[Spoiler] OW PBC1 Chaotic Neutral

[Bruindane]

Turn 11: Hidden Maneuvers

CMF bumps me off the forest hill, as hidden units can't hold ground. I can upgrade the slinger to woodsman, but need the     to attach Queen Lampedo to my warrior arriving next turn and also need some to force march the next Settler.




My scout does find Lake Suboptimal and another Scythian camp.
    goes towards Labor Force. I didn't get the option for camps. Next time.
    ends with a 4 surplus, but I do move your Settler once. The extra orders will convert to to buy mercenaries.

[Ginger*]

Spare orders probably means you should move your worker and chop a little before healing/improving etc. Turning spare orders into chops is an important part of early worker micro. I learned this from watching Alcaras and Filthy Robot's videos on youtube. We'll never have enough wood (or enough of anything for that matter, resources you need more, you'll have a stockpile you think is safe, then run into a brand-new demand for more resources.

You probably should move to another forest hill, since you have two bonuses: invisibility (and better def vs ranged) in forests and highlander, shame not to utilize both if for example babylon force marches a settler there to snipe and your slinger is uncovered by the new city's borders. That's my worst fear at the moment that they choke you in and kill a unit, we probably wouldn't be able to cope with both i'm afraid.

Training is also useful for upgrading the strength of the mercenaries you buy, which you should definitely aim to do once to get them to 4str, and maybe later get them to 5 and 6 str as spare training allows.

[Ginger*]

Left some notes on safer positioning in the south, also Kaiser does have a militia unit in the area as I got a “unit seen” notification. I hope that’s from an event and he didn’t build a militia

I’m not entirely sure what’s going on with the tribe camps they should have more units maybe it’s just that we set them on weak? Usually tribes occupy city sites and serve as a buffer between players which is nice

[Bruindane]

Year 12: Militias Everywhere

We move our slinger to the southeastern wooden hill away from the city site, as we see two Militias from Kaiser and one somewhere from CMF (I need to grok how to replay in-game actions between turns). Ginger thinks they'll rush the city site, which would then expose my hidden slinger immediately.

Are they all in, converting workers to militias, or did they both get events?

   

We also attach our queen to our warrior. We start another warrior, in part due to the military situation, and that we plan to 'hurry' both a settler and specialist in a few  turns when our city develops enough culture to allow it.

To the north in the picture is our Scythian Mercenary we bought.

[Ginger*]

Yeah, they probably got the event from being declared on. The scythian merc is really nice for you because it is stealthed in forests. However, you probably want to pull it into borders to upgrade (-120 training) to a 4 str unit.

Tribal units have 4 tiers, 3, 4, 5, and 6 str. With the last two only being available to "true" tribal units, barbarians are capped at strength 4.
However that first jump is most significant, 3 str units like militias are, to put it politely, pieces of shit, and serve to meat shield and add in some chip damage.

Anyhow I have a plan, I think CMF might have blundered his warrior away.
Currently (figured this out by selecting a unit and hovering it on a tile to see how much damage it will deal [bless this game's deterministic combat]), your slinger can deal 4 damage to, and stun!, his warrior. My marauder can deal 5dmg if I force march it there, and your zealot warrior queen can deal 7 dmg.
Now this might change when his fortification ticks up from 5 to 10% next turn, but as it stands, 4 dmg slinger strike + 2 rounds of 12 dmg attacks from our melee units can kill CMF's warrior in two turns while it is still suffering stun effects. That's actually 28 dmg total we could deal so fortification won't save him.

I think we are safe to do this because the only other melee available to them is weak militias, and if we stick to the forests, counter attack from Kaiser's slinger will be heavily mitigated as we've done before.

I am assuming that Kaiser's Tactician slinger will stunlock yours, although they maybe might barely be able to save CMF's warrior by stunlocking the Zealot warrior (main damage dealer). If Kaiser does stun a unit other than your slinger, we can use our still-viable stun again (even on his slinger), which is likely an all around worse outcome for them.

Hopefully them losing a warrior to overextension will have a psychological effect and they'll back off to give you some breathing room

[Bruindane]

I'm still learning the broad brush strokes of the game, so subtleties such as the side effects of attacking (e.g possible events that grant militias) are part of the process. I like Old World a lot so far, spending all my game time in it which unfortunately is only a few turns a week recently.

I'm all in for attacking while covered by our forests. Taking out Rome's warrior should also prevent Kaiser's militia from claiming the city site.

   

My limited spycraft on Babylon suggest they took an event granting      at some point and that Babylon may have a Scythian Consort as well. Reloads must be a bit of an irrelevant trivia when you have unlimited undos.

[Ginger*]

Your queen is also highlander, so if you can force march her warrior to the forest hill northeast of your slinger, you deal 8dmg instead of just 5, and while you're more exposed that far forward, you also receive 35% more defense as well as offense so it should survive.


On a technical note of how to do that, I think you need to do ctrl or alt click to automatically force march to a tile and move through your slinger, otherwise the UI might ask you to move through the Roman's ZOC or displace your slinger from the hill.

[Bruindane]

Year 13: Conflict in the Woods

   
Thank you Ginger, I move and attack as suggested.

   
Rome claims their nearby city with their scout and I meet the Gauls. I discover that meeting tribe events are not deterministic, even though I thought I retraced my steps exactly. I ended becoming bold with +2     instead of militaristic (+10% vs melee?).

[Ginger*]

   
Success! Kaiser also decided to use his stun on the high damage-dealing Zealot, however that won't stop the bleeding 

Of course, another Roman warrior appearing out of the fog could spell disaster, but I doubt he has one. 

The warrior is stunned, and your Cavalry can kill it next turn. It's important to use your mercenary because your Stun Slinger can now lock in Kaiser's. We have to be careful with the melee, but all Carthaginian Ranged units (including ranged mounted!) will passively stealth up after one turn if they stay in forests, so while they might get hit and forced to hide, they can't die. The melee is at risk, and while your Zealot warrior is stunned, it only has to tank one more round of hits from militia and you can run it away on your next turn if Kaiser is unable to use his slinger

I left some notes on possible combat tiles, also I was reading up earlier in the thread and you said that you need a stronghold and developing culture to seat a governor in your Rider seat. While a Stronghold (Developing culture, 4 laws) or even a Citadel (Strong culture, 7 laws) fulfill the prerequisite to seat a governor, you only need to build a Garrison like your capital has (Weak culture, 1 law).

[Bruindane]

Turn 14:  Rome loses a Warrior

With a settler coming next turn at the Rider Seat, I rushed a miner in Carthago with     , but plan to rush a settler next turn.
    management is going to start hurting.

I do need to enact a law so I can build garrison, likely right after I build the Hanging Gardens, I'll move the artisan worker up there.

   
Stun Kaiser's slinger. We'll see if my queen's zeal will protect her.