[Spoilers] Haram hopefully reports

[scooter]

Hey scooter, didn't realize you were playing this. Good luck against TBS. Or mackoti...

Yeah I'll need all of it. This is not the game I had in mind for dusting off the cobwebs, but it'll do.


I attacked Waste Disposal as planned.

c2 rifle vs musket: 77% WIN
c2 12.7h rifle vs musket: 72% WIN
c1 13.3h rifle vs lbow: 80% WIN
rifle vs warrior: 99% WIN

Netted a granary and a courthouse.



Finally settled the replacement city here after Dreylin apparently deleted his naval stack. Either that or he engaged the cloaking device used to ambush me a few turns ago.



Here's the island situation. TBS and I are in a weird spot here where we could both hurt each other pretty easily if we tried. He could easily take Waste from me if he decided to be a dick, and I could easily take Juicer from him all the same. I think this will end in peace, but it's worth watching. He and Mackoti got a little hostile when splitting up Tsargon, although that seemed to be Mack's choice. Anyway, I moved my units around in the east to get them into ports while moving my Galleons forward so that I can load up a bunch of units from the mainland as needed.



I'm vaguely concerned about this. This is almost certainly just Mack watching hs borders because I've got a metric ton of rifles converging on Oven, but I have noticed him adding a couple units here gradually. He'll be able to hit it after I capture it and the borders temporarily disappear. I doubt he will, but he has been spending EPs on me for several turns now despite having my graphs and research.



This WW would be totally unbearable if not for the truckload of luxuries we've got. I've had to shuffle units around to try to cover it off with HR as best as I can.

[scooter]

I guess it's time for one last battle, yeah?

c2 rifle vs musket: 73% WIN
c2 rifle vs musket: 73% WIN
c1 rifle vs musket: 70% LOSE
c1 rifle vs longbow: 87% LOSE
c1 rifle vs longbow: 87% WIN
13.3h c1 rifle vs longbow: 76% WIN
8xp rifle vs pike: 96% WIN
6xp rifle vs axe: 98% WIN
pinch rifle vs spear: 99% WIN
pinch rifle vs redlined musket: 99% WIN
c2 rifle vs redlined longbow: 99% WIN

Whew, and with that we're done. Snagged a granary and a forge. I don't really have much to add as a post-mortem for the war. Overall it was the most enjoyable type of war: one you know you'll win due to severe tech/mfg advantages, but also one that is still challenging because the opponent is very competent.

The war kicked off with me landing units on T164, and it ended on T175. 12 cities in 12 turns feels pretty good. Now it's time to figure out what's next.



Mackoti backed off here putting himself in a defensive position. That's nice to see. I'll try to do the same. I'm keeping a lot of units in this region until the island culture clears up, and once that does I'll see if TBS is willing to gradually demilitarize that border.



Finally, the forthcoming plans will hinge heavily on what pops out of here. I currently have 1 scientist. Possibilities:

*Prophet: 4-person golden age will be the goal. This would make 2, and I've got a third coming in about 15T (artist or merchant). I can either try to generate a 4th, or I can hang tight and try to win the Fusion race for a very late 4-person. I guess I could always build a second shrine now that I've captured another holy city, but that seems pretty underwhelming this late.
*Artist: Same plan as Prophet. It's riskier though because I'm not certain if the forthcoming 3rd person will be a merchant or prophet
*Merchant: It gets trickier here. I'd probably go for a trade mission and use the scientist to bulb something, but I may still try to get the 4-person. The 4-person plan is just very risky because it will depend on a couple dice rolls.
*Engineer: Well it would be fun?

[Dreylin]

Overall it was the most enjoyable type of war: one you know you'll win due to severe tech/mfg advantages, but also one that is still challenging because the opponent is very competent.

Thanks!

Do you think I made any major missteps during the defense? The one I think I regret the most was hitting your Naval stack outside Coffee Maker; I think the odds were slightly in my favour, but I didn't consider the downside of opening up naval access for bombardment when I made the decision ... and then the rolls went against me. As for hitting the stack on the hill (as you'd hoped), I still think that was a decent decision and my best way of denting your advance - the end result of the war was never in doubt anyway.

As for that surprise Frigate, I don't think I ever had anything more powerful than a Caravel up in Jowy's waters, so I have no idea where it came from. I'd assumed it came up the Coast from Refrigerator, but if you were watching that area I dunno. And yeah, I deleted the rest of the boats in the South after you killed off the top; didn't have enough of them to dent either your stack or TBS' so they were just floating xp.

[scooter]

Do you think I made any major missteps during the defense? The one I think I regret the most was hitting your Naval stack outside Coffee Maker; I think the odds were slightly in my favour, but I didn't consider the downside of opening up naval access for bombardment when I made the decision ... and then the rolls went against me. As for hitting the stack on the hill (as you'd hoped), I still think that was a decent decision and my best way of denting your advance - the end result of the war was never in doubt anyway.

Definitely nothing major - I can't think of a single turn that I opened up and wondered what in the world you were thinking. I guess the only thing I don't know if I agree with was using up Cats early, but I'm not super confident of that. Basically, my units in theory were exposed trudging one tile at a time towards Toaster, but I had nothing to fear because you only had like 4 catapults. That number could have been more like 10-12 if you had saved them - and that would have been enough for you to get odds on my whole stack I think.

But that's a really minor quibble, and honestly there's a good chance I'm wrong and you're right. Most likely it's 6 and half-dozen. Besides, there's a certain psychological boost in wiping out that minor stack early, and I'm of the opinion that morale boosts like that are legitimately valuable.

As for that surprise Frigate, I don't think I ever had anything more powerful than a Caravel up in Jowy's waters, so I have no idea where it came from. I'd assumed it came up the Coast from Refrigerator, but if you were watching that area I dunno. And yeah, I deleted the rest of the boats in the South after you killed off the top; didn't have enough of them to dent either your stack or TBS' so they were just floating xp.

I guess it's very possible I just had a brain short-circuit and didn't see it. Weird.

I do feel a little bad for subbing in and immediately attacking someone who's been playing the whole time, but as you can probably see in here - Haram was probably going to do the same thing. He probably would have done it even better too. So it felt true to the original plan.

[Dreylin]

No hard feelings for sure, the events surrounding my failed attack on Haram - including not calling off the attack as soon as it became clear it would fail - meant I fell off the pack (if I hadn't done so already) and was the obvious target. You were exceedingly efficient in bringing that home...

[scooter]

Turn reports will likely slow way down a bit now that the fun war is over. But here's one.



Got an artist which is generally negative news. I was betting on not-artist with the National Epic city.



So I fired the artists. Still going to have a 27% chance of this whole plan being for nothing. HOORAY.



I'm gonna win this culture war, dangit.



This city is the real jewel of this war. Getting 14 population AND all that infrastructure intact was pretty spectacular. I think I'll grow this up a few more sizes and then workshop over those farms and turn this into another production powerhouse. Maybe I'll throw Ironworks in here.

[Dreylin]

Kettle is nice 'n all, but don't discount Toaster's cottage cheese. I loved that city before I whipped it mercilessly into the ground...

[scooter]

Kettle is nice 'n all, but don't discount Toaster's cottage cheese. I loved that city before I whipped it mercilessly into the ground...

Oh yeah Toaster and its towns + academy will definitely be the nicer city... in about 50T.

[scooter]

Oops.



Was merely piling a bunch of my boats onto one tile so I could put them to sleep in a central location. My privateer was selected along with a few other boats. Didn't know TBS was hiding a Frigate under all those boats of mine.


Unrelated, but whenever the others want to call it, please make sure it ends. I had my fun, but I'm fully switching over to auto-pilot mode now until the rest are done.

[Dreylin]

Sneaky!