[SPOILERS] Out of retirement and into the fires of war. yuris125, Pitboss 68

[yuris125]

Thoth assembled a sizeable stack on the gold - exactly the same units as ours, but his have Agg promos. You're right - it would be nice to sit back and chill and make cute plans about double whip overflow into a library with creative bonus.... we do still need more units, and quickly

Will overflow from the axe into a bowman in the capital, so that the axe is free to move to the front. Will switch Big Red Dragons to a bowman and whip it next turn, not like it has a good second tile to work until gold and/or pasture is online. Gruul Smash will have to switch back to worker, it has two points of whip unhappiness and we don't want to whip it again unless absolutely necessary - not until we raise the happy cap

Was thinking of moving the axe to the banana forest, but it's probably better to keep it on the road, so that it can move into the jungle next turn. Our reinforcement route is awkward, and I don't want Thoth's stray axe turning back towards See-Scape. We can defend against a single unit (just about), it will be merely an annoyance. Well... there's always a possibility that he moves onto the banana, decides to take a potshot against the bowman in the capital, and razes it with a lucky roll, but I feel it's a risk we have to take

At the front, I assume we're fortifying in the forest and holding? Sitting in the forest seems better than sitting in a flatland city with no cultural defences

What's the condition for Thoth to retake the city and immediately have the 20% cultural defence back, without any unrest turns?

[Tarkeel]

What's the condition for Thoth to retake the city and immediately have the 20% cultural defence back, without any unrest turns?

One of the conditions for liberation to kick in is no hostile units in the BFC.

[Cornflakes]

What's the condition for Thoth to retake the city and immediately have the 20% cultural defence back, without any unrest turns?

One of the conditions for liberation to kick in is no hostile units in the BFC.

I think if the city is still in resistance he immediately gets culture back. But if it comes out of resistance then he will have resistance after recapture for a turn or two before culture returns. Although with it being sequential I don’t know if that “turn or two” is calculated when he ends turn or at the start of his next turn.

[yuris125]

Thanks! Yeah I suspected it would immediately flip back if it's still in resistance

Worst case scenario is that Thoth has combat workers in range (on the wheat tile) and can road the tile south of the forest and retake the city this turn. Although that would put his workers at risk - how willing is he to take it?

I think the most likely scenario is that he just moves the units S of the forest and tries to retake the city next turn

This may be more units than we can handle. I think the plan still is to hold this turn and see what Thoth does. If he does make the move I expect, maybe we can try something ambitious, like moving towards his capital? This has to be his entire military (maybe with some token force to hold off Miguelito on the other side - unless I'm completely misreading the situation and there actually isn't any confrontation in the east?)

The big question still is whether we want to pillage the road or not. If we want to have a retreat option (to the jungle pig), we need to keep it. If we want to try denying Thoth the gold and potentially threatening his capital, we should pillage it

[yuris125]

The turn is with us - Nauf, if you have an opinion, I'd love to hear

My inclination is to pillage the road and try holding the city. We can obviously hold it for a turn - we have more units. It won't be great odds - all combat is about 2:1 in Thoth's favour. It's hard to accurately sim though, because the bowman will contribute to the combat - but it will be wounded, and you cannot set unit hp in worldbuilder. In any case, if we try holding the city, it's imperative that we stop reinforcements (or at least make them more difficult), so the road has to go

As I said, simming is hard, I'm not a great simmer in any case, and a lot will depend on how good Thoth is at winning 67% combat rolls. But if we pillage the road, we cannot retreat any more, we have nowhere to go but into the city. So Nauf - how do you feel about it? You have much more experience than me by now

The bowman in the city is at 1/3 health, should be at 2/3 once I promote it to city guard (which also is a committing choice, if we don't try holding the city we should pick a different promotion)

[yuris125]

Oh, also, I'm pretty sure we should not try advancing, Thoth's capital is at size 4, so he has more whips available, and we haven't seen his starting archer yet. Don't think we have any interesting options, it's either try holding the city or retreat

Actually Thoth's capital being at size 4 could be an argument for retreating - he could assemble even more units...

[naufragar]

I'm not sure I'm following. If Thoth's stack is where it is currently, we don't need to move back to the city, right? If he moves enough units to take the city to the tile 1S, we can move onto the gold with all of our units and cause him a bad headache. Am I missing something? I assume we just hold position.

As for the bowman promotion, same thing, do we need to promote this turn?

[naufragar]

Ninja'd. That forest tile is our best defensive spot. If we're not holding there or trying to push to the gold, we can't hold the city.

Edit: Another option is to move the bowmen to the forest as well, forcing Thoth to commit more to the gold tile.

[Mjmd]

I'm assuming its 1 turn advanced since last screenshot and Yuris failed to provide an updated shot 

[yuris125]

Oh yeah we're holding this turn. But I feel we need to decide if we're pillaging the road this turn. Maybe I'm overthinking it and it's not really that big of a deal. Also, I kinda felt like moving on the gold while Thoth retakes the city leaves our stack cut of from the core. But maybe it's me being scared for no good reason

The screenshot from 5 hours ago is still the latest, I'm just trying to predict Thoth's moves and how to react to them