[SPOILERS] scooter's PB53

[scooter]

I assumed yes and played. It might be a day or two until I have the time and energy to report. I attacked out and got somewhat poor RNG, but within reason. AT has to go first, so he has to decide whether to throw most of his stack away or not. I was able to reinforce a bit too. I think the city will stand, but it's not impossible for it to go the other way. Awfully brave of AT to move up like that not knowing if Commodore would follow. If he hadn't, I would have demolished AT's stack.

[sunrise089]

Maybe at least a screenshot for your lurker friends?

[scooter]

... but it can be if you text edit the worldbuilder file.

Before I get started, I wanted to say thanks, this worked. It took some testing, but I eventually figured this out, and it was extremely helpful.

Maybe at least a screenshot for your lurker friends?

Sorry, the turn took around 2 hours, which is about 90 mins longer than I try to cap myself to for turns. That doesn't count the random spare brain cycles it was given for the hours of daytime/nighttime up until I actually had the time to sit down and play. Thankfully this fell on a Friday night, otherwise I would have had to wing it, more or less. But I finished the turn close to midnight, and I was pretty brain fried, so there was no way I could report it. That said, I'm feeling pretty good now after spending 4 hours in a kayak today soaking up the last bit of sort-of-summer and rebooting my brain, and things are trending in an OK direction in-game, so let's catch up on what happened.


Turns 95-96





Let's start with the simpler front first. Commodore culture-bombed Sunnyside in a seeming attempt to raze/capture Bielefeld. I suspect he was hoping he would get the gems tile to include his one-movers, and he came up just short (52% mine after the bomb). My efforts over the last 40 turns to pump culture into Bigfoot - even going so far as to build an otherwise-useless Jewish Monastery have massively paid off, and I think it literally saved the city. Anyway, I won this trade, getting pretty favorable RNG. I then killed that Horse Archer with a Warrior (hah!) just because I could. Also because I was fine with losing that Warrior - one less mouth to feed. But this front was just a sideshow. Let's check out the main event.





AT like a madman pushed all-in. Well, not quite madman. Crucially, Commodore's units are here protecting his stack, and that's what made this scary. If Commodore had just ignored it, I would have wiped this stack with little to no losses. Commodore's well-promoted HAs suddenly made things hard. Complicating things is that 4/7 of my Knights are wounded thanks to the capture of Fluoride, so I'm not nearly at full strength here.


The composition of this stack put me in a terrible position. The issue is that I need to send the CKNs in to soften this stack. What AT's stack lacks in quality, it makes up for in quantity. If I send my Knights in, all they do is fight Commodore's units, which makes it all the easier for AT to trash-slam me with cats + trash. I simmed this, and it would have been pretty uncomfortable, not to mention the follow-up from Commodore's units. However, Drill CKNs vs C3 HAs is a terrible situation thanks to HA first strike immunity, which meant I'm going to get trash odds on the CKNs. I spent over an hour simming it, and I eventually concluded I needed to slam my CKNs into the stack, which wounded the top units enough for my Knights to kill AT's best units while also dousing him in collateral with a side of flanking damage.





One bit of good news was that I had the foresight to set up a Galley daisy chain. Just off screen to the west I was moving another galley in an attempt to setup a chain which would let me move a pair of units to either front instantly. The eastern front was more urgent, so let's take advantage. I triple-chained the Galleys to drop these 5xp Knights into New Coke in a single turn. I couldn't actually attack with them because the transfers exhaust their movement, but I could defend with them. This ended up being a huge deal.





First though, it's time for some pain. I've gotta do it so that I can hit AT's units rather than Commodore's, but that doesn't mean it won't hurt. Plus, it's more important to keep my Knights alive than CKNs.

Drill4 CKN vs HA 27%: lose
Drill3 CKN vs HA 23%: WIN
Drill3 CKN vs HA 27%: lose
Drill2 CKN vs HA 27%: lose
Drill3 CKN vs HA 27%: lose
Drill1 CKN vs HA 27%: lose
C2 Knight vs HA 80%: lose
C2 Shock Knight vs Spear 96%: win
Shock Knight vs Spear 90%: win
8.6h Shock Knight vs Spear 76%: win
Shock HA vs Spear 48/10%: lose
GG Shock Knight vs Spear 90%: win

RNG swung back the other way a tad here, but such is life. I was kinda down after this sequence, because winning a couple of those would have been massive. That said, according to my sims I should easily be able to defend against AT with the reinforcements I had. I also bit the bullet and upgraded my second HA to a Knight rather than take another 50% shot. One of the things I did know going into this was that I was going to generate a GG mid-fight. I was really hoping it would spawn on the eastern half of my empire, because I could get another Knight in with a Mobility attachment. It spawned in Bielefeld instead, so I attached to an Archer, took a free Longbow upgrade, and spread out some XP to upgrade 5 units there.





Here's the aftermath. You can see the trio of full health Knights inside, along with the CG3 CKN that I elected not to attack with. I was kicking myself for not getting walls in yet, but I went ahead and got them. That doesn't help for this turn (I'm first-half), but it'll help after that. Fun fact: A Protective civ with stone can dry whip walls with 1 population. The fact that I had a couple border cities without them yet is an inexcusable mistake, but I'm so used to almost never building them. Anyway, I felt OK at this point as long as my sims were accurate. Because AT has to play before Commodore, and I knew AT would have no chance, I figured I'd offer Commodore another peace deal. Either AT was going to fail badly, or more likely he'd retreat, leaving Commodore with a two-front stalemate. I offered him just 150g for peace this time, about half what I offered on the previous turn. Then I went to sleep and tried not to think about this game. CUT TO TONIGHT.





Commodore sent me this offer. I can't fully tell what happened while the window is open, but I can see AT's stack looks pretty much dead, and I see a lot of my units alive. I also see my GG meter has moved significantly. It sure looks like he just slammed into me? It pained me, but I accepted this deal. If I can counter-attack and take his capital, it's worth it, otherwise this sucks. Can I?





Well then. It appears AT tilted his stack into me, killing nothing but my precious CG3 CKN. Fun fact: he was only promoted along the CG line because like 10 turns ago I misclicked CG2 rather than Drill2, and I figured I ought to commit to it.





I cleaned up the Spear and fleeing Archer with fresh Knights that were reinforcing from behind, winning easily. This also let me see his capital. There's enough in it that it's best to let my Knights heal for 2 turns.





Here's the situation as it stands right now. All of my Knights (except maybe the Sentry idk) will be full health in 2 turns. I could push ahead in 1 turn, but I'm not sure it's worth it. Mainly because I have help coming. There are 8 non-Commodore units in that capital, and I expect him to add a few more. That said, my Knights get odds, although it's tight enough that I do need good numbers.





I have Knights streaming in, and some will be added via another Galley chain. All in all, I'm expecting to hit the capital with 13 full health and well-promoted Knights on T99. Very slight chance I push ahead on T98 with slightly wounded Knights, but that's unlikely. The 2 Knight 1 HA pairing can arrive 1 turn later if needed. I also queued up 2 combat settlers. One will go in the rubble of AT's former city, and the other is a wildcard that will either fill an available spot, or worst-case scenario go to the clams island on the far east. The nice thing is New World Order's borders popped on exactly this turn, meaning Commodore can't snipe the rubble city location. My hope is this will push me up to 18 cities, and hopefully Banks will save my economy. If I can do this by T99, that gives me 5-6 turns to setup defenses and brace myself for a possible Commodore round 2, which will surely come. The extortion check I just wrote him will surely get him to Guilds, so things could get messy again. I'll worry about that in a couple days.


Whew. Any questions?

[scooter]

If starting techs are too important for Advanced Start, you can always try running a later era start for a change. Classical era gives everyone the same starting techs and then the other eras all have their own distinct metagames. (If anything I think RB should be running more of the later era games, the Industrial game that scooter and I took part in was fantastic fun for everyone involved.)

I meant to reply to this, but I forgot in the midst of the, uh, well, stuff going on in this game.


But yes, more non-ancient games please. I've been the late era game evangelist around here, but I haven't managed to convert many. I was actually hoping for this to be later era, but I accepted Advanced Start Ancient as a compromise. Ancient is OK, but honestly I find it takes two solid months for the game to be interesting unless it's interesting for bad reasons. With games like this or later era, they're interesting from T0. Having to puzzle through a new way to play versus a 2 month micro competition where everyone plays the same suits my strengths better anyway, so maybe it's a selfish wish. In general though, the games I've enjoyed the most are the later era stuff. Plus, it takes up much less time, so it's a lesser life commitment.

[Zed-F]

Good job holding onto your conquests so far, wishing you continued success with AT in the next few turns.

[DaveV]

... but it can be if you text edit the worldbuilder file.

Before I get started, I wanted to say thanks, this worked. It took some testing, but I eventually figured this out, and it was extremely helpful.

You're welcome. I've enjoyed reading your threads over the years, and am glad to be able to contribute something useful.

[scooter]

Turn 97





After making peace with me, Commodore promptly slipped the knife in AT's back, taking his 3 southern cities. I'm assuming this was at virtually no cost, which, hooray. There wasn't much news this turn. This was a healing turn, next turn we push in. The bad news comes in two parts. First, I need to be moderately careful about Commodore potentially sniping AT's capital. Second, I made yet another terrible misclick.





I was checking odds, and I accidentally slammed my Knight into a Spear at 63% odds and lost handily, possibly handing that Spear a Formation promotion. Lovely. I figured it's unreasonable to ask for a reload for something like that, so I'll live with it. I don't think it'll cost me the city or anything, but still. Not great!





So the looming concern is that I haven't had the time to focus on the stuff Cornflakes is doing on my west flank. That is: generating an obscene amount of great people. Phi/Ind is pretty good, you guys! Anyway, while he may have way less land and a bad neighbor situation, he's got the inside track to stuff like Liberalism/Taj/etc. I think he's going to try to convert that into TBS, but I don't know for sure. I'm hoping I can get some secure enough borders elsewhere to keep him honest, but Commodore has thus far denied me of that. I did crack that joke a few posts back about Commodore assisting TBS's come-from-behind win, but Cornflakes is the more serious possibility there.





That's right, worst GNP of any non-AT player. Now granted, 3 players are in Golden Ages, I'm saving gold, and Commodore is spending his extortion check, but still.





Included this to get a nice look at AT's I'M ALL IN BOYS attack. My dip being much smaller than Commodore's is mostly a function of me replacing units with heavy whips more than him, I think.





That's a fun GNP spike! I've basically teched nothing since getting Guilds due to spending so much money on upgrades and extortion, so I'm feeling the effects of that right now in a big way. It all had to be done, but it feels bad for right now. If I can get some quality peace turns, I can start to get things into shape, but I'm fully expecting round 2 when peace with Commodore expires.

[scooter]

Turn 98

Quick one today.





Why not?





Oh cool he got off a trade mission. And I didn't get paid for it (he went somewhere else). COOL.





Tomorrow? Unless it's going to be tight and it looks like Commodore is going to snipe the city. A few more Knights coming the following turn if I have to wait or only do this halfway. AT may be free soon.

[scooter]

Turn 99


Alright, let's see if we can take AT's capital. I first checked with my sentry Knight, and I can see Commodore still has units in place to try to vulture the capital. I only have a few units more than AT does, so while I'll be favored, I can't lose much or else I'll come up 1-2 units short, and that's bad. So I'm going to get him down to 5-6 defenders, and then see how likely I am to finish it.






In we go.

c2 shock knight vs formation spear 50%: lose (1.6h)
c2 shock knight vs formation spear 64%: win
c1 shock knight vs spear 64%: win
c1 shock knight vs spear 68%: win
c2 knight vs cg2 archer 77%: win
c2 knight vs cg2 archer 78%: lose (.4h)
c2 knight vs cg2 archer 78%: win

That seems like about expected results. At this point I made the difficult decision to quit. I think I was fairly likely to capture, but I could only lose a single more unit the rest of the way, and my odds were still going to be in the 70s for the next few attacks. Even some moderately bad luck would screw me. AT lives one more turn.





Here's the situation as it stands. I didn't see that extra Horse Archer off to the east initially, so that means it is theoretically possible for Commodore to take this city with 6 attackers for 6 defenders. That said, it would require winning some low-odds stuff, so I don't imagine he's going to bother throwing away HAs for that. He'd have to win 3 consecutive battles that will all be in the 20-30% range against the 3 real defenders there. Statistically, that's almost certainly less likely than me coming up a unit short this turn, so that's the way we go. I would have stopped one attack sooner had I seen that extra HA in time, but oh well. Next turn it definitely falls barring AT literally hacking the game.





Pacifism and Bureau. You know what that means. He's teching Nationalism now. Get ready for Taj and drafting? I wonder how far he is from Rifles. Probably not that far really. Let's see how stark this difference is.





Yikes. My break-even tech rate is like 100bpt. The problem is simple: I'd like to stop him, but Commodore won't let me. I don't trust him not to just laser focus me and throw away both of our games, because he literally just tried to do it. So... what do. In an ideal world, Commodore would try to eat Cairo and/or further set himself up for a future cultural victory attempt while letting me backdoor Cornflakes when he inevitably attempts to conquer TBS to keep him from Thanos'ing us all, but he won't do that because he's never seen an iffy war he turned down. So... I get this sinking feeling of being the boiled-alive frog. My raw land edge can absolutely be converted into some real economic power, but I'm sort of counting on TBS putting together a truly valiant defense in order to buy the time I need to make that happen.


I need to think about some way to signal to Commodore my concern over Cornflakes to see if he's paying any attention at all. I thought about sending "stop trading with Cornflakes" type stuff, but I don't want him to actually accept it. Need to think some more on how to approach this.

[scooter]

Checked PBSpy right after posting that to see Commodore playing the turn... and not eliminating AT. Phew. No such absurd luck screwing me. Now I can sleep easy and hopefully end this war in the morning if TBS rolls the turn then.