[PB56] NobleHelium Tells It Like It Is

[NobleHelium]

Yes, that is the culture jump that I mentioned earlier.

[NobleHelium]

The following turn Gira punished us a bit for moving in on Adrianople by killing our units with some better promoted than expected keshiks, but we did retaliate and kill a damaged keshik in return.  I think we lost like two horse archers, a chariot and two axes for two keshiks or something like that.  Not a big deal.




It was at this point that Laz started giving almost all of his economic output to Amica in the form of 20 gpt.  He is still doing that 25 turns later.  We grabbed the Music Artist and headed to Guilds in preparation for the next phase of military activities.



You can see the power graph drops here.  vanrober is about to be eliminated.  A while ago civac finally broke through against Cairo and took every city except his island, and then they signed peace on t130.  Cairo was apparently uninterested in punishing his conqueror with war weariness, of which civac had a lot, but not as much as Mjmd who got up to almost 600 WW against vanrober at the end.




I kept waiting for Gira to do something since he would not agree to peace, but he really didn't do anything.  He did keep building units at a moderate pace, mainly a mix of keshiks, war elephants and catapults.  If he thought he would annoy me with this state of war, it doesn't really bother me at all and I'm not going to change any of my major decisions just because you won't agree to peace without doing anything.  Perhaps he thought he was hurting us with the war weariness but that wasn't really happening either.




We kept our eyes on Amica the entire time but he was mostly covering his workers on the border and not doing much.  We teched Optics to build a caravel to uncover the few remaining degrees of latitude for circumnavigation, essentially giving us a copy of GLH.

Let's catch up on the event log.  This will be a long one.  Remember to read from left to right, bottom to the top.



You will notice some evidence of doctoring in the image because I removed some of the unimportant entries when it was convenient. Let's hit the major notes.

1) We started spreading Confucianism in some of our cities when we could afford to build missionaries.
2) Previously described war events related to Laz happened.
3) I killed civac's scouting chariot in retaliation for his killing ours earlier.
4) We had our Golden Age and civic swap.
5) Lots of Great Generals were born, at least one of which was for vanrober, Mjmd, and Amicalola.
6) Mjmd built the Hanging Gardens.
7) civac and Cairo made peace and we built Colossus.
8) We had four border pops on the same turn which was cool.
9) civac also had a Golden Age and associated civic swaps.  The foreign Merchant must have been his, the Scientist may have been his or Gira's.
10) Gira immediately signed peace with Laz when we destroyed his stack and Laz promptly gave him OB again.
11) We birthed a Scientist and Merchant during our GA to go with the Music Artist.
12) We swapped back to Slavery at the end of our GA.
13) vanrober's elimination culminated in the death of three GGs. At least one was vanrober's and at least one was Mjmd's.
14) Mjmd also launched a Golden Age.

About Mjmd and civac's wars - civac was limp teching (via specialists) for like 20 turns while he was at war with Cairo and Mjmd was basically not teching at all for over 30 turns while he was completely ruined by his war against vanrober, even with Amica donating at least one luxury to him at all times.  Keep this in mind for later.




We are building the Great Wall in earnest at Grapeshot.




After our GA ended, we whipped a round of knights in a number of cities which quickly got us up to about a dozen of them. At this point I deemed the situation stable enough to pause unit production in order to build the Heroic Epic in Thoughtseize. Cultural encroachment from both sides gradually renders Flusterstorm into a nonentity. Lazteuq has built Moai in Trebizond (his island city) which contributes to this problem.



Demos for t143.

[NobleHelium]

I knew that Trebizond would soon pop third ring due to the Palace + Moai culture (~17t), which would all but choke Flusterstorm into uselessness.  Angora had way too many units to try to take, so that was going to be a total nonstarter for a while.  Because we now had caravels available making it substantially easier to dominate the sea and thus land knights to attack the city, it made all the more sense to launch our next offensive there.




We loaded up here but I actually waited a few turns more before landing the units because we wanted to wait for a second galley to be built first.  Landing earlier could cause Laz to whip longbows more heavily and make our attack harder.  Laz's triremes actually retreated the very next turn after moving out, since we had moved up our caravel just this turn to cover the trireme and galley.




The turn after we landed knights, t150, is when we noticed civac's elephants and catapult in Turfan.  His sentry chariot had taken up residence there several turns previously.  So we cancelled the Trebizond assault and withdrew our units for defense.




As mentioned, we birthed a Merchant in our first Golden Age and I blundered by not bulbing Banking on the last turn before swapping back to Slavery, because it would allow us to adopt Mercantilism as well.  Given that, I decided to build a caravel to run a trade mission to Cairo's remaining city, which is an island.




1700g is a lot.  I don't think I've done that before.  Probably still not as good as getting Mercantilism much earlier because that would've given us some number of hammers from engineers, but I'm not sure.

You'll also notice Cairo has a lot of units left over from his abandoning the mainland, and note also the highly predictable Astronomy "goodie" islands.  More on those later.

As you can see, we're also teching Nationalism, sped up a turn by the trade mission.  Previously civac had researched Philosophy and it looked like he was aiming for the tech, but then he detoured and got some cheaper techs such as Metal Casting so I wasn't sure if he was going for it (Philosophy also gave him a religion in Taoism) and I went for Optics first.  I launched a second Golden Age and timed it so that we could do the Taj Mahal in 9 turns within, and we beat civac to the tech certainly, but he researched it a few turns later during a second Golden Age of his own.  He also did some pretty incredible stuff such as moving his capital to his Pyramids city as well as previously building a forge there (hence the Metal Casting tech), and also intentionally delaying the adoption of Bureaucracy to maximize his overflow.  And indeed he beat us to the wonder by 3 turns with a 5-pop whip (12->7).  Very well played by civac. That truly sucks for us, but not the end of the world.

The next turn we started drafting in earnest, and we also found Amica's impending attack so I made the highly unusual move (for me) of spending gold to upgrade units.  We spent ~700g upgrading some ancient units to an assortment of maces, pikes, and CKNs.  Upgrading archers to CKNs is interesting because it turns a highly defensive unit into an offensive unit, but the cost is steep at 125g.  So about 40% of the trade mission value went into that, but I deemed it necessary and we did it and as you already know, Amica was not able to attack successfully.

So we deflected the dogpile at a very significant cost to our empire (we whipped a lot as well as previously mentioned).  The next few turns civac did some moseying with his elephants in the south and looked like he was threatening Standstill and/or Flusterstorm, but he never attacked.  Perhaps he was waiting for his allies to make a move or show some inclination to do so, but they didn't do anything.  I actually previously gave up on Flusterstorm and left it with only three ancient-era defenders - assuming that Laz or Gira would take it - but that didn't happen and it soon made sense to defend the city again.  On t156 as previously mentioned a key tile flipped and we were able to attack Laz's stack.  This stack is the majority of the defenders that were in Angora, and they were moved out when civac's elephants appeared.




I neglected to take a picture before attacking so you'll have to content yourself with this one which was taken after we had already sent in some CKNs.  The attacking units are either in Impulse, north of Impulse, or the knights north of Explore.

C1 Cho-Ko-Nu vs D2 25% Fortify Longbowman @ 3.7%: LOSS, down to 70 HP (5 collateral hits)
C1 Cho-Ko-Nu vs G1 D1 25% Fortify Longbowman @ 3.6%: LOSS, no damage (5 collateral hits)
C1 Cho-Ko-Nu vs G1 D1 25% Fortify Longbowman @ 3.6%: LOSS, down to 70 HP (5 collateral hits)
C1 Cho-Ko-Nu vs G1 D1 25% Fortify Longbowman @ 3.6%: LOSS, down to 55 HP (5 collateral hits)
B1 Catapult vs G1 D1 25% Fortify 93 HP Longbowman @ 1.5%: LOSS, down to 80 HP (6 collateral hits)
C1 Knight vs G1 D1 25% Fortify 80 HP Longbowman @ 82.0%: WIN, down to 43 HP
C1 Knight vs G1 D1 15% Fortify 76 HP Longbowman @ 84.0%: WIN, down to 81 HP
Catapult vs D2 25% Fortify 90 HP Longbowman @ 4.9%: LOSS, down to 26 HP (4? collateral hits)
C1 Knight vs D1 25% Fortify 76 HP Longbowman @ 89.4%: WIN, down to 49 HP
Catapult vs D2 25% Fortify 70 HP Longbowman @ 25.9%: LOSS, down to 40 HP (3? collateral hits)
Knight vs 25% Fortify 93 HP Swordsman @ 86.3%: WIN, down to 64 HP
C1 Knight vs 25% Fortify 90 HP Swordsman @ 89.6%: WIN, down to 15 HP
Knight vs G1 D1 25% Fortify 61 HP Longbowman @ 88.2%: WIN, down to 81 HP
C1 Cho-Ko-Nu vs G1 D1 25% Fortify 55 HP Longbowman @ 68.5%: WIN, down to 54 HP (2? collateral hits)
C1 Cho-Ko-Nu vs D2 25% Fortify 40 HP Longbowman @ 90.0%: WIN, down to 54 HP (1 collateral hit)
C1 Cho-Ko-Nu vs 25% Fortify 71 HP Swordsman @ 95.8%: WIN, down to 83 HP
Musketman vs 25% Fortify Axeman @ 99.5%: WIN, no damage
Maceman vs D2 25% Fortify 26 HP Longbowman @ 99.5%: WIN, no damage
Maceman vs C1 65 HP Spearman @ 99.9%: WIN, no damage
Maceman vs C1 52 HP Spearman @ > 99.9%: WIN, down to 74 HP
Maceman vs 65 HP Spearman @ > 99.9%: WIN, down to 76 HP

Originally we were planning to leave Gira's scout there so that we wouldn't have any units stranded on the tile, then we realized we couldn't cover the knights against the BEs so we had to take the hill and the adjacent tile.

Longbowman vs 50 HP Scout @ > 99.9%: WIN, down to 91 HP

Then I realized the bug that should be fixed but had not been tested in a real game, yadda yadda, we blocked and civac didn't attack.  He withdrew his elephants 2SW and moved back into Turfan after that.  Then he agreed to the treaty and moved the elephants out of our vision.  Gira continued to do mostly nothing through all of this.

On our way to Printing Press we picked up Paper and we were able to get Cairo's map in exchange for our spare luxuries.  And so I present to you the map of the world!




Not my best stitch ever, and I somehow managed to miss Amica's size 17 Moai city which is obviously very important.  Also, there is another Astronomy "goodie" island at the toroidal pole opposite the ones in the center, which I will also talk about later.



Demos for t159.  This is near the tail end of our second Golden Age.  We recently swapped to Vassalage, Serfdom, Mercantilism, and Confucianism.  Our adoption of Hinduism was only temporary as we waited to spread enough of our own religion for it to be better.

Serfdom now gives +1h to windmills and watermills.  It also gives +1c to farms.  A Serfdom windmill with Replaceable Parts is strictly better than a mine (pre-Railroad), providing 1f1c more with the same hammers.  Amica actually adopted Serfdom in his Golden Age a while ago, but he does not have Replaceable Parts.  Along with the windmills he has been building a LOT of watermills, which is why (along with AP hammers) he has a monstrous MFG number.

[Lewwyn]

You've got numerous caravels then? Plans for Galleons? And the astro islands? That you will talk about later? 

[NobleHelium]

I do talk about the things that I say I'll talk about later! Don't act like those are empty promises.

What qualifies as "numerous" caravels? Why would I need huge numbers of caravels?!

[novice]

This thread's storytelling has Tarantinolike quality and chronology.

[NobleHelium]

I'll take that as a compliment, novice.

On t159, previously shown on the stitch, we moved in on Angora.  This was three turns after we took out Laz's stack so that we could heal up and more importantly get our spy in position to check for possible counterattacking stacks after we assault the city.  I was fully expecting Gira's refusal to accept peace to mean that he was setting up to hurt us in the same manner that we destroyed his stack.  But our spy did not reveal enough units for us to be concerned given our numbers (no cats were in range) and technological superiority, and as I previously said he didn't do anything in response to us moving in, so the attack was a go.




We have the 1-movers next to the city and the knights a bit further back in the fog.  We also took advantage of the fact that Flusterstorm was enveloped with foreign culture and thus had no trade routes (and therefore resources) to build three warriors for MP.




Laz had doubled his longbow count from his garrison's greatly diminished state, but it certainly wasn't enough.

C2 Cho-Ko-Nu vs CG2 D1 25% Fortify Longbowman @ 0.1%: LOSS, down to 76 HP (5 collateral hits)
C1 Cho-Ko-Nu vs CG2 D1 25% Fortify Longbowman @ < 0.1%: LOSS, down to 88 HP (5 collateral hits)
C1 Cho-Ko-Nu vs CG2 D1 25% Fortify 93 HP Longbowman @ 0.2%: LOSS, down to 57 HP (5 collateral hits)
C1 Cho-Ko-Nu vs CG2 D1 25% Fortify 93 HP Longbowman @ 0.2%: LOSS, no damage (4 collateral hits)
C1 Cho-Ko-Nu vs CG2 D1 25% Fortify 93 HP Longbowman @ 0.2%: LOSS, down to 57 HP (4 collateral hits)
Cho-Ko-Nu vs CG2 D1 15% Fortify 89 HP Longbowman @ 1.1%: LOSS, down to 55 HP (4 collateral hits)
C1 Cho-Ko-Nu vs CG2 D1 25% Fortify 71 HP Longbowman @ 4.6%: WIN, down to 30 HP (2 collateral hits)
Catapult vs CG2 D1 25% Fortify 71 HP Longbowman @ 0.7%: LOSS, down to 49 HP (5 collateral hits)
C3 Knight vs CG2 D1 10% Fortify 62 HP Longbowman @ 71.8%: LOSS, down to 26 HP
C3 Knight vs CG2 D1 25% Fortify 62 HP Longbowman @ 72.6%: WIN, down to 58 HP
C2 Knight vs CG2 D1 25% Fortify 57 HP Longbowman @ 68.8%: WIN, down to 56 HP
C2 Knight vs CG2 D1 25% Fortify 55 HP Longbowman @ 70.4%: WIN, down to 78 HP
C2 Knight vs CG1 D1 Shock 63 HP Longbowman @ 72.2%: WIN, down to 20 HP
C2 Knight vs CG2 D1 15% Fortify 55 HP Longbowman @ 72.8%: WIN, down to 79 HP
C1 Knight vs CG2 D1 25% Fortify 49 HP Longbowman @ 83.4%: WIN, down to 34 HP
C2 Knight vs 25% Fortify 70 HP Swordsman @ 90.2%: WIN, down to 83 HP
C2 Knight vs CG1 D1 70 HP Archer @ 98.7%: WIN, down to 68 HP
Musketman vs CG2 D1 10% Fortify 26 HP Longbowman @ 96.6: WIN, down to 78 HP




We razed the city because it was up against Gira's culture and largely of no value in its current state.  If we can raze Iconium in the future we can plant a new city 2S of Angora, which overlaps the corn at Flusterstorm which is better than overlapping the pig at Impulse because Flusterstorm has two other food.  Iconium is in a truly awful spot with no food in range so there is no loss there.

I was planning to cover the razing musket then I realized a whopping 13 cats were in range of that tile and it wasn't worth it.  So we left it to die (and thus should have captured with a crappier unit).  But Gira did not attack it the next turn so we got ourselves a C1 musket for future use.  We immediately set about starting a plantation on one of the dyes so that we can get the needed happiness.



Let's talk about techs.  We researched Alphabet for Printing Press (and spies) and could see everyone's techs for several turns now.  Typically I do this check immediately upon getting Alphabet, but I was slacking and hadn't done it until now.  This picture is from t161.

Giraflorens
We have: Monotheism, Alphabet, Code of Laws, Compass, Banking, Civil Service, Guilds, Music, Optics, Paper, Philosophy, Gunpowder, Nationalism, Printing Press, Replaceable Parts
Net: +19434 beakers

Amicalola
We have: Alphabet, Code of Laws, Literature, Civil Service, Music, Philosophy, Gunpowder, Printing Press, Replaceable Parts
He has: Theology
Net: +14350 beakers

Mjmd
We have: Archery, Aesthetics, Alphabet, Calendar, Code of Laws, Drama, Horseback Riding, Literature, Banking, Civil Service, Engineering, Feudalism, Guilds, Music, Paper, Philosophy, Gunpowder, Nationalism, Printing Press, Replaceable Parts
Net: +22956 beakers

civac
We have: Priesthood, Compass, Drama, Monarchy, Banking, Engineering, Feudalism, Guilds, Music, Optics, Paper, Gunpowder, Printing Press, Replaceable Parts
Net: +16831 beakers

So remember how civac was teching very slowly during his war?  And Mjmd was teching not at all.  Many turns later this is the result from that. Also interesting is Mjmd's decision to tech Optics (to get circumnavigation) when there are so many other very useful things he could be getting. His economy is not awful now (relative to before - it is still only a fraction of Amica's and our research rate) but perhaps he considers it to be the best value there.



Let's look at wonders.  This is from t159 and we are just finishing up the National Epic. BUG tells you the national wonder completion dates, which is rather dubious because for example we did not have vision over Amica's Moai city until very recently.  It is theoretically possible for me to have done super high level C&D and deduced that he had built a national wonder on the turn that he built it, but it would be extremely hard to do in a big game like this one.  In any case, there are some interesting bits here.

1) Amica built Moai two turns after us, which is very surprising because I thought we had finished it much earlier than everyone else.  We can't see civac's island so we don't know when he built his.
2) Gira built the HE quite a few turns before us. Nobody else has built it, which is pretty good to know.
3) Gira also built the Great Library in his capital which I hadn't mentioned previously. I knew he was building it because he built it in his previous game (PB54) at a very slow pace that was something like 20 turns. He did something very similarly here, but I think it may have only taken 15 turns. I thought about competing for it but Scientific Method is really not that far away. Besides, Grapeshot (our NE city and AT's former capital) has many other things to do, such as actually building the National Epic!
4) Mjmd built Moai after Laz, which is pretty funny.
5) civac moved his capital as you know. The other two moved Palaces are from the loss of the original capital.






Demos for t162.

[superdeath]

Whats the path to victory from here?

[NobleHelium]

With Angora out of the way the logical next step was to finish off Laz by taking Trebizond.  And so we repeated our earlier operation of landing knights over multiple turns using two galleys, this time without pressing abort.




Laz continued to build triremes to the very end, which was a truly bizarre decision because they accomplished effectively nothing.  We already have six knights on the island and coupled with four knights from the boats would be more than sufficient to take the city defended by three longbows and an unused GG.  Not to mention that those triremes aren't stopping us from landing another four knights this turn if we wanted anyway.




C2 Knight vs CG2 D1 25% Fortify Longbowman @ 10.6%: LOSS, down to 84 HP
C3 Knight vs CG2 D1 25% Fortify Longbowman @ 20.9%: WIN, down to 8 HP
C2 Knight vs CG1 D1 Cover 25% Fortify Longbowman @ 21.3%: WIN, down to 8 HP
C2 Caravel vs Trireme @ 95.9%: WIN, down to 85 HP
C1 Caravel vs Trireme @ 90.1%: WIN, down to 52 HP
Caravel vs Trireme @ 79.3%: WIN, down to 66 HP
C2 Knight vs CG2 D1 25% Fortify 84 HP Longbowman @ 37.2%: LOSS, down to 50 HP
C1 Knight vs CG2 D1 25% Fortify 50 HP Longbowman @ 85.3%: WIN, down to 79 HP

The city retains a granary, lighthouse and forge which is awesome since those are the three best buildings in that order.




Our treaty with Amica is expiring very soon, so we need to make sure we have units in position to defend again.  Our northern spy found most of his units which in fact had not gone west to attack Mjmd but merely moved one tile back from the border.  One of our caravels also scouted his northern border city with Mjmd which has only one axe in it for defense.






Demos for t163.

[NobleHelium]

While we were finishing off Laz, Amica used the treaty to build (discounted) stock exchanges basically everywhere, and maybe finish some monk buildings in cities that hadn't gotten them yet.  This rocketed his gpt up to almost 600 which was a huge cause for concern because it meant that his tech speed may be the same as or surpassing ours.  And that's not something we should tolerate if we can do something about it.




The efforts in our millennia-long culture war have had recent results and we flipped a tile next to Elderflower.  On the last turn of the treaty we packed Remand with 1-movers threatening to attack Elderflower with collateral damage.




But that is just a diversion! (Although it is still a legitimate threat.) The main event is further south aimed at Basil, Amica's holy city.  During our first Golden Age way back when I made sure that we pumped enough culture into the tile 2SE of the city to take and hold it long term, and thus this is borne of another long term win in our culture war.

People here seem to favor 2-mover raids over actual armies.

If you take away the 1-movers, is this not a real army?  Come on bro.

I actually screwed up here and forgot that units need some movement left to upgrade.  The plan was to upgrade ten knights right after researching Military Tradition but I only left seven knights in range to get to the staging tile with movement remaining, so seven knight upgrades to cuirassiers it was.  We actually lost some experience upgrading because most of the knights were above ten experience.  Amica has built a castle in Basil (as well as Elderflower) so the cuirassier upgrades are key.

And then we wait for the turn roll...




We opened the turn to a ludicrous number of units in Elderflower.  Although maybe not actually that ludicrous because we have an equally large stack attacking Basil.  In any case, it's clear that our diversion has had its desired effect and Amica was able to see our units in Remand using a sentry and defended appropriately. We could certainly have a bunch of 2-movers behind Remand in range to strike, so this response is entirely reasonable. Imagine if we had 40 mounted units behind Remand instead of southeast of Basil.

Basil is also heavily defended, although less so.  I must say this is a stauncher defense than I was expecting.  Amica spent ~800g upgrading units from what I can tell, spears to pikes and archers to longbows.  It's an open question whether our diversion was actually optimal - perhaps if we hadn't moved into Remand he wouldn't have been wary of an attack at all?  Hard to say, although he has a sentry in Gira's lands in the south and he did see some of our units (knights in particular) heading north in recent turns.  In any case, simulations showed that we were still very likely to win and this is arguably our biggest play of the game and we didn't come here to not make it.

C3 Cuirassier vs C2 25% Fortify Pikeman @ 28.5%: LOSS, down to 64 HP
C3 Cuirassier vs C2 20% Fortify Pikeman @ 29.4%: LOSS, down to 28 HP
C3 Cuirassier vs C1 25% Fortify Pikeman @ 30.3%: LOSS, down to 28 HP
C3 Cuirassier vs C1 25% Fortify Pikeman @ 30.3%: LOSS, down to 46 HP
C2 Shock Cuirassier vs C2 Pikeman @ 34.1%: WIN, down to 60 HP
C2 Shock Cuirassier vs C1 Pikeman @ 36.5%: LOSS, down to 24 HP
C2 Shock Cuirassier vs C1 Pikeman @ 36.5%: LOSS, down to 43 HP
C2 Cuirassier vs C1 Pikeman @ 32.9%: LOSS, down to 81 HP

And we're out of cuirassiers.  Certainly I regret not being able to upgrade three more knights.   Results were obviously not good here compared to average, and cuirassiers have a chance to withdraw as well.

C2 Knight vs C1 81 HP Pikeman @ 38.3%: WIN, down to 54 HP
C3 Knight vs Longbowman @ 35.5%: LOSS, down to 24 HP
C1 Knight vs Longbowman @ 25.9%: LOSS, down to 46 HP
C1 Knight vs Longbowman @ 25.9%: LOSS, down to 46 HP
C2 Knight vs C2 25% Fortify 64 HP Pikeman @ 62.6%: WIN, down to 12 HP
C2 Knight vs 25% Fortify Axeman @ 63.8%: WIN, down to 24 HP
C3 Knight vs 25% Fortify Axeman @ 71.0%: WIN, down to 10 HP
C1 Knight vs War Elephant @ 65.2%: LOSS, no damage
C1 Knight vs War Elephant @ 65.2%: WIN, down to 81 HP
C1 Knight vs War Elephant @ 65.2%: LOSS, down to 40 HP
C1 Knight vs War Elephant @ 65.2%: LOSS, down to 60 HP
Knight vs Knight @ 50.0%: LOSS, down to 40 HP
Knight vs C1 25% Fortify 46 HP Pikeman @ 80.5%: LOSS, down to 14 HP

We definitely got unlucky in this stretch but I also screwed up the attack order because I forgot some of the modifiers.  We probably shouldn't have had to take the 50/50 for example and the longbow fights could have been better as well.

Knight vs C1 43 HP Pikeman @ 85.5%: WIN, down to 31 HP
Knight vs 60 HP War Elephant @ 95.8%: WIN, no damage
C2 Horse Archer vs 46 HP Longbowman @ 83.0%: WIN, down to 31 HP
C2 Horse Archer vs 46 HP Longbowman @ 83.0%: WIN, down to 31 HP
C1 Horse Archer vs Horse Archer @ 68.1%: WIN, down to 43 HP
C1 Horse Archer vs C2 20% Fortify 28 HP Pikeman @ 85.5%: WIN, no damage
C1 Horse Archer vs C1 25% Fortify 28 HP Pikeman @ 86.0%: WIN, down to 46 HP
Horse Archer vs C1 24 HP Pikeman @ 89.1%: WIN, down to 73 HP
C2 Formation Horse Archer vs 40 HP War Elephant @ 99.4%: WIN, no damage
Horse Archer vs 40 HP Knight @ 90.4%: LOSS, down to 4 HP
Horse Archer vs 24 HP Longbowman @ 97.8%: WIN, no damage
Horse Archer vs 25% Fortify 14 HP Pikeman @ 99.0%: WIN, down to 19 HP
Horse Archer vs 4 HP Knight @ > 99.9%: WIN, no damage

Two horse archers left over unused.  Whew!




48g base from the shrine. (The shrine is of course a religious building and gets monk wonder bonuses.) And poof, it's gone!  We've razed the most valuable city on the map.  We can't hold it, nor should we try.  No more shrine envy for me. Amica's gpt immediately dropped by 120 and is lower than ours again.




Let's cover our heavily damaged remaining army with the 1-movers.  That's what they're there for.




Amica has 16 catapults but only 12 hitters (horse archers) in range.  He could attack and maybe get a positive hammer trade, but I'm not so sure things would end well for him overall after that.  If we each trade down a bunch of units we'll probably end up with more remaining.  It's like playing an attrition deck in MTG.




You'll notice that we're now at peace with Gira.  I offered peace again for the eighth or so time on the previous turn, and amazingly he accepted.  That's awesome and allows us to move lots of 1-movers away from the south, but we certainly would have gone ahead with the Basil attack regardless.  No idea why he finally changed his mind.  Maybe he was just trying to distract us from finishing off Laz, maybe the various pressures I applied like tile pillaging and threatening naval action did enough work.  Maybe he got tired of Amica's apparently empty promises of attacking us. (We can see several copper for copper trades between them.) Maybe he just felt differently that day.



Demos for t166.  We are now basically caught up to the present.