[Spoilers] The Network assimilates ipecac, Ruff_Hi & Dreylin (Monty of Vikings)

[ipecac]

Not sure if I'll have time to play the whole turn and adequately document it

Hmm..maybe just play if possible? I'll log in and try to figure out what happened later

Oh, and getting advice on conducting MP warfare was one of the reasons I signed up for this game!

Then we just have to make the best of it, I guess.

[Dreylin]

OK, I've had a look and I've paused it. I don't want to rush the turn, and can play it in ~9hrs.

Here's what I think:

1) We should keep pushing in the South. The troops there will not get back in time to affect the outcome in the North, and (I think) we have the numbers down there to take his city unless it's reinforced from the mainland. We get good odds to kill the Crossbow (or withdraw) in the South with one of the HAs. Road the tile 1W of his longbow and then suicide some of our extra Spears against it until we get good odds with a useful unit. Then we fill the hill with Berserkers and press from there.

2) It's going to be touch and go in the North. We need to dry-whip units in both ZIF & NB, but I'm torn about what. We need more L-Bows, but we also need a couple of Cats incase he tries to walk past us with that Knight stack. I'm thinking Cat in NB and LBow in ZIF - because we need the extra defensive unit in ZIF. The Galley here should be promoted to NavI and then head West to help ferry troops between PP and NB.

3) We NEED Engineering. Not just for the Pikes, but for the added road movement. It's currently 3t at around -200gpt and we only have 250g. johns has ~180g that we can try to get hold of, but we also want some money for upgrades. I don't see how we can get it at this point. Any thoughts?

4) I will run a test, but I'm pretty sure that the GG can join a unit after moving. We have 8-9 units on 3xp that can meet him 1W of ZIF, which is just about perfect. We'll join him to a Warrior to get the free Berserker upgrade. (I think that's better value than an Archer to Longbow upgrade).

5) Cities with a turn into a knight will need to whip them. That will be painful at PP and The Hub, but we can't wait. AP should go Knight, I think, and we probably want to find/build a Crossbow somewhere as well.

6) Settler on Barbstralia; where were you planting, North or the razed Adrien site? I'm guessing North and the WB from Smurf will get the Clams?

7) Forts I've already mentioned. The Eastern he can use as defenses to attack us (otherwise he has to cross the river). The Western is nice, but we need the troops closer, so we have to clear it.

8) We might want to have the Naval battle at AP/SP while we have the initiative. I didn't look at it in detail, but if we can get an even exchange here it's probably in our favour in terms of progressing us towards our next GG.

9) Erm, pray that Elum doesn't come knocking from our West....

[Dreylin]

4) I will run a test, but I'm pretty sure that the GG can join a unit after moving. We have 8-9 units on 3xp that can meet him 1W of ZIF, which is just about perfect. We'll join him to a Warrior to get the free Berserker upgrade. (I think that's better value than an Archer to Longbow upgrade).

Yeah, so I'm wrong on this one.

We also have to be careful of the no upgrade after move and vice versa, so it's going to take some more thought. Probably we won't be able to use him this turn - in which case he probably runs into the city and gives promos to whomever's left....

[ipecac]

For some reason I'm still up , but while I'm at it:

1) We should keep pushing in the South. The troops there will not get back in time to affect the outcome in the North, and (I think) we have the numbers down there to take his city unless it's reinforced from the mainland

The knight there is new and reinforcing. We may have enough to take it despite him whipping walls and longbows but it's not enough.

The main question is what is his plan. Doubtlessly he'll try to hit ZIF but he'll also move his knights to fork NB next turn so we can't leave that defenceless. If we lose NB it's still okay but quite bad. Worse case scenarios i) is he takes NB, decides against taking ZIF and starts pushing into the core and ii) just pushes into the core. We don't have anything to stop that many mounted especially when they fork, let alone C5 knights. So we need the full hp berserkers from Barbstralia back in the core. There's nothing much to be gained in the South.

2) It's going to be touch and go in the North. We need to dry-whip units in both ZIF & NB, but I'm torn about what. We need more L-Bows, but we also need a couple of Cats incase he tries to walk past us with that Knight stack. I'm thinking Cat in NB and LBow in ZIF - because we need the extra defensive unit in ZIF. The Galley here should be promoted to NavI and then head West to help ferry troops between PP and NB.

Good idea re: galley. I'm thinking that the NB should whip longbow (but not necessarily drywhip since it can't get to ZIF in time and should maybe stay in place?) and the core should build cats instead (even 2.5") since we can't do much damage to that stack with only a couple of cats. But even with cats we need heavy hitters (we won't be able to build/whip enough in time) so we need the berserkers back, not to influence the north so much as to safeguard the core.

3) We NEED Engineering. Not just for the Pikes, but for the added road movement. It's currently 3t at around -200gpt and we only have 250g. johns has ~180g that we can try to get hold of, but we also want some money for upgrades. I don't see how we can get it at this point. Any thoughts?

Whosit and CH are exploring our land. We can sell map for gold, probably just CH since Whosit has his own problems but try Whosit all the same. But I don't think there's time for Engineering: the critical time period is within the next 3 turns and we need all the gold for upgrades that we can get.

4) I will run a test, but I'm pretty sure that the GG can join a unit after moving. We have 8-9 units on 3xp that can meet him 1W of ZIF, which is just about perfect. We'll join him to a Warrior to get the free Berserker upgrade. (I think that's better value than an Archer to Longbow upgrade).

Sounds okay.

5) Cities with a turn into a knight will need to whip them. That will be painful at PP and The Hub, but we can't wait. AP should go Knight, I think, and we probably want to find/build a Crossbow somewhere as well.

The plan is to whip them hard, yeah. Hmm..I don't really see the need for Crossbows since we have both Macemen and Longbows...though we can always upgrade that archer between NB and ZIF.

6) Settler on Barbstralia; where were you planting, North or the razed Adrien site? I'm guessing North and the WB from Smurf will get the Clams?

Clams since razed Adrien site is indefensible at the moment. But might as well ship it up north in case we need to put a blockade city N of Hub.

7) Forts I've already mentioned. The Eastern he can use as defenses to attack us (otherwise he has to cross the river). The Western is nice, but we need the troops closer, so we have to clear it.

Agreed.

8) We might want to have the Naval battle at AP/SP while we have the initiative. I didn't look at it in detail, but if we can get an even exchange here it's probably in our favour in terms of progressing us towards our next GG.

If odds look good then go for it.

9) Erm, pray that Elum doesn't come knocking from our West....

We're not winning this game anyhow. Just have to see how things go, I guess..

[Dreylin]

Agree we won't win; looks like we're in a MAD scenario with Adrien. So be it.

I don't really agree that our core is under threat; we've got a stream of Berserkers incoming and will have Knights behind. He can bypass us with the knight stack, but not with the 1-movers. We can handle the Knight stack with what we will produce in the next 3turns and what we move up from TP.

Berserkers from the South will take ~5t to reach past our Capital, which IMO is too late to make a difference. We may as well send them South and use them to hit his North coast on the same timeframe.

[Dreylin]

OK, I've done most of the moves up North & in the Core. Switched some builds but not whipped anything yet. I'd rather not play the rest until we agree on what to do with the Berserker force in the South. We have 3 options:

1) bring them back North to the Core. 4turns of move will get 2 of them to the Incense; 5t will get another 6 to the same spot. We'll call this the Conservative option. It might help us preserve our Core if we can't stop his forces before they get there, but if we do (or he stops pushing) then they aren't much use.

2) we continue the attack at Barbstralia. We'll call this the Nothing to See Here option. Berserkers aren't needed to defend the North or the Core, so we may as well use them to secure our exotic island retreat.

3) we bring them South. The Death or Glory option. Actually, there are 2 sub-choices here:

3a) we hit Empanada - not quite the name of the city NE of ZIF. We can have 2 Berserkers here in 3t, 4 in 4t, or up to 8 units in 5t.

3b) we reinforce ZIF/NB. An extra turn to the above gets us the first 4 Berserkers here; the following 4 units take 2 extra turns because the Galleys can't promote NavI.


I don't particularly like #1; I think they arrive too late to have any impact unless he pushes the Knights forward in his own Death or Glory move. Even then, I think we have enough units in the mix to be able to deal with this. Once I noticed #3, I don't really like #2; I agree that it's sticking our fingers in our ears and going La-la-la and hoping the attack goes away. I favour #3, pushing the Galleys South at max speed (with Trireme cover) and deciding between 3a and 3b when the time comes.

I'm going to post in the Tech thread and advise them we're probably taking another 12hrs.

Promotions this turn; we can afford the Axe and the Archer in ZIF, so that's probably what we should take. The 2 L-bows E of PP can load onto the Galley next turn and drop in NB the following. I put KJ's Berserker in a Galley to drop at The Hub because it gets 1tile closer rather than walking round. We probably whip KJ next turn not this.

[ipecac]

I like Death or Glory. At least we'd have tried something

Agree with deciding between a) and b) when the time comes.

[Dreylin]

Cool!

We also don't need to load them this turn; just promote & move the Galleys and then load at the start of next turn. Strongest Berserkers at the front, etc.

I think we should hit the Crossbow with the HA; but even if we don't, watch for him sending the Knight the opposite way. Also the Longbow should probably be reinforced with some of our Spear/Axe pile if possible.

[ipecac]

Do you want to complete the turn? Otherwise I can finish it with instructions.

[Dreylin]

You go ahead; I wouldn't be able to get to it for another 10-11hrs.

Don't think there's much instructing need tbh.; I'm going into a meeting now, but will be out in ~1hr.