[SPOILERS PB71]Krill: By the numbers, when the walls fell (on everyone else)

[Krill]

Commodore has moved his units up.

He has 14 cats, 5 war elephants, 4 longbows, 2 swords, 10 axes and 13 spears, plus a GG medic scout. He will have an unknown number of units on boats that can land. I expect no more than 20 units, but he may have significantly less.

I expect he has more in the fog, but unless they are two movers, he can't get them into my territory next turn if he declares.

I believe I have enough to handle what I can see with relative ease. And given I have 70% greater power, I don't think he has much in the fog. I am ready to be proved wrong.





I've check out Opis, it needs siege to known down the walls, but after that CR3 maces will annihilate everything standing. The question for me is speed or efficiency, and I'm going with efficiency. Three Accuracy trebs would be enough, but then I need to swap the unpromoted maces at Cherry with the damaged ones that just destroyed Bings stack, so I need to heal and return those units and just generally shift stuff around whilst managing the risk from Commodore.

BTW, as I got the crusade event, if and when I capture Babylon I get the shrine for free. So be thorough, take the cities, and don't lose them to snipes etc.

[Krill]

I got bored and look at screenshots from the last few turns. A whole bunch of swords disappeared, as well as a couple of war elephants.

I could log in and check, but I suspect that Commodore is trying for misdirection, the stack visible is intended to draw my attention (and units) towards Cherry, whilst he has been building boats for a large naval invasion (at Onion or Lime, Onion feels smarter).

The problem is, I just don't care if he goes for Onion. The city just doesn't matter to me in the grand scheme of things. And it's not undefended (perhaps under-defended, but Potato is seeing to that with one turned units once the GA starts), but Commodore only has two move galleys, unless he has built a few whilst running both Vassalage and Theocracy (note to self, he might have done, so don't rule out some units getting transported by three move galleys). It just feels so...basic. I must be missing something, but at teh same time I think Commodore just lacks the units to do much more than that?

[Krill]

Full report tonight when I have time. Triggered the second GA and Commodore did not invade. He is building Xbows and about to finish a round of knights. It's starting to look like my paranoia is just that.

[Krill]

Turn 190










Start of turn.











After triggering the GA.






There was a choice to keep Rep, but I lose this game by lacking units in the right place at the right time.

Police State helps that issue. Rep doesn't. I'll consider swapping back to Rep at the end of the GA; I expect to, but I might keep PS if I plan to go for an immediate conquest.





This is everything Bing has. The most efficient invasion method is to use Accuracy trebs to knock down the walls and then maces get odds without collateral; I'll be moving collateral in towards Opis first from the SE (essentially beelining from which ever city builds it), but protecting it with knights. Everything else (moving the stack that beat bigs invading junk stack) is simple logistics when Bing has fewer than 15 units left.








Pindi lost another city last turn, but has cleared out everything behind his front lines. This war might take a while.





Commodore isn't moving forward. If he doesn't, the game can essentially be called, or rather, I can just stack up and win it by rolling westwards over every player to achieve conquest.

I don't know the last game won by a true conquest. Maybe PBEM4v?

[greenline]

Have you really grown SD's capital to size 16 already?

[Krill]

Yup. It was criminally underutilised, now it makes 28hpt before modifiers.

SD had Chrismatic and silver nearby. That's size 8 for the capital, so trivial to triple whip out a couple of settlers. The are is food poor, with the capital cow, plains sheep and grass hill sheep, plus a dry corn and a grass cow to the east. But there are 6 easily farmed grasslands in the north, and two in the south so maintaining a whip cycle to stack whip unhappy is no challenge. The lakes help cover early game commerce issues. The Potato site lacks grass hill so it doesn't want to sit at size 8, it's more efficient to move food around to other cities to stagger whips.

For example, the Cabbage location could have stolen a sheep to get to size 7 before giving it back to Carrot. and work two grass farms, four grass hills and a lake. 14 hpt, all there for the taking. Only needed a granary and ger, and later a barracks.

The Lime site could have been shifted one tile west to borrow food and could have worked a couple of capital cottages if desired (instead of farms, depending on how the early game turned out). That's another city that could have stacked whip anger to build keshiks. All in all, this area could have supported 6 cities and made it work, and then the first invasion may have been a little slower but could have had double the units.

The recovery of this area has been easy, because I simply haven't whipped it much, and two golden ages helps.

[Krill]

Question for the lurkers.

What do you think of me playing this game out with the goal of extracting the greatest yield possible from the core lands?

[greenline]

Who (purposefully) doesn't play with that goal?

Simcity is always fun

[Krill]

Quite a few players don't agree, and much prefer playing civ as a war game, finding more enjoyment from the tactical battles. I'm not going to deny that some stack battles can be interesting to play out (I've had four such battles this game, Bings failed invasion at Olive, the samurai situation at Rhubarb, removing yuri's control over Bings south, and then countering Bings second invasion at Blackberry and Raspberry). I've got a pretty decent track record in those sorts of battles, but that's because of the work that goes in beforehand, the building and planning.

I'd prefer to try and play out the rest of this game without attacking Pindicator, Thoth and Commodore. Yuri I'm less sure of, I'm happy to leave him alone, and there is no reason to remove him from a PYFT point of view, but he might want out.

It will be interesting to play a true ICS style game on a map this poor. I'll have to revert to building grocers and banks to stop myself going bankrupt once the GA ends, and scale back the unit builds.

[scooter]

Question for the lurkers.

What do you think of me playing this game out with the goal of extracting the greatest yield possible from the core lands?

It sounds more interesting to me than a rush to force a concession.