[Spoilers] Haram hopefully reports

[scooter]

I made my biggest mistake of the war so far last turn.



Dreylin sniped a Galleon with 3 rifles on it . I thought I checked literally every tile possible for a hidden Frigate, but I must have missed one up in Jowy's culture. I'd really like to know from Dreylin if/when he ever reads this where this Frigate was hiding. Could have easily held the Galleons back a tile too at no cost, so this was a totally unforced error. Ah well. If that's the worst thing that happens during this war, I'll call it a success. Side note: more than a little frustrated one of the THREE empty Galleons didn't defend instead. Believing they would may have contributed to my carelessness, because the rest of his navy was all accounted for with my spy watching the channel. Anyway, remains to be seen if that will delay a city by a turn. It probably will.



The big battle approaches. Final counts:

29 rifles
6 knights
8 maces
2 cats
3 trebs

11 Muskets
1 Knight
1 longbow
6 Cats
1 chariot
1 warrior

Still not fully decided if I'll wait a turn to bombard. Depends a little on what happens down south, as well as what he does with those 6 cats. So the big battle may or may not wait a turn. CG Muskets behind those defenses are actually a pretty tough nut to crack, and I don't really want to burn 10 rifles and all my siege taking this city if I can avoid it.



TBS took this city this turn. So I'm in hurry-up mode to scoop together units to take something off this island.



This is what I've scraped together that should be ready to land next turn. The galleons are labeled with signs, but we're looking at 14 rifles, 1 Gren, and 1 Treb. The goal is to lock down these two cities. If I can get another, cool, but I'm guessing TBS will get the rest. The dotmap here with Waste is painful because it's currently orphaning the rice, but I may not have the luxury of a raze & replace. Well, I do have a settler in Kettle ready to ferry over. Maybe that's actually my best bet as it lets me force a Caste artist more quickly so I can get some culture on this island. Thinking about this. It's awkward all-around, though, and since I now have to share this island, it may not be worth ceding cultural control over other tiles just to get the rice.



Those signs on the right are all accurate - gathered with my Privateer.



First Dreylin city came out of revolt this turn. Two more next turn. Always fun to get new contributing cities.

So that's it for this turn. I'm debating whether or not to immediately start another war when this ends. I don't have nearly enough land, and honestly the fighting has been fun so why not? I've still got a huge army and navy, and given that Dreylin's power is STILL above both Wetbandit and Jowy... Yeah. Current city count:

tbs: 34
mackoti: 25
scooter: 24

TBS is about to add 3 more to his total. I'll probably get 5-6 more, and Mackoti is about to get Tsargon's last two cities. The problem is that my cities just aren't as good. Mackoti has more towns and a golden age incoming, and TBS has way more cities.

The flip side is that if I stay peaceful, I'll clearly sink to 3rd place longterm, and I won't get dragged into a death war with one of the two bringers of death. That sounds not fun. Also, I've got a few ideas floating in my head anyway for peaceful plays to at least make the other guys sweat, so maybe I'll stick with my peace-nik plans. Decisions.

[El Grillo]

I haven't peeked at the code that determines order of engagement, but your outcome definitely strikes me as unexpected and rather unfortunate.

I ran some sims with a barbarian destroyer, 4 friendly galleons, and 3 rifles loaded onto one of them. No matter which of the galleons I loaded the rifles onto, or in what order I moved them onto a tile, the 3 unloaded galleons would defend first. I had a hypothesis that ties would be broken with unit_ID, or at random, but those seem unlikely. I didn't think to test 4 galleons of differing cargo, but that would be an interesting next step.

[ReallyEvilMuffin]

I made my biggest mistake of the war so far last turn.



Dreylin sniped a Galleon with 3 rifles on it . I thought I checked literally every tile possible for a hidden Frigate, but I must have missed one up in Jowy's culture. I'd really like to know from Dreylin if/when he ever reads this where this Frigate was hiding. Could have easily held the Galleons back a tile too at no cost, so this was a totally unforced error. Ah well. If that's the worst thing that happens during this war, I'll call it a success. Side note: more than a little frustrated one of the THREE empty Galleons didn't defend instead. Believing they would may have contributed to my carelessness, because the rest of his navy was all accounted for with my spy watching the channel. Anyway, remains to be seen if that will delay a city by a turn. It probably will.



The big battle approaches. Final counts:

29 rifles
6 knights
8 maces
2 cats
3 trebs

11 Muskets
1 Knight
1 longbow
6 Cats
1 chariot
1 warrior

Still not fully decided if I'll wait a turn to bombard. Depends a little on what happens down south, as well as what he does with those 6 cats. So the big battle may or may not wait a turn. CG Muskets behind those defenses are actually a pretty tough nut to crack, and I don't really want to burn 10 rifles and all my siege taking this city if I can avoid it.



TBS took this city this turn. So I'm in hurry-up mode to scoop together units to take something off this island.



This is what I've scraped together that should be ready to land next turn. The galleons are labeled with signs, but we're looking at 14 rifles, 1 Gren, and 1 Treb. The goal is to lock down these two cities. If I can get another, cool, but I'm guessing TBS will get the rest. The dotmap here with Waste is painful because it's currently orphaning the rice, but I may not have the luxury of a raze & replace. Well, I do have a settler in Kettle ready to ferry over. Maybe that's actually my best bet as it lets me force a Caste artist more quickly so I can get some culture on this island. Thinking about this. It's awkward all-around, though, and since I now have to share this island, it may not be worth ceding cultural control over other tiles just to get the rice.



Those signs on the right are all accurate - gathered with my Privateer.



First Dreylin city came out of revolt this turn. Two more next turn. Always fun to get new contributing cities.

So that's it for this turn. I'm debating whether or not to immediately start another war when this ends. I don't have nearly enough land, and honestly the fighting has been fun so why not? I've still got a huge army and navy, and given that Dreylin's power is STILL above both Wetbandit and Jowy... Yeah. Current city count:

tbs: 34
mackoti: 25
scooter: 24

TBS is about to add 3 more to his total. I'll probably get 5-6 more, and Mackoti is about to get Tsargon's last two cities. The problem is that my cities just aren't as good. Mackoti has more towns and a golden age incoming, and TBS has way more cities.

The flip side is that if I stay peaceful, I'll clearly sink to 3rd place longterm, and I won't get dragged into a death war with one of the two bringers of death. That sounds not fun. Also, I've got a few ideas floating in my head anyway for peaceful plays to at least make the other guys sweat, so maybe I'll stick with my peace-nik plans. Decisions.

I really dislike the naval fighting in civ4. Was that galleon promoed to combat 1 and the others not? BUG or BAT alter defence orders for these things, GG and highly promoed units if the difference in chance to win isn't that big. That is a good idea.

[scooter]

I could have sworn that Galleon had Nav1, which means it wouldn't have had any promos that would impact defense. The only thing I can figure is that I'm mistaken, and it actually had C1 or Vigilance or something. I'll have to take a look at the combat log later to verify.

Mackoti captured the last two cities and eliminated Tsargon. Judging by the un-updated threads, you heard it here first. He's got the best tech capacity, about the same number of beakers as me, a likely incoming golden age, and a bunch of new land. TBS may need to start getting a little concerned.

[ReallyEvilMuffin]

I could have sworn that Galleon had Nav1, which means it wouldn't have had any promos that would impact defense. The only thing I can figure is that I'm mistaken, and it actually had C1 or Vigilance or something. I'll have to take a look at the combat log later to verify.

Mackoti captured the last two cities and eliminated Tsargon. Judging by the un-updated threads, you heard it here first. He's got the best tech capacity, about the same number of beakers as me, a likely incoming golden age, and a bunch of new land. TBS may need to start getting a little concerned.

Ironically safer to keep the units in a damaged ship

[Elkad]

Transport defender order is something that has been tweaked in BetterAI mod.
Don't remember the exact details, but loaded transports get some kind of penalty to push them towards the bottom of the stack.

It's not foolproof (empty galleys won't defend a loaded Transport), but it helps.

[scooter]

Logged in to pause and to see why TBS didn't take any cities this turn. TEMPTING.



Every turn so far of this 2v1 war has gone Dreylin-me-TBS. There's no reason TBS actually needs to play after me, but it has just worked out that way naturally. Anyway, most likely the turn will roll soon, and Dreylin will play tonight, and I'll play very soon afterwards. Anyway, my point is that a natural turn (totally devoid of cheesiness) order may allow me to snipe this city from TBS, and then stock it with several rifles.

The question is whether it's worth poking the bee hive over. TBS strikes me as a cool-headed guy who wouldn't tilt over this city. And besides, me scavenging this city from him is a pretty fitting representation of what he's doing by sniping Dreylin cities anyway. I'm tempted to do it purely out of protest to him stealing cities that I've worked hard for. I don't love that he's getting a northern coastline as-is.

We'll see. Dreylin could reinforce the city which would make amphibiously attacking it a total no-go. But if not... I might just go for it. Besides, it would be entertaining, right?

[scooter]

Well I've got a day to mull it over because Jowy and Borsche didn't bother playing. Well Borsche just now did (roughly 5 hours after turn would have rolled), but Jowy still hasn't. Depending on when Dreylin plays tomorrow, the decision may be a moot point if TBS plays before me (technically double-moving me, but I really don't mind - expecting a consistent 3-way split is silly).

It's funny - turn pace has been very slow, but it's often been the guys not in turn splits that have held it up.

[scooter]

I decided not to wait at Toaster, so I just went for it. Dreylin led by suiciding 6 cats into my stack, which meant a lot of my units (not all) had about 1 hit of collateral on them. Time to attack!

Barrage Cat: Bombard
1 Treb: withdraw
2 Treb, 1 Cat: Suicide
13.4h pinch rifle vs musket: 68% WIN
13.7h pinch rifle vs musket: 70% WIN
13.7h pinch rifle vs musket: 70% LOSE
c2 mace vs musket: 9% lose
c2 mace vs musket: 9% lose
cr mace vs musket: 8% lose
c1 mace vs musket: 7% lose
c2 rifle vs gg musket: 76% WIN
pinch rifle vs pesky longbow: 88% LOSE (sigh)
pinch rifle vs musket: 87% WIN
pinch rifle vs musket: 79% WIN
pinch rifle vs musket: 90% WIN
pinch rifle vs musket: 96% WIN
pinch rifle vs musket: 98% WIN
c2 9xp rifle vs musket: 89% WIN
c2 8xp rifle vs mace: 83% WIN
4xp c1 rifle vs lbow: 97% WIN
8xp pinch knight vs musket: 91% LOSE (sigh again)
5xp rifle vs musket: 99% WIN
9xp wounded pinch knight vs warrior: 99% WIN
9xp c2 wounded rifle vs musket: 99% WIN
7xp rifle vs redlined musket: 99% WIN

I initially was logging health in the combat log, and then I stopped for obvious reasons. Anyway, if odds or order look funny, it's probably because I was playing around with units that were not fully healed and would get a promo-heal. The maces fairly early on were mainly to bump down the top Muskets that were giving me some grief. I figured these maces are pretty useless, so I may as well suicide most of them so that I lose less Rifles.





Capturing academies always rules, and the cottage cheese heaven is the cherry on top. So glad Dreylin doesn't do the dumb pillage-all-the-improvements thing that in 2016 we've apparently somehow still never outlawed. Then I finally got to do the thing that's always way too much fun.

Commando Knight vs axe: 96% WIN
Commando Knight vs archer: 99%

Not too shabby for a 1 pop city. The benefit of capturing this now is that I can use the cultural path that's opened up from the northwest to quickly move units from Toaster to threaten Dreylin's easternmost city. Just trying to speed up the finish of the mainland.



2 Caravels guarded by Vig2 Frigate. Don't want those upgrading so...

SOTL vs Frigate: 50-55% WIN
Frigate vs Caravel: 99% WIN
C1 Galleon vs Caravel: 78% WIN

Possibly more later. I aborted the plan to snipe that city from TBS after getting sight on his stack. Just not worth it. So I'll settle for 2 cities on the south island and just be grumpy about it. Dreylin could be dead in as soon as 3T. Should be 5 maximum. Another fun turn.

[scooter]

The look ahead to next turn.



This should fall T174. I've got enough boats to level the defenses by then, and from there I don't see how he can save this one. He may actually bail out of it because his last mainland city is walled up.



Not that it really matters with rifles. This city may fall on T175, or it may have to wait one more turn. I piled into Toaster a bunch of units that didn't fight this turn, and they're all now able to reach the sheep tile next turn thanks to the commando strike. I had to fill Slow Cooker with more units than I would have liked due to Dreylin's naval stack just off-shore containing 2 Galleons. I would be shocked if they had units on them, but I need to assume there's 6 units on that stack, and I'd like to keep my commando Knights.



After debating trying something dumb, I went ahead and planned to take Waste and Blender and call it good. Blender will be a little stiffer being on a hill, so this attack could be costly if he's able to pile more units in. I don't think he will, though. Anyway, I expect this to fall next turn, which means the flatland Waste will fall on either T175 or T176, depending on how many units I've got leftover.



He's got a similarly sized stack on the east side of the island. Cannons have a way of making a meh stack look awfully formidable.



Waffle came out of revolt this turn, so let's get to work at making this useful. The wharf + harbor + Zig combo makes this city an instant commerce boost with all that sweet, sweet trade route income. Trade route income makes up half of its commerce.



Jowy's culture is going to be a pain, but I should be able to at least recoup the land tile he's stealing. I'd like to just take that island from Jowy, but he literally has around 15 rifles on it while his mainland is loaded with warriors. So maybe I'll just capture his mainland and let those Rifles rot . More seriously, I don't think I'll attack him right now. I am scouting out his land, but he can whip rifles endlessly, and that's just far too costly. I've already shifted away from military builds anyway. More likely I'll come back with Infantry or tanks or something because I've seen Jowy's tree - it's gonna be space race time before he gets anything better than Rifles. I think I'd rather wait to scavenge a war somebody else starts than kick off another big invasion of my own.