[PB74] Tarkeel and civacs Game of the Year

[Tarkeel]

Luckily we still have Dreylin's iron, located at Hanabi, which is unlikely to fall before Commodore attacks.

As civac says, we're unlikely to get enough crossbows to stop the invasion, so our goal is to make this as costly as possible.

[Tarkeel]

Turn 138 (560 AD)
Superdeath sends some diplo we're unable to decipher and plemo rolls up to Catan, and we're facing the same dilemma as Rococo: Defend, Retreat, or Counter.


Countering would only kill about 4 zerks, at the cost of our entire army, so that's out. For defending, the big issue is what he has on the boats; but using Vodka on what's visible it looks like we can at least bloody his stack badly. Depending on what's on the boats he might still wipe our stack, but we're not likely to get a better chance.

[Tarkeel]

Turn 139 (580 AD)
yet another turn of peace offers from plemo; this time a white cease-fire followed by a white peace. Looks like we managed to reinforce just enough? We refuse the offers to take a look at what happened:




The full-health zerk was left as a stack protector, so he should have 6 surviving zerks on the boats that can come back after healing. For this turn we have 3 axes and 2 cats (more than those in Catan) that can attack out, and 3 axes, archer and crossbow that can defend. Vodka says that it's possible to inflict some heavy damage on this, at the cost of a few catapults.

The attack will have to wait though.

[Mjmd]

How are you getting the combat %s next to result? Are you doing that manually or is there an easy way of doing?

[Tarkeel]

Entirely manually I'm afraid, and I usually don't even usually bother to check the combat log. In this case we needed to in order to estimate forces on the boats.

[Tarkeel]

Turn 139 (580 AD) Part Deux
We considered healing for a turn, but he can cut the road and retreat NW, and we'll be unable to hit before he reaches the Rococo hill where he can be reinforced, so we attack this turn.
B1 Catapult vs C2 Berserker (7.0), 7.7%: loss, inflicting 2 rounds of damage
Catapult vs Berserker (7.3), 10.2%: flawless loss
Catapult vs Berserker (7.3), 10.2%: loss, inflicting 1 round of damage
Catapult vs C2 Berserker (6.1), 22.2%: loss, inflicting 2 rounds of damage
Catapult vs C2 Berserker (4.8), 47.6%: loss, inflicting 2 rounds of damage
Catapult vs C2 Berserker (4.8), 47.6%: loss, inflicting 2 rounds of damage
Catapult vs Berserker (4.9), 54.0%: retreat
Catapult vs C2 Berserker (4.2), 75.0%: retreat
B1 Catapult vs C2 Berserker (3.8), 77.8%: retreat
Catapult vs C2 Berserker (3.8), 77.8%: retreat
Catapult vs C2 Axe (2.7), 93.3%: retreat
C1 Crossbow vs C2 Berserker (2.6), 99.2%: flawless win
War Elephant (6.4) vs C2 Spear (2.0): 86.1%: win
C1 War Elephant (5.7) vs C2 Spear (2.0): 85.7%: loss
C1 Axe vs C1 Shock Axe (2.5), 87.4%: win
C1 Shock War Elephant (4.7) vs C1 Spear (2.0), 73.6%: win
War Elephant vs C2 Berserker (2.6), 91.3%: win
War Elephant vs C2 Axe (2.5), 91.1%: win
Axe vs Axe (2.5), 95.4%: flawless win
Axe vs Axe (2.5), 95.4%: win
Axe vs C2 Berserker (2.0), 97.2%: win
C1 Axe (4.1) vs C2 Berserker (2.0), 92.0%: flawless win
Chariot (3.6) vs Berserker (2.0), 90.6%: flawless win
Spear vs Berserker (1.6), 88.0%: win
C1 Shock Chariot Lysander vs C1 Chariot (2.0), 98.2%: win
Spear (3.8) vs C2 Axe (1.3), 91.4%: win
Archer (1.3) vs C2 Spear (0.5), 96.3%: win


That's a total clean-out. Too bad plemo has broken graphs, because that's got to leave a dent in his power rating.

Amica also continues to lose city, with Pindi managing to snipe one of the insult-cities on our border. It looks like Amica still has a sizeable army, just not the mobility to defend his fringe cities.

[Mjmd]

What are plans now? Both in general and I'm specifically wondering about those great generals.

[Tarkeel]

Honestly, we don't know. We're not out of the woods yet, plemo still has a lot of forces and both pindi and Comm are surely eyeing our lands.

[Krill]

Nicely played.

[civac2]

After a second more careful look at the combat log it turned out that Plemo did not attack with 3 of his 6 stack berserkers. That means of the 14 berserker attacks in the log 9 must have come from his boats. Plemo set a (somwhat obvious) trap for us. He advanced with the landstack and kept an unknown number of reinforcements offshore.


(from 2 turns ago)

Meanwhile presumably* empty boats roaming on the north coast were tying down significant forces there. Though we eventually gambled and moved some of the garrisons to Catan.



When we decided to hold in Catan we of course considered the possibility of substantial additional forces on the boats. Tarkeel wrote about it above. However, there were two reasons to assume they were not all full, at least not with high quality troops. He had landed 6 units from them to reinforce his main stack. Those reinforcements included an axe. Moreover, with so many berserkers he could have easily razed Augustus at any point but that never happened. Ultimately, our lack of knowledge about his exact troop strength combined with the hope to be able to hold the north convinced as to to walk into the trap and decide to fight in Catan exactly as Plemo intended.

Had I known he has 9 berserkers on his boats I would have advocated fleeing south. And yet, somehow the battle turned out OK for us. In total we lost 6 cats, 4 elephants, 3 horse archer and 1 crossbow (+ ancient era leftovers) and destroyed 9 berserkers, 6 cats (+leftovers), in total 880 hammers lost and 1240 hammers destroyed. Nice but hardly a huge victory. I also disagree with Tarkeel that this left a real mark. With the kind of power Plemo has and offset by turn production this may not even qualify as a sharkfin, maybe a finlet.



Plemo has at least 8 berserkers left on the southern fleet. From the position of his boats I suspect they took on additional forces in Ribe, so maybe even 10+ berserkers. He can still easily raze Augustus. Still, the immediate threat to the north has been blunted. That will however be the extent of it. Any offensive action on our part is out of the question. We could potentially raze a city with the generals but those we can reach are bad filler cities.