Cornflakes Goes Classical ... or Quantum?!

[Cornflakes]

I love the barb warrior doing damage amidst the carnage.

That is a nice touch I’ve actually had probably 10-15 tiles pillaged by barbs. Now that I’m whipping heavily I don’t really care. I needed the units at the front ASAP! Those last couple knight attacks for example flanked away siege and really made a difference in the kill ratio.

Speaking of kill ratio, anybody want to add up the unit count and hammer exchange? Should be easy enough with the before/after military advisor shots.

Good to see that the phalanxes are still contributing a bit!

I did not build nearly as many Phalanxes as I expected since I had to pick up Engineering earlier than expected for the road movement. I actually forgot that Engineering would obsolete Phalanxes and I have contemplated disconnecting my Iron if I wasn’t using it for Knights.

However the Phalanxes were valuable in absorbing Scooter’s knights and as versatile hill city defenders vs. both Commodore and Yuri.

**********
Where do we go from here? Now that I’ve smashed Commodore’s stack while preserving my knights, and razed MoM I’m a lot more optimistic about the longer game. Commodore has whipped heavily in his Golden Age and although not quite exhausted yet I don’t think he can assemble a kill stack in the immediate future.

I have hammers already into 4 settlers which I invested while we were finishing off Scooter. But then when Commodore swapped to Caste System I paused them and whipped knights instead.I think I’ll whip those settlers and begin the process of filling up the land. Expansion will fuel further expansion, while my core cities closer to Commodore can build military. I just have to beware of Commodore sending a Camel Archer stack through Scooter’s and Yuri’s roads.

I also don’t see a point in giving Commodore peace. As first in turn order he would always have the first strike on me at the end of a peace treaty.

[Cornflakes]

Commodore's Camel Archer stack must have been hidden on the couple of tiles that are out of sight of my city vision. I suspected that, but for me it was better that he split his stack. With a couple more CA there last turn I wouldn't have dared to attack out, and wouldn't have done nearly as much damage if I had tried.

First a screenshot of his turn: 15 losses for me, 8 for Commodore (including a couple siege off screen)

   

Then my counter attack: 2 losses for me, 14 for Commodore.

   

It was only by the narrowest of margins that I was able to get this good of a kill ratio. Even just 1 additional full health pike defending his stack would have made this impossible. I used a GGeneral to on two knights to make a 2XP fresh recruit into C2/Formation knight and promo-heal a half-health 7XP C1 knight into a 9.5/10 C3/Formation knight which each got 75% odds on the top two full health camel archers, and won! After that my attackers rapidly weakened into progressively more injured knights. 1 full health pike from Commodore would have negated my Formation option in addition to absorbing my strongest attackers, and thus making each one of my follow-up attackers iteration weaker.



I whipped a longbow to completion but next turn I can't add anything else to my Frequency defense but Commodore only has 2 visible knights in range (barring any GG that he might have hidden). The following turn I can stuff 4 pikes in addition to a turn of healing by my super medic.

And here is the military advisor for both of us. The losses on both sides have been horrific. It's hard to believe that we both have this few units 150 turns into a classical start game.

   

   

[klops]

that looks like all-in on both sides... bloody hell!


Oh and... is a GG-Treb a thing? My brain is clueless and my gut is confused

[Cornflakes]

that looks like all-in on both sides... bloody hell!

Commodore swapped into Slavery + Police State (Pyramids) at the earliest opportunity which was the turn after our peace treaty expired, now 6 turns ago. This turn his MoM-GA ended and he swapped from Representation into Hereditary Rule. So yes, all-in on his side, and by necessity all-in on my side. We exchanged evenly this turn, and I was able to promo-heal my longbow, pike, and Phalanx so hopefully I can exchange equally this turn. Then my 3 pike + 3 knight relief force arrives next turn, in combination with super-medic GG healing.

I can't afford the military escort to defend new settlements vs. the barbarian hordes, nor can I afford letting up on military whips for even 1 round. Commodore's play is to use his city count and Police State advantage to grind me down. Honestly I think that it will ultimately be successful.

Oh and... is a GG-Treb a thing? My brain is clueless and my gut is confused

I've been keeping the "GG-Morale-siege" in my secret toolchest of tricks to supplement a mounted stack. Those first few hitpoints of collateral damage make a huge difference, especially when throwing a mounted stack against a full strength Castle. When I razed Tchaikovsky, my first Knight did 0-to-1 hit of damage against each of the defenders. Had I been able to throw a catapult in first, it could have saved as much as 5 knights Unfortunately my first two GG's were sacrificed to the needs of the moment in order to survive Yuri's attack, and the 3rd was the super-medic that was so essential in restoring my Scooter attack-stack to full health in time to face Commodore, and now in healing my Frequency defensive stack.

[klops]

morale... oh yes, I see. Only had slightly better chances and collateral in mind but a 2-move-siege sounds nice.

[Hitru]

That unit count is really low. What a bloodbath

[Cornflakes]

Not much happening over the last few turns. Some minor maneuvering but mostly just restocking catapults on my end to ensure that I can fend off the next attack stack. Commodore set off a culture bomb in Tin that I missed at the time, according to the culture graph it was right around the time our peace treaty expired after eliminating Scooter. In reviewing prior screenshots it looks like it only claimed one tile of mine (4-7 from Frequency, which was an already-disputed tile that I'd only claimed from Commodore a couple turns before so it didn't jump out to me at the time). I've been monitoring the culture on the critical tile since I noticed it 5 turns ago and the situation appears to be stable:

   

Sharp lurkers may have noticed the Phalanx in production at Frequency. I pillaged my Iron last turn and built a road on the Iron tile. I now have a mine 1 turn short of completion for when I am ready to re-connect. My reasoning is that Phalanx are half the cost of Pikes, and hold up just as well defending hill cities. In either a stack battle or mounted raiding parties into Scooter's/Yuri's land the outcome is going to come down to a numbers game. I'm also taking advantage of cheaper Horse Archers to get a couple sentries that will help with barb busting and raiding party alerts.

I can get 2 phalanx for every Pike, 2.5 Phalanx for every Camel Archer, and 2 HA for every Camel Archer. Once Catapults work their magic and my 15 knights do their work against the top defenders, I’ll need more numbers for the cleanup. For perspective if I'd had just 2 more HA in my mega-stack-attack it would have resulted in 8 more units killed (2 redlined units directly attacked, plus 6 siege flanked away).

   

In the east, I'm beginning my play for the win. Two cities will be founded as indicated at YELLOW and BLUE dots. Their positioning is not strictly optimal for the long term, but they can share the Banana between them for efficiency and they have enough production between them to support deeper pushes to the north. I have 3 knights as the advanced guard clearing the barbarian hordes. I'll have 2 sentry HA screening in front, and at least 3 pikes and 2 Phalanx between the two cities. That will be sufficient to fend off a mounted raid from Commodore in combination with my sentry net.

[Cornflakes]

I mentioned the graphs in the above post so I suppose I should post them. Here's an annotated overview shot:

   

The important points are:

• GNP is about equal and both terrible, so Commodore isn't boing to be showing up with Rifles or Cuirassier any time soon.
  
• Military is equal, and I can see all of the units that he has build recently thanks to city vision so I know at this point he doesn't have a stack of Camel Archers trying to sneak through the back door.
  
• We are both whipped to exhaustion and neither of us were able to break through. At tech parity, stack parity, and equally terrible whip capacity we are headed for the long game.
  

My takeaway is that I have an opening to let off the gas militarily and get out 2 settlers which will put us at equal city count. Then lean into my Greek Phalanxes as cheap defenders and catapults as stack breakers to hold in the west while expanding throughout the north.

It only hit me this turn that Commodore can't be running Police State and Hereditary Rule simultaneously. Therefore Commodore gave up Police State at the end of his GA when he swapped into HR. Why would he pick HR (+1 happiness everywhere except his front city) over Representation (+3 happiness at the 6 largest of his 9 total cities, in addition to specialist beakers)?

[Cornflakes]

Commodore gave himself a dice roll chance

   

I had 1 Phalanx in zone defense and whipped another. Unfortunately I sent my two barb defense knights north to screen for my new city so they weren't on hand anymore in the south, but it was a turn or two late to intercept the Camel Archers in the north I set up a quick sim and won 9 times out of 10 by sacrificing the worker.

[Cornflakes]

We held!

   

Didn't even lose anything on defense! (all of Commodore's attacks were <33% for him). I did end up losing one knight on a 68% attack cleaning up his remaining 2 units.

In the north, I settled my first new city in 50 turns and have another settler ready.

   

The challenge will be maintaining the military presence to prevent Commodore from razing a city. The 5-Camel-Archer raiding party was a reminder that I need to remain vigilant. Unfortunately my sentry HA was was killed by barbs this turn because ... the barbs now have Engineering Meaning that barb horse archers can now cover 6 tiles along the northern roads

It will take 4 turns for Commodore's Camel Archers to reach either of the two cities that I'm building now. I will be able to respond quick enough with enough Knights to supplement my permanent Pike/Phalanx defenders. And since my Phalanx are much cheaper than Camel Archers I should be able to crawl ahead and gain ground.

I'm trying to re-grow. Commodore still have 55% of world population compared to 45% for myself, or 20% more than me (something like 48 pop to 40 pop). But I have Apostolic Palace for a 24 hammer advantage. I would really like to build UoS in order to start benefiting from the passive beakers but I don't think I can spare the military builds at the moment in combination with expansion. And the expansion will snowball so I'm focusing on that first.