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

[yuris125]

A peek into Commodore's land revealed this stack




He does have a lot of horse archers, but he also has more spears with formation than I would be happy to attack into. So I don't think our attack is a go at the moment. Even more so with Thoth still building up military, and now starting war elephant production of his own. We've been living in fear of his attack the entire game, but surely, surely it will come soon.... and we do have to be ready

Was hard to sim the stack to protect our workers, but eyeballing the estimate this stack should be hard to impossible for Commodore to break (and maybe enough to make him nervous and invest some hammers in defences)




Next turn some units will return to Boros Burn, some will go back towards See-Scape to be ready to counter a potential Thoth attack. Our remaining 4 catapults already returned to See-Scape

The hope still is that we will get knights early enough to break Commodore's defences

[yuris125]

So, after sleeping on it.... I don't think we have enough to take Yellow Comet. There's too many ways for Commodore to reinforce the city, flank our stack, or counter-attack. Also, it's a city on the border with Miguelito, so even if we take it, we will need to worry about holding it against Miguelito as well

We may be able to take Blue Moon, which is a lot more straightforward - there's no flanking opportunities (other than amphibiously using his 4-move galleys), and Commodore can only defend the city by putting units into it. The problem is that I'm not sure we would be able to hold it, and razing it gets us nowhere

Being unable to accurately sim combat involving war elephants (as they're modded) is an extra concern

So I do think we wait for now, keep defensive stance against Commodore, and prepare an attack against Thoth (Machinery is getting there)

[yuris125]

Miguelito built Great Library. The concerning fact is that he's wonder spamming while keeping up in power. We need to make something happen, and soon

I think the play may be to attack Commodore rather than Thoth once we have crossbows. Crossbows seems to be the missing piece which will let us hold his cities, they're good vs everything he has except horse archers, and war elephants should be able to handle horse archers. He is on the way to longbows, which will make matters more complicated. But at least longbows aren't good at counterattacking, whereas if we try an attack against Thoth we always have to worry about him hitting our stack with catapults and cleaning up with praets. For now, Thoth has seems to be in defensive stance, with most of his army (half a dozen praetorians, 4 catapults, a war elephant, and the starting archer) stacked in the capital. This would be a pain to crack. But with crossbows we can feel safer about holding our cities on the border with Thoth while we attack Commodore. And if we can successfully attack Commodore, we stand to gain more, since Thoth only has a single good city

For now, I set production focus to catapults. Then we will switch over to crossbows as soon as they're available

[yuris125]

Commodore got a great engineer. Looks like after all this we may be the last of major powers to get Machinery. I was wondering why Commodore moved research off Machinery - guess that's why

Unless he makes a fool out of me and builds Pyramids or something

We will get our next great person in 2 turns, about 15% of it being a great prophet, otherwise even chance between engineer and scientist

* If it's a prophet, we bulb Theology, only question is if there's any reason to wait (we do need to pick up Meditation first, but that should be easy enough)
* If it's an engineer, I'm no longer convinced we want the Pyramids. It may be too late to benefit from them, and I'm not sure if Representation is even better than Hereditary Rule at this point, moving out of HR would make most (if not all) of our cities unhappy. I think just finishing Machinery and bulbing Engineering would be the play
* If it's a scientist, we probably settle it in the capital again? Or we could save him for a golden age later, or bulb something on the Compass/Optics line later still

[yuris125]

Commodore did not bulb Machinery. Doesn't look like he's done anything with the engineer yet. Is he going for a wonder, maybe in a safe city away from the frontline? We'll find out next turn

We're about to lose research visibility on him as well, looks like he's putting all EP into us now

We got a great prophet. Evidently, rolling a great engineer is hard

[yuris125]

Commodore did indeed build the Pyramids. Meanwhile, Miguelito built yet another wonder in Shwedagon Paya. I really want to see his high production city, I was so proud of Big Red Dragons, but he definitely has something even better

Meanwhile, Thoth is roading a tile near See-Scape - maybe that attack is actually coming for real some time soon




I don't quite have units in position to attack this stack, not that it necessarily would've been a good play, with only two praets exposed

[yuris125]

Commodore building Pyramids at least helps answer the question if we want to build it although I'm still annoyed that we never got that great engineer roll. After the game it will be interesting to look back and think if running just an engineer and forcing it after the first two scientists would've been a better play. Problem is that with food so plentiful on the map, we had to look for ways to use it without resorting to whipping, as whip anger was too much pain to manage. Running whatever specialists we could looked like the best solution back then

Next turn I'll try to turn research on, at the moment Machinery would take 3 turns and a bit at 100%, but possibly we can get rid of that bit by hiring some scientists

[yuris125]

Machinery can indeed be finished in 3 turns, with the help of wealth build in See-Scape, so I don't even have to take Big Red Dragons off military. Now that question is, how do we break through the amount of nonsense Thoth has defending his capital

Commodore turned on research for Feudalism, which is due in 7 for him. I don't think we'll have a large enough window to attack before he gets longbows. So since, as I said, we need to make something happen, killing Thoth has to be that "something"

We're just 1 EP over the threshold of still seeing Commodore's research. We can keep it if we take EP off Miguelito, which will likely mean he will gain research visibility on us. How big of a deal is it? In theory we could research CoL and build some courthouses for more EP, but it doesn't feel like a worthwhile investment on this map

[yuris125]

Decided to focus EP on Commodore. Both Miguelito and Commodore seem to be spending all their EP on me, I have to choose between keeping research visibility on Commodore and denying it to Miguelito, and I think the former is more important

Miguelito (I think) got a great prophet - we'll see if he goes for Theology bulb or something else

Our Machinery is in at the end of next turn - I'll start thinking about tactical plan of the Thoth attack once I'm back home and can spend more time in game

[yuris125]

So this is where we are on my return from holiday




Next turn we're starting crossbows production. First step - make 4 and finally knock Thoth's units off the gold hill. Second stack - bring the stack I've been keeping behind See-Scape, add ~8 crossbows to it, and see if that's enough to kill the praets and take his capital. Maybe it's an overkill, but as it stands our units still have terrible odds defending against praets. Even with addition of crossbows things will be scary, as Thoth has half a dozen catapults of his own. I've been thinking if there are any interesting tactical options, but don't see anything better than just moving the stack onto the wheat and limiting his ability to attack from the city by having enough units to counter-attack after he hits us

Miguelito did not bulb Theology, I guess he's saving the prophet for golden age, he still hasn't had one (the only GA in the game so far was ours), probably just waiting for all the research to get the civics he wants (maybe he'll build Mausoleum as well, now that he has the base for wonder spamming?)

We're sitting on our own GP, and I'm no longer sure if we want to use it for a bulb - at this point we need 20 turns to get another great person (probably more as I will be whipping away some specialists to speed up crossbow build-up), so saving it for our second golden age is probably a better play