[SPOILERS] scooter Reruns Bluey

[scooter]

Commodore did move in unsurprisingly. A lot will hinge on what exactly is on these boats.





If they're 4 well-promoted Knights, this is going to get tough fast. If they're not.





Then this is not enough to make serious progress I don't think. (There's two more Elephants in Keepy Uppy.)


That said, I suspect he's got real units on those Galleys, and Copycat will be in danger. Thing is, that city is ultimately disposable. There's 0 infra in it, and I'm willing to trade it for time. Losing Keepy Uppy would be disastrous, on the other hand.


I asked Pindicator for his spare Horse thinking I was going to lose my Elephant access when Commodore inevitably disconnected it next turn. Then I remembered Iron + Ivory is sufficient to build Elephants, so I'm fine. He said yes anyway.

[Mjmd]

Every time I read "Keepy Uppy" I smile because its so non sensical for a city name.

[scooter]

Every time I read "Keepy Uppy" I smile because its so non sensical for a city name.

It's especially good too because the city is so critical that it's a helpful reminder of my mission each turn. Keep this city upright, and we're OK.

[T-hawk]

Losing Keepy Uppy would be disastrous, on the other hand.

Yeah, I'm reading that sentence from Bluey's point of view too

[Mjmd]

And now I'm reading the posts in the voice. Thanks T-Hawk......... 

[scooter]

One thing I forgot to mention earlier.

I love random events and think they're totally great with no downsides.

The events have been very kind to me. It's as if they're trying to win me over.

My tremendous run of events continues. Events are Good Actually, says famous Events Hater.

As I was saying...





Events are bad.

[scooter]

So this is all weirdly half-hearted from Commodore which makes me think something else must be going on. He's just not sending that much at me yet.





(1 gold from a cottage? Excuse me?)

Lost one Trireme coin flip (due to C1 it was a real coin flip) and then won a Galley fight at worse than coin flip. I forgot to take before/after demo screen pictures to check if there were units on board. I know there are 2 units on that second Galley, but I don't know for sure about the one that died given that combat does prioritize the empty Galley if one exists. I don't know that he knew my Trireme pair was 1S of that mountain, but he should have known it was a possibility.





Major screwup by me not having a second combat worker present (one was sadly 1 tile out of range - that road wasn't there), otherwise I think I could have killed most of this stack of his. Those are my odds against his C2 Formation Knight, by the way. Odds are even better against the rest which do not have Formation. He does have a combat worker east of this that might be readying a city plant - or more likely reinforcements - but all in all this is a super underwhelming attack force by him and surely nowhere near his full power. It makes me wonder what his actual aims are here and/or if I'm missing something.


Notably, his peace with Pindicator expires in about 4T, so it's certainly possible he intends to turn and go the other direction at that point, I guess. Or he doubles down into me and just sort of hopes Pindicator doesn't hit him from the other direction? You can see by power ratio our armies are pretty close to the same, and given his Knights count for "more" than my Elephants but are pretty similar overall in my cultural borders, yeah I'm not sure he really has that much more than I've seen. Hard to say exactly what's going on here. I suspect there's another wave coming shortly aided by that worker, but it's not like I don't have more Elephants coming either. The reality is I can get reasonable odds on his Knights for 50% fewer hammers. He's got more burnable pop than me, though, and it's likely his promos will improve.

[scooter]

As I posted this he played, which was quality timing. He offered peace. This combined with his roading workers suggests he's trying to use the peace and distraction to settle up on me. I'm not sure why I should give him peace after I spent so much pop putting together an army meant to deal with him specifically. If I can get Pindicator to join in a few turns, we can probably beat him.


That said, there's no guarantees Pindicator actually would join. He's incentivized pretty strongly to take advantage of the peace edge. So I guess the decision I have to make here is whether I want to try to blow up Commodore's game now by slogging this, or if I want to take the peace and expand and hit some key techs that would help me a ton. I'm unlikely to get another turn tonight, so I'll sleep on it and decide whether to re-offer or not.


As for his Knights, I didn't snap a picture (yet), but they're annoying but not particularly threatening.

[scooter]

Well, I decided against re-offering peace for now. Subject to change. The reality of the situation is:

* He's done a lot of damage to me, and I haven't had as much opportunity to return it

* I think he wants the peace because he's about to plant a city in my face and then spend 10T reinforcing it

* He can just come right back in 10T

* Uh, I think I can kill all his units here?


That last one is noteworthy. I picked off another Keshik first and have sent his boats fleeing. He also has just one Formation Knight, and he's left it within range of 2 of my 3 Formation Elephants. That's a 68% odds fight for me.





Flawless LOSS






That is... a mega tilter. I don't have expanded odds showing here, but given that flawless win is showing here at 4% odds and winning was 2x more likely, it seems reasonable to think this was a 2% chance of occurring. Absolutely brutal luck. I decided ultimately not much has changed, and I went in with my second Formation Elephant at 68%. And I lost again. At least I redlined this time, but truly the odds of this as a total outcome had to be around 1%. I plugged it into Zulan and used HP to try to approximate the CtH Elephant changes, and yeah it has the 2v1 at around 99% likely. (Though of course the odds between combats is quite different.) Just awful luck.


Anyway, you can see below the interface his stack in the south. Specifically, he has 3 Knights and 2 Keshiks in the south. And I'm going to attempt to trap the Knights.





He can escape the Keshiks most likely, but the Knights will be trickier. He can attempt to fight his way out with an assist from the incoming Knight, but in general he's going to have to take some coin flips. (That Mace is Woodsman and will hold up decently well against his Combat-focused Knights.)


I'm expecting he's going to bring more in from the fog next turn, but I'm still streaming them in from the west too. Also this may get a bit uncomfortable for Commodore as his peace treaty with Pin has I think 3T left, and at this point it would take longer than that just to get these Knights back into his culture, let alone to the other front. I really hope Pindicator joins in. Golden opportunity here. If he leaves me to fight alone, we'll see. Either way, Commodore can't really all-in commit to this degree as long as that treaty expiration looms, and that's what's helping me a lot right now.

[scooter]

Tactical situation is pretty interesting. I did lose yet another coin flip at sea, so my bad run of combat luck continues.





So Commodore mostly tried to buy another turn. There's certainly a chance he's trying to Dunkirk his Knights out of there. Unfortunately my Trireme was wounded badly killing a barb Galley, so it's not really in any condition to stop it. The issue with this turn is I basically had two paths I could follow. I had the workers to kill just one Knight - either the one 1S of the spices, or the one labeled "maybe also bait?"


Killing the "bait?" Knight would be great because it would more or less encircle the whole group. The risk is that there's more Knights on the "danger" tile that could come in and clean up. Killing the Spice Knight is safer. I also realized I could come up with a fairly flexible set of movements where I still have a good shot at the Knights the following turn, so I'm gonna go with the safer route here.





I took a gamble here as my C2 Elephants had 6% higher odds, however winning this gives me a promotion, and the C2 win would not. Also 6% is fairly small, so I went with this one, and I won fortunately. I covered it with a couple units. He could kill them, but at the cost of his whole stack. Same with the workers - they're covered but killable, but again he would lose everything to do it. I then moved units forward and placed workers on that central forested tile to provide the most flexibility.






He moves hit units west or north, they all die. Unlikely he does it. Most likely he'll move them 1NE, and how hard I go there will depend on how reinforced the tile is, but I'll get odds on his stack and likely kill most of his Knights if the RNG matches expectations. The Keshiks can get out, but he's keeping them with the Knights because they serve as meat shields in the event his Knights get redlined in a fight.


I offered him peace if he gives me 300g, which is more or less his whole treasury. I'd be mildly surprised - but not shocked - if he accepts. But I see no reason at all to give him peace unless he's going to pay me off. Thoth is cracking Yuris. Would love to be a counter-weight, but remind me whose fault is it again that I can't be?