[SPOILERS] Charriu and Zalson are fighting the honorable post count war!

[Zalson]

I would suspect that he scrambled defenders from other locations. Move the chariots to that iron hill to see if there are more freebies? He’s spent 270 hammers on wonders and more on research. He may not have a whole bunch more defenders.

[Zalson]

Obviously what until after you’ve taken the city first.

[Cornflakes]

Have you simmed what difference the Cover promotion makes vs. City Raider in the actual combat odds?

To expand upon this more, if the difference is only a couple of percentage points it might make more sense to go for City Raider even if the odds are slightly lower. The main advantage of City Raider is that it is versatile. CR doesn't care if archer is the top defender or axe. Maybe the archer will be the top defender, but taking Cover makes an axe defend instead at lower odds than you'd get on the archer with Cover. I would promote each unit individually before its specific attack so that you can make adjustments on the fly as needed.

I simmed a bit on Sunday and I may start with the swordsman against archers. Softening with chariots is more or less out of question because of the spearman.

Even with the spearman it might make sense to sacrifice the chariots. You will have to send them against the spearman at some point anyway. As long as there is only 1 spearman you might be able to scratch it enough on the first attack that your chariots can reach Archers as top defender. Sim it a couple different ways and see what works best. The fate of your game rides on this battle, so may the odds be ever in your favor! The good thing about pitboss is that you can't be accused of cheating if you win a string of low-odds battles After you take the city I'd suggest logging out and then logging back in again to create an extra save file on the server just to make sure the combat results are preserved. It's not quite as important now that RtR makes a log-out save, but better to be safe.

[Charriu]

T88 Part 1:

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Coeurva offered me peace, which I declined to have a look at the situation. As expected he managed to fortify Schilda even more. I'm now simming this new situation.

[Charriu]

I tried a lot but I find his defense to be impenetrable.  

This leaves the question of what to do now. I could offer him peace back. That way Forza will be under mayor culture pressure for the forseable future and will need a lot of troops for defense. Of course these troops will cost me much, which I don't have.

Another option would be to spread my troops and start pillaging in his territory. But that will be to costly for me, I think. I must say I'm really annoyed by this play from Coeurva. 

[Charriu]

I must say I'm totally mad right now of how this game went down for the last 10 turns. I get some sleep and will do my turn tomorrow morning; it's not worth it to play while I'm angry.

[Charriu]

Oh one thing I wanted say is: Although I'm angry right now it does not mean that I think Coeurva is a mean or annoying player. After all I said in the very beginning that I deem him the most dangerous player of all the other players. What annoys me more is that all his other neighbors didn't do anything to contain him. Superdeath attacked Magic in the beginning which weakened 2 of Coeurva's neighbors and the last remaining neighbor of him is RFS, who is still learning.

[Zalson]

Well, let him hole up in Schlida and go take his other cities. You can kill the axes on the reinforcement route and then send the chariots to explore his territory and burn his copper?

I agree with not playing angry; he is likely just as frustrated.

How many times did you simulate the attack? What were the losses?

[Charriu]

I did not count how often I simmed but the main problem is that I don't have good odds on the axemen. He has currently 8 units in there and I have 13 available. I need to sacrifice some units to weaken the stack, but the problem is the chariots will run first against the spearman and then against archers. Most of the time I need to sacrifice 2 chariots to weaken the spearman and the rest runs into archers. This still leaves the 2 axeman which my swordsman only get around 26% odds against.
Running my swordsman into the axeman results in 2 weakened axeman most of the time. Then I still need to take care of the 5 archers with only 2 swordsman and 2 axeman, who get decent odds. But then the spearman is in the way of the chariots.
Running the axemen against his axemen results in more or less the same as running 2 swordsmen against him.

I think what I will do is sueing for peace. Taking the 10 turn peace to conquer Lighthouse from RFS and reinforce Forza during those 10 turns. But knowing my luck in this game RFS will propably also muster enough troops in Lighthouse.

[Cornflakes]

Can you upload a copy of your sim file?