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

[Ceiliazul]

Now Bacchus, do you want a piece of this turn timer? Anyone else? Dhal or Scooter, maybe you guys want to send some boats over? Then come on!

[MindyMcCready]

Rambling here, thinking out loud rather than having a recommendation quite yet.

Well that's certainly annoying - I had hoped that Ichabod would have made his way over to the island by now. I'd say that that Ichabod stack counts as very scary. He'll take us apart with ease in that city (assuming that he has a Knights stack behind that). RB doesn't seem to like trebs since they suck in the field but in this situation if we can't attack out, he can make very good use of it.

I say that we send Ichabod a very, very clear message that we will devote the remainder of the game to hurting him in everyway possible if he interfers now. Seriously, screw killing Retep, screw the island,...holy war on Ichabod until the end of time.

The best way of messing with an invading Ichabod right now is not losing those border cities. That will be very difficult with the amount of power he could direct at us.
-We need to save gold for spear --> pike upgrades. Our spears just aren't going to win battles. Even with full fort + 50% culture shock Knights will still have 65.7% odds on our C1 spears. Remove the culture and it's not really a battle. Also, if we're forced to retreat, leaving a fork defending stack with spears as top defender is just asking for trouble.
-We should promote that elephant for sure as well as most of the LBs. If C2 Knights hit our unpromoted LB it's not that far off of a coin flip so we don't want that.

Can we attack that stack? I'd say no based on my previous sim. We don't have enough cats and/or enough cats close enough. Can we flank that stack? Maybe, but we'd be taking 30% battles against the top 3 elephants. It would probably be Knights vs Knights after that. We should still get odds on the formation spear with a C2 Knight. Flanking has been nerfed in RB Mod unfortunately, but I don't know how much. Still looks like our best option, but if we don't kill off those cats we've wasted our strongest, most expensive units for nothing.

Can we defend? I'd say no. After 1T to strip defenses we've got 25 (14LBs) units in there. Ichabod's got 15 cats.
-CR1 Treb should do 12 HP of damage to 5/6 LBs.
-CR1 cat should do 10 HP of damage to another 5/6 units.
-So the first 5 cats would do 1 splash to each unit. At that point the Knights would have 64% odds on our CG2 LBs.
-Next 10 cats would do antother 1 splash to each unit. With 2 splashes of collateral C2 Knights would have 80% odds on our LBs.

So we'd probably cost him 10 cats, but then he'd be chewing through our units. If we made a stand and didn't retreat, we'd be really exposed to losing several more cities. So we'd have to retreat and we have to take this threat seriously because it's a potential game ender for us.

On first writing of this, I wanted to say that I'm of the mind to whip LB or pikes in all of our nearby cities and continue with the Retep attack. But after actually thinking about it, its probably not the best choice.

Ichabod could be doing one of 2 things:
1. Really committing to war for profit.
2. Trying to contain us.

#2 is unfortunately low likelihood. If he wanted to contain us, he'd flash that stack at us and/or road one of the entry way tiles. Without that sentry chariot, that stack would be invisible to us. He likely thinks that it is invisible and its positioned exactly where he needs it to hit us with zero warning. And then there's the fact that he's researching gunpowder. :LOL:

So he's committed to war (with us) and this is his best opportunity. So it's a real war on 3 fronts. To be successful and still retain some type of an economy we need to reduce those fronts. Options:

1. Retep - we either make peace or just pull out. Making peace has the advantage of a unit teleport. Staying at war but outside of his territory has the advantage of watching Bacchus try to mash his way through those 27 defenders.

2. Commodore. I'd imagine that nothing short of gifting the city would appease him and maybe not even that. I'd shelf the idea of a second city on that island right now because we can't afford to defend two cities.

As much as I'd want to keep moving on Retep, I think that we'd just be trading cities or worse. Retep will still be there 10T from now, but our ability to re-take our cities probably wouldn't be. And you, Retep,....'may you live forever'. :LOL: (300)

[WilliamLP]

I'm leaning that way too, to just fully pull out against Retep right now. Maybe he'd reflexively accept peace without realizing it's a huge help to us for the unit teleport?

It's a shame that I committed to the bombard already. I shamefully admit I didn't move the sentry chariot to look at Ichabod until after that. I was too eager to start digging in to Suit Up, lol. This despite I have a turn action order written down I try to follow with "Move scouting units" up toward the front... Oh well, one of these days I'll learn!

Do you see any reason not to sac a great general to pillage Ichabod's hill road?

And yeah, I knowingly walked into a situation here where we have a Commodore on our hands who doesn't have a chance to win the game... That's the worst neighbor possible for all purposes.

[MindyMcCready]

Note the general is in Manon.

Looks like we're going to have a multitude of GGs. First one should be a GG healer since getting our units back up could be very critical. Second one should be settled since we're going to need it.

We may be at the point of sacrificing. Having deja vu on my objectives unfortunately:
1. Survive Ichabod
2. Take Retep's lands
3. Conquor/retain island.

Commodore unloaded! It's a mace and an elephant, and one of them, probably the mace, has a blue promotable glow. (Does the glow only show up for the top unit, or for any unit in the stack?)

I wonder why he unloaded there, instead of 1W of Trovatore? That would have been more annoying. Anyway, this isn't scary and longbows can deal with it. We could kill this right now if we were to run a knight into the elephant, but that's not very cost effective, so I'm thinking to wait a turn.

This seems like the "don't mess with me or I'll punish you" intimidation tactics. Attack with mace and then CB would be an option.

There's lots of junk in suit up. The defenses are 0 with 4 cats left to attack. I think 3 of them have 1 promo, we don't have any 2 promo cats.

No two promos? Boo. Based on his power of 201K, which I'm sure that he's increased via whips, he's got 3K or 1 archer outside of what we can see. :LOL: There's still some chance of a Retep retreat but that'll evaporate next turn when Ichabod DOWs.

I think this requires suicide cats,

Definately.

Could there be a Situation #3?

So what now??

The chariot in Boheme is actually intended for tricks. We have the option to make it a great general, declare war, move it S-S-SE on the hill, promote Morale, then pillage and suicide!

That should slow his attack down by a turn which actually might be the best use we can get out of him.

I think that you would just rip up the mine rather than cut the road. Also, I'd say that that chariot is fairly useful as a collateral soak.

1. Get knights out of Retep's land right now. I don't know if we have enough power to kill the rest of Retep's junk with just our 1-movers. So maybe he gets a miraculous reprieve (which may even annoy him!)

2. Try and take Suit Up next turn, hope we have enough to finish the job and also get something back in time to not have an invasion to the east. Hold the line by whipping a bunch of cats, basically.

Cats aren't going to cut it unless we get a critical mass. He's showing 18 units + 15 cats. So each of our cats would do about 3 splashes of collateral, maybe 4 if he adds 20 Knights to the mix. Even if we put together 10 cats in a hurry we could expect 30-40 splashes of collateral hitting 38 units. That might not be enough unless we've got the Knights ready and in position.

Also, having the cats trickle in isn't going to help us in the way that LBs or Pikes trickling in would. Cats need to be prepared ahead of time or they aren't that useful on defense in my mind.

I will say that I'm not willing to sacrifice our eastern front for getting Retep's lands sooner.

I'm thinking the same thing and unfortunately its clear that we have to abort the Retep plan. We really should have DOWed Ichabod earlier. It was certainly debatable at the time, but I think that we made a pretty critical mistake there.

1. I think that we DOW Ichabod now and demand a half dozen cities from him just to show him how pissed we are.

If Ichabod declines to counter-offer peace (likely) THEN:
2. We offer peace to RETEP. There's some low prob chance that he'll retreat out of his cultureless city in favour of the copper city. Yay for us, we plop in a handful of LBs and a handful of axes and rejoice while redeploying to Ichabod.
3. If no retreat from Retep, then we offer white peace and/or begin the pull out. We'll need every one of those units to either prevent a second city from falling or recapturing our lost city. Either way, I'd say that we're losing La Boheme at this point. Cash upgrade the spears and whip LBs is our only chance at keeping the city. Only 2T for that to happen.

The Knights may also fork Don Giovanni. Having pikes to pick some of them off would help.

Aborting the Retep plan and keeping our cats intact will be very important in retaking a city. We'll also need combat engineers down there.

[WilliamLP]

No two promos? Boo. Based on his power of 201K, which I'm sure that he's increased via whips, he's got 3K or 1 archer outside of what we can see. :LOL: There's still some chance of a Retep retreat but that'll evaporate next turn when Ichabod DOWs.

We only got the second promo available with Feudalism and Vassalage, and yeah, by that time I wanted to maximize bows and knights. And two-promo bows are a big upgrade over 1, as well, so it's always a trade-off. I tend to value multiple promos on cats less (for right or wrong) because they're going to die anyway...

I think that you would just rip up the mine rather than cut the road. Also, I'd say that that chariot is fairly useful as a collateral soak.

I think Ichabod is planning to declare this turn, after we play. I do think pillaging the road makes this impossible, unless he wants to move to the site to attack over the river. So I think the road pillage move buys us a full turn on his whole attack which could be a massive difference. Am I missing something?

Cats aren't going to cut it unless we get a critical mass. He's showing 18 units + 15 cats. So each of our cats would do about 3 splashes of collateral, maybe 4 if he adds 20 Knights to the mix. Even if we put together 10 cats in a hurry we could expect 30-40 splashes of collateral hitting 38 units. That might not be enough unless we've got the Knights ready and in position.

Yeah, Cats would just be to buy time without our full force there. A few of them attacking and weakening his whole stack would force him to pause and heal giving time for the rest of the stuff to get back. It's a negative sum game in the end, obviously.

I'm thinking the same thing and unfortunately its clear that we have to abort the Retep plan. We really should have DOWed Ichabod earlier. It was certainly debatable at the time, but I think that we made a pretty critical mistake there.

It's not clear to me that things would be any different than they are now, not that it matters at this point. If we abort the attack now I think we have a stalemate or a mutual mass grind-down. Our worst scenario is we sac Boheme and consolidate while he's plodding along one tile at a time. If we'd have declared and he declined peace, if that's better than now, it's still marginal.

Declare a few turns earlier would have given him more information than he had this way too... he could have surmised that we were going to attack Retep a few turns before we actually declared.

1. I think that we DOW Ichabod now and demand a half dozen cities from him just to show him how pissed we are.

Enh, save that stuff for Commodore. I'm Spock-like in my equanimity.

If Ichabod declines to counter-offer peace (likely) THEN:
2. We offer peace to RETEP. There's some low prob chance that he'll retreat out of his cultureless city in favour of the copper city. Yay for us, we plop in a handful of LBs and a handful of axes and rejoice while redeploying to Ichabod.

I see that point. The counterpoint is that if we offer immediate peace to Retep, he might take it on reflex without realizing that we're in another war. It could look like a noobish "oh crap, that was more defenders than I was expecting" moment. Given that I've been prone to do this in the past helps our chances.

If we wait and offer after Retep knows we're at war with Ichabod he might see that not accepting is the more damaging thing to do.

My gut is that Retep absolutely will not retreat. This is his only hill city, and I can't see him wanting to play long in a completely fragmented tiny empire.

[MindyMcCready]

Do you see any reason not to sac a great general to pillage Ichabod's hill road?

I'm pretty sure that you would just pillage the mine. It could also be a wasted action if he has enough combat engineers to road the flood plains (assuming its' not already roaded).

And then there's the value of a GG medic. If he can't take a city in the first attack, that GG medic really tips the odds in our favour.

And yeah, I knowingly walked into a situation here where we have a Commodore on our hands who doesn't have a chance to win the game... That's the worst neighbor possible for all purposes.

I'd say that our island adventure is definately costing us at this point if that's what you mean. And Commodore is very unlikely to stop once we and Ichabod decimate each other's armies.

I'm not sure what effect conceding the island to Master Commodore would have. It might just make him smell blood or alternatively that he's made his point (but usually, he keeps on making his point). But yeah, he's going to keep harassing us both on and off the island and its pretty clear that we're going to lose even a local naval battle since we'll likely have to focus on land troops. We also simply don't have enough costal cities to wage a naval war and any that we plant in the near-term aren't likely to have access to their seafood. We might get the last laugh by evading his navy with those forts and watching him get attacked by Scooter since trading hammers is costing him too.

We had to take a chance on Retep's lands sometime or else fall hopelessly behind in land. Building up to near power parity with our powerful neighbour was probably our best time. I was really hoping that Ichabod would have deployed over to the island by now.

Time to dial up Ichabod's island competition and let him know that we're having a throwdown over here.

[MindyMcCready]

I think Ichabod is planning to declare this turn, after we play. I do think pillaging the road makes this impossible, unless he wants to move to the site to attack over the river. So I think the road pillage move buys us a full turn on his whole attack which could be a massive difference. Am I missing something?

I don't know if you're missing something or if I am.

We attach GG to chariot. We move chariot to hill using up all of our movement points. We promote to morale. We pillage once.

When you pillage once it's always the improvement rather than the road.

Turn ends, Ichabod kills our chariot and saves his road and invades right on schedule.

Yeah, Cats would just be to buy time without our full force there. A few of them attacking and weakening his whole stack would force him to pause and heal giving time for the rest of the stuff to get back. It's a negative sum game in the end, obviously.

If Ichabod has a healer you're going to throw your cats away from only 1T. His cats won't be damaged and will still do the equal amount of collateral and damage to defenders. I don't think that this is a viable strategy against the stack we and Ichabod are likely to have. A Knight with 93HP can still attack a LB with 70HP.

1. I think that we DOW Ichabod now and demand a half dozen cities from him just to show him how pissed we are.

Enh, save that stuff for Commodore. I'm Spock-like in my equanimity.

It doesn't matter how Spock-like or Commodore-like you are. Its about sending him the message that he better think twice about what he's about to do. We're playing poker here.

Also, I'd say that Spock would have a different logical reaction to a dispute over some offshore island vs an assult on his core. This is why the big guys have proxy wars not 'real' wars.

New generation Spock would just rage out against everyone Commodore style of course :LOL:

Given that I've been prone to do this in the past helps our chances.

My gut is that Retep absolutely will not retreat. This is his only hill city, and I can't see him wanting to play long in a completely fragmented tiny empire.

:LOL:

I agree that Retep's unlikely to retreat. Just pointing out that his copper city is on a hill from what I can see. It also has his copper source and safe food so it's not totally out of the question.

[WilliamLP]

I don't know if you're missing something or if I am.

We attach GG to chariot. We move chariot to hill using up all of our movement points. We promote to morale. We pillage once.

When you pillage once it's always the improvement rather than the road.

Ah, ok, I actually tested this and you're right, thanks.

I agree that Retep's unlikely to retreat. Just pointing out that his copper city is on a hill from what I can see. It also has his copper source and safe food so it's not totally out of the question.

Yeah, you're right there too. I had gotten that copper city out of my mind hoping Bacchus would take it!

[BaII]

Did u take that promote to Morale move from Commodore?

[WilliamLP]

Did u take that promote to Morale move from Commodore?

Actually, yes! I was made aware of it from that time when Commodore unloaded a unit, promoted and then took a city off of Scooter and Pindicator in PB8. Unfortunately the move doesn't work here as Mindy points out.