[PB60] Amicalola and Vanrober: Gone' Fishing!

[vanrober]

Because we are afraid of the erratic behaviour of Sd we are getting Feudalism in 2 turns, full steam at 100% beakers. We are by far 1gnp and 1 on food right now, we need a bit more production to be able to handle dogpiles, getting some buildings of christianism will help to that matter.

Right now the threat is SD going for Izamal, which seems its what he is goign to do according to the worker he have there. So we will whip the walls in 2 turns, as far as we know he has not engeneering yet so he need 3 turns to get to us. He put all his EPs on us which we feel is another hint for this atack. But for me the craziest is having OB with Mjmd when he razed a city some turns ago. I really cant understand why he want to lose all his stack on our walls... I guess he want so slow us down, but really why dont you try yo win instead of destroy another's game for no reason? We have been really kind with him, we allowed him to get the island between us, we gave him gems when he couldnt get them and mjmd was threating to get those for himself. We didnt declare war nor ask for anything, we have a really nice border which doesnt call for conflict at all. I really hope im paranoid and he doesnt want to atack.

His stack is mainly mounted units, with the exception of a couple of axes he has behind that super huge stack. So we are making now pikes and upgrading with gold some too. If we look at vodka 3 WC against a pike has 26% of succed, not thinking on defensive bonnus nor promotions. And 4 vs 1 barely is better than a coinflip. We can have 4 (with no cost) on time, and we could whip harder if needed be.

       



We will make some longbows too since they are cheap and behind walls are really good defenders we will upgrade some archers and will whip some in case we need. So i really think if he tries he will lose a good neighbour that wont forget this agression and all the happy we were willing to give for free.

A completely different neigbour is GKC, we settled on his face (although we gave him 10gpt) we are giving him several happy resources and he asked us for 80g and we gave, we want to have this peacefull border while he is trying hard to "win" or at least not die. Im afraid that once he cant hold any longer we will take some cities so Jowy doesnt get all with Mjmd, we want a part of the share too. But i wouldnt consider that a betrayal hehehe.

i wanted to update a bit too about the thoughts we had with tech. We think next thing we want is go for guilds. And of course we want knights, but we really want banking, banks will help a lot in some key cities, but merchantilism is king on this map. We will have the good parts of OB, which are safety purposes, and wont get the bad things, which is strengthen the economies of our neighbours, we have several high pop cities that are giving them 4 gold already, since everyone has lost TR with at least a neighbour because of wars, several of them just want ours, and wont get them. Adding that to the free speacialist and the extra trade route that civic is king for us. Right now we need to decide when we want the GA, if we get GA asap we will improve a ton our economy and we will get to banking really fast. But if we get the GA when we get banking we will make such an incredible boost that people will want to conceed xD. Of course they will try to fight us before that we think. So we are not sure which option is better.

[Amicalola]

T139

Superdeath sent us a remarkably friendly diplo offer (~attacking Mjmd) that made our wildest dreams come true. And then we clicked out of the screen and saw he'd roaded this tile towards Izamal...



We're in full paranoia mode (also, 3 civ games is way too many, and I'm not thinking as well about any of them as well right now). We decided to war-peace him, because it makes it much easier to plan the coming turns if we at least know. We offered 10gpt in the 'peace,' because we would greatly value this 10 turns of peaceful development. We'll see what comes of it. We think we can defend if he attacks us, but it's obviously much worse than if he doesn't. We have pikes in place to flexibly move to any threatened city, while his stack is nearly entirely mounted units and siege. 

As vanrober says, we're #1 in food by a decent amount (if temporary, thanks to GKC's demise), and #1 in GNP by a huge amount (although that will also shrink as the others get circumnav). So we feel we have to press that advantage hard in the coming turns - how we attempt that depends on who we're still at war with when we open the next turn...

[Amicalola]

T140
Superdeath is indeed planning to attack us.



We can't think of any other reason to build that road, decline our gems+fish/fish, decline a beneficial peace treaty, and offer a ceasefire instead. Subtle, man.  At least we know now. We'll need to make sure we can beat back his and Lazteuq/civac's combined army during our GA. Superdeath also settled Edfu: 



Oh, we settled Pike last turn too. Finally, we sent Mjmd this, to let him know we'd be open to fighting SD with him in the future. 



I am trying very carefully to avoid saying something I’ll regret. We're extremely disappointed that SD is attacking us - we don't think it makes any sense for him strategically, tactically or diplomatically. But it's happening, so I'll cut my myself short there. Let's figure out how to beat a 2v1.

[Amicalola]

T141 

We launched a GA with our merchant. We're putting 50% EP into Superdeath for his city vis, and then we'll be researching Guilds->Banking for knights and mercantilism respectively. The rough plan is to prebuild units during the first half, and then start whipping furiously right at the end. We'll see if SD/Laz make us whip earlier though. Here are the GA demos:

[Amicalola]

T142-143

This stack showed up in the north. It's much more than what we were expecting, we're not sure we can hold it. Big kudos to them for hiding it so successfully.



This stack showed up in the south. Superdeath's army is still in his cities, presumably waiting for Laz to attack. 



Vanrober and I discuss the turn:

[Amicalola]

Hi everyone, I am asking please for a reload. Sorry. 

It ruins the surprise, but we've been planning an attack on SD's island next turn. This is likely our last chance to take it, as he has been reinforcing it gradually (additional trireme this turn, for example), and these islands are very difficult to assault. I selected our galley in the lake full of crossbows, moved it to the staging ground, only to realise...



I had apparently clicked the wrong pixel, and not selected the ship properly. This moved our other (prev. selected) ships instead, visible on the tile.   Because of this, we cannot load the northern crossbows onto the galley (sign is visible). This would mean we cannot make the attack for another 2-3 turns, which would likely give SD enough time to realise and defend it properly. 

If it was a small thing, we wouldn't ask here. But this is a really big deal. No combat has happened this turn (I think an admin can check this?). In fact, we've basically moved nothing except those ships.

[Amicalola]

T144

I've been feeling pretty hopeless the last few days, but overall things are actually looking a little bit up. We finish Guilds next turn, and are going to start whipping knights frantically, GA be damned. SD has inexplicably waited on his attack, so we're a lot more ready now than we would have been. Lazteuq/Civac have built an incredible army (really looking forward to reading their thread), and caught us completely unawares in the north, but it looks like we might just be able to hold on there. But boy, is it close. 

Northern Front
Starting with the most concerning. Here are the stacks:


According to vodka, they have a slim but existing chance (~10%) to crack the walls on T145. That was a slightly pessimistic sim, but basically it's unlikely-but-possible. I had thought they were basically guaranteed to smash us, so that was a very pleasant surprise. Funnily enough, vodka actually showed Drill promos as the best option for us, so we went for those, which cuts down their chance significantly. First time I've ever used Protective or Drill promotions, which is kind of neat. We have also upgraded nearly half of the long/cross-bows from archers, which was interesting. Ultimately, the goal here is to delay until our knights arrive, which would take about 3-4 turns. It's pretty dicey...


Southern Front
We can't see what SD has here, but here's our and Lazteuq/Civac's stacks. 


We're going to whip castles in Pike and Izamal next turn, assuming we get the chance (Pike has 2axe, 2spear). SD's power is pretty huge, so we're fully prepared to abandon Pike if necessary (that spot was maybe greedy in retrospect, although we didn't expect kamikaze SD). We will try to hold at Izamal and Octopus, if the fighting gets fierce, or worst-case Pufferfish/Octopus. 

We tried offering SD peace for 25gpt, but he still refused. Seems he is really determined to fight us, on the diplomacy screen at least.


Western Front
So the surprise is gone, but have 4 ships loaded to attack SD's island this turn, which is only guarded by 2axes and 1spear. 


He also has 3 triremes, but our 4 caravels should make pretty short work of those, so we're pretty sure we'll be able to attack next turn. The bigger question is if he's finishing a unit in the city - whether we can handle that depends slightly on the unit. 

We've been planning this for about 8 turns. This island possibly shouldn't be a priority when our core is under siege, but we're targeting it for a few reasons:

1. Once you take these, they're really hard to lose. We're amazed SD has left this opportunity for us, and are really quite worried that he'll add more units at any time. 
   
2. It's impossible to feel secure with this island here. Before galleons, whoever owns the island can uniquely attack the other via sea. 
   
3. Morale boost; we're not exactly Superdeath's biggest fans right now. I need as many of these as I can get, as a general rule. 
   
4. We want a 5th island trade route for our economy. This is probably the weakest reason, but we're about to whip so damn hard into the ground that we need all the economic help we can get. 
   

So that's the next point of attack, planned for next turn. Hopefully. 

[Amicalola]

T145 - Part 1

We opened the turn to a bizarre series of offers from SD (including 2(!) separate ceasefires), which culminated in this. We spent the day thinking on it. 


Vanrober really wanted us to take this deal, as Superdeath is the biggest reason we can't advance on Lazteuq right now. We initially wondered if he had realised his war was fruitless, after seeing our massed pikes and longbows. Or that perhaps this was an elaborate scheme to trick Mjmd. This morning, I was convinced.

But now, I moved the minimap over to his island, and realised that he'd scouted out our galleys over here, by moving forward with his triremes. The more I sat and thought about this, the more it looks like SD trying to weasel his way out of a war he has no business fighting, because he realised that consequences are coming. I mean, if this was an elaborate fake, why not take our 250 gold last turn? Why not make any effort to let us know? And who's to say he doesn't just come back in 10 turns? I'm happy with how I've kept it off-thread, but I have been incredibly frustrated with Superdeath this past week. And so the more I stewed in those thoughts, the less I wanted to take that peace. So I didn't.

[Amicalola]

T145 - Part 2

We assaulted the island with our loaded navy. First SD's two remaining triremes were cut down by our caravels. Our first suicide crossbow stormed the beaches at 17%...and won!  Our next crossbow did some decent damage at similar odds, and then our next one took 40% odds on the spear... and also won!  So we took the city, down only a single crossbowmen. And the cherry on top? I don't think I've ever seen this many buildings survive in a city this early! 



I know we just got lucky, but boy does this feel like karmic justice to me. I unloaded most of the attackers onto the island, because I want to be sure that SD can't just take it right back in 1-2 turns. Like I said, once you get these islands, they're pretty difficult to lose. Here's the final situation, although I'll possibly unload some more troops next turn.

 


In the north, the standoff continues. Laz/Civac bombarded, and (according to my updated sim) probably will for 1 more turn, but then they can probably attack successfully. We might need to (hopefully temporarily) retreat from Bream soon.  



Domestically, we've started whipping knights in many cities, and we're in total war mode. Not exactly how we wanted to spend our GA, but I think we're in a fairly 'now or never' situation. If we're really lucky, the knights might arrive just in time to save Bream. 



Oh, and I sent back Superdeath's peace offer. Wouldn't want him to think we're feeling hostile or anything.

[vanrober]

T145 - Part 1

We opened the turn to a bizarre series of offers from SD (including 2(!) separate ceasefires), which culminated in this. We spent the day thinking on it. 


Vanrober really wanted us to take this deal, as Superdeath is the biggest reason we can't advance on Lazteuq right now. We initially wondered if he had realised his war was fruitless, after seeing our massed pikes and longbows. Or that perhaps this was an elaborate scheme to trick Mjmd. This morning, I was convinced.

But now, I moved the minimap over to his island, and realised that he'd scouted out our galleys over here, by moving forward with his triremes. The more I sat and thought about this, the more it looks like SD trying to weasel his way out of a war he has no business fighting, because he realised that consequences are coming. I mean, if this was an elaborate fake, why not take our 250 gold last turn? Why not make any effort to let us know? And who's to say he doesn't just come back in 10 turns? I'm happy with how I've kept it off-thread, but I have been incredibly frustrated with Superdeath this past week. And so the more I stewed in those thoughts, the less I wanted to take that peace. So I didn't.

I  read this morning and it didnt felt like im doing now. 

When you say bizarres offers, i would actually say which were:

cf-cf, cf war mjmd-cf, pt war mjmd-pt, pt-pt. And i think he was saying hey, my 30-50 unit stack is doing nothing and iw ant to kill mjmd if you forgive that island. And i truly belive that was the play. Why? because right now i see Mjmd as the favourite to get the game. He is eating GKC so easily and SD is the only one that can stop him right now, we are top power and he is second, so making mjmd worry and GKC facing just jowy i think is the best geopolitical way to get us ahead. If we make SD even more mad at us it will make the dogpile even more happening. If possible.

Amica thinks this is true, i believe, but he thinks it would be just 10 turns more of peace for SD hit us harder again but with that island that open our core to him. And that might be true, and also that island is giving him gold. But i think that if SD atacks mjmd and make gains he will want to keep them and mjmd will want to take them back so that they would stay into a more kind of perpetual war, which would be our best possible sceen.

I think SD has done non real dmg to us while he could have, and he just stopped us to keep goign vs laz, and he lost 0. I feel it was like my play vs Ruff on PB56, moving 2 warriors towards his border just to delay his settling. And as i thought then, i belive thats not reason enough to wanting him to die instead of win. If this make sense.

In this case we are not throwing the game, and i think both options were close, and not as sure as it were on that game, i think. So i hope everything goes okey with this atack and we can get gains with the knights. This huge island is what we need to make our enemies fear us!!!! AU-AU-AU (or whatever is written the Spartan scream!)