Mr. Cairo PB 52 [Spoilers]

[Mr. Cairo]

So he's loaded up that city with tons of units, enough that attacking this turn isn't going to go very well. He also has a couple more Cats, but he promoted them as though I was going to attack this turn, and I can give a unit medic to heal collateral. I think bombarding and waiting a turn for reinforcements to arrive (1 WE and 3 Maces) is actually the better choice.

edit: it's actually 3 Maces and a WE, the Trebs are coming later

[Mr. Cairo]

So after some more simming, it turns out attacking next turn with what I'll have wont be good enough either, there'll be surviving Longbows and Xbows that can heal and promote, and I'll have no collateral. I kinda think I have to keep bombarding and building up. He'll be able to keep putting units in there, but my units are better. If I can make this one battle THE battle for his Empire, that would be fantastic, although I don't have the mobility to really exploit it the way Pind did against SD.

I saw a whipped HA from a nearby city with one of my Triremes, which I prefer to whipped Cats. If he attacks with his Cats next turn as well (he has 2 in the city) that'll be even better. He can't really attack my stack without a lot of collateral to go along with it, and so far he's not got enough, and has been wasting them on single attacks that wont do much damage.

[Mr. Cairo]

And it didn't matter in the end because last turn, AT attacked my stack with pretty much everything he had. Which included a lot more Cats than I knew about. But it still didn't go well for him. He attacked with 8 Cats, 1 of which withdrew, and then with the rest:

End result: he lost 7 Cats, 3 Xbows, 2 Longbows, 4 Pikes, 2 Swords, 1 Holkan, 1 Axe, and 1 Horse Archer. He killed 1 War Elephant, 2 Xbows, and 3 Maces.

I had a look through the combat log. He had only 3 battle at >50% odds: 52, 55, and 90. So he did pretty well actually. My Xbows were very good, killing a number of his Cats without taking a hit, and then going on to defend pretty well. They basically did exactly what I wanted them to, and sheltered the Maces.

So, not a good trade for him, made even worse since all my Maces had 5 XP, and could promote most of the collateral damage away, which they did. I attacked the city, it had 1 Healthy Longbow and 1 Healthy Pike, everything else was hurt. I lost 4 Catapults, and nothing else.
The city came with a Granary, Forge, and Courthouse  


He doesn't appear to have that much around to try and retake, other than Cats. I put my Pikes, WEs, and 2 Impi in the city, and brought my Knights up, using the healthy ones to cover my main stack. I also brought the medic, so healing will be quick. Next target is Deck. Fortunately for me, it's only 1 pop to dry-whip walls, so I can make captured cities more defendable very quickly. I'm building Longbows atm, to have decent units that can hold cities while my main stack attacks. His cities are so far apart that I can't use my main stack to zone out his units from trying to retake his cities.

It's turn 175, so here's a brief overview:






Pind and MJMD look to be gearing up for round 2. MJMD has the current advantage, and a tech advantage, but Pind has 25 cities. As long as they're fighting eachother and not me, I'll be happy.

[GeneralKilCavalry]

Looks like having a decent amount of siege in your stack negated some of the collateral? I see one instance of only 3 units taking damage.

how much longer to rifles?

[Mr. Cairo]

Looks like having a decent amount of siege in your stack negated some of the collateral? I see one instance of only 3 units taking damage.

how much longer to rifles?

Still some time, but hopefully sped up by capture gold. And at some point I'll be able to stop building units and can build infra and wealth/research.


I have to say, I wish I had more Impi. They are very useful even now, cheap 2-move units that can scout ahead, and unlike Chariots they don't die to everything.

[Mr. Cairo]

So here is what AT has gathered to once again go after my stack.


Once again he has 8 Cats, but I'm going to assume he'll have even more by the time he attacks (1 or 2 turns from now). Plus a few Xbows, Pikes, a HA, and a lot of Longbows. So compared to last time he'll have a few more Cats, but his actually hitters will be mainly Longbows. My stack this time has more Cats/trebs to absorb the collateral, slightly fewer Maces, Xbows, and Pikes, and a bunch of Knights. I'll also be on a hill. Those Knights and the hill should mean his attack will be about as successful as the last one. However, I won't be able to promo-heal my Maces, since most of them are at CR2 from last fight. The two new Maces I'm going to promote to C2 + Cover to defend against the Longbows.

[Mr. Cairo]

So AT didn't attack last turn with his Cats, in fact, they're nowhere to be seen as of this turn:



So I went in. After the 4 Cats and 1 Treb died, all my odds were great. Still lost one Mace at ~65% odds, but oh well. I have plenty of replacement Cats and stuff. Also got to 10 xp on a number of important units like Maces and Knights. And another GG.



Unfortunately for me, MJMD and Pind made peace. I now have to be super careful and watchful to make sure neither uses their ten turns to attack me. I have to say, I kinda wish we had the 5-turn peace treaties from RtR.

[Mr. Cairo]

After a couple of turns healing and gathering reinforcements, I'm moving on the filler city of Alphabet.



It looks like AT is building up for a fight outside his capital:



The only question is how many Catapults will he have. My problem is that I can't advance on his capital via hills. At some point I need to move down onto flatland. Unless I go all the way around and approach from the west. But then I'd need to leave sufficient units to defend the recent captures. If I do that I'd probably end up burning Alphabet and refounding it later. I probably wont decide until I see how the culture will change upon the destruction of Alphabet. If I give him too much time to get more units, then the advantage of being on a hill wont mean as much. My best bet might be simply to head directly to his cap. I could even ignore Alphabet and beeline to his cap, although I'd like one more turn to heal some of my Trebs up to full. However, it might well be in my best interest to force the big fight as soon as possible.


MJMD took AT's island city and then made peace, I would have preferred him to stay at war, but it actually looks like MJMD lost a fair amount of units in that little war, with me now being firmly in first place in power:

I'm currently building research in almost all my cities to finish Printing Press, which will be worth ~40 base commerce immediately. Also, I've realised with MJMD and Jowy fairly close to Rifling, now isn't really the time to be building Xbows and Maces and other Medieval junk. I need to improve my economy, so while I'll keep building Catapults, which will always be useful, I'm also switching to some more infrastructure builds.

[Mr. Cairo]

So I've been doing some sims, trying to figure out exactly what I can defeat when on flat ground, and what I can't.

I've concluded that if AT has more than 16 or so Cats, and more hitters than what I can see in his cap, then I'll end up losing that fight. Which would be unacceptable. So, I need to know if it's safe to advance.

So next turn, I'm going to take three Knights, the one Impi in the stack, and my spare GG, move them 1 tile south of my stack, add the GG to the Impi and give it Morale, then move the Impi to the hill 1 east of Pickup. That should reveal everything that would be in range to hit my stack if it moves off of the hill. If he doesn't have enough, I'll move towards his cap. If it looks like he has enough, or will have enough, I'll burn Alphabet and retreat. See if I can take some of his other cities while keeping his main force stuck by his cap, but mainly focus on getting to Rifles asap, to finish the job.

I've been in AT's position before, facing a powerful and advanced stack of units but having enough Catapults to kill it when it moves to deep into my territory. I'm not going to have that happen to me.

[Mr. Cairo]

So here is what AT has to offer:

He has 16 Cats, and a fair number of decent attackers that can kill the top defenders, letting his massed Longbow get good odds.

So I burned Alphabet, saccing 2 Cats then losing a Treb at ~90% odds, because of course, and deleted the Impi (no death notification for a GG that's deleted it turns out), so AT wont know that I know, although he may suspect.

I need to get Walls/Castles in my conquests, and build up a decent amount of Cats myself, so AT can't come waltzing up with his massed Longbows and Cats and retake his cities. I'll probably keep my stack where it is for a couple more turns, it can see any 1-move units that can hit it, and it's preventing AT from doing anything but wait, I hope. In retrospect I didn't need to burn Alphabet this turn, I could have just bombarded it with all my collateral this turn. I might not have lost as much collateral that way.

Next tech will be Gunpowder, Muskets are pretty good in a pinch. I'm also starting to work on my next Golden Age. I have a Great Scientist, and an island city that as of next turn can hire 4 Merchants and a Spy.