Ah, as if an ad for AT using an ax in AW. Am thinking AP, ay?

[AutomatedTeller]

Putting more pressure on Catwalk:



The defense in Bombay is an archer and his CG3 warrior, with 2 axes on the hill.

That's a force of 5 war chariots, one of which is shock, one of which is Sentry (obviously). He cant' reach me unless he has some chariots nearby, but war chariots beat regular chariots. Worst case, i plunder a town and make some gold.

In other news - I think I'm missing a beat with my northern cities - I think I should be cottaging the snot out of them. A couple of cottages up there will make those cities much less crappy for me. So, I moved some workers up there to do that. it's prime cottage land, too - green with rivers

I started building MoM, but I think I'm not going to follow up with that. A) I'm going to kick off a GA before it's done, so less useful and B) I want a market there.

I think that Optics (for whales), Machinery and Lit for HE are my next targets.

[AutomatedTeller]

btw - a cover axe? I presume this is an upgraded warrior that was designed for barb archer killin. Either that or a misclick. it seems like an odd choice.

[AutomatedTeller]

Played the turn - nothing very interesting happened, though I get CS this turn.

War News -

West Front:

Not one, but 2 spears show up in Bombay, rendering it invulnerable to attack by 5 war chariots

So, I move my sentry chariot in to scout a little and see this:



That's a big stack of axes!!

A couple of other interesting things are shown by this, though:

1) He doesn't have a road on tile A - so I moved my sentry chariot to tile x. I then moved one of the village pillagers to the PH Y, to pillage his marble.

I didn't capture it, but Pataliputra is safe - I don't believe even that large stack can get odds on anything there, to say nothing of me having more units.

2) I have visibility on both stick and kjn's research.

I pulled in nearly 50 gold on plunder.

The North:



not as interesting. Will try to hit it next turn - see what happens. My sims showed that 2 cats didn't do well. I didn't try 3, but it should help some.

This is more an annoyance to stick than anything big, but what the heck:

[AutomatedTeller]

as you can see, I'm going to try to keep Be - adding some infra to fight culture pressure. missionaries will help, too, once I get my GA going.

I may go for drama, just to get some theaters up there. Not sure why stick hasn't gone for them.

[AutomatedTeller]

Catwalk does not, in fact, have construction. he does, however, have fast workers, so he roaded that tile and killed by war chariot. Maybe not the best use of resources there.

Actually, it was not a good turn for my sentries - everyone killed one. I had a sentry chariot watching KJN - he roaded and killed it. And I my attempt to put pressure on stick may well have backfired badly - he had an impi out of site that could get there... and now I have an impi in my land on a side with no axes. So, i'm getting some axes...

In other news - i put a hurting on his city by Be - 3 catapults and 4 axes later (with some luck) and I killed a lot of his units. One of the cats even retreated!!

next turn - hit it again, hopefully being able to clear out some of those spears with axes so i can bring the war chariots in. Though, I may need to worry about assaults from kjn and sticks, which would kinda suck.

2 turns to a golden age and a switch to CS. I now barely make a profit at 20%

[AutomatedTeller]

argh.

he showed up with a stack of 6 impis and an HA over by Silver. Silver's gone - I'll have an axe, an archer, a war chariot and a spear in there - no way does it survive. I'm kinda pissy - I had a spear that he attacked with an C1 impi and it won flawlessly. that's just grumbling, though - I've had my share of good rolls, including winning a couple of low odds attacks and burning down catwalks city by Be. I thought about keeping it, and then decided not to, since it sucked anyway.

Moving my stack of war chariots back. I should have moved a couple of axes back, but that's ok - I'll survive.

If Silver does (I think it's unlikely, but you never know), I'll have to start operations against thestick, as well.

[AutomatedTeller]

btw - this battle for Silver is a good illustration of snowballing in combat.

Right now, thestick has 6 impi's and an HA threatening a city that (will) have an axe, a spear, a war chariot and an archer, no promos, 20% defense.



2 are C1, 1 is shock.

None of the first attackers will get odds and I have a chance to kill 4 of them - the 1st 3, at least, SHOULD die. And if I kill or cause to retreat 4, obviously the city will stand. I'll have enough follow on to keep it.

So, why does snowballing matter?

2 turns ago, kjn, stick and catwalk all killed chariots with spears. thestick won flawlessly - kjn took one hit and catwalk's took several. Last turn, stick killed a spear with the same impi that killed a war chariot... ALSO flawlessly.

Now, presume different results - that he took 1 hit fighting the war chariot. He might not have even attacked the spear, because he might not have had odds - then, Silver's defense is 2 axes, 1 spear, 1 archer and a warchariot - no way do 6 impis and an HA take that.

Or, say he takes a hit or two killing the spear - now, he's got a wounded impi as his 7th attacker, which makes it much more likely that the city will hold.

Instead, of course, I have 7 undamaged attackers.

the RNG giveth (I've won plenty of low-odds attacks in this game) and the RNG taketh away. And if had been more diligent about my defenses and put a couple of axes in each city, this would not be an issue anyway....

[AutomatedTeller]

Well, it went about as I expected, though he won a low-odds attack so was able to pillage, as well.

Impi vs axe (4%) impi loses, but did 45 HP of damage.
Impi vs archer (25%) impi wins. These two combat's doomed the city. If the archer wins and the axe takes less damage, it might have held.
Impi vs. axe (69%) impi wins.
impi vs. spear (50%) spear wins, only taken 20 hp damage)
impi vs. spear (80) impi wins.
HA vs. WC (73%) HA wins and Silver burns.

That's disappointing, of course, though more disappointing was that I basically brought this on myself by defending poorly.

I did get my 2nd GG out of it - he'll go to make 5 xp units.

Ah well. Time for some payback:



I won a 50/50 spear on undamaged impi battle, lost an 86% shock WC on injured impi battle, but took out the impis and HA. From a soldier point of view, I won those battles - lost 3 WC and axe, a spear and archer, while he lost 6 impis and an HA. Course, I lost a city... but it is resettleable and I didn't lose the silver resource. he won that exchange.

I got my GP (Zoroaster), kicked off my GA and switched into Bureau and OR, which is nice. Not sure if I'll hit Theo at the end. Pacifism is out, might go FR.

Machinery and maces/crossbows coming up, because of this:


That stack could kill my city there, with just the xbows.

I have a dastardly idea, actually. It seems dirty pool to me, though, so wanted to run it by you guys:

I can make workboats in that lake. Would be totally jerky to make one and plop it on his fish there, cutting it off completely and forever? Not pillaged, but unusable?

[Commodore]

Work boats don't block water tiles. Funniest thing in the world, back in PB5, Rego and Pin plopped a work boat on Manixome Foe's fish and thought they were stopping growth.

[AutomatedTeller]

Ahh - well, that saves me from doing some testing then!!