[SPOILERS] naufragar earns no points

[NobleHelium]

scooter might have to lose his Eliminator title after this one.

[naufragar]

Scooter's feelings right now.

I mean, I'll have to wait and see what actually happened. I assumed the great general on the axes would have been enough for sure: so much of an archer's strength comes from the +% promotions, which a couple city raider or cover promos can negate. If I wasn't sure of death, I wouldn't have deleted the captured worker previously on the city ruins. I'm not getting my hopes up; plenty of ways to die next turn. But living on stolen time is fun.

[Bobchillingworth]

I'm thrilled for you, but if your goal was to hang on and be a PITA for as long as possible, shouldn't you have evac'd everything to your 1-tile island city? That would have forced Scooter to build a bunch of Galleys and take risky combats.

[civac2]

He could have just ignored that island.

[naufragar]

I'm the keeper of the sacred flame of Stonehenge. I couldn't just abandon it.


More seriously, I had been thinking about goals and sportsmanship. I knew I'd be emptying one city. Either way, one neighbor gets a freebie. I'm not playing with the goal of causing Scooter pain, but I do want to make sure he doesn't profit from the attack. The first reason is a meta consideration: it's useful to develop a spiky reputation. The second reason is just personal pride. I want to rise to the challenge. I think we're past worrying about scooter making net gains from the attack, but I want him to make no gross gains. Now, I can't do anything about the pillage gold he's gotten, and he's gotten xp. Setting those aside, so long as I hold Stonehenge, he's gained nothing.

So, a long answer, but the short of it is that I don't value hanging in there. This play hopefully keeps me more a player than a prop.

Edit: Boy am I dating myself. Three early 2000s movies back to back?

[naufragar]

Well, let's not bury the lede. We survived.


I've made so many bad moves in these recent turns. There was absolutely no reason to delete the worker captured by my horse archer. It was extremely unlikely that Scooter could have recaptured it, and if he killed my cap, the thing would have died anyway. Oh well.


If I set up the simulator correctly, Scooter had a 70% chance to take the city, attacking in the order that he did. So I got lucky. I own up to it. By the way, I've been talking about simulating these combats. This is the tool I've been using.


This is maintained by Zulan, who also runs the server on which we play Pitsboss. If you've benefited from the services he runs, consider reaching out to him to throw financial thanks his way.

Here is the combat log in spoilers. I've marked the combats, but you still have to read bottom to top. I admit I haven't actually read the results. I just gleaned the promos for the simulation.

The tenth combat was the clean-up on my turn.

Where to go from here? Who knows. Scooter certainly hasn't offered peace, so I guess more archers?

[civac2]

Did Stonehenge get its culture doubling back when you recaptured it? The whip anger is gone right? Can you clean up the spear?

[naufragar]

Did Stonehenge get its culture doubling back when you recaptured it? The whip anger is gone right? Can you clean up the spear?

Weirdly, yes. Stonehenge is giving +16 culture, and instead of 5 whip anger, I now have 0. Strange what the game chooses to remember.

I killed the spear with an archer. My horse archer had something like an 88% chance and my newly-built archer had a 93% chance, so I used the archer and got 2xp on it. Cairo has Iron Working, so we'll see if he returns with swords.

[naufragar]

Satisfaction.



The thing that gets me about all of this is the why. Scooter isn't in a terrible position and wouldn't have been in an especially bad position if I hadn't burned his 4th city.


Gotta admire the commitment, I guess.

[naufragar]

The thing that gets me about all of this is the why. Scooter isn't in a terrible position and wouldn't have been in an especially bad position if I hadn't burned his 4th city.

I figured it was about 50/50 whether Scooter reacted to it emotionally or pragmatically. Emotionally, he comes at me for Stonehenge still. Pragmatically, he still has tons of unsettled land, a barb city, a founded religion, comparable demos to his neighbors, and a war he's winning, and I was offering him locked 10T peace. I definitely assumed nothing. I took a risk.