[Spoilers] BOBABOD!

[ReallyEvilMuffin]

Good point, REM, and it's something I need to consider. It felt natural to bring siege against Jowy because his Capital is so close to my borders and on a hill. So, if he mounts a defence there, breaking it only with Phracts can be costly (also considering that I'm not confident I can produce too many of them too fast); at the same time, he has to defend at his Capital, because abandoning it would be a big hit. If I can get a very favourable hammer trade with Catapults that way, I think the rest of the conquest would be easier.

By the way, I wish I could have a GArtist to bomb Jowy's captured Capital. His land has very low culture, so that would give me a lot of space to work with, + take the city out of revolt. But I don't have the needed slots, and I won't tech CoL just for it.

But the thing is, I haven't even decided if I want to attack Jowy. Jowy has a lot of cities with his EXP/IMP combo, and I'm sure he can use that for a big army, even filled with ancient units. At the same time, if he gets longbows, pikes or maces, I could be in trouble...

Molach is a lot softer, with less cities. But he has ivory. And he's far away, a long slog to get there even only with Phract army...

Finally, AT would be the bigger prize, giving me the TGLh. He has a good economy, though, and quite a lot of cities, with culture and protective units (he's CRE/PRO). And he's also further away from my core. My current map knowledge leads me to believe he has too much easy land for himself, but I'm probably missing a neighbour somewhere. We have border tensions, and I'd like to fix that, so that's a plus! I need to watch his tech progression closely. If he insists on going for shiny prizes, he may leave me a gap to use uncontested Phracts for long enough to make any future tech discoveries meaningless.

Overall, none of my options feel good.

When I did the phractagedden, they were str12 and war ellies were banned (hence my choice in taking byzantium) so it was a bit easier. However I was facing a high culture cre opponent who had 40% cultural defence everywhere which was a huge ballache nerfing the mobility advantage that I could have had after capturing cities, and using the then uncultured roads. Plus it made attacking awkward.

I was on the back foot as Jowy did a brilliant move attacking me, and had a compact empire just out of a GA. My main struggle was that I was killing huge amounts of units, but he could create more before I could take take the cities! It took me a long time to take cities because I was killing a few units, healing up and bringing reenforcements up and he would have the same amount of defenders, this time without any fort bonus but still with around 10 str after the 100% v cav and combat 1 and cultural bonus. My WW was extreme after it for that early, I had like 2-3 unhappy in my size 8 capital IIRC. It did also mean that I stacked huge amount of experience onto my troops though with a large contingent of combat 4 phracts to attack Bob with. Tbf I did chew through his pro longbows on the flat with ease, although the ones in the hills were awkward. I had to try and tease him out of cities to kill things.

With hindsight, I don't think the ele ban would have made things too different actually, unless there was a cata-phant stack ready to repel an invasion. Once my attacks were underway, each defender was probably better off spamming low cost units behind the high defence due to my lack of siege.

Also note 12 = 8+50% but 11 > 7+50%

[pindicator]

This one made me really happy, not sure why. Probably the first time I've got 12 wins with druid, but that's not all. There were a lot of close games, decided in topdecks, and the deck could be pretty clunky, but I managed to draw well. Even beat a guy that topdecked deathwing (without having removal, but topdecking swipe after he got a taunt from the deathlord I played to avoind deathwing letal - I think the deathwing stayed like 3 turns on the board, but I managed to put a lot of taunts and kill the guy after he spammed emotes in my face).

That should! Druid has fallen quite a bit with the new expansion; getting 12 with that class right now is pretty impressive.

Congrats!

[Ichabod]

Jowy indeed settled that filler/annoying city. I can perhaps understand it as a defensive placement to deny me a city capable of boating his Capital. Or perhaps he really wants the wine happiness. I'm not really sure, the same way I'm not sure if I should have gone more aggressively for that wine. I always considered it a 3rd ring resource in my dotmaps, so I never worried about settling it.

Going forward, if I am to attack Jowy, that city is obviously impossible to defend.



I'm considering settling on the gold here and be done with the filling of this area. I could also go for a more greedy plant 1SW of the gold, to try and nag the wines. I made a trade with Dreylin last turn, giving him my only gold for his spare gems. It's even for me, while he gains a lot, but I'm confident I can secure that second gold for me.

Interesting to note: Molach settled that city to the south as his 5th or 6th one. He's up to 12 cities now and hasn't settled in this direction again. That probably means his Capital is further away than I've thought, perhaps more to the west too. That's good news and makes settling on the area more secure.

[Ichabod]

My only iron source is directly below the Capita.. An initial glance in the map revealed no more iron sources, so I thought attacking Jowy would be easier than expected. His Capital is very exposed to me, and if I coulkd cut his Iron by taking it, I'd face less threatening offensive units in an eventual attack. But I looked again and other players have more iron scattered around, so the point is moot.



Some bizarre geography going on here. If on one hand, this makes it harder for Molach to defend against an attack coming through the east, there's also a great chance that AT could vulture out a large part of Molach's land, perhaps the better part of it too...

Meh, still can't make my mind very well. Machinery is fully bulbed by the GEng, techs are expensive otherwise. I'm building some forges around, getting my GP for a GA. My economy is probably one of the best around, so everyone will suffer to get the needed techs.

Interestingly, the MoM is still up for grabs. I think the players saw my GEng and figured I'd use it for that, so everyone is avoiding it. Hopefully someone other than Gawdzak takes it (Jowy, for example ).

[Ichabod]

I bulbed Machinery last turn so I could start on some crossbows. With that, I discovered that Trebuchets only require machinery in the mod, so I can get some siege for the invasion even without teching construction. Pretty nice. Construction is still useful for the road movement over rivers, but not essential.

I'll probably build some trebs for the attack on Jowy's Capital. Ah, and by the way, in an annoying fashion, I think every single Jowy city is on a hill.

[DMOC]

Just checking in on this thread. I haven't been following this game at all, but I suppose it's high time I read this and learn from your game. Looks like you're doing well so far. Will have more comments/questions later.

[Ichabod]

So, let's recap a bit.

In this past a-lot-of-turns without reporting, I have been in war with 3 different players.

First, AT attacked me, capturing 3 workers that were poorly guarded in his border. That was poor play on my part (I had units to defend better than that) and a very opportunist (in a good way) strike for AT. I severely lack on workers now, and that's a bit of the reason why. Well, I'm getting over it by whipping cities...



Notice my defense plan that involved a worker guarding the city. AT also launched an attack on my island city in the shared ocean. He had 2 swords attacking (amphibiously, I think) against my sole archer, and my sole archer won both combats. That was way more luck than I deserved after playing so poorly (that stretch of turns were probably my worst in this game), but I (definetely) can't complain.

After that, I teched better military techs, including crossbows. Molach was attacked by Yuris, so I took the opportunity to try and take one of Molach's border cities, that stole a wine resource and was generally annoying.



Molach abandoned the city, even though I think he could have resisted. Oh, well, again, I won't complain. We signed peace after that, the city came with a granary.



I used a GAge to boost my way to Guilds. Those were some productive turns, with cool 2/0/5 coast tiles. Interestingly enough, my second GP was also a GEng (very low odds). 2 GEngs, no wonders rushed.

The third war is my current hot war against Jowy. But that deserves a post by itself.

[Old Harry]

Third war post!

[Ichabod]

I'm not feeling very creative in the past weeks, so this report will be bad, mostly pictures. But at least it'll give some idea of how the war is going.

I decided to attack Jowy because he's closer than the other options. My heart wanted to attack AT, because he attacked me first, but my brains had it clear all along that Jowy was the only option. There was a problem, though. I signed a sheep for sheep deal with Jowy at the time of the AT attack. For some reason, I thought Jowy hadn't accepted it, but he had. So, I felt bad about it and decided to do this.



I cancelled the deal some turns before attacking (10 turns?), as a way of signalling I ended our NAP. If Jowy caught this, he had some more turns to prepare. That seemed fair enough, even though I was still a bit of a bastard.



The stack at the time of the attack. I reinforced it heavily in the next turns, mainly with Phracts. In hindsight, I should have gone for more xbows and siege, since all Jowy built is spearmen (and oh my lord, he built A LOT of spearmen). But if I had done it, he probably would have built less spears, so who knows...

One thing to notice is that Jowy's cities are almost all on hills. So far, I captured one city not on a hill, and I've seen two more not on hills. Spears on hills are annoying for phracts, giving something like 70/30 odds, so the conquest hasn't benefited much from the phracts mobility. Right now, I'm suffering a bit from lack of siege (I lost 2 trebs at >95% odds and the rest are split into 3/3/2 stacks), so I may have to start grinding some phracts for quicker results.






Jowy is whipping a lot, but other than that his defense has not been very passionate. He suicided this cat stack on my stack for no reason, and he has kept garrissons on all cities, siting ducks to be killed. If he amassed his cats and spears in one stack by retreating, I think he could have finished my stack. Now, it's too late, though, he doesn't have the units, nor the cities.

You can see that I gunned straight for the Capital, passing some minor cities, including the ones closer to my land. I figured that those units would be trapped, so I didn't care about them. Jowy's road network wasn't very good, so his units didn't have ways to pass my stack without being vulnerable. I think that worked out okay, in the end.





I won a lucky 80% combat for this city.



Trying to maximize turns healing, I made moves like this.



Nice! After this city fell, I felt Jowy's conquest would end up being a success.






Set up to capture two cities. Titania is the MoM city, which is a great prize! I deemed Titania as the last bastion in Jowy's defense, and it proved to be that, as you'll see.



I've made a failed attempt at Jowy's island city. My xbow lost the needed 80% battle, so I retreated the two other units. Next turn, I'll land on the island again, with 6 units, including 2 trebs, that will get further reinforced (it's the stack that I used to capture Lachesis).






The big battle! I lost 2 trebs here, the last two trebs that I attacked with, with better than 95% odds (shouldn't have promoted them to barrage, I guess...). But I won all other combats, not losing a single cataphract. Once again, the xbows were great, a pity that I had so little.












So, after Titania, I separated my stack in 2, to take Taka Minakata and the northwestern city. I'm lacking in siege, so I'll probably lose some Phracts taking these cities (that are also on hills.......). Jowy still has 9 cities, so the war will take a bit longer. There's the two I'm going to capture next, the island city, a flatland city to the west of Taka Minakata and one in the north coast that I'll capture pretty soon. There's a chance AT will go for a city that borders him, which I don't really mind, I guess. There's also an island city in the north coast. The rest, I don't know...

Conquest in this map is really hard, with everyone having so many cities and with all the hills. Jowy could have made this attack way, and I mean waaaay more more costly than it was. So far, I lost only 3 units (which amount to 2 AW unhappy faces in my Capital, for whatever reason), and there's still a lot of sluggish war turns to come. Imagine if he coordinated his defenses better.

Another huge factor is that Jowy's Western neighbour, Adrien, is also being attacked, so he can't steal my spoils, which would be another huge problem. If Mr. Cairo takes too long conquering the rest of Adrien, I might be able to take his cities myself (or Cairo's cities, for that matter), since I'll have a lot of Phracts postioned and well promoted.

I got 2 GG so far, one settled in my unit city, the other used to upgrade a chariot to a phract and promote to medic 3.

What I think I did right is that I really commited for this attack. I didn't detour to stupid techs (nor did I waste hammers on forges that wouldn't recover the investment in the needed timeframe) and I whipped and chopped a lot to get the army built (I have quite a lot of cities with 3/4 whip anger). I'm pretty happy with how I managed things, it was far from optimized, but it was planned and executed, which I usually fail at in Civ games.

Next post, I'll try to show how I'm digging myself out of the economic hole I put myself into. For quite some turns of the war, I was losing gold at 0% research, so there's a lot of work to do. Hopefully there'll be some good news in the war front too.

[Khan]

Really cool post. Thank you. Looks like you are doing a fantastic job of war. I approve of war.