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

[vanrober]

We want to make sure to hold both capital and raspberry cities as they are on hills. We should whip everything not on a swapping penalty and in border cities if ti is necessary to stop them form dying.

i want to hold them both but im unsure how to make that possible. I mean, i saw we need 4 choke axes every 7 Praets with CR so its a lot. I mean i have the feeling that if we retreat to capitol he can just go with 16 units to raspberry and how can we defend that?

[vanrober]

He kept lingon acording to pbspy. We need 11 turns to get construction unles any of the wonders we have hammerd on finishes before.
Do you think we would be able to retake that city? I asked civac to declare war to mjmd if we does it would be great eventhought its not now. We have more production than mjmd and hopefully his economy starts getting hurt qnd he needs to stop the fight. I think we wont have peace for the rest of the game. We are going to fall behind for just getting military done we couldnt get TGLH for 2 or 3 turns.

[chumchu]

I do not think we will be able to retake Lingon unless he leaves it lightly defended. Then we could burn with a horse archer.

Raspberry is definitely in a bad position after the fall of Lingon as it is located away from the capitol to the southwest. It might be indefensible at some point. But it is on a hill and he lacks catapults so he will have a hard time to crack it. That should at least give the other cities some time to build defenses. We can not finish TGLH here unless we are sure to hold the city as we do not want to give mjmd the one thing he needs most.

The main problem for us is the AGG praets. MJMD:s Genghis of Rome choice was great here on this very close map. Until we get catapults they are very hard to beat in the field on offense. Especially if he gets shock on them. That means that it is hard for us to force him into peace.

[vanrober]

I totally agree with you. The thing is can we let him get raspberry? Im not sure how to hold that. We have 2 axes and an archer 3 tiles far from it. If we reinforce with that he will need the double of units but then we would be kind of done in the capitol. I really have no idea how to play this war :S

The 5hing is that this game was said to be a bit bigger than pb54 and its true but the land we have left to settle is almost bare land and really far. So the distances between civs are closer eventhough there is more land. Also we were a bit unlucky to have agr rome right there. But hey someone had to face them.

I totally wont do the great light house. I am just praying anyone to end it now so we get 3 turns before construction.

I just will make archers on raspberry. He will lose time in this war and hopefully civac then east him. He are ahead on prod than him too.

Btw he might think its hard too since he is spending more than 2 hours online to play his turns.

[vanrober]

I ve totally missplayed. He took the city without losing any praet, 31% odds. Even lucky. 

   

Whatever that was not the problem, the problem is that i thought i would have stone, but he sitted there and then i losed the 1 turn dun i had on the capitol because the other one is on a trade with amica. That means 1 less unit on the capitol, he also have 1 praet more so im fucked. I think we lost the capitol too. Im not sure if we shoudl end or not that dun or what. Anyway, this game is lost. I dont see any way of not dieing now here. I should have cancel the treat with amica or ask for stone to anybody else. 

   

So basically i should ahve whiped harder to make more axes and seem less likely to mjmd's eyes, but ofcourse that would mean we couldnt get the scientist nor the wonders and no proyection for the future, so i decided to risk this into the no agression we had. But it seems mjmd had another plans. Totally my fault though. I loved to play this game, sharing it with you, chumchu has been so great, i ve learnt so much with you and im ready for keep learning on this wonderfull game. Im pretty sad, i thought i had some chances, but lifes go on! GG mates (if anyone can read until this point). I thought not to play the big PB because i have been spending so much time in the micro of this game that i felt unable to hold 2 games, but im not playing until that game happens so maybe i try to play it.

The major mistake has been not noticing well the number of units he had. I thought he would have a total of 10 instead of 15 praets +6axes.

[chumchu]

Well. You can not do anything about bad luck. It was wise not to stay on the stone hill. Those units are needed in the capital where they have better odds on the defense.

My guess is that mjmd might be thinking that we were a bigger threat than Cairo as we have mostly eliminated Ruff which gives us more cities than him. I don't know if granting him open borders or building a few more axes would have changed anything. Tere was a short window to attack him before iron working but I do not think it we could have taken more than his border cities. But with a hostile Ruff in the back that would have been a foolish move.

It seems clear that he aims for our capital so lets try our hardest to keep it. I would emergency whip an axe in capital first. The Dun gives 10% more defense. That bonus becomes worth it when we have around 10 units unless we are exactly at the threshold for 5 or 6 hits.

[vanrober]

Well. You can not do anything about bad luck. It was wise not to stay on the stone hill. Those units are needed in the capital where they have better odds on the defense.

My guess is that mjmd might be thinking that we were a bigger threat than Cairo as we have mostly eliminated Ruff which gives us more cities than him. I don't know if granting him open borders or building a few more axes would have changed anything. Tere was a short window to attack him before iron working but I do not think it we could have taken more than his border cities. But with a hostile Ruff in the back that would have been a foolish move.

It seems clear that he aims for our capital so lets try our hardest to keep it. I would emergency whip an axe in capital first. The Dun gives 10% more defense. That bonus becomes worth it when we have around 10 units unless we are exactly at the threshold for 5 or 6 hits.

I have prebuilded an axe its 1 turn without whip. Thats what i regret, to stop the axe into a dun that never happened because of the simultaneus turns. It was totally my bad. But thats losing 1 axe for no reason.

I agree we had not much to do if he wanted he could take us. Im not mad, just sad because this could have been a nice game. I think i played great (only because of your advices). I was really mad at the begining with both hostile neighbours and you jsut guided my sooooo good. Really, thanks.

MAybe a way to delay this final was to war peace him so he could freely to kill cairo. But again that would mean rome with 20 cities and full promoted praets going afterwards vs us. If we could get in those 10 turns xbows or cats maybe would be a better choice. But we didnt think this would happen anyway.

[vanrober]

He has much more forces of what i thought from begining. Raspberry will fall this turn. Im thinking on moving all to the capitol to get stronger there. but sooner rather than later we are killed no matter what.

I ve been thinking much about the mistakes i could have done and thinking on the alternatives. For learning purposes, not complaining.

We could have tried to make a huge investment on axes so he coundt kill us. But then we would have needed to make use of those axes and try to backstab him when he tried to go for cairo. The main issue with that is that then we would have had a huge target on our head. And we would have die either way. Maybe later but either way.

So maybe we should have just tried to axe fight him when he took port of our cake. But that would have drown us in a perpetual double front fight with 0 economy. They either but... I dont know. I feel we couldnt make it better. We needed to trust mjmd and then with xbows we might be able to stop him. Just maybe he realized of this and then he hitted us.

Settled on spot the last city, i didnt even bother on changing his name, im making just axes with the chops, i dont want to let him any unchopped forest if possible. Lets try to hold here.

Some screenshots of the battlefield. Please tech me how to defend in MP

       

I put all cities to axes, almost. I did things after this screenshots. This just show where the units are
s units are.

[chumchu]

I'm not sure I have much more advice to give about this situation than "try to avoid getting into it". That was not entirely within your control this game though.

The usual defense playbook does not really apply here for a number of reasons.

Defender's advantages:
1) Tile defense. Difficult terrain and cities gives a lot of extra defense that makes attacking hard.
2) Movement. You can use roads to move twice as fast (or more) to concentrate your forces on one point
3) Vision. You can see what the attacker has in your land and where to build the counters and move them to the right places.

Attacker can counter these
1) By avoiding the hard targets and going for soft spots. Or use siege units
2) Threaten more cities so the defender can not concentrate efficiently
3) Attack from out of the fog or achieve surprise in other ways.

We get good use of our first advantage in this scenario with our cheap duns protecting our cities. If we were another civ/leader it would be even worse. Mjmd did very well to stop 2 of our border cities from being on hills though as that would give our archers 70% extra defense.

Our second advantage is hard to use in this situation. We would have needed a tighter placement of cities and better roads to really use it. The optimum is to have a small number of cities, close enough that a reserve of defense units that can go to two or more cities on 1 turn depending on which city he threatens. For instance, Lingonberry could have coordinated defense with raspberry if it was on the hill south of the wine. However that was not an option here. The only unit we have that is fast enough is our horse archers but he eats those with CR preatorians. We have no counter to preatorians and he knows it which means he is free to split up to target all our front cities. We need fortification on our defenders to stop him from getting 65% odds to take out our top defenders so a mobile defense does not really work here.

The other part of the movement advantage is being able to take out smaller stacks. We have to have a big numbers advantage to do that here something like 2-3 axes/horsemen for every praet he has. That can also be solved with lots of catapults but mjmd timed the attack very well. Construction is the only way we can beat this as faster movement + catapults lets us concentrate attackers and take out mjmd's stacks albeit with significant losses.

Vision advantage was negated by him surprising us. We could also not use that efficiently unless we have a way to counterattack. If we get to catapults we can use to choose how many horse archers/axes we build depending on what units he has and how he promotes them. Axes are better unless he promotes shock a lot at which point horsemen are better.
We should probably have built/moved more axes to the border cities. With fortification they can get odds on defense and would have made it more costly for him. We could have teched construction before currency but that would have been economic suicide.

As I see it we need to stall for time to get to catapults. The best way is to get as many units into cities where they have odds on the defense as possible so that he has to take losses and damage when taking our cities. With a larger empire you could try to trade space for time. We have no space to trade here as he is on our capitol right now. We also do not gain much by retreating units. Our one strength is our tile defense so our units should be in cities he threaten if they can get positive odds. As he does not have catapults he can not clean them up efficiently in those places.

The situation:
You should sim out the battle in raspberry using vodka to see if there is any chance at all to hold it. If not, leave the defense units that get good trades and retreat with the rest. My guess without simulating the battle would be to retreat the horse archers to the capitol but leave the rest.

Capitol. I do not see the stack there. Can we hold it? can we do anything if he goes for pomegranate instead? I think he will cut the road on the deer to prevent us from attacking his stack outside of pomegrante with one movers. As we do not have construction we will only have horse to attack with plus any 1-movers in pomegranate.

I would consider building wealth in cloudberry and getting units in blueberry/whipping the worker into units.

[vanrober]

I'm not sure I have much more advice to give about this situation than "try to avoid getting into it". That was not entirely within your control this game though.

The usual defense playbook does not really apply here for a number of reasons.

Defender's advantages:
1) Tile defense. Difficult terrain and cities gives a lot of extra defense that makes attacking hard.
2) Movement. You can use roads to move twice as fast (or more) to concentrate your forces on one point
3) Vision. You can see what the attacker has in your land and where to build the counters and move them to the right places.

Attacker can counter these
1) By avoiding the hard targets and going for soft spots. Or use siege units
2) Threaten more cities so the defender can not concentrate efficiently
3) Attack from out of the fog or achieve surprise in other ways.

We get good use of our first advantage in this scenario with our cheap duns protecting our cities. If we were another civ/leader it would be even worse. Mjmd did very well to stop 2 of our border cities from being on hills though as that would give our archers 70% extra defense.

Our second advantage is hard to use in this situation. We would have needed a tighter placement of cities and better roads to really use it. The optimum is to have a small number of cities, close enough that a reserve of defense units that can go to two or more cities on 1 turn depending on which city he threatens. For instance, Lingonberry could have coordinated defense with raspberry if it was on the hill south of the wine. However that was not an option here. The only unit we have that is fast enough is our horse archers but he eats those with CR preatorians. We have no counter to preatorians and he knows it which means he is free to split up to target all our front cities. We need fortification on our defenders to stop him from getting 65% odds to take out our top defenders so a mobile defense does not really work here.

The other part of the movement advantage is being able to take out smaller stacks. We have to have a big numbers advantage to do that here something like 2-3 axes/horsemen for every praet he has. That can also be solved with lots of catapults but mjmd timed the attack very well. Construction is the only way we can beat this as faster movement + catapults lets us concentrate attackers and take out mjmd's stacks albeit with significant losses.

Vision advantage was negated by him surprising us.  We could also not use that efficiently unless we have a way to counterattack. If we get to catapults we can use to choose how many horse archers/axes we build depending on what units he has and how he promotes them. Axes are better unless he promotes shock a lot at which point horsemen are better.
We should probably have built/moved more axes to the border cities. With fortification they can get odds on defense and would have made it more costly for him. We could have teched construction before currency but that would have been economic suicide.

As I see it we need to stall for time to get to catapults. The best way is to get as many units into cities where they have odds on the defense as possible so that he has to take losses and damage when taking our cities. With a larger empire you could try to trade space for time. We have no space to trade here as he is on our capitol right now. We also do not gain much by retreating units. Our one strength is our tile defense so our units should  be in cities he threaten if they can get positive odds. As he does not have catapults he can not clean them up efficiently in those places.

The situation:
You should sim out the battle in raspberry using vodka to see if there is any chance at all to hold it. If not, leave the defense units that get good trades and retreat with the rest. My guess without simulating the battle would be to retreat the horse archers to the capitol but leave the rest.

Capitol. I do not see the stack there. Can we hold it? can we do anything if he goes for pomegranate instead? I think he will cut the road on the deer to prevent us from attacking his stack outside of pomegrante with one movers. As we do not have construction we will only have horse to attack with plus any 1-movers in pomegranate.

I would consider building wealth in cloudberry and getting units in blueberry/whipping the worker into units.

Thanks for the reply. I didnt put the stack of the capitol because its what we already knew, 4 axes 5 praets. Capitol holds for little. The 5 praets "should" die since got 25sh odds. And the axes dies into HA too so we have exactly the numbers to hold 1vs1 he should win all 26% fights which seems unlikely.

I simed on vodka and i think we lose raspberry and Lemon. We are not getting into cats i think. Thats why i thought to make a huge stack on the capitol so he needs time to take it down. But we have not much to do with the rest. Pome has just 4 axes not really fortified. so if he moves all we lose that city for sure.

I feel we cannot defend anyhow. Thats why i wanted your advices. He has much more numbers than i thought. He has 20 praets and 8 or 10 axes. He just doubles the numbers of our defenders and those have 8strength so we have no counter.