[SPOILERS] Lewger goes for the Bigwyn

[Old Harry]

Aw crap. They'll get a load of promotions too won't they?

If you move on A7x do you get a turn before that stack can hit you/reinforce the city?

[Bigger]

Aw crap. They'll get a load of promotions too won't they?

If you move on A7x do you get a turn before that stack can hit you/reinforce the city?

yes. only 1 turn though, so we won't be able to do fancy things like bombard the walls down.

I think this is our only option if we want to keep the war going - the only other option is to raze some island cities and then take peace. I do think if we took Beowulf back and held it until it went out of revolt, we could probably hold it forever after that. so its worth the chance. as long as we're pumping out units azza won't be able to come after us, even if it goes badly.

if we take it, he's forced to split units between presets and tenacious D instead of presets and A7x, which means eventually he probably has to give up presets.

lewwyn, everything except 1 archer in each city?

[Bigger]

lewwyn, what to do with the reinforcements? (4 maces, axe, HA). I'm thinking we plow ahead as if we had just won that battle. he only has 2 criticall injured cats left, so he won't be able to shred them first - and injured units. more importantly, every unit he keeps back to kill them won't be able to return to A7x. and if he does run back to defend A7x we could raze presets - it will force him to make a decision to defend one over the other .

the mace outside living end, otoh, is going to have to retreat until i can it can get more support - including a xbow from song of roland.

[Bigger]

ok, first battle results for azza's glorious win






we really didn't have a chance of surviving that. we lost a couple of 50/50 odds (like 54% in his favor), but the two spears that died azza had 84% and 87%, so lucky wins for us. every other win was at least in the mid 60's in his favor, most were in the 80s or 90s.

no worries, it allowed us to set our own trap


so thats 18 melee units + 3 cats we are attacking with. I checked the odds with the maces, they are about 48% now against azza's super archers.. thats before cats, and before promotions. the 3 cats will barrage, no point in bombarding walls I guess. Azza can get 3 horse archers (2 of them injured), 1 chariot, and 1 elephant in there(plus the 2 highly promoted archers +1 reg archer he has in there now, a cat, and possibly a unit or two in the fog - but I doubt that). he'll most likely attack out with his cat and try and defend with everything else - so we'll have 7 units to kill. with the 3 cats I'm pretty confident. after we capture the city we have 3 maces in theodyssey and 1 cat in the aeneid that can move in, as well as any units here that aren't needed in the battle. maybe even the last archer in the aeneid, which I didn't bring into the battle.

the real worry is the counter attack after we take it. we'll see - azza doesnt have many cats left, so if we can just hold it until the revolt goes away we'll be fine. and of course maces streaming in every turn - we now know engineering .



I stalled a bit hoping to get lewwyn's input, but he was awol. decided eventually to retreat the 6 units pictured here. they can still move back towards presets if azza evacuates it to try and reclaim A7x. if not they can swoop around (2 more turns for the HA, 3 more for the maces/axe). I couldnt see a benefit to sacrificing them here once I thought about it.

the galley was actually a tougher decision. ultimately, though, the island cities will not play a part in the war immediately, so I went towards muse to scare azza into retreating some units in that direction. (technically it will be able to hit muse or tenacious D - although I don't expect tenacious D to be vulnerable, and I wouldnt want to raze it anyway - it has an academy and settled GG).

demos at EOT:


and here's opur demos at beginning of the roll, as I selected philosophy tech. mostly just because we haven't been #1 GNP in ages. even if its only due to double pre-req techs on philosophy and known tech bonuses, its something to celebrate! who knows when we'll get it again

[Bigger]

btw, I switched the EP's to commodore, but I may switch them to slowcheetah next turn. he has paper, but not education or philosophy. despite the fact we have a 2nd world economy and we're in the middle of a hot war, I think there is an outside chance we can still grab liberalism - and anyway we might as well research philosophy to 90% then turn gold back on (since it has no immediate benefit to us) - we can decide if we want to go after liberalism or striaght for nationalism at that point.

also not completely sure if plako is going for nationalism directly too, or just wants the marble for epics and sistene chapel.

[Lewwyn]

Yeah sorry busy day. Looks like you did okay though. Best choices under those circumstances.

[Bigger]

thanks. I had to think about the which way to send the navy for quite awhile. The good news is in about 6 turns or so el cid will be size 10, and a few turns later the workshop will be finished so it will have enough food to work the 3 mines and workshop and crank out navy, so we can always go back and harass the islands if we get a stalemate and can't push into tenacious D(likely).

plan w/ A7x is to use all 3 cats, then use maces to take out the archers (who hopefully defend over horse units) then use spears to take out elephant and horse units. hopefully he can't get a praet or something in there to gum up that plan. worried about the counter attack so hopefully i can have 8-9 units in there that weren't needed to take the city.

i also retreated the mace near living end until I can get a larger force including at least one crossbow.

[Bigger]

ok, my internet is lagging so ill play the turn in about an hour or so. I did take some pictures though.

persistent plako is persistent:

declined

and then serdoa offered me a confusing offer:



i declined, but not sure if i shouldnt accept.
serdoa is killing brick. he took 2 cities this turn. his horse source is under one of his cities, south of his mainland (so closish to commodore and scooter). is he worried one of those will raze the city to deprive him of horses?

I could re-offer, but will feel bad about supplying serdoa w/ horses after declining giving copper to brick. OTOH, its at least 50 gold for a resource he already has... lol

heres serdoa's horse source:



ok, so relevant to azza: he evacuated A7x, except for one Cg1 archer. so I wont even have to us the cats <G>. i know he's planning a counter attack but with 60% of his army still injured and only 2 cats.. I like our chances of holding it.

and then there's this:


debating whether to retreat and go after the islands, or to head towards the fish spot where I can threaten muse or tenacious D. all he needs is a mace in tenacious D and i pretty much can't threaten either city. I could pillage the fish though <G>.

[Bigger]

ok, this was fun to play. lots of pictures.

azza basically just gave up A7x. I guess he didn't have too much of a choice after defending presets, he was going to have to lose one of the two.


I promoted one mace to CR1 to ensure I didn't lose a unit (probably unneccessary, he was 62% unpromoted).


with the strangled cultural borders im going to have to dry whip a theatre and something else once the anarchy ends to avoid population starving off and try to reclaim first ring borders.
maybe a forge?
the granary and courthouse are both nice, though.


ok, here's everything I could get in there. most of the healthy units that can strike are elephant or horse units - so I went ahead and promoted all the spears to C1. I also shelled out the cash to upgrade our C2 spear to a pike (95g). im not really worried about melee units attacking so I left the maces unpromoted. they are all 3/2 exp maces anyway, so I couldnt make a shock mace.
anyway thats 27 units, including the 4 cats, so im pretty confident about holding. But for superstition reasons only, im waiting until we go out of revolution to rename the city to Beowulf.

here's the health stack on the hill that can hit us:

the 2 full health cats are the most scary thing.

here's the injured units in presets:

i thought I took a picture after the turn rolled of the units healed, but can't find it. a lot of these units fully healed as the turn rolled (including the 2 horse archers 1E of the city) but except for the HA they can't hit A7x this turn.


i wanted to show this off. yes, the #1 gnp is nice,, but thats inflated by our 100% science - its only 375 or so at breakeven (40%). what im most excited about is our trade route dominance. that jumped with open borders w/ slowcheetah, we got a significant bump. we also have a lot of unused trade routes and really need new cities asap. if we were at peace I would be pumping out settlers for filler cities - 1 on the canal west of popol, 2 on the island east of the iliad, 1 west of former iron maiden, maybe 1 near the gems south of mahabrata, not to mention 2-3 on the big island east of rama's journey. as it is Im hoping we can take more of azza's cities to claim the extra routes.

also of interest - im prettys ure scooter is #2. i looked at the demos before he logged on and the #2 had +45, then it changed to +51 after he logged in (im assuming he accepted open borders with slowcheetah or someone??). so the 2 2nd tier empires have the top 2 trade routes - im not sure what the big 4 are doing. also not sure how we are in #1, since we're on the mainland - slowcheetah has open borders with everyone but serdoa and xenu (he hasn't made contact w/ serdoa yet, don't know why he doesnt have them w/ xenu. im assuming he has merohoc since we haven't made contact with them yet).


ok pushed on here. here was my reasoning - that mace in muse came from tenacious D, not muse. which means if we hadn't threatened muse it would have gone north to the stack that could attack A7x next turn. so we've already made the war in the north easier. if I move to the fish next turn he will have to retreat something to cover it (tenacious D is working ona cat that will take 4 turns to finish) - or leave either muse or tenacious D defended only by a warrior.

if i retreated towrds the islands I could no doubt take one - but I would have to raze it. since the islands aren't really contributing to azza's war effort, I would rather invade them later when I have enough of a force that I can keep them!

random empire pics for lurkers:



also, I figured out how we made contact w/ slowcheetah:


EP's going towards slowcheetah. 14/turn, but that will be 18/turn by the time A7x is out of revolt. if he doesnt start sending EP's our war, we get research visibility at 78 EPs. that will be very useful if we want to consider a liberalism run after all (we'll have to save some gold, so will have some tiem to consider that).

[Old Harry]

Could you have better trade routes because you've only been at war with Azza and serdoa? The others aren't getting the peace bonii... or do the closed borders with Azza mean your trade routes are actually all over sea?