[SPOILERS] swance bitten, twice shy

[ljubljana]

nauf should have approximate vision on our stacks, yeah.... they have a scout on the forested hill 2SW of tomokaze.... which i know because i kept moving units there last turn and the game kept prompting me to declare war on nauf when i did so, which i almost accepted . i assume they are moving it around most turns to get vision on what we are doing, as i am doing in their theater

yeah, unfortunately i am not sure that ANY of these plans leads to anything useful happening within 4 turns, unless we either locate the bulk of their cats or identify via sharkfinning that something really major is happening in the west.... there was a small sharkfin last turn but not enough to represent a full engagement, i think, especially given the mostly-intact nauf stack we can see by qohaito - i'll post updated graphs when the turn rolls

GT can't hit the stack with collateral out of the fog until it reaches the grasslands tiles 1W+1W or 1W+1NW of Liabella

hmm.... for whatever reason, due to the way sentry works, a sentry unit 1W of lalibela does not get vision on GT's capital. so they could set a trap by storing combat workers there as well as siege and then slamming us as soon as they move out. however... i THINK the capital itself is the only tile from which this is true, so i suppose with the dropped longbows granting vis into the capital this should be okay.

another thing to note is that we are currently projected to get city vis on GT via espionage points in just 5 turns.... which probably will be more than that as they are spending on us as well, but still, at least at THAT point i think we'll be able to make progress. that is, unless GT is sufficiently tricky about hiding their cat stack, but can they do that AND defend all their cities at the same time, esp when we have longbows sitting on hills throughout their territory to give even more vision?

man.... i've been getting too used to polytopia, a game that is a pretty good trainer for civ tactics mechanically..... except for the one ever so tiny flaw that all territory that has ever been explored is ALWAYS visible in that game  this idea that charging blindly into the fog in the face of an opponent's superior stack can ever be the correct thing to do is just so foreign to me.... but i suppose a key difference between nauf and us is that they may not quite have to do that, as they are ahead of us in tech by enough that they have guerilla crossbows sprinkled throughout GT's territory already

i guess really i should be happy to be getting ANYthing out of this war, attacking with horse archers and catapults into pikes + crossbows and racing someone coming in with knights on the other side i suppose one could interpret that to mean our timing was premature, but.... i am not sure i think so as every turn we delayed carried a risk of nauf peacing out or GT getting together enough spare troops to be safe at lalibela. i guess the fact that we did successfully blitz and seem in position to hold those two cities means our timing can't have been THAT far off, as long as we do manage to get some kind of additional gains out of this

[williams482]

We got two cities and we're keeping them. Regret nothing.

I think the only "error" of any significance made here was in failing to anticipate the arrival of pikes for GT, and thus a failure to tech up to and build any units that could trade efficiently with them. Which we're about to remedy with maces to be unlocked in two turns. (Incidentally, is it worth pre-building axes anywhere? being able to whip out a few maces on t142 would be nice. Assuming we have anywhere to whip them out from without further fucking our economy).

[ljubljana]

Turn 141 - Zululand

start the turn with WAIT nvm guess what finished



coast glorious coast!!!! also lol at this city getting its first ever culture from moai statues

ok, sent greenline cow/cow renewal - doing this every 10 turns might someday expose us to the consequences of being overpredictable but i want to take no chances at the borders with a serfdom swap incoming



in the north, GT has done as i hoped and is advancing their triremes up away from lalibela..... ok, now i have a plan - ambush and kill these two triremes with 3 of our own (or trap them somewhere where they can't escape without smashing uselessly against c1 triremes with the coastal defense bonus) while making maybe as many as 3 or 4 galleys in eg lalibela and adulis. that is enough to ferry not just a wave or two of longbows but also, critically, our CATAPULTS.... and with 6 of THOSE i think we can get off an attack against aksum as long as their collateral is not in immediate range (moving up our 2-movers at the same time of course). and with the initial group of longbows having hung around and pillaged for a few turns in advance of that, we should be able to come to a pretty good understanding of how likely that is to be the case. and yeah, of course if we do see the cats at aksum, we try to cut them off and go at matara instead



this could be an opening.... i left an exposed scouting chariot last turn, which they combat-roaded over too and killed with a pike. but.... it appears that they have left only this one pike covering their two combat workers >:D which should be pretty valuable to them and very difficult to replace in their current whipped-out state. vodka claims that two shock impi have 74% odds to defeat a shock pike...... we are running a bit low on impis which is a bit concerning as their role as cover for our 2-movers is not obsolete, but killing 2 combat workers when our opponent has engineering and where we expect to rely heavily on pillaging seems too high-value not to go for

shock impi vs shock pike (9.9%): dies, doing 1.9 HP of damage. i expected that at 4.1 health the pike would have odds on our impi but i guess not....? so is a 4-health pike generally going to be worse at fighting than a 4-health spear or is this some quirk of the way promotion math works? anyways we only have 62.7% odds to win with the second impi but i'm still going to roll the dice on it, if we have to we do have one more horse archer in range that can clean up, and horse + 2 impi for pike + 2 workers is still a positive hammer trade for us
shock impi vs 4.1 health shock pike (62.7%): wins and spawns a great general!

i was hoping the captured workers would get movement points, in which case we'd stand some chance of keeping them, but it looks like they do not so they are duly deleted. i am not entirely sure of what to do with the GG with our stack now back up to full health.... but we have a few turns to think about it as he hilariously spawned in kirishima, literally as far as possible from the ethiopian front  i suppose in theory i should delete the victorious impi as well to avoid giving GT experience (since i'm sure they have almost no odds to win against a crossbowman) but that doesn't quite sit right with me... maybe there is a way to use our horses to threaten an attacking xbow in a way that could save the unit? certainly it's worth a shot if the horses would otherwise do nothing this turn

um...... as for why we haven't seen any of GT's OTHER workers during this war....



??!?!??!? is it worth diverting like, a chariot or something to go hunting for these? maybe! or send mjmd a little ping politely telling them to please eat them

my internet kept cutting our during this period so.... it is at this point that i refreshed RB and saw williams' phenomenal suggestion about pre-building axes and possibly whipping the resulting maces..... in particular amphibious maces would be a great addition to the payload of whatever group of galleys we might throw together to go after aksum. as you mentioned our economy is pretty fucked so i am uncertain of if i will actually whip them but i can definitely start a few



well, perhaps we have reached the point where nauf's stack actually CAN'T be wiped by GT's.... or at least where there is reasonable grounds for questioning if it can. qohaito has been abandoned in the face of nauf's advance, and i guess we will see soon whether they intend to make a stand at gondar (surely the best next target for nauf, right?) or not. tbh, in GT's position there must be quite a temptation to, when invaded by two stacks, one of which you might be able to wipe and the other of which you probably can't, to go after the wipeable one just to spite ONE of my conquerers... which would in this case be us. it remains pretty damn emphatically clear that we have to pick up the pace here but i just don't know HOW other than going for some really dubious "fingers crossed" situation at matara :|

[williams482]

Yikes that's a lot of units in Nauf's stack.

Obviously we want to make further progress and I think the amphibious landing plan makes sense as a somewhat less exposed avenue towards taking Aksum, but getting into a mutually destructive battle would be disastrous for us. As discussed the geopolitical situation does not favor Nauf progressing directly from crushing GT to crashing into us, but if by the end of the war they have that stack mostly intact and ours is either mostly destroyed or damaged and vulnerable, that might be an opportunity for further gains too good for them to pass up.

Also, those workers?   

I wonder what GT is thinking with those two. They must have been trying for a trade connection with MJMD, and I guess if they're that far from home when a hot war breaks out, might as well just keep going? Seems clearly unhelpful for war effort, unless this is a hedge against a loss of resources if MJMD decides they want to cooperate?

[ljubljana]

yeah.... this could be a good time to send nauf a LONG (20t? 30t?) fish/fish just to be on the safe side. it's probably in their interest to accept something longer than they otherwise might to keep the alliance together as a refusal could spook us into peacing out, and having to destroy all of GT's (still almost nauf-sized) military by themselves... well, i imagine they could do it, but it would certainly drag out the timetable. i don't think i want to ACTUALLY peace out as that seems dastardly in a way that would impede future alliance prospects, but i think the implied threat of doing so carried in a long NAP should be ok...

sigh. at least if this war ends up hoisting nauf up into ginger's tier of favorites while we stay second-tier, both ginger and nauf will need us alive and intact to contain the other. and i think we were never going to win this game without at least one additional attack, so it may not be so bad to be far enough back from the leaders that someone may be willing to join another 2v1 with us. i say, frantically rationalizing

[ljubljana]

Turn 142 - Zululand



gingac has called us out on cutting off their ivory supply...... well. i don't really WANT to give them happy at this point (nor do we have urgent need of the wines) but i think the risk of diplomatically alienating them from refusing this is too high. i will begrudgingly accept

greenline accepted our cow/cow as well. great, one less thing we have to worry about. and they are showing their own longbows in the border cities which is of course not exactly an aggressive indicator



interturn: nauf apparently captured qohaito and moved the bulk of their stack to target what still seems most likely to be gondar (but could be yeha), and GT recaptured. and.... nauf declared war on ginger for some reason?? ginger did have a scouting chariot in the area which i guess constitutes free XP, but is it really worth declaring war over?



GT attacked and killed our worker-sniping impi with an axe... but there is no axe occupying its former position? does that mean GT deleted it, or does attacking on your own roads only cost 1/2 or 1/3 of a movement point and so the unit could retreat after they attacked? i thought attacking always cost at least 1 MP regardless of the underlying terrain.... lol wow i know so much about this game



GT is still moving their northern triremes into harm's way in search of more fish to pillage. ideally we want to attack them when they are 1N of wakatakakage so that we can attack out of the city to protect any wounded triremes should we fail to kill both units. and the timing is lined up nicely to make that happen without giving GT a warning-whip: 2t from now, GT's triremes should be 1N of the city, right as another trireme is produced in WTK. i will station the other two triremes 1NE of the city center so they can move into WTK and then attack on that turn. just to be sure, triremes only have a vision range of 1 at this point in the game yes? it seems that way from worldbuilder but i don't want to be overlooking anything



gondar defenses. certainly these look very crackable, but... where are your cats? lurking zone-defense style halfway between gondar and matara? this could in theory be a good turn to move 2 tiles from matara in the hope of forcing them to choose which city to make a stand at, and maybe getting them to abandon matara as they did at qohaito. i think we have the units in position to beat their current garrison if they don't reinforce it.... the main issues are that a) we could get collateraled from the fog in so doing b) it takes us further from the capital and potentially gives nauf a freer hand to strike at it and c) it takes our counterpunch out of range of lalibela if GT launches a stack towards it. a) i think we can guard against with a sentry unit, at least for THIS turn - we could abandon this thrust if they move up cats to intercept us, but the hope would be that they won't have any to spare if they expect holding gondar to be possible. c) i think i'm feeling ok about for now, cracking 5 CG2 longbows on a hill would require committing a significant stack i think, and probably couldn't be done without the kind of disproportionate losses that only make it the right move if GT's goal is to hurt zululand specifically as much as possible. b) is a real concern.... if they crush gondar and move on to the capital i imagine they probably will get it, but perhaps we will be in better position to take yeha and hawulti in the south in exchange. bad cities, but at least they're 2 cities....



decided to move a scout in the west up into a semi-sacrificial position (if they GT wants to expose a unit to getting pasted by nauf's stack to kill it, they can be my guest...) to check for cats and on the garrison in yeha. we can see another nicely-sized pile-o'-pikes here, but still no cats...



addis ababa looking pretty vulnerable to predatory galleys as well.... nauf will very likely get there before we could though

on going for matara this turn: i think it's viable enough to at least justify committing a sentry chariot to checking for the cats. especially since we are still a few turns from an amphibious anything being possible in the north (i do not want to show GT galleys at adulis and lalibela until they no longer have time to turn their triremes around to go kill them, so i think it's best to delay whipping 1-2 more turns)



with something like 34 units in range to attack in 2 turns, i think we can handle this if there are no catapults or major reinforcement stacks in the fog. and if there ARE cats in the fog, we do get a turn of warning as we can trade a sentry unit to find them, and/or our G2 longbows are sufficiently advanced now that i think we could use one of them.... i think with our units otherwise going to sit around doing nothing for a few turns, it is worth overloading GT's defenses with nauf and seeing if we can't prompt them to abandon matara. we certainly have enough that i'm not too worried about GT attacking out if we move to the hill, at any rate. sure, i suppose i'm down



highlighted garrison is what i left in lalibela. plus a few more g2 longbows could get back in the city if GT moves up a stack. workers are there so we can get 1-movers into the city on defense if GT abandons it, and/or so we can reposition the cats for possible amphibious transport into the aksum area

also, feeling pretty settled on engi as our next tech choice.... the planned serfdom swap means we must get those castles up asap i think, and the marginal value of extra road movement militarily is pretty decent as GT has demonstrated. still only 2 opponents have it and there is no second guilds discoverer yet either.... and not shockingly ginger has a monopoly on paper



here's what i went with re nauf diplo. 25 turns takes us right up to when our safety GA would pop for a slavery swap... or to when we could swap to slavery and mass-whip to attack if nauf get superdeathed or something. i invite them to accept as well to make this commitment public, to deter superdeath on their flank and ginger on ours. it might just not be in my nature to fully trust alliances like this outside of wartime, but if we CAN form a strong one, demilitarizing this front and turning our attention eastward towards runaway ginger and their very edible-looking economy that dreylin has already expressed some willingness to split with us certainly seems like the right geopolitical call.... major downside would be if the next 25 turns gets nauf into a runaway position themselves but i rather get the sense that a) they still have quite a bit of consolidation to do to pass ginger, as do we and b) we won't be in position for a hypothetical 2v1 with superdeath until at least that long anyways



realized at last that we can wring a significant advantage out of being first-mover here - gt DOES get vision on WTK city center if they move the triremes 2E, but if we whip this third trireme now, they won't see it on their turn, and on ours we can produce it and then hide it before they get a chance to. likewise with the galley in lalibela. so if i whip both cities now we can JUST squeeze in a second round of boat-whips before the golden age ends, if it still seems like a good way to go. 4 galleys' worth of longbows into cats certainly seems to stand a better chance of taking aksum by surprise than 2.... i am not thrilled about the hit to adulis's growth curve that would result from this but i can deal, the city has a half-finished granary and will eventually have a real food resource with which to grow back onto its tiles. seems worth a significant increase in the rate with which we could ferry troops to the aksum hills

[ljubljana]

if GT rolls the turn as they have been doing lately, and happens to be looking at our north coast cities when they do so, they are going to see our whipped galley in adulis be produced, which could unavoidably leak information to them that they can't then pretend to not have seen..... as player 2 in the split, is GT supposed to be going out of their way to NOT look at their enemy's cities when they roll the turn in case they see something get produced?

or is there something we can do about it.... what happens if we whip a unit and then swap away, leaving it at 74/50 production but still in the queue? hopefully it doesn't get produced and the overflow is saved for when we do produce it? edit: actually that doesn't even help in this case as we have to overflow into galleys next turn or we won't hit 20 hammers in time to whip on the last GA turn...

[aetryn]

if GT rolls the turn as they have been doing lately, and happens to be looking at our north coast cities when they do so, they are going to see our whipped galley in adulis be produced, which could unavoidably leak information to them that they can't then pretend to not have seen..... as player 2 in the split, is GT supposed to be going out of their way to NOT look at their enemy's cities when they roll the turn in case they see something get produced?

or is there something we can do about it.... what happens if we whip a unit and then swap away, leaving it at 74/50 production but still in the queue? hopefully it doesn't get produced and the overflow is saved for when we do produce it? edit: actually that doesn't even help in this case as we have to overflow into galleys next turn or we won't hit 20 hammers in time to whip on the last GA turn...

I don't think anyone has ever raised the point. My guess is that it's a quirk of when production happens in Pitboss and we don't get any ruling that he shouldn't look. It's fine to plan around hoping he doesn't notice, but I wouldn't expect any ruling that he shouldn't be able to see them.

[ljubljana]

ok... well, it feels like playing out of my window to log in and do anything about them now that it's been all day and nauf has played (not that i really can anyways), but GT is indeed rolling the turn, so if they look around after rolling they will see the trireme in WTK at least, as there are no other units in the city it can hide under.... if their triremes turn around now when they otherwise wouldn't have the impact will be pretty significant, taking our galleys offline for some very important turns during a potential race for the capital as we wait for our own triremes to slowly catch up or we can now try to play around it by moving up our triremes next turn, but then we probably won't actually get a chance to kill GT's boats

re our great general: how amusing would it be to use him on galleys.... we could make 6 3-move galleys or one 4-move galley (which gives heroic epic eligibility) + 2 more galleys that are 1XP away from a fourth move. these could race nauf to addis ababa which will definitely die to 6 judiciously-applied units... and could also be a horrible surprise for ginger down the line if we get a chance to fogboat ankyra with amphibious maces/muskets/grenadiers :D of course all ginger would need to prevent that idea would be like, one judiciously-placed blocking trireme though so maybe it's too cute for its own good

[williams482]

Movement costs of attacks are weird. Basically it works like this:

If the attacking unit does not actually move onto the tile it attacks into (i.e. it doesn't kill the last unit in the defending stack) then it burns the same amount of movement that would be required to move onto that tile without the help of a road. So attacking a flat ground tile burns one movement point, attacking a forest or hill burns two.

If instead the attacking unit does kill the last unit in the defending stack, and there are roads/railroads on both the attacking and defending tiles which the attacker is eligible to use, the attacker will instead only burn the movement necessary to travel from the attacking tile to the defending tile via roads.

So for example, if you have two knights on a roaded plains tile attacking two warriors on a roaded hill tile, both in your territory: The first knight will attack, win, and be out of movement, while the second knight will attack, win, and move onto the hill tile having spent only the 1/2 point of movement normally necessary to move one tile along a road.

So that axe which killed your impi probably did run off into the fog instead of being deleted.