[SPOILERS] yuris125 the dueller, round 1 - vs 2metraninja

[Mist]

Nic, I don't mind the cheering, but little less advice please.

This is supposed to be a duel after all, not a team effort

[Nicolae Carpathia]

Whoops. I guess I'm just glad Yuri is owning face

[yuris125]

Very nice reporting and it sounds like an exciting game!

Thanks! It is exciting, but I wish the reports were more about my good plays and less about my mistakes

Whoops. I guess I'm just glad Yuri is owning face

Thanks, but I don't think I'm owning anything just yet The next few turns will probably decide the game. If I hold on to Tours, I win - especially if I kill a significant part of his army in the process. If not, it will be difficult

Farms over cottages are a natural choice for a Phi leader

[yuris125]

Played to T148

Bad news - Tours has fallen. 2metraninja brought in 12 Cats, finished off my Walls in 2 turns, dealt collateral and killed the city without losing a single battle. Nothing I could do. As I said, losing my Cats in the trap near Almarikh was a bad mistake

This is the stack which killed the city



He thought about continuing the attack. A stack which included 37 (count them!) Keshiks appeared on my borders



But I already drafted around 15 Muskets and had them in defensive positions. He made a comment on the lines of "do I take the risk and kill you now, or contain and beat you with superior production and GNP". Since he didn't attack, I assume he decided on the second option

This was a strange comment to make, demos showed that while he did have an advantage in MFG, it was in single digits, and my GNP was better than his. Yes, I have much less land than he does



But I think he underestimates how much help I get from Oxford and cheap Universities which come with Phi. Yes, he will be ahead if I let him develop his economy to the level where I'm now. But I have no intention of doing so

On T146 I completed Taj, and started what is expected to be a 27-turns long golden age. I used one of the two GS I mentioned earlier to bulb Printing Press, and spawned a GM. So right now I have a GS, a GM, and another great person will be produced before the end of the first GA

Here are the demos at the end of the session - keep in mind that I'm at 0% research, and he is also in a GA



I think I still have an excellent chance if I figure out a way to kill his main stack without suffering deadly collateral from his Cats

[yuris125]

Turns are getting longer, game is getting slower. Only 10 turns played today. 10 turns of meticulous drafting and building up forces



I now have 49 Muskets, and will go over 50 in a few turns. I'm starting to think about using them to brute force myself into one of 2metraninja's cities. This one:



The city has something like 2 Maces, a Crossbow, 3 Spears and an Archer for defence, and also has over 20 Keshiks and 5 Cats or so. It's on a hill and has 20% cultural defences, so I expect to lose a few Muskets. But they're about to be obsolete anyway, I'm 4 turns away from Rifling and killing some Keshiks would be very helpful. I plan to start the attack as soon as I discover Rifling and can draft Rifles to defend if he start a counter-attack. He still doesn't have Alphabet, so he's 4 techs away from Rifling, I should have a nice window of opportunity there

A game mechanics question by the way, do mounted units receive bonus from cultural defences, or does it count as a defensive bonus?

In other news, I denied the Economics GM to 2metraninja, I knew he was going for it and had a couple of turns advantage over me, so I used my GM to bulb it, and got a replacement for discovering it first. Sacrifice a GM to get a new GM and deny a GM to the opponent, I like it

I'm still doing ok in GNP and MFG, despite having less land. Although 2metraninja has access to all economic buildings now, he researched Education and Banking, so it's going to get worse. It's already showing: I'm only even with him in GNP, despite the fact that I'm in a golden age





Still, I have 17 turns of the GA left, this should be enough to get me all the tech I need to start a push

[yuris125]

Just 7 more turns played, but what turns they were!

Things started off nicely: 2metraninja moved his northern stack away from my borders. I seized the opportunity to move in, mostly for some scouting



His stack consisted of 3 Crossbows and a Spear, so I only had to worry about more units streaming in from the fog. But with a decent number of Muskets and Pikes I wasn't too worried. He ended up retreating his small stack, so I had a chance to move the Sentry Knight NE, further into his territory. The rest of the units moved S onto the hill in my territory. From there, Muskets still could reach whatever units he used to kill the Knight. And he didn't attack, the Knight managed to retreat to scout another day

This was a minor thing, but at least it allowed me to have a better picture of things happening in the north. The main events were going to happen in the south though



As planned, after discovering Rifling, I assembled around 40 Muskets from around the empire, and moved them to attack Ulanbaator. As you can see, its borders popped since I first posted the plan, so I could no longer attack in 1 move from my territory. So he was forewarned, and decided to retreat his Keshiks and the Catapult. The defences consisted of 2 Maces, 1 Crossbow, 3 Spears and 1 Archer. Of course, I captured the city with superior numbers



I decided to keep it. It's somewhat remote from the rest of Mongolian empire, close enough to me, with road connection already in place, in a nice location, and with ToA - not the most important wonder, but no reason to throw it away. With three dozens of units, I was fairly confident I could keep it. I immediately upgraded one of the Muskets to a Rifle, and promoted to CG2, moved in another Rifle from Grenoble, and was feeling reasonably confident he wasn't going to try anything stupid

To my surprise, he did. After nail-biting 5 minutes, the city was still in my hands, and his stack was almost dead





This is where we stopped. I'm not going to think the game is already won, but I do think I'm in a very nice position now

I think he fell to the same trick as I did when I moved out my Axes/Cats to capture the city he founded on Chartres's spot. Seeing your city in opponent's hands is as annoying as seeing an opponent's city on a spot where your own city once was. Maybe even more annoying. Still... I understand his attempt, but he should've stopped the attack when my defenders had odds on his units even after collateral. Losing 13 Catapults is painful, but not game-ending; losing 8 Knights and two dozens of Keshiks could very well be the reason I win - if I win

[yuris125]

Well, 2metraninja decided to concede. He knows his situation better, but I would imagine he thinks it's going to be hard to stop my Musket force now that he lost his mobile defences, and he knows I'm building and drafting Rifles while he's still some distance away from them

I didn't expect the game to last so long, most duels I saw end around T100, and playing to T165 was unexpected. On the other hand, with a Gunpowder-based UU and mid-to-late-game traits, playing against Cha/Imp Mongolia, it's probably logical: I had to survive the onslaught of Keshiks, and get to the point where my own advantages come into play

I'm reasonably happy with the way I played the game. I managed to take advantage of the Phi trait relatively early. The 2nd city, Orleans, had a lot of flood plains cottages and managed to produce quite a number of great people; then after I farmed the grassland around Paris post-Civil Service, several great people were born in Paris as well. Because of a tiny map and less commerce produced from land, bulbs were relatively powerful even in the mid-game: one GS could almost discover expensive techs like Education and Chemistry, producing the same amount of beakers as 3 turns of research

I also think it was a good decision to keep Great Scientists around until I was on the Liberalism path, not use them earlier. With techs being relatively cheap on a tiny map, it seems to be better to research early techs in the traditional way. Here are the techs I bulbed:

Paper
Education
Philosophy
Metal Casting (a GM bulb)
Economics (a GM bulb)
Printing Press
Chemistry

With 3 great people used for the GA, that's 10 GP born during the game: 9 in the traditional way, and the Economics GM. Another one was going to be born before the end of the GA, too. Not bad, I think

As for the Spi trait, in the early game I used it to switch between Hinduism and Judaism for border pops. Later, obviously, I regularly switched between Slavery and Caste System. Unfortunately I didn't get much chance to switch between civics in other columns. The traditional way is to adopt Pacifism with Caste, but my army was too large for Pacifism. Still, switching to civics I wanted without anarchy as soon as they became available was a huge help. My end game civics were Hereditary Rule - Nationhood - Slavery - Mercantilism - Theocracy (although I spent most of the time in OR). Maybe I didn't use this trait to full extent, but I think I leveraged it reasonably well

And of course, Muskets are an awesome UU, no doubt about that

I'll post some end-game screenshot later; since the game was played online, both of us need to join it before I can take screenshots

[yuris125]

Here are end of game screenshots

The glorious French empire:

North



South



Mongolia as we know it:

North



South



Note the Trireme in the inner sea, which greatly helped to scout the movements of Mongolian army

The defenders of New Rouen (formerly Ulanbaator) and the remnants of Mongolian force



As you can see, the Mongolian stack is badly damaged, so I can promote my Musketeers and send them to finish off the remaining Keshiks

Mongolian regiment in the north



Demos at 0% research



At 100%



Note that my power is more than 50% higher than 2metraninja's, even before the wounded Keshiks are killed off. Also note my advantage in MFG - I think this played an important role in the victory, drafting is nice, but when you can only draft 2 units per turn, you can't get 50 Muskets in a reasonable time just by drafting

Top5 cities



My cities have been larger than 2metraninja's for the whole game. I think this is what allowed me to keep up despite the disadvantage in land

Victory conditions



Selected cities



The glorious Paris, centre of French science



The magnificent Orleans, centre of commerce and the place where many French great people were born



The hard-working Lyons, where the bulk of French army was recruited. It's funny to think the French people only discovered Literature in 1700AD, and the main military victories were achieved without Heroic Epic



The rich Marseille, which reclaimed gems from the jungle and made best use of them

[haphazard1]

Thanks for your excellent reporting throughout this game, yuris125! Very interesting reading, and a fun game to follow the back and forth struggle.

[2metraninja]

Yeah, congrats on the win, Yuri. It was exciting game, which still leaves me wonder how all this happened.

Well played sire. My only hope is to meet you again on the battlefield sometimes soon for a revanche.