[Spoiler] Master Auro Has A Living Army

[Aurorarcher]

Dave didn't attack. Didn't even smash (read: waste) his cats. Smart play.

He is coming with a force from west.



At end of turn I put just enough weak defenders to Poisson (7 wolves + 2 beast). Dave can attack with 8. I hope he doesn't move his troops to the sea. If he does I can kill some of them with my 5 galleys but not all (and I only get very good odds with my C3 galley). I hope he stays on land because I got a lot of pillage cash this turn to do this:

Before:



After:



They are in a very good position with 3 Rust Shamans. I hope to kill a lot of units next turn. He might put those stacks together also on a hill (and not attack yet). That's actually pretty bad if he does that but I think overall it's better (especially if my Rust works well next turn) than if he moves to the sea. He could potentially fork both Euler/Poisson by putting his stack 1W of the Crab lake but I don't think Dave wants to sit on flat land even with 17 strong units. He should see a pretty big power spike if he takes a look at demos (my power went up by about 100k from last turn). If he just wanted to raze Poisson he could move his northern stack to the tile where his galley is now and then take the sea. He has some C4 Cultists coming from south too. This takes more turns obviously and gives me time to build units but Poisson would go down 100 % certain.

Near Pythagoras I had to leave it with 8 real units + 3 wolves + shaman. I rusted more units, this time also 2 Chariots and another Drown. I don't think Dave will attack, he is bringing 1 more Chariot behind but he needs more. And I am getting Beastman every turn. But, only 1 more turn of golden age... then my economy will collapse (like I wouldn't be dead anyway, heh).

[Aurorarcher]

Poisson didn't survive, I forgot his Chariots... doh. Pythagoras fell as well but he kept it so I managed to counterattack and won a lot of fights while only losing couple units. I also scorched (turned into a desert) some plains tiles because Dave has been using ships to bring Drowns etc. and attack my cities right away. It's to my advantage if he has to sit next to city first so I can rust his units. He has a huge stack of 6 Cultists, 15 Drowns and 2 5-mover chariots (very annoying, see my economy later). I have rusted almost all the drowns and one chariot, I think only like 3 or 4 have their weapons still. Here they are running away, I wouldn't be surprised to see if he moved to the pigs tile. Though then if my units are fully healed I just might attack.



The problem really now are the chariots. See I'm already running deficit (losing gold at 0% science). Those chariots are going to pillage all my lovely towns, villages and so on.... Argh! Well, I'm surprised I've lasted this long. He needs to bring cats next to Euler to be able to take it. I'm planning to bring some units to former Cairo land (there are some lovely towns to pillage...). I need some money.

In the south I killed one of Dave's Drowns (it was a 3-mover from mutation). He must've accidentally moved it further than his other units could reach (it was 1N of the stack). I have another galley east that can attack (but not with great odds, about 25% to kill the Drown). I am building fort 1NW of Feuerbach next turn to bring my winning galley to safety it can take 2 promotions next turn. Dave will Tsunami the city but if I can kill that Drown (and I will rust it asap when it comes too close and then it'll be easy) I should be able to make his Cultists run away or die. Notice I also scorched that tile 1NE of Feuerbach to prevent quick attacks from there.



Power graph shows that at least once during this war Dave lost enough units so that he didn't build as many during his turn to replace the lost power... well, you can see it didn't took too long to recover that...



Demos. That GNP is quite amusing I must say... 

[Aurorarcher]

Dave has 3 pretty big stacks nearby me. Slowly he is going to force me to focus on one front while he takes the other. Dave's GA ended and I can see he must've huge unit/upkeep costs as well.



Yeah... I know I'm the one with -13 GNP, I'm staying alive with pillage gold from superjm land.



I scorched this tile so Dave can't attack with 2 movers, it's actually pretty hard to see that it's now desert. Dave might even step on it by accident and then I'll be able to kill them. He has a lot of Iron Weapon drowns + some cats on the tile 1SE of Wheat.

The stack north east from Pythagoras has 6 chariots which I couldn't Rust without losing my Shaman (and I don't want to do that). They can hit me and probably kill 6 units with not that big of a luck. I left 9 units in Pythagoras. No other units should be able to hit the city. I want to wait for him to come closer and then I might be able to clean up... or retreat. My real problem is the 26 unit stack in the west which is probably going to destroy my Copper city soon (if Dave has found my copper he should definitely aim for that). It's easier to defend this stack because almost all the units are rusted other than 6 Cultists and one annoying strong Chariot. Cultists work in my favour because they don't act as stack defenders even when they have odds due to Chanelling II. So last turn actually his Chariot was top defender! I had 42% odds to kill it but I didn't want to risk my best unit to kill it.

I also killed 2 units in south this turn, rusted his 6 str C1 drown to 4 str C1 and killed it. Then I had 62% odds to kill his C4 Cultist and won. That galley couldn't escape back to safety unfortunately.

[Aurorarcher]

Okay. Finally Dave brought enough units. Even though I killed a 15 unit stack last turn I lost Möbius and had to leave Pythagoras empty this turn. I also lost Feurbach in south and going to lose my copper city next turn. Going to be down to just cap pretty soon.

[DaveV]

Well played. Rust was a great choice; it reduced my units from superior to inferior. In the end, you couldn't overcome the sheer weight of numbers, but you kept me at bay a long time. The forts and galleys were a thorn in my side.

The pillage economy was a nice touch; I've tried that before, but just didn't have the units to spare this game.

I didn't realize until very late in the game how close our capitals were. I thought Pythagoras was a huge reach, planted in my face to invalidate my second ring canal city, but it was probably on your side of the dividing line.

[Aurorarcher]

Thanks, Dave.

Our capitals indeed were quite close. I wonder if I had used the info to my advantage earlier when I met you from east with my beastman. I could've done something with Lucian instead of keeping it close to home.

While I think I made some mistakes (for example killed my economy for a little while when REXing too hard), I think it was almost impossible to beat you on this map. Of course you also played well with your advantages, so not taking anything away from your great performance. I also think the RNG was very kind for you considering the 3 traits. For example you had EXP for a long time to spam cities and also bypass my city count then you got CRE after that. Then in the end you had AGG for a long time to get strong units.

During the game I deliberately avoided settling on coast but it was just too hard to avoid it with the land how it was. Then I realized that in order to compete with you I'd need to build a huge navy and control the two main seas between us. If I were to fail there it would be game over. Well, we all saw how that went. I had a good amount of ships in the west early (where I first declared) but in the east (where you razed Klein) I was late while you already had plans. It was just so hard to compete while you had GNP & MFG advantage over me.

[Mr. Cairo]

After reading your thread, wow, you did really well considering what you were up against, congrats. Sorry I didn't do more to try and slow DaveV down.

Also, the reason I wasn't building ships in Kwythellar was because I couldn't! That body of water was a lake, too small to build ships on.

[Aurorarcher]

Yeah, I didn't realise it at that point. But I think you could've built a fort on a hill 2NE from Avelorn and bring galleys from there.

[Mr. Cairo]

Yeah, I didn't realise it at that point. But I think you could've built a fort on a hill 2NE from Avelorn and bring galleys from there.

I had no workers left by then  most of them died to Raging Seas.

I was mainly just trying to hold DaveV outside Kwythellar for long enough to build a fleet in Avelorn safely.

[Aurorarcher]

Ah, well that explains a lot then.