Supercharrihitstouristicharryshallowdocious

[Old Harry]

At the very least it sounds like it will be interesting, and quite the golden chain.

I have a feeling that Cornflakes tried to do it in a recent game, but then events intervened. I'd like to see just how impossible it is to pull off...


Turn 99

Is Cornflakes going to declare on Gav just as TBS gets to Guilds? He's also moving a small stack from his Babylonian border to his Persian border, so this might just be real. (I'm trusting that he's happy to let us duke it out with TBS and isn't planning to burn C or J and draw our attention.)


Why does TBS taunt us so when we can't attack? Note our defensive stack of cats and welly.


Demos and power.

[Old Harry]

Turn 102




Demos and power. We'll have to keep an eye on how fast that graph goes up.

[superdeath]

Whats the plan for victory?

[Old Harry]

Whats the plan for victory?

Just keep having golden ages until the others give up? Um...

Turn 104

We've explored Cornflakes so here's a map stitch of the known world. I'd forgotten how tense a tight toroid can be.

Anyway TBS's knights can hit us, Pindi or Cornflakes over land and Cornflakes looks like the best target as both us and Pindi are pumping out war elephants and catapults. Mincemeat Pie is on flat ground and means Cornflakes' capital is next up, so that's where I'd expect to see see action. We'll get our sentry chariot down there in a few turns and see if anything is gathering down there.


At the end of turn we got the Music artist and a lucky Engineer from Digerasaurus. Plan Golden Ages Forever is go!


Demos and power. TBS has added at least 8 knights in two turns, while our power only went up 20 000. Must do better.

[Old Harry]

Turn 110

Over the last few turns Hitru and I have been arguing about whether we should attack the score leader who was first to knights by a wide margin and has 1.5 times our power. I'm sure that TBS knows how bloodthirsty we are and that we've been discussing how to remove IT Crowd for the whole of the game. Hitru thinks that he's probably just admiring himself in the mirror or something.

Anyway a couple of turns ago TBS took a lightly defended coastal city from Gavagai. I was convinced this was a cunning ploy to lure us into the trap of attacking his most vulnerable border city and having our stack destroyed by 20 knights, while Hitru saw it as the perfect opportunity for us to clatter straight into him.

This turn TBS took a second city from Gav. So is this a real war? We have a 5-point plan for figuring out if IT Crowd is a trap:

1. Check if TBS has Engineering. This workshop is only worth 1/2/0 so we don't need to worry about 6-move knights just yet.


2. Check if he's actually attacking Gav beyond that first city. The capture of Sardis and the stack of crossbows, swords and trebuchets to the south of it means he just might be. There aren't a lot of knights around here though - they could still be lying in wait just behind IT, ready to pick apart an unwary stack. The trireme moves SW and bingo! That's all his power over here. I count 16 knights on campaign with another couple in NCIS.


3. Declare and move the trireme in to check on the gems city. Oh my. This might actually be a good idea!


4. Road and move the sentry chariot in to check all the other places a stack could be. Nothing to see here...

5. Attack! We have a 4-letter plan for the attack:

5a. Move stack next to IT Crowd. I expect another longbow next turn, but with 10 cats that's not a huge worry.


5b. The 4-move galley is using ocean to stay safe. I don't want to take on the trireme stack (one is full health, the others are at 50% or lower), but it would give Gav a shot at a kill if we did. In the end I thought the intel the Trireme can gather would be more valuable than a 30% fight.


5c. Pillage some tiles with sentry chariot. Or possibly take a city. Most likely it dies to this knight next turn, but at least that distracts the knight... If he doesn't die do we pillage the horse or take Modern Family?


5d. Move artist just into range of IT Crowd.

IT Crowd popped borders to 40% last turn. It'll have put a decent amount of culture into the tiles around it over the 50 turns it's been there. The second city - Keenan and Kel - hasn't produced as much, but with Stonehenge it's made at least 50 culture, so the artist may or may not claim first-ring tiles for IT.  Which makes me think it's probably not worth trying the culture bomb. Which makes me think we should show him to TBS to make TBS think we will use a bomb and advance on us more cautiously.

We don't know how much power Pindi has, but he's promised he's attacking TBS, and this stack should at least do a small amount of damage. Should we invite CF to the dogpile?


Demos and power.

Finally, after turn roll and Paper, this is what techs everyone has. TBS doesn't have Construction (I didn't even think to check for bridges, just assumed he had it) so Engineering is some way off.

[Old Harry]

Turn 111 The battle of IT Crowd

TBS retreated a spear and a longbow, leaving just three longbows in the city. He's thinking that will make our catapults less effective on the attack.


But we've totally outwitted him here - we want to burn Kenan and Kel and to do that we need to hurry as many cats forward as possible to hit the city on t113. This masterwork of scheduling shows how long before his main knight stack can get to us (bear in mind he plays before us) and so our plan is to put whatever remains of our stack on the gems on t112. If we can burn K&K on t113 that's great - if not we should still be able to escape back into our culture by t115.

This is all assuming he doesn't have another stack of knights somewhere in the fog. But Hitru assures me that's impossible.


All of which is a long way around saying that after bombarding the culture away with 5 catapults we then only hit with one cat, before switching to axes and chariots!

- Catapult vs CG2 LB - 1%... LOSS - 1 hit
- CR1 Axe vs CG2 LB - 2%... LOSS - only 1 hit
- CR1 Axe vs CG2 LB - 2%... LOSS - 2 hits!
- Chariot vs CG1 LB - 1% (10% withdraw) ... Flawless loss
- Chariot vs CG1 LB - 1% (10% withdraw) ... LOSS - 5 hits!
- C2 Welly vs CG2 LB - 43%... LOSS - LB down to 5HP

Frustratingly I used an 8XP welly here instead of the 5XP one I intended oh, and TBS got a great general in his capital.

- Welly vs CG2 LB - 60%... LOSS - 2 hits
- C1 Chariot vs CG2 LB - 90%... WIN!!!
- C1 Chariot vs CG1 LB - 95% ... WIN!
- C1 Spear vs C2 LB - 99%... Flawless win!


192 gold isn't bad but seven units to take the city is pretty poor. At least four of them were ancient trash we won't miss...

We've done some calculations about how an artist bomb would work in IT Crowd, the upshot of which was that we wouldn't take the first-ring tiles from K&K, which is a shame because with two horse archers and 3 chariots left I'd feel confident about beating one unpromoted knight and taking the city. Instead we'll throw our 2-movers at the LB and spear because it's better to fight them out in the open than inside a city.


- C2 HA vs LB - 25% (15% withdraw)... LOSS and LB down to 49HP
- C2 HA vs spear - 25% (15% withdraw)... WINNNNNNN!!N!N!N!N!N!N!N!N! :Dancing:
- C1 chariot vs LB - 54%... WIN!

Nice to get a couple of good rolls at the end there. The victorious chariot reveals a spear and warrior pair lying in wait before we delete it. We move the remaining stack (6 wellys, 4 cats) to join the horse archer and will move them to the gems hill next turn. I'm not sure what we do if he puts a spear on the hill though. Perhaps those axes were useful after all...


Meanwhile back on the home front we started our second golden age and revolted to Organised Religion for 5 turns to spread Taoism a bit. Remind me that we need to revolt to Taoism soon Hitru. Once Taoism is in our 4 GP pump cities we'll do a burst of pacifism to get our GPs for the third golden age and to bulb Education. We need to keep an eye on the tech situation to see if anyone is racing us to Liberalism or trying to get Taj before we can.

Our Taj plan is to launch the 3-man golden age the turn before we research Nationalism then rush-build the wonder the next turn to extend the golden age to 21 turns (because the Taj golden age starts when the build queue for that city is resolved you normally get an extra turn of GA for all the cities after it in the city list, unless you're already in a golden age in which case the extra turn is just added on and applies to all the cities ).


Demos and power.

[civac2]

You are one-turning the Taj?

[Old Harry]

You are one-turning the Taj?

Well I *think* we get 700 hammers from a great engineer we've kept on ice because Diggerasaurus is a size 10 city. Am I right? 600 base hammers + 20h for every pop over 5?

Anyway our current plan is to pop the 3-man GA in 8-12 turns followed by Taj ASAP meaning we should stay golden until turn 143. What could possibly go wrong?

(Apart from TBS getting engineering next turn. Obviously.)

[Old Harry]

Turn 112

We're taking the bullet and biting a risk. Our slightly anaemic stack moves next to K&K, so we'll take a shot at the city next turn unless TBS comes up with a stack 3SE of the city or an offer we can't refuse.


This seems like a good time to talk about geopolitics.

Pindicator

Pindicator has a massive information advantage thanks to Aztec Sacrificial Altars. He essentially knows exactly what we're doing - probably down to where we're getting the next great person from. He's also the crop yield leader now and has most (all?) of the monk wonders, so his score belies the potential he's about to demonstrate. I'd put him somewhere about 20% for the win

He did declare and move units into Babylon this turn so he isn't hanging us out to dry, but now we get to play chicken about who is first to jump out of the war against the most powerful civ in the game.

Pindi's stack is pretty great as long as he doesn't come up against 20 knights. But those knights might be able to hit him t114 so if he's paying attention Pindi should burn SnS and retreat.


Cornflakes

Does Cornflakes have some kind of alliance with TBS? We've sent a bunch of diplomacy his way with no reply and he continues to give open borders to the civ with Great Lighthouse (I guess trade boycotts aren't so fashionable nowadays).

I'm pretty sure CF only signed a cease fire with Gav (after just burning one border city) so he could renew hostilities when he hits Guilds in the next five turns. He's neck and neck with Pindi on crop yield and the obvious beneficiary from our war with TBS, so I'd say has as high as 35% odds for the win here if he can roll over Gav efficiently.


TBS

Was TBS just trying to improve the clock situation by attacking Gav? Even as we applaud that intention we couldn't let him snowball away with all the Persian land on top of his own greedy (excellent) land grab. I worry that our burning IT Crowd takes the dogpile target off TBS to some extent, but hopefully the score lead will keep working it's magic on Pindi.

TBS is likely to take a pragmatic view and go back to attacking Gav if he can get peace from us, so we should try to do as much damage as possible. His odds still seem something like 25% to me.

Gavagai

A tasty snack. 0%.

Demos and graphs. The power graph is last for a reason.

[Old Harry]

Turn 113

TBS offers white peace. I reckon (thanks to F5) that he has 8 knights and a spear in K&K with a great general two tiles south east of the city. Our 4 cats, 4 chariots, 2 HA and 6 wellies will never beat that so I take the peace.


I then discover that he hit our stack with 9 knights. We lost 3 wellies and two horse archers and he lost four knights. That's a good hammer trade for us, but he gets a lot more GG points thanks to the great wall... We're still 4 XP away from our first great general.

I'm a little surprised he let us get away. I'd have been keen to extract every experience point I could if I were him, but I'm sure he has his reasons and they rhyme with "handbaggy".


So what do we do with all our (surviving) units for the next ten turns? Thoughts turn to the south, where Gav took Ergili back from TBS. But he's still at war, and TBS has 10 turns of freedom, so Gav's time is up. We only have one galley over here (or at all), but we could try to snipe Tarsus or Susa... Perhaps we can get some capture gold and XP for that great general I want.


Another thing our units could do is worry about Pindicator getting machinery on his way to guilds. While Cornflakes has joined the pour-espionage-into-Ethiopia gang and we've lost his graphs. I'm concerned all over the place now.

So can we start drafting Oromo Warriors and building Cuirassiers in ten turns time?

Well no.

Education and Nationalism cost 3300 beakers each, Gunpowder is 2000 and Liberalism is 2400. We're making 330 beakers at break-even (call it 400 for the arrow bonus) and plan to use one great scientist (1900 beakers), so the total we need to research is around 9100 meaning 20 turns for all our tech goals (maybe a few less as our economy improves).

So which techs do we need first? We can only put so many beakers into Education before we start to waste the bulb, we can't complete Nationalism until we launch the next golden age (in 8ish turns) and we can't start Lib or Gunpowder until we're done with Education. So let's just keep saving cash.

Demos.