[SPOILERS] Athlete and Lewwyn are SHAKA OF THE VIKINGS

[Lewwyn]

Heh, Yeah I was waiting too.

So I sent a missive to Nakor now that I've seen his phract in Antioch:

Hey Nakor, this the email I'm using for all my RB stuff now.

I wanted to congratulate you on getting your cataphracts. I see the one you've built in Antioch. The first? of many? Given that your nation has come into its own with the advent of your UU, I wonder if you are preparing a christening of sorts by invading someone and lavishing yourself in their blood? I hope that you are considering your options carefully. While I am continuing my battle with TRD, I wish to point out that I haven't left the back kitchen door open.

I have no idea of your allegiances to Ruff or Seven, but I"m aware you had a information pact with TRD. I hope your ties with TRD have not grown as I have continued to beat him back after his assault. I would not wish any bad blood between us due to my current conflict. Can I count on your continued neutrality in relation to me and my war with TRD even though you've reached equine nirvana?

Yours,
Lewwyn

Its not very subtle but then at this point he's building the phracts already. He's either going to attack me, Ruff or Seven. Its probably in his best interest to attack me or Ruff. I believe Ruff is the easier target given his lack of military tech and his current losses. Seven is harder to reach and more of a stretch, however, as Seven is top dog he may want to take him down. Now me. I've laid out why I'm a good target. my hop though is that he'll see that I'm not a pushover even with my main force attacking TRD. I've already got the 3 pikes and an Xbow in the closest city to him, plus I'm whipping walls there next turn and castle in another two turns. There are 2 longbows a zerk and a 2 cats on their way to that city as well. I'm whipping 3 cities and just busting out the longbows, pikes and cats. He has 3-4 turns before I can pretty much repel any attack there.

One of my concerns is that he wardecs and goes north through temperance attacking my units that are attempting to take that city. And then he goes north through the cities still in rebellion. (Sigyn went into a 3 turn rebellion from chastity's culture this turn before I could take it, ugh). The question becomes how many units does Nakor think I have.

[Lewwyn]

So, I was going back to the save to see how I would do defending against Nakor when I spotted this gem:



Notice that this picture is of TRD's worker building a road, on a plains, south of Temperance that has no other improvement on it. This TRD, who never builds roads. It's a road to Nakor. Nakor has a worker there too. That worker is making a cottage on the forest tile there. follow it up with a road and he has a path straight up to TRDs territory and what I would call the soft underbelly of mine. Now this gives me a bit of a timeline. Nakor will want to get the forest gone, plus road that tile before he makes any moves towards me. Hopefully I can spike my power enough to warn Nakor away. Time to rewhip my civ into the stone age.

[Lewwyn]

Ah ha, plot thickens.... Nakor has responded with this missive:

Hey Lewwyn,

Good to hear from you and thanks for the congratulations!
You are doing an awesome job against TRD! Congratulations to you as well!

I see you are well prepared for my Cataphracts with some Pikes in stragetic places.
If it would make you feel more safe, I'm willing to sign a NAP between our two nations.

Kind regards,
Nakor

Now, I've been worrying about Nakor blindsiding me, but I think I made my point with my pikes. Question is how much does he fear me crossing the border and am I holding him back from conquesting Ruff or Seven?

If I sign the NAP, I'm basically sealing TRD's fate because I will have nothing stopping me (besides TRD himself). Also I will be able to conquer and reconsolidate safely. Even reestablish my economy. Truly, its a great deal for me. But if I sign it am I setting Seven up for a double team? Without me to threaten Nakor's backside what would happen.

The more I think about it, the more I think the NAP would be the way to go. Nakor can only really attack seven through Ruff or me. SO most likely he'd hit a weakened Ruff. Seven is only really accessible by two points on land. And by sea he's on top. Actually, this may be a huge mistake by Nakor. He'll lose the chance to attack me with phracts, will have to war with Ruff or Seven giving me time to finish off TRD tech ahead and put my new land to work. Though if Nakor can turn this NAP into all of Ruff's land faster than I can capitalize it may work in his favor. Nakor is KILLING me in GNP right now. I believe he's still in his golden age.

Ah well, I've sent a msg to Seven asking his opinion and how it would affect our alliance if I did sign the NAP. See Seven and I have been working together, trading gold, resources, information, units. A lot of goodwill and loyalty has built up making this decision difficult because it could signal a parting of solidarity. Bah. We'll see in a bit.

[NobleHelium]

Why does Nakor care the forest is gone or not? Wouldn't it be faster just to road first?

[Lewwyn]

Turn came early! 2 turn day!

I'm kinda tired so this may be a bit shorter report:

Now you see it:



Now you don't:



Magic! Or just some good rolls. Actually, the rolls ended up in my favor all the way through after the first Zerker sacrificed against the crossbow. To begin with though, I never would have attempted the attack if the Crossbow had been promoted. That would have simply made it too tough. He had that unit last turn so he definitely had the option. Sometimes not using promotions can be a bad thing people. I also wouldn't have attempted it if there was a 4th unit in the city. Hence the "heh" directed at his crossbow outside the city.

SO I went in, killed the galley to the south and looked at my units odds.

Against the crossbow:
16% for unpromoted zerk
22% for cover zerk
30ish% for cover + city raider zerk

Not good odds at all. I knew I was going to have to sacrifice here. The problem is my 4th unit is a pike. The crossbow would need to be damaged enough that the Pike could kill it even with the boating penalty. So I went with the middle 22% zerker I wanted to save the highest promoted one, but felt the unpromoted one just wouldn't give me enough damage, couldn't risk it.

I hit, Xbow down to 2 health, great!

Next up bowman:
35% for Unpromoted zerk
71% for cover+city raider zerk

Went with City raider zerk and won the battle.

Next up Spear:
96% for Unpromoted zerk = he wins!

Next injured Xbow:
90% for Pike! = He wins!

So overall I had just enough odds. If I hadn't had the Pike along it would have been for naught.

I had to raze the city or he would have recaptured and whipped another xbow and I wouldn't have been able to recapture it with my injured units. So goodbye big beautiful city. If I can't have you TRD certainly can't. I'm building a settler in 6 turns.

On the Temperance front I am waiting. I have units in Hel(rename from Chastity) that are healing including a cover + city raider 3! zerker. Also another trebuchet and cat. He has built a new Xbow in temperance and could easily have 1-2 more by the time I reached the city so I figure I should just take a breather and gather the necessary reinforcements. ALthough now tat I think about it... I should take TRDs last two island cities first. That way I can concentrate my forces at Temperance right at the border with Nakor. This way I don't have spare units from the Nakor border to take the two island cities. Options...

Power graph, aka Nakor's getting scary:



My Military Screen:



Check out the GG EXP bar. 89 of 90 for the GG. One more fight and it would have popped this turn. Oh well, I'm chasing a galley with a trireme. I have 3 moves he has 2. I'll hit him next turn, get the GG. I'm going to pop out a chariot slap the GG on and get a GG medic. Right now I don't have one since I've used them for super attacking units and free upgrades to zerker.

So thats the state of things. I'm still waiting to hear back from Seven about what he thinks for the Nakor NAP. I think I'll message Nakor asking how long he is thinking. Fishing, Stalling.

[Lewwyn]

Why does Nakor care the forest is gone or not? Wouldn't it be faster just to road first?

If he's worried about me bringing a stack to his doorstep then he doesn't want me sitting on the forest for defense bonus. From his email I gather I'm not his first choice to attack, but if he wants to attack someone else while we don't have a NAP in place then he would want to be sure to be defensive against me.

The road is more necessary for attacking. Clearing the forest is more necessary for defending. He doesn't want to make it easy for me to Back door him if he attacks Ruff or Seven.

Did I explain that alright? I'm getting tired, about ready for bed and I think I just repeated myself unnecessarily .

[NobleHelium]

I see. I figured since you were assuming he's taking an aggressive stance then he would likely be able to attack you before you could threaten him, and be able to put off the forest chopping until after the road.

[Lewwyn]

I see. I figured since you were assuming he's taking an aggressive stance then he would likely be able to attack you before you could threaten him, and be able to put off the forest chopping until after the road.

Nakor is by nature defensive. But being aware of all possibilities(ie: him deciding to attack me) is important.

I believe this NAP offer may have something to do with Seven accidentally accepting a map trade with Nakor. Nakor now knows that Seven has taken Ruff's islands (apparently he didn't know before!) and knows about the secret silver and ivory islands. A real blow to our coordination. The real advantage that Seven and I have is that we've pretty much neutered two opponents.

I'm not going to sign a NAP. I believe I have enough to defend against Nakor. We may get to see if I'm right.

[Lewwyn]

I wanted to point out something real quick. Go back and look at that military map. I think it really highlights just how much land Nakor has. He has more land then me even with my conquests! This is part of the Nakor problem. The other part is that he's in a GA teching Education and gunning for Lib. I have to decline the Nap just to keep pressure on him or he'll tech beyond me while I'm still trying to reestablish. My infrastructure sucks. I have no courthouses, markerts, no guilds for grocers.

It was necessary to say the least. If I didn't go war full throttle I would have made little gains and it wouldn't even be worth discussing how to stand up to Nakor. Still seeing -7,8 gold maintenance in each city stings a bit.

Gotta knock out TRD hope that Nakor drains his economy attacking Ruff, and that Seven can capture more of Ruff than Nakor.

[Lewwyn]

Turn came finally, been a while. I told Nakor I didn't think a NAP was necessary, that the status quo was fine.

Apparently he does not agree:



You can see he's moving a phract and a mac into TRDs land. I believe he will try to pull a move similar to the Americans during the Cold War. Giving your enemy's enemy military.

That phract on its own makes things pretty annoying, I suppose I can expect some more, but probably not too much. Given that Nakor cannot take anything from me as my defenses are too tight, and he would take too high a loss, and that he is after another target, he's attempting to slow me down and make things more difficult for me. Silly Nakor.

This does mean that I am going to leave Temperance for last now. I will attempt to crush the islands first then bring the full army to Temperance so that I can make sure all my mobile forces are on Nakor's border when that city becomes my border with him.

Also notice my trireme there has killed his galley. Was he trying to pick up troops on his galley? or the workers? No idea... The galley kill got me a new GG. I'm going to stick him on a scout of a chariot for a medic.

So here is the Naval situation:



I can get 2 trebs, 2 cats, 1 longbow 1 GG zerker and 5 other zerkers to hit Humility in 6 turns. I will put the siege and the GG + Longbow on the island first and they will walk up to the city. If I feel threatened I can get 3 of the zerks on that stack the turn before it sits outside the city. Otherwise those zerkers will attack amphibiously.

The other choice is to hit Humility with 5 zerkers navaly in 3 turns. That shrinks the time he has to react but also leaves me scrificing some crossbows for sure. And I still don't think it'd be enough. I know he has at least one bowmen, and one crossbow in Humility. plus whatever else he whips. The city has 60% culture defenses on a hill. I'm looking at the very least 3 crossbows in the city in 3 turns which means that I'd have to sac 3 zerks to damage them and I'd only have 2 to clean up 3 damaged units...fail. The best way and probably only way is with siege. So 6 turns or more if I feel like bombarding the city a bit, during which I could go get more zerkers as well.

So plan is:
A) contain TRD and Nakor in Temperance
B) capture Humility
C) capture Patience
D) regroup all troops
E) mass assault Temperance end war and begin recouperating/consolidating/teching.
F) Kill Nakor

Hopefully this all works out as planned. I don't like taking 6 turns to take Humility but if the assault isn't right, I have to do it all over again. Island can be a pain in the ass when the city is on a hill with massive culture. Zerkers can only get you so far without some siege.