[PB61 - Spoiler] bell's uncreatively named spoiler thread

[El Grillo]

Thank you for the detailed reports, and don't be too hard on yourself. Warring against humans is tough, and unexpected things like stack teleportation certainly don't help.

[civac2]

Random thoughts:
You need Military Science to promote a unit to Commando. The best you can do before that is Morale for a 3 move horse unit.

As for the war, your destruction of Jack's main stack already made this war far easier than it would have been normally. These minor screw ups are comparatively not that important.

You do not need to hold Jack's coastal cities. Burning the them down is worthwhile unless the war is completely over. Even if you are too squeamish to do that capturing them and having Jack recapture them is still a net win.

[Mjmd]

AT LEAST once a game I forget to scout before doing things. Hopefully a good lesson and maybe you learn it better than me.

To me the big question has always been what will Bing do and I probably should have urged more caution instead or encouraging bloody thoughts. That being said, Bing is proving to be quite clever. Teleporting then not taking the attack at his stack so he would instead hit ours.

I also have to admit to not being very available for Bellarch since first two turns of the war. But I figured lessons are better learned with hands on experience (also I just haven't been around, but the hands on experience thing sounds better).

[bellarch]

It's T150, and so it's time for another update.

First, let's talk about the war. So after the eventful first few opening turns, nothing much happened. The only major action was a siege at Eversmile:




Bing did declare on Jack and capture a city, but he quickly made peace after Van launched an invasion into Mongolian territory! I'll write more about that shortly, but for now let's return to Eversmile.

So as of T147, I had moved the stack you see above next to Eversmile and bombarded the defenses to zero. In theory, I would take the city next turn! . . . in theory. In fact, I had not been carefully counting units in the city. Jack actually managed to whip and move twenty-four units into the city in the meantime! I didn't have enough siege . . . but I didn't think about that hard enough and hold the attack, so I went ahead. Oops. 

At the start of T149, this was the situation:




We had taken out several defenders, but there were just too many units in the city, and that wasn't helped by me suiciding several axes into a defensive longbow. So yeah, that didn't go so well. But I still had most of my knights, so I kept my remaining stack in place, and continued moving siege and knights to reinforce the stack. The following turn, I thought I might have a shot, so I sent my five full- and near-full-strength knights into the city. However, I lost a ~50% combat and then only won 2 of 4 around ~65-70% odds, and so I was unable to do much damage to the defenders. So I moved my Medic III chariot nearby and my cats up to prepare for the next turn. At the start of T150, this was the situation:




I looked at this at first and thought that I didn't have enough . . . but then I looked closer (and consulted with Mjmd -- the message notification is the little purple box on the lower-right, lol). Jack still had a lot of units, but most of the defenders were hurt, and only one pike was left near full health. So I sent in the cats and then made the attack.




We had to win two tough battles, one at 33% odds and one at 50% odds, but we had just enough units to capture the city while only losing one knight and the catapults. With this, we're fully in clean-up mode against Jack; we just need to heal up the knights and move up some more cats, and we'll be ready to go.

But the war against Jack isn't the only thing going on. Let's turn to the war between Van and Bing.

So on T147, Van declared war and marched this stack into Bing's territory. This attack was perfectly timed. Joshy had used a Golden Age to tech to Guilds, but he didn't have a stack of Knights built up yet, and Van had also used a Golden Age to tech to Guilds. This attack was all older units, but it was quickly reinforced by knights. Van captured Bing's city of Concordia with this stack, but I believe he lost some of it to Bing's defenders in Power Process. However, he did manage to raze the latter, and the survivors retreated to heal at Concordia:




You can see the stack in the city and the size of the other one marked by a note to the SE. Van is moving Knights up, and the Confucian missionaries indicate that he's planning to take a few more cities from Bing at least. Bing does have a decent stack of defenders prepared, so we'll have to see if he can stave this attack off. In the meantime, we're building a settler at Thalassina to resettle near Power Process (newly freed up from Notre Dame, since Van built it instead). I picked out this location based on the current borders, but we may be able to get a better one. We'll have to see how things shake out.

The big question right now is if anyone will interfere in this war. We would honestly like to, but our hands are tied -- we're still stuck at war against Jack!!  Now that Eversmile (and its huge stack) has fallen, Jack's days should be numbered, but we still need to commit most of our troops to a western offensive. We have moved most of our spare units into a mini-stack at Hall of Skulls, but it won't be sufficient to really challenge Van. We need Joshy. Is that going to work? . . . well, maybe. We're negotiating, but I think Joshy doesn't want to go to war without us also being committed, and that's a problem because we cannot safely commit to war against Van right now. Trust me, we would be doing so if we could! We indicated on T149 that we wanted to go to war together in 10 turns, but realistically we'll be going to war whenever our stack is freed up and we have the units to actually do something. In the meantime, we've moved most of our defenders away from the Roman border to signal our peaceful intentions to Joshy, we're continually refusing fish-for-fish deals from Van in order to imply the possibility of an invasion and hopefully draw his units to our border as a safety measure, and we're continuing to build and whip knights and catapults out of every available city to reinforce our armies. Van had a chariot I'm Eversmile, so he should also know that our stack is freed up and could move against him soon. (In theory).

Of course, there is some risk that Joshy just decides that we look like a better target. He could probably take and hold Blessed Isle and Nok right now, and that would be a huge loss for us. But I don't think he has much incentive to do that. For one, we can get enough units together to stop an attack from Joshy. But more importantly, if we are crippled, then the only major players left are Van and Joshy, and Joshy loses that match every time with the current setup. In my evaluation, for what it's worth, it is in Joshy's best interest to team up with us and Bing to take Van down a peg right now.

So how are we doing overall? Well:




Right now, we're solidly in third by a demographic standpoint. Of course, this is only because the demos screen is a lying liar who lies. We are obviously the best 

But seriously, if we manage to conquer Jack unscathed and Van eats Bing, we should end up in a solid second place (though we’d like to prevent the latter!) We'll actually have the most cities once Jack is down, and we'll have several commerce cities between our existing ones and Jack's that have been whipped down and will regrow into an economic powerhouse. But we'll still need a rebuilding period after the war to get that all together. Right now, our economy is kind of trash, and we're really feeling the impact of not having courthouses -- though Optics and the associated circumnavigation trade routes, due next turn, should help with that. Hopefully, we'll be in a position to start the rebuilding process soon. In the meantime, we've assigned Wolof (as our major city without a barracks) to start building missionaries for the western cities. We need to rebuild at least the minimum forge/terrace/barracks infrastructure in each city, and OR bonuses will help with that. Luckily for us, most of Jack's cities already got Judaism spreads, so we're ahead of the game in that respect.

P.S.: sorry if there's any weird errors here; I wrote 90% of this post in Google Docs on my phone, so it's possible some snuck in. In completely unrelated news, Mjmd thinks I am insane 

[Charriu]

P.S.: sorry if there's any weird errors here; I wrote 90% of this post in Google Docs on my phone, so it's possible some snuck in. In completely unrelated news, Mjmd thinks I am insane 

Mjmd is not alone. I would hate myself for writing so much text on a phone.

[bellarch]

So one more update on the war, before it (likely) comes to an end this turn. On T150, last I reported, we captured Eversmile. T151 nothing happened; we just rested units. T152, though, we moved this stack of knights on the attack!




The point of this attack should be immediately obvious; we threaten two of Jack's cities in one move. Jack only had unpromoted Longbows, too, and Combat II knights get odds on them, so there was a decent chance that we could just take both cities on the next turn. And in fact, that's what happened. We had 13 knights available to Van's 8 longbows and 1 elephant, and we took out both cities while only losing one knight. A bit lucky on the dice rolls there, but I'll take it! Van was reduced to just five cities, we could attack four on T154, and he only had a single axe on defense:







You can't see the remaining city in these pictures, but rest assured there's one in the south. Each of these cities whipped a Longbow on the next turn, but we were able to capture all except Moonbrush Woods with only one casualty. The current situation looks like this:




We have two full knights and one injured one at Hearth, and four knights only slightly injured at Moonbrush Woods. Unless dice rolls go very badly or he whips a pike at Hearth or something, this should be all wrapped up.

But Jack's not the big story anymore. You may have caught it in the last screenshot, but there are developments on the Indian front!




Van declared war on both us and Joshy and moved his stack within our sight! I think he did this in order to get both of us to either declare war on him or sign peace -- we've been putting units on the border as an obvious threat and moving our own units away from Joshy's border, and Van likely realized that. He asked for us to either (a) sign a ceasefire and go to war with Bing (b) sign a ceasefire and go to war with Joshy © sign a peace treaty. I responded with a simple ceasefire, but I'm less sure that it will work than I was last night. Fundamentally, Van has no incentive to sign a simple ceasefire with us -- it leaves still leaves us able to wage war on him and not tied down anywhere else. Because of this, I am leaning towards a peace treaty if he won't sign the ceasefire -- maybe even sending a peace treaty this turn and just not worrying about it. I would like to go to war and beat up Van's stack at least, but my units are still tied down in former Khmer territory, and the stack I have waiting by Van's border is not sufficient to deal with the stack Van has. We'd have to wait ten turns before doing anything, but we honestly might need ten turns just to position our units. And honestly, Bing probably has enough units to still deal with the stack Van has built up right now. We could sign a ceasefire and declare war on Bing and then immediately send peace, but I'm guessing that would only buy us a turn before Van declares on us again, and we'd need more than that. So that's my thinking, but I'm not entirely sure what the right move is here. If Van does actually attack us, we probably lose Hall of Skulls and Hospes, and maybe Green Stretch. We can repel him eventually and resettle those cities, but that's still a major loss of infrastructure and population, and we really don't need that when we're already in a rebuilding phase. (Plus we'd have to stop building the courthouses that we're finally getting to put up and whip more knights, which would be bad.) 

So yeah, that's where we are. I'm not super happy about it. Another update should come later tonight, after I've played the turn and have a better idea of what's going on.

[bellarch]

So tl;dr:




Warning: this post contains salt.

So some weird timing issues went on with this turn. I got this PM from Van:

Hello Bellarch,

Im afraid ive just DoW you, claiming second half of the split. It might sound weird since i played first this turn, it basically means you are playing after this turn and double turning me next turn so that i stay on second half. I also wish you play after josh and bing, its early in the war but i want to avoid any issue in the future, although ill ask lurkers for it.

Best wishes

vanrober

This is kind of weird -- I mean, it kind of makes sense since it ensures that Joshy and I are in the same half of the timer, but it's a weird situation. That being said, Mjmd and I talked it over and decided to roll with it. So I decided to log in before Van as instructed, and did so and uhhhhhhhhh






So uh. um. What exactly is going on here? I guess Joshy took a ceasefire + DOW peace deal that Van sent to us last turn, but why? Why not just send a peace treaty if he wanted to do that? Because no, Joshy was not signaling peace. Instead:




Joshy, you were JUST TELLING US that you wanted to go to war with Van! WE TOLD YOU that we were going to war with Van in just a few turns! Why are you sending units at US?!?!? 

Because it's not like this was a planned attack or anything. There are no units moving towards Blessed Isle. No units moving towards Nok. All we can see is a few knights moving towards Hospes -- a few knights that we can repel easily. I mean, sure, we didn't have defenders right there, but our stack was nearby! Joshy even knew that -- he's had units in our territory! We had the units to defend the city! And we can whip units elsewhere. Unless the hammer is waiting to fall elsewhere, we're not going to lose from this attack. Even if he manages to take and raze Blessed Isle or Nok, all he'll accomplish is crippling us.

I'm not mad, I'm just disappointed. Van is ahead. We are in second, but we are still losing. We technically have more cities than Van, but half of them are currently in anarchy. Van has, or is going to have, every late-game economic engine, and he's built infrastructure all over his empire. Joshy, what are you doing?!? You should be helping us take down Van so that anyone else has a chance to win! Including you! The only person who benefits from this is VAN!!!! 

Anyway, we sent Van a clean peace treaty, we sent Bing crab for crab, and we sent Jack successive peace deals for 100g, 200g, and 300g. We are bribing you to do the best thing to help you win the game! DO IT!

*sigh*

But realistically, we have to recalibrate. We've managed to take a respectable second place so far, and we had a chance to challenge Van with some help -- help that would have made sense for Joshy to give us, I might add! But we could lose from this. I ordered up another round of knights in all the cities that should have been building courthouses, whipped some knights we had building, and generally prepared to start fighting another long war that we would probably lose. I would think that Van just eats Bing if Joshy actually commits to this -- and then proceeds to WIN THE GAME -- but I can't be sure. After all, Van could just decide to attack us instead. We can put up a fight, but we can't beat both of them. This is especially a problem because we can now see Bing's stack -- and, um, I'm really not sure Van can beat this!




And if he also doesn't think he can, then he has EVEN MORE REASON TO GO AFTER US INSTEAD.   Anyway, there's a very good chance that Hall of Skulls will be taken and razed next turn, because yeah, Van can just do that.

Anyway. Jack is almost dead, but not quite, because we can't have anything nice this turn. I think we should have enough knights to take the city next, though.




I apologize in advance if I don't give a proper post-mortem post for Jack on time because I am still extremely tilted, lol.

[Mjmd]

Its weird that the weirdest thing wasn't Van's PM.............

After thinking about it a lot longer, my new best guess for that PM is Van requested the time extension to have a valid excuse to play after Bellarch, but then Bellarch who has been playing at an awkward time for own schedule, but also at a time I'm not really available, decided to also delay (we were originally planning on figuring out what to do with new cities; ie what they should be. I changed I think 3 notes to whip cities ). Anyways, Vanrober then decided to pull the trigger this weird way? We think**** its mainly intimidation, but who knows now that Joshy is doing  

I think it is important to recognize that not everyone has same information while playing a game. Here was my conversation with Bellarch, vaguely trying to think of wtf Joshy is thinking:



But if Joshy keeps pushing in in serious, this game is over. I've been persuading Bellarch to move units south off of Joshy borders both as a sign of friendship and good intentions, but also because A) we just need bodies south and B) I knew if Joshy went after us the game was over anyways, so it seemed best to be friendly.

[bellarch]

The funny thing is that I knew the clock going to be inconvenient for me last turn, and I actually had been considering asking for an extension before Van ever said anything lol:



But anyway, I should probably clarify that it's entirely possible that Joshy has his own good reasons for attacking us; we just have no idea what they are. We certainly don't have all the information that Joshy does! But we're mystified as to what the reason could be . . . other than     . . . and well, seeing as it is my spoiler thread (and I was making the post right after finishing my turn), I decided to tilt a little  

Honestly, the only reasons I can see that make much sense to attack are that (a) Joshy is actually doing a fake war declaration, similar to what we did with Bing, and is actually gearing up to redeclare on Van or (b) Joshy has decided that he can't win this game, and his best route to getting second place is to take down the person in second place rather than to take on Van. The first is tactically sound, but then I don't see why he's making an actual attack on us, unless he's really trying hard to fool Van or something. The second is . . . well, I honestly would find it kind of lame, but it's understandable. (Though why would he then not fully commit to the attack?) Of course, the second scenario really sucks for us, but I suppose if that's the case then it is what it is. 

[bellarch]

Post coming later tonight. Besides the farewell to Jack -- I want to talk about exactly why he lost (and why I don't think it's entirely his fault!) -- I also need to talk about the absolute comedy of errors that was the last few turns . . .