Oxy changes his naming scheme to Community... and inexplicably doesn't get cancelled

[BaII]

So, for his power that's not a lot of units, I'm sure he's waiting in the fog somewhere so I don't think we can advance in the southern front. We already forced a bunch of whips so that's a good sign we're going to only get further ahead of him. We could potentially snipe the first city and clear up a lot of culture for us to expand into with new cities.

[Cheater Hater]

T149 Report:
Since I didn't get any input from BaII before I felt I had to play the turn (around 24 hours after the turn roll), I made my moves mostly as I described. Let's start with the south theater, where all the action is:


As you can see, I concentrated my troops on the square in xenu's territory--there could be a lot of troops in the fog, but unless they're all either Cats or HA's (to collateral my stack or flank my Cats), it shouldn't be a disaster. A lot of this will depend on what xenu does, notably with regard to Zuckermais. I have 10 Knights (and a HA that can clean up if necessary) that can hit Zuckermais next turn if it's not defended enough, but I don't think that's realistic--even if xenu doesn't add any troops to the city, it will likely cost most of my Knights to raze it. The main change from the last post is that I moved some of the healing knights back to Jeff, just in case xenu tries something funny (notably, I don't know what I do if he moves a sizable stack to the jungle tile--probably just suicide a bunch of Cats and focus on using my 1-movers to at least make the stack manageable, then attack Zuckermais if xenu left it open).

Next, the northern theater, where things are thankfully more boring:


Unfortunately I forgot to take a picture of my knight stack (since I put a worker over it), but you can assume if I knight was in the pre-turn picture and not in this picture, it's in that stack. My moves here have mainly been defensive, focusing on upgrades and making sure Chang isn't takeable by two-movers from the fog, but since I'm continuing to produce Knights (that will mainly be sent towards the northern front) we could eventually make some offensive movements up there, especially if xenu continues the troops exoduses from SS.

I took domestic overview pictures, but not much else has changed--let's continue to demo analysis:


Hooray, our GNP is improving, and we haven't even turned research back on yet! Our soldiers are also looking good, and the rest of the (relevant) stats are above average or at average as well. Of course, the golden age isn't going to last forever, but we're doing good otherwise.


The power ratings continue to be close, but the upgrades are pulling us ahead for the time being--I don't think this has last turn's combat in it yet, just the initial round of upgrades.




As you can see, the golden age is making its effect known on the GNP and Production graphs, but there's a big problem--even with the golden age boost, xenu still out-produces us! I don't know what will happen once xenu's whips start hurting him (and of course losing a city certainly won't help ), but this, along with the power parity, is why I've been worried about this war.

Now getting to BaII specifically:

• Which "first city" do you think we can snipe--Zuckermais, SS, or something else? (not that xenu has many other cities we can see--there's that one across the river, but with only the one Galley being produced it doesn't seem that practical to take it)
  
• When do we turn research back on, and where do we aim it? Nationalism would be a good choice, but we aren't getting the most bonus on it (not many people have it--though BGN did build Taj last turn, so that's at least one civ). Something like Banking or Aesthetics gets us more bonus, but it's not as useful (mainly being prerequisites--Banking on the line to Economics or Rifling, Aethetics to Military Tradition and Literature)
  
• We got a Great General last turn during the attack, and it's currently hanging around Jeff--I have no clue what I should do with it--make a Medic, or something else?
  
• The settler in Jeff is waiting to found the "Maybe C" city, but I have no idea when I should do it--now? If we burn Zuckermais? When we make peace with xenu? Some other time? How much of a garrison do we need for it?
  

[Cheater Hater]

T150 PreTurn:
This turn is very interesting--xenu makes his first offensive move against us, but also could have given us an opportunity!


The one bad thing that happened is that xenu pillaged the rice at Britta with a (Sentry) Chariot--I shuffled some tiles around so it doesn't affect us too badly, but it's still a minor hindrance. On the other hand, xenu shockingly only left 4 units in Zuckermais--granted, that includes two pikes, but still
Obviously I'm really worried this is a trap--the WE and one Cat that were on that tile are currently hidden in the fog--but I still want to see how many knights it would take to burn the city. I don't know how many would be acceptable though--if it takes the losses of 7 knights, is it worth investment? It does get rid of a Great General on Xenu's side at least, I guess. My guess is that I should be able to take the city losing 4 Knights (2 to redline each of the Pikes, then some cleanup), but I'm going to set up some sims shortly to check that number.

Before I do, I did take the graphs for this turn (since they won't change--I didn't take the demos for instance), and they're interesting, especially since we have HAK's graphs now:






Wow, xenu's production really took a hit when we burned BK--he also took more of a power hit than we did it appears.

Those questions in the previous post are obviously still up for debate BaII, along with opinions on whether we should try to burn Zuckermais--I'll edit the sims in this post.
Run 0: No promotions, no walls, no fortify
1 Knight lost--Obviously this is better than can be expected, even getting lucky on a suicide Knight
Run 1: Walls, Promotions/fortify on xenu's units only
2 Knights lost--This is relatively lucky too, winning both ~65% battles against damaged Pikes
Run 2: Walls, Promotions/fortify on xenu's units, suicide Knights with Flanking, Pike cleanup Knights with C1 Shock, Archer cleanup Knights with C2
2 Knights lost--the Pike cleanup Knights with Shock have ~88% odds, which is much better--and even if we got unlucky, the cleanup is easy

Overall, even my guess of 4 Knights lost was overly pessimistic--I now see 3 as a worst case, with 2 being far more likely (and not even two highly-promoted Knights, instead Flanking Knights so they have a slim chance to survive). That has to be worth it right? The one caveat I see is that unless I want to leave the 4 killing Knights out to dry, I'd have to move my stack up, and I don't know if that's what I want to do. If I don't move my stack up, is it worth 6 Knights to burn the city?
(Note: My sim didn't take into account that some of the Knights were damaged, but I shouldn't have to use them if I don't want to, and if I do, I could either have them suicide (not likely) or take care of the Archer cleanup)

[Cheater Hater]

T150 played, pictures here
The RNG decided to play me today, but we did burn Zuckmais with the expected losses (2 losses on the attack, 5 losses to xenu's gigantic stack we found, so 7 total)--more to come in the report.

[Cheater Hater]

T150 Report:
I'm on the clock for this report, as the turn's about to roll--let's start with how the combat turned out:
(And yes, I realize now that I should have promoted my knights C1 instead of F1, since I was assuming they were dead regardless, but that's not the biggest problem)
F1 Knight vs C2 Pike: Retreat, no damage
F1 Knight vs C2 Pike: Loss, no damage
C1 Knight vs C2 Pike: Loss, no damage
After those completely BS results, I stepped away from the game for almost an hour--when I came back, I decided to continue the attack at all costs after seeing that plako had declared on xenu! That meant that even if I had lost a lot of troops, presumably xenu couldn't commit that many troops to me (see how much plako's power towers above xenu's in the above graph--and ours for that matter, but that's neither here nor there)
C1 Shock Knight vs C2 Pike (22%): Win!
C1 Shock Knight vs C1 Pike (23%): Win!
And the archers were easily cleaned up. Overall we used 7 Knights, just like the worst case--it's just that the RNG decided to cause me to rage by having the combat results imbalanced. I obviously burned Zuckermais after seeing that xenu had a stack next door (it only had a granary), but what that stack had was another matter entirely...


Yes, we've found xenu's big stack, and it's comparable in size to ours:
6 Knights
4 WE
1 Pike
13 Cats
It's not quite as large as ours, but since we've had to burn a lot of our knights to burn BK and Zuckermais the sizes are comparable. I might have been able to move up our 1-movers to guard the knights, but I didn't want to let his Cats hit my stack (and I thought he had more Cats when I was playing the turn), so I moved our 1-movers back to the hill and moved our 2-movers (as well as some troops from the northern front and a couple workers) to the jungle, so they can move to either front as necessary.

Speaking of the northern front:


(apparently I didn't get a screenshot of stuff in Chang, I'll get it in the pre-turn)
SS is still relatively lightly guarded, so I could try to attack there--but if xenu moves the big stack north I don't like that idea at all. I don't know how realistic it is to do any more attacking though--should we even consider a peace deal so we can settle the Maybe C city, turn on research to somewhere, and come back in 10 turns? I don't know how good that is, and I think a lot of it depends on what plako does, and what xenu does to counteract plako. The only thing we can see right now is that xenu is doing a ton of whips.

Molach's having internet issues, so I'll continue my report--let's do a domestic overview!




Basically all of my cities are putting out at least one Knight, to replenish my supply after using them to burn those two cities. I have no clue what I should be doing next though--more Cats for the northern front? Maces, Pikes and/or Longbows for defense? Going back to domestic builds, like finally getting some Courthouses down?

Next, let's take a look at some demos:


My GNP is improving! Hopefully we'll get some research done before the Golden Age finishes--I still have no idea where we should go next.




Lots of Paper being researched--is that a direction we want to go?

That's about it--I'll be back in a bit with the T151 Pre-turn stuff, hopefully BaII will have popped in at some point with some input.

[Cheater Hater]

I took the T151 PreTurn pictures and put them here, but I have no idea what I want to do this turn--SS may be open, but I wish I had a lot more troops to attack it with (and most importantly, a lot more Cats). Xenu's stack has disappeared into the fog with our Knights dying, and as such I have no clue where he's going to attack next--how much of a priority do I put of defending the south and trying to continue our push in the north?

[Cheater Hater]

I did finally play the turn, pictures are here, but I want to get a full report done soonish. I think the best plan is to try to attack SS soonish, so I moved all the Cats up, while keeping the other southern 1-movers back so they can defend my southern holdings--of course, the best case involves that stack either moving northward or towards plako. I'll go into more detail in the actual report.

[Cheater Hater]

T151 Report:
This turn was a lot less eventful than last turn, but it was probably harder overall since the path wasn't nearly as clean-cut. Let's start with the northern theater this time:


Lots of troop callouts this time, and that doesn't even count the non-stacks, like the Cat returning from its HR duty and the Longbow moving to guard Chang once I move all the troops up. And yes, that does mean I'm planning on making a move on SS soon--if SS doesn't get a significant increase in defenses, the attack turn is T154, with a tentative attack force of:
22 Cats
12 Knights (some damaged)
4 Maces
4 Pikes
1 HA (Medic)
2 Phalanx (probably upgraded to Maces)
Again, this is very tentative (I don't think that leaves Britta a defender, for instance), but this should be enough troops, especially considering that the troop composition is weaker than BK had (though there's still time for some pikes to be whipped in, to say nothing of the whole stack showing up). Of course, moving up all those Cats could have some dire consequences...


Yes, Jeff does have only a single Pike in it at the moment, why would that trouble you?
Seriously, the situation isn't nearly as bad as it looks--those Phalanxes will be upgraded to Maces soon (probably next turn even--I can upgrade 3-4 Maces a turn, so all the remaining active Phalanxes will be upgraded to Maces in time, along with the remaining Spear), and the three Knights that were hanging around Jeff are currently on loan to Annie for HR purposes. Still, if the whole stack comes this direction, these troops won't be enough to survive more than a turn or two, but they aren't alone--the other Knights being produced in the south are available for Jeff, I think I can get an archer down there (which can be upgraded to a longbow), and I can whip a Castle if disaster strikes.

The real question here is what xenu's gigantic stack does--there are four realistic possibilities, and each of them affects us in different ways:

1. The stack moves north to garrison SS: This will stifle my advance, and leave us at a stalemate--except that plako will still devour xenu's backline. If this happens, I probably will try to make peace (asking for a large sum of gold).
   
2. The stack moves east, trying to attack Jeff: This is clearly a worst-case scenario for us, but it leaves him with most of his troops outside his territory--depending on how fast plako is with his conquests (notice that plako hasn't made any gains yet, according to the tracker), we could wipe out xenu's territory before he could wipe out my southern territory (though the city across the water might not be easily takeable)
   
3. The stack moves west, to defend against plako's invasion: By far the best case for us, as it lets me take SS without worrying about xenu's counter-attack in the south.
   
4. Xenu splits the stack somehow--I think these cases are generally good for us, since it would take a decent number of troops to defend SS, while I feel like I can defend in the south against a partial stack.
   

That's the most important part of this turn--I'll do the rest of the report (domestic overview, demo analysis) later

[BaII]

I think we need to see what Xenu's stack will do before we found a city on the C tile, if we ever get a chance to hit him with our cat's and send in the rest of our troops, I would think that would lead to a positive result. We can't let Plako collect all the spoils of war since we desperately need a lot more cities. Did u spend the GG yet? I think a medic 3 unit would be great here. Also sorry for the lack of response to some of your earlier posts, schools been getting busier.

[Cheater Hater]

What do you specifically want to hit with the Cats--SS, the large stack, the large stack in SS, something else?

Yeah, we still have the GG--I could make that HA a Medic 3, though the other possibility I was thinking of was taking the Pike I made Woodsman 1 and angling to make it a Woodsman 3 Medic 3 super-unit--that might be a bit too optimistic, at least for now though :/

Xenu is continuing to whip a ton of units--he's down about 70 points since we started the war (which does include the two cities we razed, but nothing from plako yet), so I'm assuming he can hold off semi-reasonably against plako. I don't know how many spoils of war we can reasonably take though--we can't afford to keep many cities past where the capital would be right? I'm assuming we would keep SS if we take it, then we have the C spot, a couple other cities we can found in the area (wherever xenu's cities are that are keeping all the residual culture around), and then we really need to start building Courthouses

Do you have any thoughts on the domestic stuff BaII? When should we turn back on research, and where do we head? Can we afford to whip out some Courthouses/other economic buildings after the Golden Age, or will that have to wait until the war dies down a bit?

I'm currently waiting to get in the game (I think I might bounce off zanth), but I'll get the preturn pictures soon