[SPOILERS] Pindicator as Qin Shi of China - Boring Ol' Vanilla

[pindicator]

Barry hasn't even touched the turn yet. I fell bad if he's already checked out- though I'm sure it will help the rest of the war

I dont feel bad. 'barry' is a troll and deserves an embarrassing, but clean, death. Then he deserves to have his usual login revealed and mocked... but thats getting a bit personal. this sock puppet shit is ruining the realms experience for me.

A sock puppet? That explains the handle but not the poor play. I thought we just had a new person who was trying to express himself as a shy new person by naming himself after that novel. Not a sock puppet by a cheeky vet.

Don't tell me who it is. I'd rather not know until after I've bested them

[pindicator]

So of course as soon as I post that Barry plays his turn and whips his cities.  Good, we'll have a fight to the finish   3 or 4 more pop was whipped away this turn -- Note to Self:  Figure out how many points each pop is worth this game.  Anyway, it's looking like this is going to be a bit of a slog.  I have 7 axes, 4 chariots, and 2 spears in my invading host, although not all of that is put together.  I might use a chariot to go pillage his furs and hurt his ability to whip.  That gives me about a dozen units to converge on his next city.

How much can I expect him to have?  Two whips this turn, 2 whips last turn, but I think some of that was brought up in the spear and archer I could see last turn.  Probably a little more.  Barry will be whipping every turn he can.  I don't think he'll have the pop for a lot of whips, and I can make it worse by pillaging his furs.  It will take me 2 turns to move my units into position to attack his next city, so we could have as many as 6 units inside that city. If it's that many then I don't think I can attack until I have twice as many attackers.

What's the answer?  More units of course.  The library is starting to look greedy now, but I should be able to get away with it.  Catapults would be wonderful units but we are still too far away for those.  Math + Currency + Construction is something like 1600 beakers.  I think I will swap back to Iron Working instead and try to get some swords out as city-busters.  IW should finish as the Library does, so we can swap over to swords in the capital and at Willow Creek.  They'll take forever to arrive to the front, which is a shame, but that +50% is going to be hard to beat when it comes to attacking units in cities.  A round of swords after IW should be enough to set things squarely in mop up mode.  While I get them out I'll have to pillage his improvements (spare the cottages).  Should be doable, especially with the huge city advantage I have, and the fact that he is whipping means a long drawn out war will favor me in the end.  As long as I keep him bottled up.
Actually, that makes me want to have more chariots.  If I can keep him bottled inside cities, then having units that can quickly run around and pillage things, and quickly go between threatening his capital and his 2nd city - well, those should be a good finish.  No need to take any risks here, just keep the pressure on, and we'll worry about our other neighbors when we finish Barry.

Just need to take this one step at a time.

[Commodore]

Horcherate!

[pindicator]

Turn 074



Maybe i didn't remember the state of my forces as well as I thought. Some units were a turn farther back, and the axes were more injured than I thought. As it is, I only have 7 units approaching Barry's city of Ville.

But Barry is not Barry, I am told. Barry is in fact The Deceiver



It is a name that few speak loudly or without uttering a curse. We have all heard the stories, of how in a time long past the fallen lords all but leveled the western lands and threatened to break the very spine of the world. Now we speak of him openly as the enemy, it is as if these stories are now being played out again. They speak of desperate battles and attacks succeeding against all odds. I doubt we have little such place for this kind of epic fantasy here; there are just men opposing us ... and yet, the horrors we witnessed at Benghazi. The warriors who took that city say among the men clad in bronze were not always living, that some were the undead we would hear about in the old stories.

Our advanced scouts have come racing back, insisting that the same thing is happening in the next town of Ville. They claim that the Deceiver is laying whole districts of the city to waste, and then raising up corpses of women and children to fight in his undead army. Every day more population dies and more thrall warriors are garrisoned within the city.

We have been ordered to move with all haste to Ville, to burn it and the source of the Deceiver's war machine to the ground. Only then will we be able to win the war against him.


As for my moves, i advanced everything. The chariots are heading north for a couple of reasons. To scout across the lake, and I was grateful that they saw nothing. Now they can even head for the fur next turn, although it's way too soon for that. Instead they will move back and join the axe stack as I near the city. And who knows, maybe they get him thinking about how safe his capital is and he doesn't move as many units up into Ville.

Ville is the key to the whole war. It sits on Barry's source of copper, and half his population.

Unfortunatley I had to keep a chariot back, to deal with a menace:



I was not sure what to do with my workers here. Scales and Tandem are whipped into such an angry state that they will not need tile improvements for some time. But the towns of Willow Creek and Madrigal are going to grow onto as many hills as they can support so that swordsmen can be built later on. Iron Working is due in 6, possibly 5 when the Library finishes and Benghazi comes out of revolt.

Here are my angry cities:



We'll finish the worker here and probably go straight into the next worker. I don't think we will build any more units unless the need really presents itself.



Tandem will start a settler next turn. I probably will settle south of Scales, and try to lay cottages while using the capital's rice to grow it. We need to have some commerce coming in if we're going to finance this war. Or at worst it will be a city to whip units out of. I'd love to build galleys or a library here, but both of them will take a whip and I've done that a lot already.


P.S. What does Horcherate mean? Google failed me

[Commodore]

Horcheration: To horse archer someone in a violent violation.

[Ceiliazul]

germanjojo's contribution to the lexicon, I believe.

[pindicator]

Full report later but I'll post the important bit now before I head out for the night: No new units in Ville, none in sight along the road, and I have 8 units that can hit his city next turn. Bonus: a barb spear is heading straight for the furs that I was thinking about pillaging.

Double Bonus: I got an event!

[Ceiliazul]

Double Bonus: I got an event!

slave revolt? let 'em riot!

[pindicator]

Turn 075

Double Bonus: I got an event!

slave revolt? let 'em riot!

Amen brother! Let them riot all game long!



Nearly the full amount in the motherload -- I could have swapped techs to Metal Casting and had enough gold to tech that at full, but I kept things on Iron Working. I may not finish Iron Working, because I have a suspicion Barry's morale is starting to break. The next turn will tell a lot in that regard, though.

And as I said, we got an assist from our barbarian friends:



Sadly, the warrior in our core is not cooperating, instead of going north to the grassland where our chariot could kill him he's now hugging the treeline and making for our copper. Willow Creek has an archer that just finished which is now sitting on top of the copper; I'm hoping next turn we will open the game up to see a barbarian suicide.

I didn't capture it in the screenshots but Barry did not add any units to Ville. Still sitting on an archer, a spear, and a warrior for defense. The warrior hardly counts as a defender, so I am very optimistic about taking the city next turn, because here is what I have nearby:



And it looks like he's already played, so let's jump in and see if we can take a city!

[pindicator]

No pics for Turn 76, but in the end nothing. We got rid of that pesky barb warrior by my copper; an archer picked 2xp up. And sadly there was no attacking against cities either. Going into the turn I was thinking that the only thing that would keep me from attacking would be if he upgraded that warrior to an axe and then also built another defender... and that was exactly what he did.

I could have sent my axes in, but at 17% odds I was not confident they would get the needed hits in against his 2 axes and archer -- and then I'd need to power through the wounded units and spear with 3 chariots, a spear, and a wounded archer. So I pillaged the rice and called it good.

Next turn we should be a lot better off: 7 axes (2 wounded), 4 chariots, 2 spears, and the archer. Even if he adds a unit we will be in better shape to take the city next turn.