[spoilers] FT's attempt at social distancing

[Fintourist]

I built those mids because my earlier plan/game plan had been voided. Ask whatever questions, and ill answer whatever doesnt actually give away spoiler info. ( i dont think any of it would, but its easier to just answer questions.. )

Probably no questions at this point.. Let's come back to everything when it's post mortem time..

***

Another topic: Ruff's turn order behavior is just baffling for a RB Vet. He is in war with Cairo and clearly there is a tense situation between us and he still keeps logging in and out in the middle of my turn and after our turns. I'm happy that he is engaged with the game, but logging on your side of the split should be very basic Pitboss behavior.

I don't think he is actually double-moving units or making changes in the fog, but logging during your split would remove that worry. And I don't think there is any game-deciding intel that can be had, but it's still annoying that we can't e.g. move a sentry unit into Ruff's vision and out of it later when we finish the turn without being sure that Ruff won't spot it via out-of-split logging in. I kinda don't want to escalate this because this is not the biggest deal and because of negative diplo points, but if you Ruff read this after the game, I think other players would appreciate more refrain during conflicts.

***

As for the actual game: Ruff took SD's capital and has 15 units and 7 catapults in the area. We could have positioned our somewhat wounded stack to kill that, but we decided not to. SD's capital would be nice to have, but we might benefit from a peaceful border here (if that's realistic) and I'm a bit hesitant to exchange blows as long as Commodore's military is still bigger than ours and not too far away from our Northern border.. Next turn most of our stack has healed and we have a macro decision ahead of us:

1. Fight Ruff
   
2. Engage in the north (CF and Commodore)
   
3. Hold our breath for a few turns and see how ongoing conflicts develop
   

[superdeath]

Rooting for you guys.

[Fintourist]

Rooting for you guys.

Thanks SD!

Turns 127-129

This is a crazy game.   We decided that going after Iowa (SD's former capital) will not win us the game, but if Commodore rolls over Cornflakes, that could be real trouble. So we healed our stack for a turn and our 25 HAs started running north where they could join our catapults and 1-movers.

However, great things have happened over the past two turns between Commodore and Cornflakes. Commodore has lost 200k soldier points   without capturing a city. Cornflakes has whipped his economy down and also lost 120k in power.

During the last turn the exchange was especially Cornflakes-favored, which probably means that our intervention is not anymore a must-have. We are again #1 military in the game and have our units in a flexible position to do something:

1. Do we run back south and set ourselves up to hit Ruff? We have a big enough force that we could take SD's former capital and maybe more, but if Ruff plays things correctly with his catapults, things could be bloody/costly
   
2. Do we set ourselves up to hit Commodore while he is down. Take a city and try to catch his units out in the open?
   
3. Evil backstab on Cornflakes and take the jungle area that was stolen from us by Elkad's hero spear?
   
4. Eat popcorn for 5 turns until we have knights and hit somebody with a tech edge?
   

This is kind of a luxury position to have as I could see all of the options working out. At the same time, none of the options is risk-free.. 

[Fintourist]

Turns 130-131

Still a crazy game. Even a chaotic game. We decided to embrace the chaos: 




Obviously lost a 88 % battle and lost two HAs to kill one spear.. We decided to keep the city for now, let's see what develops and if Part Florensis can be a Northeastern outpost for us.

I think there is a chance that we can wipe the partly wounded 13-unit Commodore stack that is on the jungle if we manage to coordinate with Cornflakes - that was a significant part of temptation for entering this dance. Might not happen as we are half-assing it a little bit here.. I don't feel confident enough that Ruff would not think of this as an opportunity to hit us so we left a decent part of the army in the south.

[Charriu]

Turns 130-131

Still a crazy game. Even a chaotic game. We decided to embrace the chaos: 

Now the real embracement of chaos would have been "return control to the Indian Empire"

[Fintourist]

Hah, that is indeed true. Well let's see if we end up holding the city. We are most definitely not committed to it, but it could serve as some sorts of buffer zone and provide us with some reaction time and visibility.

[Fintourist]

Turn 132

Unfortunately Cornflakes did not want to spend his catapults so that we could have wiped Commodore's stack.  So now we are just dancing a bit around the captured city - Commodore can take Part Florensis back next turn if he wants and then we'll see whether there will be some real fighting. We have also sniped and deleted 5 workers at the cost of 2 chariots so far. I don't think that really impacts his economy and but Commodore having less combat workers available is of course nice.

I guess this has now officially ended our friendship with Commodore, but I don't believe that has really been a thing for a while. If you look at the scoreboard, it's pretty evident that we are each others' main competitors in any case..

[Fintourist]

Turn 133

The Tic-Tac-Toe at Part Florensis came to an end..




During this little skirmish Commodore lost 425 hammers in units while we lost 210. If we add the destruction of Part Florensis to the tally, I think we can consider this a minor victory.. However, if you ask Commodore, I think he can also claim the victory as his wounded stack managed to retreat back to the safety. 

I guess Cornflakes had two alternative approaches to the situation:

1. Use his catapults to kill the stack and hope to gain some land in the future at the cost of weakened Japan
   
2. Preserve all his strength and hope for bloody exchanges between us and Commodore
   

 
I don’t think it’s unreasonable that Cornflakes decided to stay back, but it’s a pity for us.   I guess this was still a shot worth taking though as there was a chance of really hurting our main rival.

Anyways, I think we are liking the Northern border better without Part Florensis and with a new Japanese city at Babylon border creating further tension between Cornflakes and Commodore. Commodore offered peace, but I think we will entertain us next with “Etruscan Pass” while we are waiting for the knights.
Enough about this insignificant battle! The real entertainment takes place at Migu's thread with 2 dead GGs.. 

[Fintourist]

Turns 134-138

During the last turns, we cut the roads to Etruscan Pass, marched a little stack in, bombarded the defenses and took the fight this turn:




One catapult spent to kill 5 defenders was a nice result (I guess two would have been more likely) and now our skirmish with Commodore is over. At least for now.

Overall the last few turns have been awesome for us. Cornflakes more than made up for not killing the Commodore stack by murdering couple of developed cities with some kind of a naval strike.. 

Meanwhile we finished Guilds couple of turns ago and first knights have joined our force:




I think the biggest weakness of our current position is our really long and spread out border. As you can derive from above, our defensive solution has been more or less:

• Catapult stack in the north
  
• Catapult stack in the south/east
  
• 2-movers as the main force so that they can join whatever catapult stack needed
  
• Enough spears/WEs/longbows that we are not totally vulnerable to quick surprise attacks
  

It's been a while since the last empire shot a.k.a more knights in the making:




With Commodore losing couple of key cities to Cornflakes and less important Etruscan Pass to us, demos are starting to look again pretty convincing




Our soldier point lead is becoming significant and real-life MFG lead is actually quite a bit stronger thanks to Police State. Gold-saving GNP is less hot, but we are only 5 turns away from Banking and Mercantilism. 14 free Representation-powered specialists should make our economy pretty solid..

So where to go from here? That is something we discuss with Hitru and OH every turn. I think our current position is strong enough that we are not anymore forced to do anything too risky, but soon we have a stack of knights and it would be a pity not to use them somewhere.. 

[Fintourist]

Turns 139-140

Miguelito and Cairo had a big fight last turn and they continued the fun this turn. Our sentries followed the action, and sorry Miguelito, this is just all too tempting.. 




Bunch of really wounded units, no time to heal and no fortify bonus.   Let's see how much promo-healing Miguelito is able to do, but unless something surprising happens (by Migu or some other player), there is a decent chance that our 19 mounted attackers will take the Hindu holy city next turn. Unfortunately only 2 knights were close enough to join the fun, but catapults and more knights can be considered a back-up plan. Or a necessary force should Commodore or Ruff want to join the fun.