[SPOILERS] Serdoa plays in PBEM46

[Serdoa]

Lost 2 Catapults and 2 Axes. As for Harrys loses... he was at 240.000 soldiers at the start of this turn. He has less than 160.000 after the end.

[Nicolae Carpathia]

Phony wars leading into a desperate ragequit war against someone who stole your wonder is fun

[Serdoa]

Well, tbh I would probably have been better off just building wealth and teching for 10+ turns. I would now have CoL, Calendar, Monarchy and maybe parts of Feudalism as well. Yeah, most certainly I would, my teching was quite good, even without Cottages.

Anyhow. I'm mostly attacking because it is more fun. Thats not really a winning strategy though. But this turn will be deciding for the whole rest of the war I think. Harry has 8 Axes, 6 Catapults and 3 Spears next to my troops which I moved into his lands. Those troops consist of 9 Catapults, 19 Axes, 5 Spears, 5 Chariots and my GG-Medic-Scout. I do have some damaged catapults in there - which might help to preserve them. If they would all be fully healed and Harry smashed his cats into my stack they would not take damage (no collateral on collateral-weapons). If all my axes got damaged (which is perfectly viable with 6 catapults) all his axes would attack my cats first (best defender against axes...). That would be 50:50 battles, but chances are he would kill several of them. As it is, he will have to take ~5 of those coinflip-battles (and I just can hope he'll lose some) and then will attack my other troops. If he attacks, I expect that I will lose ~8 units, most of them axes. Thats a pity, but not much I can do. I can just hope that his cats get no withdraws and that he loses the coinflip-battles.

Not sure if staying at Exeter would have made more sense. I certainly would have done that if he had countered my peace-offer (I wanted to 2 cities) with something. But as he did not, I expect that he just doesn't want peace but decided to fight till the end. Makes sense, kinda, as he probably lost his chances to win. Or not - as if he made peace with me, guess whom I would move that army towards. I mean, it is not like I want to have 40 units sitting around doing nothing.

Speaking of 40 units... HAs are being built, after 2 turns I now have 10. That should go up to 20 in the next 4 turns I'd guess. I hope those will be sufficient for a final push. Again, much depends on how much damage he does this turn. But I hope that simply due to the high numbers, RNG won't screw me. I think it was pretty even in RNG-luck for both Harry and me up till now, so lets just keep continuing that.

Btw: I'd love to hear what tactics those with more experience are normally employing if your opponents fields siege weapons. Because lets face it, they are pretty deadly if you do not have a stack that is at least 3x as big as your opponents (mine is and it still may stop my advance).

[Serdoa]

Harry outplayed me and will raze Exeter in 2 turns ...
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or not because he has 21 units to attack and I have 19 to defend. That might be enough to hold it. And if he does attack, than he will lose his core as my other 33 units will move forward. I would retreat out of Exeter but he might raze it and I'd like to keep the Pyramids if possible. We'll see next turn I guess.

[Serdoa]

Well, he has a few more units than 21 I think, so probably Exeter is his / burns. Though if he does attack it, he will lose his capital (if I didn't fuck it up again...).

He clearly outplayed me, hats off to you Harry. I was slowly advancing my 1-mover-stack and he simply circumvented it in his own lands. I should have seen that coming, but I was simply not taking the time necessary for those turns (rather, I was not thinking when I played them, because it actually does not need that much time to move one big stack, the issue comes with the where to move it). Anyhow, if he gets Exeter back, I will still have around 20 units in my backyard to oppose him and 30 in his lands to attack him. He will have to decide what he actually wants.

And honestly, I would hope he simply would offer peace with asking me to return Crewe. I would keep Exeter and could advance all my 60 units on THH. That would help Harry and me. Especially as Harry could turn his stack around and attack Azza in 5-6 turns. And Azza most certainly is not ready for that.

[NobleHelium]

What turn were your units supposed to have moved out on?

[Serdoa]

AD0380. What should have happened Noble was that my main-stack (in Crewe) moved out to threaten his capital. I knew he could wreck my stack in Exeter but that would have been at the cost of his capital, he would have had no way to stop me if he moved against Exeter. Plan being of course that he is NOT moving against Exeter but instead back against my main stack.

But appearantly, none of that happened. My units sit still in Crewe. My horses sat in the city it seems, which is ok as again he should not have attacked them because who would trade his capital (plus maybe the cities behind it) for that.

Anyhow, with that loss this war is over. Either I delete my big stack or he will kill it anyway. Then he can move against my cities. I could whip them a little bit more but they are already at the limit in the end. So he can probably roll me as well. What probably is for the better because I honestly lost any fun with this game. Opening the turn and seeing that my stack was either not moved or moved back for whatever reason just left me with nothing but disgust.

And thats a shame because this was a good game and Harry played really well in the war. Clearly better than me. But he shouldn't have gotten this win this easily. Oh well, I can't even ask for a replay of the turn because without me being able to figure out what happened I can't deny the possibility that I DID forget to move the stack. I don't believe that one second (again, my whole tactic was only based on that one move) but I can't prove otherwise either.

[NobleHelium]

Well most likely what happened was that you saved midturn while playing and loaded the game up later on. Then all the actions you did in the second session didn't go through. This happened to N7 in 23 when they were passing partially completed turns around.

Normally I would say you should replay your previous turn but that may perturb the combat results even if Harry does the same thing, so I'm not sure what would be fair in this case.

[SevenSpirits]

Yeah this is the second time I've heard of something like that happening. I don't know what caused it then but I remember suspecting it was caused in part by loading a save while still having another save open. Do you remember if you did that?

[Serdoa]

Um, yeah, actually that could be the cause. I did have that turn saved in between to play other things (I sat on this turn for nearly 4 hours, and didn't want to let other stuff sit as long and wait) and loaded it after finishing another PBEM-turn directly from the end of that turn (so no going back into the main-menu).

And yeah Noble, I am not sure what to do here. Tbh I don't want to ask Harry to replay the turn (I know I would be frustrated if I would be in his shoes) but I also don't want to play a turn which is only half of what I actually did. I'm at work now, but I did take a second glance on the save before I left home and I think there are more units that are not moved (which again leads to him not being pressured when he should be). I'm not sure about my build queues, it might be that those are also not the right things (I did change my wealth-builds to HAs).

I wouldn't fuss about this so much if it wouldn't be for the fact that basically my last 25 turns of play hinge on this turn. It might be that Harry would have wrecked my HA-stack anyhow, but I think knowing that he could still move his stack back into his capital before I can reach it did certainly help this decision. If my movement would have happened, he would have to accept losing his capital for it if it wasn't moving back.