[SPOILER] [PB38] OT4E plays this one because lurking around takes too much time

[chumchu]

Bad luck there but we had our fair share of good luck this game.

That sounds like the start of our demise. If they can take our core cities while the GJ cities are still not up to speed then we can not push back.

[OT4E]

The most unluck in this game for us is Elkad. He came out of nowhere with no clear reason to fight us. May be I dont understand the map, but I dont see what he can gain from attacking is.

But whatever is in his head he is sending on us and now he has razed our city. This will cost him his army but we will lose many because of fighting agg spears is not what numids are designed for.

And this will prevent us from effective counter-attack on OH or GJ if he manages to attack us.

OH didnt take city that turn but I dont know was it bad luck for him after all or he just took time to consolidate/heal.

Anyway even if we get rid of invasion I whipped too much for us to recover in reasonable future. In the addition we are going to lose silver and probably furs soon so the anger in city will make us to whip even more. Needless to say that we are having deficit already. I had wrong assumption about maintance cost actually. It is too high and unmanageable.

If the chance arises I will try to make as much harm to OH because he is the only one from us who has chances to win so he must pay double price for easy war spoils he estimates to get by attacking the weaker side.

[chumchu]

I agree about Elkad. I can see OH vulturing for good reason as he wants to remove a difficult neighbor and take our land. But for Elkad we are not an optimal target at this stage as we are high in military and low on economy. OH on the other hand is much more of a threat down the road with his well developed land and economy. Elkads attack was also too small to be effective and now he will lose a lot of hammers for little gain. I do not see how his positions improves with us out of the picture, what is then supposed to balance OH?

[OT4E]

So we are sieged by this:


this:


And this:

My gut feeling says nothing good about it  

[OT4E]

Analysing mistakes I think the biggest one was to go for HBR before Alpha. I didnt realise that our economics couldnt afford any campaign. I also went for mysticism and masonry after.

In fact we didnt whip hard to get those first numids. I think we made 5-6 whips at most so I cant say ww overslaved. We just had too much of cities and high base maintance. I think going for Alpha would cost 4-5 turns of delay. May be we couldnt be that effective in attack vs GJ but definitely we were able to take both cities. And after all we failed to advance anywhere.

Also we should have more defenders to make it impossible to breakthrough for at least our hill cities. If you go somewhere you must be sure for your back.

And the last one I think was letting OH grow peacefully. I didnt know that he has 1 neighbour less at that time. He invested in economics heavily and now have Machinery, Calendar, Alphabet, Currency and Maths. What have we got? Things could go better if we could get GJ's cap because he wouldnt be in position to recapture it even against our wounded units but now he has green light to walk through our lands because we need smth like 30 numidians to beat 10 spears even on open grounds.

[chumchu]

Alpha was already delayed by MC and we need it badly in a build without cottages.

I agree about OH but were there any good opportunities to attack him? This might have been a more general problem was diplomacy. We managed to get dogpiled while not being a threat while OH could grow in peace.

[OT4E]

Yes, there were moments we could attack. Even now OH has not enough units to defend well. If there was no Elkad he was a toast. The reason he played so scarelessly was in open borders. He saw our preparations, he watched every our step. Next time I will think 3 times before openin borders.

This turn I decided to raze those 2 cities of Elkad. It doesnt seem we can make much harm to anyone. He has finally appeared with 4 WEs so his stack is completely untouchable for us.

The luck turned out of us completely. I had 2 triremes against 1 from OH and lost both. What was worse the last one caused 0 damage at 94.5% so I couldnt even finish it with galley. Damn...

[OT4E]

MC before Alpha was fine. HBR and other staff should wait for. We had ~100 hammers of production so we couls hurry HBR drastically. I underestimated our expenses. I thought in 10 turns we could get currency with Colossus.

[chumchu]

I concur.

What is happening now? Score seems low so I guess we are collapsing on all fronts.

[OT4E]

Well, shortly we do.

Turn ago I captured island from OH(what we should have done a while ago) but failed to raze his Moai city. The chance was low but I did try and lost.

OH got silver city and the other one close to him. Elkad stack is now under Cartage walls. I have a dozen of archers there but it cant really stand.

GJ has army at the southern cities.

Our last couple of numids are seeking for an opportunity to raze something else in Elkad's territory. But I dont think it will work.

Probably people can blame me for not defending properly, but I knew it was impossible in the situation we have got in. One of the main problem was that all of our luxuries were located next to our enemies, even starting ivory. So in the first 2-3-4 turns we have lost them all. And therefore literally every citizen became unhappy and all the production was halted. All I could do is just to whip cities to size of 1 without hope to recover.