[PB65 - Cornflakes] Rising from the Ashes

[Jabah]

My understanding is that hills are blocking vision (in your case, being on flat ground), should you have a 10 tiles vision unit you still wouldn't be able to see the tile behind the hill.

[Cornflakes]

My understanding is that hills are blocking vision (in your case, being on flat ground), should you have a 10 tiles vision unit you still wouldn't be able to see the tile behind the hill.

So the promotion is all about gaining better eyesight, not vantage point (higher) nor agility ("looking" as if from adjacent tiles). I guess my assumption was based off sentry simply adding a ring of vision all around as if you were standing on the adjacent tiles, similar to the vision gained from the first ring of culture from around a city.

[Ginger*]

Greeding promo heals on your knights while baiting first strike?   :P

[Cornflakes]

Greeding promo heals on your knights while baiting first strike?   :P

An honest mistake! He has 3 spears in range and I meant to promote 3 of my knights to Shock. But I got caught up in ogling over the GA demos for my turn report screenshots, ended turn, and then noticed after the turn roll when taking that overview screenshot that I had forgotten the promotions The one C2 knight I had promoted previously when at war with Pindicator. It was the first one that I built and I wanted to test the odds vs. his G2 longbows on the hill in front of his border city ... not as good as I had hoped sadly

I had a moment of panic after realized that I forgot, so I actually pulled out Vodka to confirm that I should be OK. My C2 kinght will get 90% odds on defense vs. C1 spear, and the unpromoted ones behind still get about 75%. I may lose one but that should be all ... and those odds will still likely be better than I'll get vs. at least the one spear in his capital. My C2 knight is showing 40% odds vs. top Longbow defender right now. India is just so weak. And speaking of weak, here's my screenshot of the power graph which I didn't post earlier ... check out Superdeath

   

SD has about 10 Cataphracts plus maybe 3-4 at most whipped on the current turn which isn't shown on the graphs. He has 6 catapults and a smattering of axes and that's it! I think he's pumped all of his production into wealth to get to Guilds and then Engineering so he has no mass behind his heavy hitters. As Commodore likes to say, quantity has a quality of its own, and I certainly win the quantity comparison. This is the reason I still have Superdeath down at completely out of the running in the rankings. He could maybe get some cheap territory by sniping a couple Indian cities from SAC with his current forces while continuing to whip heavily, then take everything and pile on to steal Bing's former territory from Pindicator before he gets Pikes. But if Superdeath knocks off Pindicator it's truly game over and a cakewalk for me to button up.

I think they are at the point where they need to engage me 100% and force a swap into Police State and out of Representation ... but they can't because Pindi and MJMD both have peace treaties through my GA. I'm still pumping military at my production focused cities while building banks at my commerce cities and my goal is to maintain top power ranking from here on out. I'm building up a catapult stack in the west backed by Pikes/Longbows in our border fortress Money, and will stage my Camel Archer mobile stack in a central response location that can reach the danger/killing tiles for Pindicator and MJMD in time while they wade through my culture, or pivot/split to the Superdeath front if needed. I will not build wealth but rather utilize the banks to increase my slider and continue pushing production into military.

[Cornflakes]

I almost split my attack on SAC too much He scraped together enough defenders at the capital to make me bring up the catapults. No problem, I'm advancing my Camel Archer stack to cut off further reinforcements and fork the backline cities. Citadel was conquered for 200 capture gold and I bombarded at Crash.

   

The million dollar question: Will Superdeath martyr himself and use SAC's roads to strike me, or use his Cataphracts to pick off a couple SAC cities for himself? I'm keeping an eye on the situation and keeping my retreat options in mind even as I advance.

[Cornflakes]

I noticed one striking absence in SAC's unit mix ... no catapults whatsoever are visible!

Regarding Sentry promotion, notice how I have vision on the three hills 1S, 1SW, and 1S2W of Treehouse as well as the plains tile 1E. This produces a couple extra anomalies in the sentry promotion as normally vision would be restricted to the hills adjacent to my stack and with the promotion I'm now seeing TWO additional tiles in some cased. Curiously I cannot see the Treenhouse city center which must be blocked by the hill 1S.

[Cornflakes]

SAC has alphabet so I asked our foreign advisor if he had any input on the striking lack of catapults in Indian territory … sure enough, no construction or HBR. So he made a beeline for Feudalism and longbows.

That wasn’t necessarily a bad choice considering that he has now consolidated about 10 LB into Crash forcing me to delay there. Maybe I should have just bit the bullet and plowed through with my initial stack instead of bombarding? But he had enough mass that I couldn’t have lost more than 2-3 fights or I wouldn’t have had enough and then my stack would have been wiped. Better safe and cautious especially since he doesn’t have catapults to smash my stack. I’m biding my time by pillaging villages. Superdeath, MJMD, and Pindicator would likely burn them anyway so I might as well pay for my unit maintenance. Serfdom farms, windmills, and Rep Scientists will do just fine as replacements.

Still keeping an eye on Superdeath’s Cataphract stack, up to 11 now but hasn’t moved from the staging tile near his capital. I'm ready to beat an orderly retreat if he swoops in to SAC’s defense. Although I pretty much match him in numbers pike-for-Phract so as long as he doesn’t catch me with a wounded stack right after capturing a city I actually wouldn’t mind having a head-on confrontation and just getting that Phract stack neutralized rather that watching it grow bigger.

[Ginger*]

I’m biding my time by pillaging villages. Superdeath, MJMD, and Pindicator would likely burn them anyway so I might as well pay for my unit maintenance. Serfdom farms, windmills, and Rep Scientists will do just fine as replacements.

I remember from PB63 that one of the perks of running a serfdom economy was comfortably scorching everything secure in the knowledge that you'll have adequate tile improvements afterwards 

Not sure if I read you correctly, does SAC's longbow mass actually prevent you from capturing without bringing up more cats/hitters than you have currently committed, or does it merely force you to bombard down a couple turns?

[Cornflakes]

Not sure if I read you correctly, does SAC's longbow mass actually prevent you from capturing without bringing up more cats/hitters than you have currently committed, or does it merely force you to bombard down a couple turns?

I am bringing up the victorious forces from Citadel to the capital. I do not have enough for Crash and the plan is to bombard and then a combination of newly built forces (trickling in about 2-3/turn) and bring the Camel Archers after capturing the capital. I have 10 pikes in the stack at Crash so currently have enough to fend off a Cataphract attack. I just wish I had a few maces instead of axes there. I considered retreating the axes back into my territory, Building wealth for a couple turns, and then upgrading but I don't think I'll do that.

[Cornflakes]

The War/Peace! 10 turns of security from Pindicator, 9 from MJMD ... all systems are GO!

Houston, we have a problem!

   

Superdeath is on the move. Not taking the worst case action of using SAC's roads, but he is attacking SAC, having captured the easternmost city this turn and moved his stack of 13 cataphracts as shown adjacent to Zergling. SAC has the highlighted stack which appears to have evacuated Zergling and will bolster the garrison of Crash this turn. This creates several problems.=:
1. He will now significantly outnumber me to the point where my stack is in danger of a sally even without catapults. My combined stack that the capital, plus my mounted stack, will be sufficient to crack Crash but that will take several turns to assemble.
2. Once I take down the Indian culture, Superdeath's Cataphracts can immediately strike my wounded victorious army in neutral territory and wipe me out.

I was prepared for such an outcome and initiated my evacuation procedure. My stack at Crash has retreated to the YELLOW circle. My stack at his capital has advanced to ORANGE, in position to capture his capital next turn, while my stack of Camel Archers pillaged the village at RED [hidden by the interface at the top]. I have enough material to capture his capital this turn, which will put weight behind the Cease Fire and Peace Treaty offers that I sent. The garrison at Crash can't reinforce in 1 turn. If he refuses and doesn't re-offer peace then I'll raze the capital to clear culture for Citadel and free up those forces.

Overall I'm happy picking up Citadel for the cost of 3 catapults and 3 axemen. It comes with 8 pop, 5 villages, and enough food to feed the citizens. First builds will be walls + castle so that I can stuff in a few longbows as a new border fortress.