[SPOILERS] Scooticator and Pindooter give a sporting try

[scooter]

So I'll answer a question that I'm sure lurkers are curious about - if this misclick by Lewwyn really matters in the end (in terms of saving or not saving the capital). The answer is I really don't know. My feeling is no, but I honestly don't know the answer.

All I know is I do not believe he has enough collateral to bring 25 infantry + whatever I pile down to a level where he gets odds with all his rifes. That I have tested, because it was much easier to test. However, on TOP of that he's got 31 rifles, many of which have pinch. even if all his collateral dies AND every single rifle loses, he STILL has something like 40 units left to attack with, including some highly promoted Knights. At that point my units would be decimated. It's not out of the question that he can still burn this city. The reality is I just haven't simmed it, and I'm not super interested in doing so, so I genuinely don't know the answer.

One thing I do know is that his decision to sit and heal hurt his chances far more than this misclick did. The misclick itself is a pretty minor thing in comparison.

In summary: I don't know if his % chance of razing my cap just dropped from 95% to 90% or from 10% to 5%, but I do know it didn't drop from 95% to 5% because of the misclick.

[scooter]

Things that happened to me, chronologically.

*Tests, determines that building walls are super worth it in TB - makes it so cats can't remove defenses completely, major boost in holding city.
*Tries to build walls
*I CAN'T FIND THE ICON OH CRAP
*Wait, I have walls already? WHY?!
*Oh right, we used them for overflow for Oxford!
*Buys pindicator a gift basket
*Tells Cyneheard this story
*Cyneheard: "remember you can't build walls after rifling"
*didn't remember
*BUYS PINDICATOR A PRIVATE ISLAND.
*fin

[pindicator]

Knew I should have built a castle there!

[scooter]

Turn 218

I'm now pretty certain this city is holding. Let's see what we've got.



I'm assuming these 4 units are dead, but they are going to do obscene amounts of damage if he attacks this stack. According to Cyneheard, if he attacks one of these guys with a full healthy pinch rifle (he doesn't have tons of those either - I'm airshipping 3 units/turn right now), they still have a 35% chance of winning without even taking a scratch. If he starts burning collateral, his narrow chance of taking TB almost entirely evaporates. I have no idea what he's gonna do.



14 infantry in the city right now may not intimdate Lewwyn too much. However, here are my defense numbers - this is what I'll have in the city by end of next turn:

31 infantry
21 Knights
6 cannons
1 grenadier
2 pikes
2 archers
1 spear

The Gren will have exhausted it's movement points and be ineligible for upgrade, and some of the upgrades are coming from a few ancient units. Also, again these are not counting the 4 infantry on the hill. The number would be higher if I had the first half of the turn, heh.

If he elects to go around the hill, the number of infantry will be over 40, at which point I really don't think he can take it. I might just be able to counter-attack at that point. Here's what he's got:

30-33 rifles (3 trailing with promos?)
25 knights
18 CKNs
13 catapults
10 pikes
2 maces
1 war elephant
2 longbow
3 axe
1 spear
1 archer
3 warrior
1 scout

The 3 trailing rifles I suspect he can give G2 and thus could join in the cap attack if he takes the hill. Chatting with Cyneheard and we were trying to ballpark how many units would die if he attacks the hill. 10 is the bare minimum. I'm suspecting he might throw some of his ancient trash at the hill. The maces/elephants for sure. That's probably his best bet, but they are def going to take real units with them.

I press enter, and then I checked the demos. Um, I'm back up to #1 in soldiers already.








EDIT: 31 infantry, not 32. fixed above.

[Cyneheard]

The 35% clean kill is at 85HP for a C2 pinch rifle against a G2 Inf on the hill.

[NobleHelium]

Yeah, and you also can't build castles after Economics...

[scooter]

An interesting side-discussion here is the value of upgrading units in RBMod. When tech costs are as enormous as they are now, upgrading units becomes a relatively better use of commerce than normal. Given that commerce has always been something we have a lot of, we've done it a LOT in this game (remember, we haven't been in slavery since BEFORE we built up for the Nakor war - we've whipped like 6 units all game), and I think in the end it's been immensely valuable. For example, I was sifting through my "ancient trash" on the military units screen. I define ancient trash as being anything pre-longbows. In my 40+ city empire, I have roughly TEN "ancient trash" units. Total. In my whole empire. And I'm gonna turn 2 more of them into infantry next turn. The other reason for this is we've frequently used heavily outdated units for free GG unit upgrades, which account for like 4-5 units. Anyway, it's just kind of an interesting side effect, and I like it. I think it's good for the game overall, because it 1) slows tech pace and 2) increases military action. I've definitely said in this thread that I think the tech pace is slowed a bit too much, but this kind of tech pace slowing at least gives the leaders a little bit of an advantage to work with - converting their commerce into military strength. Given that other obvious options for accumulating units quickly (whip/draft) have been nerfed, it's even more desirable to just upgrade old units, especially if they have some XP accumulation.

[scooter]

Turn 219

The infantry did as I hoped.



13 kills for those guys, crucially including 7 collateral units. I'll put it this way, if it's gonna take 7 collateral units for him to kill 4 infantry, guess how many it's gonna take to kill 30 (plus 20 knights) in a city. Way more than what he has left, that's for sure. Anyway, his chances of taking the city are basically 0 right now as far as I can tell. I have a little sandbox that has the exact unit breadowns with no promotions because that's quick and easy to put together, and when I just now ran that, he killed 0 units. Main reason is once he collaterals everything, I still have lots of infantry in the str 14-18 range, which means his rifles have no prayer. Anyway, like I said that didn't include promotions (or fortification bonuses) which means it's not a precise simulation, but given that the promotions favor the defender here, it's definitely enough to suggest he's going to lose everything. He's come this far, he may just suicide it all.

I guess he could sit there for a turn, given that those catapults could bomb down the defenses completely if they spent 2 turns doing so, but at that point it may be time to start counter-attacking since I would have enough numbers to do so. Waiting doesn't really help him.



I'm going to take the coveted Confucian shrine next turn. The cool thing here is I can capture it, THEN I can upgrade these guys to infantry. These are what's left of my elite amphibious CR guys, so they'll be killing machines. If he masses units to protect his capital, I might just wait. I don't want to lose these guys - super valuable for obvious reasons.



Hooray for power spikes. Commodore's brief spike apparently stopped. I think that's a pretty good sign for me. I'm genuinely curious what Azza is building down there. Sure looks like he hasn't built a military unit in months. Interestingly enough, if Lewwyn had taken one of the peace deals I offered, he could have used that massive army to easily capture all of Azza's cities during that time window, and then he would have had THAT much more pop to whip and fight against me with. If he wanted to hurt me, that probably would have been the better way.

[antisocialmunky]

I wonder what sort of position you'll after you absorb both Lewwyn and Azza.

[NobleHelium]

Not building that castle after all? Or did you already finish it and overflowed out of it?