[SPOILERS] Scooticator and Pindooter give a sporting try

[scooter]

Turn 210

Mack is definitely retreating:



Happy news. Here's waht I meant by his wide open south seas:



4 useful cities defended by a combined 2 archers, 1 Knight, 1 Jan. Still though, peace is the way at the moment. Globally, Commodore and dtay made a deal:



Hm. DP really doesn't have a lot of teeth, but the threat of trashing routes is the actual pain. I kinda doubt this has a real impact, but we'll see with time I guess.

As you can also see, I have 2 very safe sources of coal. Less than I would have guessed given how much land I have, actually. Also, that CKN killed my Grenadier at 6% odds. Hilarious.

Just one city went down this turn:



Rather than burn, I pressed the shiny liberate button again.



The rationale:

1) Would like Azza to remain very friendly with me
2) Maybe Azza will rebuild this city so it's much more useful when I capture it 50T from now.

Next I'll sail some of these units west and clean up the rest of Lewwyn's islands. I think I'll mostly just liberate from here on out. I don't think there's any left that I'm likely to keep. If nothing else, the capture gold is genuinely useful.



Weird things happening here, allow me to explain. I'd like to make a run at the Pentagon. I'm going to get to Assembly Line at least 1T, possibly 2 full turns before mackoti. Unfortunately, mackoti is in a golden age, so I'm pretty sure he can beat me to the Pentagon just by nature of boosted production. However, at worst the fail gold will be very useful, and at best I might just get a coin flip. Anyway, I'm trying to bank some overflow here, hence the weird tile assignments. I do actually need to do the math, because there's a real chance I'm better off overflowing into a 1T factory, THEN starting on the Pentagon. I'm going to get some workers into position to pave over a couple of those farms for additional workshops too for the mad dash (I'll return them to farms afterwards so I don't starve). We'll see if I can pull it off.

Yes I realize Commodore might get Assembly Line a turn or so before me, but he doesn't have a city with this many hammers OR Ironworks (or Steel for that matter ), so I'm good on that front.

On my discussion earlier on how to crack Lewwyn - I did some very stripped down sims, and it actually looks like I might just be able to get the job done with infantry, cavs, and cannons. It will be bloody and I'll take some serious losses, but I should come out ahead. It just takes so much siege to reduce Str20 infantry down to a range where Str10 Knights and Str14 Rifles can do anything to them - especially when the goal I'm looking at is around 30 infantry bare minimum (and something like 25 cannons and 25 Cavs sounds nice). So that's my tentative aim for now. We shall see. I should be able to produce the gold required for that scale of an upgrade something like 3-4T after completing all the necessary techs.

[NobleHelium]

I would check factory -> coal plant before Pentagon. Pentagon is crazy expensive. Although you do have Ironworks in there so the net percentage increase on those buildings is smaller.

[Cyneheard]

Don't forget to adjust your overflow based on the new post-factory modifiers when planning.

[NobleHelium]

The overflow out of completing the factory will be adjusted by the new modifier (including the factory). I call this the forge bug.

[scooter]

Yep, thanks to both of you. I think I'm going away from the stable and building a Grocer first instead. I can overflow just as much, and I'm going to badly need the health when I start adding all this stuff. Anyway, if I go factory-> coal plant, that's good for 200% multipliers (IW 100%, Forge 25%, OR 25%, factory w/ power 50%). That means a base 48hpt comes out to an adjust 192hpt while building the Pentagon, good for a 7T build. That's pretty fantastic for Normal speed. That's assuming I bother with the factory and coal plant. The factory would be a 1T build, and I think the coal plant might be as well. So... I think I could have this thing done like 11T from now? That would be pretty competitive. Depends on how quickly Mack can get Assembly Line. If he's still 5T away... I might just be able to steal this thing.

Those are estimates are without paving over a farm. I may be able to shave off a turn by paving over a farm, I'm just not sure if I'll be able to afford the food loss from that.

[scooter]

Just realized Mack isn't even in OR - he just bounced into Free Religion. I bet I beat him if he doesn't get into OR - or at least can force a coin flip.

[scooter]

Hoo boy. Interesting times we live in. Lewwyn played and ended turn, so I jumped in to look. Slightly "taller" resolution here on this picture:



He moved everything north, and I mean everything. It looks like he may be targeting Timbers - every unit of his is in range to join the jungle hill tile next turn. I'm considering chopping the jungle in case I want to hit his stack while it's still on the first hill. Probably not, though - I imagine I want him to move next to Timbers.

Soooo... what kind of numbers are we talking here? Here is everything from Lewwyn that can reach the jungle hill tile next turn:

27 rifles
29 knights
29 CKNs
16 catapults
12 pikemen
3 muskets
2 longbow
1 war elephant
1 mace
-------
120 units

Yeesh. There's also like 2 axes and a warrior or something, but I'm just counting units with Str >= 6. Anyway, this is a lot, greater in quantity than what I have, no question. However, I make it up in quality. Not always enough on the attack, but on defense it definitely can be enough.

my units:
20 cannons
27 grens
21 knights
2 muskets
3 pikes
1 longbow
-------
74 units

So on one hand, the downside is that he's going to be on a hill. 27 Rifles on a hill is no joke. On the other hand, my grens will get to attack his Rifles most likely, because his Knights won't get the defensive bonus, so his Rifles will be top defenders despite having the disadvantage against Grens. I'm going to roughly sim this out to be safe, but I can't see him winning this. His 2 movers make it such that he probably has an outside shot at razing Gators if I have to pull too many units away from it, but if I lose Gators in return for killing his stack and romping through his land, that's a trade I'll take any day of the week and twice on Saturday.

So we'll see. Not 100% sure that he'll move in, but he's clearly thinking about it. Mackoti's enforced peace with me is supposed to expire next turn, so perhaps Lewwyn is thinking Mack will declare next turn? So he might call off the attack if he sees Mack and I take enforced peace. I'm really not sure what Lewwyn is thinking/planning, which is a little disconcerting because figuring these things out is usually the one part of my game that's strong.

Really rooting for one big huge battle here. That makes my life so, so much easier if it happens.

[scooter]

Oh, I should have noted a few more things:

1) Lewwyn has enough gold to upgrade a few units to Rifles so he could get a few more Rifles together... but on the other hand, he can't upgrade and get them into my land next turn.
2) I should have included the 4-5 Airships I'll have too that can put a dent into his top defenders.

I guess if we do end up having Armageddon, I would need to stream that turn huh?

[scooter]

I did a very rough sim. By rough I mean I didn't even bother with promotions, which favor me a bit (I'd rather a pessimistic sim). But in short, while yes I can beat this back, I'm going to take very heavy losses if he goes all in. The main issue is I have just 54 hitters to hit 120 units, so obviously he's going to get in a counter-attack. The other issue is he's just got so many units that he soaks up quite a bit of the collateral with junk. Also, his Knights end up being so far down in the priority list in terms of defending that he'll certainly have some left, and by that point it's very difficult to prevent him from using the leftover Knights from, say, razing Gators.

All that said, it'll be worth it if his stack goes down, which is almost certainly will if he really presses the attack. So I'll take some pain, but I should win this battle, and in the long run it'll be a net positive for me.

If he bails, I'll just wait for infantry and Cavs as previously discussed - that will work just fine. I think I'd rather just get this over with though so I don't have to think about this anymore.

[scooter]

Apologies for the spammy style, but one other consideration. If I let him march onto the hill adjacent to Timbers before counter-attacking, that's the situation that allows him to counter-attack by burning Gators. If I hit him while he's on the jungled hill (chopping the jungle ahead of time), that means he can really only counter-attack units on a hill.

Also, he would still have the option of bombing down the Timbers defenses, meaning he could be counter-attacking into 0 city defenses. At least on the hill it's a 25% defense that he can't remove.

The other risk is that if I hit him on the first hill, he might bail and retreat into his culture, and I can't let that stack retreat, promote, and heal - it needs to get wiped once it enters my borders.