[PB48] TBW

[TBW]

I've been informed that Raskol is planning on throwing all of his siege at Cancer, across a river, and then slamming his stack of knights into it. He would not mathematically be able to kill enough units to conquer the city doing this in one turn, even if he used all of his one movers as followup attackers across the river too. I have 3 fresh CG2 longbows ready to move into Cancer this turn too, plus I can one turn another unit from there, though I unfortunately can't promote it. He would theoretically be able to finish the city off after that at the cost of the majority of his remaining knights. I haven't simmed out exactly what happens after I move the fresh longbows in, but without moving them in he can easily clean up the city next turn, and I really don't think it would be worth it for him to throw away 19 siege units + virtually his entire standing army to break my back with Superdeath's full powered knight stack lurking nearby. It would be the most pyrrhic victory you could possibly pull off in a game of Civ 4.

He seems to have figured this out too, and he's asked to discuss some things with me before he takes his turn, which I'm certainly open to. If there's some way I can maneuver him and Superdeath into fighting each other, in a way that spares me from getting scoured off the mainland, I might have a chance to become relevant again for a little while. I might even be able to get some sort of tech donation from GKC to try to get back on track too.

[TBW]

T147:

Negotiations with Raskol seem to have gone radio silent, he added me on Steam and then didn't message me or send any more PMs, though he did withdraw his army from my territory. Superdeath, on the other side, has moved a Great Artist up to where I can see it. He spawned the artist 3 turns ago, and I can't think of any reason he'd have to move it to that city that doesn't involve blowing my borders out with a culture bomb before hitting me with a fat stack of knights. My stack in Cancer is still intact and I'm adding a Combat 3/Formation pike every turn, as well as catapults and pikes from outlying cities every few turns. I'm also pushing out workers and settlers on the ice shelf to settle out on the islands; maybe I'll end up resurging as counterfeit Polynesia while everybody else is busy battling it out on the mainland. I can definitely kill one stack before I'm totally swept off of there at this tech level, but I can't kill two at once.


You do what you can do, even if there's not much hope. The glacial turn pace isn't a lot of fun for me but I'm sticking it out anyway.

[TBW]

Over the last few turns/couple of weeks I've decided to align with Raskol instead of SD. Why? In my opinion, it makes more sense to help the #2 player slug it out with the #1 player, instead of getting eaten by the #2 player while the #1 player smoothly glides towards rifles and wins the game unopposed. Not only is it more interesting, but Raskol doesn't seem to be nearly as tactically sound as SD. so the chances that he'll get his own stack wiped out or badly damaged enough that I can make a move are good. The worse things go for the people ahead of me, the better my chances of making a comeback are. Of course, if they both have been stringing me along and are planning a massive counterattack to clear my stack out of the game then I've completely taken the bait on it.

[TBW]

I screwed up and jumped the gun on turn order today. I'm no longer splitting with Raskol since we've got a peace treaty and have mutual interests right now, and I managed to look at an old pbspy tab instead of refreshing it and just took my turn ahead of superdeath, who I am still splitting with because we're at war now (he sniped two of my cities first half of last turn). I'm so thrilled to not be stuck waiting until hour 38-39 of every turn that I completely blew past it. I sent him the following PM just now:

I just screwed up, I logged in and took my turn early since I'm out of my previous turn split and thought I'd seen that you'd taken yours already on pbspy, but it was an old pbspy tab I had open instead of the latest one and I didn't refresh it before I jumped on. I didn't make any offensive moves this turn but I did move some units that are potentially in contentious spots, if you need to roll my turn back so I don't blow the turn order that's totally on me. I'm really sorry about overlooking that, frankly I was overjoyed to not be stuck in a split where I have to wait 38 hours per turn every single turn.

My turns don't take too long right now because I don't have a lot of cities left and only one major stack, but it's still a hassle to have to roll things back and I feel like a jackass because I'm usually careful about details like that. I screenshotted the positions of all the relevant units I moved this turn and I'll make the same moves again.

[Miguelito]

No combat on your side of the turn? From the shot it seems the war is rather cold atm

[TBW]

No combat on your side of the turn? From the shot it seems the war is rather cold atm

No combat that turn, no. I did move three units that could theoretically have been picked off by knights coming out of the fog.

[TBW]

T156:
I let Superdeath double move me to clear up the minor turn timer issue, so there's no problem with that now.

Superdeath offered me Banking + Paper for a cease fire until T160. I turned it down. I want to conquer at least 2-3 cities before I'm talking peace deals, and my goal with this war in general is to get Raskol's massive stack tied up far away from my core and weakened. I have a mechanical treaty with him for 8 more turns, but if an opportunity presents itself for me to launch a blitzkrieg strike at his core while he's laying siege to Superdeath after that, I will absolutely take it. Right now, I'm going all in on taking cities from SD, because I think that's the best way I can gain an advantage here. I need capture gold and I need more cities and he's my only available target for expansion.

[TBW]

T157:

I conquered the city of Cahokia, which he left with one longbow garrison. I wouldn't have dug in hard on it either, it was a 2 pop city. He doesn't have a large garrison in InnerLighthouse, but with two turns to reinforce it before I can even get within siege range and Engineering roads, a large garrison can pop up very quickly, and he's certainly got the units to reinforce it.


Raskol sent me this screenshot. I don't know what SD's plan is yet, but I know he's definitely in a bind right now. If he attacks my stack, Raskol wins because SD will have to burn up all his catapults and still punch through hill longbows and C3/Formation pikes, leaving him with a lot of damaged units to deal with Raskol's huge stack of trebuchets and knights. If he attacks Raskol's stack, I get to push forward through InnerLighthouse, mop up what's left there, and have the option of attacking Raskol himself if his stack gets wiped out. And if you add GKC's big stack of war elephants and the complete enigma that is Mr. Cairo to the mix, everybody's chances of winning drastically go down.

[TBW]

T158:
Raskol lost a Great General this turn, I have no idea what the circumstances were but it's usually a bad thing when that happens while your GG is defending. That tells me that it's likely SD opted to throw his stack into Raskol's instead of mine, which was my main goal all along in this war. If the two of them crash their stacks into each other then that opens up a window for me to stick a knife in Raskol's back for good in 6 turns.

Another hopeful sign is that SD revolted into Slavery and keeps trying to figure out a way to buy me off, this turn he offered me a treaty + 50 gold per turn. I'm sorry, man, I really just need you to kill Raskol's stack and to open up some space where I can grow for a while, settling for techs or gold per turn before then doesn't help me long term. I'd also be more inclined to take a deal that was less lopsided if SD hadn't decided the best way to defend against Raskol was to raze two of my cities to create a buffer.

[TBW]

T159:
SD withdrew his troops from InnerLighthouse, it had been whipped down to 1 pop but it still counts as a conquest. I piled my stack into it, minus the catapults I bombarded with first (it was only at 20%, but I don't have as many cities to produce units in so I have to try to preserve as many as possible) and the one movers I used to attack it. I also left a couple Formation pikes to defend that stack, since it's within range of knight counterattack and I can't pillage all the roads along the way. I also saw that Raskol lost the city of Mesa Verde last turn, but he'll easily retake it this turn since it just has a 1 longbow garrison. SD definitely has some kind of plan for a counterattack here but I have no idea what it might be, so I'm going to play this cautiously.