[SPOILERS] Panzersmackdown with Justinian (Mack/Seven)

[Rowain]

In my defense, I did guess first... and I'll stick with it. We all know these guys (Mackoti especially) can whip cities to a bloody stump, but I don't think they will.

On the other hand, I wish I guessed 42 just for he geek cred.

You just should have said that you talked in 33-system and not decimal and you would have been golden .

[SevenSpirits]

OK, so we're undertaking another invasion. Sorry I only have one snapshot of it so I will have to describe what happened.

We were setting up to capture their fur city, Foxwoods, with cats and horse archers. The original plan was for all the units to move in along the diagonal. Of course they would have 1 turn warning (we just have to move after them on the first turn of moving into neutral lands), but with 8 cats and a bunch of attackers it's no biggie.

However! Our spy caught sight of an even better opportunity. They had pulled back 3 cats and 3 other units onto a "hidden" tile 2W1S of our planned invasion point. And you know what wrecks cats in open ground? Horse archers. So the turn of the invasion we split the 2 movers off from the main stack and sent them through the newly-roaded forest pass. The best part was this put them in range of the cats, but the cats weren't in range of them. (And at the time, there was no road 1N of the cats' position, so if they moved before us their cats would have to retreat somewhere where they could not help defend Foxwoods.



OK, so we move in after they've played. And move first the next turn too and can therefore slaughter their units, right? Right????

Nope, the RNG still hates us. I simmed this battle out beforehand and about half the time we kill every unit for no losses, the other half of the time we kill all but one redlined cat and lose one horse archer (the first one, who has to attack the spear at only 60% odds). All the units other than the spear have miniscule odds against horse archers (and then when the chariot and spear attack the catapults are already near death from flanking).

But... we missed most of our flanking rolls. So there were still two catapults left with 4.0/5 strength. And then our chariot lost it's high-odds attack and we decided not to attack with the spear, to be safe. So instead of killing all their units or all but one, we killed all but 3. The remaining cats escaped to the city as there was a worker around to build a road for them. Thankfully the most likely result of this is we get to kill them next turn anyway.

So it's now turn 3 of the attack and we bombarded down the defenses with 5 cats, and attacked with everything else, doing lots of damage and losing 1 cat and 1 axe. Next turn the city should fall.

Domestically we have teched guilds, banking (with bulb help), iron working, civil service (with bulb help), polytheism in the last 5 turns and will continue with aesthetics this turn and literature next. Then (5t after swapping to mercantilism) we will enter slavery and begin the whipping. You guys were close, our own rough guess was 40 and with some planning I revised that to 43. We may end up whipping 1-2 more or less but that's the plan, so Rowain (closest guess at 42) gets a cookie.

The actual items planned to be whipped are 2 forges, 4 courthouses and 11 knights. Those knights will be supplemented with more from Fastbond and Black Lotus (which will be getting the heroic epic imminently), and we are not whipping these two cities at all. Mind's Desire, the Moai city, and the national epic city will also not be whipped.

The island city by comparison (which you saw was size 6 in the screenshot, gaining 9f/t), will be whipped for 11 pop. (From size 11 down to 2, building a forge, courthouse, and two knights.)

[Ceiliazul]

The island city by comparison (which you saw was size 6 in the screenshot, gaining 9f/t), will be whipped for 11 pop. (From size 11 down to 2, building a forge, courthouse, and two knights.)

[SevenSpirits]

I feel like doing another update.

Regarding actual whips: looks like it will be either 42 or 44 pop. Quite a few things went differently than planned. First, a barb galley spawned in the one tile of fogged coast in our lands and pillaged a fish boat. So we whipped a replacement boat, and miraculously were still able to whip the knight + courthouse we wanted anyway. Also, I miscalculated the size of the island city - it only reached 10, not 11. (We don't have a sandbox or anything; all the planning is just mental and paper calculations. I probably had an off-by-one error counting population growths.) Thirdly, it turned out that a few cities could actually squeeze out a little more than planned, but in some cases this just mean the whip was not required.

So anyway. We are assembling an army and plan to attack in three turns. Attack meaning enter their culture. Then the turn after that move next to the city. Turn after that bombard and attack. We should have 13 knights available for this with 3 more en route. A similar number of catapults, and 1-2 maces and longbows. Plus assorted pre-medieval units.


City by city:

We'll have 8 courthouses as soon as Fastbond builds one and it can then start on the forbidden palace. That should be done in about 10 turns.


As soon as the civic cooldown is over we'll swap back to caste/bureaucracy and move the palace. We are growing Mind's Desire in anticipation, and have two chops ready to go into infrastructure once it's getting the bureau bonus.


Many cities got whipped down as much as possible (without giving up any great tiles). Not much to say about them. Also, many cities are building wealth right now so we don't go bankrupt while in slavery.


National Epic city. We finished it 3t after literature came in and we hooked marble, via three 3rd ring chops we'd saved for a while.


Nothing to see here.


Nope.


Whipped just this last turn because it was working cottages for Mind's Desire. Now it sucks. Haha.


Moai city - started on it as soon as we got the stone city back. Now it just has to grow. Like the other national wonder cities we didn't whip it at all. Unlike them, however, it started out small and only has one food resource.


Heroic Epic got almost built in one turn by two forests on the border that we chopped. Now it's pumping mostly cats (it's important for the cats to have 2 promos).


This will be a unit pump in the future, getting a forge and barracks. Right now though, it just built 2 knights and will build another.


This will be a naval production center.


Island city couldn't get forge/CH/Knight/Knight, although replacing that last knight with e.g. 2 longbows was possible. Instead we are going to leave it at 3 whips for happy reasons and let it grow to 14 faster.


This city got its fish pillaged, but it was OK.


Not much to say.


Settled for marble and fur around the advent of mercantilism. Will be at size 2 forever but still worth it.


Settled for silver and later whale, with the spare settler we produced in case we had to settle for iron.


Captured from X-com.

We've built 5 spies and sent them all west. Four of them died before reaching the other side of X-com's lands. Not sure if that's normal. (But we have city visibility because they then spent all their EP stealing Metal Casting from us.) The fifth is sticking around and may help plan the invasion or try to steal calendar.


Rest of X-com's lands.


Our border. We invade by the wheat.

[Nicolae Carpathia]

Negative gold at 0% science? Ouch. Is that from unit maintenance (from many units per pop point), or just losing commerce tiles?

[SevenSpirits]

Negative gold at 0% science? Ouch. Is that from unit maintenance (from many units per pop point), or just losing commerce tiles?

It's from losing the 25ish merchants we were running. :neenernee

We just don't have much commerce at all - look at our cities. No rivers, no cottages. Not counting merchants our net gold has actually gone up in slavery, from working coast, whipping away non-commerce-working population, and finishing courthouses (and of course building wealth).

[Bigger]

I think its funny that you built a forge in a city that will only ever produce 1 hammer. I guess you really wanted those 2 happys.

[Ozzee]

How many cities are you planning to conquer in this attack (best/worst case)?

[Ellimist]

I think its funny that you built a forge in a city that will only ever produce 1 hammer. I guess you really wanted those 2 happys.

At size two, the city has a food surplus of 9. The forge bonus will apply whenever they whip it.

[SevenSpirits]

I think its funny that you built a forge in a city that will only ever produce 1 hammer. I guess you really wanted those 2 happys.

Like Ellimist said it's produced a lot of hammers from whipping already. But indeed, we do need the extra happiness there. We want to grow the city to size 14 so it can provide $3 trade routes in our mainland cities, but we don't have enough happiness to reach that without the forge. A Market would have solved the happy problem too, but it's much more expensive for the same (or less) happiness if you subtract the hammers that the forge has already produced from its cost.