[SPOILERS] Athlete and Lewwyn are SHAKA OF THE VIKINGS

[novice]

Great report. Could you show us a more zoomed out map as well of the Viking/Babylon/Nakor borders?

[Lewwyn]

Indeed! Here are 3 Screenies of my border north to south:





You can see once with galleons I can swing at Kindness and then hit his islands. The longer the mainland battle plays out the weaker his island defense should be.

IN the south theres only room to found one more city, just north of the lake. Its in the center of me Nakor and Seven. I would build a settler but the war is more important maybe I'll whip one out though in Sol... Still just another city to defend...

[Lewwyn]

So quick update, no turn or anything, I was just talking with Seven.

Got a little scouting info, in the fog 2 tiles up from Charity (that tile I said would be a good staging point) TRD has one HA. SO add one HA to the list of units that could potentially hit all my targets. I'm still not worried. All of my stacks had an extra unit added just in case he an extra unit, so no worries. In fact it even makes me wonder more if he'll go ahead and stage on the cat stack thinking with that extra HA he'll be even safer. We'll see.

In other news, Seven is going to hit Ruff soon. He has 5, I think he said, galleons filled with Maces already. This means he's going to try to capture ruffs home islands and then go along the coast razing coastal cities. Nice.

We also discussed Nakor and the possibility of a 3 way alliance against us, and believe we'd be a match for them. Though we will have to hurry the current conquests in order to prepare for phracts.

Also, (we talked awhile) Seven shared some info about islands in the fog. He's discovered that there are 5 tundra islands, one for each, apparently identical with 4 ivory 2 silver 2 fish 1 clam 1 crab each... Wow. And only Seven and I know about them at this point. Or have the means to settle them (well I will once I get some galleons). Seven is going to settle his island soon though, while I am not. He's going to send me a silver and ivory. I'm also going to start sending him a rice next turn. I don't think our opponents will have much of a chance to settle those islands anyway. TRD will be wiped, Ruffs islands and coast cities destroyed and Nakor, well, Nakor sits on the fence all the time until he has overwhelming force, but I"m not sure he's going to be able to get that this time.

Hopefully that helps with world news since others don't update too much.

[Lewwyn]

War war war! TRD choose option 3! Direct assault on Charity! (Which I forgot to rename again, doh!).

So lets go straight to the logs!
Log 1, the beginning of the assault:



Looking good. Every Cat is killed! No withdrawing cats this time TRD! Oh and looky a GG popped. I also like the buddhism spread, +1 gold for me.

Log 2, the end of his assault and my counter attack:



About what I expected. I lost the max amount of units that I was prepared to lose. His 5 HAs and 1 crossbow were successful. I was hoping for one win, but you can only get lucky so much.

Now my counterattack started with a bang. Remember the Crossbow that was coming off the non-roaded grassland? He landed on the stack and was therefore protecting all those HAs I moved my jungle stack into the city, but of course they have to wait a turn. I promoted my units but none got higher than 6.8 health and that wasn't going to cut it against a fully healthy Crossbow. So I looked to the only healthy two mover I had, my GG. He was sitting in Loki and his odds to win were about 61%. Not great. I went for it and he won!

I was pretty happy about that. Now I had a crossbow in the NW that was at 5 health. I was willing to risk a 65% shot on killing it. Lost that one. but damaged it good. From here out I just went with my highest health unit on. The odds were about 49% on the next attack (spear crossing river at HA) but he won. From there the odds ran: 68%, 68%, 45%, 60% and they all won! I got some good RNG loving.

So total casualties:
TRD:
8 cats lost, 1 injured (2.4) 8x50 - 400
2 crossbows lost - 2x60 - 120
4 HAs lost, 1 injured (1.9) - 4x50 - 200

Total hammers: 720

Lew:
1 crossbow lost - 1x60 - 60
6 zerkers lost, 6 injured - 6x70 - 420
1 spear injured

Total hammers: 480

So in the assault and counter assault, I come out on top in hammer costs. By a healthy margin too. Lets look at the battlefield aftermath:



Green boxes are self explanatory. The important thing about these are that Charity has an uninjured crossbow, spear and 2 zerkers to defend if from any... futile flailing attempts. The light green is the GG at 3.4 health and another zerker protecting. best he can do is hit it with the half dead cat and the redlined HA, fail.

Red: Cat with 2.4 health
Pink: HA with 1.9 health
Purple: slow, out of position, but healthy crossbow
Teal: Diligence has not changed any units still 1 crossbow, 2 bowman, 1 spear! Yum!

Here's a scouting msg from Seven:

He has the following which you can't see:
1 XBow 1 Bowman in Chastity
1 XBow 1 Spearman 1 Bowman in VII
1 Galley adjacent to VII which can reach a water tile adjacent to Chastity next turn (the only units it could unload in Chastity next turn are units that are already in it, if any).
I do not have vision of Kindness, nor of anything S of Chastity.

He looks really screwed, good job!

VII is his capital by the by.

Engineering finished, and now that TRD's stack is gone (battlefield looks a bit empty) I can send extra units to dilligence from Loki and not fear for its defense. This means probably 7 zerkers 7 cats land next to the city next turn and takes the city the turn following that.

[luddite]

Wow! I can't believe he actually attacked you there. Even if he'd lost nothing but the catapults, it would have been a big loss for him.

[Rowain]

Looks like this war goes very well for you .

[Lewwyn]

Looks like this war goes very well for you .

Indeed his choice to attack was the second worst choice (The worst being sitting in that spot next to the city without attacking.)

His best choice would have been to withdraw 1 tile from charity and reinforce enough to really do some dmg.

I've also been doing some calcs on Kindness and I believe I'm 5-6 turns away from taking kindness by sea. Seven gifted me a galleon this turn. It depends on how fast I get a couple more berserkers built.

[Lewwyn]

I continue to be surprised and unsurprised by TRD's moves. I believe he may have given up after losing the stack. He moved the Crossbow out of chastity onto the damaged cat. He moved his hurt HA to the same tile. So he basically has a full health crossbow, 1 injured HA and 1 injured Cat 1 tile NW of Charity (DANG IT, gotta remember to rename it FIRST). Why would he do this? He knows I'm aggressive with attacking. maybe he thinks I won't risk the only healthy units in the city?

I sac the cat into the Crossbow, then kill it with a zerker. I kill the cat with a spear at 90% odds and finish the HA with a zerker who ends up fully healthy.

The other move TRD made that BAFFLES me should be clear in this picture. Here is an overview of the battlefield with every military unit on both sides labelled:



As you can see ini the middle, TRD moved his Crossbow out of Dilligence, leaving it supremely undefended. He even moved it onto that dang non roaded tile AGAIN! If he moves it back, he's lost the fortify bonus. At most diligence could have 5 units in it next turn. The three there, a whip, and the crossbow returning. I have 7 cats, 6 zerkers I feel very comfortable with those odds.

You can see the rest of the map. The only real threat is that crossbow in the south of Charity(small threat). Also note the GG zerker on the right. Lets take a closer look:



You can see he's unupgraded past movement and exp gain in the lower left. Also this picture shows my tech(Monarchy 1 turn, I've ended my turn at this point tho so 2 turns). Also notice my tech rate is not bad! And notice TRDs tech as well. You may be wondering why this GG zerk is sitting here on the shore. Well:



Heh, 4 turns and my new galleon will come out of the fog with 2 zerkers and eiether a cat oor a pike. I have a pike in Thor and a Cat on the shore a tile or two from the GG. So I just have to choose before next turn whether to take a cat or a pike as the third unit. In either case the path is outlined and if followed will bring my vessel at max movement next to kindness in 4 turns while allowing the units to be picked up off the shore and from Odin's island.

Can I have the lurkers check my route and verify that I have outlined a path that TRD cannot see? TRD does not have Optics, though he is teching it. Also Opinions on Cat vs. Pike? I'm leaning toward Cat though having a pike would be nice for defense once I've taken the city.

[Lewwyn]

Update from Seven:

Kindness has 1 XBow 1 Bowman. There are 3 triremes nearby too.

TRD's Galley appears not to have unloaded on the mainland yet. Therefore I am guessing it contains the XBow from VII (and maybe another minor unit). Alternately TRD is shuttling the other way, evacuating to his island.

I asked you for a dye in-game (you have 2). If you don't mind I'd like to trade for it; I'll give you the other of Ivory/Silver in exchange, once I have those up.

Very important note: In response to my update, it was pointed out that I had made an error in reading the game rules: War Elephants are not banned! Not a bad tool to have against Cataphracts.

So yes a cat sac and the two zerker charge will take Kindness. Alternatively, since the capital's crossbow has left his city, that means he only has a bowman and a spear in it! Oh man thats even easier than Kindness! (Though I'm betting that Crossbow leaves Kindness next turn). So the question becomes: Take a couple extra turns and surprise take the capital? There is the unfortunate possibility that his second city could spawn 2 crossbows and retake the city though(no way I can reinforce it). I might be better off hastening the demise of the mainland and then simply ferry rolling the capital islands.

Also... WE unbanned? and we're the only ones with Ivory? hahaha I've been building Pikes in advance of the possibility of Nakor's phracts, but WEs are even better!

[Lewwyn]

I just want to say real quick that I took over on turn 130, and just played turn 144, so 14 turns. Considering where we were when I started, I'm actually quite surprised at how many breaks I've gotten. TRD does not press his attack, does not truly build up more military and pretty much everything that could go Seven and my way has. I'm not sure how much of that is skill on either side of the war or luck. But the reason I'm thinking about it is this newest revelation that actually WEs are unbanned, Seven's about to settle two ivory and trade me one, and no one else has the capability to reach it. Just seems like all good luck and I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Earlier Seven and I were talking about what should we do if it ends up being just the two of us left at the end. Neither of us wish to fight each other as we've been very close allies and each of us have helped each other immensely bot in unit trades, gold trades, resource gifting and trading. So we decided that if we were the last two standing we'd have deserved the right to do whatever we wanted. Split victory?

On another note, I have to give a shout out to Athlete because while I may have been a bit worried having lost the first city of the war and having nearly no real military, he did set me up for a pretty good recovery and bounce back. Great infrastructure, over techs, good diplo situation, and an enemy to focus on.

Thanks bud, I'm having a blast!