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

[WilliamLP]

So it's the final war. Maybe not literally, but I'm not playing with any consideration to anything that happens after this anymore. I.e. gold is for short term gain, cottages are 0-sum tiles to be whipped, workers are for combat actions only.

Cleaned up some of Retep's junk:




Horatio Nelson probably should have been on a boat. I made our general into a M3 archer to help these guys heal. A chariot would have been better but we don't have a nearby one without promotions.




I vacated La Boheme rather than face a wipe after siege strikes. I expect his next move to be to either X or Y. Y is possible because the road 1SW of Boheme should go neutral.

Our stack from Boheme moved 3N. The reinforcement stack from Retep's lands gets to Z in 2 turns. Turn 168 is looking like the time for our decisive battle.

Ichabod's move on Don Giovanni looks like it was a feint, and the knights from there are coming back to join the main force. Ichabod took Formation on many knights, which tells that he clearly doesn't want to attack into pikes without softening them up a lot with siege first.

I dry whipped walls in Manon for 3 pop. Unfortunately it can't dry whip a castle in time to take the bombardment... Unless someone could gift us stone. I offered 320 gold for it to 3 people who have it. Mackoti, Scooter, and one of Plako or Lewwyn.




Commodore added a Cat and a Knight to Bathurst, which is enough to break our contain.

Up here, we're not playing for the long game either, just wanting to be a real thorn in Commodore's side. So the hill city is getting settled next turn. It's not much more difficult to defend 2 cities than one here anyway, with engineering. Magic Flute will still be the easier target for him.

Note Commodore picked up his mainland invasion force. I'm working on that tundra fort for boat mobility. 13 worker turns for it is pretty intense. The dream would be a corresponding head of the Nidus Worm 1E of Magic Flute. Or even a full network of 4 forts that Comm would need 4 boat stacks to block! With all this whipping, it's not like we need worker turns for tile improvements anymore.

As far as the larger goals now, well there are none! We are a solid 10th place in this game, and the 9 above us are way out of reach now.

The only one below us in the standings not getting chewed up for parts is Bacchus, so there still might be a long term rivalry between us and him, if only for who stays alive the longest.

[MindyMcCready]

Commodore added a Cat and a Knight to Bathurst, which is enough to break our contain.

Up here, we're not playing for the long game either, just wanting to be a real thorn in Commodore's side. So the hill city is getting settled next turn. It's not much more difficult to defend 2 cities than one here anyway, with engineering. Magic Flute will still be the easier target for him.

We need to think about the objective here - and/or how does this island help us in surviving Ichabod/outliving Bacchus.

We could keep trying to make Master Commodore's life difficult with that hill plant or we could try to get peace.

If we gave up Magic Flute and got that settler (and the units) back onto our mainland we could use that settler for the double fish city - which would put us ahead relative to another city that would be under constant threat. I do take the island dispute less seriously than an assult on our core and we've chopped most of the forests I believe so we got as much as we can reasonably expect to from that island.

If we don't get peace with Master Commodore we're going to be forced to defend AI style with 3 units in each and every costal city. We'll also be forced to continue building navy which I'm looking at as a real staircase to nowhere right now.

Also, the point of settling on that hill top is largely gone. The characteristic of being unboatable is good since we get a chance to attack out first - but we're unlikely to be able to divert the troops/cats to enable this. Basically he'll be able to land a stack of cats and we won't really be able to do much about it.

So my recommendation is to give up Magic Flute for the benefits of:
1. Return the settler for fish city. Alternatively a settler to reestablish LaBoheme if its razed.
2. Get those 8 or whatever units back to our mainland.
3. Stop building (tech inferior) navy.
4. Allow access to seafood as well as costal tiles that will otherwise be choked.
5. Allow less units in our costal cities at least until we can do something about that 66 unit mega-stack.

A bitter pill to swallow to be sure, especially given how much you seemed to enjoy the island adventure but we're now talking about survival and/or the return of LaBoheme from the oppression Ichabod the Hated. (Don't actully hate the guy! I believe that the Persian referred to Alexander (of Greece) the Hated.)

[MindyMcCready]

Like you, I'd also guess that Manon would be his target.
-Hoffman is isolated and vulnerable
-Barbiere is threatened
-William Tell is threatened
-Don Giovanni is isolated.

So yes, T168 looks like it'll be a pivotal one for us.

When you post pics can you state whether they're the start of turn or end of turn? Thanks.

[WilliamLP]

We need to think about the objective here - and/or how does this island help us in surviving Ichabod/outliving Bacchus.

We could keep trying to make Master Commodore's life difficult with that hill plant or we could try to get peace.

It doesn't help survive Ichabod or outlive Bacchus, but both of those are going to come down to one decisive moment which nothing on this island can affect in time. So the goal is, indeed, to make Commodore's life difficult.

In the larger metagame, the goal is to demonstrate that if you try to take land that's mine by geography, you might get it but be prepared to prove you can fight and win it.

At this point in the game, our spot in the pecking order is finalized. With sustained peace with Ichabod it could have been more interesting: kill Retep, take a big bite out of Bacchus, develop our large amount of land and see if we can do better economically than players like Black Sword, Lewwyn, heck maybe even Ichabod himself. But none of that is possible now.

So the goals left for me:

- Show Ichabod and RB that we're not going down like Cheetah, Azza, Nakor, in this game.
- Make Ichabod pay as much as possible.
- Make Commodore's life as difficult as possible.
- Have fun, maybe learn something about Civ tactics.

3. Stop building (tech inferior) navy.

When Commodore gets Astro, sure. Right now we're doing fine hammer for hammer with galleys. Also, I have plans to make a run at some of Ichabod's nets pretty soon.

For posterity, here's our units killed vs lost as of now, including the turn I'm about to report. The stats don't include suicides, I think.

Killed:
4 Lion
1 Wolf
3 Worker (I think this is undercounted, we killed 2 of Ichabods and at least 3 of Retep's I believe).
2 Scout
7 Warrior
11 Axes
2 Phalanx
2 Mace
1 Catapult
4 Spears
1 Archer
4 Chariot
7 Horse Archer
1 Elephant
1 Galley (Barbarian)
3 Carrack

Lost:
1 Scout (Stupid bear over the river)
1 Quechua
5 Axe
1 Archer
3 Longbow
3 Chariot
1 Knight
4 Galley

[WilliamLP]

Anyway, I'm done stressing out about this game very much. What happens happens and there is no tomorrow.

Mackoti took a city off of Harry! So our potential savior is pretty occupied at the moment, to say the least.

Island (mostly) pre-turn:




Faust was founded!! Comm unloaded some more units. He has 8 there. However founding Faust creates roads and makes the Mace / Cat SW of it vulnerable. (Combat settler!)

Shock Chariot vs C1 Mace (4.6% / 9.5% withdraw): Lose (3 Hits). Comm gets a general!
C1 LB vs Cat (82.5%): Win
Shock LB vs Mace (98%): Win




It's also cute that because the fight was on ruins, the tile has roads, so the victorious longbow can get back into the city.

So another mace and catapult went down for the cost of a chariot. Come on Commodore, if you want me to give up this island show me you aren't going to leave holes in your tactics. Honestly I hope he complains in his thread about how Faust is bad manners because it's not helping us win the game. (Spoilers: it's not. )

Post turn:




There's a G1 longbow guarding the worker 1E of Faust. He might be able to kill the worker with the mace and elephant, but it will just be a trade-down with a large chance for him to lose both units if he tries.

I'm conceding the hill tile 1NE of Faust for now. If I had played more carefully there might have been a way to guard it effectively, but Faust itself is much more important. As long as we have longbows in a hill on a city, taking that down won't be a picnic

The C2 galley, he doesn't see, but he might move his carrack and attack thinking it has units inside, which it doesnt. The trireme and galley 1N2E would then retaliate and be in a position to ferry longbows again.

The more interesting war:




That's the situation after I moved.

Ichabod took Boheme for free. He left enough in there that we can't cost-effectively take it back or spite-raze. But... that's three mounted defenders out of his main stack!

Ichabod offered peace for Manon, Don G, William tell. Then after I logged in to check what he did and refused he immediately logged in again, so maybe he thinks I had a chance of accepting that? I hope he thinks I'm close to a peace concession, instead of desperately hoping he'll overcommit! Honestly I wouldn't even take peace for Boheme back right now.

We got the stone trade from Mackoti! I gave up 320 gold for it, which is steep but there is no tomorrow, after all. Now Manon can dry-whip a castle in time to take the bombards. It also guarantees that he won't attack out on turn 167, right before our decisive strike.

We're really fortunate for two things: The hills by William Tell are in a great spot to prevent forking with Manon. Also there are no hills next to Manon to siege from.

A bunch of our mounted defenders are 2N1E of Manon, instead of in Manon itself. This is to react to strange tactics like moving his knights 2NE to fork William Tell and Don G.

The "X" tile is staging for our counterstrike, which will be in position next turn. It's pretty important that he doesn't see how many knights or cats we have available.

I look at Ichabod's stack and that is many, many knights. 29 plus 13 horse archers I think.

However I wonder what happens when we put 15 cat strikes on that and start attacking with our own knights. I'm hoping we can do enough collateral to get really good odds on Knight v Knight combats and actually flank down his cats! I'm not looking forward to setting it all up in World Builder though.

Ichabod's core must have practically nothing in it to field this many units. But it is only Dtay or Plako that could try to punish him by the sea and that seems unlikely.

I'm not even going to talk about Retep right now, but he'll surely try something else also.

[Ceiliazul]

hard to quote on my phone, but:

YAAAAY for not going down like some others. (also, you arent down yet!)

you cant spite-raze Boheme. you wont get the option because you have majority culture there.

have you been pretty lucky in your naval battles? to exchange galley/trireme vs. carracks and break even is pretty good!

good thoughts on your larger reputation. some folks forget this when the chips are down and it comes back to haunt them in later games.

[Zed-F]

Commodore appears to have been trickling in his carracks rather than stacking to prevent 1:1 trades.

[WilliamLP]

you cant spite-raze Boheme. you wont get the option because you have majority culture there.

Ah, I actually knew that, but forgot so thanks for the reminder. And it's majority culture and not being the former owner of the city? That's interesting too.

have you been pretty lucky in your naval battles? to exchange galley/trireme vs. carracks and break even is pretty good!

In the first fight Comm attacked a carrack into two C1 galleys for odds near 10%-80% of us winning with 0 or 1 loss. In the second fight it was 3 galleys vs 2 separated carracks, and I attacked 3 into 1 where the odds were about 70% to go 1-for-1 or better. But we actually lose 2 for 1 there, and when he cleaned up the victorious galley we had another produced that turn to retaliate for a 3-for-2. So if anything we've had worse than average luck on the sea. And the trade has been 4-3 which is quite reasonable given that all he had to do was bring in a stack of 2 and we'd be pretty screwed.

[WilliamLP]

Btw, I forgot to mention that I'm hoping planting Faust will attract a certain Demon to this thread, who I know has an RB account.

[MindyMcCready]

The more interesting war:

That's the situation after I moved.

Ichabod took Boheme for free. He left enough in there that we can't cost-effectively take it back or spite-raze. But... that's three mounted defenders out of his main stack!

Ichabod offered peace for Manon, Don G, William tell. Then after I logged in to check what he did and refused he immediately logged in again, so maybe he thinks I had a chance of accepting that? I hope he thinks I'm close to a peace concession, instead of desperately hoping he'll overcommit! Honestly I wouldn't even take peace for Boheme back right now.

I'm guess that you meant undercommit,...but at 74 units you might have actually meant overcommit. :LOL:

The "X" tile is staging for our counterstrike, which will be in position next turn. It's pretty important that he doesn't see how many knights or cats we have available.

I look at Ichabod's stack and that is many, many knights. 29 plus 13 horse archers I think.

However I wonder what happens when we put 15 cat strikes on that and start attacking with our own knights. I'm hoping we can do enough collateral to get really good odds on Knight v Knight combats and actually flank down his cats! I'm not looking forward to setting it all up in World Builder though.

At a glance we're going to need more cats and Knights.

He's got 74 units there and 19 of them are seige so we'll land hits about 3/4 of the time. So about 4.5 splashes of collateral per cat assuming the 6 max that I observed. So we'd get about 60-68 hits of collateral across the 55 units (74-19). So just over 1 splash per Knight, and each cat does 7HP damage. Not exactly ripe for the taking but we could further assume that 15 of the Knights are at 1/2 power from cat defense.

So 14 Knights left with 93 HP and 3 elephants with 8/9/10HP damage (no barrage, barrage1, barrageII).

The flanking I'll need to sim out but I think that the RB-mod means 10HP damage from each Knight flank attack. I don't know the mechanics on how cats/non-cats absorb collateral unfortunately (like how seige units mean a skipped hit). That's critical information on whether our 15 Knights would have any chance of scoring kills or not. We might be forced to throw a bunch of LBs in the fray to ensure that the Knights survive long enough to deliver their flanking damage.

NOTE: The barrageI doesn't seem to make any difference against Knights due to trunctation (7.8 or 7.1) . I don't think that Knights ignore FS so that might be a better for more direct damage since hurting the Knights will be our key to flanking damage (but non-Knights would probably get hurt more).