[spoilers] FT's attempt at social distancing

[Fintourist]

Looking back

Ah for fuck's sake. I've criticized people here enough for throwing in the towel, so the only option is to push forward. I'm still feeling physically ill regarding what happened, but giving up will just make me feel worse.

So I'll dedicate this post to "what happened" and "what could and should have been". The next one will then be about looking ahead.

Recap of the battles that went wrong:

• Turn 67 (1st attack on Capital): 40 % chance of capturing Elkad's core and maintaining basically all of our army
  
• Turn 68 (2nd attack on Capital): Average luck would give us Elkad's core and we maintain most of our army
  
• Turns 70-71 (99.97% Spear): Average luck gives us Elkad's core and we maintain half of our army
  

So average luck gives us either a crushing or a great victory. With bad luck or even terrible luck (e.g. we win the last 60 % fight) we still get Elkad's cities, but things are more costly. Unfortunately what happened.. is just something much darker.

510 hammers lost:

• 7 Horse Archers
  
• 2 Chariots
  
• Axe
  
• Spear
  
• Quechua
  
• Scout
  

But it is what is. I've went through the sequence and I would not change a single thing. I would take every fight again in exactly same attacking order. The amount of time spent with the combat calculator before the fights was not insignificant.

What could have been:

I kind of wanted this to be a statement win and we were heading that way. I challenge anyone to try to replicate the micro of the first 50 turns and see if you can do better. And I'm very happy how the early lead was converted into HBR and a strong Horse Archer attack.

I believe we were heading into a pre-T100 concession. Use capture gold to power us to currency, cheap EXP markets to get us happiness from our furs and Elkad's ivory. Use the army to take couple of cities from superdeath / backstab Miguelito / take the jungle area from cornflakes.. A lot of solid options that all seemed very realistic. 13-15 cities by turn 100, double everyone's demos, double everyone's army. 

But it was not meant to be. As for now, we are still #1 in GNP, Food and MFG with an average army. That sounds better than the reality, but anyways we are not yet out. Let's discuss our options in a separate future post.

[Charriu]

Looking at the tactics of the war, I wouldn't have done anything different and even if, those changes would be minor. Everybody would take a 98.2% chance of winning for example. You really just had terribe luck.

[naufragar]

Nothing else to say really. Glad you're playing on.

[Fintourist]

Thanks guys!

Looking ahead

As mentioned previously, demowise we are not out of the race yet:




Yeah, series of #1s and a mediocre army, but that's a bit deceiving. We have accumulated quite a bit of whip unhappiness from building up our attacking force and also whipping necessary replacements due to just losing so many units (in addition Elkad just moved spears in and forced an axe whip from us). In essence this means that both continuing an economic snowball as well as building a relevant-sized army are not feasible in the near future.

Here is the overview of our lands:




We just settled our 8th city next to Elkad's city ruins and name of the game is now trying to regroup, consolidate and build a big enough force that in the midterm we can again make some moves.

The huge winner of recent events is Cornflakes. He already had a decent macro position due to successful crippling of Ras. Add a free city, free worker or two, totally crippled Elkad to south, out-of-gas Incas also unavailable to contest. All in all this is now Cornflakes' game to lose. I'm not sure why he is not doing better at the moment, so his snowball is at least a bit delayed, but he will be a problem in the future. Annoying in a game that seemed to flow without problems.

***
Lurkers are surely well aware of Commodore completing the stables quest and fighting Miguelito, but let's mention that regardless. In the alternative reality we would bring out the   and take Miguelito's gold city at the appropriate moment. In the real world we are hoping that Miguelito needs more than 2 spears to kill Commodore's 10+ HAs. I think Miguelito has enough army as the starting point that he should not fold immediately..

[Fintourist]

Turns 74-75

To add to the insult, Elkad came in with his mega-spear and its buddy and forced an axe whip out of us. That made him retreat and now we have a 90% shot at revenge and creating some chaos (e.g. steal that worker).




So here we go:

Axe vs C3 Spear 90.1 %... LOSS

And that mega spear improves its statistics: 1 survival out of 37261 attempts. Or 99.997 % chance for us to kill that guy. 

This forces us to get another axe out asap instead of a very much needed terrace. I have to say it's really really hard to stay positive..

[Charriu]

This is getting surreal. At least nobody can rightfully whine about bad RNG in the near future.

[Old Harry]

Looking back a few turns Elkad also lost an 80% spear vs horse archer attack as well. Charriu - did you do something to the RNG in this version of the mod to mean that attackers never prosper?  

[Fintourist]

It must be a BUG! Honestly, until this point losses have meant that we are unable to gain new cities (now and in near future due to lack of army), but now we have reached the point that if this continues we start losing land..

[Charriu]

Looking back a few turns Elkad also lost an 80% spear vs horse archer attack as well. Charriu - did you do something to the RNG in this version of the mod to mean that attackers never prosper?  

I wondered when somebody comes up with this. ;

Let's put it that way when I need to implement something to prevent you from winning then you achieved god-status in this game.

[Fintourist]

Turn 76

Latest developments:

1. Elkad moved aggressively in with 3 spears (one of them  is the can't-lose-spear)
   
2. We whipped another axe to defend his former capital
   
3. We had 2 HAs in range to capture a worker and threaten Syphilis
   

To our surprise another unit was not born in Syphilis during the interturn so there will be fighting next turn as Elkad's spears are out of position.

• We have another 92.6 % chance to take Syphilis next turn
  
• Elkad has a 0.3 % chance to take his capital back
  

Combine those odds and we have ~92 % chance to eliminate Elkad this coming turn. Adjusted odds for this game are around 25 % and based on my stomach our chances of success are roughly 0..