[Spoilers] AT (Charlie/Mongolia) has a thread. In which he shall post.

[AutomatedTeller]

Well, that explains why it won an Ignoble

Actually, the Ignoble's have kind of changed over the years. The first year, most of them were ironic - this one, Dan Quayle & Michael Milken got one. More and more, they are for real research that is just kind of weird

Turn 97, In Which AT Turns To Thoughts of Conquest




Molach got a scientist and someone else got an engineer. I dunno if that's HAK with his 2nd or whoever got the HG or someone else or what.

I presume Molach will make an academy out of it - seems llike the right Fin thing to do.




Krill took 3 more cities from TheWannabe this turn. It comes more and more clear to me that I'm not winning this game, not that I thought I was earlier Two players have been eliminated and I really don't have a lot of room to manuever - I suspect that as soon as I attack someone, barteq will come up my ass.




My scout is continuing north to see what's up with dtay.





Currency will help with the GNP, a lot.




I wonder if Krill is on the other side of Barteq.




That's Molach's axe in the middle of my civ, scouting me out. Still not sure if I'm going after Molach or Adrien, I have to say.


Various attack plans:





Against Molach, I'd have a force made primarliy of Keshik's. I'd try to hit him as below, creating as many forking opportunities as I can to screw him up. Hit Early War hard and take it first turn, then manuever to get his 2 gold city and cut off his south.

The Yellow liines are molach's borders once I take Early War.

Longer term, I'd probably send a 2nd wave to the north and hit the cap from 2 sides.




Adrien would also get a primarily keshik attack force. I can't hit a city the first turn, so I won't, but I should be able to fork 2 of them. Alternately, I might go in to the east a little ways, not have to worry about exposing combat workers. Again, the idea is to get to the capitol soon. I'll take care of his northen city with slow movers, or perhaps let Molach snag it. I don't know that I'd keep it, though I probably would.




This would be a primary sword/attack based attack, with keshik support. I'd hit in his center hard - I presume that would attract a stack of defenders. Presuming I get his city, I'll move to the southern cost from 2 sides and then a primarily Keshik attack will come from the cap to kill the coastal city.

[AutomatedTeller]

More and more, my plan is Molach.

I know more of his land, he's probably easier to take than an aggressive civ and I might well be picking up an academy if I can take him. Plus, honestly, he's better situated for a strike - his northern lands are closer to my two main military cities. I'll be able to strike at No Scouting with no real warning, if I so choose. In fact, I might be able to take a city each turn for the first two turns (Early War and No Scouting), depending.

Plus, taking him before he gets a large stack of catapults is probably a good idea...

[AutomatedTeller]

Well, Molach is determined to not let me expand any further. Pics later (you can probably pop over to his thread to see what's up), but he's got 2 cats, something like 8 GW and assorted other stuff gearing up to hit Water Memory. I am going to lose it, which is unfortunate. More unfortunate for Molach, though, is that he's not attacking weaker civs. I mean, his build up has had me wondering if I should go after adrien, but it's kind of irrelevant now - definitely molach. it won't be a "take my city and walk off with peace" again. he wants war, he'll get it.

[AutomatedTeller]

I will do a big update, but I don't know that Molach takes the city at all. I've run some sims, which don't necessarily mean anything, but in about 1/2 of them, he takes the city, generally with his last or 2nd to last attacker. In some, he almost takes it, but runs out of attackers. What happens next turn is up in the air, of course. In many, but not a majority, he gets creamed - losing his stack while killing very few of my defenders.

Why that happens depends almost entirely on what a Drill III defender does and how many 1st strikes it gets early in the combat and what it does with them. it's quite possible for it to get 5 first strikes and kill an attacker before it gets a chance to do anything.

[AutomatedTeller]

Turn 100, In Which AT Tries to Figure Out What Happened to 98 and 99

Actually, I knew I didn't report 99 - not sure what happened to 98.




I'll do the big photo dump of turn 100 in a separate post.

Molach declared and moved in. This is his stack.

8 GW, 2 axes, 2 chariots, a spear and an archer. And 2 cats, which is what makes this attack possible, not just suicide. Without the cats, this attack just fails. With them, it's close - I'd say it's about 50/50, mainly depending on how first strikes by drill III archer gets - it can kill units with those 1st strikes. I've often wanted to do an archer/cat army and see how effective it is... but it's pretty vulnerable to horse archers...

I have 1 spear, 1 axe, 5 archers and 1 scout. The spear and axe are both C1, 3 of the archers are plain protective archers (CG1/Drill I), 1 is CG2 and the other is Drill III. 2 of the archers and the axe get, I think, 25% fort bonuses - the rest get 5-15%. And I'm on a hill with walls. It's a stronger defense than it looks..

I feel reasonably good about this - not shown is that i have 5 Keshik's in or NE of Urination TIme and I whipped in another in Bloody Kids, so my counter-attack is excellent. Plus, I have 2 promo units, which is a lot better than no promo units...

[AutomatedTeller]

Turn 100, In Which AT Dumps A Lot Of Screens

Cities:




Summary

Graphs

Other information:






Tech:

[AutomatedTeller]

Turn 101, In Which AT Starts To Take Revenge

First, Molach took the city, razed it and resettled. I'm ok with his city, actually. I probably won't make a big deal about it.

Second, he got lucky and only lost 2 cats and 3 GW, which is a crappy trade off for me - that's 220 hammers for him to 205 in military to me and 67 for the settler. I was hoping for 4 or 5 GW dead and all the rest of his units injured. That would have been an excellent result for me.

His attacks were:

Cat loss 4%
Cat loss 7%
GW win 17% 44 hp
GW loss 29%
GW loss 37%
GW win 37% 0 hp
GW win 74% 19
GW loss 56%
GW wi 56% 40
GW win 85% 76
axe win 100% 17
Axe win 100%
Spear win 99.9%

That's 2 low odds attacks winning, one of which flawlessly. He lost 1 of his 50% attacks and none of his gimme's. For that exchange to be ok for me, he'd have to have lost 5 or 6 GW and the rest of his units hurt badly enough that my Keshik's could clean up most of them.






Instead, I'll have to kill one of his cities. No Scouting is dead, unless there's a spear just finishing. I'm second in the turn order, so he'll emergency whip it, but it's toast.

Unfortunately, I have to raze it - no way I can keep it. But removing his city will help me.

I suspect he'll move a GW, the axes and the chariots up to the woods tile 1N of where they are, and everything else further south.

[AutomatedTeller]

Turn 102, In Which AT Does Something Different Than Planned, Mainly Because He Can't Read

So, when I logged in, I saw this:




Which, to you and the me of right now, looks like a lump sum of 62 for peace, which doesn't seem like a lot for me not burning one of his better cities. Unfortunately, the me of then saw 62 gpt and said "man, that's lot of gold, I gotta take that", and so I did. Imagine how mad I was when I realized that I had screwed up.

I could have killed his city for the price of 2 or maybe 3 keshik's and retreated the others. (I'd kill 2 archers, but his stack would have taken out the survivors, probably. I might have killed another sword along the way, i dunno. I suspect I would have gotten more gold out of it. Probably been able to settle a city up there myself before he could replace it.

Anyway, that was stupid of me. I then offered a trade for incense and corn (btw, why in god's name is Molach the only one in this area with gold? 2 with gems, 1 with gold, 4 with silver. maybe it balances out with calendar resources?)

Exploration




Well, this is fine how do. dtay can either expand into south or east. South is me. I guess I have to hope he goes east - he's already been attacked from that direction, but I guess I have to dedicate some resources to defending this border. I thought part of the reason we had a toroidal was so that we didn't have backlines like this?




Alphabet finally starts to pay off for me as I get a view into barteq's city with my spy. That's an anti-keshik defense if I've ever seen one - 3 spears? Molach may not have 3 spears in his entire civ. Well, were I attacking barteq, I'd not bring keshiks, or at least not primarily keshik's.




War Plans
Well, Water Memory didn't work out very well. And I didn't burn any of Molach's cities, so that was a waste. So, now what?

Adrien. Gotta conquer someone. I have no idea why he hasn't produced a great prophet yet, or, in fact, switched to Hinduism - what's the point of getting the religion if you aren't going to do anything with it?




This is where my forces currently are (at least the ones relevant to this discussion). I'm chooising to make a strategic decision to trust that dtay won't come after me, cause I'm pretty wide open there. This has a real chance to bite me in the butt, but I don't see that I have much choice - I'm already outexpanded, and that's a terrible thing for an imp/pro civ. I have to take some chances. Most likely, dtay will take advantage, however. if he can hold off long enough for me to take out adrien, though, I'll be happy.




That should end up with me having 3 of adrien's cities 6 turns from now. By then, I should have replacements for keshi's lost, a road for replacements, some units to help keep spears from just killing keshik's, etc. We'll see.

Edit - sorry, the numbers on all those are wrong. I'll be starting in 3 turns, not 2. 8 of the Keshik's take an extra turn to get there.

[AutomatedTeller]

While we wait, a couple things I neglected to mention:

Last turn, I got currency, which gets me an extra set of 2 commerce trade routes per city (I have OB with dtay, krill and ichabod)

Also, this:




This will bring the market to a just under 110 hammer, which is a 5 pop whip. I'll build for a while and then whip when I have another citizen and it's only a 3 or 4 pop whip. That will A) raise my happy cap here by 2 and B) make me more money when I run 0% science.

I'm going to let Whale Breath grow some before I put one in there, mainly because I want it to create military for now. Same iwth the cap - it will grow for a little while.

[AutomatedTeller]

Turn 103, In Which More is Discovered about Adrien's Land




Allen is very lightly defended. I presume a spear or axe will show up there when I attack, but it's possible he doesn't realize how quickly I can get there.

In any case, 1 axe isn't going to do much against 12 keshiks.

2 turns to go. Gather together the keshiks next turn, then go the turn after.




Power curves.