Intersite Game - Turn Discussion Thread

[NobleHelium]

Well I don't know, maybe we should build walls in Mano. They complete instantly and we would have two units in the city that benefit from it.

[kjn]

The other benefit of walls is slowing down catapults, not that I think it matters much against cuirassiers in a +20% cultural defense city.

[scooter]

http://www.twitch.tv/NobleHelium

About to start it looks like, pop in if you're around.

[Nicolae Carpathia]

X-posting from the War Tactics thread, my version of combat simming. Other people play around with it. Don't worry, random seed on reload on.

[NobleHelium]

[Mardoc]

Silver lining: we ought to be able to run Counterespionage in Brick by Brick, assuming they keep it. Because it's Hindu.

[waterbat]

We're losing BbB? Didn't see stream. That's sad.

[Ruff_Hi]

Turn 170 - 1100AD

T169 --> T170 occurred on or about Aug 15th at 5pm (RB time). Note that the clock moved from 36 hours to 48 hours as of this turn.

And ye shall hear of wars and rumours of wars: see that ye be not troubled: for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet.

How many people consider that this whole game has been heading towards this turn? Or do you think it is heading towards T175 when CFC join in on the party? Or will CFC just sit back and watch while CivPlayers and Apolyton (CFC's pawns) do their dirty work for them? Or ...

Anyway, the turn rolled and there was immediate activity ...

Guerra con Civplayers
Guerra con Lizzy

So it's official.

The funny thing is that the mod didn't lock us out - we could still log in. As such, we did so (being very careful to not move units) and watched first Apolyton and then CivPlayers (in waves) move units into our territory. They claimed the first half of the turn division (it is not a split!).

Both (Ed: CivPlayers & Apolyton) of them have claimed the first half with their DoWs, in my understanding.
Civplayers virtually logged in and DoWed the minute CFC ended the turn.

Their login was immediately when CFC ended. Obviously CFC was holding ending turn for this reason. Death to the infidels, etc.

There was some chatter about being sandwiched between the two but then our own oil on water man chipped in ...

Relax, they very clearly just are grabbing the first half of the timer.

Mayor Noble provided the first update from the war front with pictures from the west showing the initial wave of CivPlayer units.

Later General Sunrise posted a summary after Apolyton had ended their turn but before CivPlayers had. This showed the slow moving Apolyton hammer (8 rifles and a lone trebuchet) [Trebuchet(!) - just to show that humans do actually build these things] threatening The Gauntlet. I think it is safe to say that The Gauntlet is toast. I officially put forward this city name as candidate for the biggest misnomer award. Hmm - thinking about that award, while The Gauntlet is a good award candidate, the obvious eventual winner of the misnomver award is darrelljs' 'Hugs & Kisses' thread.

Anyway, back to General Sunrise' initial summary ... he also provided an update on CivPlayers and concluded with ...

CivPlayers: 20 Cuirassers, 4 Horse Archers, 1 Chariot
Realms Beyond: 15 muskets, 6 maces, 3 Knights, 1 Medic War Chariot, 2 Axes, 10 Catapults

They definitely don't really have enough to take BbB.

It was also good to see Sullla chip in ...

Defense in the south looks relatively straightforward, move everything inside Brick By Brick and dare them to attack through the city's defenses. I don't think they can take the city with those units - I'm pretty sure that CivPlayers only has 1 promo on their units, not two, and thus they'll only be C1 and not C1/Pinch - and I expect simming will show that the muskets will hold Brick. If they choose to move two tiles north instead next turn, then bring in the cats and knights and destroy the stack on T171.

In the north, Apolyton will take The Gauntlet for sure, but I don't think they'll get anything else unless they have a lot more rifles than the 17 in that picture. Obviously kill off the highly mobile CivPlayers stack first, it's actually much more dangerous than the ponderous Apolyton group.

However, from there, the RB community returns to its true roots of double and triple thinking everything ...

Have they got enough eps to revolt bbb?

... and ended with the certain belief that, while CP don't have enough EPs to revolt BbB, Apolyton certainly do, they currently have a spy in BbB and will revolt it next turn.

So we just did a sim by stream.

Conclusion: if the city is revolted, they will get fantastic odds and wipe the floor. I think it's very likely that they'll be able to revolt it, so we need to assume we're going to lose Brick.

Scooter provided a fantastic summary which I cannot improve on ... thus I will lift it verbatum ...

Okay, we talked through a defensive plan in the stream, and I'm here to present what our plan is, and present it to you all for comments. Let me start with the most important front. As I wrote a few posts ago, we did a sim, and if they revolt Brick by Brick, everything we put in it would get slaughtered with very few losses. We don't have precise numbers for the cost of the revolt, but we've estimated it'll cost them 400-600 EPs, and with their massive EP output and the EP slider being available, that won't be an issue.

They are capable of simming too, so I think we absolutely must assume they will revolt the city. Their attack only makes sense if that was their plan, and I don't think OT4E is dumb when it comes to tactics. So we will lose it. After my first batch of screenshots, as kjn noted CivPlayers DID bring up several 1 movers that seem lined up to garrison the city. It seems like a logical bet that they plan on keeping and garrisoning the city. So our defense plan here needs to be to set ourselves up for a recapture and/or position ourselves to wipe their stack. So all that said, here's a picture, and I'm going to do my best to walk through it clearly.

THE SOUTH FRONT



There are several stray units not highlighted here, but I just picked the big stacks so as to avoid clutter.

1) We should leave a group of defenders in Brick by Brick. The point is to force them to revolt the city. We figure if we leave approximately 6 defenders in the city (4 muskets, 1 axe, 1 mace), they will have to revolt the city. Their odds will be in the 20s on those attacks if they don't revolt the city, but they'll be into the 80s if they do revolt it.

The idea here is to burn all their EPs, so that once we recapture, the culture all comes back, but they won't have enough EPs to revolt the city again.

2) With this in mind, pink circle is the best staging tile. Any further south and they are vulnerable to their giant Cuir stack on the hill. Any further north and they cannot hit Brick. If the Cuirs pile into the city, awesome, we can probably wipe their stack. If the Cuirs move up north, they'll be in range, and we'll hit them that way. If the Cuirs head south, we'll have to handle that, but the city should be easy to recapture in that case. NOTE: we will still control the horse row of culture when Brick falls.

3) The one caveat here is the red box. The one vulnerability we have here is if CivPlayers has 4 workers on hand to road those two tiles. If they did that, they will be able to hit pink. If they want to fight on open ground in our culture in range of a ton of units, that's fine, but the main concern is that we put all our cats on that tile, and CivPlayers flanks them all away with Cuirs. I figure the chances they do this are on the low end, but not insignificant. We only see 1 worker that is in range of those two tiles, but we can't know whether or not they have more. The compromise here is we think we should something like 3-6 catapults on the pink circle, and place the rest on the blue circle.

If they flank the cats away, the cats on the blue circle can hit those units, and cleaning up their stack will be trivial from that point. If they choose not to attack the pink circle, 3-5 cats worth of collateral should be enough to take the city, depending on how many units they place into it. And, realistically, if they just pile everything into Brick, we can afford to take another turn to set up.

4) Note the Knight stack highlighted in sign mode. Those will come down. Those will be a big boost.


THE NORTH FRONT



This is much more straight-forward. The basic plan is to move this stack of maces/cats 1NW onto the green signed tile. This is not enough to take out 17 Rifles, but if Apolyton keeps their stack split, this will be enough to take out one of the stacks. Also, if the 2-movers get done in the south are able to come up here, this combined with the Knights would be enough. Basically the hope is to use these guys to keep Apolyton honest while we deal with CivPlayers. If Apolyton trudges through our land and takes a couple cities, whatever, but these guys will prevent them from being greedy and splitting into half. Remember, Apolyton has "just" 17 rifles up here. As you'll see in a minute, they definitely sent quite a few to CivPlayers for defense purposes, so they should not have a large second wave. Finally, the Mano front:



There you see 4 more Rifles in Costalot. Combined with the couple coming to Brick, I can see now why Apolyton just has nothing at all. Anyway, the plan for this turn is to move the Mace/WE mini-stack into Mano and complete the walls. That will likely prevent them from taking Mano next turn. They may just bombard and move 4 rifles up next turn, although the walls will make the bombards pretty ineffective. If they do that, we'll probably lose the city, but this plan will make the city survive an extra turn and force them to commit rifles if they really want to take it, so this seems like the way to go.

---------

So this is our proposed defense plan. Feel free to ask question or make suggestions. I'm pretty confident this is the best way to go, but discuss away. We have almost 2 full days before we need to end turn, and I think we are 100% entitled to using every bit of that if it's what's best for us.

Following that post there was some further posts that didn't really change or challenge this direction ... rather it provided some small refinement or other options ...
- BrB falls without the revolt but with some additional Cuir losses
- Swap from walls to unit as that will cost CPs more to take it


Warning: Personal Opinion Follows ...

Personally, the above is all betting that Apolyton revolt BrB. Consider the situation that they aren't set up to revolt the city ... if that is the case, then we are just giving it away for very next to nothing. Remember, the reason we built SoZ was so that our enemies would have to pay dearly to attack us. If we just give BrB away, then that whole objective was a total waste of time. The focus Apolyton / CivPlayers have on BrB is 100% the right thing - they don't want to have to fight us in our territory while we hold the SoZ. They are focusing their initial war efforts on removing it and, at the moment, remove it they will.

If they take BrB, they will raze it. No question!

As such, I really think we should be doing more to hold that city by betting on the situation that they don't have the units in place to revolt it next turn.

Just to illustrate the point - they are already fighting 100% inside our culture - we should make them pay for their first war objective.






Stream Archive

The stream for T170 can be found on twitch ... Assessment.

http://www.twitch.tv/noblehelium/b/447312387


Other

'We Hate CFC' trophy for T170 goes to BGN ...

Their login was immediately when CFC ended. Obviously CFC was holding ending turn for this reason. Death to the infidels, etc.

... and the prize for 'fun facts' goes to kjn ...

Some screenies ...

A lone barb axe in the tundra:

It is also interesting to note that the number of rifles Apolyton is bringing to the table is less than we had expected. Mainly because they gifted the first round (or two) of their drafting to CivPlayers ...



Finally, two observations / comments / lessons for the next game ...

• why did our discussion move from the turn by turn discussion thread to the war thread? Some people (initially including me may miss posts due to this.
  
• For next game, lets make sure that we put SoZ in a central city that will stand for many, many war turns.
  

[NobleHelium]

I don't think that last section should be in the turn tracking thread, but whatever.

[kjn]

We had plenty of reasons to put SoZ in Brick by Brick. It was cheap, we could get failgold, we needed a good source of culture in the city, and it could serve as a war deterrent.

Now, CivPlayers has made that a major war goal, and it's a pity we didn't have time to get our main stack down there quickly enough (or we could have gutted the northern cuirassier stack), but I still think we made the right choice in placing the wonder there.