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

[Krill]

Thanks Refsteel.

I've been wondering what to do if I popped a Gspy and I came to the conclusion that it might be better to have a Gspy scouting out the unseen cities and then crank up EP for perfect vision, rather than another wonder or Machinery bulb when I have every doubler going. At a push I think I can make up the Machinery bulb beakers in 10 turns or so.

Mostly this was to figure out if I wanted to whipa zigg or Forge in Pear. Then try to break everyone's economy between keeping up with a decent Academy capital and rep versus espionage allowing as close to perfect counter play.

[Krill]

I decided that I was too curious to not run the espionage slider for a turn, to get research visibility on Thoth, and also push up to Commodore quickly (I took his research visibility as well, and will get it on him in four to five turns). I need to know what is happening with these two getting to Construction, but longer term I may need to push hard for city visibility, it's not that expensive in terms of cost to research, cheaper than Machinery to get itnon both of them, and it may force them to run the slider and delay their own research.

You can see that Thoth is running to Calendar for extra happy. I think he has incense, sugar, and silk on the Pindicator front and spices at the capital so it's a no brainer really. It also opens up his northern coast for settling.

[Krill]

Will people just leave me the fuck alone please.

[Krill]

Pindicator wants to die. This is nothing more than a force to lock down units at Rhubarb, but the two trebs warrant dealing with.

This, OTOH, is problematic:




Except I only need to kill the swords and the rest of the stack can wait. 8 swords to kill, 6 spears in the way. How best to get there...

One thing I can promise the lurkers. After this game the next one I'm playing is always peace.

[Krill]

Observations:

1. Being in the middle sucks. That problem notwithstanding, this is not impossible to deal with. Again the invader arrives with no collateral, and unless Commodore moves along the forests, he has to be on flat land adjacent to Cherry.
   
   
2. If I bring back the HA I moved north past Rhubarb I have 12 HA on hand to defend against Commodores stack, but that leaves only one to deal with Pin.
   
   
3. Pindicator will again be on a hill adjacent to a city with a bunch of formation samurai, but now all of my vultures have 25% fort and four of them are C2 shock. I have two catapults in place and can whip a third. This is slightly worse than I had when he arrived last time, OTOH there are no axes to take some hits (there are the two trebs though) and I do not know about chariots. I now know he does not have HBR (OK, I don't know, but he doesn't).
   
   
4. If Pin doesn't ping down the walls (why would he?) one treb probably dies and he will get odds with healthy samurai. Assuming the vultures are knocked down to 80 health (ie the two that defend from teh trebs will be lower) the samurai also need to be at roughly an equivalent hp to get 50/50 odds, 100hp samurai should kill and not take many hits. That would leave 4 vultures to defend 8 samurai and he probably gets through all of them. Defending might buy me a turn, at a high cost, but will not hold the city indefinitely but opens up weakened samurai to counter attack depending on numbers.
   
   
5. Conversely, the vultures in Cherry, despite being on flat land, defend with odds against Commodores swords without any promotions (any vultures I whip there are 5XP so C2 shock), so if there are a few remaining swords I may be able to defend the city with the remaining (healing) HA, two vultures and 2 spears.
   
   
6. There are 16 units I need to kill. I only have 13HA (and 6 vultures for cleanup at Rhubarb). I need more units to make sure this defense is effective
   
   
7. Commodore could move his stack directly west (not adjacent to the city) as if he were moving towards SD. He has got boats in the water which can't do anything to me except dump even more units near to his Cherry stack, but he could have just kept them in one stack if that was the case.

Analysis

1. Could have offered Commodore something diplomatically rather than play this isolationist. I'm not conviced it would have worked, but it would have been something.
   
   
2. T116 (this turn) I can get HA out of Plum this turn (two chops), Apple (dry triple whip), Olive (single whip), a catapult from Rhubarb (double whip), and a vulture from Cherry (single whip).
   
   T117 I can get HA out of Apple (overflow and single chop), Pear (double whip), vulture out of Cherry (dry double whip), Rhubarb (overflow).
   
   T118 I don't know what cities I'll still hold
   
   
3. I need more happy to continue the whips, so go back to Thoth and see if he still wants gems.
   
   
4. I can definitely handle one of the stacks, but if there is a way to handle both I will have to find it next turn. Probably have to do the same with Pindicator, sacrifice the cats and see what is still standing. Three cats might not even dent the D3 samurai. I might want to consider throwing away a C2 shock vulture which has 50/50 odds of getting two hits in, if there is only the one D3 samurai (and so let the cats attack the formation samurai).
   
   
5. This would have been easier to deal with if I had vultures in the south and not the north

[Krill]

A quick sim shows that if Pin moves in with that stack it dies every time, the only question is what it takes with it (all three cats and sacrificial vultures, but the HA can get odds now that they are well promoted). Even if he added 3-4 chariots from the fog that will not change things.

The challenge is that I need to commit the HA to one target, and it will fair far better against Commodores stack. I think I might be back in the position whereby I need to try and defend at Rhubarb, even against two trebs, and attack at Cherry. I only need to add one additional unit to Rhubarb and it can't be captured. It might be that I don't even cat this turn, but I try and bear the brunt of the attack and then counter with everything that remains....but that then requires I don't go in that heavily at Cherry. If Pin has 8 hitters I need 9 units in the city, and figure out how what to do with the cats to soak up the trebs hits.

But I don't have a choice at Cherry, if those swords are adjacent to the city they need to die ASAP, I don't have the vultures to defend there.

Now, Commodore has six spears, but only three of them are C1 (he doesn't have barracks everywhere so it is believeable that three of the speras really are unpromoted). My three C2 shock HA have odds (over 64% odds) of victory, not including withdrawal chances, against the unpromoted spears. So throw in three HA (either C1 shock or F2) against the C1 spears, then use the C2/shock HA, then the swords defend. 8 swords, 7 HA, 75% odds of victory down the line against C1 swords, 80% against the unpromoted swords. Do not clear up, take the GG that spwans, hopefully somewhere decent, sprinkle on teh XP for promo healing, and then try and hold Rhubarb.

Jesus it sounds even worse when I write it out, but I know it can work, I just have to decide when I would stop attacking the swords and reposition to defend Rhubarb.

[Krill]

Lurkers: Concede to Thoth

I've offered Pindicator peace and sent Com a ceasefire. I doubt either accepts. Com is sticking to the forests which means I probably can't hold Cherry as he will get to it before I could move catapults into position, but depending on what happens I can run all the HA past Cherry before it falls and just try to raze what I can of Commodores core. Pins core isn't worth razing as it can't scale or keep up with Thoth. Even if I had to also fall back from Rhubarb, I'd have the units to hold with the vultures and the few cats and what I've just whipped. Commodore cut my copper but I'll have another source hooked on T119. It's a pain but it doesn't really affect this situation.

The reality is that centre starts like this get dogpiled, and out of the remaining options, I will be in a forever war with Pin and Commodore and Thoth will have free reign, completely unchecked. In fact he will actually become my main trading partner for resources, so if anything he benefits from this war in a positive fashion, not just from the losses three opponents can take. I don't think that the moves I can make now are moves I make to win, but moves I make to make others lose. Obviously I'll play this out but I don't see how Commodore or Pin get anything out of this war but lost units and war weariness, they will have to raze every city they can reach.

[greenline]

I struggle to understand Commodore's motivation for this one. It doesn't seem far enough in the game that it makes sense to go for zero sum attacks on the score leader, compared to improving your own position first.

[Krill]

He probably wants to raze and retreat, but forgets his own rule of "no small harm". Cherry is painful to lose but doesn't break anything and if Pin moves in I absolutely can destroy that stack. It's not even close. Doesn't cost me much in terms of vultures either so Commodore cannot move past Cherry. And he can't hold it either, the moment he tries to defend the city his stack dies, so he has to raze.

But from a diplomacy standpoint it's a 2v1 and I am strong enough to stop either of them from winning.

TBH I'd say that calling the game after this turn for Thoth and moving on is probably a good outcome for everyone, that large game could get off the ground. After this point it just gets bitchy, I know I'll get blamed for king making, or not trying hard enough etc but whatever. Commodore would probably complain but he has to understand that I spend the rest of the game passing in his cheerios. And frankly that's just not fun even though it's necessary.

Edit: just to be clear, even if I held all cities and wrecked both their armies I would offer the concession, I can't guard all borders and move against a single player, and Thoth can roll east to the coast with Commodore.

[Krill]

I don't get these players sometimes. They act bizarrely (using the technical definition of the word within psychiatry).

Since I rolled my T116, Commodore moved along the forests. But he could have dumped his stack onto that forest on T116 anyway! So he gave me another turn to prepare. So why the change of mind?

Then SD killed another scout, whilst he knows he is going to get attacked by Thoth in the next few turns. So he is probably being opportunistic and thinks my days are numbered? But how does that help him, his power is pathetic and I have war elephants (oh wait, maybe he doesn't know that I have Construction because he is game state illiterate).

Then Pindicator retreats his stack after putting two samurai on the adjacent hill and looks to probe around Plum.




At this point I have to make a comment that I am unsure if each of these players is actually playing to win, as of T117. I am not questioning Pins initial thrust, or the justification that COmmodore has to probe now, I am questioning how they think this will help them when I am top power but not top in crop yield or MFG (I am top in GNP but not by a huge amount, and Thoth is actually doing quite well).





SD's power is quite amusing, his war dec is absolutely an attempt to scavenge.





Commodore decided to stick to the forests. The delay allows me to bring down catapults to attack before he can...and let's Pin try and come in a turn or two later and try to mop up.