[SPOILERS] scooter's PB53

[Hitru]

Nah, this attack is in big trouble. One spear can easily kill 8 units by itself ( see pb49 )

[scooter]

The worst part? I can't even counter-offer him to ask him to pay for it because he's got just 82g in the bank and he has science on, so I can't ask for GPT either. So I ignored it. If he would kick me a few hundred gold, maybe I'd do it. I'm wondering if people are vastly overestimating how important foreign routes are for Protective civs when domestic IC routes are available. I'm making literally 4 commerce/turn off my OB with Commodore and Cairo. It's nearly worthless to me, but I think I'm being treated like I have GLH or something. It's odd.

I suppose I should spoiler my response. Mild PB52 spoiler, do not open the following if you are a player in that game:

Maybe if you keep complaining about this issue in your game, and I keep doing the same here, some of our competition will see it eventually?

Nah, this attack is in big trouble. One spear can easily kill 8 units by itself ( see pb49 )

What part in the game is this referring to? I only started following 49 later on, so I think I missed a good one.

[Zed-F]

FinTourist started having ridiculously terrible combat luck against Elkad once the latter was down to his last few cities, closer to the beginning of the game.

[pindicator]

The worst part? I can't even counter-offer him to ask him to pay for it because he's got just 82g in the bank and he has science on, so I can't ask for GPT either. So I ignored it. If he would kick me a few hundred gold, maybe I'd do it. I'm wondering if people are vastly overestimating how important foreign routes are for Protective civs when domestic IC routes are available. I'm making literally 4 commerce/turn off my OB with Commodore and Cairo. It's nearly worthless to me, but I think I'm being treated like I have GLH or something. It's odd.

I suppose I should spoiler my response. Mild PB52 spoiler, do not open the following if you are a player in that game:

Maybe if you keep complaining about this issue in your game, and I keep doing the same here, some of our competition will see it eventually?

More Mild PB52 Spoilers

I think I wrote out and deleted 2 responses because I was worried about 'influencing' exactly like that. I settled on the frowny face.

At least the new version of PRO should get rid of this boogeyman.

[scooter]

Turn 64





Cornflakes is apparently feeling a bit more amenable. That's less than I would have asked for, though. He's offering me 90g to get like 1k in return. That said, he does have two neighbors to negotiate with. I closed the window to see how much he had available. 6gpt + 88g was the max I could ask for (148g), so I did that. I think he'll say yes to that, but I could be wrong. He's got a Galley/Trireme combo sitting by my island city that surely has the Merchant on board which you can just see below the interface here, so he's ready to do this. Onto the interesting stuff.





Ok first, WTF is this? I wish my Galley was in range. He also settled a city this past turn (in addition to a bunch more whipping). I'm just now noticing he has a crabs improved and worked 1S of that Galley. I'm wondering if I can get more than just Stonehenge here. I'm also wondering if there's a unit on board (edit: foreshadowing?). Ok, main event.





This is mostly good news. The good news is he didn't get a 4th spear, and he also did not turn on auto-promote, so that bottom C1 spear didn't get a second promotion. The 4th unit is in theory a bummer, but a warrior is just free XP for me. The catch is that it makes this kind of a near-thing, so I might have a scenario where I "win" but come up one unit short of completing this turn if RNG goes badly, which gives him another turn to shove units inside 40% cultural defenses. Not ideal! So, enough talk, let's go for it.

Shock HA vs C2 Spear 11%/18%: lose (redlined!)
C2 HA vs C1 Spear: 12.5%/17.5%: WIN (!!!)
C1 HA vs C1 Spear: 9.7%/18.1%: lose (2.7h left)
C1 HA vs 2.7h C1 Spear: 62.1%/7.6%: WIN
0xp HA vs warrior: 96.5%: LOSE
0xp HA vs 1.4h C1 Spear: 97.4%: WIN
0xp HA vs .4h Warrior: 99% WIN
5.0h 2/2xp HA vs .2h Spear: 99% WIN

Captured with my last attacker. It would be a bannable offense for me to complain about losing a HA to a 3.5% odds fight after I started this fight with a redline + 12.5% win. In terms of raw odds, this is probably about expected in terms of results, but getting the good rolls early and bad roll late is usually a good trade. I'll take it. The 75g is not trivial either for me.





Well as I type this, we have breaking news. This was the situation post-turn. I figured this was probably ok. The only place Spears could come from is on the boat or on the wine tile. He must have done one or the other.

08/18/2020 11:23:10 64 AT score increased to 371 (+31)
08/18/2020 11:23:10 64 scooter score decreased to 693 (-31)
08/18/2020 11:21:49 64 AT logged in

He captured it back. That's a bit ominous. Once he ends turn I'll have to peek in real fast just to see what he did.





Commodore completed this play. He settled a bunch of cities in the last 2 turns and capped it off with an 11 city Hanging Gardens. That'll rocket him to the top of the food charts.

[sunrise089]

Scooter, in your combat log summary you have 5 WINs. But weren’t there only 4 defenders?!

[scooter]

Scooter, in your combat log summary you have 5 WINs. But weren’t there only 4 defenders?!

Huh. You're right. I must have copied it wrong. I bet one of those wins were a withdrawal - perhaps the 61% odds fight I thought I won. I will have to check this when the turn comes back to me. That would explain why I cut it closer than I expected based on sims.

[scooter]

Turn 65-66

Pretty much the worst-case scenario. And yes, one of those wins earlier was actually a retreat.





I retreated. He must have had a ton of units on the Wine tile. I thought about razing the city, but that would have just cost me the rest of my Horse Archers, so let's call this a sunk cost and move on. Cho-Ku-Nus next in 6-7 turns. Growing my cities as much as possible and adding a couple Galleys to be ready.


FIN: 21, 21 (375)
PRO: 20, 20 (532)

[sunrise089]

How many defenders did he have in the city after the re-capture?

[scooter]

How many defenders did he have in the city after the re-capture?

Just 3. Axe, warrior, and scout. So 1 + junk. That said, I also know he was sitting on a pair of spears + chariot + maybe more just outside the city, so recapturing would have been worthless, and razing would have been a suicide mission. I still considered it pretty seriously to remove the culture. Just decided against it, as I'd rather have the HAs alive at this point. I should have razed to begin with. It was always awkwardly placed for me, and the culture was the real annoyance. I got greedy. I figured though I just needed to hold one more turn which is when my CG2 archer shows up and all my HAs get promotions, making recapturing really hard for him. Figured I had one more turn before numbers like that showed up.