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

[MindyMcCready]

So we just discovered that drafting occurs at size 7 rather than size6. That's going to hurt the defense plan alot. Especially in Borscheland.

[HitAnyKey]

So, here's the stuff for this turn:

Here's the Borscheland front:

And here's the area around the capital:

In this area, trying to decide which tile to have the Catapults & HAs sit on, to wait for Comm's landing party.

[HitAnyKey]

As requested in our chat, here's a detailed image around Sleepy.

[MindyMcCready]

Housecleaning:

1. From the F1 screen there are 7 cities producing no GPP. Double check that we can't work a specialist.
2. Switch hopeless cities to archer or wealth builds. RollinEyesAgain
3. Same for Bouncy.
4. You've switched McD to a castle I presume.
5. Wha? Thebes can make a LK in 6T? Ok. Nevermind.

[HitAnyKey]

1. I reviewed all the specialist stuffs before I logged out. Those 7 cities all have no buildings that allow for specialists so they are stuck just running citizens. That's what we get for building almost no infrastructure before.
2&3. I had Rollin & Bouncy on Cat with the hopes that I could whip out the Cat to help pound Gav's stack at some point. You think Wealth is better?
4. Yep, McD was switched to Castle.
5. Yeah, right now hoping I can get that LK whipped out if Commodore lands troops there to try to take that city. Otherwise, it will have no defenses since I just sent the Archer back to Alex.

[HitAnyKey]

Well, morning starts off crappy....hopefully this isn't an omen for my job interview this afternoon...

First logged in to this diplo from Tas:



Then get to find out that Commodore had TWO spys down there and with the second one he destroyed my Marble. And my workers can't remake it this turn, as needed.



Only good thing is that unless they are somewhere hidden, Tas may have sunk 2 of Commodore's Galleys. Since I now only see 3 up there. And he bunched together all of his Caravels in the south into a single stack.




So my only chance of being able to whip out the Taj is if I can get Tas to accept a trade that would include him sending me Marble. I don't really understand the 34gpt that he's asking/demanding from me. With the Iron from him, I can only guess he's hoping I'll pay him that much for him helping to fight Commodore. But he needs us to be aligned just as much as I do.
In either case, I think I may send back this trade but asking for his Marble instead of the Iron (which is obviously just symbolic)....but I don't think I can justify that much gold. So just trying to decide how much. Though if we do land Taj, it would pay for itself pretty quickly. And if we don't, it's basically game over.

[HitAnyKey]

And here's the Demos after doing 3 Drafts:

I have a phone call in a few minutes, so if you pop in the only thing really need to discuss is what trade to send back to Tasunke to get his Marble. I'll obviously send him my extra resources, but just trying to decide how much gpt I can afford to pay him.

[MindyMcCready]

I don't think I can justify that much gold. So just trying to decide how much. Though if we do land Taj, it would pay for itself pretty quickly. And if we don't, it's basically game over.

Well I did repeatedly tell you to shop around for a second marble. You'd better land that deal at any cost so that we can whip Taj this turn. Any cost!

I don't really care if we offer Tasunke 50 gpt, whip the marble and then DOW him to cut this ridiculous 100 gpt that he seems to think that he can extract from us. That city trade was clearly him trying to screw MC or us or both.

From Tasunke POV he gave us 1T to reinforce those cities before we were to face 10 knights. It's only extremely fortunate unit placement that is going to allow us to keep either of those cities. So yes, make any deal that you want and then DOW to cancel that BS that he served us.

Feeling a little grumpy today,...can you tell? Anyway good luck on your job interview.

I'll post more later (and I have some good news for you) but you need to land that marble deal with somebody today or we've wasted an enormous opportunity cost pursuing the path of your choice. Weaker defenses, no caste, later merc, given up Lib,...etc.

Since I was repeatedly warning you about our marble,...here's another way that MC can outplay you that I don't want to come true. MC could very well be shopping around to become the marble monopolist right now. Offer a high price, preferrably to Tasunke. GET. THAT. MARBLE.

[MindyMcCready]

So why is Mindy grumpy today? Well I was running SIM until late last night. Primarily good news.

I had to run quite a few since the RNG was acting pretty ridiculous. Playing as Gavagai the attacker, I got thumped repeatedly. I've always known that the game was against me (I swear serial correlation is a 'feature') so the results for "HAK" were a little over good. Nevertheless,

Closest to expected Scenario:
Defenses: 4-5Maces, 6WE, 6HA, 15LK (all C1), 1 archer, 9 cats, 0-1 Axe. Total always 42 units.
Attackers: 15 cats + 11 CB (all C1 + D1) + 10 NC (with correctish promos) + 21 WE (with correctish promos) + 1 sword + 1 chariot (left the archer out). Total 59 units.
Our luck was frustratingly, consistently on our side. I had to start counting up the coin-flips and keep searching for an expected outcome. The closest that I got was a 194/141 so decidedly better than expected, but not ridiculously so.
Attack style: Cats first,...CB vs LK,...NC vs LK,...WE vs LK.

RESULT:
Losses LK(8), Mace(3), Archer(1), WE(2)
WINS: Gavagai had 18 units left,...so he got in a bunch of retreats.

Lessons learnt:
-Getting a couple of extra maces in there makes an enormous difference. Well worth the 125g in upgrade cost for an axe/sword.
-The weakness in our defenses is in the fact that Gav's CBs get to target our LK. I was suprised how ineffective they were. Over 4 SIMs I think we only lost 1 LK to a CB.
-Despite defending against CB and collateral,ur LKs had no trouble at all repelling his NC.
-Last stage of the battle was 21 WE vs LK primarily. WE were facing between 30% - coinflip odds up until the very end.
-So we can defend McDonalds but we'll need to pull everything into it.
-Getting an extra cat or an extra archer (to soak collateral) will also really help. Anything that we can extract from those cities in order to maintain this type of ratio.
-Under no SIM did the cats or HA defend outside of their ability to soak collateral. Completely available for counter-attack.
-Towards the end of the battle we were bleeding units very heavily,...but Gavagai had already lost maybe 50 units by then.
-A pair of LBs (to defend vs CBs) would take the pressure off of the LKs and turn this into no contest.

I'm going to point out 2 things about MP. #1 is that SIMs take a fair bit of work. With any luck Gavagai might be pressed for time and not be able to SIM out such a battle.

The #2 MP thing is that experienced players, when using 1-mover stacks, tend to hit a city with cats at their first opportunity. They don't want to spend the time battering walls/culture since there's simply too many examples of defenders rushing units in and making the attack infeasible.

Should the stars align and both #1 and #2 happen, Gavagi will hit us the first turn. If that happens and the luck is normal we should fare far better and our promote and counter-attack could easily wipe his stack. But we will have to maintain that ratio to get those results.

If Gavagai does the non-MP thing and strips culture,...he can do it in 2T,...we'll need to retreat to Popeyes,..but we'll definately stop Gavagai there until we can generate enough units to retake McD.

[MindyMcCready]

Important questions:

1. Can we 1T Feudalism?
2. Will the 3 maces make it into McD before a T162 attack?
3. Did we kill the roads?

So what would be ideal:
-T160 Tech Feudalism. I would support the use of wealth builds to accomplish this.
-T161 BOT: We play, whip castle in McD. Whip an archer from any city that can make it to McD.
-T161 EOT: Gavagai moves SOD onto hill
-T162 BOT: Everything into McD. Cash upgrade 2-3 units into maces (125g),...or better yet upgrade archers into LB(95g). Draft from Popeye's and move into McD?
-T162 EOT: Watch Gavagai destroy his stack.

PS: Forgot to mention in the earlier post that none of my units had any fortify. So while his CB could possibly take shock instead of C1 that would be neutralized by the fortify bonus. Also, the over expected luck would also be neutralized somewhat. So overall, that scenario is probably closest to what we could expect if this battle was enacted 100 times.