Gillette Turn Discussion

[Old Harry]

Turn 204 part one

Lots of naval combat on Trolls' turn. It went like so:
Plako's Frigate vs OH's Ship of the Line 4.4% LOSE (ie we won)
Plako's Frigate vs OH's Ship of the Line 20.9% WIN (ie we lost )
Plako's Frigate vs OH's Frigate 23% LOSE
Plako's Frigate vs OH's Frigate 32% LOSE
Plako's Frigate vs OH's Frigate 30% LOSE
Plako's Frigate vs OH's Frigate 50% WIN
Plako's Frigate vs OH's Frigate 50% LOSE
Plako's Frigate vs OH's Privateer 64% WIN
Plako's Frigate vs OH's Frigate 96% WIN
Plako's Frigate vs OH's Frigate 99% WIN
Plako's Galleon vs OH's Frigate 74% WIN
The good news is they didn't get any of our galleons, so all our grenadiers survive. The other good news is that we have a Ship of the Line and two frigates in range that can hit their stack.


First our circumnavigation frigate kills a damaged frigate.


Then the SotL nearly loses to a frigate.


Then a coinflip... That we win!


And a 97% that we win.


Trolls bring out their first Ship of the Line here. If they have a dry dock it could be four-move, but otherwise we can skip around it like a bush kangaroo.


I used our knackered Frigate to take a shot at theirs which we lost,


But makes it a >99% fight for a galleon to win flawlessly.

So our 11 grenadiers now have four targets that they can hit. I didn't attack this turn as I think we want to pin down units for as long as possible. But attacking next turn would be possible. Against pinch cavalry we'll lose a gren for each, otherwise we should win most fights. Which city do you want to hit?


I think we're doing pretty well for naval units, and the happy cap here means I don't want to whip or grow any more. So we could start planning for the aftermath of the war... Or should we be using the dry dock for building boats?


On the home front Trolls are threatening Pike (might hold), Epee (doomed) and Katana (doomed) this turn.


Then Halberd and Occam next turn. Our choice is to throw everything into defending Occam or to prevent the other attacks succeeding. I'm not convinced that we can beat the Occam stack, but if we don't try to kill it there isn't much point continuing, so I'm tempted to leave Halberd and Pike to die. What do you think?


I will aim to end turn in about three hours with a report on the second half of the turn.

[Cheater Hater]

Well, it certainly seems like we're winning the naval front--how does the power graph reflect our early successes?

These units attacking Halberd and the peninsula are separate from the main stack, right? I think we have to leave the cities on the peninsula to die (how many units are in Pike?), but we don't really have to make a decision on Halberd right now, right, since it can only be attacked by one cavalry?

Have you poked the main stack with our airships, or do we need to move them off the peninsula to save them this turn? How are our odds looking?

The plan is still to try to force the main stack onto flatland next to Occam by piling some units on the hill, right? I see there's some units there right now; how many are there?

Does the "+SOTL" sign by Elephant Beer mean there's a ship there right now for defense? It looks like it's on a hill (based on the Guerrilla II Rifle), but other than that it seems like the best target (big city, weakest defenses). Other than that I think Weissbier is the only other target worth the risk.

[Old Harry]

Just a quickie to finish off the turn, first we scatter XP over 13 rifles to get one promotion each and a free upgrade on a warrior:

Well, it certainly seems like we're winning the naval front--how does the power graph reflect our early successes?

Not even slightly. We've sort-of run out of pop to whip away now, while Trolls seem to be continuing to produce stuff at a ridiculous rate...

These units attacking Halberd and the peninsula are separate from the main stack, right? I think we have to leave the cities on the peninsula to die (how many units are in Pike?), but we don't really have to make a decision on Halberd right now, right, since it can only be attacked by one cavalry?

Yeah, you're right, they are doomed. I've abandoned them (there is a pike in Pike and a longbow and musket in Katana.) If I hadn't mis-moved some pikes there was a way to save pike, but - they'll probably do more good in Occam anyway...

Have you poked the main stack with our airships, or do we need to move them off the peninsula to save them this turn? How are our odds looking?

I've moved our airships somewhere safe and hit the stack with another ten or so. I also ran a sim, inspired by something TheHumanHydra said, for what happens if we just sit in Occam and let them come at us. It doesn't end nearly as badly as I feared - attacking 30 cannons over a river is just impossible. So I think we should consider this! I'll do a bit more simming if I get time.

The plan is still to try to force the main stack onto flatland next to Occam by piling some units on the hill, right? I see there's some units there right now; how many are there?

This is a great idea - leaving two rifles on the hill with guerrilla promos would kill at least two of their units, perhaps five or more (any more and they'd use cannons to make it easy), but they could choose which units they would be, and I want them to attack the rifles with cavalry - so I moved everything back into Occam and fortified it. Sorry!

We have a lot of promotions outstanding, I think that NobleHelium would kill me if I put City Garrison promotions on them all, but do you want them on some of them? This is how things look now:

Does the "+SOTL" sign by Elephant Beer mean there's a ship there right now for defense? It looks like it's on a hill (based on the Guerrilla II Rifle), but other than that it seems like the best target (big city, weakest defenses). Other than that I think Weissbier is the only other target worth the risk.

It does and I agree totally. Guess we'll see how it goes next turn.

One last thing - our great artist can put another 20% culture defense on Occam, which costs another two cannons to clear. I think it's probably not worth it, but I should mention it...

[Cheater Hater]

So what happens if we stay in Occam? If they attack with everything do we keep the city, if they attack from the hill? How much does this depend on the promotions for the Rifles (no promotion vs generic Combat/Pinch vs City Garrison)? If they don't decide to attack in that case would they stay in place and heal or decide to try and cross the river to either attack other cities or avoid the river crossing penalty? If they do decide to heal, does Medic III outpace our airships? How much do they keep adding to the stacks each turn? How long can they reasonably delay the main attack, considering M3 and Pirates are joining the attack in 6 turns?

[Old Harry]

From civstats it looks like we lost four cities this turn.

In the no-promotions sim I ran we killed almost everything they threw at Occam, while we kept most of our cannons and rifles (badly injured) which then have the opportunity to heal before attacking back the next turn. Attacking 30 collateral-immune cannons over the river with airshipped rifles is just suicide (if I remember right most of the rifles seem to have pinch - if they take charge it might be different, but I don't think they have enough XP for that).

So the only thing that makes sense is for them to wander around the city until they don't have to attack over the river... If we don't pay off Pirates' loan we could research Military tradition and upgrade our knights to Curassiers, giving us a chance to kill their cannons...

Medic III probably does outpace our airships, but every turn we delay them is good - it costs them money and allows us to build units. M3 and Pirates aren't going to be doing anything much on t210.

It looks like I'll play the turn tonight (in about 4-5 hours from this post) will you guys be around?

[Old Harry]

Turn 205

Cities lost:
Epee (razed)
Katana (kept)
Pike (razed)
Longsword (razed by a commando cav )


We killed a total of
2 cannon
1 rifle
In losing those four cities. You can see there are small Troll stacks all around here. Probably celebrating.


First priority is to kill the commando cav. After an airship-hit a pike gets 40% odds.


But loses, so I clean up flawlessly with a knight.

Next up our naval battle falls foul of the fact I left our galleons seven tiles from Elephant Beer. They've effectively emptied that city and piled everyone into their other coastal cities. So we can't get anything over here (the numbers are the no. of units, assume a mix of cav, rifle and cannon).


So I move the fleet down to fork some different cities and at least make them shuffle the troops around a bit.


This is the force attacking Halberd. I think the city will survive for one turn before falling, but I haven't simmed it, so I don't know for sure.


Finally this is our defense and their attack at Occam. Our rifles all have combat I (except three that are CII), the grens and pikes are the same, a handful of muskets have CGII, some others CGI and others CI or nothing. If they attack us this turn we should win, if they sit and heal up we have the choice of attacking or sitting tight again next turn. Either way they are still producing so much military that they'll overwhelm us eventually. Even if we can destroy this stack I think I want to concede...

[scooter]

Just popping in to say hello and nice job putting up a heck of a fight .

[Old Harry]

Thanks Scooter, nice to see you back in the old place! TBH I'm a bit pissed with all the moves I've done - lost Rapier and Pike when we didn't need to, and lost Longsword to exactly the commando cavalry attack that I've been going on and on about! I don't know how much you've been following but any constructive criticism would be appreciated!

The good news is that we have the Trolls on the run:

21:17 (2 hours ago)

Hi,

It seems to me this war is soon reaching status quo. If you're intrested, we could start discussing about the terms of peace. I'm sure we could find a way to make it worthwhile for both of us.

They think that when the M3 and Pirates NAPs expire in five turns they're in for a demogame-style pile on. Little do they realise just how unprepared everyone else is... Which reminds me Yossarian - Mackoti?

Anyway, I've added pictures to the report, enjoy.

[YossarianLives]

Just popping in to say hello and nice job putting up a heck of a fight .

I agree 100% with Scooter. You've done an amazing job Old Harry. Don't beat yourself up over the little mistakes. There are so many moving pieces here it's impossible to keep track of everything. Also, you've been pretty much a 1-man team while Trolls still seem to have pretty decent participation. You're the only reason Trolls didn't win this thing ages ago.

Anyways, settling and holding all of Smoothfoundland for Team Gillette counts as a victory in my book

[Cheater Hater]

Wait--Trolls are offering peace? We would take straight peace right, even at this point? (losing ~10? cities) They only kept 3 cities, right, and we still took one of their cities as part of the deal. I still think SFL will eventually push us ahead in the very long term, especially since we can re-found most of our cities. Then again, the wording by Trolls made it seem like they were willing to give up stuff in order to avoid the (non-existent) dogpile--if we could get back one or two cities this could work in our favor.

Then again, if we do sign peace, all that means is that we push Trolls to attack M3 and/or Pirates, just like they attacked TEAM during the last war (though at least we know when M3 and Pirates are supposed to attack this time ), which will expand their territory even more (though did they get that much from TEAM last war?).

I wouldn't say we're a one-man team Yossarian--you and I have been giving Old Harry lots of help, even if Old Harry has been the only one playing the turns

Again, how much of their power score is concentrated in units we can see? Sure, their power is large, but they have a lot of units we can see between the mega-stack, the smaller stack by Halberd, and the naval front--and I still don't think their production is greater than all three of us combined (if M3 and Pirates get their act together ).