[SPOILERS PB71]Krill: By the numbers, when the walls fell (on everyone else)

[Krill]

Thanks mack I thought it was something like that.

Right now I'm wondering if he has HBR and a stack of HA in the fog...

[Krill]

I've run a few simulations in the past, and a quick one this mornign before ending turn, but it comes down to three points:

1. Does Pin have a stack of HA in the fog to join the samurai on the hill on T109? Just a couple might have a huge difference. If he does then disregard the rest of this post. Looking at the power changes if he does, I think he built them before he got Machinery, and I can't see when he researched HBR if he has, but this is something I just can't know until next turn.
   
   
2. How does he promote the remainder of his samurai? He has seven that I believe should be able to take charge, drill 3 or formation. Shock doesn't matter. Charge and D3 samurai fall off a cliff at 76hp against HA with C1/shock, against C2 HA they fall off the cliff at 72hp. Formation samurai fall off at 68hp, but should only come up against C1/shock HA.
   
   
3. How does the collateral from eight catapults, and the 8 attacks from the cats themselves, spread across the stack? There is no siege to defend, so all of the collateral will hit, but how is it spread? D2 means -20% collateral damage, and D3 means a further -20%, but how it falls matters. Realistically the catapults may do almost no damage on the attack themselves (not quite 40% chance on each attack against a full health D3 samurai and there are at least two present to defend, and slightly over 50% against none D3, none charge samurai), but over eight attacks there is quite a spread of what happens and these attacks matter.

There is a follow up problem for Pin though. He has no collateral or method to reduce the walls defence. The Vultures already present already have odds on defence against his stack, unless he has full health D3, shock or CR1 samurai, but we can be fairly certain he will have nothing undamaged. What if he does not promote his units and wants to promote heal? In the sims I've run I can stack wipe, so I doubt he does that.

It's closer than it looks. Out of the two positions, I think I'd rather have mine unless Pindicator has a hidden stack of HA I couldn'tdiscern, but I'd feel better if I had another couple of HA.

Also, I need to figure out at what point I would back out of an attack and retreat.

[Krill]

Actually I've just spent the past half hour running sims for against all formation samurai.

It's close, and it mostly comes down to two breakpoints: how many hits the cats get in before I have to start running HA (and hence the odds for the first few HA), and the odds for the last five vultures as the real hitters.

I've seen stack wipes with normal outcome and times when there are 10 Samurai left standing because nothing will hit. Usually if the cats hit 5 times or more, there are four or fewer units left on the plains hill at the end of the turn. If the cats hit four times or fewer it is time to look at alternative plans.

Nothing left but to roll the dice, but there is one comment I'll make: I never truly considered Pindicator coming with an all samurai force, I thought some of the units would have been trebs. In hindsight I can see why he would, and I'd probably have pushed out a few more HA in which case this would be pretty much done.

[Krill]

There are three extra chariots present. I'll need 30 minutes to run some sims just to make sure that doesn't turn this into a blood bath but I'm not sure when I will get that time for 10 hours or so.

[Krill]

Busy, pictures later.

I did something I think is almost always a bad idea. I attacked with the catapults, 5 got hits in, 8 rounds total and then promoted and moved everything into Rhubarb. Before the chariots were present this would usually lead to a stack wipe, possibly over two turns, but now it leads to too many samurai alive with no reserves on my end.

I have 20 defenders to 17 potential attackers, so I can't lose the city this turn. I do not know which units can promote heal for Pin, but in general his stack will not get odds on attack right now, and I have reinforcements and a medic spear that should never defend. The issue is the order of battle, and it is on a knife edge, but I think the defender wins.

This battle is one of the tightest I've seen in a long time. I'd rather Pin plays the turn and wins the battle than I play and lose it TBH.

[Krill]

Pin didn't attack, and he has two new samurai in view this turn. He also has a medic chariot he didn't have last turn, which changes the calculus, quite a bit.

If he had no siege, I had a plan to stack Rhubarb to the gills with Vultures at half the cost of each samurai, and rely on my greater economy to not go broke. But he can build trebs and an unpromoted treb has odds on a defending vulture once the walls are striped away. Pin has the easy option to just place one or two trebs under his stack and with 6 bombards the walls are essentially gone (left to 2%), and I can't easily flank the trebs...and if I do, then he just brings up two more trebs and he wins the hammer exchange. That's not a long term solution.

Thankfully his units don't heal until he starts T111 (yay sequential and not arguing over who moves second), so I can attack this turn, 12 full health HA into 12 samurai that have not healed at all (save one promo heal to drill 4 which doesn't matter except for the health). Next turn there will be a further four HA in range but there will be a full health samurai on his stack so further attacks are out.

The odds aren't great, but they are in my favour: wins start at about 40% for the first fice to six battles, the withdraw odds push it up to 52% in my favour at the start and get better as we go along, and then I have 6 vultures and two chariots against whatever he has left (two axe, 3 chariots). Even if the HA v. samurai battles go poorly I essentially have to attack with everything because those last battles are cleanups.

This one is down to the RNG, so praise unto the RNJesus. It's going to be brutal.

[Krill]

Sorry Pin. Maybe next time.

[Krill]

I had issues with screenshotss taken during the turn (they were all black, but I have a screenshot from when I logged in after Pin played yesterday evening and screenshots from after the battle (turn played but not ended)

Before:





After:




Full combat log. Check the odds if you want to see just how brutal this turn was and how easily it could have gone either way. I even lost a GG (at 87.5% odds) just to get another HA into the fight so the vultures and chariots could clean up. Battle 23 would have been lost if I didn't play safe and promote the new vulture to shock, I think the 7 (not 8 as reported) cat hits over 5 units was about average, maybe a little good. Got two withdraws, not unexpected over 13 HA battles at such poor odds to begin with (battles 13 and 14). Battle 11 is where it almost derailed and the HA got no hits in, and that was the Samuari which killed the GG, that samurai would have defended against the vultures, and they would have gotten no hits and I would not have been able to clear up the stack without the GG landing in an accessiable city (it had to generate in Pomegranate, Apple, Pear, Rhubarb or Cherry to be placed onto the Apple HA whipped last turn, to take Morale to reach the stack and attack).

I think this samurai is the one that survived as well so it will almost certainly promote, it got 4XP from the two defences (it got dropped to 7hp and then there was no 7hp Samurai in any of the following battles).




I might put up some more pictures later, but to be absolutely clear, this was an incredibly unpleasant turn to play. I think the next game of civ I play is going to be an always peace game.

[greenline]

ugly as that was, it does make me appreciate maces a little more. If you have the tools to get to them early and neighbors are close, it is hard to trade evenly with them.

how much of the sketchy odds do you think was due to the Samurai drill promotions?

[Krill]

ugly as that was, it does make me appreciate maces a little more. If you have the tools to get to them early and neighbors are close, it is hard to trade evenly with them.

how much of the sketchy odds do you think was due to the Samurai drill promotions?

Couple of points: no one can get maces early in base BtS or CtH because a player needs both Civil Service and Machinery. Just look at Pindicator here. He barely made it to Maths, he can't get Currency, CoL or Civiler Service unless he finds another 2.8K beakers. The only civ that can do it is Japan in RtR, and in RtR the counter play is similar to defending against an axe and sword rush. It's a weird example but the closest I can get. I don't think a single samurai rush has been pulled off in a manner that could be considered "successful", but maybe this is the closest? it was a very, very close run thing.

Samurai have two innate free strikes and then +1 free strike from D2. These are what lead to the catapults not getting that many hits in. Without the free strikes I think it would have been a lot easier, with fewer "high health" samurai when the HA came to attack. To be honest, it is the -20% collateral from D2 that is the bigger deal though, as this meant that there were no low health samurai at all.

All HA apart from the Keshik ignore first strikes so when it came to the sketchy odds, the first strikes had no effect, but this was he reason I leant so heavily on HA and not war elephants. The sketchiness came entirely from the reduced collateral the the limited hits from the cats.

Note: Because I completed the stable event for the +1 food, I have stables everywhere and this is what pulled everything together, plus AGG for cheap barracks. I imagine that a well play game from most civs would have gotten to Construction, but without a humungous investment in cats (like, 16 cats v. 12 samurai) I don't see how single promo HA would have been enough. Flanking 2 does allow units to ignore first strikes, so an F2 war elephant could work...but then the units has 30% retreat odds when you need to kill, not damage so HA are just better.

In future I'd give Japan far more respect for what it can achieve.