[SPOILERS] Seven Russias Into the Periclous Fray

[SevenSpirits]

t176-177 and previous

A bit of history. Haram and GermanJojo have had a feud all game. In their recent war (waged mostly with classical units, though IIRC Haram added knights later), Haram invaded and was pushed back by Jojo's whipping and strong defenses. In particular, Jojo had a ton of catapults, as well as many ballista elephants. Haram fell back to his own territory. Jojo founded a city that gave culture right next to the chokepoint city which Haram had conquered and held. Jojo then attacked that city in a massive clash of stacks and failed. Haram destroyed his forces and was then able to re-invade and wreak havoc on Jojo's core. He razed several cities including the capital. Jojo managed to hold onto the northeastern end of his territory, which is on this big peninsula. He stationed his forces in the two border cities and streamed down reinforcements from the peninsula cities. Haram could not advance further.

Haram's problems were in large part caused because Grimace was attacking him at the other end of his empire and was also next to the now-razed Jojo cities. This distraction had been getting more and more severe, and so he hadn't even been trying to fight Jojo, though they remained at war.

The situation was ideal for me to jump in. The cities I can reach of Jojo's all have skeleton defenses of 0-2 units. Jojo's forces are heavily countered by riflemen, which I've just gained the ability to draft. Haram is basically no longer interested in conquest and may even be happy to see me take Jojo out. Jojo himself is probably happy to be finished off, rather than lingering forever in the classical era while his former invader dies a slow death. Grimace is occupied. And I have by far the best geographical position from which to invade GermanJojo.

Here is the main elite force. Maybe 6 turns ago I gained control of this tile on GermanJojo's side of the water. That informed my plan. There was now a tile where I could station galleys in range of two cities but outside of his vision. In addition, that means that my 3-move galleys (I ended up with two) can move into cities after capture, which is also very useful as you will see.



A secondary amphibious force of just two riflemen in a galley was prepared over here, by HAK's former capital. Without slavery, it wasn't possible to get more galleys out from the time I started planning the attack. But a second galley was due to finish the turn of the initial attack.



Finally, the ground force was the one scheduled to lead the charge through the remaining cities, and the primary army, of Jojo.

[SevenSpirits]

GermanJojo invasion continued

Since Haram was in the second half of the turn split and I didn't want to shove him into a three-way split where he had to play last, I played after Jojo in the turns leading up the war. Ironically, on the turn of war, GermanJojo told Haram in the tech thread to just play his turn at any time despite their war status, unless he was actually close by with units. So my efforts were perhaps not needed.

I positioned my scouting chariot to teleport to the cultural beachhead my moai city had gained, so it wouldn't be stuck somewhere dumb. I took a last look at GermanJojo's trade screen. He has 10 cities (all of which I can see on the map), and various resources which I will not be able to see on the trade screen after declaring war. Then I declare and start with this:



and this



Both victories. Step two: make use of 3-move galleys.



It was really handy to be able to so thoroughly scout out this area and the exact troop positioning and culture levels during the turns leading up to the attack. I knew this city would be empty and reachable by a knight.



Then I took the fourth city that it was possible to take this turn.



Then, upgraded my eastern galley to 3 moves and set up the fall of another city on the following turn, catching a worker along the way.



Got another worker and solidified my odds there. The city might produce one unit, but I have two good ones in range.



Finally, with some just-in-time drafting, I loaded up the new galley with 2 more rifles, eyes on goodmoodtoday. Not a sure thing by any means, but I have a chance at getting it taken care of early.



That's all the conquest for turn one of the war.

[SevenSpirits]

t177 (second war turn)

GermanJojo had a production phase during which he still did not know that I had declared. Then he got to log in and move units.

I logged in to what I think is good news. He seems to be retreating units to tiredofhisrobot where, presumably, he thinks they can make a difference simply due to numbers. The piddly pairs of defenders in the two defended cities I was threatening, at least, had decided to bail. That meant my galley (which I guess he was not aware existed) got a free city capture. I guess I was lucky that the galley was one turn late compared to the others.



You can also see in the above picture that a few of my riflemen and a knight took a little vacation in the jungle. Man, I hate selection groups so much. I thought I was telling a knight to move next to the city, but when the order was executed, since there were also riflemen selected, they changed the route from the displayed one to park in the higher defense space. Oh well. Might delay a capture by a turn down the line. But I can't really complain.

So yeah, I captured the three empty cities.



And I set up to capture this one next turn, with 3 riflemen and a knight being more than enough. (The current garrison is 1 archer.)



Not pictured - I also moved a ton of the land stack into mounted unit range of the southern city. Assuming he doesn't waffle on consolidating in the center north, I'll be able to take it with just 1-2 units and not need the catapults/maces/rifles for it. That will be the 9th city I capture, leaving just one more, where I guess we will have a real fight.

[Ichabod]

Impressive. Perfectly planned and well executed (not perfectly, since you misclicked the units into the jungle ).

Congrats on first place in score, by the way.

[SevenSpirits]

Thanks. I also have top population at the moment, and Gawdzak got up to second place in pop and land with his new former-viking cities out of revolt. But meanwhile, Mackoti's power is shooting through the roof, and he has picked up astronomy a few turns ago. The state of the game is very volatile, and I expect him to make big gains soon. I can only hope his target(s) puts up a strong defense against the Riesengarde.

Gawdzak asked for a 500g loan (in exchange for 55gpt) and I accepted. I'm hoping we can work together.

In the war, GermanJojo returned his southern stack to guard the city, so I'm having to advance on it with 1-movers. This is where getting the 3 rifles stranded in the jungle hurts a bit. I am keeping my mounted units back a tile so they can't be picked off by ballista elephants, which are, perhaps surprisingly, a pain to play around.

[SevenSpirits]

I believe that having the rifles go on safari hurt quite a bit here, but I'm not entirely sure. War with catapults and ballista elephants is really complicated. I moved my slow stack up next to GermanJojo's southern city, with something like 5 cats, a rifle, and maces about equal in number to his real attackers. A second stack of rifles and a couple reinforcement maces lagged behind, and the mounted units held back too. The idea was that he has to spend his cats on this stack and then won't be able to chew through all the maces so his wimpy guys could attack the exposed cats. But I suffered some combination of poor luck and misjudgment, because he was able to kill 4/5 cats after all and he only lost a single unit other than 3 of his 4 cats. Good news is he only has the 1 cat left, so hopefully I can take care of things next turn with the reinforcements. Matchups might be a pain though, we'll see.

For the northern stronghold I am just amassing a big pile of riflemen and modern mounted units, without siege because I don't really own any (I'm drafting all my slow-movers, while production goes to cossacks). I think this will work out due to his troop composition of mostly elephants and catapults, which don't get the city defense bonus anyway. I am not sure yet how to approach the city with regard to my mounted units. Cossacks are fine against ballista elephants, but maybe I should keep them two tiles away so the elephants have to leave the city to attack them? I don't know. Will have to figure out what size stacks to bring in a turn or two.

Ballista elephants are a good UU.

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

I can't remember now, but does an attack cost a full movement point or only 1/2 or 1/3 if you have engineering, depending on the terrain you are attacking into? So if your units are on flat ground, which I do not know to be the case but for the same of understanding the mechanic let's say they are, he moves out of the city, attacks the stack on flat ground with a one-mover, then retreats into he city if he survives combat with the third movement point? Is this right? It's early and I just woke up but this seems right to me.

[SevenSpirits]

Attacks cost a full movement point (2 for hills/forests) unless they kill the last enemy unit on the tile, so what you're saying wouldn't be possible. Also, I've been checking every turn and he still lacks engineering. Who knows though...

[spacetyrantxenu]

Yeah, getting the matchup you want when attacking is a significant edge. If you guys were equal in tech it would be a nightmare to deal with. He could cat your stack, pick off your mounted with units designed for that purpose, and then go to work reducing the rest of lower strength units after clearing the presumably higher strength mounted from the top, without the disadvantage of taking poor matchup to clear the top strength units. So he'd be able to spend his top strength regular attackers against whatever middle strength stuff was left in your stack, probably at much better odds. That's a uniquely Khmer position. Your counter, though, is a handy mix of higher strength units than he can field plus, I assume at this point, a significant materiel advantage that he can't hope to overcome in his depleted state. Ballin-pants makes the nut a bit tougher to crack, but superior quality and quantity should do the job nicely. Keep on grinding!

[Ichabod]

Have you built the Globe Theater yet?