Return of the Horde: Temujin of Rome

[oledavy]

WK, whenever you see this, log into PB6 stat.

[WarriorKnight]

So what's all the fuss about?



Speakrise have made a move on W. In addition to the stack just outside, Speaker also has some naval units that are forking both X and W, probably to prevent me reinforcing W with X's garrison.

However, it's not quite as bad as it looks. Mostly because I have quite a number of units in the area myself:





Fortunately I spotted Speaker loading units last turn, so I moved my cats up as a precaution, and good thing I did. Sadly 3 cats aren't much, but like dave over in the east I haven't had time to upgrade my defense to cannons yet and at least it's something.

My current plan is to send in the cats for collateral, then promote Knights up the Flanking line and try and flank as many cats as possible (those form Cuirs will mean they'll be fairly useless otherwise). If I can get rid off some of the siege, they'll have a much tougher time.

As for the naval action:



I have 2 Frigates and 2 Caravels nearby. I'm hoping I can kill the Frigate and then use the rest of my navy to block Speaker from reaching X. That'll mean my garrison there can support W instead, but it all depends on how things go.

Obviously the elo hell strike is off, Speaker's seen my workers building a fort which means any future assault won't have the element of surprise. Still, it was pretty good timing on our part, as my army would've probably been out of position in a couple of turns. Time to kill some stuff.

[Shoot the Moon]

On further reflection, this is actually a bit more dicey than I originally thought. A lot depends on the naval rolls and the results of the knight attacks to flank the cats. If the cats can't be flanked it will be painful.

[oledavy]

Btw, WK, no pressure, but if they take the city, I guarantee you they will fire off their GA in it and bisect your front.

[Commodore]

[oledavy]

I don't want to steal WK's thunder, but I'm surveying the battlefield, and man, I have never seen such a bad run of combat luck. Speaker got hammered and the city is still standing. I would like to claim that me and WK are superb tacticians, and while I think the two of us did an excellent job preparing for this, the RNG really broke in our favor here. It's almost enough to make me forgive it for that artist....

[oledavy]

[SIZE="4"]The Battle for Kararomum B[/SIZE]




Okay, so WK and I played the last turn together, setting the table for Team #1

First, WK hit the Team #1 stack with 3 catapults. Then, we promoted 3 knights to flanking II and sent them into the team #1 stack. One managed to survive and inflict flanking damage on the cats. There was also some naval fighting to be done, and the Roman navy sank one of Speaker's frigates (at poor odds) and a pair of galleys, that unfortunately were unloaded. I postulated that the naval movement was a feint and we should be pile everything into W, however, we decided to leave 3 units just in case there was anything scary aboard the remaining galleon and galley in the Mongolian fleet. WK moved a galleon before I could stop him, otherwise we could have gotten a few more units in W, but as things stood at the conclusion of the turn, we had more units than they had hitters, so we were sure of holding the city. We missed our chance to ambush the Anglo-Mongolian Army, but there's no reason we can't destroy it by just throwing tons of units at it. I suggested we position workers to road along the possible retreat routes for the enemy forces to chase them down in the event they withdrew.

Here's what things looked like when I loaded up the game:





Speaker opened the turn by attacking one of the injure Roman Galleons in the northern sea at 84.3% odds, but lost. It was at this point Speaker birthed a GG, conveniently close to the front as we would see later.

Speaker then killed a Roman caravel with a galleon and destroyed the offending frigate with his galley (you don't see that everyday). I think we was just trying to mop up the weakened Roman navy, as the galley was obviously unloaded and X was too well-guarded to boat. However, the galleon was, which will come up again later.

At this point, Team #1 pressed forward with their main attack against the city. Sunrise's frigates lowered the defenses to 8%, and one catapult was detailed off to put them all the way down to 0%. The six remaining catapults all suicided in to inflict collateral, and then the cavalry arrived.

I didn't notate the promotions on each, so you'll have to forgive the lack of detail:

Knight vs. Pike - 22.7% WIN
Knight vs. Pike - 21.3% LOSS
Knight vs. Pike - 56.6% WIN
Cuirassier vs. Musket - 84% LOSS
Cuirassier vs. Pike - 71.8% LOSS
Cuirassier vs. Musket - 72.2% LOSS
Cuirassier vs. Praetorian - 88.2% LOSS
GG Cuirassier vs. Musket - 96% WIN
GG Cuirassier vs. Musket - 96% WIN (but knocked down to 4.3)
Knight vs. Musket - 53.7% LOSS

During the course of the entire battle, Speaker won a single low odds battle, and lost six battles he should have won

They never had a good chance of taking the city, but holy shit that was a bad run of luck.

Speaker unloaded the galleon, carrying three horses, behind the main stack, and were joined by a fourth Mongolian horse unit. He additionally moved in his GG and created a super-medic. Six of the units in the main stack did not take part in the battles of the last turn, and will heal 30hp if we don't kill them in the meantime. I could figure out exactly how much, but I'm just going off the notes I jotted down in a hurry. Of particular note in the above screenshot are the workers building forts. Team #1 are going to try and get Sunrise's navy into the northern sea.

Team #1 now has 14 units in range of the city. I checked against our previous info on the stack and presumably, no new units have been loaded into Sunrise's galleons, (unless they're reinforcements). We have 17 wounded units in the city, several that can promote, and 12 more units that can move in for the next turn.

As things stand, we have a really good opportunity to inflict some serious damage. If we're willing to sacrifice many of the survivors in W, I think we can destroy the Team #1 stack, and kill at least two of their GGs. I would like to hit them before we heal, and since there are so many Indian and Roman troops converging on the city, we can afford to be aggressive and make unfavorable trades to eliminate Speaker's Army. Hell, we may even be able to push and capture all those fort-building workers, prevent the English fleet from reaching the northern sea. Also in the course of all this, WK birthed a GG.

So, here are is the casualty report for the last turn:

WK
3 Catapults
2 Knights
1 Frigate
1 Caravel
2 Pikes
2 Muskets

Team #1
2 Galleys
2 Frigates
6 Catapults
2 Knights
4 Cuirassiers

I haven't run the numbers, but I'm pretty sure that's a positive hammer and power exchange for us. Anyone feel up to the task?

If only we had a couple cannons in range.....

[oledavy]

WK -

If you or Shoot have time, creating a WB save for the current situation on the field would be really really useful. I would offer to do it myself, but I probably won't have the time before the turn rolls - really didn't have the time to write that report :rolleyes:

Anyway, let's try to play the next turn together and finish this thing, only chat in gmail so I can't accidentally end turn again

[WarriorKnight]

So, summary of results (from Speakerrise's POV)

Frigate loses against Frigate 84%
Galleon win against Caravel 78%
Galley wins against Frigate 85%
6 cats all die at 1%
Knight wins against Pike 23%
Knight loses against Pike 21%
Cuirassier wins against Pike 56%
Cuirassier loses against musket 84%
Cuirassier loses against pike 71%
Cuirassier loses against musket 72%
Cuirassier loses against Preat 88%
GG Cuirassier wins against musket 96%
GG Cuirassier wins against musket 96%
Knight loses against musket 54%

Wow. That's a pretty rough series of loses in the middle. Even though we probably wouldn't have lost the city, we would've lost quite a bit of our stack.

Here's how things stand now:



With some fresh units taking garrison (2 pikes, 2 muskets and a LBow) and Speakerise only have 1 injured cat left in their stack there's no way W is falling now. I dunno yet if we'll have a chance at eliminating some more units but with 3 Speaker GG's in range (a new Medic3 GG is 1NW of the stack) I'd certainly like to try.

However I don't think we'll have a chance at Parley, as Speaker is building a fort chain to let sunrise's ships enter the northern lake and my own navy is busted up after trading hits with Speaker's ships. Not to mention that Speaker now has 3 units inside Parley now, and if a rifle gets in there we have no shot.

EDIT: Ninja'd in my own thread, I know exciting stuff is happening over here and your turn reports are usually better but c'mon dave, give me something good to report on...

[oledavy]

EDIT: Ninja'd in my own thread, I know exciting stuff is happening over here and your turn reports are usually better but c'mon dave, give me something good to report on...

Sorry

My mistake. I just couldn't wait to report on the action. Will stay away from stealing your thunder from here on out.