Gillette Turn Discussion

[Old Harry]

Nice work, yeah nothing much to screw up! I'm not planning worker micro much any more..

[Old Harry]

Turn 197

We start with a gift to Pirates, who have messaged to say they cancelled their rolling NAP with Trolls and will be allowed to attack on t205. This is our gratitude - even if they don't attack Trolls will still need to keep some units up on their border.


Lots has been going on since I was here last. We could do with Hagia Sophia, but we only just got Theology - lots of rifles are great though and both TEAM and Pirates are gearing up for warfare


I think some luxuries might help M3 with draft anger, so I offered this deal. We've got another gems getting hooked next turn, so this doesn't cause any trouble for us.


We'll get our great person at the end of this turn - 80% chance of an artist. Hope it's worth it... EDIT: Artist it is.


I don't know how much you can see here but the upshot is that Trolls have 20 Cavalry, 8 Knights, 23 Rifles and 17 Cannons heading for our border.


On our side we have 6 catapults, 12 cannons, 16 pikes, 14 rifles, 3 muskets, 9 longbows and 10 knights as well as a great general medic III chariot. We'll have more completing over the next four turns, but for now what should go where? I think I'd like to leave the longbows and perhaps a couple of pikes in Jemmy and Katana and stuff everything else into Epee. I've been holding the rifles out of the reach of their fast workers in the hope Trolls keep building cavalry, but I think we want them in Epee on turn 200 (just in case they do attack t200). The cannons and catapults could sit in epee too, or could sit on the tile SW or NW of Epee to give extra protection to Jemmy or Katana. If we can't pop the tile of culture SE of Jemmy I'd favor protecting Katana.


At sea Trolls have 3 caravels and 6 frigates down south, but nothing up north, we'll have more than that after the end of next turn, but I wonder how many they'll have?


We're deliberately only completing two units this turn since next turn we can start whipping and will have Theocracy. I've been putting hammers into several builds in each city so we can whip over consecutive turns building up overflow to get extra units out. It'll be touch-and-go how many we can get to the front for t201, but we'll have a lot soon after that.


Next turn we switch to nationhood, slavery and theocracy. I guess we'll stay in these civics for the rest of the game (or until our next golden age in about 30 turns). I wish we were Spiritual right now.


Power is looking up. A little late, but thanks to M3 we might just survive this.


Demos

[Cheater Hater]

You mean thanks to Pirates--that NAP cancellation means they can't blitz for the capital at the very least, unless they want to lose northern cities (though Pirates have barely any troops at this point--how much tech do they have?)

How much does M3 need Hagia? Are there any rules against them gifting the Hagia city to you for a time? (Why were they building Hagia when they should have given us more Rifles--did they pop an engineer?)

[Old Harry]

You mean thanks to Pirates--that NAP cancellation means they can't blitz for the capital at the very least, unless they want to lose northern cities (though Pirates have barely any troops at this point--how much tech do they have?)

That's what I'd like to think. But who knows?

How much does M3 need Hagia? Are there any rules against them gifting the Hagia city to you for a time? (Why were they building Hagia when they should have given us more Rifles--did they pop an engineer?)

Maybe they are about to workshop their whole territory?

[Old Harry]

Thought I'd do a bit of simming for a troll attack

- it takes five cannons to take down 60% culture

- airships hit cav for 15% leaving them at 12.8

In Katana, on a hill with 60% culture:
- fully fortified G1 longbows get 50% odds on C1 cav,
- fully fortified C1 pikes get 50% odds on C1 cav
- fully fortified pikes get 50% odds on C1 cav
- fully fortified pikes get 45% odds on C2 cav

- fully fortified muskets get 45% on C1 pinch cav
- fully fortified muskets get 55% on cav
- fully fortified CG muskets get 50% on C1 pinch cav
- fully fortified CG muskets get 55% on cav

- fully fortified CG muskets get 65% on C1 airship-damaged cav

In Epee, with 60% culture:
- fully fortified CG2 longbow gets 35% odds on C1 cav
- fully fortified CG1 longbow gets 25% odds on C1 cav

- fully fortified c1 pike gets 48% on C1 cav
- fully fortified pike gets 45% on C1 cav
- a pike gets 25% on C1 cav

- fully fortified CG2 musket gets 55% on C1 cav
- fully fortified CG2 musket gets 50% on C1 pinch cav
- fully fortified CG1 musket gets 48% on C1 cav
- fully fortified CG1 musket gets 25% on C1 pinch cav
- fully fortified musket gets 25% on C1 cav

Bear in mind cav get about 20% retreat odds, so a 50% battle for us is only a 30% chance of losing. Also we probably don't have time to get to full fortification.

So I think we can slow the cavalry charge if we put a mix of muskets, longbows and pikes in our front cities. There needs to be a similar number to the total no. of Troll cav in each city though. So we'd need over 40 to cover both Epee and Katana.

Finally this is what the border should look like if we lose Epee, Katana and Jemmy (ignore the forests etc, I haven't bothered getting the lie of the land perfect):



I'm inclined to have everything fall back to Occam, or possibly Epee based on this. The good news is that thanks to Halberd there are plenty of tiles where our cannons can sit safely in wait to hit the Troll stack.

[Old Harry]

Turn 198

Started with a chat with HAK.


thestick seems to think he hasn't cancelled his NAP with Trolls yet, I don't really want to give them the Bannana, Clams and Dye we have spare if they aren't going to cancel it, but actually it makes no odds to us so we might as well...

First things first, we revolt, saving us 25 gpt:


Then we draft Smooth Criminal, Jemmy and Katana. Since we're going to lose Jemmy and Katana, and probably Epee we can do all our drafting from these for the next couple of turns... I tried out drafting after the turn roll and it worked, so that's an extra three muskets for Trolls to face on t201!


Then I spent a little while writing up how the whipping will work over the next few turns. This turn we gain 6 muskets, 3 pikes, 3 cannon, 4 frigates, next turn 4 musket, 1 pike, 5 cannon, 5 Frigates and 2 Airships, t200 I'm not sure how much overflow there will be to use as we'll be out of the golden age, but I think we'll complete a lot of airships to get to the front line quick. Airships are probably more useful to us at sea - they'll give us odds on Troll Frigates...
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?...hNUE#gid=4

Anyway we've whipped away 130 points worth of population, it's been a bit epic...


This is the Troll border with Pirates/M3/TEAM


And this is with us


This is the northern naval front


And this is the bulk of their navy - 7 frigates right now.


Demos

[Old Harry]

Turn 199

A bunch more whipping takes another 100 points off us this turn.


Our power spike is still pretty crappy though


I've put in a couple of research builds in places we weren't going to produce units very soon to get us Mil Sci to the beaker, after that we'll save money for upgrades. The Privateers were a way of getting hammers in so we could whip two turns in a row and overflow into another frigate, mostly worked well, but I annoyingly wasted 20 hammers in Scimitar by going over the max overflow.


I've asked if anyone will loan us 1000 gold to be paid back t202, I don't expect an answer...


We'll have three galleons and four Frigates staged on the S? tile next turn, ready to pre-emptively strike whichever of Salty Dog, Weissbier or Single Malt we decide is the best option. Trolls have four Frigates of their own in the area, along with some galleons which could cause us trouble.


Down south Trolls have seven Frigates and three more galleons, our stack will be 3 frigates, 2 privateers and two triremes (upgrade?) We'll need to put some airships in Oathkeeper to injure them a bit, but Oathkeeper is vulnerable to the galleons. I think perhaps we just accept that we're losing this city too - it wouldn't last long after Katana fell anyway


On the eastern front I think we'll know where they are coming from next turn. Not that that will let us do much about it...


We can't really get close to trolls on MFG outside the golden age (they'll have a couple more turns I think), but we've got to have whipped a similar number of hammers!

[Cheater Hater]

Here we go...
It looks like we'll be getting some loans at least

Edit: Thanks for not making me play the war turns Assuming you get a turn this weekend, when will you be able to play next?

[Old Harry]

Turn 200

The troll golden age is over and we complete a bunch of fighty stuff.


Re: playing over the next week - it wasn't just that I knew you wouldn't want to pick it up at this point - my inner control freak just couldn't handle not playing then next 5-10 turns out! If it gets back around to me by Monday am I'll play t201 then, after that I'll have my crappy laptop, so can play in Starbucks or somewhere if needed, but I'd rather wait until I'm back home. We'll see how impatient everyone gets...

Offer of gold from HAK, with what sounds like very reasonable conditions. This will let us upgrade all our zerks to grenadiers and probably some of our triremes and caravels to frigates. I'm happy to give them the great general as well as sending them back units to the value of the hammers they've sent - how about a message to the effect:

"Hey HAK, thanks for the loan - that is perfect. As far as repaying the rifles you sent us goes I was planning to send you back any surviving rifles plus the balance of hammers of Frigates, Ships of the Line, Airships or Cannons, your choice. Once we feel secure against the Troll menace (ie they won't make any further inroads) these are yours to prosecute the war further. You've given us 17 rifles, which is 1870 hammers. We think our next GG is a fair rate of interest so I'll send him once he's born. "

etc... What do you think?


We'll use M3's money for upgrading units, these are all the things we could upgrade:
- caravel - frigate = 110 * 3 = 330
- trireme - frigate = 140 * 4 = 560
- Zerk to grenadier = 110 * 15 = 1650
- catapult - cannon = 170 * 6 = 1020
We have 1500 gold on hand. First up we have 12 zerks ready to hit cities next turn so they cost 1320 to upgrade, then we can only upgrade one caravel. We'll have to do the other two next turn, perhaps with the triremes too? Then we need to pay HAK back. I don't think cat-cannon gets us a very good return since the cat still does collateral damage (does anyone know how much they differ?)

This is an interesting puzzle - I don't think Trolls will declare on us next turn, but if they do then only two of their five (4-move) frigates can hit our galleons (barring movement promotions), so all of our grenadiers should be available to hit Cape Cod, Salty Dog, Single Malt or Weissbier. We have five frigates and a privateer in theater, but our three airships should give us an edge. We'll have three ships of the line in the area in three turns, which hopefully won't be too late. Finally Trolls could drop off six rifles/cavs by Rapier on t201, which we could hit with airships then with amphibious grenadiers. Although Rapier is a fairly rubbish city which we could manage without.


Down here our galleon can choose which city to attack next turn, I'm more inclined to hit Tequilla Sunrise as it's further away from the Troll homeland.


Over here we have the zerks we couldn't afford to upgrade, but given that TS has 2 rifle and a cavalry I don't think we'd have got it anyway. We can upgrade these in a few turns time if we see another opportunity.


Finally on the Eastern front I'm thinking that the counter-attack stack could go on the pink or green tiles, do you have any thoughts about that? Also should some rifles sit in Epee (they have approx 30 cav around) and what promotions do we want for the units in Epee? They won't attack next turn, but the turn after I expect to see a big stack between Katana and Epee.


Units we're building this turn: Mostly Cannons, Frigates, Ships of the Line and Airships (in the small SFL cities) but where Trolls have visibility I'm trying to build our hitter units so they will have less chance of knowing that we have 24 cannons and growing. So Jemmy and Katana are drafting every turn and will build a Grenadier and a musket respectively. Of course with their fast workers they could easily get visibility on our cannon stack. So should we close borders this turn or will that give them a pretext to declare a turn early?


Demos


Power


I haven't ended turn, the questions I have are:
1. Should we close borders this turn?
2. Which tile for the counter attack stack?
3. What do you think of the message to M3?
You have about five hours before I'll need to end turn...

[YossarianLives]

1. Closing borders isn't going to be the move that prompts their attack, so if it gives us an advantage, let's do it. They can still send in those fast workers for reconnaissance once they DOW, though.

2. Either tile works, I don't see any advantage choosing one over the other.

3. Message to m3 sounds great

Maybe it's just wishful thinking, but it looks like our power graph is improving