[SPOILERS] Stonehenge First: scooter's thread

[scooter]

T175 is still defending

Oooookay. So Commodore fired his cannons at Shirley and retreated the rest. He decided to do this:



It's safe to say 13 Cavs can kill 2 axes, so clearly I have work to do here. Should be fine though - that city is on a hill across a river, so I don't need to get much in. I fired 2 barrage cannons at that stack and then killed the top unit with a Cav from Jeff. That was the only healthy Cav in range. The rest of his force did this:



He collateral'd Shirley for the express purpose of preventing me from hitting that stack, but whatever. I'm not going to let them survive:



Hit them with the cannon + 2 cats, then with random units. I actually hit a bad string of 3 straight losses ~80% odds, so that was rough, but I did kill them all. The very last one I hit with a chariot which was super fun:



Fun. Now, he could probably hit that stack pretty good if he wants, hard to say. Anyways, I got another GG out of this. That means I'm going to try going for the KO blow on Commodore's capital again next turn. First, need to clear this Cav out of his:



Can't let him get a look at what I have. Deleted the worker. Yep, let's do this:



Everything is labeled. I actually don't need both FW, I set this up thinking the road on the sheep was not there (the Cav was still covering it), so I'm fine. The final tally for the turn:



You can see that rough stretch of 3 losses in a row after the suicide catapults. The first two attacks were 70-80%. The third was a Flanking II Cav that had 30% win 40% retreat odds and still died. Bummer. Other than that though, things went pretty smoothly. Commodore doesn't have a ton besides his Cav stack, and I think he'll withdraw that. Demos:



Still tops in soldiers, but that #2 number...



Yeah, I took this shot before the Pin banter thread thing even came up, so I've been halfway expecting it. Thing is, if he attacks the city west of Abed, I've got a nice reaction force. If he attacks the same city as last time, it's probably dead. HOWEVER, I did use a sentry awhile back to see he was moving stuff at my city west of Abed (Troy), so my bet is that's where he's coming. In which case it'll still be tight. Depends a lot on what Commodore chooses to do.... which is yet another sucky part about banter threads.

[scooter]

T176 makes things go boom

Ok, here was his stack:



Those 11 cannons are the main scary part. Presumably he has more Cavs in the fog, because that's probably not enough. However, I had one thing really fortunate bounce my way. Last turn (which took me forever to play) when I was shuffling units to defend Commodore, I decided to back off on pressuring Norvos because Commodore pulled too many units out of it for it to be a really cost-effective attack. So instead I shuffled the cannons into a spot to cover Troy from 1-movers. This was a big help. Fling cannons + cats into that stack, then next comes Cavs. I decided to delay my Commando check on Commodore because I wanted to use those Cavs to flank away all that siege. If I do that, I'm safe. Well, I started attacking and it went... incredibly well.





I am bummed I got only one siege withdrawal, but I really am not in a position to be complaining right now. The aftermath:



Pindicator XV is actually in trouble next turn. I did bring back the Rifles from Britta, so several of those rifles were not involved in the attack. Speaking of, Commodore withdrew as expected:



The highlighted units are the units NE-NE of Shirley. This means he could theoretically hit Shirley with those Cavs. I had to add units into Shirley as a result to make sure he couldn't kill it with Cavs. I also shuffled units as best as I can. I'm going to need to hurry my Cavs from the Pin front back up here. Also, I'm building...... workers?



Go figure.

[scooter]

Ah, missed two screenshots. By the way, Commodore's power dip from our skirmishes finally registered:



Looking forward to seeing if Pindicator's tops that. Actually, demoscreen says yes it will:



NOt sure which of those is the low one, but either way it's close, so Pindicator's dip will be a bit sharper.

The gameplan now is to finish Railroads, and as soon as I can get out of Nationalism I'll go back to the right civics, fire a golden age, and then try to push decisively ahead of Commodore/Pin. I mainly need to spam workers. Once I have a solid rail network, I'm MUCH much safer.

[Bigger]

well if you hadn't suicided so many workers you wouldnt need to . Whats the banter thread about, it sounded like you lost a city from the way Pindicator spoke. But so far good news =).

[Nicolae Carpathia]

Never give up never surrender death and glory

[scooter]

AGHGHGHGHGHGHGASGHIODSFJDPIFJSADKFMK.MFXZIOFJSAIRF[WAF

[Merovech]

AGHGHGHGHGHGHGASGHIODSFJDPIFJSADKFMK.MFXZIOFJSAIRF[WAF

I personally feel like this would make a good QOTM.

[scooter]

That's all I know how to say. I knew Commodore could do the Commando thing because I've tried to do it several times myself. I've been very intenionally prepping for him to do just that. I just happened to play that turn at 1AM, made one little mistake, and that just happened to be the turn Commodore tried it. I dunno what else to say. Every turn I've been leaving at least 2 real units in there so it was impossible. The only time I would leave one unit in there was if one was completing EoT, which was basically every turn because I was 1T-ing units all the time. Anyways, at the last minute I changed my Abed build to a Worker because Railroad was coming EoT, and I've been short on FWs because I've spent a lot scouting. I did that without covering Abed. The dumb thing is I had 2 Cavs RIGHT next to Abed with the GGs to try a double-commando move next turn, and all I had to do was move them back in.

The kicker too was the 6 great people. That was supposed to be my game clincher and those could have at least righted the ship for me salvageably had I kept those. I had them further south, but I moved them north of Britta a couple turns ago when Commodore threatened Britta just to be safe. I just didn't move them back to Britta. Again, I just dunno. This is why these turns were getting tiring btw, I was having to check all these little things every single turn, and turns were taking 20-30 minutes or so. It's like someone (Seven I think?) said in the 38 lurker thread or something - the sucky part about being a runaway is that you can't phone it in, and one bad turn destroys your game. I'd been mailing turns in nearly all game and only started playing closely when Commodore and Pin started throwing stuff at me every turn.

Oh btw, the other kicker this turn? Pin threw another stack at my other side. I gave a token defense but didn't really even think about it. If it falls, it falls. I probably could've squeezed another unit or two in, but my motivation is gone. GG Commodore. Oh lastly, I'm not playing with a banter thread again.

[scooter]

I personally feel like this would make a good QOTM.

I would be honored.

Sorry for a gloomy post by the way, I try to avoid those, but I was seriously 10 turns max away from sealing this game for good when all that happened, so that was a serious bummer. This game was surprisingly stressful though. I love this game concept, but wow that got really stressful and unfun to play at times when it turned into Tower Defense. Anyways, don't expect serious updates from me anymore. I'll just pass on turns until Pin is ready to concede to Commodore. I was dead serious when I saw my research capacity got cut in half by that attack btw. My max bpt is in the 400s right now, with breakeven well below that. It'll be in the 500s when I'm in the right civics, but it was over 1k just a half-dozen turns ago. That's about where Commodore is I believe. So yeah, game is done. I'm tempted to just workshop everything and just build military nonstop and make Commodore's life similarly obnoxious, but I lack the motivation for that, especially with Pindicator choosing to invade me this turn too.

[scooter]

I can't put into words how pissed I am at myself for this. It's especially annoying because it's not like I was unaware Commodore could do this, I've been assuming for the last 30 turns that he would and was taking appropriate precautions. In other words, I'd feel less bad if it was just a better player out-thinking me and not a case of "I played at 1AM and changed my Abed build right before ending turn and forgot to adjust accordingly"... Blah. Silly game.