Adventure 59 - RefSteel's Unplanned India

[haphazard1]

The report continues to be entertaning, RefSteel!

Interesting that your Mansa never got any island cities. Mine managed to grab 4 off shore sites away from Isabella. Not sure why there was such a difference.

[RefSteel]

The report continues to be entertaning, RefSteel!

Interesting that your Mansa never got any island cities. Mine managed to grab 4 off shore sites away from Isabella. Not sure why there was such a difference.

Thanks, haphazard! I'm not 100% sure of the reason Mansa never reached those islands in my game, but I suspect this has a lot to do with it:

Bael-Bael's location meant that as of a very early date, Mansa couldn't reach those islands without sailing through my city's culture. He did get Open Borders right away, but the need to pass through my territorial waters and past (later through) a relatively-hostile Izzy's territory probably discouraged him from trying. (Mansa was Hindu to Izzy's Buddhist in my game, since the Hindu founder - Hatty - spread it to him by missionary. Since I know who founded Hinduism in your game, I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that player didn't throw a bunch of early hammers at converting Mansa.)

Are you still playing through your game, by the way? It sounds like there was the potential for a Byzantine war in the offing that would be far more exciting than mine....

I'm a bit too tired to upload a bunch of images right now, so my report on the Mali war and surrounding events will have to wait until tomorrow. It's been possible for a while now for me to automate workers (and probably even build queues) and more or less just hit shift-enter until my spaceship gets built and I win, but that wouldn't be any fun!

[RefSteel]

Bonus Round, Part 3....


The Year 1100:

So at intervals throughout this report, I've been including little caveats: "Don't try this against humans!" It's high time I explained exactly why, and this is a good place to do so because in spite of the only-works-on-the-AI preparations, my attack is going to be of a kind that does work against human players. (At least, it does if you pretend I was staging my stacks out of sight, two roads from Mansa's borders instead of right on them.) This will also be a demonstration of one of the bazillion reasons we ban spies in our BtS MP games: I'm bringing down the defenses of a city with a castle at the loss of a couple 40-hammer spies and a few hundred EP; to make this alpha strike work without this, I would probably have needed over 500 more hammers' worth of 2-movers, most of whom would die as they softened up the defenses. That's ... uh ... not an efficient hammer exchange. Fully fortified longbows on the castle walls of hilltop cities are really, realy hard to crack. But if you have a spy in the castle to create havoc in the streets and lower the drawbridges so your forces can ride straight in? That's a different story altogether.




You can see I did have a backup spy this time (in addition to another who was "stumbled upon" last turn) who could have made an attempt next turn if this one failed - and that I had enough EP to examine some of Mansa's cities. You can also see that if Mansa were a sentient being, I could have just staged on the Gingerbread Village and kept my stack hidden (unless he had a spy - or any scouting unit; we have open borders - operating in my territory, of course).

With Djenne's cultural defenses removed, it's time to declare war and send in the troops. I don't have great odds with anybody against the top longbow, but Mansa has only four defenders in this city - and the fourth is just a cat. My decision to use the spy before declaring war (instead of pushing enough spies into the city to be sure of revolting it on the first turn I tried, and then using them only once my stack was in position) means I'm not sitting around and waiting for slow-movers like suicide 'pults. I'm not giving Mansa a chance to reinforce or to hit my stack in his territory. This is an alpha strike: A gambit to take his front-line city - his second city overall and the one that contains the Statue of Zeus - on the first turn of the war.




You can see I have (had, in Mansa's case) little trade deals going with all the AIs to make a little bit of money from some of my excess resources. You can also see my attack is about to start.




I was a bit lucky (basically 40% odds of this result or better) and lost just one Kwombaght on the attack. (Two would have been the average, and even I was only expecting to lose three). When I planted Melbourne Epicure three tiles away from Djenne, far, far away from my core, with only a warrior for defense, and made the Pyramids its second build, the problem wasn't just that Mansa would have called me on it if he were a human player; he had to call me on it to prevent things like this from happening later on. If I hadn't also stolen his/Izzy's horses with a ridiculously aggressive Bael-Bael plant, he could have hit Melbourne Epicure or Sheringa in almost the same way I just hit Djenne, but especially without them, his choice was to hit me hard at my reach cities before I could defend them ... or to wait around and let this happen to him.

Reinforcements rolled in, including a mace to kill that spear, but then I attacked the mace in the picture, not realizing he was on a hill, and lost in spite of ~4:1 odds, dealing so little damage that I didn't feel I could safely clean him up with any units I was willing to risk at the odds I was getting. Attacking him at those odds was a mistake, and I wouldn't have done so if I'd realized he was on a hill (and that he'd therefore have worse odds when he was the one on the attack) but those are the breaks.

Meanwhile, out in the east, Charles Lamb moved into Mali territory, approaching Kumbi Saleh via a forested hill with another stack of 'pults, while my biggest single stack of Kwombaghts moved still deeper into Mali territory. Thanks to my vision on the region, I knew this was a safe move, and another reason a human opponent wouldn't - or at least certainly shouldn't - let me get away with the city plants and peaceful cultural pushes I executed against Mali. And then of course, the AI's tactical incompetence turned my dangerous attack into an utterly devastating one.


The Year 1110:



(I'd like to pretend I wasn't playing at thtat time of night, because the reason has less to do with the game itself than with sciatic pain, or possibly a cascade from it.)

So my 10-Kwombaght stack is forking two Mansa cities, one of which has only four defenders, and is sitting on flatland with "just" 60% cultural defenses. But Mansa, in typical AI fashion, has completely botched his defense, running maces out onto flatland right next to my Kwombaght stack apparently in the hope that they can reinforce that doomed city next turn, rolling a catapult out into the open, and running a spear and longbow past his hilltop, castled capital - the one my Kwombaghts are forking - out onto flat ground, for no discernible reason at all. So ... guys? I'm afraid I'm getting a little greedy right now.

The spy you can see in Timbuktu has the full stationary bonus, but I'm not going to use him unless I'm sure I have enough force to take the city. This just means I wait until after two unpromoted Kwombaghts have taken C1-Shock and won their 95+% odds battles against those flatland maces for my Shadow Wombaght is ready to take his 91% shot at the city's defenses. (If I'd lost either of those battles, using the spy now would be a waste.)

The spy mission succeeds, and then it's deja-vu all over again from Djenne. The three longbows here are more intelligently promoted; I lose two Kwombaghts in the three initial battles, and then there are some nervous moments when I find one of the three did too little damage, and I end up facing just ~70% odds against an injured Longbow, then only ~75% odds against the city's spear and ~90% against its Skirmisher, but I only lose the first of those three battles, and after two easy ones with the the two (now-)redlined longbows go my way, Mansa pays for his brain-dead tactics. In spades.




I lost another Kwombaght at ~70% against that hilltop mace before I killed him (really should have left him alone until he left that hill; I lost more of my forces attacking that stupid mace than against the entire city of Djenne!) and a mace at >85% odds against the flatland longbow (in case you think the game has decided to start giving me normal die rolls or something) but those are acceptable losses for taking out all of Mansa's mobile units in the theater. I have plenty more combat units available. Seriously though, if even one of those units had been in Timbuktu instead of pointlessly out in the field - even the injured mace, or one of the two maces I had to take out (on flatland) before the battle anyway - I wouldn't have even attempted an attack this turn, nor next turn, for that matter - meaning two more turns to reinforce and prepare a counterattack, and two more chances to catch my spy. I'd have taken Kumbi Saleh this turn, sure, but that city's falling shortly anyway - it's now completely cut off from the rest of his little empire.

At this point, I think my back is ready to let me get some actual sleep, so I'll pick this up sometime tomorrow, but my next moves are pretty quick anyway: Dropping Walata's defenses to 0%, moving Charles Lamb and his 'pults up to Kumbi Saleh in the east, and repositioning everyone with movement left for healing and/or another attack. I might take the nearest of those workers (there's a third under the missionary too) if he's in the way or if an uninjured unit has nothing better to do, but I don't really need any more, I'm going to get them all eventually anyway, and my priorities for now are defending what I've taken and then wiping Mansa off the board.


The Year 1120:



The epic of Dame Mandy Foot continues. There is absolutely no excuse for Walata, and there never has been. Even if you icnlude the tiles in Serrata's first ring, Walata's BFC featured the following food bonuses and grassland tiles: 1) A grassland silks that was already in Gao's BFC. It also ... yes, that list is complete ... it also had five coast tiles and two ocean tiles, plus two plains which Mansa of course cottaged (anyway, farming them would have required irrigation chains). Everything else (including the incense ornament this utterly worthless "city" prevented me from claiming until its forest was gone) is desert. I couldn't justify keeping this city to myself in spite of having both the Colossus and the GLH with more than half a dozen island cities. (Yeah, it would have turned a profit; no, I don't care.) Granted, the land around Mansa was terrible ... but not as terrible as Mansa's decision-making.

Anyway, I move some forces in toward Gao, bombard Kumbi Saleh's defenses down to 5%, advance a bunch of Kwombaghts on that city, and prepare for next turn, when I'm going to take my fourth Mali city in as many turns of the war. I told you this wouldn't take long.


The Year 1130:

Okay, let's take a brief break from the war to talk about what my empire has been doing. We're not just building more units - in fact, Mansa is the last target I intend to take down with Kwombaghts, and I reverted to Representation and Bureaucracy a little while back. Yes, I've been building a few reinforcements, but mostly I'm working on infractructure; in fact, I've been snapping up a few more wonders, just for kicks.




You can see the capital with Sankore from a few turns back and Curry Pie Floater with just-completed Notre Mandy. Another of my wonders is of course the Great Library - completed quite a while ago in the Australindian city of Timbuktu. (Of course, Mansa Musa didn't realize it was an Australindian city at the time. He just found out last turn.) Not pictured: The Statue of Zeus, captured with Djenne; the Temples of Solomon and Artemis captured with Constantinople, and (above the scrollbar) the two additional wonders (MoM and Sistine) under construction now. I should note that Mansa was building the Parhenon in Timbuktu before I declared war, but I didn't feel like waiting for him to finish the thing. Also, I just finished banking, so I'm going to revolt to Mercantilism and Caste System now. My island cities, together with the small numbers of foreign cities in comparison with Australindian ones, make it far more profitable than my foreign trade routes. Plus Hatty's been annoying me, so my foreign trade routes may be even fewer soon.

Anyway, that was fun, but back to the war at hand!

First up: I left two 'pults unguarded near Gao because he had only two longbows in the city. Incredibly, Mansa elected to attack out with one of the longbows - a Guerrilla I - winning the 78% battle but leaving it redlined on a flatland tile in reach of about five of my Kwombaghts. I could not have asked for a better result from the destruction of the 14th Wombatapult Division, which was likely to make a suicide attack on the city in a couple of turns anyway. An injured C2 Kwombaght takes the free xp while marvelling at Mansa's incompetence.

This brings us to Kumbi Saleh, which costs me the 17th Wombatapult Division and nothing else. Once the defenses are down and that attack goes through, neither Charles Lamb nor any of the Kwombaghts get odds as low as 95%.




It comes with a settled Great Artist (Mansa's Music prize) and is the Confucian Holy City, so I keep it in spite of the crazy chain irrigation I'll need to get it above 4 food per turn. (It has fish in its BFC, but those belong to Bael-Bael on a permanent basis.)

I've taken a Mansa city on every turn of the war thus far. He's down to his last one.


The Year 1140:

There's a very real danger that I won't be able to show Mansa's graphs anymore until I win the game. (I actually spent a bunch of EP on him for the past couple of turns just to get them back after my city revolts, just so I could show them here.)




As you can see, my war civics (during and shortly before my war with Justin) and unit supply costs and so forth really hammered my world-leading GNP. Why, I was in danger for a moment there of seeing the low end of my GNP graph brush the top end of an AI's graph! Good thing I averted that catastrophe.

Anyway, I have a massive overkill force in Mansa's lands right now because I dunno, I was being sloppy. His lands, for the record, consist of three cultural rings around the city of Gao.

The 16th Wombatapult Division cuts the city's defenses almost in half thanks to Accuracy, and then since my hundred-odd EPs against Mansa are going to be useless shortly, I make use of the spy I had sitting in the city just in case. Archery is the only tech steal option, and it will let me build cheap longbows for city defenders, so why not, right? And after undertaking that, I send in my most-recently-finished Kwombaght - a 3xp nobody from nowhere (Felrick Biotech, the filleriest of filler cities) - to soften up Gao's lone longbow with 21% odds. I'll decide who can best use the xp afterward to clean up...




...orrrrrr not. See? The pRNG does let me win ~20% battles sometimes, just like the AI! The only trouble is that, as mentioned above, when I undertake that kind of battle at all, it's probably in a situation where I don't need the luck.

So, yeah. That was a pretty quick war. And with it, I'm officially over the population threshold for Domination. And like two thirds of the way to the land threshold. Once Mansa's cities come out of resistance and pop their borders, I'll own more than half the land tiles on the entire map, but the game, in its infinite wisdom, thinks that a player who has managed to conquer half the world and more than both opponents combined hasn't really demonstrated military dominance. Barring severe cultural madness (and a lot of time) I'm not going to reach the >2/3 required without yet more fighting, so it's a good thing Hatty has dropped back to Cautious relations, and it's a good thing her city plants have been annoying me. Because I'm close enough to finishing the game at this point that I might as well.

(Why bother? Because unlike in Civ5, you actually get something for winning this game: The game replay is fun to look at, particularly for a domination win, and it's nice to have it saved for posterity, accesible via the "Hall of Fame.")

Next up? A few more silly shenanigans en route to the conclusion! (Right now though, I'm not sure exactly when that will be....)

[haphazard1]

I liked your "one city per turn of war" with Mansa. And I completely agree about that area near the Christmas tree incense -- utter and complete junk terrain, as bad as any non-polar area I can recall in a Civ game.

Bael-Bael's location meant that as of a very early date, Mansa couldn't reach those islands without sailing through my city's culture. He did get Open Borders right away, but the need to pass through my territorial waters and past (later through) a relatively-hostile Izzy's territory probably discouraged him from trying. (Mansa was Hindu to Izzy's Buddhist in my game, since the Hindu founder - Hatty - spread it to him by missionary. Since I know who founded Hinduism in your game, I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that player didn't throw a bunch of early hammers at converting Mansa.)[/spoiler]

The religious differences with Isabella were probably the main factor. Mansa shared Izzy's Buddhism during the early years of my game, although he later founded his own religion and converted to it.

I am wondering about other differences, though. In my game Mansa founded Djenne (the second Mali city IIRC) in the spot where in your game he had Kumbi Saleh. So he founded near the horses earlier and his culture there was much stronger. This might also have influenced his later exploration and expansion of the coasts/islands.

Are you still playing through your game, by the way? It sounds like there was the potential for a Byzantine war in the offing that would be far more exciting than mine....

I have been diverted by the latest game of the month over at Civ Fanatics, with all the Mansas. It has been fun. But I am still planning to get back to my Adventure 59 game and continue. I need to decide if I want to continue warring or not -- I stopped at a critical point, and will need to choose my path forward before resuming.

[haphazard1]

(Why bother? Because unlike in Civ5, you actually get something for winning this game: The game replay is fun to look at, particularly for a domination win, and it's nice to have it saved for posterity, accesible via the "Hall of Fame.")

I still find it difficult to believe they got this wrong with Civ V. A static screen upon victory, and that's it? Really?

Sure, it may seem like a small thing given all the other things that went wrong with that game. But capping a multi-hour effort with less than Civ IV gives the player for building a wonder? Civ IV does such a great job at the end of the game, using the replay and graphs and stats to recap all you have done during the course of the game, reinforcing the sense of accomplishment and allowing you to really savor your victory.

I just don't understand the mental space the Civ V dev team lived in. It is like Civ IV never existed in their world, and they were building a sequel to Civ III.

[RefSteel]

The religious differences with Isabella were probably the main factor. Mansa shared Izzy's Buddhism during the early years of my game, although he later founded his own religion and converted to it.

I am wondering about other differences, though. In my game Mansa founded Djenne (the second Mali city IIRC) in the spot where in your game he had Kumbi Saleh. So he founded near the horses earlier and his culture there was much stronger. This might also have influenced his later exploration and expansion of the coasts/islands.

Agreed. I guess sometimes the dice just come up oddly. (In my game, Mansa never switched out of Hatty's Hinduism, by the way ... of course, I suppose he might have eventually if I hadn't wiped him out.) That said, I don't think there was anything my Mansa could have done to claim the horses or fish from Bael-Bael. I prioritized culture there, and it popped its second ring borders long before Mansa'd Djenne did (though his Djenne was in a different location in my game, stealing the sheep ornament and nearly cutting me off from the middle of the continent. Nearly.

I have been diverted by the latest game of the month over at Civ Fanatics, with all the Mansas. It has been fun. But I am still planning to get back to my Adventure 59 game and continue. I need to decide if I want to continue warring or not -- I stopped at a critical point, and will need to choose my path forward before resuming.

Sounds good! I hope your GotM Mansa got better land than Adv59's did.

Sure, it may seem like a small thing given all the other things that went wrong with that game. But capping a multi-hour effort with less than Civ IV gives the player for building a wonder? Civ IV does such a great job at the end of the game, using the replay and graphs and stats to recap all you have done during the course of the game, reinforcing the sense of accomplishment and allowing you to really savor your victory.

I just don't understand the mental space the Civ V dev team lived in. It is like Civ IV never existed in their world, and they were building a sequel to Civ III.

I even like the silly little movie that ends Master of Orion I - which came out twenty years ago! - and the sense of closure it gives each game. But the Civ4 replay is especially great for reliving the events of a game.

All that said ... I'm finally officially done with this game. ("This game" being Adventure 59.) Conclusion incoming.

[RefSteel]

Right, so I just realized this game is going to be over within about a dozen turns. It's time to stop messing around then. This means: No more infrastructure, apart from a couple of hammer buildings which are virtually complete already. Forget about all (but one) of my National Wonder plans. We'll end the game with exactly three National Wonders (since two are finished already). Cancel my remaining World Wonder builds. If some AI builds one of them and gives me fail gold, fine, but I'm calling them sunk costs right now. It's time to end this.


The Year 1170:



Andaman is named for the real-life islands of the same name, used by the British as a prison colony for Indian prisoners - sort of like they used Australia itself as a prison colony for British prisoners. This was - needless to say - a dangerous place to live, with thousands of deaths reported in the course of its history as a penal colony. Since lack of planning led me to plant it without defenders or workers, five tiles from a barbarian city, basically just to hopefully claim some more tiles for eventual domination (while also turning a handsome profit through trade routes and rep/merc/caste) I'm really not expecting anything better from this place. Also visible is Chang-Tzu, the Great Prophet I finally allowed Commonwealth Bay to complete. Contrary to my previous expectation (that I would never get the tech at all) he is going to bulb Theology for me, just to give me a couple more xp on new units (of which I will have many shortly). That's the theory, anyway. I'm actually going to save him for a little while since I have no need to adopt Fundamentalism just yet.

Also, I changed my mind about the Sistine Chapel. The extra culture should help toward domination, and Bael-Bael is too far from the front to provide much in the way of war material anyway. It could build a lot of wealth instead ... but building Sistine is more fun.


The Year 1190:

I should talk about what I've been doing with Liberalism. I've been one turn away for a while, and if any of the AIs had been close to landing it (or even had both prerequisites) I would have just grabbed it for the best available tech. I've been careful about which tech that is though, moving up a couple different tech lines so that whatever I'm part-way through researching is never the most expensive tech I want. It's not going to get any better than this though - not until I cease to care about tech altogether.




I've actually already built a couple of 5-xp rifles out of my HE city too (with its settled GG). They just look like a longbow and a musket for now. I built the longbow just to get a sufficiently experienced rifle-to-be out as early as possible. He actually has a very specific job.


The Year 1200:



As you can see, my Great Prophet is bulbing Theology after all, from his home in Commonwealth Bay. That's partly because the great person born in Sustainability Victoria this turn was the ~90% Great Merchant I was hoping he would be, now already on his way to Izzy's territory. It's also partly because my Rep-Caste-Merc economy can finish Military Tradition in two turns at 0% science. And if you're paying more attention to my screenshots than I apparently have been to my rivals, you'll see the reason Hatty doesn't have any castles or pikes yet: It was Izzy, not Hatty, who finished Engineering several turns back. Egypt's just working on it now - which means I probably should have attacked with Kwombaghts several turns ago, but whatever; this will be more decisive, and more fun to see.

Also in the news: Bael-Bael just finished the Sistine Chapel, which will actually matter (hopefully) ... and Izzy is teching Astronomy. She's had Optics for a handful of turns, and I'm pretty sure that means her sorta-lame maps will include the two dark columns just east of her territory that have kept me from circumnavigating all this time. I pay five whole gold for her map, and ... yup. That should make things a little easier for my galleys.


The Year 1210:



I'm spending a few turns in Dystopia civics. I wouldn't want to live in the new Australindia, but this is going to be the fastest, surest way to end the game. I'm also giving the AIs an alternative since the only AP resolution on offer right now is Diplomatic Victory, but I'm pretty sure they won't take it. (Hatty got a couple of Buddhism spreads thanks to my Combat Missionaries. I vaguely recall that cities with your state religion in them have cheaper spy missions or something, so I figured it was worth a shot in two of her high-culture cities.)


The Year 1220:



Don't bother counting them up; there are more above the screen because they wouldn't all fit at once. The two 5xp rifles here have a particular trailing ship to board, the one galley is useless but that city couldn't contribute anything better, and as for the Cavalry, three things to bear in mind: 1) They thought they were Kwombaghts in the build queue, but we knew better. (A side note, since I talked about the potential for archers to upgrade into Longbows in the queue this way above: They don't, ever. Archers upgrade in the queue to Crossbows for no good reason.) Also, 2) I actually finished exactly one Cav for each letter of the alphabet this turn. But 3) I won't be giving them alphabetical names because this turn I'm also running a 1700 gold trade mission with my GM and burning through all of it and around 800 more of the gold I've been saving up to upgrade various units to rifles ... and 20 Kwombaghts to yet more Cavalry.


The Year 1230:

You may remember that I called my attack on Djenne an "alpha strike" because I sent in a rapid assault force to take the city on the first turn of the war. So that's all very well, but let me paraphrase another fictional Australian here: "That's not an alpha strike..."




"...this is an alpha strike."

That's five cities and 43 population points razed in the first turn of the war, plus a couple workers captured and their guards (and a random scouting warrior) disposed of. I lost one Cav. If anyone wants the details, I'll provide them, as some of them are actually kind of interesting ... but ultimately it boils down to this: In addition to cultural superiority and massive production advantages, I have Cavalry and rifles against longbows, ancient garbage, and an elephant or two. Also, Hatty and I have (well, had...) an inexcusably long border. I won't be able to keep up five times my Malinese city capture rate in this war, but I'll be able to take enough. I'm still going to fall short of the domination threshold this interturn (I'll be around 60%, I think) but even that won't last much longer.


The Year 1240:







Two more cities razed, including the Giant Golden Whatsit in Elephantine. (The wonder enables all religion civics. I've already done that through tech.) And of course I took the capital - and kept it, even though its shrine won't start making money for me until the game has long since ended. (The Great Wall doesn't matter either since the world's only remaining barbs are on islands.) I took a shot at capturing Hatty's island city of Asyut too, but it was less than a 25% chance overall with the two units I had embarked, so I wasn't surprised when it failed.

So I'm all ready to advance my troops in preparation for taking three more cities next turn ... except a quick calculation suggests I won't have to. As it turns out, there's an easier way to get my hands on Asyut.




Belatedly recognizing that she was going to be dead within two turns if she didn't do something about it, Hatty agreed to give me the city and every other non-city thing she owned, for ten turns' peace. The game's not going to last ten turns though. The game is over, actually.


The Year 1250:



The game has finally noticed the success of Australindia's unstoppable war machine.




There are other graphs too of course, but they pretty much all just look like this one.




The shrine I've been feeding forever makes Madrid kind of hard to beat, but all four of the other top five cities are Australindian. Those are my cities 1, 2, 3, and 5, by the way; SMT has the palace, Commonwealth Bay would have had it if not for Disapointment Peninsula, Bael-Bael had the Moai Statues, and Sustainability Victoria got the Heroic Epic. My only other National Wonder was the Forbidden Palace, built in (of all places) Sumatra around the time of the Mali war.

My fourth city was Sheringa, which would have been much better if it had ever controlled its sheep before I conqured Djenne in the late game, but still wouldn't have held a candle to these four.




I guess because of the early date, this turns out to be the highest "normalized score" I've ever achieved. It could probably have been even higher if I'd noticed about Engineering and gone after Hatty ASAP.

So that was fun! I've never really tried to just go for all-out early war before. Winning with just Kwombaghts might have been even more fun, but I didn't mind the sheer unstoppable power of rifle-based units tearing early-medieval Egypt apart.

Thanks again to anyone still reading, and to T-Hawk for getting this one off the ground!

[haphazard1]

And a very strong conclusion. Nice report, RefSteel!

That's a lot of units rolling out all at once. Poor Hatty...pre-gunpowder units against an incoming tsunami of rifles and cavs is just not a place you want to be.