[SPOILERS] Stonehenge First: scooter's thread

[scooter]

I'd try to defend. But, I have no idea how it will turn out. Good luck!

Thanks!

Also this is the sort of situation where you wish you had a supermedic for next turn.

Yeah, the kicker is that I used a GG on a military academy just 1T before this happened. If I had waited one more turn I could've used him in the city as a super medic and/or a way to spread XP and get promos + health for instant healing. I figured my Cavs would heal in my central city in 3ish turns (some sooner) and I would be able to play zone defense all over pretty easily. Pindicator just came in a turn or two early. (In fairness though, if he had come 1T earlier I would've had no chance to get those 2-movers in)

The one problem with the super-medic is all those 2-movers came in last turn, so none of them were eligible to heal this turn... And next turn only the survivors (if there are any) are eligible, so the medic3 would've only actually influenced a few units. But yeah, I was still bummed, that GG would've been nice here.

[scooter]

Crap, here comes a banter thread post. I'm nervous.

[scooter]

The "merciful" thing was this message I sent attached in my email to him:

Sorry for the delay. Needless to say you made me think a little. Be merciful and tell me the results once you've played so I don't sit and wonder while Commodore plays?

So he's refusing to tell me what happened. Was worth a shot to ask.

Now I have to sit and wait for Commodore to play. My one fear is Commodore will know Pindicator is doing something due to the banter and will push into my territory or something, at which point I'll be not thrilled with the banter thread. I'm not going to respond there now for that reason.

[AutomatedTeller]

You said it's your HE city? I think it's worth defending. Losing it is a much bigger blow than losing a few cavs, since your HE city will replace those in a few turns.

[scooter]

T154 has more hope

Great news: He did not attack at all. Bad news: It's not over. He added 9 catapults (ugh) and quite a few Rifles. However, I added a ton of stuff too and got a bunch of healing with the hometown bonus plus a Medic1:



The 9 catapults are scary, however my situation here is... pretty ok. By quick count I have 29 defenders, including 10 Rifles (9 of which are full health). Granted, a couple of those Rifles are Guerillas so that's not useful here, but Rifles are Rifles. That alone makes me feel good. He has 9 catapults, but only 27 hitters visible. He would need at least 10 cavs in the fog IMO for this to work, and it's just not possible for him to have those kinds of numbers right now. So I'm safe from him for now, though that's a scary stack, and I've spent a lot of pop and commerce on this defense so it's still a serious setback.

There's also still the possibility that Commodore will try to be opportunistic. I believe I've adequately shuffled defenses, but the stuff in the south is still uncomfortably thin. We'll see.

[scooter]

OK the above was written before Pin's banter thread post. I believe it's suggesting he withdrew, but I'm not 100% sure.

[scooter]

Man these are tense turns.

Btw, I didn't talk about this because, well, bigger fish and all... But Commodore got the Communism spy, revolted to state property/nationalism, and I've seen workers workshopping. So he's going all-out hammer economy and try to kill me. Should be fun. If I survive this, I'll spend some time tonight figuring out where he is tech-wise and trying to figure out his plan. He's teching towards Rifles right now, likely for ability to draft them and to upgrade his Cuirs to Cavs.

[scooter]

T155 survives with flying colors

Well it was bloody indeed, but very one-sided:





That is some serious XP I just picked up. Also, here's more:



Ok, that's 6 cavs and 1 HA spread out over 4 tiles, all badly wounded. That's 6 free XP. Anyways, I don't know if Pin could've done this or not, but two things that could have made this worse:

1) If he had attacked that first turn with everything and then moved reinforcements in rather than sitting for a turn. I think this swung it from possible to totally impossible. I got a free turn to rest in my city with a Medic unit, so that pushed it over the edge. Also, there would've been a lot of my units dead if he had attacked that first turn, making those 9 cats more potent because the damage would've been more concentrated on real defenders. Just my guess, no real idea what the result would have been.

2) Also, I'm really surprised he didn't burn down all my towns. He could've done it no question, but all my towns are intact. Huge break for me.

Anyways, he actually did pretty signficant damage to me. First, I spent around 500-600 gold on upgrades trying to defend, and that's a big chunk of beakers in my heavily beaker-skewed empire. I also drafted/whipped something like 13 population, which put a noticeable dent to my empire. I was maxed on tiles and running several specialists in my big cities. I dry-whipped a Rifle from Britta which was 5 pop alone, and that city can't borroow the foods to grow because Troy/Jeff need them to regrow their whipped pop. Abed dry-whipped a Cav which cost 3 pop, which is straight-up 3 specialists. Look at my Commodore score differential pre-invasion and post-invasion. Honestly, I lost more pop defending this than Commodore did in losing Myr. Yes there's the infrastructure/city/culture loss so that loss is still bigger, but from a pop standpoint, this really, really hurt me. I probably went overkill, but losing my HE city would have been worse.

That said, I'm in OK shape if I can continue defending. I just need to step cautiously and avoid a timed dogpile. I've got a few ideas, we'll see how that goes. Also need to get some 2-movers into my southern core so I can play some zone vs a potential Commodore stack with catapults.

[scooter]

Oh, nearly forgot:



That's my favorite picture . All the dips you see. You can see a series of Commodore dips that concide with my dips, and then the two big Pindicator dips. Anyways, the point is each dip is bigger thanthe one before it - Commodore's get bigger and then Pindicator's got bigger. I think I'm winning the informal kill contest, so even if I lose this thing (very possible depending on Commodore), I'll be content if I can hold that title.

[dazedroyalty]

Nice! I'm glad to see you're redeeming yourself from PBEM34V! I won't say congrats because that's like tempting fate, but you're doing very well.