Cheater Hater, Ruler of the Modbreakers

[Cheater Hater]

T126 Report:
Let's start with the two fronts:




As I said above, I haven't made moves towards either city--I moved a bunch of units up to Angle Bay in preparation for an attack next turn, and I'll also move my troops up to Plano next turn as well, assuming the units Whosit moved away don't move back to the city. However, things are very, very interesting on the other side of the war--as I write this post dtay is playing his side of the turn, and Whosit has already lost two cities! My guess is that Whosit's going to be able to keep his capital with those troops he's moving up (presumably taking all of these cities isn't free for dtay, since I doubt even Maces aren't going to get flawless wins), but dtay's turn isn't over yet (Edit: Now it is, dtay only took the two cities)

Next, to the domestic side of things:




I did my first whip in a while, whipping the Library in Ravnica. Other than that, it's the typical mix of units in the north/east and infrastructure in the south/west.

Demos time!


Unfortunately, my GNP continues to decline, even though I ticked the slider up a notch this turn--part of this is probably related to my whip, but the library should help things a bunch, in addition to all the growths. Of course, the real push to CoL will come when I actually take Angle Bay, which should give me enough gold to finish it.


Whosit's initial power drop has finally registered on the graph--not that much, so I presume Bell Preston was only guarded by a unit or two--it had two Archers when I passed it by with my Galley ~10 turns ago, and dtay probably hit it with 2-movers, so Whosit couldn't get much more in there. You can also see my power's recovered from what I spent to burn South Plano.




As you can see, I haven't shown my GNP/Production graphs for a while--there's a reason
Even my production, which isn't horrible overall (just a bit below average) pales in comparison to the people I know and have graphs for--of course, this is a biased selection since I'm purposefully not focusing on graphs for people I'm not in conflict with and/or aren't as relevant nationally, but it's still important since not everyone I know is off the screen--I'd be curious on how I compare with MYKI or Cyneheard for example.

[Cheater Hater]

Holy crap, Krill/novice have joined in on the Whosit dogpile! At this point I'm just hoping I can take Plano in time before either dtay or Krill/novice gets there. In addition, if Whosit is dead, I'm not sure I can defend my holdings--remember, I need to defend Mirrodin well if I resettle it, in addition to Plano and Angle Bay. This is going to be a very interesting couple turns has Whosit disintegrates.

[Cheater Hater]

T127 Report Part 1: Angle Bay
Now that the war is 3 on 1, I log in to see...Whosit has initiated combat with me!
Except that it's not him attacking my Plano stack or either Angle Bay stack--he just fought my Galley at Plano and lost. It actually was exactly even--we both got 5 hits, and I only won because of the natural coast defense

And now to what you all want to see--my attack on Angle Bay! I didn't do any sims for this, instead relying on what I did for last turn (but improved obviously with the extra units/fewer river penalties). Let's go through one by one:
Cat vs Axe (15%): Loss
Cat vs Archer (34%): Loss
Cat vs Archer (34%): Retreat!
(River) Cat vs Axe (28%): Retreat!
HA vs Spear (10%): Loss
Intermission: Surprised by the lack of fortify on the last Spear, I took my only picture of the attack:


HA vs Spear (18%): Loss
HA vs Spear (35%): Loss
HA vs Spear (35%): Win!
HA vs Spear (38%): Loss
HA vs Spear (40%): Win! (remember, the odds are win+retreat, so 2 wins in this HA vs Spear block is very good)
WE vs Axe (87%): Win, no damage!
WE vs Axe (86%): Loss
(Damaged) WE vs Archer (87%): Win
HA vs Axe (73%): Win!
HA vs Spear (86%): Win
Chariot vs Archer (82%): Win
Axe vs Axe (75%): Win!
Axe vs Chariot (97%): Win
(Damaged) Impi vs Axe (91%): Win
Archer vs Archer (99%): Win
Archer vs Spear (99%): Win
(River) Archer vs Axe (99%): Win, no damage
(River) Archer vs Spear (100%): Win, no damage
And I'm out of units--thankfully I had just enough units to take the city!


Tarkir is finally back under my control! Overall, things went well--I lost 2 Cats, 4 HA's and a WE to kill 5 Axes, 5 Spears, 3 Archers and a Chariot, most with one additional promotion each. This also shows that I gained over 100 gold from taking Angle Bay--and no, Tarkir isn't costing me 30 GPT, I just bumped up the slider to complete CoL a turn earlier
Now, the question is what is going on in the rest of the world--now that the event log isn't going to spoil my attack and win, let's look at it:


(the rest of the event log is just my attacks)
Lots of stuff is covered in that log--someone researched Theology, two Great People showed up (including one from dtay), and I got a Great General early in my attack (that I have no clue what to do with, but we'll cover that in my next post ). Of course, the most important part is that Krill/novice joined the war against Whosit, and that dtay captured another city. But wait--didn't the tracker show Whosit lost 3 cities this turn?


Apparently razed cities don't show up in the event log--Whosit's down to 4 cities now. You'll also notice Plano isn't on the list--it's actually the capital now after dtay took Avendale! That's means we now know where all of Whosit's cities are--Nowhere is the rice city I'll take shortly, Plano is the city I'll hopefully be able to take, Chill Lakes is east of where South Plano was (it expanded borders and I can see it now, actually), and Prairie Village is sitting east of Tarkir. The real question is how much power does Whosit have remaining, how much of it is in Prairie Village, and will dtay and/or Krill/novice aim for Prairie Village instead of Plano? I feel like dtay wants to go to Prairie Village next and certainly wouldn't keep Plano, but Krill/novice is the real wildcard--I still think what they should be doing once Whosit is basically dead (with only Nowhere and possibly Chill Lakes remaining) is that Krill/novice should start attacking dtay--considering it's either him or me (unless the Whosit invasion force is little more than a skeleton), dtay's territory is probably a lot more practical to keep.

The big variable in this mess that I can control is what I end up doing at Plano. I'll cover this in more detail in Part 2 when I actually have the Plano theater documented, but even though I did move up my troops there, I can't take the city next turn simply due to the lack of non-siege attackers! Thankfully I can keep checking to see if any other troops show up, and try to set it up such that I can take the city on T129 (and hopefully not have either dtay or Krill/novice declare and take it back--again, a dtay or Krill/novice declaration probably ends any hope of relevancy I have, if not my game completely)

Anyway, that's the end of Part 1 of my report--Part 2 will cover the Plano theater, my domestic stuff, and some interesting demo shifts. I hope I can get it out tonight--this stuff is really interesting!

(and again, lurker input/cheerleading is always helpful! )

[Cheater Hater]

T127 Part 2: Plano, Domestic, and Demos
I started talking about Plano in Part 1, but to get the full picture, here's the eastern theater:


As I mentioned above, I only have 10 non-siege attackers, while Whosit has 16 defenders. Even if we assume best case I win with all my non-siege (which isn't certain, since siege doesn't take collateral and thus I'm probably going to take at least one Axe vs Cat battle), that leaves 6 redlined units remaining, then dtay or Krill/novice could bring some 2-movers out of the fog to snipe the city from me--and don't forget I still don't have any passage to the east other than via South Plano (aka Galley) if Plano remains under another civ's control. One thing I might do is bring an Impi around to the other side of Plano before I start my attacks and see if any other units are within range, then start my attack, leaving 7 redlined units to take care of next turn (even if they promote, I'll have a bunch of Cats remaining from the 3 that bombard, the 2 that move up next turn, and any retreats I get (I was getting a bunch of retreats in my old sims, and I'm sure I'll get a ton when I sim the new setup)).

Before we get to domestic stuff, one thing I forgot to talk about was what the troops around Tarkir are going to do going forward. Honestly, part of the reason I didn't is because I'm not sure for certain--last we saw Nowhere it had Walls, an Axe and a Spear, and I doubt it has more than one additional unit at this point. I can reach it in one turn with my 2-movers, but I don't think 4 HA's and an Impi can take the city, even at full health, and as such I'll need some of my 1-movers to help, especially my Cats and some of the new units being produced right now. Speaking of new units, let's move to the domestic overview!




Lots of units are being completed this turn--the HA is obviously heading north, the archer is guarding a city (probably Mercadia, freeing up the Impi), but the WE is more interesting. I think my plan with that is to put it on the Galley, so it can attack the city in two turns (considering there will mainly be redlined units in Plano by that time, the penalty shouldn't matter). Other than the units, I also whipped the Market in Mercadia and restarted the settler in Ravnica as explained earlier. Also, check out what I have highlighted in the northern screenshot--FinHarry has Knights now!

Well, we can add another facet to the "I'm dead if this happens" list--now to demos!


And the ebb and flow of stats continues. On one hand, my production is now top 20, and my GNP is not abysmal (though I'm running the slider at 70% with a million bonuses). On the other, expending ~40k of units taking Angle Bay dropped me down to only 8th in power! The graph will tell an interesting tale next turn--I'm expecting to be under FinHarry, but let's see the other civs I'll be under:


Honestly, I'm not sure I'll be under any of my other neighbors--Whosit's the only person near me, and obviously he'll drop a ton from my attack (more than me I presume, especially considering I'm reloading about half the power I lost), as well as dtay and Krill/novice's attacks.




Here you can see my upturn at least in raw GNP--of course, I'm so far behind everyone I have a long way to go, but getting more cities, building Libraries, and growing my cottages should help get to techs at a reasonable point.

[Rowain]

Thank you for your information-rich reports

[Cheater Hater]

Thank you for your information-rich reports

And thank you for posting that you appreciate my reports--it's good to get some response even without actively prodding for lurker input

And now, to the reason I wanted to write this post--responding to yuris in the tech thread. Obviously, I strongly disagree with the sentiment that we should have to stay with the reload that makes me redo combat--let's walk through the events step-by-step:
1. I play my turn, take Angle Bay, end turn--importantly, my combat is visible on the portal, since Whosit lost score.
2. Old Harry logs in
3. BGN logs in, plays his turn
4. Old Harry gets bounced from the game, game goes down
5. Caledorn reloads to my autosave--this is contrary to standard practice, which always starts by reloading to the first available autosave.
6. novice posts that I would have to do combat, and that the reload to my save isn't ideal--I'm asleep during this time, so I can't say much
7. yuris plays, takes/razes an AT city, and BGN posts saying his save should be fine--seriously, these happened at basically the same time, which is why BGN doesn't mention yuris in his post (though AT's city was taken ~6 minutes before the post)
8. Caledorn reloads to BGN's autosave

In this case, I feel like it should defer to me, since I played my turn before any problems started happening, and I feel like standard practice wasn't followed with regard to starting with the latest working autosave, but I have a clear bias in this situation. I mean, I don't know how close my situation was overall, but I had just enough units to take Angle Bay, and I feel like my combat results were above-average--I posted my results in the post, but my full logs are here if anyone wants to substantiate that claim.

Now, I have a couple of questions, to help me understand the situation a bit more:

• If I would have replayed my turn immediately after the reload in the same way, would my combat have been the same?
  
• If I would have replayed my turn after other people had played, but no combat had occurred, would my combat have been the same?
  
• If I would have replayed my turn after other combat had occurred, would my combat have been the same?
  

Now, in actually relevant stuff, Whosit has finally played his turn--and he did so in only 3 minutes
I have a feeling someone's checked out of the game--now to see how dtay and Krill/novice begin to carve up Whosit's remains

[Cheater Hater]

*sigh* And that's why I haven't been posting outside my thread as much--I can't understand the full picture. I still stand by what I've said--in my experience we always start by going save-by-save, especially when combat would be reverted. In addition, I thought this was fixed by having many more autosaves (log in, EOT, log out) in this mod--maybe that was slated for a future version, or in another mod? I don't know what the solution is though--hacking an entirely new Pitboss?

Again, getting back to the game, dtay has played, and Whosit has lost yet another city--I'm assuming that was Prairie Village, since he can't get to Nowhere, Plano is too heavily defended, and Chill Lakes is on the opposite side of the map.

[Ichabod]

I'm not a pitboss specialist, but I think your combat wouldn't be the same no matter what. Even if you replayed immediately, with the same order, etc.

I agree that your combat results should have been kept when the game was reloaded, but I think it's important to take into account that, in a game this huge, where every single player only knows what is happening in its part of the world, it's easy to think that you got the short end of the stick (I doubt Yuris meant that the game should be reloaded to save his results and kill yours).

In the end, did you keep the results?

[Cheater Hater]

I'm not a pitboss specialist, but I think your combat wouldn't be the same no matter what. Even if you replayed immediately, with the same order, etc.

I agree that your combat results should have been kept when the game was reloaded, but I think it's important to take into account that, in a game this huge, where every single player only knows what is happening in its part of the world, it's easy to think that you got the short end of the stick (I doubt Yuris meant that the game should be reloaded to save his results and kill yours).

In the end, did you keep the results?

What yuris was arguing was that the second reload shouldn't have happened, which would have saved his combat and left mine undone. The second reload is what kept my combat results (I assume; I haven't logged in since I played since Whosit/others in the turn split have played).

[Cheater Hater]

Well, my streak of being excited to write my turn reports appears to be coming to an end--this turn was a mess, primarily related to me completely blundering Plano:

• Whosit used his Cats in Plano on my stack, decimated most of my non-siege units, and even got 2 retreats.
  
• The stack he moved away from Plano is coming back (after presumably not making it to Prairie Village in time).
  
• I saw dtay's first military unit--and it was a knight
  

I retreated from Plano back to my standard spot--hopefully Whosit doesn't follow me with the northern stack and actually gets some kills. Right now my goal is to make dtay spend a bunch of units redlining all the units at Plano, then sweep in to take the city. The problem is the timing--remember, the turn order is me->Whosit->dtay, and I have to move up next to the city before I can attack (unless I want to risk losing the stack). As such, the order of events has to look something like this:

1. dtay moves his 2-movers in range of the city--Whosit likely won't see them if it's only 2-movers, but I don't know if dtay has some Cats, or other units to support his (presumably) numerous Knights)
   
2. I see this (thanks to my scouting Impi), move up my stack next to the city
   
3. Whosit uses all his Cats on my stack
   
4. dtay attacks, either takes the city or redlines the defenders
   
5. I attack with my redlined attackers, take the city?
   

At this point, I honestly doubt I can take Plano unfortunately--my only chance comes if dtay decides to make peace, but in that case he probably moves on to me

In addition, there's more problems incoming--dtay entered a golden age and made a bunch of civics changes, and FinHarry's power has skyrocketed last turn to the same heights as dtay and Krill/novice.

I'll hopefully get some kind of report done--I'm just disheartened at the moment. Seriously, how did I get so far behind? Was it being blocked off by Whosit, or the required military buildup in order to counteract that? Could anyone take my position and be in the upper-portion of the standings 125 turns in?