Brick by Brick (Spoiler Alert!)

[TheHumanHydra]

Hooray! Thank you. I was a bit worried about that part.

[TheHumanHydra]

Another can't play till morning, but had to open the save to see:




You have no idea how happy I was to see that. I literally almost teared up. What's wrong with me?

Drafting like a psychopath is still on the table, though.

[BaII]

So Serdoa goes horizontal, attacks with overwhelming numbers, does massive damage, and is destroyed. I go vertical, attack with technological advantage, do (hopefully) massive damage, and am destroyed. Lesson: attack with both overwhelming numbers and technological advantage so as not to be destroyed. Problem: time to develop overwhelming numbers may allow target to reach technological parity. Solution: unknown. I wonder how long it would take me to build 40 cuirassiers. Maybe I should draft my cities into the ground for rifles ... ??? (don't answer, obviously).

THH the thing, u need to realize that here, that it is MUCH easier to defend against an attack then to attack someone else. Notice how you went pretty much dead even with trade. I would say this is more effective than most attacks. Take a look @ Bigger's attack Azza in Pitboss 8. You would realize that they both possessed the same technology, but when the attack came Brick lost the battle horribly

You need to realize that since the attacker will most likely get hit by stacks of catapults for tons of collateral damage. Creating a situation where the invading stack is severely wounded and is easily mopped up. Besides at the end of the day, you have already crippled Azza severely. You have already him pretty badly. Also I am amused by the fact that the best way to defend it to attack

[BRickAstley]

. Take a look @ Brick's attack Azza in Pitboss 8. You would realize that they both possessed the same technology, but when the attack came Brick lost the battle horribly

That's Bigger, not BRick

[Qgqqqqq]

Err you shouldn't discuss pb 8 out of spoilers.

While they may have lost many units in battle, I wouldn't say horribly - they razed a city, distracted an army long enough to take another, and have a ship harrasing hid other island cities.

As to this I'm happy for you - how long do you see the war lasting?

Nothing is wrong with you - when I won a 50/50 shot to kill cornflakes warrior in a duel I was VERY happy, and that's much less important.

[TheHumanHydra]

@BaII: Oh, I fully understand the defence is far stronger in this game, as it should be. I was just trying to think through the problem so I could refine my approach for this and future games. But you are totally right. What did you mean by the sentence about trade though? Were you referring to how I went from deficit research to break-even after the loss of all those knights (till I punched the slider up)? Yeah, that allowed me to shave a turn off Liberalism - a big boon! I tried to get it done at end-of-turn this turn, but at the absolute maximum science my civ could produce I was just a hair off. I kept the slider at 100% but reverted all my tiles back to normal.

That 100% research was funded in part by this:




It was garrisoned with but a spear:

THH - 13 knights, 3 crossbowmen, 2 spearmen, 2 quechuas (1031 hammers total)
Serdoa - 16 horse archers, 12 catapults, 2 axemen, 1 chariot, 2 spearman, 2 archers, 1 warrior, 1 scout (1066 hammers total), cities of Thessalonica, Zz'gash, Nicaea, Char, Constantinople

I founded this city and spread Taoism to it with my founding missionary:







That's city number 10. I have two more good sites in my territory that I want to settle shortly, then I need to find one more for a complete drafting base (I decided I could draft my Heroic Epic city after all).

I moved my main army, mostly healed, here:




I had to make my moves somewhat hurriedly today so as not to keep the save all day, so this may have been foolish and (again) result in it being destroyed. (The knights that took out Constantinople are also somewhat in danger.) If not, hopefully I can massively reinforce my army with those two mini-stacks and achieve vague parity with Serdoa. I wish I could have simmed him attacking out of his city again; that would have helped a lot, but no time ...

Demographics after end of turn (GNP obviously unsustainable):










At first I thought Azza's troop buildup (triggered by Serdoa's attack) might be just for defence, but now I think he's planning on attacking someone - the logical target would be me. I must confess I haven't given much thought to defence against him yet - potentially to my peril - but I have at least kept up my military builds. I've seen he has macemen, and he's currently two turns from Engineering. At least if he attacks shortly I'll have some knights and catapults to face him with, though potentially rather out-of-place, and I'll be able to draft. He might well take cities, though, depending on where he attacks. I will try to give more thought to defensive arrangements next turn.

@Qgqqqqq: Thanks. To answer your question, I'm not sure; I need to give more thought to that, and it will depend on what Azza does and what happens to my stack! I'd like a complete kill if possible, so poor Serdoa doesn't have to keep playing, for all the city- and tile-plunder that would bring to speed me on my way to rifles, and so Azza can't just swoop in and steal Serdoa's developed border cities. I must admit, it would feel very satisfying to crush that army, too - assuming it doesn't crush mine first!

[BaII]

Sry I was particularly about the trade part. I was mentioning that, you had been able to equally trade hammers with Serdoa.

[TheHumanHydra]

Oh oh oh, I see. So far at least! Let's see if my luck holds ...

[TheHumanHydra]

So I did lose my stack this turn. Surprisingly, given my last few posts, I'm not upset about it: this time I don't feel like it was due to factors outside my control: something that shouldn't have been. Still unfortunate; obviously if I had had time to sim, I would have understood the degree of risk and preserved my army, but I didn't want to keep the save 24 hours! Anyway, it actually cost Serdoa more than it cost me, although he'll be able to finish what's left this turn cheaply:

Serdoa - 14 horse archers, 4 catapults, 3 axemen, 4 spearmen (755 hammers)
THH - 9 knights, 3 crossbowmen, 1 spearman (683 hammers)

I proceeded to do something really weedy (I was aware it was so when I did it; I don't know if that's better or worse): I sacrificed my two remaining knights (at 1.0/10 strength each) for 0.4% odds potshots at the one warrior left in his city; both failed, obviously (I was originally planning on grouping them with the rest of my knights from the northwest). I long ago learned not to do stuff like that in single-player; I guess I needed to remind myself why it's stupid for multiplayer too. Oh well!

So the tally for the whole war so far is:

THH - 24 knights, 6 crossbowmen, 1 spearmen, 2 quechuas (1834 hammers total)
Serdoa - 30 horse archers, 16 catapults, 5 axemen, 1 chariot, 6 spearman, 2 archers, 1 warrior, 1 scout (1821 hammers total), cities of Thessalonica, Zz'gash, Nicaea, Char, Constantinople

Oh, we both got another Great General!










Lest you think I am now armyless (save for that small stack above), I present my military advisor from after end-of-turn:




At end of turn I was first to discover Liberalism.

[TheHumanHydra]

Took Nationalism, researched Aesthetics. Azza's on Paper.

As predicted, Serdoa cleaned up what was left of my stack, at the loss of no units. I attacked his city with my new stack, killing all six of his spears present plus a horse archer and a catapult. Should have killed an archer, too, but lost my knight at 96% odds. That's 181 hammers for 60. With the 165 lost on Serdoa's turn, that brings us to:

THH - 25 knights, 7 crossbowmen, 1 longbowman, 3 axemen, 2 spearmen, 2 quechuas (2059 hammers total)
Serdoa - 31 horse archers, 17 catapults, 5 axemen, 1 chariot, 12 spearman, 2 archers, 1 warrior, 1 scout (2002 hammers total), cities of Thessalonica, Zz'gash, Nicaea, Char, Constantinople

Here's what's left of each of our once-proud armies:







I'm hoping I can grind down those last few units and be able to just ride over his last few mainland cities. My knights are fairly healthy; unfortunately, his horse archers will heal at the start of his turn; we'll see what that brings. I've more knights trickling in and a bunch of catapults on the way.




My cities have been suffering mega war-weariness since the big battles started, and I've been whipping like crazy to cut it down. I whipped Aquanauts and Hydranauts five population each this turn to finish universities and bring them out of unhappiness (don't worry, Hydranauts for example has like a +14 food surplus). This caused me to go to third in population and crop yield for the first time in a while. Azza and Old Harry have been growing like weeds - Azza upward, he only has one more city than me; Old Harry outward, he has a whopping 15 cities, half again as many as me!

Some of you may be wondering why I keep putting out knights and not switching over to infrastructure now that Serdoa's been fairly well crushed. Aside from the reasons I laid out for continuing the war in my previous post, I do feel I need to rebuild my army in case Azza comes calling. His buildup may be just out of fear - let's face it, if I had managed to preserve my stack, I may well have ridden it straight through Serdoa and into Azza - or it may be in preparation to attack, or both, as my crossbow-turned-knight surge was earlier. It's not really my GNP that needs boosting now, as much as it would be nice, but my population (as soon as I'm out of war weariness) and power, seeing as my stack was destroyed.