[PB73 SPOILERS] scooter's Oracle

[scooter]

Yuris finished an Axe rather than a second Spear, but otherwise huddled in his city. So I plugged things into vodka and...





Well, huh, that's better than I thought. I have more units in range next turn anyway, so I don't think there's much risk in going now, so let's do it.





Again, the fight things hinge on is the first one. I forgot to expand this to show defender HP probabilities, but if this is a flawless loss or close to it, the attack is hosed. A win means the fight is won. The more common outcomes in between all hinge on the amount of damage done. Enough stalling.


LOSE - (1.2 left!)


Fantastic result. We can end this now.





WIN.





WIN.





WIN. Just one more to go with 2 units to do it.










GG Yuris!

[Zed-F]

Great to see the warm up phase of the game done! Now to prepare for the main event…

[scooter]

Two more quick things.





I wondered where his last GG went! That's a nice bonus. Hopefully I can have this city useful on time.





Two things here.

1) I unfogged the trade path prior to capturing the Byzantine city, which meant that the capture forced trade route recalculations, netting me some extra commerce. Nice!


2) Cairo had a second city burned this turn by Luddite. You can see the improvements totally outside cultural borders here.



One final thing, the capture gold has been genuinely valuable for me. That's 234g over the last 4 turns. Super handy.



Finally, I assume Yuris is going to swing by here soon. I'm hoping I have assumed correctly that our situation was always going to be a duel to the death, which is why I went aggressive early and sniped those cities. I figured you were always going to come at me, so if I could dedicate some inexpensive resources towards slowing you down, I'd have a shot. I'm glad I did because those Phracts were honestly rougher than I expected. But I'm gonna feel really dumb if you come in here and say you planned to coexist with me, and I was the big aggressive bully attacking you for no reason.

[RefSteel]

Mechanics question - what happens to your Civics if they're no longer eligible? Razing Pyramids might not do anything.

You are immediately forced into anarchy and pick something else when you come out of anarchy.

Zed, am I missing something? My understanding was that when you lose eligibility for your current civic, you're dumped into the starting/default civic for that column, with no anarchy and no delay to your next potential civic swap. Though it might look like it's happening the way you described if you take the 'mids from someone in Representation who's already teched Monarchy (especially an AI) since they might respond to being booted to Despotism by immediately revolting to HR.

[yuris125]

Just a quick comment - I didn't feel I could accept your peace offers, because round about the time I found hammers to build galleys, Oxy flooded the straight between us with triremes (which you saw later). The one galley I did build ended up never leaving Constantinople, Oxy likely would've killed it on sight if it did. So staying at war with you and hoping for the best was the only option I had - I knew there was little chance of success, but it still was the best chance I had

Very well played so far! ggs, and best of luck for the rest

[Zed-F]

Mechanics question - what happens to your Civics if they're no longer eligible? Razing Pyramids might not do anything.

You are immediately forced into anarchy and pick something else when you come out of anarchy.

Zed, am I missing something?  My understanding was that when you lose eligibility for your current civic, you're dumped into the starting/default civic for that column, with no anarchy and no delay to your next potential civic swap.  Though it might look like it's happening the way you described if you take the 'mids from someone in Representation who's already teched Monarchy (especially an AI) since they might respond to being booted to Despotism by immediately revolting to HR.

I could easily be wrong, it might work as you describe! I was sure you can't remain in your current civic though.

[T-hawk]

I vaguely remember RefSteel's version as being correct, though of course haven't tried or seen it firsthand in forever.

[yuris125]

Finally, I assume Yuris is going to swing by here soon. I'm hoping I have assumed correctly that our situation was always going to be a duel to the death, which is why I went aggressive early and sniped those cities. I figured you were always going to come at me, so if I could dedicate some inexpensive resources towards slowing you down, I'd have a shot. I'm glad I did because those Phracts were honestly rougher than I expected. But I'm gonna feel really dumb if you come in here and say you planned to coexist with me, and I was the big aggressive bully attacking you for no reason.

Oh I missed this paragraph when I scrolled through the thread last night. Yeah there was no avoiding me sending phracts your way, and with how close the battle at Stewy ended up being, it is very possible that me losing Adrianople's production, and not being able to pre-build phracts, were the decisive factors which swung it in your favour

I'm not happy about leaving those cities open to sniping, but you were 100% correct to look for these opportunities and take them

[Zed-F]

I think if you'd had more Phracts, things would have played out differently, but to a similar conclusion; we would have fought closer to our core (trading space near Stewy for time) but would probably have still won in the end. It would have been a more grinding victory, though, and would have left Oxy so far ahead as for us to be unable to compete with his production. Even under the current circumstances, this is still open to question, so it's possible that all this was decided at the map construction and snake pick phase; whoever got start #1 would have been handed an enormous advantage.

[yuris125]

Yeah - my first foray into your territory (with Axe/Spear/Warrior stack) was to confirm you had Construction, and the plan at the time was that if it was confirmed (which it was), I would put as much pressure on you as I could while building galleys and sending phracts over to Oxy. Alas, by that time Oxy's triremes made that impossible. So to an extent you razing Adrianople closed all paths for me, there was no way I could research Metal Casting and build up a fleet within the timeline when phracts were still relevant. Fighting you was the only option I had left, however unlikely I was to win