[SPOILER] Krill rambles on

[Thoth]

I'm enjoying watching the streams Krill.

[Krill]

If there is a battle tomorrow, it's 21 HA (four C2/Shock, four C1/shock, 1 C2/Formation, six C2, one C1 5 unpromoted) plus 1 chariot (1 sentry) versus 19 HA (two C2/shock, four C1/shock, one C2/formation, ten C2, two C2) plus 3 spears (one C2/15% fort, one C2/0% fort, one C1) and 1 axe (C2/10%fort) and 3 chariots (3 sentry). Plus a medic 3 unit on boht sides.

Someone tell Gav to stream it, because this is going to be epic.

[Krill]

Tomorrow I'm going to stream everything from before I log in, but I have my parents around for a good chunk of the day, so I'm probably not going to be able to play until the mid-late afternoon. Tentatively expecting to be able to play my turn around 1530 GMT.

[Krill]

82 food lead on #2.

[Krill]

One post from Gav is a stop signal. He isn't going to attack, or he would be planning the attack with Bacchus right now.

[Krill]

jinxed it.

[Krill]

So what to do now...

I'm running off the assumption that Gav doesn't attack on T124. I think that's a reasonable assumption, given the number of units that are in each players stack. If Gav attacks, the rest of this post doesn't really apply.

Here is an old picture, I intend to update it next turn after finding out the outcome of the "battle".





Gav was planning to attack Jerry Reed. He has a slow mover stack there, not enough to take out the city garrison. At least a portion (about 16 HA minimum, closer to 10 tio be safe) is needed to take out the city plus another 5 cats. Without cats he needs everything he has to take the city and would still be open to a counter attack on his surviving units that would probably wipe him out.

The prescence of my stack forces Gav to keep his units both healthy, and on a road network he controls. The prescence of my city and the threat of a culture bomb gives me access to his front cities that do not yet have city garrisons. I can also threaten him by moving forward and bombing aggressively, and this puts Gav in a position where he wants to try and plant a city between his front cities and Trevelyan, to limit this possibility.

I have two answers to this. If Gav plants on the grass hill, I can tech Engineering whilst building CKN and a few Trebs, and then one move his city if he tries to hold it; probably have to culture bomb after he settles, and TBH that is probably his go to plan to try and make me burn the bomb.

Gavs second choice is to replant Waylon Jennings. Because of the hill tile and distance from Trevelyan, I can't ever one move with CKN or Trebs, but at the same time he doesn't put much pressure on my city garrison. Same problem for me though, it kind of forces a bomb if I want to interact with Gav. A culture bomb wouldn't stop the city plant though, it only gives me control of hte first ring of his city for a while. If I just want to play defensive, I can instead focus on growing Trevelyan to about size 10 and running 6 artists with a Pavilion for a minimum of 35 culture per turn (so long as I get a barracks or Castle, and one of them is going to happen).

I actually can't stop Gav replanting Waylon, he has a settler in place to plant at the start of T124. I can only plan to raze the city if he moves the garrison away. It therefore stands to reason that Gav is going to put hte settler on the grass hill to try and force me to bomb, and the plants his city, on either the WJ site or grass hill depending on if I bomb. He then crams a ton of units in it and stares at me. We both build more units and I end up one moving him because I won't bomb if he puts a city on the grass hill. I'll just let Gav tie his own noose then push him off when I have a bunch of CKN and Trebs and other units. The problem he has is that if I don't bomb Trevelyan and he plants on the grass hill, if I take his city I can immediately (that turn) plant forward and bomb a city that is planted minimum distance from Tsargons old capital.

Good luck holding anything at that point Gav.

No, the smartest thing is to put the settler on the hill to try and force me, but when I don't bomb he should probably plant the old WJ site. That has the same issues me razing, replanting and bombing, but the WJ site is safer. The grass hill means I may well not be able to get an easy raze due to blocking unit movement, and the WJ site block me planting anything in the area to try and take the land path up to Adrien, which is what I'm really interested in.

The possibility that Gav doesn't plant a new city is interesting, but I don't think I get so lucky. I want to hold the area around Hank Williams 2 and north because I wants to take the land up to Adriens capital at some point (and it probably has to be sooner rather than later TBH). If Gav holds HW2, or any more land than that, he splits my empire in half just like I did to dtay in PB18 and I'm not being wrapped around that thorny bush. My aim, other than to put myself in a position where I can take all of HAKs lands later and also hold off Gav from taking much if any of that land, is to take out HW2 and replant it in a more safe position, probably north of the pig. That puts me in a strong enough position to hold the north that I'd probably feel reasonably comfortable handling Gav from that point on.

The other massive change to the tactical position is if Gav gets a Great Artist. I don't know if he will from wonder gpp, but he is in Slavery so I don't think it's likely. If he does, then I need to bomb Trevelyan asap and get it generating 1cpt to start pushing culture into tiles. I'd also have to raze the waylong area city that I expect him to plant so he doesn't counter bomb there. Pushing Trevelyan to size 10 takes too long, and there is no way to get it to 5K culture for 80% borders, so really there isn't a counter to Gav doing this short of just having more units and wrecking his face if he tries to get aggressive.

Whichever way you spin this though, I think I'm in control in this area. So long as I have an artist monopoly and haven't bombed, Gav has to react to the threat I present to him and he is not able to focus on building, or finishing off Tsargon. So I need ot hold onto that artist and not use it until commiting to the bomb gives me something I need, like a dead HW2 and a replacement city, or a GA and an opportunity to use the golden age to generate a second artist (more on this in next stream).

[Krill]

Damnit Gav I know you don't want to play the turn if you have a huge let down like this, but I need to play at some point today...

[Krill]

If I can't play in the next half an hour I'm probably not going to be able to play until tomorrow.

[Kurumi]

Stay focused, there is no reliable way to distinguish a sheep and a wolf-in-a-perfect-sheep-disguise from a distance!