[SPOILERS] Stonehenge First: scooter's thread

[AutomatedTeller]

It had a settled GG, too

I enjoyed the game tremendously - quite a different experience from the greens game - every time I made a mistake, you or Commodore made me pay for it. An outstanding learning experience.

[scooter]

It had a settled GG, too

I enjoyed the game tremendously - quite a different experience from the greens game - every time I made a mistake, you or Commodore made me pay for it. An outstanding learning experience.

Thanks for playing! I actually think you had a really strong game strategically and simply got beat by tactical stuff, which can happen on a map like this. Also seems like you were on the receiving end of more attacks than most, so some of that is simply unlucky. It's a lot harder to defend on this map without the 3CC rule. Did you ever consinder bulbing Machinery with your early GE? Early crossbows on this map would be a terror.

[AutomatedTeller]

Thanks for playing! I actually think you had a really strong game strategically and simply got beat by tactical stuff, which can happen on a map like this. Also seems like you were on the receiving end of more attacks than most, so some of that is simply unlucky. It's a lot harder to defend on this map without the 3CC rule. Did you ever consinder bulbing Machinery with your early GE? Early crossbows on this map would be a terror.

I did, in fact, bulb machinery - but I hadn't picked up IW yet. If I had done that, I don't think that I would have lost VultureRoad to Commodore. That was an enormous mistake, made larger by the fact that I knew that Commodore was A) aggreesive B) had the aggressive trait and C) had a large power spike.

If I had xbows, I dunno, maybe he'd have bothered you.

[scooter]

T130-131 fires GA, sprints for Rifling

Let's do this GA thing again, shall we:



Cool. I settled Shirley, but the culture is funky:



Unfortunately that means Commodore owns those tiles. I do get the Merc bonus so I'll get a free artist which is a nice boost - I've been doing the same at Annie. ALso, got a great engineer:



I've got a few ideas on how to use him actually. Definitely save him for later for now though. Rifling is going to be too much to finish next turn, but T133 I can do it.

[scooter]

T133 sports fancy new Rifles

First, sniped a Musket from Commodore with my fancy Pinch Knight:



Enough room to run away too. Settled a scary city on the border:



Should be interesting trying to hold this. Rifling is coming EoT, so let's get 4 Rifles immediately:



Who needs drafting?



Need to get more of them. Demos:



FWIW that soldier count is before 4 Rifles appeared, so I'm back on top there. Arms race is definitely happening though.

[scooter]

T134 trades haymakers

So you may have seen the little jabbering in the banter thread. That came up because Commodore did something. Well first, the good news upon opening the save:



More importantly, 4 Rifles already exist now. Anyways, I'm going to need it because:



He didn't care so much about the city, but he caught a bunch of my Knights in the city. I actually got the save late at night and figured this is the kind of save you don't play late at night . Finally got to play it. One subtlety here - Commodore catted Pierce here with 1-2 cats. I thought that was random. I noted it to him when we were idly chatting, and he said it was to injure my Knight in there just enough to prevent it from being useful here. Not a bad thought actually. He said he could've burned that one, but thought it more valuable to kill the Knight stack. Also not a bad thought, pretty well played. His top defender was a Formation Cuirasser with 12Str still remaining, so yeah, my Knights got crap odds on that. However, I had 3 Barrage-capable catapults hidden just in case he might do this . I also had Knights in reserve at Annie, so....



Yep, his Cuirassers went thud . Look at that health bar on that Musket! Yes, it's there, look verrrry closely. Anyways, I don't know what the hammer exchange was, but I do know that if we're both going to lose a bunch of mounted troops, I'll trade Knights for Cuirassers any day of the week. Was also nice to see I still have #1 soldiers:



Unfortunately it's taking awhile for my Rifles to get places (the horror of 1-movers), but that was Commodore's best window for awhile I imagine to do some damage and the damage ended up being pretty mild. I'm going to head for Military Traition next, where I'll immediately unlock Cavalry since I have Rifling already. Pindicator better have more muskets by then (does he even have gunpowder?) or else things will start to get dicey for him.

For fun, here's the power graph from the following turn to see the matching dips:



Mine was offset a bit by Rifles completing I imagine. I have quite a few now.

[scooter]

T135-136 survives and expands

Survived!



Event log just to show he had no further attacks, those are all from last turn. Reinforcing everywhere. Upgraded a couple units, especially this guy:



I'm genuinely curious how many C2 Cuirassers that could kill by itself. Several. I prepped to settle my next city:



Settler has been there for ages but with the Commodore attack it felt too risky. T135 demos to show the soldier count rising rapidly still:



Gonna need that if I want to survive what I guess will be a 2v1. GNP graph shows the weirdness that's been going on:



You can see that ridiculous spike I made when I launched GA, completed Oxford, and turned on science all at once. Anyways, you can imagine why Commodore is so hard to quantify because of Rep. Pindicator is definitely lagging. At end of this turn I got tech visibility and he's just now finishing Education. I might have a window to ambush him while he's still slogging through his non-PHI universities maybe? I can't get to Cavs fast enough for that though. Anyways, on T136 I did settle another city:



I'll just farm the grass N of the city, bulldozing the cottage. Just trying to get these cities to be producers. I'll push culture, obviously running Merc Artist in all these cities. These turns all make me nervous, I feel like a big stack could hit anywhere at anytime, and it makes me nervous.

[Bigger]

love the name theme (yes I'm slow)

awesome that you have to use chang, even... I didn't realize you were up to 8 cities :O

[scooter]

awesome that you have to use chang, even... I didn't realize you were up to 8 cities :O

Actually that was my reaction too. I was like "I swear I have to be missing somebody" and then I counted up my cities. I was the only person with <5 cities for an eternity!

[scooter]

So I told this to Commodore by chat, but this is why I've really enjoyed this game so far. The save came in around lunchtime, and I wasn't able to get to it. I then see Commodore quickly updated his thread several times within an hour or so of that... and then I descend into full-on paranoia. I did get that second Rifle into X right? I didn't leave my mounted units vulnerable did I? Abed is safe right? His Cuirs are dead and I have Rifle + Pikes in there, no way he can 1-move it. Hm. Does have have more Cuirassers I don't see? Does he have a big cat stack and he nailed Pierce?


Etc etc. These are the things that run through my mind every turn because there's just so many angles you can get hit from in this game, especially when your opponent is inching a bit closer to "desperate" status now that I'm at 8 cities, top land, top soldiers, top-ish research rate (nobody knows really), and have a Rifling monopoly. Commodore insists he didn't do anything to me, and I believe it... But every time I'm unable to look at the save and a thread starts pinging I get nervous. I can't remember a game doing that to me quite like this game has.