[SPOILERS] Stonehenge First: scooter's thread

[scooter]

T158-162 tries evil schemes

Well I tried to end this game in spectacular fashion, but it didn't work. If you noticed, I generated a GG during my last fight with Pindicator. Given I recently got Military Science, a rather fun possibility opened up. Besides, NH told me I was stupid to build a Military Academy with my last GG (he is wrong, just like he's wrong when he said he didn't think Jeff would survive Pin's attack ), and I wanted to try something more fun. Commando promotion. You see, Commodore and Pin do not run HR (no motive to leave units in the capital) and both severely depleted their military in skirmishes with me. They also had thrown all their forces to the frontlines to deal with me... So it's highly likely capitals would be empty. I decided if I was quick, I could probably use a GG on a single Cav, promote him to Commando, and nail his capital if it's defended by just a token unit. And why wouldn't it be? Normally I can't 1-turn it, so it's better for him to have units in front cities. The key is that I have fast workers, which are able to run into Commodore's land and get a good look, and then be deleted. It's a 40h throwaway scout, which is easily worth it. I don't want to actually use the GG unless I know for sure it's something I can hit. It's a longshot, but I took a look



Too bad. Worker deleted. It's nice to finally get visibility on his capital though, so it's not all bad. He then used an archer to whack two of my workers on the edge:



He promptly popped that unit with a cav () which I then cleaned up with a formation Cav:



Fun! I also decided to get myself Levees:



Still aiming at Industrialism to get Infantry in play. Two nice things happened:



I finally got control of that last tile, so I no longer can be easily hit by 1-movers here. The main threat I had was Grenadiers out of the fog nailing my Rifles. Commodore went for Steel though, so I'm going to have to start watching for that. He's workshopping like mad, so I think he's going to push all in here pretty soon, so I'll have to respond accordingly. Also got a second Engineer:



This one may go for the 3-man GA since I have the one ready for the Pentagon, but I'll wait a bit to decide.

[Bigger]

did you check Pindicator's capital too?

[scooter]

did you check Pindicator's capital too?

Yep, just missed a picture of it somehow - got mixed up in the shuffle of the 40 or so PB5 pictures that have happened in the last couple days. It had a few units in it too, so I'm shelving that for now. I still may use the GG to unlock West Point though.

[scooter]

Pictures will have to wait til tonight, but COmmodore and Pindicator are both cranking out the power right now which means another wave is inevitable here. Hopefully my brief Levee pause doesn't bite me, but I think I'm OK on that one. And yes, Pindicator just updated his thread so I'm pretty nervous about that. So far this game he never updates unless he's doing something big. Should be fun. Commodore's military is better than Pindicator's anyway, so who knows what to expect. I've positioned Cavs in spots where I can reinforce everywhere, and border cities that can be hit out of the fog by Cavs are pretty strongly defended. So we'll see.

[scooter]

Commodore's going on about something in the banter thread. From idle chatting, it sounds like he's flinging units at Abed (save is in my inbox, I'll be able to check it out in a bit). I believe it's a desperation attempt because I just scared the crap out of him on T166. First, he did this:



That just screamed "bait!!" to me, so I left it. I don't even need that tile. New civic time!



The risk of course is that I cannot draft for 5 turns now, so we'll see if that matters. But man did this civic change do dirty things to my GNP:



That's 0% science ya'll. Yes increased culture is a part so it's mildly deceiving, but this probably scared Commodore more than a bit. However, he may have a very real stack incoming:



Yay for WW in an AW game?



No HR does mean a couple cities have 1 unhappy citizen, but Rep is still easily worth it.

[scooter]

T167 inflicts pain on the Commodore

Ok, this is what I logged in to see:



The real threat are the siege - particularly the cannons. Anyways, the real mystery here is... how many Cavs does he have in the fog? Obviously he brought none in the stack. So anyways, I have 2 Barrage cats on hand and some cavs. I decided to play aggressively. I nailed the stack with my two catapults (pity I don't have more), upgraded a bunch of Cavs to Flanking 2, and just went for it. The results were fairly good:



When you start getting 50% win, 30% withdraw odds, that's beautiful stuff. Also attacked with that random Pinch rifle off the start as it was in the field. The aftermath:



I JUST noticed something. The tile SW of Norvos finally flipped to me!!! It must have happened right after Commodore played, because there's no way he could've gotten to that tile without having it during his turn (he plays at end of turn order). That means he cannot hit my capital with Cavs from the fog, and he also can't really escape. So I feel pretty good now. By the way, see if you can spot my starting archer in this screenshot. It's definitely there... Sort of .

So I think I'm safe. If he wants though, he can easily wipe out all those cavs unfortunately. That was a worthwhile sacrifice though IMO. If he does do that and stick around, I have a cleanup force of my own ready:



Pindicator with an annoying city plant:



That's just ASKING me to raze it.

[AutomatedTeller]

In the screenshot of Abed, you have +2 for "Our state religion is the best" and +1 for "In our religion, we trust!"

is the +2 for a cathedral? Or something else?

[kjn]

So, how long are you going to tolerate the existance of Norvos?

[scooter]

Well in some sense it's barely worth razing since it's sz4 and on a hill full of defenders. However, now that I can just plaster it with Cannons, I may put it out of its misery soon. I just wonder if this thing is more of a net drain than it is a help to Commodore - it truly is an awful city. It depends on how many units he leaves in it. Killing that city is more about killing the units inside of it, really.

I'm currently pushing for Railroads, delaying Assembly Line and all that. It's just too risky right now to not get rails down. Also trying to push out a few more fast workers so that I can get them down as quickly as possible. Commodore and Pin are both going full-bore on military, so yeah, I'm going to be getting round2 pretty soon... Which should be pretty nasty. I'm probably goign to launch a golden age pretty soon here to try to counteract all this. I don't know when exactly, but I can do it at any time.

I'm also considering burning one of my two GEs on instant Ironworks in Britta.

[scooter]

Ok, these turns are getting exhausting having to defend against two people with equal technological parity and very nearly equal armies. In short, I just played T175, passed it on, THEN Pindicator made that post in the banter thread. He has two cities he could be hitting. One where I think I'd be fine, one where I would not be. But anyways, I'm going to update you first up to T174, then I'll do the turn I just played, and hopefully by then Commodore will play, though he'll have some decisions to make I suspect. Anyways, these were the demos on T169, and this is why I'm victim of yet another mass invasion:



The thing is, I have enough for each of these attacks, but because I can get hit at literally every city because both players are gunning for me, I can't possibly have enough military. I need some luck. Or good defending, and I think I pulled that off fairly well on T174. First, on T172, I have this shot:



Commodore kept doing obnoxious things to trade units for workers, so I named this worker appropriately. He of course spent a unit to kill that too for whatever reason. Anyways on T174... FIrst I apologize, I didn't take a "before" picture of Shirley. But he sent a big attack at it. Anyways, I was forced to swap into Nationhood (ouch!!) and draft two units. I spent some cash on upgrades... HOwever, I had some 2-movers in Abed that could not reach Shirley because of all his dumb pillaging. THen I realized I could do some clever roading:



Both of these workers roaded these tiles which gave me just enough to get 2-movers into Shirley from Abed. The bulk of my cavs were south of Abed and unable to reach (they were jointly defending my two Pindicator cities). So that let me do this at least:



I moved all 4 of those units in. My favorite twist was placing the primary Cav stack on this tile:



That can of course hit the stack by Shirley next turn, but it can also hit Norvos and/or defend Abed/Troy (Troy being SW of here - Pin's border). THis left for a final situation around Shirley:



Again, he's obviously got a bunch of cavs and I couldn't flank his siege this time, but I THOUGHT I was safe, but it was impossible to know for sure....

The turn I just played (T175) coming up later. Also, apologies for spelling/grammar mistakes, I didn't proofread this one like I normally do.