[SPOILERS] scooter is fashionably late to PB54

[scooter]

I get the sense there's an appetite for an update given that multiple people have pinged me to ask what's going on recently. I pulled back a bit, and Naufragar decided to send most of his army after me. I've been playing turns on complete autopilot and rather quickly, and that resulted in me getting one of my cities burned completely unnecessarily. Whoops. On the flip side, it meant I could run past him with my chariots.





That leaves him with just his Stonehenge capital and his 1-tile island of Cordoba. I didn't take any other pictures, but I did kill that grassland archer as well. I expected to lose 1 chariot razing that city, but I got lucky and did not. 


I didn't take a picture, but this morning had wilder news. He attacked out with one of the two Archers in Madrid into the chariot, and he lost despite having odds that were in the neighborhood of 90%. That means next turn if he doesn't complete any units, I'll get to take a shot at the capital. I have a C1 Chariot, and two C2 chariots hovering at like half health, and the warrior (which I moved to avoid the river penalty). Zulan's calculator gave me a 58% chance of winning, though I don't know if that's taking into account fortify bonus. So we're looking at a big coin flip. This is as good as chance as I'm going to get anytime soon, so I'll give it a shot if nothing surprising comes up.


I feel kinda bad because it's clear Naufragar is more into this game than me judging by login times, but I've killed his game. If I can finish him, I might see if he wants to join me and partially take over if other players don't object. I think his attack out was a tilt, but he's done some clever things - the worker-galley city defense earlier was really great in particular.


The biggest thing for me here was picking up some gold in the raze and after pillaging a bunch of stuff. This gold meant I can finally finish Iron Working. My tech is horrendous this game. I still don't have Fishing, for example.

[civac2]

You can input fortify bonus into Zulan's simulator. I think it's the right-most drop down box.

[scooter]

Well, an attack as swingy as this one deserves the blow-by-blow. Thanks to civac, I adjusted my inputs in the Zulan calculator, and I came up with almost exactly 50% odds of winning this fight. My tech is so bad and his culture so obnoxious that it's this or catapults in 50 turns, so I absolutely have to take this coin flip. I just took my strongest unit each time.


pre-attack: ~50% odds

C1 Chariot vs Archer 0.7% (10% withdraw): lose (2.2h)

Okay, this is a good start! The hardest part is cracking the Archer's initial pool of health. 0.7% is very much in flawless loss range, so it was huge to get some damage in. This increased my chances.


odds now: ~65%




C2 3.3h Chariot vs 2.2h Archer 13.5% (9% withdraw): lose (1.3h)

odds now: ~65% again


Alright, so that's about the median expected result. My chances now are still right around 65%. Time to send in the last chariot. We're in range now where it's not out of the question I could win with this last Chariot.





C2 2.5h Chariot vs 1.3h Archer 35% (6.5% withdraw): FLAWLESS LOSS (GG spawn)


Welp. RIP me I guess. Regression sucks sometimes. I debated over what to do with my warrior. I could continue to choke with him, or I could YOLO him. My odds are 18%, which is not terrible. Screw it, the game's already cooked.






Warrior vs 1.3h Archer 18%:

Unbelievable.

[scooter]

I kept it, of course. Stonehenge is too big a prize. Now, it's theoretically possible he could take it back. He has two archers on that sign. However, I can squeeze my Chariot into Madrid just in time, so he'd have to win two low odds fights.

[NobleHelium]

MINUS FORTY-SEVEN POINTS FOR MISUSING MEAN REGRESSION. Regression to the mean is not gambler's fallacy.

[scooter]

MINUS FORTY-SEVEN POINTS FOR MISUSING MEAN REGRESSION.  Regression to the mean is not gambler's fallacy.

Think you're reading an implication in that isn't there. I know the difference. I've been running slightly hot, but to that point I was nosing back towards average. It just happened to come all at once, but I didn't imply that was the only way it can happen. My odds were 50/50 in this battle overall, so while the last two fights were wild and swingy, my luck was pretty even here.

[NobleHelium]

I mean, I guess. You said it right after you took a below average result.

[scooter]

Hah! Naufragar moved his worker 1N and his archers 1E of the corn. This meant I could not get into the city AND I could not attack an archer due to using an "attack" on a worker. Well done. He'll retake the city next turn and prolong the pain. Not sure if I'll be able to recapture in a timely manner. A+

[scooter]

LET'S ROLL THAT DICE AGAIN.

Bummer.

[NobleHelium]

I mean, you captured a worker.