[PB37 SPOILER] Coeurva, Bacchus -- Cyrus of Carthage

[chumchu]

Yeah, it is not looking good but the military numbers are slightly deceptive as a a lot of variations comes from how much military is tied up against other players. I thought that we would have to risk being weak in military for a while to build up eco.

Thanks for taking over. I'm back in two days to take over again.

[Coeurva]

Don't get me wrong, I think you've done a good job fixing the economy. But we urgently need to fix our military as well.

I was going to write that we need preventive insurance against dtay's rapidly-growing power, but it turns out that "prevention" is, uh, no longer within the question. I think you get what I mean... Joey's message was, indeed, a warning. (Whale-Sheep perhaps meaning "southwest". No idea.)

Ours is the first half of the timer. I'm going to pull all the stack from the Savant border (excluding the Ignis garrison visible to him) and revolt to Slavery. Rifling is still 15t away. We'll live that long, I think, on the islands at least, and I think we should continue teching to make dtay's life as hard as possible, but upgrading looks viable as well.

Update from playing the turn: dtay's stack consists of something like ~18 knights (C3 and C2 Formation variously, also a Medic III general), 15 muskets, 12 cats, 8 cannons, and assorted classical units (seven swords) with reinforcements (cannons, muskets) already trickling in. I've pulled the five catapults from (hopeless) Zodiac Spire towards Shag Vermin, which goes to 60% cultural defense next turn, and where we'll gather all of our own knights (roughly 30 of them, plus some NumCav) within the next turn. Attacking with those into dtay's stack seemed fruitless here since we don't have enough units in range to follow up, and the enemy would merely heal right up again. Unfortunately, the northern siege units take a bit longer to arrive.

I've set nearly all cities to musket builds, not that it matters this turn (anarchy), except Sherry/Styx where frigates are being built; there's also a cothon finishing in Överbord, which I've left as such as well. Our best bet might be to build frigates and survive on the western islands for as long as possible.

Final note: Krill saw dtay's stack. There's one of his chariots running around Cuckhokia. He's also pointing a frigate at Westward Ho! from Savantine waters.

[Coeurva]

Well, we've lost Zodiac Spire and all the catapults, which mostly served to occupy dtay's cannons (all of which bombarded) and killed some cats/swords of his, but losing us the eight Guerilla II longbows as well. We've killed one knight and a sentry HA this turn; attacking dtay's other units (15 knights, 11 muskets, 222 of Shag Vermin) at 50% odds seemed too dicy, more so since he outnumbers us. My hope is that dtay's stack, which is momentarily devoid of the cannons, swords, and some muskets (11 left), impatiently moves in towards Vermin, where we could hit it with 26 knights next turn, roughly ten of which dtay can't see yet. Reviewing the situation, I've set most cities to knights instead of muskets, since dtay doesn't have that much stack protection and he'll have to move onto flat land when going against our cities, and we can't get enough muskets anyway; knights might at least arrive in time. Next turn, you can whip every city for military.

dtay has galleons pointed at our western islands already, but there are no frigates visible, so building frigates in the west still appears sensible. He's also using Joey's islands as naval bases (Yekaterinburg, at least).

Rostov is currently guarded by one single musket. We have a galleon in the area that dtay hasn't seen; it might be possible to raze that city with three knights, but I didn't currently want to divert forces from Vermin. So, there's a plan for some offensive action at least.

Nothing else to say. JR4 offered map/map, which I've accepted, although I don't think it has helped either of us.

[chumchu]

I'm ready to play next turn. Let's see if we can hit him with knights and cats.

[chumchu]

Too big stack atm. We need more cats. Will cue those.

He also has a small navy that we will have to deal with. I put the western ilses on that.

[Coeurva]

Alright, get those catapults and give his fancy cannons a piece of counter-industrialization! See, our catapults are all hand-crafted by slaves and 100% organic.

My worry was that catapults would not reach Vermin in time before dtay has assembled its cannons before it, and deal too little damage, but I might well be wrong.

Here's something from the pb38 signup thread:

Actually you want to be next to a vet, they won't invade you when they know they can't achieve anything.

It's the newbs you want to watch out for.

I won't be so stupid to respond to such things in public again before the game ends, much less since I'm not even mentioned by name. But just in case:

Incredibly, had I known that I couldn't achieve anything, I actually wouldn't have attacked Krill. The distinction is more that veterans better know the threats involved and the power required, and can gauge whether they can achieve anything before finding out the hard way (then again, Gavagai had probably hoped for much more success against Savant); apparently Combat is a pretty good promotion on ships!

I'm none too blithe about what Krill has written there, but I'll refrain from further comment. You can guess the reasons, anyway.

[chumchu]

Yeah, I thought it was hilarious as well.

I have attacked Dtay stack which stood on the flat ground in front of vermin. We gave better than we got in that battle, mostly getting 67% odds after the sacrificing the 5 initial cats. We flanked about 10 units to death so he now only has 3 damaged cannons and 3 damaged pults. Most of his knights are dead as well, including his GG medic. We got two GG, one for a numid to knight upgrade that also gives us 3 xp 13 knights, one for a caravel to frig upgrade with a similar idea. The bad news is that he has a lot of muskets and swords left that can take city even when damaged so I retreated all our knights out.

The real bad news for the turn is that Joey piled on our western isle and we can not defend against dtay and Joey's fleets. I expect Krill and savant any turn now.

[Bacchus]

I still stand that Krill is pissed for cause, but not as much cause as he thinks, especially after reading his thread. There was plenty of myopia from his side too. In any case, we knew precisely that long-term Krill would have an unmatched production advantage on that sea, ensuring that we can never pose a strategic threat to him.

NavII was also critical to making our inevitably smaller navy have some use as a counter-puncher, even out of Mandrake. Where stuff went flaky is with saccing some Galleons, re-taking Regna, and maybe letting the classical junk get sunk.

[Coeurva]

I'd like to discuss my mistakes with Krill after the game ends. I'm sure that the CML war laid the foundation to both Krill's apprehension and our eventual failure. Not to say that the plan to press aggressively towards him wasn't right, but rather that my execution was flawed. For all the world's eyes, we attacked someone on T53 with one axe (although they didn't research BW until that late, either, which only dtay will have known), stayed at war for 30t, and didn't walk away with any conquered cities, although some of our city sites would have been impossible without it. But the units we built went obsolete right as the war ended, and around that time, the infrastructure of other players started turning profits as we dropped from #1 demographics. Then, instead of catching up in infrastructure, I turned to settle rather weak islands (due to missing the two critical tiles in scouting) and building even more military, yet not decisively enough to conquer parts of Yuri before dtay could tech to knights fuelled on the Colossus (which was the best wonder to build on this map, I believe, perhaps apart from TGLH, but possibly not even that). The campaign against Savant was probably the right call when it had become clear that we couldn't defend any Russian gains against dtay's knights (but perhaps Krill, or others, think differently?) -- but that's about it, and we should have pressed for Sandcaster as well. Then again, I'm not sure if we wouldn't just have lost those islands to Joey later...

The classical junk getting wrecked can also be traced to my inexperience -- I had expected the damage done to Krill's galleons to sway combat odds far more than what we ended up with.

chumchu, good work on defending against dtay. Joey's play makes perfect sense, as he needs to curtail dtay, who is his one rival for victory. Preserving the knight stack is more important than holding any single city, since dtay will outproduce us anyway. If anything, I'd recommend using it against Savant should he pile on, since you'll have the best odds to defeat whatever invasion force he sends. And if JR4 declares war, which he likely will the instant that his war with Savant ends, make sure to alt-click Gavagai's name on the scoreboard, so that we can set some kind of record at least

[chumchu]

We have now lost the knight stack in the counterattack to our counterattack. He took another city amphibiously and removed our vulture to get range to it =(. We are certainly dead now. I see us being split between Joey, Dtay and Savant. We did some damage to Dtay so he will not get the full shebang.

About the early aggression, I think it was definitely worth trying based of your read of CML. The best way to get ahead is to take out a neighbor and it is cheapest to do so early in the game. Had you been able to swallow CML/Yuri you would have been leader of the game. I think you should have pressed harder to do so with numids and have aimed to finance alpha and currency partly with conquest gold.

About the Krill wars. Krill was obviously a threat but I think your plan hinged too much on surprise against an experienced and wary player. Both you and I made mistakes in the combat as well.

I have been testing carthage in single player with Washington and it is a lot of fun. I really like Exp over Imp as it gives the early bonus hammers but also enough eco with double speed markets, grocers and cothons to sustain conquests. Numids absolutely wreck the AI, I can conquer multiple civs with only them at Immortal. That does not work as well against players when they get well promoted spears behind walls. They can not really threaten you until catapults though. Still, with the damage you did to cml I think early numids forking cities might have overwhelmed him.