[SPOILERS] Scooticator and Pindooter give a sporting try

[pindicator]

Uh...why was the clock still running after the ball went in?

In game they went back and put like 0.4 or 0.2 seconds left. But yeah, with a Cleveland home game you think the timer would be stopping it early

[scooter]

FYI: Nakor played a 4 minute turn, did not whip. Lewwyn then logged in and razed that dye location of his. Or actually, I think he captured it and then whipped a different city because there's a 4 minute gap between the capture and the score decrease.

[pindicator]

Azza should be jumping in any turn now

[pindicator]

Do we want to go for it?



3 knights in range, 3 defenders: praetorian, spear, archer

Nakor retreated all his praetorians. Smoke Stuff gained control of the peak N of it finally, so he likely saw the knight inside our city. It looks like he's going to gain control of that plains tile NW of it before our catapult can get there

[scooter]

Yes I'm all for rolling the dice. Probably 50/50 chance of winning all 3 sounds about right? If we win, awesome. If we lose, he just has a couple wounded units and we know what we need to commit to this city on this turn. So yeah, worst case is it informs our decisions for this turn, so we definitely take that shot.

Is C1 the best we have there?

[pindicator]

Yeah, all three are at 3xp. And if one loses there are always zerkers on the galleys

[pindicator]

Actually Scooter, how many zerkers can we land by Alcair Dal this turn?  We're looking at defenders of Praetorian, Spear, Archer - and if he's building anything in that city it's an elephant.  So if we have 3 or more zerkers available to land then let's just keep our 3 knights in range and land our zerkers to take the city next turn.

The only reason not to would be if we want to race south to capture Imre Stand with zerkers.  But I just looked at screenshots, and we don't even know how long that will take - Nakor never mapped out a coastal route past that peninsula by Cold Rocks Hold.  So let's just land the berserkers and have them take Alcair Dal with the 3 knights there.

And then let's send 1 galley south to map out all that fogged area.  I'm concerned there's a coastal route to mackoti that we need to watch for -- remember the work boat that we saw from mack?  It came through Nakor's lands to get to us.  Or wait, let's just swap maps with mackoti.

***

Domestic note:  For a moment I thought I screwed up at Packers by mining the hill ahead of workshopping the grasslands, but in this case it appears to be okay.  Mining a hill takes 5 turns (1 to move onto the hill, 4 to mine) and workshopping takes 6 turns.  So the workshop will make up the 3h difference in 3 turns, which is faster than the next improvement than can  be built.  But in this case at Packers, the worker was not in position to move and workshop on the same turn, so it would have taken 7 turns to workshop, giving us a 6h difference and 6 turns to make it up.  Which is as long as the next workshop would take to build, meaning we are

This was a very convoluted way to say that if we have a choice between workshopping a tile or mining a tile, most of the time the answer is to workshop first.

***

2nd Domestic note:  Where does our next settler come from?

***

Finally, my schedule the rest of this week gets a little hectic.  Tonight should be fine.  Tomorrow I might not be able to play after work.  Friday I can play, but only very late, likely after the timer would run out (if the turn keeps rolling at about the same time).

[pindicator]

To complete the regoarrarr, I would keep the knights just built around our core. Or maybe they help take Smoke Something, but I don't think they'll be needed farther south. So let's keep them as core defense

[scooter]

Actually Scooter, how many zerkers can we land by Alcair Dal this turn?  We're looking at defenders of Praetorian, Spear, Archer - and if he's building anything in that city it's an elephant.  So if we have 3 or more zerkers available to land then let's just keep our 3 knights in range and land our zerkers to take the city next turn.

Deeeeefinitely saw this a few minutes after capturing the city.

Anyway, the Zerks on the galleys are wounded enough that they wouldn't be able to get odds anyway, so I think we probably had to do this anyway. Report in a few.

[scooter]

The Battle of Alcair Dal

Well I saw pindicator suggesting not to go ahead with the attack a little too late, but given the wounded Zerks we were going to have to use at least a couple Knights anyway. So it went ahead:



C1 Knight vs Praet (69%) - WIN (1.0h)

C1 Knight vs Spear (70%) - WIN (8.2h) (GG in TB)


And there's our great general. So let's talk about how to use him. Either super-medic or upgrade an axe into a super Zerk (Chris Davis who has 3xp and is on the frontlines). Got an opinion?



C1 Knight vs Archer (91%) - WIN and capture (7.1h)

Perfect.



I can't remember the last time I captured a city with this much pop intact. That's pretty great. By the way, we're prob going to want to farm over that riverside hamlet NE of Mayene so that we can chain to irrigate the rice, but that shouldn't be a problem. Other than that we can def keep most of the cottages in this region.



Another granary. We are living right. So here's a shot of our spoils thus far:





I haven't done anything else with the turn yet because that's all I had time for, but I'll play the rest of it tonight. The main question is how much we want to heal Knights before pressing forward. We've probably only got 3 or so in the main front region that are fully healthy, though a bunch are >= Str7/10. I really was hoping to avoid spending a GG on a medic, but it is a tad tempting.