An alternative play is to just let him have Carmen for nothing, and try to take down his two axes at home, and rush his land. I might like this better because taking an axe vs spear combat is painful - without horse soon we need spears badly. And taking 6 axes vs three is virtually guaranteed to be a losing trade.
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[SPOILERS] Small Wunders and Izzy of Inca: The fat lady sings
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For better or worse, my play was to concede Carmen (which would almost certainly die anyway) and take on the 2 axes at home where we had favourable odds.
C1 Axe vs Axe:  Win, and Mindy is at 6 xp! Axe vs Axe:  So we got the upper third of the combat result.  And William Tell was founded. (We already have a Rossini opera but I needed a military theme, and the famous overture has a pastoral tune interupted by the famous cavalry charge tune!) I moved the axes and archers toward Carmen, to give Retep a chance to screw up by undercommitting and losing some more axes to a counter-attack. I offered peace to Ichabod. You may hate this move, but you're not around on weekends to argue with me (lol): I offered the map trade to Bacchus. My idea is to show him the map, so he'll see that Retep has enough forces east to take Carmen, and maybe that would encourage him. Also Bacchus planted his third city. Retep's move was a good one in the 1 vs 1 game - we had a lot invested in Carmen. It sets us both further behind the world again, of course. I think we need first ring horse after our western base city. Comments on the marked site? It's dry and not a good city but it would get the horse online fast, and give furs. My wishes for this game: 1. We conquer Retep eventually. 2. Ichabod does not win after a poor and greedy Civ play that was nothing but full of contempt.
September 23rd, 2013, 06:40
(This post was last modified: September 23rd, 2013, 06:41 by WilliamLP.)
 (September 22nd, 2013, 23:41)Ceiliazul Wrote: How does trading maps show who has forces where? It totally doesn't, but he'll see my layout (though he knows where Carmen is anyway) and he'll see the city razed in the logs and hopefully infer that Retep must have a lot of forces there to do that? I don't know, it's a stretch. And he'll get maps sooner or later from Cheetah or Ichabod I'm sure, so we might as well see where his cities are.
Good move with taking out the Barbiere axe. Did you engage just one or two?
Master Commodore had some good luck with his unit naming as well. Mindy's Minions (archer) took down an attacking Zulu Impi on flatlands. Good to see that my luck hasn't faltered.  I also agree with abandoning Carmen. As you said we need to be on the better side of 2:1 and trying to hold Carmen will only result in an even hammer exchange and retep with the XP. I'm not 100% sure that Retep will raze it. (We have culture now so it won't autoraze?) It's not exactly choked by culture and retep might reason that he'll be at 4 cities to our 3 and believe that he has a chance and try to keep it. Which may well be true. Other suggestions: 1. Well I was going to suggest that the CG1 archer could remain in Carmen but it doesn't look quite as good as I was hoping. C1 Axe vs CG1 Archer no fortify: 61%/39% C1 Axe vs CG1 Archer full fort: 28%/72% Axe vs CG1 Archer no fort: 31%/69% Axe vs CG1 Archer full fort: 24%/76% The fortify bonus doesn't seem to tilt it that much vs a regular axe and he'll be the one with the XP at the end of it. Depends on how much fortifty you'll have. 2. Start saving gold. Doesn't look like you're going to make it to Math anyway. We might need the cash to upgrade the 2 Quechas. If Retep keeps Carmen those 2 units could make all the difference if we try to retake it. 3. We're being set up to leave our axes out in the open. He's got a chariot by now. 4. Stop retreating that PFH axe. If we're going to go on the offensive our softest target is that horse city. We might need to hold that PFH for the offensive. If you can post exact troop locations. We can try to come up with an attack plan. But the horse city seems pretty good to me while defending with archers Barbiere and the new city. (September 23rd, 2013, 07:33)MindyMcCready Wrote: Good move with taking out the Barbiere axe. Did you engage just one or two? Two axes were killed, the second one at 50%. So we had good luck on this front at least. Quote:I also agree with abandoning Carmen. As you said we need to be on the better side of 2:1 and trying to hold Carmen will only result in an even hammer exchange and retep with the XP. I'm not 100% sure that Retep will raze it. (We have culture now so it won't autoraze?) It's not exactly choked by culture and retep might reason that he'll be at 4 cities to our 3 and believe that he has a chance and try to keep it. Which may well be true. I'm 95% sure it will auto-raze. The condition where cities don't autoraze at size 1 is when we're taking back a city that has our culture in it. (Lurkers please correct me if I'm wrong.) Quote:Other suggestions: Yeah on the one hand archers are the best they can ever be when in a city on a defensive roll, but the odds aren't great and it's also needed to hold William Tell. Quote:2. Start saving gold. Doesn't look like you're going to make it to Math anyway. We might need the cash to upgrade the 2 Quechas. If Retep keeps Carmen those 2 units could make all the difference if we try to retake it. I don't know, retep is still dead in the long game. We have more military than him, soon to be 4 cities, and his third city is absolutely attrocious. I don't see why we have to be desperate enough to pay 80 gold for 1 axe. Quote:3. We're being set up to leave our axes out in the open. He's got a chariot by now. Yeah, it has become very clear why he was desperate for horse immediately: He needs to defend a full-on counterattack. I think he's building chariots in his capital and his first one will finish next turn. So, any poking the west axe can do is limited by how quickly a spear can catch up, which is what I'm waiting for. Quote:If you can post exact troop locations. We can try to come up with an attack plan. But the horse city seems pretty good to me while defending with archers Barbiere and the new city. Retep moved the 6 axes next to Carmen (no surprises). My plan is to retreat the CG1 archer to William, and the spear to Barbiere. Any thoughts? We have enough in the east to defend if he keeps going forward. Unfortunately he can now use our road network around there.
My understanding is that a city doesn't autoraze if its grown to size2 (at any point) or if its had culture in it. We whipped the granary so I suspect that Retep will get the option. I could look it up, but it probably doesn't matter since it looks like we'll find out in 1T anyway. :LOL:
Regarding the war declaration - I don't think that it was a bad move. Ichabod was showing a single warrior in the city and we had an excellent chance of killing it off with an archer and a warrior. Had that happened we wouldn't have had 3 axes out of position for the Carmen defense. We took a chance based on what we could see and that single Phalanx (in all of Ichabod's army) was in the one tile that we couldn't see. Had Ichabod's Phalanx been 1T behind it would have been a successful move. Also, had retep either tried for Barbiere or we had culture popped 1T earlier in Carmen we could have at least had a chance of defending in either scenario. Ichabod's move is going to be one for the history books. For the cost of only 100H settler, he caused our empire to be split apart, our gold-corn city isolated, destroyed our chances of military mobility, and shifted our death-match into Retep's favour thereby allowing Ichabod uncontested expansion opportunities and beginning the opening notes sang by a rotund woman. We're really just choosing our poison now. And I just want to point out that long-game, Retep is no more dead than we are. He's also no less alive in the short game than we are. If he keeps Carmen he's +1 cities to us. Our 3rd gold-corn city is dangerously isolated. His capital is as big/strong as our is and he now has a mobility advantage that we can't match. We need to be looking at surviving to the mid-game more than worrying about the long-game. We're re-enacting Cynehead vs Commodore in PB5; Commodore vs Scooter in PB8 or really anything with Commodore in it! :LOL: We have some choices regarding the offensive. He's definately got very little to protect his 3 other cities. He's now spread his troops out and we have some chance of concentrating our own now. I'd suggest a move towards his captial and fork his horses/capital. We should be able to raze the horse city and neutralize his mobility advantage at least. (September 23rd, 2013, 08:34)MindyMcCready Wrote: Regarding the war declaration - I don't think that it was a bad move. Ichabod was showing a single warrior in the city and we had an excellent chance of killing it off with an archer and a warrior. Hindsight and all that, but this ignores that Ichabod isn't bad, and he knew those units were there when settling. So I think we could have been certain he could hold against what was in sight. Quote:Also, had retep either tried for Barbiere or we had culture popped 1T earlier in Carmen we could have at least had a chance of defending in either scenario. Yeah, mistakes were made. A farm first in Carmen would have been a much stronger play too, so you win on that one as well.  Quote:Ichabod's move is going to be one for the history books. For the cost of only 100H settler, he caused our empire to be split apart, our gold-corn city isolated, destroyed our chances of military mobility, and shifted our death-match into Retep's favour thereby allowing Ichabod uncontested expansion opportunities and beginning the opening notes sang by a rotund woman. I'm still sure the rest of the world is glad Ichabod didn't simply take any one of the fantastic city sites he has available as his sixth city, which all need literally zero defense. Quote:We're really just choosing our poison now. And I just want to point out that long-game, Retep is no more dead than we are. I strongly disagree. He's got no GNP! We're going to have 2 gold and 1 silver. Those three tiles nearly research more than his whole empire. Quote: He's also no less alive in the short game than we are. No, but we're at least up 12k power on him now. Quote:We have some choices regarding the offensive. He's definately got very little to protect his 3 other cities. He's now spread his troops out and we have some chance of concentrating our own now. I'd suggest a move towards his captial and fork his horses/capital. We should be able to raze the horse city and neutralize his mobility advantage at least. Yeah, unfortunately anything that moves out right now without a spear in the stack is really foolish. |
