.

I emptied Barbiere, so that an axe and archer could defend the 2 workers, to be sure the chariot can't steal them. This makes it temporarily unhappy.

Now we can build a settler finally! And I'll take a full inventory next turn but I think we have about 5 2-promo axes available now!

[flugauto]

What is Regoarr-scale?

[WilliamLP]

What is Regoarr-scale?

I'm not the most well versed in the history of it but in Pitboss 1, he was about to build a spaceship. And he logged in expecting to win the game, but actually someone had promoted a commando unit and ran 10-11 tiles along his railroad to raze his capital instead! That's 1.0 on the scale. This probably barely registers.

[Ceiliazul]

nice battle there! (the west front at least )

you may yet get to build a library someday.