[Spoilers] Boldly Going Nowhere and Mr. Cairo go to Florida. Hilarity Ensues.

[Mr. Cairo]

My timeline is getting iffy, it's coming down to margins of just a dozen or so culture in Vanillaisis. Last turn I got a GG, which I used on some ships to get extra promos, I probably should have settled him in Vanillaisis, for the extra 10 culture/turn. But I'm pretty close to another one, so if I get to do some more fighting next turn I should get one and I'll settle that one.

With my cities being lost, my income is going down, so this turn I'm going to save cash for a final spurt of 100% culture slider. I should have done it last turn, since I lost 2 cities this turn. But, I was too confident in my timeline last turn.

Last turn SD's transports had forked Vanillaisis and my Moai city, and I decided to abandon the Moai city, which was probably a mistake. I should have left enough of a Garrison that SD would try and take it, but it would still cost him. Instead he got to burn it with a Tank (which I then killed with no losses of my own, as well as the Transport that carried it), and landed 6 Marines in different tiles around Vanillaisis, 4 of which I killed, again, with no losses, thanks to Airships bombarding them. Not sure what that's all about, but the less units he has in those ships the better.


However, there was some great news this turn:


JR4 has turned around after burning that city. I don't know why, and I don't care. Now I realistically only have 2 stacks to worry about.

What I really hope happens now is SD lands his entire force, I get to hit it with my collateral, wiping it out, and letting me concentrate pretty much my entire army on wetbandit. He could also try and take his Navy and sail towards my cap, if wetbandit also goes there, that'll also let me concentrate my forces.

5 Turns. I hope.

[Mr. Cairo]

I've just realized something about wetbandit's stack. He only has 114 units in it that can actually capture a city. Half of his stack are Artillery and MGs. If it comes down to it, I can just stuff my cap with enough units to keep it alive for 1 turn, which could be the 1 turn I need to win. SD's forces army, probably doesn't have any MGs or Artillery. So I doubt he wants to land it, because then I'd kill it. But, as long as it's on the boats, he needs at least twice as many units attacking, so I can, if I must, leave less units defending against SD's fleet than I have been, in order to stuff the city that wetbandit is threatening with enough units to keep it alive. That is an option. I've never really played at this level during this era, so when it comes to the combat, I really am winging it.

Perfect world, wetbandit sees JR4's retreat and either moves away from my cap to preserve his stack. Or stays still to heal for a turn. Anything, 1 turn of delay from wetbandit should be enough to win without even having to fight his stack.

[Old Harry]

[Mr. Cairo]

It's getting interesting. Lots of cities under threat, and I decided to try and tempt SD and/or wetbandit into having a crack at them to weaken their forces for the eventual fight outside my capital.
SD moved his fleet up to threaten my cap and Wal-Martyrs:

I moved a few units into Wal-Martyrs, so that he hopefully attacks, loses a bunch of units, and injures more. That way I'll have less to worry about attacking my cap. Jr4 also has some Transports in range, he might try and weaken WM for SD, since he plays before SD, but I think he's probably content to let others do the actual fighting, since I can only assume he doesn't realise how close I am.

There are still some SD Transports threatening Vanillaisis, so I had to leave some sort of Garrison there, as well as a smaller one in Talibangelical:

I kinda hope SD tries for Talibangelical, I have too many units to lose the city, and I'd kill some units that could be better used forcing a larger garrison in Vanillaisis.


wetbandit has not been stopping, his stack continues to advance.

I left a decent garrison in Talibanjos. He can burn the city, but it'll cost him Tanks, and unless he moves his whole stack to cover the injured Tanks, I'll be able to kill those ones as well.
Most of his best Tanks are at the maximum damage my Airships can inflict, soon I'll be hitting his less-promoted Tanks. I do actually think that when I eventually attack his stack, I'll be able to kill most of his Tanks and Infantry. I hope. Unless the MGs and Artillery end up top defenders. They have really low base strength and their promos don't add to that, so hopefully, even after the Artillery, it'll be the Infantry and Tanks that are the top defenders.
I expect that he'll ignore Talibanjos and just go towards my cap 1 tile at a time, I want him to move up to the tile 1S of the cap, so I can attack his stack from inside the city without crossing the River, so hopefully he prefers to move to a point where his attack wont have the rive penalty. I don't expect that to happen however. He has so much Arty that the river crossing penalty will be meaningless by the time he actually attacks with his units (if it gets to that point).

I did abandon Sparta, as you can see. I moved my fleet out, so hopefully SD tries to kill it and I get some xp from a couple combat victories. All I need is a single GG in the next couple of turns to stay on schedule.

I don't know if my strategy of baiting SD's attacks is a good one, if I can get a greater than 1:1 win:loss ratio I think it's worthwhile, and I want to keep the cities as long as possible so I can maintain 100% culture for as long as possible. Ideally, I can keep him from even trying until the very end, when I can pile every unit into my capital for the final showdown.

I do really hope that wetbandit kills Talibanjos. That stack is the real threat, and if he goes after that city it'll either delay his advance on my cap, or cost him a bunch of Tanks.

[Mr. Cairo]

I did some rough simming on how to deal with wetbandit's stack. And it turns out, even 80 Artillery aren't enough to guarantee that his own Tanks will all get kills, and my Machineguns still shred his Infantry. I also tested me attacking him, and the results weren't very good.

But when he attacked me, and I had all my MGs, Tanks, Artillery, Marines, ATs, and about half of my Infantry, his Tanks, after the Artillery, only killed about 50 of my units. His Infantry never got good odds. I still think I ought to hit his stack with Artillery, just to weaken them even more. The thing is, the Artillery is not guaranteed to do a lot of Collateral (and his is all upgraded to Drill), nor is it guaranteed to deal it's collateral to the maximum amount of units. It's interesting how collateral is considered the great equalizer, but once units get much higher base strength, and the numbers really start to climb, it actually gets less effective than you might think. Now my sims weren't perfect of course, I wasn't going to put in all the right promos, but I also didn't factor in the damage to his Tanks my Airships have been doing. So I think actually my sims painted an overly pessimistic picture. I hope.

This means that I might not even need to kill his stack to survive. I was in a bit of a poanic when I realised that wetbandit would have 2 turns to attack my cap if I do nothing, and on the second of those turns SD could also attack from the sea. The sequence would be this:
This turn (1), wetbandit can move next to my cap. The turn after that (2) he can attack my cap. Then the turn after that (3) attack my cap again. Also that turn (3) SD can attack my stack assuming he keeps his fleet in range of my capital, but he does it before wetbandit's attack on that turn (3). I can move some more healthy units in after SD plays that turn to defend against wetbandit, and then at the beginning of the turn after that (4) I win, assuming I get the great artist. My simming suggested that wetbandit wont have as much success as I had first imagined.

I also realized that wetbadnit is probably planning to move his stack onto a hill outside my cap, in which case this is the last turn I have while they're on flat ground. So I think my plan is going to be, this turn, hit his stack with my Artillery and then try and pick off as many of the top units, ideally Tanks, with my own Tanks. I'll have to get past his AT first, but my C2 Tanks already have odds on his AT now, and my Artillery might actually be able to hurt them, although probably not as much as I would like. This would have the added bonus of getting me the GG I need.

According to civstats SD didn't take/burn any of my cities, even the one I left undefended. Maybe the Transports he had in range of it were unloaded?

I don't know, time to play the turn. A lot does depend on what SD does, if he has unloaded his army next to my capital, then I'll have to kill it. And hope my sims were accurate and I can just hunker in my capital against wetbandit's stack.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

This thing is so tight, I'm on the edge of my seat!

Rooting for you.

[Mr. Cairo]

OK, so, in the end I decided not to attack at all, in fact, I'm not going to attack his stack with anything until after he attack my cap. More on that later.


In the mean time, the defense of my cities is getting more and more complicated.

In the north, SD split his Transports to threaten my cap and Vanillaisis.

This has forced me to abandon Wal-Martyrs this turn, and transfer its garrison to Vanillaisis. There may come a time when I have to risk Vanillaisis and hope that the RNG gods will be kind and SD wont win too many low-odds attacks from the sea.

In the west, I guess that SD didn't have any units in those Transports, so I moved my fleet such that his Battleships don't get to kill my with collateral and my Destroyers get some better odds against his Battleships, not sure why I didn't think of that last turn.

Of course, I wanted him to attack this fleet so I could win a couple battles and get a GG. But as it happened, I killed a JR4 Destroyer with some Ironclads and that was enough for the GG, which I immediately settled in Vanillaisis, for an extra 10 Culture/turn. Which is actually a meaningful amount, amazingly.

In the south, more threats:

wetbandit can move his Tanks into position to hit Yokel Haram next turn, but that would be without Artillery support against 100% cultural defenses. A dozen good defenders can hold that city if he charges his Tanks forwards. If he keeps his stack together, then it'll definitely be too late.

JR4 has sent more than just that one Tank and Spearmen in that little force:

That's all his 2-movers. However, it's not in time. He can attack YH in 3 turns, but he only has 2 more turns to play before I win (assuming I get the GA). If I win this, JR4 will look like a fool, if I don't he'll look like a genius, seeing the most gains for the least losses. In fact, he'd probably be favoured to win at that point, all because he bet that others could stop me in time. However, I'm beginning to think that as long as I get the Great Artist, I can't lose, as I'll now explain.

Why I can't lose maybe

OK, so, here's wetbandit's stack:

As of this turn, my airships have dealt the maximum damage to his C3 Tanks. One Airship even hit an Artillery (although the next ones hit Tanks again, so I don't know what was special about that Artillery).

Why does this matter? Well, in my testing I found that even after hitting my cap with 80 Artillery, his Tanks do not immediately get good odds, and my own Tanks are hurt the least, and don't defend that much.

Here's my test:

I put in this city all my Tanks, all my MGs, all my Cavs, and all my Artillery, about half my AT and half my Infantry. I think in reality I'd have a few less MGs, most of my Marines, and all my junk in there (I still have a few Phalanxes and Archers and Spears). The only promos the defenders have are the ones that PRO gives to the Infantry and AT. In reality, my units will be much more heavily promoted.

I attacked this city with 80 Artillery, with no promos. In reality, wetbandit has given some of his Artillery Drill 1 and 2, although most of it isn't promoted. It certainly looks as though he promoted his entire stack before moving in, so for now I'm assuming that the promos I can see in his stack are what he's going to have. I guess most of his Artillery are upgraded Catapults built before he could generate lots of starting xp. In any case, the Drill 1 & 2 Arty will do some more damage to the units they're actually fighting, but no more collateral damage, so overall, I think this sim actually favours the Artillery and the actual result will be better for the defenders (ie: me).

So here is the result of that sim:

As you can see, my Infantry took by far the brunt of the damage. My Tanks, Cavalry, and AT aren't that badly hurt at all.
I then attacked that stack with 80 unpromoted Tanks, and killed about 50 units, mostly MGs. For some reason the Tanks in the city barely ever defend against the other Tanks (I have some C2+Ambush tanks that would probably end up defending a bit), but still make good defenders against Infantry after the Tank attack. In reality, wetbandit's Tanks will be promoted, but they're also badly hurt from the Airships, so let's say that 60 of his Tanks will kill a unit, and his Infantry and AT (if he attacks with them) will kill a further 10. I'd still have a lot of units in the city, and they'd all heal up a decent amount from my Medic and any promotions they might have got (I'd turn on auto-promote).

At that point, on the next turn, before I play, SD will be able to attack from the sea, which is a worry, but hopefully I'd still get decent odds with my defenders, and he'd not have enough units to take the city. When I play that turn, I can hit wetbandit's stack with my Artillery, and maybe even some surviving Tanks to kill/injure even more of his Tanks, and possibly move in some fresh defenders from other cities. If Yokel Haram is threatened by some of wetbandit's Tanks, I can move just enough of my weakest units to prevent the city from falling, putting it's fresh defenders in my cap. I'd also be able to move my garrison from Vanillaisis into the city, since I'll win before SD or JR4 get to play the next turn and hit it from the sea. That would then leave wetbandit with a few injured Artillery and Tanks to try and take my capital, and I'd probably have enough units in the city to prevent that, and when DZ hits end turn, I'll win!

So, my plan now is to let wetbandit attack my cap with his entire stack, and hope that the conclusions I took from my sims are correct, and his attack wont be nearly as effective as I thought. The next turn, assuming that SD's attack from the sea isn't incredibly effective, I'll be able to hit wetbandit's surviving units, hurting them even further, and putting some fresh defenders in my cap.

Of course, all of this is meaningless if I don't get the GA from Yokel Haram in 2 turns time. It's at 71% right now, it'll probably go up to 75%? Maybe. I don't know.

Really sucks knowing it all comes down to luck in the end. I'd rather get the GA but be completely wrong about wetbandit's attack tbh. It's a more honest loss than being right but unlucky.

[Mr. Cairo]

A little more on why it seems as though the Artillery (for both me and wetbandit) doesn't do as much damage as you'd think. I did a little reading, and I think it turns out that when the Artillery (or any collateral-causing unit) picks the units it deals the collateral to, it can sometimes pick a unit that's immune to collateral. So it's quite possible that you can attack with an artillery and only deal collateral to a few units in a stack of hundreds, if a lot of that stack are immune to collateral, like MGs or other Artillery.

So, I ran a test.

First, I attacked a stack of 10 Infantry and 1 Artilelry. It dealt collateral damage to 8 units every time (I turned on new random seed on reload so I could run the test many times).

I then replaced 1 of the Infantry with a Catapult, which is immune to collateral damage. Attacking that stack with the artillery, it only dealt collateral to 7 units more times than it dealt it to the max 8 units. So just 1 Artillery reduced the collateral.

Next I tried with a stack comprised of 8 Infantry and 8 Catapults. So there are still 8 units that can be dealt collateral to, the max for Artillery, but there were also 8 collateral-immune units. The Artillery dealt collateral to 4 units almost every time, only a few times dealing it to 3 units, and never to more (but I assume it would do if I did the test enough times). So now I'm going to try creating stacks with the same proportion of immune and non-immune units as in both mine and wetbandits stacks. For me that's going to be 23:10 (I'll do 69:30 for the test). For wetbandit it's almost 1:1, which corresponds to that last test. Which is probably why I had such bad results in the earlier test of attacking his stack with my Artillery. I'll still scale up the test and do 50:50.

So first, against my stack. I attacked a stack of 69 Infantry and 30 Catapults with 10 Artillery 10 times. These were the average number of units dealt collateral damage for each of those 10 times:
4.3   5.3   4.4   5.0   4.5   4.5   5.2   5.3   4.7   5.1
Which themselves average out to 4.85. Which is an effectiveness of almost exactly 60% of maximum.

Now lets do the same against a stack of 50 Infantry and 50 Catapults:
3.2   3.4   3.1   3.5   2.8   3.3   3.0   3.4   3.0   3.3
Which average out to 3.2. Which is an effectiveness of exactly 40% of maximum.

So a stack which is 30% immune to collateral reduces the effectiveness of the artillery by 40%. A stack which is 50% immune to collateral reduces the effectiveness by 60%.

I can tentatively conclude that the presence of collateral immune units reduces the effectiveness of the collateral inducing unit by the percentage of the stack they take up + 10.

I think the +10 is because as the fight goes on, some units get injured beyond the amount the attacking unit can actually deal (max of 80% of health for Artillery). According to the wiki when a unit so injured is selected for collateral, instead it'll pick one that can be injured, which might be a unit immune to collateral. I don't know if that's actually what happens, or if those units are considered immune, but the effect is the same, as units get injured the ratio decreases and less units are dealt damage, even if there are still plenty of eligible targets. It's certainly something I noticed when I did that test with 80 Artillery. By the end most of them are only dealing collateral to 1 or 2 units, and sometimes to none at all, despite there being plenty of units that can be dealt collateral.

What this actually means in-game is that I want to put all of my MGs into my cap, and not attack with my own collateral before wetbandit does. I'll replace the MGs defending other cities with Infantry. I'll also put my Marines in my cap, because they have higher base strength and will make better defenders after the Artillery attack.

[Charriu]

Very interesting. Out of curiosity I will investigate the actual implementation in the DLL.

[Mr. Cairo]

Very interesting. Out of curiosity I will investigate the actual implementation in the DLL.

Neat. Are you going to share your conclusions before my next turn, or will I have to wait until the game is over to learn how wrong I am?