[SPOILERS] Nyles Standish goes full retard

[NylesStandish]

Nicely written report as usual.

When would you be planning to invade plako?

Turn 103 is when I'm currently planning to have my stack next to Hamburg. The longer I wait, the greater the potential resistance becomes. The actual war declaration could be that turn, or possibly the turn before. I can't attack Hamburg without having my stack visible for at least one turn before moving onto the hill, thanks to my chopping of that key forest, so I might declare Turn 102 since his reaction will be the same either way. I could use that extra turn to get some scouting info from the chariot I have hanging around.

I've considered asking Plako for Open Borders on Turn 101. In the overwhelmingly unlikely event the offer were accepted, this would allow me to use the chariot to check out the garrison of Hamburg and see what forces are on their way before I declare. If it looks uncrackable I can switch targets. I can arrange my forces so that if he accepts OB and sends a chariot into my territory to scout, he won't be able to see much.

Open borders doesn't lock me into peace, right? I can just immediately alt click and declare war?

[GermanJoey]

Yup.

[NylesStandish]

Turn 101:




Everything is in position. Chariots and Horse Archers are being built to catch up with the main stack. I didn't ask for OB since I'd have to delay the stack on the hill by a turn to keep him from seeing it on Turn 102 if he accepted OB immediately and moved a chariot onto the corn. The stacks NW and W of Nineveh could have stayed out of sight without delaying the attack.

Turn 102:




Open borders proposed by Elkad. I declined and re-offered without the 6 gpt just before I ended turn. This isn't some kind of code or anything, is it?







I could have just run that galley through immediately upon running into his borders instead of sitting around looking suspicious for almost 10 turns.




The defenders of Hamburg. I really wish I had done that 4 chariot rush against Hamburg right when it was founded. It's doable, but it's not going to be easy. The good news is my stack has more of everything except chariots atm. My sims have me taking the city, but it can get really messy, and they don't take into account how Plako (and not the AI) would react to my actions. Not all of the units will have the full fortify bonus like they did in my sim, but more reinforcements will show up. The forces are formidable enough to make a good counterattack if I were to send my stack to the West for some Manifest Destiny, but I think I can win or at least not lose my whole stack, so I'm going for it.




The stack of doom. Workers in Nineveh will finish the road next turn.

Lots of wars going on elsewhere, btw:




Krill destroying The Wannabe.




Tao attacking DZ




REM taking a bite out of Commodore. It needed to be done, but it might be too little too late. Haven't been paying attention to the events log, but the graphs clearly show that Commodore's in a golden age and pulling down some ridiculous numbers. Best crop yield of my neighbors too, and I think the most cities as well before REM took one. Somebody's gotta stop him, but that massive mfg. is probably going to fuel enough military expansion to repel the invasion and then some. Best of luck to REM and myself going after hard targets.

[NylesStandish]

Turn 103:




Elkad accepts OB and I send my chariot to look around.




Yuri doesn't have Alphabet, so I declared war.




Moved the main stack onto the hill. Partially obscured by the list of Plako's units are my chariot and his spearman. I moved him there to get some vision, and now he's almost certainly fucked thanks to that spear. If he somehow survives, the chariot in Frankfurt can finish him off without putting the city at risk or into unhappiness. Plako won't attack into the stack since he gets bad odds. I could have put more shock promotions but figured it wasn't necessary.




Most of these guys probably won't make it to Hamburg in time to participate in the battle. Still, that's a lot of shit coming my way.

Also, props to REM for dropping Commodore's score by 48 points with his last two conquests.

[NylesStandish]

Turn 104:




Nope. This is where I would re-offer the peace treaty in exchange for the city of Hamburg if city trading were allowed.




I don't have enough hitters to take the city in one turn. I could suicide all of the cats and decimate both of our stacks, or wait a turn or two to lower the defenses. I chose the latter.




In other news, Commodore is getting completely rekt. Gone from 13 to 7 cities. His golden age production won't likely save him, contrary to my earlier predictions. REM could be one of the 2 or 3 people with higher soldier counts than me.

I wanted REM to take a bite out of him, not consume his entire being and absorb his power. Commodore doesn't even have metal or horses left, so I sent him Copper and Gems for Stone so that he can mount a more credible defense. This trade doesn't actually cost me anything, since everything that Copper allows me to build can also be built with Iron, and since I have a spare Gems laying around. Stone actually helps me finish Moai faster, and I probably could have gotten some gpt, but failing that I'd have just gifted it to him to stop the REM snowball growing any larger. Someone's got to stop him...

AND HIS NAME IS JOHN CENA!!!






I mean Elkad...

[NylesStandish]

Turn 105:







More exploration. Love the lake whales.




Finished bombarding down the city's defenses. I'll send in the cats and begin the slaughter next turn. I didn't send them in for the attack this turn because I did some trial runs with World Builder and the median amount of catapults that survived was 1 if I attacked with them all this turn without bombarding down defenses (and nearly half the time they all died), versus a median of 3 surviving cats, minimum of 1 and maximum of 6 if I waited a turn (I did 15 trials with each). Consequently, they do more damage and my swords and axes pretty much all survive, and I get a Great General, which I will probably use for a super medic chariot. Some wounded defenders will remain, to be mopped up the next turn.










Commodore's situation is looking pretty grim. Even with my Copper and with Elkad joining the war against REM, I doubt he pulls this out. I hope my chariot in the west can find REM's stack(s) and see what kind of heat he's packing.

[NylesStandish]

Turn 106:







The first real shots of the war are fired. This guy had 11.6% retreat odds and survived almost unscathed. Was this a sign of things to come?




Somewhat. None of the others matched the first one's performance, but 4 survived. I expected 3, which was the median of my 15 WB tests. Also, the Horse Archers seem to be taking damage, though they are supposed to be immune to collateral from siege weapons. See the second screenshot in this post, where a Horse Archer has gone down to 5.5 health after my first catapult withdraws from a swordsman.

Time to send in the hitters.




Odds on the first attack are 68.8%, and go into the 70s and 80s for later attacks.




Not a single swordsman is lost.

Now to send in the axes. Those look like good odds...




What the fuck. I should have stopped after the first 4 got killed so I would have some more Axes to cover the stack, but I got greedy and wanted to kill as many injured units as possible. I was getting favorable odds, too, mostly in the high 60s, 2 around 50% (incorrectly promoted axes), an 80% which I lost, so even if all of them were 50% odds, on average I'd expect to lose no more than 4 out of 8, but I lost 6 out of the 7 that attacked. The only survivor killed an archer at 80 something percent. The only undamaged axe left is combat II for some reason instead of combat I + shock because . I completely shit the fucking bed managing these axes. I even gave Plako a great fucking general. We lost the same amount of units this turn, but that chariot I lost earlier put him over the edge, I guess.




Literally one point away from a Great General.

I'm posting this before playing turn 107, so I don't know whether Plako attacked my stack or not, or how bad the damage is. I don't think any individual unit of his got enough experience to be a threat next turn, and most of his stack is too weak to attack even my damaged units without healing up first. The most numerous and healthy defenders are horse archers, and they should be thoroughly dissuaded by my combat II spearmen.




In other news, I found the remains of Commodore, so REM has to be nearby as well. I'll ask for open borders with Commodore as soon as I get Alphabet.

[GermanJoey]

Horse Archers definitely aren't immune from collateral, I'm not sure why you thought that.

Good luck with the attack!

[Bobchillingworth]

What's with the shock promo on your sword?

[NylesStandish]

Horse Archers definitely aren't immune from collateral, I'm not sure why you thought that.

Good luck with the attack!

I think when I was assigning builds to a city, I must have read the "Immune to collateral damage from siege weapons" off of the description for the catapult but none of the other things in the catapult description, otherwise I would have realized I wasn't hovering over the button for horse archers.

What's with the shock promo on your sword?

If I used a city raider sword, the top defender would be an axeman. If I used a shock sword, top defender would be an archer. Part of my reasoning was that if I get the archer out of the way first, I can use shock swords against axes and get better odds in those fights, instead of fighting the axes first with city raider promotions. Shock would also be somewhat useful on defense, unlike city raider.

Also, in my sims, there were often situations where a shock sword got better odds fighting an archer than a city raider sword against an axe due to the particular way the collateral damage got distributed (not sure if that was the case for the sword you're referring to). It happened often enough after the first archer got knocked out in my sims that I usually just mass upgraded all the swords to shock to save time. That may have influenced me to put more shock promos on my swords than the situation called for.

In the actual fight, I upgraded one of my Swords to city raider so that I could compare odds with a shock sword. I didn't do it for the first combat for the reasons stated above. I don't remember if I compared before every subsequent battle, but I ended up promoting them all to shock except the one. City Raider I would definitely be superior on a sword that survives the battle (as all of them ended up doing), since it will get +45% on everything when it's upgraded to City Raider II, versus a Shock/City Raider I sword which only gets +45% vs melee and +20% vs everything else, so that's a significant opportunity cost for the shock swords.

I was pretty sure I was doing the right thing when I made the upgrades, but after reading Bobchillingworth's post I'm starting to wonder if I screwed up a bit.