[SPOILERS] Scooticator and Pindooter give a sporting try

[Ceiliazul]

none of that was spam, all good stuff: keep it coming!

stream the turn, yes!

[scooter]

Turn 211

Alright, all I'm going to do for this turn is present the potential battlefield. I don't know for sure if he's planning on attacking, but he very obviously set himself up to attack, so I'm going to assume he is attacking and prepare as if he is. So I'm going to present you with two screenshots, as well as a few notes under each one.

The Attackers



1) The reason 4 of his Rifles are 11.8h is because I hit them with Airships . I'm pretty sure they'll just heal back to full health, but I just thought that was fun. Hopefully he'll read into it too much or something.

2) Nice thing is these Rifles are not especially well-promoted, and there's no blue fog around them either. Half the rifles that ARE promoted took CG, which won't do him tons of good on a hill. If half of these were guerilla or pinch or something, that would be nasty.

3) I'm still shuddering at the thought of how much damage his 50ish collateral units can do. Let's not dwell on this too long.

All in all, nothing you don't know about I don't think. The next picture is going to take more mental energy to follow, but bear with me.

The Defenders



1) I decided to NOT plan on hitting him on the first hill, and I also decided to burn 3 workers to chop that jungle anyway. The rationale for the former is for the mini-stack SW of Gators that would not be able to be involved on the first hill attack, as well as the 3 Grens coming by sea (more on this in a few). Letting him onto the tile SE of Timbers has some serious drawbacks of its own, but I think it's the lesser of two evils here.

2) I also was hesitant about staging my main group 1N of Gators. The reason is that I think Lewwyn still doesn't know it exists, and this my be factoring into his reason to prep for an attack suddenly. Anyway, what I really don't want is him coming in with a sentry Knight ahead of everyone, spotting the huge group and bailing. He might still see them on that hill NW of Gators, but the chance of that is just smaller, so I went with the option that was a bit less risky. This means if he moves in next turn, I won't be able to hit it, but that's the trade-off here. This decision on staging tile had a large bearing on my decision in #1 to not plan on hitting him on the first hill.

3) I decided to put my Guerilla2 Gren SE-SE of Timbers. Part of this is serious - I'd like to be able to bleed him a little of units if I can - it'll take him at least a couple strong units to kill that (even if his second attack wins, it drains health which is crucial on his top units - or maybe he burns a few of his valuable CKNs). The other half though is I kinda want him to feel overconfident. A Gren on that tile is kind of a weird move that seems a little desperate. I dunno, I still have time to login and retreat it, but I'm going with that for now.

4) The fort is because I have a Galleon incoming with 3 fresh Grens (and a Knight the turn after), and if I build a coastal fort I can attack straight off the boats rather than landing them and using up the movement points instantly. Just a little trick that may come in serious handy as I scrounge up every unit I've got nearby.

5) I stuck a couple extra units into Timbers so that it'll look to him like I'm hopelessly trying to reinforce it a bit.

I think that about wraps it up. Any questions? In short, I wouldn't be surprised if he manages to burn a city, but it'll come at the cost of his whole army I'm pretty sure. So I'm just hoping he doesn't back off into a more defensive position, because I'm ready for this to just be resolved.

[NobleHelium]

Not sure why you deleted three workers to chop the jungle if you're not even going to attack that tile. If you have so many extra workers donate them to my next game.

[scooter]

Not sure why you deleted three workers to chop the jungle if you're not even going to attack that tile. If you have so many extra workers donate them to my next game.

Because what I don't want is this:

Turn X first half: Lewwyn moves next to Timbers
Turn X second half: I kill half his stack and wound the rest
Turn X + 1 first half: Lewwyn promo-heals, retreats onto jungled hill (75% defense)
Turn X + 1 second half: I lose a lot more units than I normally would have because I didn't chop the jungle.

[scooter]

[scooter]

Turn 212

Where to begin. Oh right, this.



I accepted. Hopefully the Leeroy video didn't confuse you into thinking I was attacking this turn, it was just meant to be what I imagined Lewwyn thinking as he moved in. Anyway, one thing I noticed is my airship attacks from last turn actually were on Rifles that were moving last turn, meaning none of them healed. That's actually pretty nice! I sent them again.



This is pretty brutal because it's hitting his strongest Rifles - the handful of pinch guys he has at the top of his stack. Here's a look at the damage:



Overall it's a pittance compared to the bulk of the stack, but the real benefit is it makes my intial attacks easier to win, making it more likely that I don't lose many early battles - because after those top few units, I should win virtually everything. I actually found a 6th airship after taking this screenshot and hit one more Rifle. 5 of the 6 airships are in range to hit the next tile next turn, so I'll get in 5 more hits with airships before I start the attacks.

So that's the good news. The "bad" news if there is any is this:



9 Knights that can hit Pistons next turn, which is rocking a single longbow and an airship . Now, I can get 2 longbows into there no problem (they were on their way from nearby cities already). But I'm gonna need to pull a couple units away from my main hitting stack to handle this unfortunately. Just no way around it. Here's what I scrounged up.



Pulled away 1 Gren and 1 Musket. I also retreated a Knight, but if he doesn't attack, that Knight can still attack next turn. For my purposes though, I'm going to assume that Knight is out of it and not count him as a hitter available for next turn.

He can in theory beat that stack - he can take 3 losses. It would require some good dice rolls (his Knight attacks on the longbows should run 25-30% or so, which is not out of the realm of possibility for him to win a couple of those). If that happens, it happens. I do think there's a chance he wouldn't be able to burn Pistons (the culture is like 20% his), which would mean I could easily recapture, but we'll just have to see what happens. To show you that he really brought the house, here's what he's got in reserve:



Nothing really. Those Rifles are good Rifles, but nothing dangerous. In the south, I continued my thing.



Liberated to Azza.



This one didn't allow me to liberate, so I offered it as a gift to Azza to do the same thing basically. Here's my setup for now:



1) Highlighted are the 3 Grens that just came off the boat. I'll want to be careful with those CR2 Grens obviously, but I should be able to keep them safe.

2) I moved the Pistons stack 1N of Gators. He's seen them leave, so I want them to become visible again so he doesn't suspect I'm hiding more units elsewhere.

3) I kept my main stack on the hill NW of Gators. Unless he's got spies running around, he probably hasn't seen this stack - it's been hidden for like 15-20T. Anyway, most of them will move into Timbers and then attack out of it so that they're safely inside the city.

4) This leads me to my One Big Problem. I may not be able to stop him from burning Gators. It really just depends on how many of his Knights I'm able to kill in the attack, which may not be that many. So the problem is I have several important units in Gators (some cannons + grens). I'm counting on them to be part of this attack, because I need to kill as many units as possible in the first turn. However, this requires that I leave those units on the tile 2S of Timbers, because they'll use up their movement points attacking the hill.

The end result is this; say he's got 15 Knights left after this attack (very possible given how even longbows may defend before some of his Knights). He could use whatever 1 movers can promo-heal to kill my units 2S of Timbers. There will probably only be 10 or so. THEN he can use that cleared path to burn Gators with his Knights. I'll have 3 fully healthy and fortified pikes in there to make it bloody, but if I don't leave enough behind (units that I would like to use as hitters in the attack), I could very easily lose Gators. End result is next turn I may have to make a decision between letting a few extra units of his live in order to save Gators. However, if doing that puts Timbers in danger... Well I may just have to risk letting him burn Gators, because Timbers is the more valuable city to me right now. Anyway, that was long-winded and I hope it makes sense, but that's the main issue I have with stopping Lewwyn, and it's why I've said a few times he may be able to burn a city. We'll see.

5) Attack order is going to be a fun puzzle. Like I said, I did a very rough sim or two, and the main issue is cannon preservation. So I have 20 cannons. I'd like to make sure at least 12-15 survive. That's actually not that hard, because they'll very quickly get odds, even when they're being used as collateral. However, his first batch of Rifles will get odds on them. The puzzle I have is to determine if it's worth slamming a few Grens into those top Rifles (his musket would actually be top defender) before using the cannons in order to maximize how many cannons are preserved. The reason for this is just because I have 2x as many Grens as Cannons, so cannons are more scarce for me. We'll see. The airships may actually be doing enough damage that I don't have to worry about this too much, but it's just a tactical decision to think about.

6) I did bite the bullet and upgrade 2 archers into Grens. I didn't want to do that because gold is precious right now in rushing to Assembly Line, but I've found that I realistically can't shave a turn off of Assembly Line's due date, so I may as well upgrade.


FINAL COUNT

28 rifles
25 knights
27 CKNs
16 catapults
12 pikes
3 muskets
8 maces
1 war elephant
2 longbows
3 axes
1 spear
1 archer
3 warriors
1 scout
--------
131 total units

5 airships
20 cannons
28 grens
21 knights
1 musket
------
25 softeners
50 hitters

Popcorn.

[scooter]

Here's a few stray pictures I also took from this turn.



Got my first levee completed, adding a cool 12hpt base to the capital. I was just able to squeak out a 1T Knight to join in the counter-attack against Lewwyn next turn. I'm still running Bureau, so my hammer production here is pretty great even before I add the factory.

Here's my protective net against Plako:





I'm thinking he's gonna leave me alone . He's probably just hoping I'll do the same for him, which I will.

[scooter]

One last thing: the lurker thread is majorly buzzing right now. If experience has told me anything, they are definitely either discussing:

1) A horrific mistake I made that I haven't noticed yet
2) Kittens

I judge both to be equally likely.

[Katron]

We can discuss kittens AND your horrific mistakes at the same time!

[Krill]

We might also discuss how I think the tech rate is broken and tech costs should be doubled again. But kittens are more likely.