(October 31st, 2013, 12:35)MindyMcCready Wrote: Not sure about this one way or another - never thought about this before. The triple fork is NNW of Barbiere so if he can see everything in the BFC, he could see that. If he only sees inside of the city screen, then he might not be able to see any units that aren't directly inside a city? Sorry, re-reading are you stating that city visibility means seeing in the 3x3? If that's the case, then great! Uncertainty on his end will mean attack sooner rather than later.
City visibility means he sees the city center tile, and everything it can see (it may be more or less than the BFC). So 3x3 for flat, and extra vision for hills as per the usual rules.
Interesting. You are pretty well read on this stuff!
So he can see almost every tile with the exception of our triple fork. That's really good to know. Serious entrapment is a possibility here.
That PH SW of Turandot,...no road? I think that we'll need that ASAP. And you might want to double check that with construction you can cross a river onto a hill and keep going.
(October 31st, 2013, 12:35)MindyMcCready Wrote: Well you're giving up 45% defense if we attack out. We'd still have 88% odds with a C1 Spear vs a C1 HA. That comparees to the W-L-R of 72.3% - 9% - 18.2% for defending. So that spear is basically out of commission and doesn't have any chance of defending against a second unit (6.9% chance of the spear havig more than 31HP).
...
Turandot's 60% culture is even better than 20% + 25% river. So bottom line, if we can get 4 spears into each city + a couple of other units we should be able to hold (each) city for at least a turn.
The difference is that despite better odds, on defense the combat won't occur unless he sees it beneficial to attack, and he won't because and just keep moving around.
If we can force a trade of a spear for an HA without dying I think we should do so without hesitating... it's 50 hammers down for 35 and actually helps our economy. Leaving a stack intact and trying to have enough to defend all possible routes seems really suboptimal, and means we need more invested in defense than he invests in attack, instead of less.
Quote:That PH SW of Turandot,...no road?
It has a road, the graphic just looks funny. Also despite having construction I've only seen one bridge in the graphics. (2N of Barbiere).
(October 31st, 2013, 13:16)MindyMcCready Wrote: Please note that I still have him at 6 chariots.
I'm sure it's just 5. One suicided mysteriously probably after it ran next to a stack that would eat it free, and a second one suicided after pillaging the cow.
(October 31st, 2013, 13:42)WilliamLP Wrote: The difference is that despite better odds, on defense the combat won't occur unless he sees it beneficial to attack, and he won't because and just keep moving around.
If we can force a trade of a spear for an HA without dying I think we should do so without hesitating...
Well I don't disagree if he moves to attack position #1, so long as we avoid those chariot-axe battles.
(October 31st, 2013, 13:42)WilliamLP Wrote: Leaving a stack intact and trying to have enough to defend all possible routes seems really suboptimal, and means we need more invested in defense than he invests in attack, instead of less.
Normally that's true, but in a sense, its the opposite in this case. The culture of Turandot and river of LT means we need less to defend with. 1 spear >= 1 HA + 1 chariot. So we need 1:1 at this point. Any spear vs HA battle that kills a HA but takes the spear out of play worsens our ratio at least until the spear is healed up.
Obviously if we get 88% odds to kills things then we should take it so long our ratio is there. Buying us an extra turn could also mean getting an extra cat or spear to turn this into a proper route. And we should be able to catch him in our own territory with a couple of combat engineers.
Of course the ratio gets ugly if he moves to the triple fork but by then we'd have enough cats or spears to properly skewer him.
I just re-ran the 2:1 and it looks like 1 spear >= 2 C1 HA in Turandot and also in LT given the river crossing.
No river: C1 HA + Chariot vs C1 Spear: 46%-42%-12% or 58% survival.
(October 31st, 2013, 13:42)WilliamLP Wrote: it's 50 hammers down for 35 and actually helps our economy.
It doesn't help our economy to lose units because we're almost certainly going to need to replace them to hold the Ichabod front. If build weath were a possibility I think that we'd choose to keep a unit, pay the 1 gpt and build wealth to compensate rather than lose a unit, build a unit and not build wealth.
Maybe I'm taking you too literally. :LOL:
Oh actually you're right about the 5 chariots.
Retep had 6+1 before and deleted a chariot.
Then as of T98 you posted that retep had 5 +1.
Then T99 he pillaged a cow and deleted the unit.
So we're good in that sense, but that means that he's got an extra 4K power unaccounted for. Hopefully that's not 2 stables.
Lastly, if you want full-on paranoia, we have 6T until he attacks our eastern horses city. :LOL: I seriously wouldn't put it past him to raze our most eastern city. Had we actually pillaged him or taken the first aggressive action, then I could say that I actually kind of like Retep's play style. More people should declare holy war when attacked. But since we never actually took an overly aggressive move against him he's kind of going over the top. Your half-way justification is sound. Not for avoiding war, but certainly for avoiding holy war.
And of course, Bacchus still hasn't needed to whip,....
Not really suggesting anything,....but I'm getting to the point that, were I in another game with him I would probably be repaying this type of troll attacks. Cost him the game for kicks,.... "Oops, I spent the last 50T attacking you and just happened to have left 2/3 of my cities completely undefended for my neighbour to take,...".
Help me, I'm confused! What is he trying to do with that stack? Does he know that spears move over roads as fast or faster than his horse units? Is this all a grand plot to have another chariot pillage a cow and commit suicide? Is it possible that he expects us to have settled for seafood by now?
I can't play the turn until later but I confess that this move doesn't fill me with dread.
Bacchus settled on the desert, which actually surprises and pleases me a bit. It's the more neighborly plant vs 1E (or even 2E), i.e. cities that say "rawr I'm going to settle up on you with no regard for defense".
Quote:It doesn't help our economy to lose units because we're almost certainly going to need to replace them to hold the Ichabod front. If build weath were a possibility I think that we'd choose to keep a unit, pay the 1 gpt and build wealth to compensate rather than lose a unit, build a unit and not build wealth.
Maybe I'm taking you too literally. lol
Yeah, maybe. It's better to not lose a unit than lose one. But if spears had a special magic ability "sacrifice spear: destroy one of Retep's horse archers randomly" I'd be pressing that button like crazy. The smaller his mounted stack is the fewer spears we need in our standing army.
Quote:Your half-way justification is sound.
Are you going on about Barbiere as our first city again? Yeah, it was the strongest economic site, sharing tiles with our capital, and quite defensible against all early attacks. Maybe he's got an angle in his thread but it doesn't seem like a holy-war worthy action.
But as always there's no code of conduct for what's expected when you don't think you can win other than choose some goals to make the game interesting.
As is probably no mystery, I don't believe in spite carrying grudges between games. Though to not use someone's observed personality to try and predict what they're going to do and plan accordingly would be foolish.
(October 31st, 2013, 17:21)WilliamLP Wrote: So of all the possible moves we got this:
Well that's better than just about any alternative move that he could have made. I was joking about him trying to raze our eastern horse city. But that might be his plan.
We could have some trouble keeping up with his horses unless we've got some combat engineers to move with our spears. Specifically, if he follows the red line, we'll be one step behind him.
Assuming he never uncovered the tiles north of Turandot,...would he or wouldn't he know that a city was there or not? Alternatively, if he has city visibility but never unfogged the area around Walkure (can't read the title - eastern horse city) would he know its there and/or its garrison?
If he has info on these cities he probably didn't move there by accident.
If we move our invisible units into Turandot he'll see the units and may back off and we wouldn't get to kill anything. If we keep our units invisible,...got to go.
It was maybe suboptimal to move the catapult to the fork tile instead of keeping it north, but I wanted to keep it out of vision and prepare for him to potentially show a 1-mover stack.
Basically, Retep's move feels like a step backwards.
I thought about moving 3 spears N-NE from Traviata onto the forest hill, but then he can move SW-S which while isn't a problem is a nuisance.
If he moves NE-SW now we can move 5 spears (the build in Turandot is actually not ToA but a spear finishing this turn) to the cow tile. That way with the two workers there we could hit his stack if he decides to keep moving east. The two workers there are basically devoted to tactics right now.
His moves aren't totally toothless given his raze-at-any-cost objective. If Retep follows the red path we pretty much have to move our spears to Turandot. Otherwise he can outpace us to Walkure.
If our units were positioned 1T from Turandot we'd have a chance to hit him NWW of Walkure, but that'd be our only chance. [deep dramatic voice] If we fail there, the city is lost! [/deep dramatic voice]
If he takes that sheep hill we'd need the spears from LT to move EE.
Also, if he pauses at NNE of Turandot (1 move, stop) then he can beat us to Walkure pretty much no matter what we do. We'd have to split our defenses into Turandot + EE of Turandot.
(November 1st, 2013, 11:03)MindyMcCready Wrote: His moves aren't totally toothless given his raze-at-any-cost objective. If Retep follows the red path we pretty much have to move our spears to Turandot. Otherwise he can outpace us to Walkure.
If he moves on the red path, he gets 5 spears to the face on turn 109, when he's on the plains 3N of Turandot. Worker moves can make this happen. And there will be 3 additional spears that can keep pace with whatever is left. (2 on the fork tile, 1 in Walkure).
Quote:If our units were positioned 1T from Turandot we'd have a chance to hit him NWW of Walkure, but that'd be our only chance. [deep dramatic voice] If we fail there, the city is lost! [/deep dramatic voice]
Well that's about the best he can do for threatening us with that stack. We'll likely lose the 5 spears to a counter attack, but then we'd be able to hit what's left with axes and/or cats and that stack would be done.
The other real option is that we see the axes & spears show up at the same time around LT,...but we've got some cats to deal with that now.
As soon as you move your units out of the invisible spot he'll proably back off again.
But if spears had a special magic ability "sacrifice spear: destroy one of Retep's horse archers randomly" I'd be pressing that button like crazy. The smaller his mounted stack is the fewer spears we need in our standing army.
