Mr. Cairo Thread (spoilers)

[Mr. Cairo]

Someone was found guilty of cheating by reloading attacks in Erebus in the Balance PBEM LVII.

Huh, I guess I'll have to go have a look.

Well, imagine my complete lack of surprise that Mackoti was in fact cheating. I noticed that PBEM LVII was in 2024, but I had memories of these suspicions way before that, so I went and found the last post in my thread of the last time I played in an EitB PBEM, which was PBEM LIV in 2021.

This is that post:

So after reading some of the other threads I just want to reiterate and expand upon this post of mine from a little while ago:

It would be nice to play one of these games where the winner is not a foregone conclusion before it even starts. I do want to play another eitb pbem after this, but not with mackoti.

I do think there are legitimate concerns about mack cheating, but I don't think there'll ever be satisfactory answers either way. But, to be honest, it's irrelevant to me. Either mack's cheating, or he's so good at this mod it seems like cheating. The outcome is the same no matter what: mackoti always wins. Which makes these PBEM's especially dull since there is a pretty small player pool so every game with mackoti in it ends up being the same. So, while I do want to keep playing EitB PBEMs, I wont play one with mackoti again.

And yes, I know that if mack isn't cheating, then he's getting punished for being good, which sucks. But I play this game for fun and frankly, it's just not that fun to play EitB PBEMs with him, so I won't.

Anyway, that's enough about that.

[Qgqqqqq]

It's pretty clear he was doing more than just reloading, though Ref has kept the exact details quiet for understandable reasons. And yeah, there had been suspicion of mack for a long time - Bob made a similar comment in his last game.

[Mr. Cairo]

I'm up to three Catapults now, I think I'll need 5-6 to take Bat. By the time I have those he'll have probably around 15 Warriors in the city. I did a little testing and it really doesn't take many Catapults to shred Warriors. To roughly simulate the mix of full fortify bonuses and some C1 promotions on his Warriors in my sim I put the defending city on a hill (Bat is on flat ground) and it only took a few Catapults against the Polar Bear & ~12 Warriors before an unpromoted Centaur was getting good odds. I have a bunch of well-promoted Centaurs I'm going to start upgrading to Centaur Chargers, I've already upgraded my C2+Sh Warrior to a Charger. I don't think it'll be as hard of a fight as Dave probably thinks.

In case you're wondering how I'm going to afford the upgrades:

That's 217 gold in the last three turns, and he has a lot of cottages deeper in his territory (unless he's started to destroy them himself, but I've seen no evidence of that).

[Cornflakes]

That’s a nice haul of plunder!

What are chargers? (For those of us who have never played FFH) I had assumed at first that it was a promotion since you talk about Warrior and centaur both getting the upgrade, but then you mentioned gold for upgrades …

[Mr. Cairo]

That’s a nice haul of plunder!

What are chargers? (For those of us who have never played FFH) I had assumed at first that it was a promotion since you talk about Warrior and centaur both getting the upgrade, but then you mentioned gold for upgrades …

Centaur Chargers are the Kuriotes unique equivalent of Chariots, which in FFH come after Horsemen and are strong on the offense. Centaurs are a UU Horseman replacement.





Warriors can upgrade to Chargers, so I would assume they can also upgrade to Chariots in other civs, but I'm not sure and I can't be bothered to test it. The main thing is they don't require resources or a building like Chariots.

Also, all "Centaur" units have a special ability that when used gives them an extra movement point for 1 turn, but gives them -10% strength that only has a 50% chance to wear off each turn.

[Thoth]

Normal non-UU upgrade path is warrior-->axe-->chariot or scout-->horseman-->chariot

[Mr. Cairo]

The attack begins next turn:

It'll probably take at least 2 turns, maybe more if he brings units from his capital.

My C2 Chargers already get good odds on the Polar Bear, after the Catapults I should get good odds with all my units.

I have a Great Scientist waiting to pop a GA, but I want to wait until I can use it to revolt into new civics, especially Arete, and possibly Warfare. But I'm a few techs away from being able to get those during the GA. For now I'm getting KotE so I can start building Adepts, Bronze Working. Once Dave is gone I can start spamming Settlers and build outposts around me for resources and defences.

I chose Arcane when my civic changed a few turns ago, I deliberated for a while, but I figured it would have the best long-term use over any of the others. There's a good chance I'm wrong though...

[Mr. Cairo]

Catapults all had ~80% retreat odds and all retreated. After that the lowest odds I had was 81%. I lost a single Centaur at those odds.


He didn't move any units out of his capital as far as I could tell:


I have four more healthy catapults on the way. While they catch up I'll heal in Bat. I decided to keep the city to give a spot to heal without needing to retreat back to my own territory.

I estimate he'll have around 25 Warriors by the time I attack Ant. Close to twice what was in Bat, but no Polar Bear and I'll have twice as many Catapults. It shouldn't be that different.

[Mr. Cairo]

No screenshots this turn, but I just moved my stack on to the Ancient Forest Hill 1S of Ant. DaveV has Hunters now which will be tougher than the Warriors of course, but not so much as to make a difference I think. Bat should be secure as well, I moved an Adept with Earth1 in to cast that spell that adds 25% city defence and left 1 more unit there than he has Hunters, so should be fine. The 75% defensive bonus of the Ancient Forest Hill also keeps my stack safe.

I have fallen behind the rest of the pack, but I'm hoping that once the war is over and with all the pillage gold I'm going to get I'll be able to pop my GA and power up a lot of techs. I also plan to found a bunch of settlements to grab some resources.

[Mr. Cairo]

Haven't played the turn yet. I wanted to do sims before the battle so I set it up based on what I assume he'll have (I haven't looked since last turn, but I doubt it's very different).

Here's the set up:
His forces. Some of his Warriors have the C1 promo, that was left over from the previous sim, but I kept it in. I gave the city walls of Stone to roughly simulate the various promotions his units have + fortify. It's not perfect, but I think approximates.

My stack (roughly) with some regular Centaurs behind, and 6 Catapults. In reality I have 8 Catapults, four slightly injured, but I would need 2 to bombard the cultural defenses, so this is a simulation of an attack with just the six

So with six Catapults the results go like this:
With my odds decreasing a lot once all I have are the regular Centaurs.


I tried again with 8 Catapults and these were the results:

He had some healthier Warriors that defended well against the regular Centaurs, but once I was past them my odds got better.

Obviously this isn't perfect. I think overall I'll have worse odds, as his Hunters have good promos, but my C2+Sh Chargers get 80-85% odds on them after the Catapults, so I should still get good odds killing them.

Overall I get better results waiting a turn so I can attack with all 8 Cats.

HOWEVER I tested to see how it would go the turn after the attack, attacking again with the injured Catapults. Turns out they still get their 80% retreat odds and do the same amount of collateral despite have much lower health. So even though the Warriors who didn't defend the city healed up, I could still collateral them down.

This has made me realize I can attack this turn with 6 Catapults, only using my best units to take out the top defenders, and next turn go again with probably around 6-7 Catapults, including 2 healthy ones to hurt the top defenders. I promote the Chargers and again kill the best defenders, meanwhile bringing more units in to finish the job (I have some decently promoted Centaurs I can upgrade in Bat this turn). He won't be able to attack out because he'll need his units to stay still to heal from the collateral.

It might take a 3-4 turns (instead of two), but I think that's the best way. I don't want to wait a turn and give his best units more fortify bonus.

So, I'm going to go play the turn now, the plan being to bombard down with 2 Catapults, attack with the other 6, kill the top defending units with my best Chargers, then stop, and do it again next turn, and the turn after that, and so on until it's over.

If my plans go wrong, I will have to retreat out of there and regroup, bringing more Catapults and Chargers, but that would be a serious failure/setback.