[SPOILERS] Team BASTARD settles on deer.

[Mardoc]

Are turn splits in effect when there is no war yet? I wouldn't think so.

Well, I could argue either side. It's not 'while warring', it's 'whenever the double-move would give an unfair advantage'. I want to avoid anything that's questionable, even if we could argue it.

Pretty well irrelevant now that I'm away from my civ computer, though . Unless you're volunteering...

[Mardoc]

I, um, I still don't understand culture. Why did we keep the tiles? Not that I'm really complaining! Going to just do the attack directly. Azza's bringing down the army from the northern idiot city. They'll be in time to counterattack if he wants, or in time for us to kill next turn maybe.





Not sure what prompted the bringing of the army. Maybe it was seeing the cat plus seeing me hold off playing? Maybe it was this power graph? Just a bit too late there, buddy



I actually considered waiting, on the theory that destroying six units is good but ten dead is better. But I'm not actually sure we could pull it off. Only eight hitters in range, for one thing. And I think we'd definitely lose the row of tiles we need for a first-strike.

Turned out to be a good thing we didn't wait any - lost all four cats and an axe, only had one extra hitter, too. Granted, part of that was due to river-crossing, which knocked the cat retreat odds down from ~30-40% to ~16%, and surely impaired the axe as well.

Here's what it looked like post-cat.


Kept the city, stuck two healthy archers in it; they have a good chance of holding, or at least gutting Azza's reconquering force. He can hit it with 2 chariots, 2 axes and a spear - probably enough to make it flip hands again if he's willing to spend everything.




I don't think I'm going to offer peace. If Azza counterattacks, we might just hurt him badly enough to push onward. If he doesn't...well, we shouldn't fool ourselves into thinking 'peace' means 'not aggressive'.

Here's what we have left - plus two full health archers in Dental Plan, plus 1 full health archer on the sheep hill.


After thinking it over, I decided to slip in some nice 2-pop whippable units in the queues ahead of the axes/archers the cities were working on. I don't know what we'd use cats and HA for, but I'm sure we can figure out something. Overflow ought to be able to basically finish the simpler units. Except in Red, that is, where I stacked up yet more unhappiness by hurrying the archer. Azza can hit it with a chariot, and 1 archer just seems a bit scant to be guaranteeing our front. If it turns out to be unnecessary, the archer can help secure Dental Plan.



In more peaceful news, we've discovered Nakor the Mayan Borg. Who also already has Buddhism That makes something like 10 known cities with the religion, plus perhaps some in the fog.



The western half of our empire is pretending we're still in REX. Wait and see on Azza if we can maintain this or not, but at the current rate we'll be able to launch another settler southward in four turns, and all of Yellow, Blue, and Green are growing nicely, going to be able to contribute to the empire soon. If we have to, we ought to be able to get a serious amount of production out of these cities for HA and cats. If we don't need them for war, then maybe they'll get us a couple more settlers and a Great Prophet.



War aims, at the moment: hold Dental Plan, wait and see what Azza does. If he maintains his army in being, I think we pretty much have to play defense for now, and save all the hammers we can for grabbing more backline cities. Rebuild our catapult force and we can absolutely hold on the defense, especially now that we've got culture where we need it. Dental Plan could whip in a walls as soon as it's out of revolt.

If Azza rages and charges, though, then we might have opportunities. Maybe we can raze Nothing At All again. Maybe even push on to Boo-urns. HA would let us push some before he can react. But realistically, only if he burns his army at Dental Plan is that feasible. We can't take any city that army garrisons without cats, and by the time we get more cats, advanced, he'll have more defenders.

Net result of the turn: spent 235 hammers. Killed 210 hammers, plus 100 hammer city, 30 hammer monument. Not quite as good a ratio as I'd hoped, but still worth doing.

[Mardoc]

Reload again

That's gonna change some RNG rolls. I don't expect a serious difference, if anything it might be bad for Azza. Still annoying

[Thoth]

Reload again

[Mardoc]

Has anyone ever told Dhalphir of this concept called 'tact'? Perhaps the related idea of 'empathy'?

He's even got a point, usually, but he expresses himself so rudely and is so unwilling to give people a break, that I'm half-tempted to move first next turn for the sole purpose of causing a reload and raising Dhal's blood pressure

If he were the only one hurt, I'd do it. But there are 30 other players who deserve a little consideration, I guess.

At least the reload went smoothly and we didn't have to replay. Only lost another day.

[Lord Parkin]

I, um, I still don't understand culture. Why did we keep the tiles? Not that I'm really complaining!

Tiles flip the turn after you gain the popular control of them (i.e. you have to have the highest culture for two sequential turns).

Has anyone ever told Dhalphir of this concept called 'tact'? Perhaps the related idea of 'empathy'?

He's even got a point, usually, but he expresses himself so rudely and is so unwilling to give people a break, that I'm half-tempted to move first next turn for the sole purpose of causing a reload and raising Dhal's blood pressure

I believe he's 14 years old, so give him the benefit of the doubt. I tended to let my emotions run away on me as an early teenager too.

[Mardoc]

Ah, thanks for the clarifications, LP. Both of them! So culture's a slow process, and Dhal needs time as well, with perhaps some gentle pushback.

Anyway, Azza did pretty much just what I was hoping for, although we weren't *quite* as lucky as I was hoping:



Killed three archers, lost axe/chariot - that'd be decent enough at 75 hammers lost to 65 - archers are quite economical. But also, he left his hitters all in range of our stack, so we got some nice 90+ percent battles recapturing Dental Plan. Killed a chariot, spear, and axe, with only one small scratch on one of our axes: 100 more hammers down the drain for Arabia. Also sniped a worker up by Nothing At All. That may be temporary - his spear has 70ish% odds on the archer, but I left the worker undeleted because of the larger situation. Nothing At All is defended by that single spear; even if he takes the worker, we can take it back, and he'd be leaving Nothing empty either way.

So far, expenditures for this battle are 310 hammers on our side, 375 on Azza's, of military, plus 180 hammers of worker/city/monument destroyed. Azza's at six cities to our nine - although Dental Plan doesn't really count yet, so it's more 6:8. And we might manage to get Nothing At All a second time, thanks to his counterattack. I'm liking the progress here. We've done well enough tactically that I think we can afford to continue strategic expansion rather than dumping hammers all into units.

That assumes nothing more in the fog. But honestly, I don't think Azza *has* much more, until he finds time to break out the whip. He was below us in Power when the war started, and we're starting to run low on units ourselves. Plus, the best place for foggy units to go last turn was back into Dental Plan - could have had battles with 20% culture/river crossing again. They didn't show.

Here's the situation at the moment. Highlighted stack is the new Dental Plan garrison. This is still shaky, but I don't think Azza can push it over before we have a chance to reinforce and heal and fortify.




I think we absolutely hold Dental Plan, at least until he rebuilds his army. Hopefully by that point we've got some more reinforcements in here as well - seems likely, really. I think it's likely that we can finagle to raze Nothing At All again, since he left it mostly bare. And that's all we can likely manage, until he makes another mistake or we grow more. I was a bit too generous in my RNG assumptions, I think.

Production wise - Whipped the two HA/1 cat, which should help us hold in the field; next up is a big pile of Pro archers, I think. And Walls/culture in Dental Plan (which will be renamed Communist when it emerges from revolt), to hold the city as well. In the west, we whipped in a granary in Blue; Friend Computer's nearly finished a spear while growing, and will probably go onto a settler next turn, to be whipped in two. That settler will probably go here,



but maybe-perhaps it should go up here instead? Depends on just how empty Azza's barrel is, I think. It's a chicken that hasn't hatched. It certainly won't be our last settler in the near future, we'll continue to have options.




I may need to swap things up a bit, though, and put a couple of the eastern cities on slow-building settlers while the west whips out a couple units. I've accumulated an awful lot of whip unhappy; Red's the worst at 32 turns/4 unhappy.

Currency next makes most sense to me, after which...I'm not quite sure what makes sense. We don't appear to have *any* Calendar resources, not until we manage to conquer core Azza territory anyway. Our worst maintenance bills are in the 3.5 gpt range, so CoL doesn't seem to make much sense either. Maybe Aesthetics/Literature, since we're likely to unlock a Heroic Epic soon? Maybe Monarchy/Feudalism for HR happiness and Pro longbows? Maybe Poly/Monotheism to get ourselves some Organized Religion? Or we could even push toward Metal Casting/Machinery/Engineering to get Citadels, pikes/crossbows/forges as options.

I guess I'm leaning toward wait and see, but probably the Literature route, followed by longbows by way of Monotheism. We could combine OrgRel and HR civics into one revolt, and Pro longbows ought to hold cities well enough to release some units for aggression.

[Mardoc]

Oh! And we're 26/30 toward our first Great General! I don't think we'll get it in the next couple turns, mostly because I don't think Azza has (m)any units left for us to kill. Sometime soon it's likely. I see four fun options here, not sure which is best.

A: Make ourselves a medic III chariot.

It may actually be too late for this, because of researching HBR and losing our chariot to the barbs, but a medic III something else would be very handy when we get around to pushing in on Azza again. Downside: Azza's not really got that much strategic depth anymore. I don't see further pushes as attack-heal-attack, I see them more likely as attack - pause to defend - attack or else as just a full smashing. On the other other hand, I doubt this is our last war.

B: Settle him, in whichever city is likely to be our HE city.
Two-promos on all units, and halfway to a third for mounted? Three-promo siege? Yes please! Downside: it's spread out, just making all units slightly more effective.

C: Attach him to a galley.
We could manage at least four moves out of a galley, which is enough to, for instance, hit Azza's capital from the fog. Downside: better for razing cities than keeping them. 2 units isn't likely enough to hold a city we take, especially when we're likely to lose one in the conquest and wound the other. Matters more for a potential FinHarry or BGN war than a Azza war, I suspect.

D: Save him for morale shenanigans in the future
Upside: we won't be fighting Azza forever, soon we'll need clever moves not just mistake exploitation. Downside: We're likely to get more GG's; I don't see Azza doing much but building units from here out. Doesn't save us any hammers now, unlike more Azza-focused uses.

I guess I lean toward settling in a high hammer city. Mostly because this won't be our last GG, and I anticipate lots of war remaining in this game. Generally making a lot of units better is probably the most benefit we can get, and we'll have other chances for uber-units.

[Commodore]

So culture's a slow process, and Dhal needs time.

Little redundant there, eh?

[Mardoc]

So what'd Azza do IBT?



Basically nothing ! He must really be gassed . Either that or he's preparing something cunning out of sight - but, well, give me time to heal and fortify and I won't complain. Maybe we can even figure out how to get cultural control of Dental Plan's first ring

Also, whatever he whipped in Nothing, it wasn't a unit; still only that one spear.


The barbs are being annoying. We can kill that easy...except our army's all busy. Maybe we'll have to let it suicide on the walls.



So, let's set up a phase II Azza-smashing, shall we? I didn't think we'd be able to do this until he suicided the garrison to knock Dental Plan down two sizes. Got four units who can hit Nothing next turn - archer, axe, and 2 HA. Which units we use...well, it depends on if he's got a unit about to pop or walk in. Maybe we get away with just the axe and his currently 96.6% odds If Azza reinforces, we probably can kill the city anyway; wait and see. I still think burning it makes the most sense. I think we've proven that its current location is basically indefensible . Refound 1 E with hill-boosted archers, or not at all.


Nothing much else from us this turn, though. Except one little bit...I'm actually debating if it's worth whipping the settler from Friend Computer. It can slow-build him pretty fast anymore, and we could definitely benefit from working all those commerce tiles while it would otherwise be regrowing. Cost us basically 5 turns on the settler, plus whatever we could have built while regrowing, in exchange for...probably 9 commerce/turn. And our second settler would basically come out at the same time either way. Can't decide til next turn anyway.