[Spoilers] Shallow Old Human Tourist Hit the beach!

[Old Harry]

Turn 172

So Toku's capture of Jimmy White's Whirlwind Snooker means BGN/GJ can concentrate his defensive forces in the west - there are another 5 cats on the way and a knight or two per turn should join.. Now if he keeps these units on this tile on the turn we move in we have a very good chance of wiping his stack and romping through the whole of Mongolia. But the chances of that mistake aren't high - he's more likely to drop back to Beshbalik and use the 3-move roads he gets from having just researched Engineering to cat our stack to oblivion.


Having so much culture invested in Jimmy means we can see what's going on there thanks to espionage spending. His 15-20 knights seem to have disappeared. If they're heading to attack Elite or Dragon Age we're fine, we have enough defence and hitters to trash a stack. If he's sending them to attack Harrier Attack then we could be in more trouble. Either way if we don't get peace from Toku then our attack on BGN/GJ is going to be a whole lot weaker...


On his Moai island we can't do all the pillaging I'd like due to knights and spears. So we take out a copper mine and scarper to the south. The plan is to threaten some more cities and then blockade trade with everyone else via his southern coastal trade routes.


We're not the only ones fighting at the moment - Dreylin took two cities from dtay this turn and burned three others. And he's not finished - my guess is that Gryffindor and Damocles fall next turn with Totsuka following soon after. Good job!


Demos and power.

[Old Harry]

Turn 173

This is where we hope that BGN/GJ doesn't have optics... Three boats of knights here, one boat with 2 swords and a crossbow a little further south.


And one boat with two knights and an axe at the farthest southern point of Mongolia. We haven't checked what's in these cities for a while, but hopefully it won't stop our attackers...

Looking at the event log I hope Mackoti (User) has had enough of the turn pace and is getting into a massive bust-up with TBS but he's probably just trying for a peace treaty. Further up the event log I have a feeling that Donovan has misunderstood our intentions - that might explain why we haven't found a big stack on his GJ border (the highlighted tile is as close as it gets) - but he must have seen us loading knights onto this boat and he doesn't have a border with Toku, so I don't understand why he declared war. The good thing is though that this damages Toku's economy as Donovan blocks a lot of his trade routes - so Compass went from a 1-turn to a 2-turn tech for him! In fact that's probably what it is - I think Donovan might be our new best friend!

The other interesting thing here is that Dreylin took another two cities from dtay (only one that we could see). I think he'll take at least one more next turn. Nice work from the Vikings - does that give them enough of an advantage to roll up the rest of Celtia?


It doesn't look like we're going to get another city kill on Toku's east coast, but if we're pinning knights into his coastal cities that's pretty good and might just let us get away with reducing our own defence forces for our GJ attack... We sent one last peace offer as I doubt he signs peace once we attack Mongolia.


BGN/GJ has a stack of 6 knights and 9 cats on the "4 cat" tile now, with more knights due to arrive very soon. If we can attack that with 14 knights we're going to be very happy. We'll put the spy on the highlighted tile this turn, then move to the stack next turn and then on turn 175 we'll know if we're keeping or burning Sicca.


Demos and power.

Now we just have to wait for TBS to play two turns (since BGN is waiting to play until he has to in the hope GJ will come back). Next update this weekend?

[Old Harry]

I think is time to end this game. I vote yes, please other say your opinion...

Give us two more turns!

[Fintourist]

Alright, let's put couple of thoughts out there ahead of our big turn.

1. I'm feeling pretty WTF towards BGN right now. It's great and well appreciated that he is willing to cover for GJ, who just decided to disappear (another topic), but you should not really cover for someone when you know that his neighbor is actively preparing for an attack, especially if your game actions are directly related to that info. 

As BGN took over we assumed that he was going to play it neutral, but he has been shuffling the units towards our border during the whole period, which is probably objectively the right call, but feels really disappointing considering his information level. Our border with GJ has been entirely peaceful for the whole game, while on the other side, GJ has been already once been attacked by DZ. I really don't see a scenario where GJ would have made this sort of unit re-allocation had he played.

I guess we should have raised our hand as BGN took over, but a) we did not expect him to play like this, b) it can't really be done in the tech thread as that also gives the attack away and c) we did not expect GJ to just disappear for a longer period. Now it's too late and we just need to live with this, but yeah, this really screwed us big time here. 

2. Back to the actual game. As I repeat every time, this game has been pure struggle since T60 and the last 100 turns we just have been scrambling and taking risks in order to achieve/maintain some level of relevancy (ie. attacking OT4E and later Elkad opportunistically with limited force, Astro beeline without economic or militaristic resources to really back it up). What we are going to do next here, is only going to amp up the level of   here 

So what's probably going to happen, is that we are just throwing ourselves willingly into a 1v2 against Toku and BGN/GJ while it's questionable whether we have enough resources for a profitable 1v1 war in the first place. This decision boils down to the philosophy that we prefer playing for the win/relevancy to going for more conservative options that would guarantee us a respectable finish. At least the way I see these games, there (typically) is only one winner and the rest are losers..

So we are kind of banking that there exists a scenario where we just somehow outplay our opponents here, make this 1v2 work and that will improve our position this game. At the very least this decision provides a lot more    for us and the lurkers vs. us focusing on fixing our economy and waiting for Cavs or whatever for the next move.

3.   to OH and Hitru for putting in the real preparation work during the last period while I have been swamped with work.

[Fintourist]

Re point 1 in the previous post I want to emphasize/clarify that I think that BGN is a stand-up guy and I'm sure there is no malicious intent and he is trying to avoid using spoiler-info. The thing is only that we have prepared everything based on the neighborhood relation we have had with GJ during the last 40 turns and now things have simply changed and I feel that this subbing arrangement will lead to a worse outcome for us. The fact that we are not really in a position where we can afford things going sideways makes this more painful.

[Old Harry]

Turn 174

Alright, let's put couple of thoughts out there ahead of our big turn.

1. I'm feeling pretty WTF towards BGN right now. It's great and well appreciated that he is willing to cover for GJ, who just decided to disappear (another topic), but you should not really cover for someone when you know that his neighbor is actively preparing for an attack, especially if your game actions are directly related to that info.

In contrast I couldn't feel less WTF towards BGN - we have no idea if he or GJ would have put more effort into preparing defences but I know that the Mongols can see almost everything that we've been doing and if Boldly hadn't made the moves that he did it'd be negligent. Happily, on this - the important turn - it looks like someone new and unspoiled is piloting German Joey's civ. It could be Elkad or Joey but I'll guess it's GJ as he's posted in his thread for the first time in a while. Whoever jfr7p is he played a 10 minute turn and only whipped once, so how much damage will he have done?


This is pretty unfortunate for us, meaning that the original plan of staging on the forest NNE of Sicca is out of the window. We spent the day thinking on it and came up with three new plans:

Option 1
- Hit all the coastal cities
- Pillage rice
- Position a stack on a vector to hit Sicca from the NW next turn (requires 2 workers)
- Optional: The (unpromoted?) Guerilla muskets could go sit on the forest NNE of Sicca to absorb some of the knights/cats?

Option 2
- Hit all the coastal cities
- Pillage rice (requires 2 workers)
- Position a stack to go for The Wildlands (needs worker support - perhaps 4 workers?) next turn and thence to the capital (stack would go on the highlighted tile in the next screen shot)
- Position a smaller stack on a vector to hit Sicca from the NW
- Optional: The (unpromoted?) Guerilla muskets could go sit on the forest NNE of Sicca to absorb some of the knights/cats?

Option 3
- Don't declare war
- Hold back at sea until next turn
- Position a stack to go for The Wildlands (needs worker support - perhaps 4 workers?) next turn and thence to the capital
- Be ready to move in as originally planned next turn if the force in Sicca moves to defend The Wildlands or go via that city to decapitate Mongolia if the stack stays in Sicca


After a lot of thinking we decided that waiting was a bad idea, and that without control of the area around Sicca we don't get security for the coastal cities we plan to take this turn. So we're concentrating our forces in the north west. Except those that are positioned to defend against Toku.

With that we declare war!

Starting in the far south with the empty Jute.


53 gold, a granary and a lighthouse is a nice haul. We debated burning the city for a bit, but GJ doesn't have roads to make the reconquest quick, if he does reconquor its a size one city which isn't going to hurt us, he's wasted some units that we'll be happy not to see in the north and it's always going to be vulnerable to our naval superiority. So we kept it, wondering if the galley has amphibious swords on it. Then we moved to threaten Old Sarai - the green knight landed and the amphi knight can help out wherever. Bai Clan is a tougher nut to crack so we'll probably just blockade it until Frigates can soften it up or Donovan captures it.


Slightly further north Turfan has a sword in it.


- CR2 Sword vs Sword - 23%... LOSS (2 hits)
- C2 Sword vs injured Sword - 65%... WIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIN!!!!!! (1 hit)

The Granary and Courthouse survive and we get 141 gold for our Chemistry push. We've only seen one galley around here, so we load the sword straight back onto the galleon as he can promo-heal to be amphi next turn and there might be further possibilities for him to make mischief. Polarity Sect is our next target and on the way we need to do something about this galley.


- C1 Galleon vs Galley - 99%... WIN! (4 hits!!!!)

The city itself is a toughie as we've only got one unit left:
- Crossbow vs C1 Spear - 42%... WIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIINNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN!!!!!!!!1!!!!!!

That was a little lucky. We gain another 161 gold, and the Granary, Lighthouse, Forge and Courthouse all survive, but keeping this city just isn't feasible, so we trash the place. One less build queue for GJ is a great result for us. GJ's only source of horse is highlighted. I don't think we can do anything about it, but stopping him building knights would be amazing. Perhaps we should bring a force of knights to land SW of the horse and fork that tile and Blood Stream?


The biggest battle this turn is at Thapsus. This city is one of the keys to the north - a good city that should let us slowly throttle Hadru while our main army tries to make progress into the heart of Mongolia.


- C2 amphi knight vs C1 spear - 66%... WIN! (5 hits! Down to 5 HP!)
- C2 amphi knight vs spear - 68%... WIN! (2 hits)

(Hitru jinxes the next fight: "OH is on a roll here!")
- C2 amphi knight vs sword 72%... LOSS! (4 hits - down to 16HP)
- C2 amphi knight vs CG2 Archer - 80%... WIN!!!! (4 hits - knight down to 32 HP)
- C2 knight vs Cat - 95%... FLAWLESS WIN!

And finally


- knight vs injured sword - 99.9%... FLAWLESS WIN!!!


The Granary, Lighthouse and Courthouse all survive along with 150 more gold for the coffers. More importantly the culture behaved itself and the rice is pillagable. It'll be 8 turns before the city comes out of revolt.

Our last target this turn is Sabra and now FT decides to jinx us: "keeping knights alive would be big.."
- C2 amphi knight vs spear - 68%... LOSS (4 hits)


- knight vs injured spear - 99.9%... FLAWLESS WIN!

We get 150 gold and a Granary, Lighthouse and Courthouse again. Either GJ built a lot of infra or we're getting lucky with buildings here. We squeaked through this fight with exactly the required number of units, so we should probably praise the RNG for letting us win a couple of close battles. We also got another Great General who settled in Elite to make 12XP knights and 9XP muskets. My only regret is that we don't have any knights left to capture the workers by Sabratha. Oh, hang on...


So we capture one worker and the other will probably get deleted before we can get to it. Two highly-promoted knights pillage the rice and it's road so that Thapsus isn't threatened (unless Hadru completes a knight this turn, in which case it'll fight our full-health C2 knight). Then we move our knight stack up in two sections, one containing the pike and four knights, within range of Sicca in case we decide to keep the city and put the pike in it. The other has 9 knights, a GG medic, workers and settler.

Our assumption is that GJ will have his units fall back leaving a couple of upgraded pikes in the city in the hope that we waste knights capturing and then leave ourselves open to a knight+catapult counter-attack. To this end a small stack of potentially guerilla 2 units - 2 muskets and 2 crossbows - is 2NE of Sicca and should make short work of it if only pikes are left. To avoid the risk of counter-attack Hitru suggested burning the city and replanting 1NW, so that's what the settler is for.

If, on the other hand, the whole stack is left in Sicca then we'll try to wipe it and capture the city on perhaps t176.


Meanwhile our other war has turned cold and defensive - we've got units to cover if these boats unload knights to threaten Harrier Attack.


Dragon age is still packed with enough stuff to eat 15 knights fairly easily and the mobile defence force here should stop aggression directed at Elite or Col.


Tomb Raider is our weak point - Toku can see that the city only has a mace, spear and six cats in it. Our Sicca knight stack can come back to help out if he attacks, but if that stack needs to push ahead then will Toku know, or just try to push his luck? Ulsan recently popped first-ring borders, so Tomb Raider is working three artists to get its next border pop in two turns, hopefully we'll then keep Ulsan's first-ring tiles. At some point we should really do something about this city. Maybe with cannons?


On the east coast we're not capturing any more cities, so the boats have spread out to try to pin more units and prevent Toku getting a strike force together.


We got Mackoti's graphs this turn so we'll have a full data dump.

What happened to TBS's crop yield?




What will Mack do about Xenu's culture attempt?

[Old Harry]

Turn 175

Joey is definitely the opponent now, he played a 13 minute turn and whipped 12ish pop away. In Hadrumentum he 4-whipped something (presumably a knight) - we're hoping to blockade the place before the end of turn to cut iron and horse supplies and stop whatever it is from completing. I'm not sure of the order that blockade and production are resolved though, so this may not work.


Old Sarai 2-whipped something, but the city will fall to our knight before that can complete.


We get 79 gold and a granary. 3 pop and 4 turns of revolt. Then we go for the galley.
- Galleon vs galley - 98%... WIN! (3 hits)

But we get a pretty bad roll, so we'll put into port to repair. Bai Clan 2-whipped. At the end of this turn it'll be the only un-blockaded port GJ has. There is also a river near Blood Stream, but I think we can set up a blockade WNW of Bai Clan to isolate him from the rest of the world. Then if we can cut his only source of horse he can't get supplies from someone else and we won't face any more knights.

Hang on - is Elkad about to go for Bai Clan himself?


Joey left a decent defensive force in Sicca, it's going to cost us 2-3 knights to take the city. Our spy tells us the 19 catapults are in Beshbalik, but where are the remaining 4 knights?


We aren't sure, but it doesn't really matter so we attack. A flanking knight gets the best combined odds to survive against the pike:

- F2 Knight vs C2 pike - 4% (28% withdraw)...

LOSS! (Wow! It took the pike down to 10HP! If we'd gone with a C2 knight we'd have won! )

- C2 Knight vs C1 spear - 66%... LOSS (3 hits)
- C2 Formation Knight vs Knight - 90%... LOSS (1 hit!)
- C2 Formation Knight vs Knight - 90%... WIN (2 hits)
- C2 Formation Knight vs Knight - 90%... FLAWLESS WIN!
- C2 Formation Knight vs Knight - 90%... WIN (1 hit!)
- C3 Knight vs injured Knight - 96%... WIN (3 hits!)
- G2 Crossbow vs injured spear - 99%... WIN (1 hit)


- G2 Crossbow vs injured pike - 99%... FLAWLESS WIN!


We get 102 gold and the Granary and Forge survive. But not for long... Okay, city burnt and replanted as Zarch. We quickly build two roads to the NE of the city and discover where some of those knights went. This gives me ideas about pressing on and hitting Beshbalik - if GJ only has 5 real hitters we could just take the casualties and mop up the rest of his empire. But can we afford to take the casualties?


Then we capture another worker.


Elkad's final city has a four-worker bonus for whoever hits it from the fog with 6-9 amphibious knights...


We still seem to be pinning knights in Toku's coastal cities.


TBS has chemistry, so its good that we're getting it too.


What we're building. Still lots of basic infrastructure, but we'll be going into slavery in 3 turns to get those things built quicker. The triremes will all be frigates next turn.


Demos and power.

[Old Harry]

Several key players have posted in their threads recently that they are willing to concede to mackoti, including TBS. We've hashed this out in the lurker thread and think this is more or less the time to call the fight. Turn pace is not great and the contagion seems to be spreading, but we lurker scum aren't the ones playing the turns so you guys sort out whether you want to continue or end.

I guess we didn't have a path to victory mapped out, so it was really just down to Xenu vs Mack. If Xenu is one of the conceedees then fair enough. It's just a horrible shame for a game we put so much energy into to peter out before we had a chance to pull ourselves back into it.

We need a much smaller map next time.