[SPOILERS] joey and scooter's thread: FUN THINGS ONLY

[Ceiliazul]

Stalingrad all over again?



Also, thats nit a river, thats a moat!

[GermanJoey]

Stalingrad all over again?



Also, thats nit a river, thats a moat!

Tell me about it! Luckily things are perhaps working out a bit...

First, the situation when I loaded the turn is that Bacchus, who got Guilds last turn and has begun an upgrading spree (currently in a Golden Age, getting enough gpt for about ~2 HA upgrades a turn), split his huge amount of units into two different stacks: a two-mover+cat stack (first image below) to cover any forking attempt to the south, as I had previously discussed, and a garrison for his capital. (second image) The capital garrison has an exactly equal number of units as I have hitters in my stack. (third image)

So, what the hell do I do here? Obviously, this will be as good of odds as I'll probably ever get to put the hurt on his capital, what with more C2 Longbows arriving every turn, and every knight upgrade he gets completely errodes my power advantage. It's either stand up now, or slink away. The first thing I did was sim this out:



And a few attempts showed that hitting his stack with all my seige meant that I'd have average around 80% odds for the first 4 or 5 top defenders, with easy cleanup after that. Great. The problem is, of course, whether that other stack would be able to retaliate. The answer, I think, is no; he doesn't have Engineering, so the only things that can hit me are the Knights, Horchers, and Immortals, which are easy pickins' for the pair of pikes I'd have on defense. So, I'd be all clear there.

I thought about it a really long time, and decided to go for it. The result after my seige hit weren't great (first image below); the longbows were devastated, but a knight and the maceman remained almost unscathed. (I did get a single cat withdraw though, which is nice.) So, unfortunately, my first two battles were at 36% and 52% odds, but..... I won both! After that, I lost only a single additional knight at around ~90% odds, but hey, I ain't complaining. (second image)

I forgot to save the aftermath screenshot (played PB21 right afterwards and accidentally saved over it ) but all that remained of his stack were two 2.0/4.0 Immortals. I could have risked my Chariot at 88% odds to kill another one, but I'd rather save it for a super medic using the Great General that just spawned in Zoo. at least 3 or 4 of my knights were practically unscathed, as was my pike. I also unloaded an additional fresh knight and a C2 pikeman for additional cover. Overall, I lost 520h and 33k power in this battle (570h/36k total for the war), while he lost 825h and 61k power (1060h/77k total).

The big question is, what will Bacchus do now? He does indeed still have enough units to cover the city; between whatever he'll whip in that city (actually now that I think about it, he hasn't whipped anything in the last few turns - I wonder if he switched into caste for his GA?) and upgrades, he'll probably have 3 CG2 Longbows, 4 Knights, a WE, 5 Immortals, and 4 catapults. I won't have enough healthy units to take that. However, I'll have completely replenished my seige within 5 or 6 turns, reinforced by another dozen knights/pikes/maces, and my stack will be fully healed too. Will he be able to hold out against that? I really don't think so, not anymore. As long as I'm able to keep the pressure up, and with any cash that could go towards Engineering getting blown on knight upgrades, I think he'll eventually crumble. His other option is to let me take the city next turn and hope that I keep it, hitting me on a counter attack. I'd have to think long and hard about that one; luckily my Sentry Knight did survive this battle, so I'll at least be able to spot any shenanigans...

[von Adlercreutz]

Nice battle! But still kind of reminds me of battles like Verdun.

[Ceiliazul]

Hey, thats not like Stalingrad at all! Nicely done taking advantage of opponent missteps. So... hammer?

[Ceiliazul]

Also, this situation is a big reason I think guerilla (hill defense) promos are underrated. You'd really rather have your longbows defending his counterattack instead of injured knights here. But still a good run.

[GermanJoey]

I agree, I think its a very good promotion line, especially because, unlike the Woody line, the defender can't cut down a hill. That's why I think the Celts are secretly overpowered in RtR mod; the Dun giving GII instead of GI means that an entire 1-mover stack can usually get 2 moves in an enemy's territory if your scouting is good, which is likely with map-trading being available at Writing instead of Paper. (not in PB18 ofc, but in general). Gaellics starting with GI AND GII AND still retaining the RtR Swordsman +50% city attack means that they remain one of your most effective units until Rifling. A horse archer with attack-odds on everything in a turtled city? So cool...

[GermanJoey]

Wow, dtay just landed lib!!!!! That's super quick, I don't even have paper yet!

News on the eastern front: Bacchus did indeed reinforce his capital and upgrade 2 knights. Here's his stack:




The 5 cats are a bit worrisome, but he does not yet have enough there to really do any damage to me. I have too many units in my stack and too many of them are near full health. Here's the current composition; I had a better hover SS of this, showing hp and promos, but unfortunately I saved over it, ugh.




GG medic next turn, should be ready to hit in 3 turns, once I have a few more cats in place and the majority of my stack is back to full health. One interesting thing is that I have a CR3 Swordsman, as my low-odds swordsman battle last turn netted 4 xp! I started on the HE in Cedar Point, which will be done in 4 turns and allow me to pump 1T knights pretty much immediately. NE also done in 4 turns; GA target is T160, although I might want to delay that. My intermediate tech goal is Paper->Education->Gunpowder->Economics->Philosophy->Nationalism. That is an extreme number of beakers in total! My breakeven rate is something like, off the top of my head, 450b/t or so? Add in an expected average KTB multiplier of 1.25, and I'd earn about 9k beakers in 16 turns. That's a little bit short of the total I need for those 6 techs. Being able to switch into and out of Nationalism would be super useful though, as I'd be able to draft almost 20 Jans in that timeframe! I guess we'll see...

In other news, agent 427 (dhal's replacement) destroyed my exploring galley for some reason. He's a guy I know from another site that I don't get along with too well, so I'm sure he did this just to be spiteful. Its kind of stupid, because the only reason I'm even still near dhal's territory is because setting him to the AI immediately caused a ceasefire, which forced back to the start of his borders. Whatever. I guess I met everyone important except for Pindicator; hopefully, he finds me.

[GermanJoey]

Arrgh, the workers, I didn't think about the workers! He had 2 workers 1NE of his capital in that screenshot up there, and I didn't think about them at all!

Bacchus actually updated his thread this morning, so I logged in to take a look. He roaded 1W of his capital and hit me with his cats, 2 horchers, and 4 knights. Both horchers withdrew (he's 3/3 now with that ) and all 4 knights won. What was truly unfortunate is that both pikes basically took collateral on all 5 cat hits despite having 18 non-seige units on the tile. I lost 4 knights and 2 cats due to flanking and took some heavy damage to my stack; a 300h v 460h trade, very good for him. What's worse is that he can now threaten to take Ergili next turn; have to think pretty hard whether I want to withdraw or reinforce my stack. I have 2 fresh knights and a fresh pike awaiting unloading, and 3 knights able to upgrade next turn. He has 8 knights and 1 WE total now, although at least 3 of his knights are highly wounded and he has no more cats remaining.

[GermanJoey]

Oh wow, I just realized he tricked me with that GG Knight. It had only C1 and C2 before, now it has C4 and formation!

[GermanJoey]

Hahaha, oh man, some small pieces of good news this turn.

First of all, Bacchus only killed one cat w/ flanking attacks; that's a big deal to me, because right now I'm basically limited on cats. Second of all, I took his little fishing village of Zohak with a mace; it hadn't popped borders yet and was guarded by a single axeman, so an easy time there. The total hammer-lost/power-lost tallys are now:

Me:
1 Trireme (50h/3k)
8 Catapults (400h/21k)
1 Trebutchet (80h/4k)
5 Knights (450h/30k)
----------------------
Total: 980h/58k

Bacchus:
1 Galley (50h/2k)
4 Knights (360h/24k)
8 Longbows (400h/32k)
2 Axemen (70h/6k)
1 Spearman (35h/3k)
1 Maceman (70h/6k)
3 Immortals (90h/9k)
5 Catapults (250h/15k)
----------------------
Total: 1325/97k

So, I'm still grinding him down ok, its just the ratio isn't as good as it was before. I opted not to attack out this turn, as my GG Medic is now online and a large portion of my stack will be back to full health next turn, with almost all of it back to full health in 2 turns. I think I should be ready to hit him either then or the turn after, depending on how many more cats are available. Anyways, I reinforced the stack with another 2 C2 Knights and a C2 Pike. Speaking of pikes, I found out why he was so successful last turn:




Instead of dying, each of his horchers got 4 and 3 hits, respectively, then retreated, which is just absurdly unlikely. This is after the pikes got hit with 4 and 5 collateral hits a piece (a cat can collateral 6 units a hit, meaning that each cat attack had ~37% odds to actually wear down the pike). This is what allowed his C3 Formation GG Knight to get such great odds on my other top knight. Not that any of this changes the situation, but I guess me feel a tiny, tiny bit better that Bacchus just got lucky here rather than completely out-maneuvered me. There's a chance he'll take his coastal city of Ergili back, but honestly that'll be a death sentence for his capital. We'll see.

In domestic news, I popped my great artist this turn in Hastee Tastee, in addition to popping my 4th-ring borders, and got a fantastically lucky Random Event:




Poor TBS!!! 140 gold for permanently claiming the wheat and deer? I'll take it! My prior plan for this city involved hitting 4th-ring borders then growing it up to size 7 on a razor's edge in order to get it back to surplus food. Now, I can grow it no problem at all, gaining 21 culture a turn working just a single artist specialist. We've started exploring each others' borders now, by the way; he has a horcher parked in HT, and I've sent a worker over to explore too, peaking near the south for any hidden stacks. (might as well explore with a worker; I'm basically out of tiles to improve, even counting stuff I'm switching over to different improvements - 11th in land, heh)

Lastly, I queued up some expansive harbours in my iceball fishing villages. Should net me more income than a courthouse would, and that's even before free market.