[Spoiler] Fintourist loses his multiplayer virginity

[Fintourist]

Turn 165

This turn was truly a rollercoaster of feelings! Let me show you how it went:

1. I see this:



2. Hydra/BaII lost only 1 catapult, not a single mace! %&&/ #&X&

3. I check the combat log, he got first a nice roll with the catapult (2 %) and then the first mace won with <50 % odds. Stupid RNG.

4. I calm myself down. My gamble failed, I knew that it will all be RNG dependent and decided by couple of fights. And anyways this whole situation is my own fault. Yeah stupid RNG, blah blah, loss of focus, blah blah blah, the fact is that I got greedy and Hydra (I'm sure) made the exactly right move at the exactly right time. I have to credit him for that and then just keep pushing. And maybe play a bit more conservatively

5. Wait, why are there so many maces in Barcelona?

6. Oh yeah, Hydra does not know that I'm not in a position to retake Barcelona this turn and has divided his defences between the two cities. My whole tactic was based on Hydra losing enough maces so that I could take his capital. I had counted that 3 defending maces should be a piece of cake, 4 maces would also be perhaps doable. And now I see that Hydra only has 3 maces and 1 Xbow in the city. That's bold! Xbows are significantly weaker against Janissaries than maces and now I actually have odds to take the city!

7. And so my gamble actually works even though it shouldn't:



8. Here is the list of fights:



My cat of course died, first Janissary won with 47 % odds, second lost with 30-something. Third one won with roughly 70 %, fourth died with similar odds and last two fights were cleaning up. Overall the RNG went pretty much as one could expect, but I must be happy

This exchange of cities cost me some extra units and several turns of non-revolt ownership in Barcelona, but assuming no further surprises it accelerated the end of this war. As my next wave of draftees is already on its way I should have odds on capturing Barcelona on T168, maybe even T167 if Hydra/BaII plays too carelessly.

Here are the demos after ending the turn, with tech on, but no tech selected:



Especially MFG looks as it should. When I revolt to caste it will look even better
Population stat shows that I have still lots of room to go vertical. That is starting to happen right now! My newer cities are soon growing big enough that I can draft Janissaries/Rifles out of them and my core cities can grab couple of extra pop points.

Hmm.. what is that -14 GNP... How is that possible here... Oh, that's why:



It seems that Hydra bought last turn the peace from Azza for 50 gpt I don't like my main opponent getting extra gold! The fun part of this is that Hydra does not have gold reserves and it seems that he is losing quite a bit of gold currently (I bet somewhere between 25-35 gpt). This means that he is going to STRIKE. How soon are units going to start dying?? Maybe I'll just park a stack next to Barcelona and watch those units starve and walk then into an empty city.. A true encirclement.. I have to say that it would be the funniest way I can imagine to finish this war Well, I guess that won't happen soon enough..

[Old Harry]

So have you got the units in place to keep Toledo and your other gains? And is Barca the last city to take?

Also is there any sign of Sareln yet?

[Fintourist]

So have you got the units in place to keep Toledo and your other gains? And is Barca the last city to take?

I should have! The turn where Hydra moved was simply the one and only turn when my troops were out of position. Hydra/BaII has only 5 maces left (2 severly wounded) so there I can't see any problems anymore, but of course if other players decide to join the party from some direction. And yeah Barca is the last city.

Also is there any sign of Sareln yet?

Some signs yeah:



Sareln re-settled the old GLH city (probably for iron) and finished now his 1st Frigate in Lemongrass. I have currently 4 Frigates surrounding the city and protecting me from his attack. (Visible in my last post)

I guess he might have some kind of attacking force coming out of the blue and that would surely cost me a city or two, but my sentry net is expanding all the time and at least my core should be protected. Every.. Turn.. I.. Get.. Stronger..

As said previously Sareln has made him so costly to attack that I have no interest in attacking him before Rifles. Now I'm just trying to get a complete naval dominance against all my opponents (Frigates should be very usable still for a good while). That's the only thing that really can give protection in this map.

[Old Harry]

Aren't you tempted to just declare on Azza and Viqsi for the look of the thing?

[Fintourist]

Aren't you tempted to just declare on Azza and Viqsi for the look of the thing?

Sure But war weariness mechanic pretty much forces me to stay in terms with Viqsi (who provides me happy resources) and fight my opponents separately.

But yeah, I just need those couple of turns to finish BaII/Hydra and then I can start harrassing someone (probably Azza). In roughly 10 turns I should be at least very close to Rifling and have around 25 cities that can draft them. After that this game should become non-stop aggression and war weariness managing.

If you take a look at soldier points you can see that I have roughly 800k while my opponents have 1600k combined (Azza has 600k). I need to step up my military still a level before I can comfortably stomp everybody.

At the same time I think that my lead is larger than it is many games that I have seen conceded. I think in several games a real dogpile on the leader could still have turned the table. But whether that's fun, desirable, in practise feasible etc. is a different discussion..

[Qgqqqqq]

Hey, @T164, when you say costs decreased by 200gpt upon SP + GA do you mean gpt at 0% increased by 200gpt or loss at 100%/seen in financial advisor decreased by 200gpt? Because the two mean very different things, and I'm curious as to just how large maintenance is on a map like this...

[Fintourist]

Hey, @T164, when you say costs decreased by 200gpt upon SP + GA do you mean gpt at 0% increased by 200gpt or loss at 100%/seen in financial advisor decreased by 200gpt? Because the two mean very different things, and I'm curious as to just how large maintenance is on a map like this...

My costs dropped by 200gpt when having tech 100 % on. With 0 % tech the effect is somewhat smaller, because I'm now missing the Bureaucracy boost. ~170 gpt savings came directly from State Property, rest from Nationhood. I can post the financial advisor next time when I play a turn

And no worries, I'm not letting the GA to affect my cost calculations

[Fintourist]

Turn 166

I keep pumping Frigates in my cities, draft the maximum amount of Janissaries and prepare myself for the final strike against BaII/Hydra.

The city number 32 (if I'm correct), "Bounce" was founded in the new continent (damn screenshot title):



These cities are soon becoming useful. Net Roller drafted its first Janissary and it will whip a settler in couple of turns. I could use here a couple more workers, but overall it's fine. I just want to get these cities to size 6 soonish so that they can start drafting Rifles.

You can also see that I decided to tech Constitution first. Direct beeline to Rifling might have been better, but on the other hand, my opponents still have 40+ cities and if they are not willing to concede this game is going to last quite a while despite my lead. Representation specialists are a reasonable way to kill the growth in large cities when they reach their happy cap.

I'm also considering whether I should revolt to theocracy (and tech Theology), together with barracks I could draft rifles that have 2 EXP points. On the other hand I'm still getting reasonable value out of OR and I don't like building monasteries. This is actually a tough call.

[Fintourist]

Turn 167

1 down 3 left!

Many thanks to BaII for replacing Hydra, but I'm sorry say this, when it comes to warfare it was again visible that you were playing the turns. Last turn you had already moved three maces out of Barcelona and when I opened the save I saw that you had taken the pretty cheap bait:



Yeah, Sevilla is empty, but if Barca falls those units are going to disappear.. I had 8 Janissaries in Galleons ready to hit the city and as the only defenders were one non-promoted and two severly wounded maces, the decision (whether to attack amphibiously or unload the units) was easy. I lost the first mace, but the following three fights were just cleaning up (well, first one was 72 % IIRC):



And so Barcelona was recaptured and Spanish empire destroyed

Now that both BaII and Hydra can start reading these threads, I just want to say that I hope I have not been too harsh towards you in this thread. Sorry if I've been! However, I would estimate that I have only reached 3 out of 10 points in the Sullla scale This is a greens game and we are supposed to make many mistakes anyways!

As a conclusion, I think you Hydra opened a bit slower than you probably could have, but the main problem was that you completely stopped expanding in the "early mid-game". When it comes to this final war, I'm not sure how much you did concentrate BaII, but seriously: Whip those units! This war only lasted 10 turns and considering the amount of units I brought it should have lasted at least 20, or 30! I might have even been forced to return the mainland cities if you had kept me busy longer and Azza and/or Sareln (and/or Viqsi) would have piled on me later. Anyways, I hope that we can Hydra still work well together in PB13!

Ok, back to this game and current turn. Now that the Northern war efforts are over, the logistics-show begins again. The first goal is to strenghten some of my lightly defended cities. And I guess starting from next turn the planning of operation against Azza truly begins. However, there is one thing that prevents me from going all-in against my current main opponent. And it's of course Sareln..



I again managed to screw up with that screenshot sign Anyways, this is the situation. Sareln has in the city:
2 Frigates (2nd added this turn)
2 Galleons
9 Muskets
3 Ancient units

I have currently 2 Frigates NE and 2 SW of the city. This city is truly annoying and it ties quite a significant amount of military. My Frigates are currently blocking the attack routes toward my cities, otherwise Sareln could threaten ~5 of my cities quite easily and even attack 2 of them amphibiously. Consequently, I feel forced to maintain the naval dominance in the area and now as Sareln added a new Frigate.. I had to whip 2 more myself.. This approach does not do good for my economy, but it's still better than keeping a large garrison in all nearby cities. It still takes a while, but eventually I'm going to unload couple of cannons and a good stack of rifles+janissaries next to the city and my ships can finally move somewhere where they can be more useful.

Finally, here is the current composition of my relevant military:



More ships, more drafting. Soon cannons. That's the plan.

And finally, I teched Constitution, do I want Theology (Theocracy) now also before I revolt again in 2 turns??? Currently all but 1 of captured cities are still missing Hinduism. And roughly half of my cities are building infra, other half is producing units. +2 EXP would be huge for my ships, but despite workshops, hammers are still kind of a scarce resource in this map..

[BaII]

Turn 167
Many thanks to BaII for replacing Hydra, but I'm sorry say this, when it comes to warfare it was again visible that you were playing the turns.

Yeah well I always knew I was terrible at warfare.

It seems that Hydra bought last turn the peace from Azza for 50 gpt

Though all of my units would have died if I didn't get some capture gold .