[PB25-SPOILERS] The Lunacy of the Reign of HAK Continues

[HitAnyKey]

Alright HAK, if this game is over fire the GA and turn on tech. Post the damn graph for that jerk.

Looks like GJ is finding himself a replacement. I'm actually even fine with it being Krill as long as he hasn't really spent much time reading the details of my thread. I know in Commodore's post he mentions all the pots Krill has made in both of our threads, but I looked and the last 4 Krill made in mine were all related to all that city zooming stuff. Before that, his last post was way back in April....again in response to technical stuffs...I think responding to something you asked about the mod.
So if he only just glances at the threads occasionally, then I'm fine with him taking over. I think.
But an unspoiled person taking over would probably be a little better though.

In either case, the game is not over. At most, someone will just replace GJ.

[HitAnyKey]

Nice question too. How exactly do we answer that without tipping MC off?

And this is why I'm not replying to anything in the tech thread. Other than my statement that I definitely want to keep playing. Even if I don't win, if I can pull off a solid 2nd or 3rd place finish, I'll be happy with that for this game. But not until at least 3-4 civs have been completely eliminated. Grimace & Borsche will be gone first. Possibly Elkad after that.
But then there will be some glorious battles amongst the rest of us. I want to see some of that happen first. And I'm sure so do the lurkers with wanting to see their bloodbaths.

[MindyMcCready]

Assuming that this game is going to continue,...

So in 4T it looks like we'll have 3 galleys ready for the invasion making T138 as T0. We'll probably have to proceed with the attack at that point. The hope being that we can catch Gavagai's injured units in the field.

We're still at war with Borsche right? So MC won't know what's going on until we capture a city or until there's a war dec between Gavagai and us.

So I worked on a battle sim to try to determine how well our stack could stand up to endless Numidian Cavalry.

Our Stack:
-8 C1 LK + 6S +6 WE (half C2, half C1) + 10 cats

Flatland defense against:
-30 NC with a fairly even distribution between C1 + Flanking II and C3.

Result:
-11 dead NC (19 remaining)
-11 retreats + 8 victorious

-5 dead LK, 1 dead WE, 2 dead swords.
-Interestingly the HA when victorious or retreating did between 4 and 6 hits of collateral to the cats. So this doesn't appear to follow the same distribution as collateral from cats.
-Surprisingly, not one cat died. One cat was at 0.4 but the remainder averaged about 1.3 strength.

-So round 1 definately went to us. The following round would probably be a slaughter as we promote first and start the one sided killing with or without collateral.

Still the battle was pretty close. And Gavagai could do better by hitting us with cats first. But not necessarily overwhelmingly better. The cats die against the WEs while averaging 4 hits. So against a reasonable number of cats the LKs are still healthy enough to stop the HAs.

Bottom line,.... we don't have to really sweat it out unless we meet equal numbers. But we're going to need those LKs before we try to hit Gavagai's healthy stack. It'll be hard for Gavagai to do that given his need to protect his cities + our 3-move road ability.

[MindyMcCready]

So relative to my hypotentical army of:
8 LK - need a bunch
6 Swords - have 4? + 3 completing. CHECK!
6 WEs - have 7? CHECK!
10 cats - we had 11 earlier so CHECK!

So we just need to get the 8 LKs in place. I don't mind the market in Burning Spears,...but let's make sure that we can get a spear/LK the turn that we land Engineering.

Archer --> CB upgrade is 125G
Spear --> LK is 95G. So that's definately money well spent.

We should land Engineering as fast as possible,...whip in castles and then save gold to upgrade spear --> LK? We can get 2 per turn through upgrades + whip in a couple. Maybe more if we GA the turn we land Engineering.

We can also bring over spears and then upgrade after we catch the first city as well.

[HitAnyKey]

It'll be almost 4 turns before we even get Engineering. So there's no way we can have 8 LK's at that time. Also, a few of the Galleys are coming from a good distance away. I logged in just now and did some counting of squares:
Existing Galley 1 will arrive at Arbys T136, with an earliest drop off of units T138 on that Corn farm 1SE of Popeyes.
Existing Galley 2 will arrive T140, with an earliest drop time of T142.
Galley from Sad will arrive T135, with a T137 drop time.
Galley from Overworked will arrive T137, with a T139 drop time.
Galley from Sore will arrive T142, with a T144 drop time.

I currently have available around those western cities: 6 WE, 4 Sword, 7 (maybe 9) Catapults, 1 Spear, 1 HA, 1 Chariot
I just switched a bunch of the western city builds to Spears to get hammers into them so that they can be finished/whipped as soon as we get Engineering:

I didn't bother switching Arbys since it won't grow or put out enough hammers fast enough to be able to whip out a LK in a decent time. So it'll whip it's Granary when it can.

But basically, the earliest we can dump a bunch of units next to Popeyes is T139 when three Galleys can drop off a total of 6 units and then go back for more. Other option is I think some of the Galleys could drop off on the Grass Hill 2S2E a turn earlier. So some units could be dropped off there, the galleys load up with more units. Then the following turn the units from that hill move next to the city and more unis get dropped off. Basically, it would come down to whether Borsche (if he's still alive) sends units to attack mine on the hill rather than keeping them fortified in the city.

As a side note, the Trireme I have coming along that south coast will get there soon. So it will be able to give me a look into Popeyes on T136, long before I attack.

[MindyMcCready]

T132 Power = 386K
Population Power = 33K I assumed the missing 4 cities were all size 7.
Buildings = 55K I assumed that the missing 4 cities had neither Barracks nor Stables. I assumed no Moai which is 10K.
Tech = 60K. I assumed that he had IW. There are no real question marks here.


Gavagai Hypothetical Army = 238K
-I'm going to assumed 2/3 HA and 1/3 cats
Cats-8, HA-16, Spear-5, Archer-8, axe-7, chariot-2, warrior-4

So that's shouldn't be enough to stop us given MP and border protection requirements. The more he's invested in WEs and HA, the less he'll be able to do us serious damage.

[HitAnyKey]

We should land Engineering as fast as possible,...whip in castles and then save gold to upgrade spear --> LK? We can get 2 per turn through upgrades + whip in a couple. Maybe more if we GA the turn we land Engineering.

If we think there is even a chance we might want to kick off that GA the turn we land Engineering, then I will probably stop whipping again. I have 5 cities growing this turn, and another 5 cities growing the turn after that. Want to get the cities as vertical as possible to get maximum benefit from the GA.

[MindyMcCready]

It'll be almost 4 turns before we even get Engineering.

I get that. I think that we need to start the invasion before Engineering. We move to the hills with swords + WEs and dig in. With 3 galleys we can transport 6 units per turn like you said.

I currently have available around those western cities: 6 WE, 4 Sword, 7 (maybe 9) Catapults, 1 Spear, 1 HA, 1 Chariot

So those 22 units + 2 combat engineers can be moved in over 3-4 turns.

I think that the idea is that we sit and wait for the culture to drop. If the culture drops we can road the tile SE of Popeyes and try to hit Gavagai's injured units. If Gavagai isn't careful he might not see us. That's probably a long-shot given that we're still at war with Borsche but he might conclude that Borsche won't accept peace.

I just switched a bunch of the western city builds to Spears to get hammers into them so that they can be finished/whipped as soon as we get Engineering:

Sounds good. Once we have Engineering and the battle is underway, Burning Spears can provide a lot of LKs pretty quickly + cash upgrade the first couple of spears when Popeye's is captured.

But basically, the earliest we can dump a bunch of units next to Popeyes is T139 when three Galleys can drop off a total of 6 units and then go back for more.

We don't have to go back for more, just reload while sitting on the same spot. I'm making this distinction since the reload spot could be 2E of Popeyes allowing us to unload directly into the city for further Gavagai killing.

Basically, it would come down to whether Borsche (if he's still alive) sends units to attack mine on the hill rather than keeping them fortified in the city.

Borsche has 75K in power. That's not going to happen.

[HitAnyKey]

On a side note, Joey has whipped Black Seminoles to the ground. It is now size 2. It also now has two Longbows in it and there are 2 LBs in Uptown Warriors (probably upgraded the Archers that were there). So hopefully Commodore loses at least one unit killing those 2 LBs in BS. He also did a single-pop whip in both UW and Bedazzled, so those are Size 7 & 2 now.

[HitAnyKey]

Alrighty then.....Borsche is Eliminated.....

Gavagai just took the last 3 cities in rapid succession.




And here's the Demo's after Borsche is no longer included in them: