[SPOILERS] Athlete and Lewwyn are SHAKA OF THE VIKINGS

[Lewwyn]

I played the turn earlier this morning so this is a late update, but some interesting twists.

First logs show:



Yup he attacked the GGs, which is actually good for me, but whats this? A GG died? What were the odds?



29%... SO TRD had 29% odds and he attacked my GG and lucked out. I don't really understand it at all. He only attacked with two Xbows even though he has another two to use. He could have attacked with the other ones and killed the cat and the other injured GG that survived its attack (also at 29% odds). I just don't understand the tactics here. Why attack only with two Xbows at 29% odds each only to not finish the job. Furthermore, he didn't attack with his Xbows from 1 tile NE of Chastity. Instead, the wounded Xbow sat next to my main army and got eaten as I moved my army towards Chastity... Baffles...



SO here we can see the assault. Pretty self explanatory. BUT there is one more thing. TRD screwed me again. He did NOT build roads where those two cats are. I thought there were roads there because I would have built roads there if it were my city. His terrible road network is now affecting me! The plan was to move the cats tehre so if needed they could head to Chastity, or if needed they could swing and hit Temperance in 3 turns if I took Chastity next turn. Also, if that happened any of my unused zerkers would have been able to swing down there with them... if there were roads...

So, Chastity hopefully next turn. He does have a GG in the city, and I only have 2 cats in the main force. But I have an overwhelming number of Zerks and he can't get that xbow from his capital to the city next turn. The best I can see is whats there, plus a whip, plus a possible xbow on the galley. So max possible is 5 xbows in the city. (GG attaches to the bowman for free upgrade). I don't really know yet what the odds are on that. Guess we'll find out on next turn. May need to bombard and wait for those two cats.

[luddite]

Sorry you lost your gg, but at least it was for a good cause. If he had kept them both in chastity, he might have actually made it difficult to defend that city. As it is, I doubt you'll have any trouble.

[Lewwyn]

Sorry you lost your gg, but at least it was for a good cause. If he had kept them both in chastity, he might have actually made it difficult to defend that city. As it is, I doubt you'll have any trouble.

Agreed. I'm not complaining that he's making questionable tactical decisions, I'm more miffed by them is all.

I'm also a little irked that his Xbow killed the GG at 29% odds, again in the end it meant that TRD had one less Xbow to use to defend the city, but it was just annoying.

[Lewwyn]

Well, apparently I was wrong about the max units he could get into the city. He ended up with 4 xbows and 2 bowmen. A total of 6 units. And I was unable to break him this turn:



Note at least his GG is dead. I killed 5 units for the price of 4, 2 of which were cats. Its okay but a little more costly than I wanted. Hopefully he doesn't get too many units into the city. Current:



His capital looks tasty.

Also for fun, a pick of Seven's new island homes:



Anway not pictured but TRD has optics at 1 turn. I decided not to pursue optics. I haven't got compass yet. So instead I'm going guilds! 6 turns but I can only keep that tech rate up if I keep plundering TRDs cities.

Sorry not as in depth as usual. Tired, gonna take a nap.

EDIT: Just a note from last turn to this turn, his cap emptied. He probably has a xbow and a bowman on the galley outside of chastity. If he whips a new crossbow he'll have 4 units, 2 health Xbows, one injured xbow and 1 bowman. Blarg. We'll see. Too tired to worry too much atm.

[Lewwyn]

Ho, Ho, HO! TGIF! After 3 days the turn has arrived! And I have some pretty overworked battlefields for you all!

First, just so you know, Seven razed another of Ruff's cities.

Next, I open the save and find that TRD has only whipped one Xbow in Chastity with no other reinforcements. Nice! Now my units are still injured, reinforcements need a turn. I figure I'll wait, bombard and heal to take the city next turn. City defenses to 24% Here's what it all looks like:



Here you can see my army, his city and just SE of my army I have another Zerker (he swings both ways as I'll explain after my next pic). As long as there's no big surprises I should take the city next turn since I will have 3 full health zerkers, a full health crossbow, and a bunch of half health zerkers. That all should be self explanatory.

Next in the north Sea we have a super interesting situation. TRD got optics this turn when he ended turn. My galleon would have been in view of his Triremes if they were in the position they were in last turn. But he moved them west. This means he still has no visibility on my galleon. Theres only one spot I'm absolutely sure of that I can hit his capital from 4 spaces away without being seen. I'v marked that with the teal line. The yellow line is the turn AFTER next, barring any units or upgrades in his capital. Yay!

Also, TRDs triremes moved to an interesting position. They cannot be upgraded to caravels until he moves them into his territory. But if he moves them into his territory my triremes and Galley will be able to move past him. This means that If he does move the triremes I may move the Zerk from Frigga onto the galley and have all the ships move into TRDs territory past his triremes/caravel upgrades. He may attack at that point but I will also have a caravel on hand courtesy of Seven which he has gifted onto my stack. SO if he attacks the stack my Galley will not be attacked. Given this I would be able to move that galley the next turn next to XVII and provide another extra Zerker to either take the city or defend it.

If he does not move the trireme, I'll probably attack his triremes with my caravel and triremes. Also, the Zerk may go to another plan... :



Here is the Temperance plan. It would give allow me to hit Temperance with 4 Zerks and 1 Trebuchet in 4 turns, or 5 zerkers and 2 trebuchet in 5 turns. I'm also amenable to sending a pike with the 5 turn army. You can see where all the units are coming from on the map. Sigyn's extra spear will garrison Skadi to free up the two healed zerkers. I have the first Trebuchet in Loki and the other zerker NE of Loki. The trebuchet in the south will take 5 turns to reach Temperance at least. The question becomes can I take Temperance with only 1 trebuchet and 4 zerkers. The zerker West of Sigyn is now on a road thanks to the worker there so he can swing south along the road once Chastity is taken. I have him there so if anything happens he can move onto the main stack and join the attack, go south or reinforce Sigyn. Options!

Also an option I just thought of is to send the 4 zerkers and the 1 trebuchet early. Get a turn of bombard in before the second trebuchet gets there with the other zerker. The problem with that is TRD sees the army one turn early. It gives him 3 turns to prepare instead of 2! Now whether getting an extra bombardment in is worth tipping my hand is the question. Thing is, Temperance is only size 6. There is not much whipping available to him there. In fact it may work out in my favor if I can get him to whip before the city grows by tipping my hand a turn early. Alternatively I can make the attempt to sack the city with 4 zerk and 1 trebuchet and make the decision of whether to attack that turn, when I get there. Options!

Also you may notice I have two pikes in Forseti now. I have another Freyr that can reach Forseti in 1 movement. I'm seriously worried about Nakor. I think I'm the easier target here between Seven and myself. Seven has the islands and has only one city that connects to Ruff by land. I, on the other hand, have a direct connection to Nakor and a very nice city that he could hit with phracts from his city! Also he knows I'm in the process of conquering TRD so I'm weak on the backside.

Nakor is the kind of guy who fence sits and makes the easy, and most beneficial decision. Between attacking me and Seven who's easier? Who would give him more benefit? I'm weak from conquering and I"m still not finished. I have lots of new prime land located right next to him. Compare that to the inaccessible Seven.

Also, Seven saw Nakors first two phracts built already. Sort of in his south, but... I need more troops in Forseti fast. I may even have to stop the TRD rampage if it gets to that. Pikes, longbows, cats I'm building them all. On the plus side my cities are almost all healed from the initial whipping round. I want to wipe TRD though. Not only would it help my happiness and eliminate someone plotting against me, it would be great to eliminate a player from the turn schedule :P

So that's where it stands. I would appreciate input on the Nakor situation. Should I be as worried as I am? Should I be more proactive on that front? Also what do you guys think about the Temperance attack? I'm feeling good about it but I'm also considering that taking temperance would be a mistake if Nakor is coming from me. It would give me another front to defend against two movers. Ugh. Although if I let Temperance sit, Nakor could use open borders to hit Chastity, Sigyn and maybe even Loki. SO perhaps taking temperance is actually narrowing the possible battlefront with Nakor.

[Lewwyn]

One other thing, I started teching Guilds and all, but now I think its a mistake, I need HBR for knights anyway, and I need HBR for WE when Seven gives me ivory. Also having a couple HAs would be great to sac against any stack Nakor has with cats. I believe I'll switch to HBR Next turn and then complete guilds.

[Serdoa]

Why do you build Trebuchets and not Catapults?

[Lewwyn]

Why do you build Trebuchets and not Catapults?

I built about 3 trebuchets, but I have 3 more cats building. I find trebuchets to be great attacking cities and I knew I was going to hit Temperance and then his islands. I only want a few for city taking. Then back to cat production for defense. Mostly I just wanted to use em?

I know that A) they're more expensive B) they're only good attacking cities and C) they aren't as good for hitting incoming stacks, but really I just like the way they look and find them more likely to survive smashing into a city. If even one trebuchet survives attacking a city its already paid for its extra building cost because cats nearly never survive at this point. Still cats are more versatile so I wouldn't build a ton of trebuchets, only a few.

[Lewwyn]

3rd attempt to write this thing...

Well, I wanted to do a full on update. But unfortunately I don't have all the screenies. I have two and I will explain the rest as I go. I had to shut off the game without taking screenies which is quite troublesome.

First off, Chasity. I took the city. He whipped another Xbow in the city so he had 3 Xbows:



injured cat bombards, healthy cat Sacs, 3 zerkers attack at 45% odds, 2 win 1 loses. I clean up with the GG for extra XP.

Naval battles went well. Caravel kills the one trireme, My first trireme kills the second trireme. I put the zerker and pike from Frigga onto the galley, they will be able to hit his capital next turn. Frigga is putting one turn into a longbow and then whip next turn.

Captial has 1 Xbow, 1 Bowman, 1 spear. Next turn I hit with 3 zerkers, 1 cat 1 pike. Do cats do collateral off a boat?

Also note I've switched to HBR, be done in 2 turns. TRD is teching Astronomy! with 85 gold in his coffers and 15 turns to go atm.

Temperance plan is going forward with 4 zerks and a trebuchet entering his territory next turn. The Zerk from Frigga will no be coming so I'm just going ahead with it. The second trebuchet is behind those, I'll make the decision on bombard or not when the troops get close.

Power graph:


Nakor is still rising. He had a phract built in the city south of Temperance this turn... ugh. I'll ask him about it.

So the reason I don't have more screenies is because I was taking them just before I ended turn and I hit cmd+shift+r instead of cmd+shift+3 which is the print screen command on a mac. Apparently cmd+shift+r is the hotkey for "screw me". It made the screen go black, put Civ into window mode and the civ window was black. Nothing I did would put it back. I could still hear the music playing though and still had the Civ cursor, so hit enter, and the turn ended. I clicked around the area for the save pop-up and found the save in my folder so that I didn't have to replay the turn. I'm still nervous that nothing is screwed up, but I sent the turn to Seven anyway. Heres what it looked like on my desktop:



UGH. I quit Civ and then it loaded back up fine. I still have no idea what it did. In any case, thats why I don't have more screenies and the full on battlefield images. Then while I was writing this, Firefox crashed, twice. Sweet computer day.

[Serdoa]

Thanks for the update Lewwyn, waited for it already

As for the catapult on your ship: I believe to remember that catapults (or other siege) can't attack via boat. And also not bombard. But I am not 100% sure.