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

[yuris125]

Thoth decided to fight for the hill, and didn't have good rolls




After the catapult hit, he lost a 44, a 71, and an 86 before cleaning up our 3 units

Admittedly, we didn't have good rolls cleaning up his stack either. He moved a praet, a war elephant, and an axe onto the hill. I went with the same scenario - hit with 1 catapult, then send regular units. We lost a 51 (war elephant vs prae), won a 70 (war elephant vs war elephant), then lost an 87 (war elephant vs axe). Then a horse archer and a crossbow cleaned up

So all in all, I'd say combat luck just about evened out, the problem is that even trades heavily favour us when Thoth is so production limited. He lost 4 praets in this encounter, and that's a big blow to his power

Thoth's current force (don't think he has anything on tiles we can't see)




We also got a great general out of the deal. I decided to make our chariot into a medic 3, but didn't calculate XP properly. The chariot already had combat 2, and needed 26XP to unlock medic 3, great general only got it to 25. Hopefully there will be an opportunity to find that missing XP point. The positive side is, we now definitely have a unit which unlocks heroic epic

In the north, our culture claimed the hill 2N of Boros Burn this turn. I went ahead and killed Commodore's units (horse archer had ~70% vs the archer and won, then the spear cleared the chariot). I had the units to kill them ages ago, just didn't seem useful before we had a good unit to put onto that hill

So at the end of the turn, we have a guerrilla 2 crossbow on the gold hill at the border with Thoth, and a guerrilla 1 crossbow on the hill between our capital and Blue Moon. Still think Thoth has enough units to make the losses too severe if we were to attack him, but we have maybe 4-6 turns of crossbow build-up before having a strong enough stack to go on offensive - there's still time to see how the situation develops before committing. I still think attacking Commodore is strategically the better option, because of higher upside if it goes well. But Thoth's power graph dip is sure to get Miguelito's attention, and I do want to make sure it's us and not Miguelito who gets Thoth's capital

[yuris125]

Miguelito founded Confucianism. Guess he's going for Civil Service? As I said before, I don't think CoL is a high value tech in this game. Can anything be unlocked by EP after research visibility in CtH? Spy missions are removed, right?

Also noticed that Miguelito now has Alphabet, and the F4 screen confirms that he's a bit ahead of us in research. He has Meditation, Aesthetics, Literature, Alphabet, and now CoL on us, and we have Monotheism on him. I think it's fair to say that Miguelito is in the lead as it stands. Not that it's surprising after his recent wonder spamming arc

No military action this turn, honestly wouldn't be worth reporting it, but I see that with Miguelito travelling and Commodore and Thoth (presumably) unhappy with their positions in the game, I'm the only one reporting

[Tarkeel]

Miguelito founded Confucianism. Guess he's going for Civil Service? As I said before, I don't think CoL is a high value tech in this game. Can anything be unlocked by EP after research visibility in CtH? Spy missions are removed, right?

There's still city vision and investigation.

[yuris125]

Thanks!

[yuris125]

Was thinking if there was a way Miguelito used his great prophet to bulb CoL, since the gap between Alphabet and CoL looked very small for him, I've been checking F6 and didn't see Alphabet researched, and CoL was definitely this turn, since that's when Confucianism notification appeared. But don't see how this bulb can be possible without clearing Monotheism and Theology. Must have been just me missing the 1 under Alphabet for several turns

[yuris125]

A disheartening turn

First:




A big golden age for Miguelito, and he's brave enough to switch out of slavery. But also, Bureaucracy? Civil Service the turn after CoL?? I think I figured out how it's possible - remember Miguelito got a great merchant shortly after we researched Currency, and I said he's probably going to bulb Currency and stay on pace with us research-wise. Well, I think he ended up hard-teching Currency, and used that great merchant for the Civil Service bulb

It's an interesting decision about when to use great people right away for immediate benefits (like we did with the math bulb), and when it's better to save them for more high value plays. We find ourselves in this situation where Miguelito's great people are cheaper, he has the same generation as we do thanks to Parthenon, and it is now boosted by golden age and Pacifism (Pacifism is unlocked by Shwedagon Paya). And he has a great scientist born this turn still unused (I assume he used the great prophet from earlier for golden age)

I played Phi as an early game trait, generating any great people I could after the first two great scientists, and figuring out what to do with them depending on rolls. Looking back, it may not have been the best decision, but it did seem reasonable at the time. Miguelito's great person generation was better targeted, and I think it's fair to say that he got more value out of them

Last turn I thought Miguelito was ahead in the game, but we were within touching distance. With this development, I think it's fair to say that we're far behind. I thought we had time to make things happen - we don't. We need to make some progress, right now

Which brings me to the second disheartening point. I promoted a horse archer to Sentry and took a look at Commodore's stack




Yikes

So my immediate reaction - we're attacking Thoth. We will suffer losses, but nothing for it. If I finish the current round of crossbows and bring axes from See-Scape and Gruul Smash, our stack will be 12 crossbows, 3 war elephants, 7 axes, 7 catapults, and 5 horse archers. I'll run the numbers to see if that's enough; more catapults would probably be helpful, to absorb the hits from Thoth's catapults and have enough siege damage to hit him back

The key units for attacking Commodore will be not knights, but pikes. We will have a couple more shots at creating a great engineer for Engineering bulb, but the first one will be in 16 turns. Do we have this time? Not sure, but until then, once we have crossbows to attack Thoth, we should switch to war elephant production, war elephants are probably the best units we can get right now to fight against this Commodore's stack

Final thought - I severely underestimated the economic aspect of CtH Agg. We're currently paying 30gpt in unit maintenance, and it's poised to go up even further. -50% to that is quite significant, and quite possibly the reason Commodore's economy stays afloat and Miguelito's pulling ahead, despite having similar-size military

[yuris125]

I ran the numbers and I think the stack I outlined above should be good enough to not die to Thoth's catapults. This is all very approximate, and would take too long to set up 100% accurately, but I just wanted to get an idea of what happens if Thoth throws his catapults and everything he has into attacking our stack







So I guess we go as soon as I can get crossbows in position

[yuris125]

Commodore finished Feudalism research, and fired his own golden age to switch to Vassalage and Serfdom. Another player switching out of slavery. Honestly, I thought this game would force people to stay in slavery even for golden ages - guess not

Also noteworthy that Commodore stays in HR despite having Pyramids. A while back when I was talking about what to do with a great engineer should we get one, I said that Pyramids was no longer important and I would rather use it for a bulb, just because HR is so important for happiness. Guess Commodore came to a similar conclusion; I wonder if his Pyramids build was mostly for denial purposes. Or maybe he plans to switch to Police State at the end of the golden age?

Anyway, with me finding ourselves falling behind Miguelito, I'm coming to conclusion that we should not plan an attack on Commodore. It made sense when I thought we were at relative parity, and could take on Miguelito one on one if the other two players were taken out. With the recent developments, it may no longer be the case. I need Commodore to stay relevant, just so that a 2-v-1 is a possibility, however difficult it is to make it happen in an always war setting

With this in mind, while I'm not entirely demilitarising the border with Commodore, I am bringing 2 of the 4 catapults I had in Boros Burn to the Thoth front. This is the remaining stack in Boros Burn




While not awful, it will not be able to defend if Commodore sends in the entire stack of his I showed a few turns ago, plus whatever he has in the fog and in those dreaded 4-move galleys. The period when he's out of slavery is the best time to do it in any case. But the real question is whether he sees the game state similarly. He can absolutely punish me for this move, does he risk it, not knowing what I have in the fog? (the answer to this question is nothing, everything is going to the Roman border) And does he want to attack me at all, or does he want to have the option of a temporary alliance vs Miguelito?

2 turns until our units are in position




The circled hill means that we cannot approach covertly, Thoth has visibility on all tiles near his border. So I'll just have to move in plain sight. Not like he doesn't know we're coming. See-Scape just whipped crossbow no. 11, and should finish the 12th with the help of overflow in time for the attack. Or I might need to whip again - we'll see

Also, as you can see, I'm building wealth in Big Red Dragons - this is also a consequence of deciding that Commodore is no longer a target. This turn I was only making 10gpt at 0% science without the wealth build, and if we're not attacking Commodore, we need to speed up research more than we need the extra military right now

Capital is building a bowman for cheap MP, it doesn't have many defenders and need something to keep it from getting unhappy (this turn it temporarily has a horse archer working as MP, but it will be needed at the front when the attack starts)

[yuris125]

Commodore's stack is missing




Hope that's him signalling that he's happy to demilitarise the border, and not trying something sneaky. Because I actually need to move 3 units out of Boros Burn over to Gruul Smash for MP. Only realised this was the problem when I moved axe defenders out of Gruul Smash to be part of the attack stack, and it started rioting like crazy

See-Scape is going to riot as well, its defenders are also joining in, but in See-Scape I can at least whip the rioters away, and ride the unhappiness for a few turns. Gruul Smash is working on our next great person (great engineer please), so gotta keep its tile assignments

Speaking of See-Scape and tile assignments, look at this horror I had to do to get that last crossbow out




But it is done. Next turn the stack assembles on the gold. Fingers crossed

[Tarkeel]

Thanks for the updates, and best of luck in the attack! This game has a very interesting dynamic, even if it's been not that many actual battles lately.