T154-155
I feel like my posts have had a bad Word:Picture ratio recently. Maybe reporting nearly every turn is a little too frequent. I feel a little like I've gotten to the point of the Dunning-Krueger effect where I've learnt just enough to realise how little I actually know; it's more intimidating to explain my thoughts/plays from that mindset. I've felt it really badly in my last few posts for 59, especially. But I guess even getting things wrong gives insight into my process - no point reporting unless I actually say something.
We took an undefended Yokib in the north, and now we're advancing on Izancanac.
I made a huge mistake here, borne entirely out of laziness. I moved the whole stack instead of a unit first to look around, and we didn't realise Lazteuq has this stack here. Yikes.
In a way, his building walls tricked me hard, because I assumed he was settling for a siege. I wonder if that was the point. I don't think he can wipe our stack here, but I also don't think he wants to. It's more likely that the trap gets executed in 2 turns, by his secondary stack in Xukpi (~9 'real' units). We'll see. We've been sending only a few knights here, and maybe we should have prioritised it more.
I say few because most of our attention (and our opponent's) has been on the south over these turns.
These stacks are getting ridiculous. We're building up at a relatively equal rate, which is a problem because Lazteuq will inevitably get the first strike. His stack can't break ours while we sit in Uxmal, but it can if we advance out. If we're really lucky, he'll attack into us and break the stalemate himself, but I don't think there's any incentive to do so. Every turn we wait here is a turn SD, Mjmd, or Jowy can finish off their own wars and turn on us, and I'm sure Lazteuq/Civac know that.
Our boats are forking Xukpi and Calakmul, but pretty soon that won't do anything and we'll have to choose to send them north or south. At least these guys prevent Laz from really sealing the northern deal and moving out all of Xukpi's units.
In the SD-Mjmd war, SD retreated in the north, although he killed a bunch of Mjmd boats on the inner sea. He also lost a city in his south.
This is pretty concerning, because he could absolutely ram his army into Octopus in 2 turns. Another reason to kill Laz/Civac fast as possible. As a side note, I realised that even if we (somehow) manage to break them soon, we won't actually be killing them for ages. This:
is literally uncapturable before galleons, and even afterwards would be a real slog. I'd think Laz/Civac can stuff at least 15 units in there, which would take something like 30 units (plus the according ships) to crack. Maybe even more, and that's the best case scenario. I've talked privately to Tarkeel already about these islands, but I think they're too strong/defensible, especially for people conquering the owner. Superdeath has the same problem with our equivalent island now, and we're Protective so it's even worse than normal.
The other reason we need to end the stalemate is this:
Laz/Civac have started whipping as well, but they can afford it (circumstance, and also their whips are also more efficient thanks to Police State). Swordfish is worse than average, but our cities are all starting to rack up whip-unhappy. It's not so much a problem now as much as it will be when we want to grow/draft, and we'll need to do that to keep up with Jowy/Mjmd in the late game.
I have no idea who is favoured of the three remaining contenders. It somewhat depends on SD and Lazteuq/Civac, or 'the relevant-but-not-contenders.' I guess that's the nature of these games, to a certain extent. Not to say we have no agency though - I can think of a few great and a few terrible moves I've made this game. There's certainly going to be a lot to cover in the retrospective, whenever it ends!
I feel like my posts have had a bad Word:Picture ratio recently. Maybe reporting nearly every turn is a little too frequent. I feel a little like I've gotten to the point of the Dunning-Krueger effect where I've learnt just enough to realise how little I actually know; it's more intimidating to explain my thoughts/plays from that mindset. I've felt it really badly in my last few posts for 59, especially. But I guess even getting things wrong gives insight into my process - no point reporting unless I actually say something.
We took an undefended Yokib in the north, and now we're advancing on Izancanac.
I made a huge mistake here, borne entirely out of laziness. I moved the whole stack instead of a unit first to look around, and we didn't realise Lazteuq has this stack here. Yikes.
In a way, his building walls tricked me hard, because I assumed he was settling for a siege. I wonder if that was the point. I don't think he can wipe our stack here, but I also don't think he wants to. It's more likely that the trap gets executed in 2 turns, by his secondary stack in Xukpi (~9 'real' units). We'll see. We've been sending only a few knights here, and maybe we should have prioritised it more. I say few because most of our attention (and our opponent's) has been on the south over these turns.
These stacks are getting ridiculous. We're building up at a relatively equal rate, which is a problem because Lazteuq will inevitably get the first strike. His stack can't break ours while we sit in Uxmal, but it can if we advance out. If we're really lucky, he'll attack into us and break the stalemate himself, but I don't think there's any incentive to do so. Every turn we wait here is a turn SD, Mjmd, or Jowy can finish off their own wars and turn on us, and I'm sure Lazteuq/Civac know that.
Our boats are forking Xukpi and Calakmul, but pretty soon that won't do anything and we'll have to choose to send them north or south. At least these guys prevent Laz from really sealing the northern deal and moving out all of Xukpi's units.
In the SD-Mjmd war, SD retreated in the north, although he killed a bunch of Mjmd boats on the inner sea. He also lost a city in his south.
This is pretty concerning, because he could absolutely ram his army into Octopus in 2 turns. Another reason to kill Laz/Civac fast as possible. As a side note, I realised that even if we (somehow) manage to break them soon, we won't actually be killing them for ages. This:
is literally uncapturable before galleons, and even afterwards would be a real slog. I'd think Laz/Civac can stuff at least 15 units in there, which would take something like 30 units (plus the according ships) to crack. Maybe even more, and that's the best case scenario. I've talked privately to Tarkeel already about these islands, but I think they're too strong/defensible, especially for people conquering the owner. Superdeath has the same problem with our equivalent island now, and we're Protective so it's even worse than normal.
The other reason we need to end the stalemate is this:
Laz/Civac have started whipping as well, but they can afford it (circumstance, and also their whips are also more efficient thanks to Police State). Swordfish is worse than average, but our cities are all starting to rack up whip-unhappy. It's not so much a problem now as much as it will be when we want to grow/draft, and we'll need to do that to keep up with Jowy/Mjmd in the late game.
I have no idea who is favoured of the three remaining contenders. It somewhat depends on SD and Lazteuq/Civac, or 'the relevant-but-not-contenders.' I guess that's the nature of these games, to a certain extent. Not to say we have no agency though - I can think of a few great and a few terrible moves I've made this game. There's certainly going to be a lot to cover in the retrospective, whenever it ends!
It did even out a bit as we lost the 9th and 10th combats both, but the first 10 combats still went amazingly overall. We started getting odds like this:
I think they might finally do it, because if they wait any longer our knights will heal. Vaguely-accurate sims show both sides taking horrific losses, but theirs being considerably worse, so hopefully that works out alright for us. 
Lazteuq/Civac sacrificed 26catapults, 6macemen and 2pikemen to kill 1axe, 1archer and 2crossbowmen. After that, it looks like they gave up and sent the remaining units to garrison Mutal. We have to heal for two turns in Lakamha, but afterwards we should be a lot more free to advance, thanks to the removal of all their catapults.
We still have tech visibility (by 8 points!), and getting back to city-vis would take at least a turn of 100%, so we'll leave it for now. A new sentry knight for his land has been ordered. 
