[Spoilers] Dtay's first PB: When you play a game of CIV, you win or you die

[Ceiliazul]

congrats! man that lake NW of Jetboy sure is convenient... for them.

Keep up the reports!

[dtay]

Yeah its real unfortunate placement. If that were a hill instead... ugh.

This is a weird decision though. I can basically guaranteed capture of Popinjay in 2 turns if I went for it, which is strange to pass up. I feel pretty good about my strategic analysis though - leaving popinjay ties up troops, and i want his troops divided. I basically think there are 3 goals in this war

Goal 1: Kill the army. This is easiest when TBS's army is in medium chunks. Large enough to catapult, small enough that I outnumber him.
Goal 2: Jetboy. This is the center of TBS's empire. It has by far the most population. It has the shrine which is bringing in absurd gold per turn.
Goal 3: Take all (continental) cities as fast as possible

So goal 2 is clearly optimized by going for Jetboy. Goal 1 I think is also best achieved by targeting jetboy, since if I concentrate my army on Popinjay he'll probably just leave 3 longbows again. He's less likely to do that at the capital, and if he does, fair trade imo. Goal 3 is the hardest to predict, but I think splitting his empire is probably the most efficient for creating tactical mismatches that allow quick city captures.

[dtay]

The march begins:



I'm going to have a surprisingly large number of muskets "stuck" guarding bagabond, unless I want to try to reinforce the doom-stack with a mini-stack. That would make the terminal attack easier, but is risky since the muskets could be sniped by knights mid-passage. but then, I might be able to arrange it such that even a tactically successful attack on the reinforcement stack would be a losing move strategically.

Troops in Bagabond:



Troops behind bagabond



Troops FURTHER behind bagabond



So some of these need to guard bagabond. Troops guarding bagabond also present the threat of attacking Popinjay, so it ties up TBS troops. Other options include trying to get a reinforcement stack to Jetboy by attack time (assuming I stop for 1 turn to bombard down defenses, but that might prove unnecessary, we'll see). Or I could send a stack up to hit Modular Man.

Taking any of these secondary targets would be great, but even if I fail to just tying up TBS troops that can't be at Jetboy is worth it, since I think that will be the decisive battle. But if he does load everything into Jetboy I can take cities on the cheap. This would all be a ton easier if my army had lots of Curs like the original plan, but... we make do with what we've got.

TBS shifted to slavery, so he's about to whip out lots of longbows/knights.


Still no sign of Scooter/Pind intevention. Hopefully taking Jetboy should sound the horn for the vultures to descend... Come on, there's NOTHING HERE:





Most of TBS's troops are in either this area defense stack (SW of Jetboy):



Or the promo-knight stack (in Jetboy):



I logged in after TBS to check, he didn't much change this deployment. he shifted the knight stack to 1 north of Jetboy, presumably to increase its strike range.

[spacetyrantxenu]

There were some problems with your pictures, lots of duplicates. Retry? I'm enjoying the carnage.

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

The pictures are good, he just left his stack selected in each one. Check the mouse-over highlight.

Dtay, I use Alt + s for the green highlight when taking screenshots to make it abundantly clear what is highlighted. I'm loving the thread. Keep up the

[dtay]

Advice noted, yeah those are def hard to distinguish right now.

[dtay]

I'll get pictures up in a bit (lots of class today), but I ended up playing a gambit. I left 8 troops in Bagabond, sent ~6(memory) muskets, 2 cats, and 2 workers up to the forest near modular man. The desert SW of that forest has 3 workers, 3 muskets, and a cur on it. A cat is also in range to join the main stack by next turn.

Why the mininvasion? keep up the pressure and stop TBS from putting everything by the capital. But wait, never split the stack! Yes, ideally. The optimal set up would be to just have all those troops with the main doom stack. But because of the desynched nature of this invasion I can't really GET those secondary troops down to the capital quickly or safely. So they might as well force a draw off of other troops.

How did the invasion end up desynched? First because TBS preempted me. Second because I'm rushing at the capital, both to stop him from whipping that 18 pop into a bajillion knights, and to deny him the GNP necessary to get to more techs. Finally, because a lot of these muskets weren't even PRODUCED until the invasion was launched, cause I'm still in constant draft mode.

Final concern, what if he retakes bagabond? He almost certainly could, with 4 cats, 3 maces, and 13 knights in range (plus some number of longbows). I don't care. The cost to take it from 7 muskets and a mace on a hill (some fortified, others with city-defense 1 or 2) would be at least all his cats and 5+ knights. And the knights that didn't die would be left NOT by the capital, and instead by Bagabond, injured. Where 2 more would die to formation curs immediately. And then I would retake bagabond 1 turn later with the modular man stack +4 more muskets + 3 more curs. To take bagabond would be to forfeit the capital, and the victory would be temporary. Frankly, I hope he attacks. He probably won't because he'll realize the implications, but we'll see.

Or maybe that's a giant miscalculation and I just gave back a city... but I think I'll be all right. Hopefully I won't be and next turn.

[dtay]

Yes this is obviously confusing without pictures, I'll get those!

[Ceiliazul]

good luck! fortune favors the best lurker thread. :-)

[BaII]

Are you planning to raze his capital?