[SPOILERS] Scooticator and Pindooter give a sporting try

[scooter]

Turn 192

I figured I should report on what I did with regards to mackoti before realizing he hadn't ended turn yet. Hopefully he's moved all his military units already, and we don't have to worry about a messy reload.

Pindicator mentioned that our units were ready to counter-attack his stack, but my earlier screenshot wasn't clear. Mackoti kept most of his Knights in reserve back on the same tile as last turn, choosing to leave a single Knight in Chrysalis and two Knights up by my northern cities. Anyway, I had made only a couple decisions, so I'll just report on what I've done.



Bit of a gamble here for a variety of reasons, but I won this one. I then covered it with a formation Gren since he basically just has 2-movers around here.



If he wants to kill those units, it'll hopefully cost him a little. I hadn't decided yet if I wanted to add another Gren to this stack or not. Thankfully he's not even threatening Captain Trips yet.



Well, in theory he could have stuff 1E of the copper, combat road the tile 1S of Trips, and then hit me. There's really not a whole lot that could be done about that except to prep to counter-attack any units he would do that with. Also note the "1 Cuir, 4 Knights" sign SE-S of the copper - that is accurate as of this turn. Mack did leave 1 Knight in Chrysalis. I would love to just raze it, but the culture is 50/50 right now, and I wouldn't be able to burn it, just capture. At which point I'd just be trading Knight for Knight (assuming I didn't lose the dice roll), so I don't see much point in doing that when it's still in revolt another half dozen turns.


Bigger

So I'm going to accelerate things a little bit. Bigger is aggressively scouting out my land with a few units, and as much as we've been trying to disguise our cannons and give the impression they're all going to mackoti, he's apparently figured it out the last few turns. First, his diplo offers suggested desperation, and now he's switched EPs over to us. Thankfully we can produce EPs at a significantly faster rate.



Anyway, the west front first:



Basically, we're looking at 9 Grens to hit Clara.



What do you know, there's 9 Knights there. Main goal here is just to wipe out his main reactionary force. If we can do that, we're golden. He's got other Knights, but this represents a big portion of them. If we're able to, yeah we'll capture Clara and liberate it Azza. However, if we knock out all these Knights, I'm pretty confident Azza will just capture it himself. He's got the units for it, he's just been tied down by the Knights. Now unfortunately I'm a tad concerned he may try to alpha-strike us or something, so I've shuffled some units around the Raiders/Colts/Grizzlies area. It's all a tad vulnerable for another turn or so. One major advantage is Knights cannot flank Cannons like Cuirassers can, so he can't even get odds on Cannons by attacking them with Knights. It's tough for him. Anyway, my main concern is the progress on the east side.



General plan is to send two boats down the west side, one down the east. That may not look like a lot for capturing 5 cities, but the defenses have been laughable for awhile now.



The two cities that are not marked had a single ancient age defender last I saw them. Hot knife, butter, etc. I do want to leave Bigger an "out" of some sort, though, lest he get into spite mode. I kinda doubt that since he's still in a hot war with Azza, but it's something I'm thinking about. I'm hoping this will be a short-term opportunistic war for now, and Bigger will have incentive to make sure that's how it goes if I offer him peace before trampling his core. We'll see, every turn is play it by ear right now with the way mack has been playing. But there's nothing to stop us from sailing down his east coast and just leaving a trail of carnage. For example.



We get easy odds on all of these cities. Or here's one from a couple turns ago:



He would go on to capture that city last turn. Anyway, he has nothing better than Caravels, so he can't touch Galleons, let alone Frigates. It's pretty much impossible for him to defend against all this, hence his semi-desperate messages lately. He hasn't really been building military lately either, judging by the power graph.

[scooter]

YES. Mackoti just logged in and took the peace deal. Bad news for poor Bigger. Let's see what I can do with 10T.

[scooter]

Funny side-effect: dtay is going to login and see us "demanding" all his gold, all his gpt, and his world map since I can no longer offer him Musket Shrine. I... almost feel like it should be legitimate to inform him I was attempting to sell him the city, so he doesn't take it as a "pay up or I burn cities" type threat which is not at all what I was trying to communicate. I probably just need to live with it though.

[antisocialmunky]

I hope that pindicator continues in some capacity. This has been a pretty awesome thread and looks to be even more interesting in the future. Thanks for the all the hard work.

[Dhalphir]

For what it's worth Pindicator, I think the fact that diplo offers still go through even if one or more elements are invalid is a stupid fucking gameplay mechanic and I don't think anybody would consider it poor form to tell you what it was originally supposed to be.

[Ceiliazul]

For what it's worth Pindicator, I think the fact that diplo offers still go through even if one or more elements are invalid is a stupid fucking gameplay mechanic and I don't think anybody would consider it poor form to tell you what it was originally supposed to be.

I think that was directed toward Scooter?

I think leave it be. Lurkers can step in if necessary, but I don't think it'll be needed.

[SevenSpirits]

As far as I know, the bug where continued ownership of cities is not checked like that of other tradeable items is fixed in this version of the mod. I don't remember what that looks like though - I'm not sure if it shows the trade or not and if so what it looks like. But it should be working the same as if you offered someone a resource trade and lost the resource in the meantime.

[NobleHelium]

I hope that Drama tech is for overflow but you're not running 100%...

As far as I know, the bug where continued ownership of cities is not checked like that of other tradeable items is fixed in this version of the mod. I don't remember what that looks like though - I'm not sure if it shows the trade or not and if so what it looks like. But it should be working the same as if you offered someone a resource trade and lost the resource in the meantime.

This fix is in Tides as well?

[SevenSpirits]

Yeah.

[pindicator]

For what it's worth Pindicator, I think the fact that diplo offers still go through even if one or more elements are invalid is a stupid fucking gameplay mechanic and I don't think anybody would consider it poor form to tell you what it was originally supposed to be.

Not quite sure what the context is, but a lot's been going on lately so maybe I'm forgetting something obvious.

And wow, I didn't know whether to laugh or cry at this one. I'm guessing you haven't read pbem23. Probably my least proud moment on this site.

@Noble - Drama was done to mask our golden age tech path for another turn.