[PB59] Pindicator's One Thread to Rule Them All

[Lewwyn]

Sooooo about that sub?

[pindicator]

We should get naufrager to do it, that way he'll be so scared of my army that he'll retreat back to his capital.

[pindicator]

Turn 129 in my Enforcement of the Unwritten Rules



There was another John Goodman quote from this movie that I was thinking of, but I decided to keep things PG-rated.

Naufrager sent me another peace offer.




I sat a long time.  Part of me wanted to hold naufrager's hand here and insist he stay at war.  The silly fool will probably think that he caused me to go after Amicalola because he gave me peace.

I also wish I could have captured it well here but he had done some sort of ridiculous spread-out technique where all his units were unstacked and moving out.  Suddenly I really wanted to attack him for being such an idiot.

But I took the peace.  I had a feeling that if I did not then Amicalola would once again stab me in the back.  And we were past the point of trying to survive, we were now at the stage of the game where we get to choose how we want to go out.




Maybe something made him think that I would do this, as he had the sea tiles to his island city covered. Well, I guess there's only one way to do this. I unloaded the sword & elephant on the mainland and sent my boat in. It lost, but damaged his galley enough.

The second 4-mover went in and won a 95% fight.




We won and attacked with a CR2 sword on the archer that was within




We won the 43% fight and Aurora was burnt to the ground.

With naufrager at peace I was given the opportunity to move EVERYTHING up. And so I did. I killed Amicalola's sentry chariot that had been teleported out to our border, and moved the whole stack forward.




Oh, and then I killed the galley that ended up down by Bracegirdle, winning that 30% fight. Wish I had done that with my 4-mover

Finally, let's look at what Naufrager accomplished this war:




So in a war where I retreated at every possible encounter, where he kept walking forward without resistance, he burned 3 cities and kept 1.

Maybe i should have stayed at war with him.


EDIT: Note to self - get a horcher over there and burn improvements

[Old Harry]

Am I getting a whiff of pb8?

[pindicator]

A little bit there is no new home to go to here. But the -10gpt at 0% science certainly brings back memories

[pindicator]

Turn 128 in the Revenge of the Shire

Amicalola turned and ran. Seems smart.




He also whipped a Longbow. Which might be a tough nut to crack, except I had used that 2nd Great General to get 4 swords up to 3 promos. The catapults bombarded the defenses down and then those CR3 Swords suddenly had 75% odds. They tore through Longbow, Axe, and archers alike. When we got to the spears I let the axes take over. 6 units dead, none lost for the good guys




We burned it. 2 burned cities for the 2 that Amicalola burned. Not that this makes us even, not by far.




Only my 2-movers could hit this. But sending horchers up against war elephants and spears was just suicide, right? On the other hand, I really did not want those catapults to get away. Something in my gut said I needed to go for it. Besides, I didn't have much to lose. Then on the other hand, I really should just keep all my huge stack together and go forward next turn.

Took me 20 minutes to listen to my gut. I sent in my first Formation Horcher against his C2 Wele. I had a 30% chance of surviving. Almost 30%.





I see we are finally paying dividends on all that early bad RNG!

With an opening shot like that I had to send it all in. I even promoted the Great General sword to Morale and he joined the fray. We lost a horcher on the next attack, against the unpromoted Wele, and lost another on a 65% fight, but we won or withdrew on every other fight. RNG was very, very kind here. But after the horchers had flanked down the catapults, they were low enough that the chariots were able to mop up. At the end he's got 2 surviving units and no catapults from this mini-stack.

Full attacks, because these ones weren't the cakewalk that the city fights were:

Code:

C2 Form horcher vs C2 Wele (11.9% / 17.6%) - WIN !!!!!!!!!!!
C2 horcher vs Wele (10.8% / 17.8%) - Loss, Wele to 68hp
C1 horcher vs Spear (26.8% / 14.6%) - Withdraw, spear to 10hp
horcher vs Spear (21.8% / 15.6%) - WIN
C1 horcher vs 68hp Wele (59.4% / 8.1%) - WIN
C1 Shock horcher vs Horcher (68.0% / 6.4%) - Loss
horcher vs axe (67.6% / 6.5%) - WIN
C1 Morale Sword vs 92hp Cata (88.9%) - WIN
C1 Chariot vs 85hp Cata (81.8%) - WIN
C1 Chariot vs 74hp Cata (82.5%) - WIN
C1 Medic Chariot vs 73hp Cata (83.0%) - WIN

Now we moved everything up.




Not sure about that galley - we might lose Mugwort.

But we killed 14 and lost 2 horse archers this turn. Not a bad turn.

[pindicator]

I was having some regrets about burning the border city, so I thought it out a bit. Really the question is: Could there be any chance of a pb8-like migration? Could I conquer enough to have an empire in place in 10t when naufrager decides to attack/not-really-attack again?

And the answer seems like a pretty clear NO.

There are some real key differences between this game and pb8. First of all, it is about 30 turns later. Empires are larger, we're up against an empire that is 30t later in tech. We gave Amicalola the 2nd half of the turn time and he whipped a LONGBOW. What's the next city going to look like when he has time to whip walls and put 3 or 4 longbow units in? I needed a CR3 sword to get odds the first time and those aren't exactly easy to produce. (And how far away is he from knights?)

Second, I'm going up against a far more developed empire. 18 cities remain. All of those can be whipped twice over and I'm suddenly outnumbered. (Does he have the will to do so?) Also, there isn't one conveniently placed iron to remove on the opening turns of war and we aren't going up against someone who has been in builder mode because they thought they were safe on an island. We're going to war against someone who had been fighting (opportunistic?) wars for some time.

The more I think about this, the more I realize just how pressing speed is. I will probably get to burn 1 more city if I am lucky. If naufrager moves his army through then maybe we can do more. Nauf asked me for open borders this turn so maybe he actually is thinking of joining. I have him an iron for iron trade so maybe that will give him courage. Then perhaps we can do some on-site war training

[pindicator]

A reenactment of last night's horse archers charging Amicalola's war elephants



Eomer throwing the spear seems about right for the 10% victory I got to start things off

[pindicator]

Turn 129 in the Revenge of the Shire

Burned promos on one of my horchers to get sentry and see what was up.




Uh, did I just kill Amicalola's army last turn?
Anyway, I decided to just sit tight on the plantation and let my siege train catch up. Thought about threatening Full of Love but I really don't care about that city. Naufrager can deal with it if he wants; his units are moving up from behind.

I think I'll advance along the hills and try to get a core city.

[pindicator]

So, everything got moved 1N and I'm seeing even less units. Maybe he's pulling everything back to the capital. I decided to just ignore Full of Live and go straight for Cocoon.

Naufrager's horchers caught up to my main stack. That's an interesting dynamic because he moves before me in order, so he can't really take advantage of my catapults. May be better for him to hold those back for his own slow movers? Or even just strike out on their own