[SPOILERS]A new adventure of Vanrober always guided by chumchu

[Charriu]

The score change is from territory, which is earned 20 turns after you acquired new territory.

I will explain how to create a map of any size later, when I'm not on the phone

[chumchu]

Rome with unnerfed praetorians is a very scary neighbor to have. Since CTH (rightly) nerfed WE there is no unit that get odds on them until crossbows. Axes can do with a promotion advantage but MJMD is aggressive and we are not so it is the opposite. Collateral can even it out but it does not unlock until construction. We can not fight them in the field without a big numbers advantage.

However we have good archers and cheap walls to defend our cities. We have to stack up a defenders bonus of 195% from our archers to get above the 50/50 threshold. We can reasonably get the 50% archer city defense, 50% wall, 25% fortify, 20% city garrison promo for 145%. That means 64% for him to kill our archer =(. If we add the 50% from the hill it drops to 28%, or 25% with guerilla 1. On that he may get city raider and we may get city garrison. Conclusion: Archers work against praetorians fully fortified on hill behind walls, on flatland they melt. Flatland cities needs walls and axes. Link to calculator: https://www.realmsbeyond.net/forums/show...#pid675999

Once he gets Praetorians we can not fight him efficiently until the medieval era. We can stall him until construction by stuffing walled cities with archers and axes. That leaves us vulnerable to forking, pillaging.

Strategic options:

1) Avoid war by a) making friends or b) look like a costlier conquest than other options. I prefer this option but it is ultimately not in our control.

2) Preemptive strike. This is highly unlikely to work but would be a relief to us. With multiple neighbors we can not go for an all in early rush on one without creating just as a big a problem on the other front(s).

The midpoint between us is the line at city B which is 7 tiles form both. Given the layout of the rivers and that our opponent is Genghis of Rome I do not think it would be wise to contest that river valley. I think we can reasonable get A and D. A should IMO be moved to the hill southwest to have first ring corn and better defense. This makes a gap between the cities which makes me uneasy.

Perhaps a filler between them to prevent him settling up on our capitol. The filler city should preferably be on one of the two green hills 5 west of our capitol but neither of them has any real food. The southern one blocks using the clam so it is no good at all. The northern one, blocks city D and only has two wine and a second ring cow which is subpar for this map. Given the lack of resources in that area I'm guessing it has at least one strategic resource to make it better. Let's wait with a final decision until we see copper and horses.

[vanrober]

Totally agree.

I think going hill defense instead of city guardian is better since we get a bit more on the second, we maybe should round him up to see who are the rest of his neighbours because if he has someone not pro he might prefere go to him, eventhough i am one of the noobest players of the game so that will make him feel we are juiciest (and not for the fruit names hehehe)

I use vodka calculator, i dont know if you know it so here is the link, i didnt try the one that you use. https://zulan.net/civ/vodka/

Finally, that grasshill river we could use it just to pump archers, for defense eventhough is a crappy city, if we mane to get 8 hamers or 9 it would mean archers every3 turns which is decent eventhough it gets low pop. Lets see if there is some copper or iron around.

[chumchu]

We have Pro so we get Drill 1 and City garrison 1 for free on the archers. He gets Combat for free on the praets. That was why I use for a base.

Vodka is very simple to use and good for multiple attackers. It does not work with modded units though.

[vanrober]

I dont really understand well the drill bonus, its like more rng? I usually use or garrison def or hill def for archers unless thy got a ton of collateral

[Charriu]

Drill for the most case is better if the units have similar strength. It also unlocks some promos similar to combat 1 for example shock

[vanrober]

In this case it doesnt seem to be one of those with same strenght isnt it?

[chumchu]

The math behind civ 4 combat is a sequence of coinflips (which can be modeled by a binomial distribution). The winner of a coinflip gets to strike at the other unit. How much damage a unit does with each strike is determined by the relative strength of the two units. The base is 20, meaning 5 hits kill a unit with 100 hp.

The big jumps when your odds get better come when relative strength leads to fewer hits being required to kill your opponent. If your warrior is attacking Ruffs warrior then you need 5 hits to kill him and vice versa. You flip a coin until one of you get the 5 hits in, your odds are 50% to win. If you get combat 1 he will only do 19 damage and need 6 hits to kill you while you still need 5 hits to kill him. You flip a coin just like last time but this time he needs to get 6 hits on you until you get 5 hits in on him. The odds are 68% for you to win.

What a first strike does is that it literally gives you a chance to strike first. Having 1 FS means that only you get to strike with the first coinflip. If it falls your way then you get a strike in as normal. If it falls his way then he does not get to strike you as he would have otherwise. Having 2 FS means that only you get to strike with the first two coinflips et cetera. In the warrior vs. warrior scenario above, if you have 1 FS instead of combat 1 then you have 57% odds to win. This is not as good as 68% from combat 1 which is logical. It is better to require a full extra strike before you die than to just have a 50% chance to get a strike in first before the normal fight.

First strikes should not be undervalued. With first strikes it is more likely that you at least get some damage in. This actually reduces variation in outcomes for you if you need to damage a defending unit when attacking a city. Over multiple fights and turns the effects become stronger as you take less damage and deal more damage. If you have many first strikes they can become overpowering as you can get a lot of damage in before your opponent even gets a chance to strike. Think of a well fortified longbow with drill 4 promotion. It can fight of many more axes as it get so many hits in before the axes get to strike.

Using Vodka: 10 axes with combat 1 attack a single longbow in a hill city behind walls. They have 99% chance of victory losing 4 axes on average. If we promote the longbow to Drill 1,2,3, 4 it changes dramatically. The attacker now loses 9,5 axes on average and have only a 16% chance to win.

Does this explanation make sense to you? I suggest you play around with either of the two calculators to see the effect of first strikes.

[vanrober]

The math behind civ 4 combat is a sequence of coinflips (which can be modeled by a binomial distribution). The winner of a coinflip gets to strike at the other unit. How much damage a unit does with each strike is determined by the relative strength of the two units. The base is 20, meaning 5 hits kill a unit with 100 hp.

The big jumps when your odds get better come when relative strength leads to fewer hits being required to kill your opponent. If your warrior is attacking Ruffs warrior then you need 5 hits to kill him and vice versa. You flip a coin until one of you get the 5 hits in, your odds are 50% to win. If you get combat 1 he will only do 19 damage and need 6 hits to kill you while you still need 5 hits to kill him. You flip a coin just like last time but this time he needs to get 6 hits on you until you get 5 hits in on him. The odds are 68% for you to win.

What a first strike does is that it literally gives you a chance to strike first. Having 1 FS means that only you get to strike with the first coinflip. If it falls your way then you get a strike in as normal. If it falls his way then he does not get to strike you as he would have otherwise. Having 2 FS means that only you get to strike with the first two coinflips et cetera. In the warrior vs. warrior scenario above, if you have 1 FS instead of combat 1 then you have 57% odds to win. This is not as good as 68% from combat 1 which is logical. It is better to require a full extra strike before you die than to just have a 50% chance to get a strike in first before the normal fight.

First strikes should not be undervalued. With first strikes it is more likely that you at least get some damage in. This actually reduces variation in outcomes for you if you need to damage a defending unit when attacking a city. Over multiple fights and turns the effects become stronger as you take less damage and deal more damage. If you have many first strikes they can become overpowering as you can get a lot of damage in before your opponent even gets a chance to strike. Think of a well fortified longbow with drill 4 promotion. It can fight of many more axes as it get so many hits in before the axes get to strike.

Using Vodka: 10 axes with combat 1 attack a single longbow in a hill city behind walls. They have 99% chance of victory losing 4 axes on average. If we promote the longbow to Drill 1,2,3, 4 it changes dramatically. The attacker now loses 9,5 axes on average and have only a 16% chance to win.

Does this explanation make sense to you? I suggest you play around with either of the two calculators to see the effect of first strikes.

Its all about stadistics, now i see. Yeah drill is the best promo if you are going to promo a lot of drills or if there is a lot of junk atacking.

Really, thanks you so much for the explanation since ive never know how things worked

[vanrober]

Turn 21

Noble and lazteuq grew pop and Cairo took tech

I moved into the corn to get some vision of Mjmd that as we know has already BW.

   

Demos: