[SPOILERS] Scooticator and Pindooter give a sporting try

[scooter]

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.

I think he was referencing my post about my trade to dtay potentially going through the wrong way, and he just mistakenly addressed you instead of me.

[Dhalphir]

That's it.

[scooter]

Turn 193

Barring something unforseen, tomorrow will not be a pleasant day for Bigger. It's probably actually been not great for a couple turns, because I'm not even bothering to hide what I'm sending at him now. I can see his defenses, and he can't do much about it unless he's got a nasty ace in the hole I'm not aware of. As my preview, I'll go through the 3 main theaters.


Western Theater

Bigger's units:



He took 2 Knights out of here last turn (I know where they are). I'm going to be awfully sad if he takes more out next turn, I'm hoping to do as much damage as I can. Here's mine:



Yes I just remembered one of those Frigates can't reach, but I have more than I need.


Eastern Theater

Doing this second, since it's easier. I'm going down two coasts.



These guys will capture B-b-bacon next turn, ideally. Last we saw it had a single archer in it, so 3 CR Grens should be plenty. If not, I'll pick off what I can.



One of these Grens is not amphibious. That's ok, he's going to be used to attack the Knight from within the city once I capture it, assuming he's still floating around like that. Otherwise I'll just use him as a general on-land defender. I'm grabbing another CR2 Gren from the mainland with an extra Galleon, and that about-to-complete Grenadier in Boilermakers will join in the fun too. I actually could have taken It's Bacon! this turn, and it took all my patience to wait til next turn as planned.

Central Theater

This is the messy one, but that's okay. First, here are his main defensive stacks that will figure in initially.





It's really nice that hardly any of those Knights are promoted. Also, only 1 CKN and 1 cat. He's just not going to be able to get odds on our units I don't think. I will note that the 2 missing Knights from Clara are under the interface in this screenshot. You can see it better, though, in this picture:



So I'm not up against a whole lot, and no help is coming from his east side.



This is a scattered mess of confusion. Anyway, the short of it is I can get about a half dozen cannons and a fair amount of Knights next to "Bakon" next turn (as well as more Knights that will be in range of the city). If I don't see anything that gives me cold feet, I'll just push on ahead. If he wants to burn his Knights attacking at < 50% odds on my cannons, I'll take that trade as it'll cause him to collapse even quicker, even if he saves a turn on the city. He'll probably be forced to withdraw unless he really takes units away from the Azza front. I'm really curious how he'll choose to handle that. The only thing that could seriously throw a wrench in things is if Azza gives him peace, which I seriously doubt. Bigger's power is not scary.



For those who can't quite make out the difference between his bar and Old Harry's bar, he's the lower one. He's really lagging behind. Here's what I've got:



It's honestly not even that impressive yet, but given Police State + Golden Age + WorkshopSpam, units are pouring out of cities right now - about a half dozen cities are semi-sustainably 1T'ing units at the moment. I'm actually having trouble with our Heroic Epic city (Orioles) - it's accumulating overflow way too fast, and it's about to cap out. I don't have expensive enough units available to build! Expenses in case anyone's curious.



Any burning questions on the eve of war?

[NobleHelium]

Uh, should you maybe have a few more units in those border cities which are vulnerable to knights in case of counterattack or preemptive attack?

[scooter]

Uh, should you maybe have a few more units in those border cities which are vulnerable to knights in case of counterattack or preemptive attack?

Take a closer look and tell me where he can pre-emptively strike? Looking at this picture again:

Bakon doesn't have any 2-movers in it, so he can't hit Grizzlies or Gators from that city. Baconator has 2-movers in it, but there isn't a city that he can hit from that tile.

The only city he could realistically hit is Raiders with the Knights in Clara, so I stocked that up with more units (Knights) last turn.

[NobleHelium]

Okay, that's fine then. Yes, obviously I'm not reading that closely.

[regoarrarr]

Good thing pindicator isn't around any more or he probably would screw it up

Kidding!!!

[pindicator]

Hey, I'm still around Rego!

[scooter]

Turn 194

Where do I even start with this turn. This was a 2 hour turn, and honestly I could have taken my time more than I did. I took well over 30 pictures, and I ended up deleting around half of them just so this turn report wouldn't be any more unwieldy than it needed to be.

So last turn I ran a 20% espionage slider, because that was going to be enough to get me city visibility on all of Bigger's cities. So here's what I'm looking at pre-turn:



He really doesn't have anything after those two front cities, and he's desperately building cats since he has a serious lack of siege, and he can't get odds on my units without collateral.



These cities are even more helpless and will be a hot knife through butter. Anyway, I started with the city formerly known as Clara (Bigger baconized the name during his turn). He did remove 2 Knights from the city sadly, but he left the rest (6 Knights) in the city. I won't complain. He still has 2 units more than I can kill, but I'll do my best. So let's start:



gg cr3 Gren vs Knight 99% - win (10.4h)

This should be pretty easy.

cr2 Gren vs Knight 96% - win (6.6h)
cr2 Gren vs Knight 97% - win (10.2h)
cr2 11.6h Gren vs Knight 97% - win (9.8h)

The odds went up 1% because after the second attack I noticed I had an extra frigate in range that I thought was out of range, so I went ahead and bombarded it down a tiny bit more. Next I used a C2 instead of some of the CR1s I had because I was Knight hunting (attack order actually didn't really matter in this case), which gave me my only sub-90% odds attack of this particular battle.



C2 Gren vs Knight 77.3% - WIN (3.8h)

Now I'll just kill as many as I can.

C2 CR1 Gren vs mace 91% - win (8.2h)
cr1 gren vs pike 97% - win (4.8h)



c1 gren vs pike 96% - win (4.8h)

And that's it, only 2 units left. Azza may just capture it which would be fine (Civstats has since suggested he didn't). I intend to liberate it to him anyway and hopefully gain him as a war ally here. I am glad that I'll get to capture it and at least get some capture gold out of the deal before I return the city to Azza.

I moved on to the island attacks next. Here was the pre-turn picture again for reference. The first city is the one that's hovered over in this picture.

The top CG1 Musket is moderately tough considering I don't have any CR2 Grens over here yet (just CR1), but after him it should be easy.



cr1 gren vs cg1 musket 76.5% - WIN (10.0h)


Nice dice roll there to get started! From there it was easy.


cr1 gren vs c1 knight 89% - WIN (8.2h)
cr1 gren vs cg1 archer 99% - win (10.4h)
cr1 gren vs axe 99% - win (flawless)


Not taking a whole lot of damage here thankfully.



cr1 gren vs spear 99% - win and capture



First capture!



Next order of business was to kill that pesky Knight. I would have actually preferred he was inside the city so I could get the city raider bonus on him . I did bring along a normal Gren though to hit him from land.



c2 gren vs c1 knight outside city 77% - lose

Well that sucks. First unit lost, and I'm fresh out of cleanup units. That Knight is wounded enough that it can't really do a whole lot to me, but it's still annoying.

Let's take another island city.



cr1 gren vs spear 99.9% - win and capture (10.6h)





Overkill probably. So that's it on the city capturing front. Next is figuring out how to set up on the mainland. His Knight that was running around in our land was exposed, so I needed to whack it before he got to retreat it.



C2 Knight vs Knight 73% - lose (4.3h)

That's sad. I don't want an important unit stuck on that hill this turn, so I went an unorthodox route next.

cannon vs 4.3h Knight 99% retreat - retreat (2.0h)



archer vs 2.0h knight 91% - WIN (1.2h) (trollolol)

That was fun. I picked off the chariot too.

Knight vs chariot 99.9% - win


My next skirmish was a slightly questionable. I spent quite awhile going back and forth over this attack. If you noticed from the pre-turn picture, there was a little stack on flatland that was headed to reinforce Bigger's front city.

That had a couple city garrison units and a couple Cho-Ku-Nus. Bigger's main issue is lack of collateral, and if I can pick off city garrison and collateral units on flat ground, that may be worth it. One issue is the stack had a pike in it, but I also had a few shock knights that won't get many other chances to use their shock promo, so I was hopeful. Unfortunately, I somehow only took a picture of the first attack.



Shock Knight vs pike 37% - lose (4.9h)

Not unexpected, but this would have been awesome to win.

c2 Knight vs pike 72% - lose (2.5h)

That's sad. This probably made this not worth it. Thankfully I did win the other 3.

c2 Knight vs musket 78% - win (flawless)
shock knight vs mace 95% - win (2.5h)
shock knight vs CKN 96% - win (7.0h)

The problem is by losing the second attack, I only got to kill 1 of the 2 CKNs, so that's disappointing. But overall I can't complain. Now, he can counter-attack those 3 Knights wth his reserve Knights, but I would be thrilled if he did that. I've got units in place to counter-attack his counter, and trading Knights wth Bigger is fine when that's his only good units and it's my weakest.

That concludes the action for this turn. Here's how I set up outside his front city.



So the thing is that he can't get odds on those cannons when all he's got is Knights. He has 1 CKN in that front city, but that's the only unit that can collateral that stack. If he wants to take coinflip odds he is welcome to do so, but I don't think he can do anything this turn. Next turn I'll probably spend a turn bombing down teh defenses with those cannons while I add more units to the stack, but it really depends on what Bigger does. To his credit, he got walls in the city, but I think his best bet is going to be to retreat given his lack of collateral and ability to attack with odds. A turn or so of bombarding and I'll easily slaughter what's in that city. I'd be happy with an early decisive battle.



As you can see, a good bit more trickling in, as well as quite a few Knights that will all be in range to join the party next turn. Here's the combat log from this turn to see the carnage.



I did get a great general too.



I've got an idea or two of how I'm going to be using him.


In terms of next turn, I'm prepared to capture a minimum of two more islands out east, and potentially a 3rd city. Depends on Bigger's troops layouts next turn. If he clears out of his front city at all, I could potentially just capture it. Really depends on a lot of things, but more than likely I'll be bombarding for a turn. My top priority is actually killing his Knight stack, so I'll jump at any opportunity to do that.

I thought about offering Bigger a cities for peace deal, but I ultimately decided against it.

1) 10T would likely be enough for him to finish Rifling. That's not THAT big of a deal against Grens and Cannons (I would be more nervous about Cuirs honestly), but it would make my Knights significantly less useful.

2) The amount of cities I would ask for would be pretty high, and I don't want him to be offended by it and get into angry mode and start spiting me by bailing out his defenses against Azza to throw everything against me. I'd rather him make the first offer so that he stays practical about this.

3) All of his cities have almost the same name, so making him an offer requires an extreme amount of work, and the thought doing that after a 2 hour turn was enough to make my head spin.

I thiiiiiink I covered it all. Questions?

[pindicator]

Nice opening salvo! How many cities would you count as a success for this war?