[SPOILERS] Small Wunders and Izzy of Inca: The fat lady sings

[WilliamLP]

Retep's moves before the turn roll:




It looks like he's going for a plan similar to Mindy's, going east with the option to fork off.

I think he may have made a mistake under-defending the tile with the workers. The question is can we exploit it? What he may not be banking on is that we have enough spears around to defend Barbiere as well as another tile, or at least make it not very cost effective for him to strike it.

Option 1: Hit the worker tile with 3 spears. The first one has 68% odds on the spear, then something like 75% on the archer, then 85% on the HA. We probably wouldn't win all of these but we'd be able to kill the horse archer and the workers, for a definite hammer advantage. We might have to suicide the winning spears though, I'm not sure.

Option 2: Hit the worker tile with axes. The first one probably loses against the HA, but then we basically clean up. We move all axes + 2-3 spears SW of Barbiere to make sure he can't counterstrike the stack effectively. The axes being across the river helps. (The chariots can cross the river, then attack).

Option 3: Do nothing. I think we can defend anyway, eventually. But Horse Archers are by far his most valuable unit right now so a chance to take one probably shouldn't be passed over.

I have a lot of simming to do this afternoon...

[WilliamLP]

Simming this out, option 2, to attack with axes, looks quite good. In 20 trials:

6 times: 3 Axes win with 0 losses.
6 times: 1 axe lost, final kill with chariot. (This happens when the first axe nearly kills the HA, and the chariot can make the final kill on the stack and retreat.)
4 times: 1 axe lost, final kill with axe. (The axe probably needs to suicide here to prevent free XP.)
4 times: 2 axes lost, final kill with chariot.

60% of the time, this is fantastic, the other times it's still good (2 axes for a HA, archer, spear, 2 workers).

The remaining question is can we cover our bases if we try this. I simmed it enough to be convinced that he'll take tragic losses if he either attacks the stack with 7 chariots and 6 axes, or Barbiere (with CG archer, 2 spears, chariot, axe) with 7 chariots.

So here goes:

C1 axe vs C1 Horse Archer (27%): ... Win! Sorry Retep, we didn't need to be this lucky. It turns out either killing the HA or severely wounding it is close to the same result though.
C1 Medic axe vs CG archer (97%): Win. (Attacking with the medic axe to take it off the top of the stack.)
Axe vs Spear (98%): Win. 2 workers captured.




There was another straggler axe on the staging tile.

Chariot vs Axe (96%): Win.

With this result, I actually contemplated trying to keep the workers! (Moving spears and axes there to cover the tile). But I didn't like the tactics of what he could do to the east with 3 spears out of position like that. So I suicided the victorious axe, and chariot.

All told,

We lose: unpromoted axe, unpromoted chariot (65 hammers)
He loses: C1 horse archer, Spear, CG Archer, 2 workers, axe (265 hammers)

The scene now:




Barbiere looks kind of underdefended, with just 2 spears, but them plus the CG archer is very safe from 7 chariots behind walls. (I ran the sim a lot to make sure).

I slowed the growth of Manon by a turn, in case he tries to move chariots onto the cow tile, then we can hit with 5 spears.

La Traviata is very underdefended, but we'll fix that in a couple of turns - it whipped overflow on a chariot it had in the queue and will finish a spear the turn after that. I actually don't think Turandot needs to be whipped for this right now.

Honestly I think the smartest thing retep can do right now is retreat again. If he allows axes to hit him with no defensive bonus, it will not be pretty for him.




We actually slipped behind Retep here, but that should change next turn.




We're starting to fall more behind the world average in the important stats like food and GNP. Being at war with 3 teams at once in the BC years does that I guess.

[WilliamLP]

A great general for Ichabod is pretty scary! The only good news in that is that his forces are far away from attacking us right now. Settling for 3-promo phalanx out of his best production city would be a move for him to consider.

Retep just stayed put on the tile. He's possibly waiting for a couple of HA reinforcements? We're not that far from being able to just take him over the river with axes - a shock axe gets 62% odds. But that's more variance than I'd like.




- Sorry, I think we can defend the terrace in Manon.
- I roaded 2W of Manon to give him more chances to make a mistake with an information disadvantage. (E.g. move 7 chariots SE-SE)
- I briefly contemplated moving a big stack to his capital - it could get there before his 6 axes and 3 spears could defend! It would open up a base race though, we'd lose Barbiere probably, and it's hard to feel good going toward a capital on a hill without siege and without knowing what is there.

[Plunder]

This war seems such a pain. imo it's unreasonable to think that retep can actually take a city from you. A fully fortified axe in Barbiere still wins it from an chariot (at least 75% defence bonus). As I see it, all he can do is walk around with his stack and pillage tiles in an attempt to compensate the unit upkeep.
So he's slowing down himself and you for not good reason at all :S

[WilliamLP]

This war seems such a pain. imo it's unreasonable to think that retep can actually take a city from you. A fully fortified axe in Barbiere still wins it from an chariot (at least 75% defence bonus). As I see it, all he can do is walk around with his stack and pillage tiles in an attempt to compensate the unit upkeep.
So he's slowing down himself and you for not good reason at all :S

Yeah, Retep committed totally to war very early, and soon after he gave up hope of even making gains on us. His goal has just been to stop us from doing well in this game. Nothing he's done in the last 50 turns has been cost efficient for him. Even razing Carmen ultimately cost him a stack of 7 axes and he gained nothing for it. His only hope is that we make a big mistake, but it's always far easier for the attacker to make mistakes, working without mobility and information. And every turn that goes by means we're more ahead.

Many Mindy's prediction will come true: that we'll see Bacchus (who Retep is completely ignoring) take Retep's capital soon. If that happens I'm just going to call this a duel victory and I think we can be competitive with him anyway.

[WilliamLP]

Retep moved his stack SE. He is probably thinking to move SE, then SE again. To what end, I'm not sure. He has one horse archer peeking at Traviata, which isn't very scary.

I thought about a counter-attack again. It's not crazy right now since 6 axes and 3 spears are completely out of position to defend anything. But, just watching and defending is dead-easy and works fine. And I want to move units east anyway, to defend a new settlement!

Chariots in Barber are quite useful as disposable fork defenders, since on any given turn they can be in Manon or Traviata. They aren't great defenders but numbers ensure that no sneaky tactics could ever take a city with just a couple of units.




Retep was literally getting near strike levels of GNP. This includes culture and espionage! He might have been losing money at 0% science. Cheetah is also thoroughly screwed.






With this wave by Retep he seems to have sacrificed basically everything. His capital is down to size 4 and he must have whip unhappiness everywhere.




We should see a massive dive in Cheetah's power line next turn.

[MindyMcCready]

This war seems such a pain. imo it's unreasonable to think that retep can actually take a city from you. A fully fortified axe in Barbiere still wins it from an chariot (at least 75% defence bonus). As I see it, all he can do is walk around with his stack and pillage tiles in an attempt to compensate the unit upkeep.
So he's slowing down himself and you for not good reason at all :S

Yeah, Retep committed totally to war very early, and soon after he gave up hope of even making gains on us. His goal has just been to stop us from doing well in this game. Nothing he's done in the last 50 turns has been cost efficient for him. Even razing Carmen ultimately cost him a stack of 7 axes and he gained nothing for it. His only hope is that we make a big mistake, but it's always far easier for the attacker to make mistakes, working without mobility and information. And every turn that goes by means we're more ahead.

Many Mindy's prediction will come true: that we'll see Bacchus (who Retep is completely ignoring) take Retep's capital soon. If that happens I'm just going to call this a duel victory and I think we can be competitive with him anyway.

Can't argue about that anymore. :LOL: 3 units smaller plus no HA defenders and that stack is very vulnerable. I still think that HA defenders + triple fork + river crossing + even numbers = trouble,....but that's only for a player that actually, you know, suffers from bad rolls once in a while. Anyway, that's the past and he's a sitting duck.

I'd be surprised if Retep doesn't take the cow tile with the intent of forcing us off the fork. He'll have no river crossing to protect him so there's the 'mistake' that you're looking for.

I'd still love to see a strong numeric advantage for a nice, clean fight followed up by a taking his cities and maybe seeing what Bacchus has defending but I'm not going to bug you about it.

[WilliamLP]

Ichabod made peace with cheetah. And it looks like Plako got the MoM already!




Holy crap, Cheetah just got destroyed. That's about 8 axes worth of power drop, I'd guess. I also think Cheetah must have been trying to attack, since no cities changed hands, and it's not easy to take a dive that large pre-catapults as a defender.

Ichabod has a lot of cities, 10-11 I think. He also has quite a reasonable GNP thanks to reduced maintenance from Aggr. And now he has a very promoted massive army with no threat from one of his neighbours.

At best, our role in this game is to be spoilers to him.




Retep's doing a bit more "Yakety Sax" with his stack, going back and forth. He appears to have suicided a chariot - he has only six now including one straggler. He may have moved a chariot somewhere and then learned that it was just going to be free spear experience.

Turandot actually crossed the health cap. This points toward the seafood city next after we finish construction.

The settler finishes next turn, and I don't feel absolutely great about whatever our next site it. It's probably where Cherokee was, but lots of other spots have advantages.

[WilliamLP]

Can't argue about that anymore. :LOL: 3 units smaller plus no HA defenders and that stack is very vulnerable. I still think that HA defenders + triple fork + river crossing + even numbers = trouble, ....but that's only for a player that actually, you know, suffers from bad rolls once in a while. Anyway, that's the past and he's a sitting duck.

The problems with this reasoning are first that he can't get even numbers - he can start with even numbers but they won't be even anymore after he gets even 2-3 moves into our territory. And second that HA defenders aren't cost-efficient. One unpromoted axe will take one out of the fight leaving the rest of the stack open at high odds.

We were on the right end of a 60% result. (30% that we beat the HA outright, 30% that we die but weaken it enough that a spear is top defender and a chariot could kill the HA and move back into protection.) Another time we were on the right side of a 5% result, killing his stack without losses before, that was pretty lucky, but the variance was 1-2 axes. We had a really bad roll against Ichabod earlier (well into the bottom 5%) where we lost two more axes than the expected value. I don't think there's been a play that we've made where anything that's more than 1% likely would have been a disaster.

TLDR: If you're going to say that we're only safe from Retep because of luck you need to back it up with specifics.

[MindyMcCready]

Can't argue about that anymore. :LOL: 3 units smaller plus no HA defenders and that stack is very vulnerable. I still think that HA defenders + triple fork + river crossing + even numbers = trouble, ....but that's only for a player that actually, you know, suffers from bad rolls once in a while. Anyway, that's the past and he's a sitting duck.

The problems with this reasoning are first that he can't get even numbers - he can start with even numbers but they won't be even anymore after he gets even 2-3 moves into our territory. And second that HA defenders aren't cost-efficient. One unpromoted axe will take it one of the fight leaving the rest of the stack open at high odds.

We were on the right end of a 60% result. (30% that we beat the HA outright, 30% that we die but weaken it enough that a spear is top defender and a chariot could kill the HA and move back into protection.) Another time we were on the right side of a 5% result, killing his stack without losses before, that was pretty lucky, but the variance was 1-2 axes. We had a really bad roll against Ichabod earlier (well into the bottom 5%) where we lost two more axes than the expected value. I don't think there's been a play that we've made where anything that's more than 1% likely would have been a disaster.

TLDR: If you're going to say that we're only safe from Retep because of luck you need to back it up with specifics.

Just congratulating you on your luck is all...at worst I said that in the worst case scenario it could have been dicey. I don't see how you read that as "we're only safe due to luck".

Going back to the timing of my post that seems to have upset you.
-T94 Retep's got a stack of 17 visible units + 2 known whips which were assumed to be HA.
-From what I could see we had 13 units + 1 chariot in the area. So we're not at even numbers,....
-We had 4T before Retep could get to the triple fork.
-We had the risk of having to do a river crossing attack meaning that we'd need more than 1:1 units and 4T to rectify this.

Looks like you had it well in hand but does it really upset you that I tried to flag the worst case scenario? And your luck has been very strong. If you suffered a very unlucky (not 1% but bottom 25%) set of attacks at the triple fork location crossing a river on a 19 unit stack you still feel that there was no risk?

Anyway, I don't need a response to any of this and maybe its even best if I don't get one. Clearly, I'm upsetting you so I'm going to lay off the posts for awhile.