Graphs and demos: Our soldier count is now slightly below average but we`re building units in the coming turns so hopefully we won`t look too vulnerable.
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[SPOILERS] JR4 tries his luck in PB 37
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Whoa! Things are really heating up! And meanwhile Gav just captured two cities, still hasn't ended his turn, and most shocking of all, posted something in his spoiler thread! I assume the latter means he's disgusted with something and deciding what to do about it, but I guess you never know....
Meanwhile, Fountain Head is a major prize if we can hold it. It'll never prize those fish from GermanJoey, but the corn and clams are good enough. Great job reinforcing it with Galleon chains too! Dark Savant may or may not be able to kill our other forces in the open, but I think we'll be able to hold the city at least until Gav or a contender* comes for it. Sadly, those towns won't be in our control until Harmondale falls (which means if we take Nighon, we'll have to reinforce it by sea). * - Let's be real. The non-GJ "contenders" are dtay, who just played back to back turns, including the turn roll, in 11 minutes total - and Krill, who did the same for the previous two turns in 3 minutes flat. I'm still having fun, and I hope you and all the rest of the players are, but the outcome isn't really in doubt. If GJ manages to lose from here, it won't be so much an upset as an epic and unprecedented collapse. On the combat results: Four consecutive losses with those cannons was an incredibly unlucky outcome. It's possible that it was close to 5%, but I honestly doubt it. If I understand it right, we had to not only lose four straight coinflips but either repeatedly do so without getting any hits in or roll the ~worst possible set of targets for collateral again and again or both. Of course, I never did sim it out since I didn't know how or if (or what) we'd be attacking. It's possible D4 is just that strong against collateral without barrage, in which case we should have sent in B2 Cats first or something. Either way though, a great win in spite of lousy dice! I'm looking forward to seeing what next turn looks like! On building more soldiers: Yes. More cannons and Grens are definitely needed! (And soon, of course, we'll be able to add MGs....)
Dark Savant is in trouble. Another two Ethiopian cities fell this turn. Steadwick may have been one of those cities. Gavagai`s forces are visible right next to the city. Fountain Head`s defenses held this turn but I`m unsure whether our units outside of the city survived. We had 3 mortally wounded Knights south of the river. DS would need Knights or units unloaded directly onto the tile or Nighon in order to get rid of them. Our G2 Grenadier is our top defender on the hill, guarding a lot of wounded units.. I can`t wait to log into the game to check out the situation but it`s gonna be a while until I can get to it.
I`m still slightly annoyed with our combat luck last turn. We lost a lot of hammers there to pure bad luck. Our Cannons were indeed up against a D4 Oromo. The second Cannon got in a hit, improving our odds from 48 % to 52 % iirc. So that`s 4 die rolls lost in a row. As for Krill and dtay playing short turns: Hmm, they don`t seem very invested right now. Hopefully they`ll get back into it if DS falls apart quickly. At least dtay should get more land for himself if he wants to be somehow competitive. Joey is of course the big favorite to win but I think the others have at least a 10 % chance to win combined still. I don`t really want to concede yet.
TURN 216
Let me start with the big news right away. Last turn Dark Savant`s power was slightly higher than 1.7 million soldiers. As Gavagai took a couple of cities off DS I hoped for a noticeable decrease. The demos told us that... the lowest power is down to 1.3 million! So that`s an awful lot of soldiers dead. Also, DS has about 20 units standing idle in the 3 cut off cities in between us and Gavagai so he`s going down in flames. That sort of encouraged me to look for opportunities. Nighon still only had a single Grenadier guarding the city. It was decided to take a gamble. C2 Pinch Knight - C2 Pinch Grenadier 23 % - WIN!! Awesome. Finally we caught a break. Nighon is defended by a Grenadier, 2 Muskets and 3 Knights (1 wounded). No guarantee that the the defenses will hold but hopefully those Ethiopian Knights have been destroyed already. Harmondale is lightly defended, just saying! Heh, maybe I`m getting overconfident here. We had a couple of other battles: Next to Mist: C2 Sotl - Injured C2 Sotl 87 % - Win SW of Fountain Head: C2 Sotl - Sotl, C1 - 75 % - WIN! DS got a GG when Gavagai played. It`s in Harmondale. Also, DS suicided a Catapult into our units on the hill next to Fountain Head for some reason. All our wounded units survived. Tularean Forest was reinforced and has about 8 defenders now. Things are looking good. In domestic news, we are comfortably finishing Railroad eot. D-mishi was unhappy again and a Drydock was whipped. Vulcania started the Forbidden Palace. I think that`s a good investment. With overflow that`s a 9 turn build. D-mishi is taking forever to build the Globe.. Tularean Forest has that extra fish to work now and Mist`s crabs was freed up by Gavagai`s conquest (but pillaged by that Sotl of DS). We`re building a few Drydocks. 5 units finish eot, 3 Cannons, a Grenadier and a Knight. Next turn we`ll focus on MGs instead.
Nice opportunism. Here's hoping it comes off!
It might be interesting sharing (culturally weak) land borders with Gav if DS does get eaten over the next few turns...
It may have looked easy, but that is because it was done correctly - Brian Moore
December 31st, 2017, 15:42
(This post was last modified: December 31st, 2017, 15:46 by RefSteel.)
Well played! The first Knight win was lucky, but a follow-up was likely to take the city even had it failed. If we have any hope of controlling the Fountain Head region, the key is that little city of Nighon: A canal city on a hill surrounded by a flatland killing field. It's worthless economically until Harmondale falls of course, but that may happen before it's out of resistance: It sounds like you're thinking about an attack there already (dunno if we can get sufficient force there in time though since its cultural defenses are still at 60, with a Castle against Knights, and I don't know how much naval force we can bring to bear) and it looks like Gav brought the hammer this time, assisted by a much better match between our attack timing and his.
Since we're trying to hold the region, if we can spare a build queue and transport space to get a Settler over there, a city 3N of Fountain Head (on the plains tile at the end of the peninsula) would be good to support our forces in the area, making transport logistics easier and adding another build queue (and port) on that part of the mainland. [EDIT: It's also important to get a Buddhist Missionary to Nighon as soon as we can, so it can start generating culture ASAP.]  (December 31st, 2017, 15:39)shallow_thought Wrote: Nice opportunism. Here's hoping it comes off! That was a fun turn to play for sure! We need to be veery careful here so that Gavagai won`t change his target just because he could. Having cities on hills, defended by Machine Gune should be enough to keep him away for the time being. But you`ll never know.. (December 31st, 2017, 15:42)RefSteel Wrote: Well played! The first Knight win was lucky, but a follow-up was likely to take the city even had it failed. If we have any hope of controlling the Fountain Head region, the key is that little city of Nighon: The city of Harmondale is not very well defended for the time being but it could of course be reinforced quickly. Still, I`d like to attempt a capture (or a raze if we can get boats down there quickly enough. I agree that Nighon is going to be a valuable asset for us, so it will be reinforced massively in the coming turns. We should be able to get a couple of MGs down there in 2 turns time so let`s see what DS has left now. Getting a Settler/Missionary down there asap is surely a good idea. It`s a bt weird that DS still hasn`t settled that spot N of Fountain Head as it has seafood. Nighon will be a good city if we can get rid of the culture of Harmondale. It`s got 2 seafood sources [EDIT: and a Cow]!
Some notes from the latest screenshots:
Harmondale: That city would be great if we can really take and hold it, especially if a significant fraction of its infrastructure survives. It has hills leading right up to it from Dark Savant's core of course, but if we want a presence in Might & Magic lands at all, it's got to be better to have more mutually-supporting cities (especially on hills) than fewer. What do Dark Savant's cities look like to the south? Strategic maps: Gavagai's attack vectors are kind of hard to believe. The impression I get is that Dark Savant has a bunch of slow-movers and siege in his capital, And Gav is sort of moving around the stack, cutting off supply lines and build queues around the edges, focusing on the mainland so the islands can be defeated in detail. Either that, or the explanation for a lot of his recent decisions is that Gavagai's finally gone crazy. (Or he's just having fun with some ridiculous plays since he can get away with it against Might and Magic's present paper military and he knows he can't ultimately win against GermanJoey anyway.) Top 5 Cities: Since we've been trying to make the best we can of our limited space (we still have less land than Dark Savant, though that should change within the next few turns...) by making all our cities as strong as they can be, it's great to see two of ours among the top 3 in the world, especially as there's a good chance that Muqa is the best of the cities below the screen! Tech report:
Gavagai still hasn`t played so it looks like the next turn will be delayed for a day. Time to take stock after a couple of interesting turns.
I suspect that Gavagai managed to surprise Dark Savant last turn with that city capture on the eastern side of the continent. When Castle Ironfist falls, Gavagai will have a free hand to get most of the spoils himself, unless... someone else decides to intervene. Joey might be considering an attack already, as should dtay. If we can get Harmondale, I`d be more than happy with the outcome of the war. But those last 3 Ethiopian cities between us and Gavagai could take a while to conquer as they have huge garrisons. War Weariness could easily be a problem in 10 turns time, especially if we lose a big stack inside Ethiopian territory. I`ll take a screenshot of Harmondale`s surroundings next turn. Joey`s tech path is surely a good one in the long run. Kremlin plus the Statue of Liberty is a good combination. Those techs are not, however, very scary ones for us. I was more worried about a determined run for Destroyers or Fighters/Bombers. Our Machine Guns should be able to protect our core at least until modern units emerge on the battlefield. Maybe dtay wants Destroyers asap? Or he might do the same as us, relying on the MGs to keep him safe. Also, we should decide on our tech path in the coming turns. Going for Divine Right and that fifth religion is very tempting indeed. Perhaps heading for Cavalries instead is safer for sure, but right now I`m leaning DR first, if we can 1 turn it. Thoughts? |
