[SPOILERS] Pindicator as Qin Shi of China - Boring Ol' Vanilla

[Ceiliazul]

good luck, and Death To Barry!

[pindicator]

Turn 069

Gold is mined, monument is chopped; in 10 turns it'll start to be a real city.



With the gold hooked up we can now get Writing in 2. I thought about keeping on Iron Working, but because Barry and Cyneheard made me accelerate my timeline by the time I get Iron Working out it will be too late: either I will be winning and swords won't do more than clean up, or I'll be dead. Besides, we need to get a library going in the capital so we can have some sort of economic gain after taking Barry's lands.

Better though is that Cyneheard took peace. So I have 10 turns to sort things out in my east. I put Willow Creek on neutral food: Sheep, Copper, grass hill mine, and plains hill mine net a solid 15hpt. Because we have peace we're going to build a barracks in 4 turns and then however units I think I need. This city is going to be my military production for a long time, I think.

Out east:



I whipped the axe in Tandem again to get overflow for another one right after. Or maybe a chariot just so it gets in with the first wave. Probably a chariot. I'm having a big debate with myself about whether I move out on turn 71 or 72. Obviously every turn lost is bad, but the unit composition changes are enough to make me think. I can attack with either:

Turn 71
5 axes
2 chariots
1 spear
1 archer OR 1 upgraded warrior

Turn 72
8 axes
3 chariots
2 spears
1 archer OR 1 upgraded warrior

Waiting 1 turn would add 5 units. Then again, it's not like I won't be making those units anyway - they'd just be a turn behind. So probably the right answer is to just go in on 71 and have the additional units be a tile behind. They'd catch up when we capture the first city.

I'll be bringing the 2 workers along as well, to road a connection to the first city we take. Going to need more workers soon, I'm sure.

Also I'm not sure if I burn 80g on a warrior upgrade or not. Probably better to just take the archer; I don't know if an upgrade from a 3 strength archer to a 5 strength axe (for purposes of this attack) is worth spending 80g. Cash is going to be tougher to come by soon.

All right, we're going in on 71

[Commodore]

[pindicator]

Turn 070

I think it's starting to become obvious what i'm up to





But I gotta keep on whipping!



Barry whipped a couple of pop away this turn. He lost 2 points, and I think that's 2 or 3 pop. Forgot to check what the points were for 1 population, but I lost 2 points for the 2 pop I whipped away this turn. Hopefully he's whipping in his next settler and ignoring the power graphs...

I might start a library next turn in the capital. Depends how confident I feel. But Barry's power graph is pretty much non-existant

[pindicator]

Turn 071

A bit of apprehension going into this turn. I've been reasonably sure that Barry wasn't prepared, but any time you go in blind it's a bit of a nervous moment. Will he be waiting with half a dozen units in his city and we're looking at a slog? Plan for the worst, hope for the best - or something like that.

Actually, where have our daily affirmations gone? We could use something like that after all this mapmaker negativity I've been throwing around.



Yes, I think that sums it up about right!

And what did those axemen find?



Oh dear...

Really trying to think if I want to keep pumping units or not. Obviously Barry is going to realize what is up next turn when he can swap everything over to military builds. The problem for him is that if he wasn't making an axe in Benghazi now then he isn't going to have one by the time I take it. He just finished a chop (lucky timing on my part), so while the road to Benghazi is no longer as covered as it was, this means he doesn't have a quick 20h he can throw into an archer or other unit. Next turn he'll be able to swap builds, and the turn after he'll be able to whip -- so this looks like Benghazi is falling.

The ivory will be huge for recovering from the whipping I've done. Tandem and Scales are both sitting at over 30 turns of whip anger. Here's hoping things continue to run smoothly.

[pindicator]

Turn 072

Well, a bit of bad luck as it appears the forest chop did indeed go into an axe for Barry.



Still, that second chop won't finish in time for a new unit inside the city. And unless there's another axe on the road 2E of Benghazi then we should be fine for capturing the city. 9 against 3 is pretty nice odds. But if I open the next turn and see it's now 9 against 5 ... well, things could get dicey.

I swapped Scales and Tandem to chariots. Almost did it with the capital too, but I'm being greedy and building a library there instead. 2 chops go into that next turn

Up north, WilliamLP is really trying to encourage me to whip some galleys



Some IC routes would be nice, if we get that far


Edit: I forgot to mention, Azza lost a city to someone

[pindicator]

Turn 073

ATTACK!!!!!



Barry got another archer in last turn, but we had enough to make it work. The question now was just how much would we lose. Our battles went:

Axe vs CG Archer 23.1% - loss, 28hp left
Axe vs Axe 25.1% - loss, 32hp left
Axe vs Archer 30.6% - WIN!
Axe vs Spear 95.9% - win
Spear vs Axe 95.4% - win
Archer vs Archer 97.7% - win

Very spectacularly. The first two axes won taking a lot of HP off the defenders, and then the third axe won a low-odds battle. After that we got to mop up and even select which two units to finish things off so that they'd get 2xp.

Say hello to our 6th city:



Sadly we haven't killed all of his units, but that's hardly to be expected. Now he knows we're coming, and he has 2 cities to whip and chop stuff out of.

I moved some units to cover the forest hill, so he could not park the spear and archer there. Next turn we'll move everything along the hills towards his horse city.



Maybe I should whip some more units...

Widening our net a little, Cyneheard is taking advantage of me going east to take all the good spots on our border.



Annoying, but the right play by him. I know the city is there because there was a forest on that tile before.

And someone finally built the Oracle. That was late.

[Ceiliazul]

congrats! I've always thought that RNG rolls are much more important in the first few battles, and you sure stacked your dude deck right for this one!

[pindicator]

congrats! I've always thought that RNG rolls are much more important in the first few battles, and you sure stacked your dude deck right for this one!

Absolutely true, especially for early wars where less units are involved. And here I was very lucky, not only in winning the battles I did, but also that the first two losses took a lot of he out of the defenders. Then again that my winning units took little damage and can promote-heal.

Barry hasn't even touched the turn yet. I fell bad if he's already checked out- though I'm sure it will help the rest of the war

[Ceiliazul]

Barry hasn't even touched the turn yet. I fell bad if he's already checked out- though I'm sure it will help the rest of the war

I dont feel bad. 'barry' is a troll and deserves an embarrassing, but clean, death. Then he deserves to have his usual login revealed and mocked... but thats getting a bit personal. this sock puppet shit is ruining the realms experience for me.