Burning Down the House [Mr. Cairo Spoilers]

[RefSteel]

Thanks for the update - sorry for leaving you out of my spamfest last night! I admit that the then-latest update in the thread being almost two weeks old and ending with, "not really a lot to talk about" was the main factor there, so now I'm looking forward to hearing more about the Fiery Burning Plan as it takes form!

In the meantime: Has playing as the Sheaim affected your playstyle and plans so far, in a direction that a different civ with a strong Axe-replacing UU wouldn't have led? I've never tried them out myself.

[Mr. Cairo]

In terms of my playstyle, I suppose I don't need to worry about garrisons so much, animals are still a big threat, so it's not like I can send out settlers with just one warrior as escort. But once the city's down I don't need to worry about barb warriors coming by.
It's a lot more useful a trait in SP, when there's a lot more barbs, and map features that spawn them.
I had already planned on getting earlier cottages and being more aggressive this game, and I think rather than the Sheim focusing me in that direction, they just compliment that plan.
I'll do a proper report with screenshots of my cities and such in a few turn when I'm working less unimproved tiles

[Mr. Cairo]

The army assembles:



I'm committed to this attack now, my economy is tanking, and what cash I do end up saving I'll be spending on upgrades. Fortunately, my target (DaveV) appears to be suffering as well, and has somehow slipped in score to below me. However, I can't keep this build-up hidden; I hadn't realised how much power Pyre Zombies have on the graph/soldier count. I've built two and my power graph has done this:



Demos (after I hit end turn and another PZ was built):



My cities:

[Mr. Cairo]

Good and bad news. Good news is one of my scouts captured a Griffon, which will make for a great advance scout towards DaveV. Unfortunately, that Griffon revealed that DaveV is about to settle a city towards me, and on my route to his capital. He'll have a lot more warning now.



I'm going ahead with it anyway, I don't have a choice. My plan is to advance my workers, covered just by Warriors, to build a road towards his new city. He'll hopefully think I'm just trying to establish a trade route towards him. He's probably building a road to his new city as well, so assuming he abandons this city once my army appears (which he should) I will at least have a road through neutral territory towards his cap.

Best case scenario is he sends some units forward to the barb city that I can then ambush and kill right away. These ones by this new city are well promoted, but he's not in apprenticeship, so he can only get promos from fighting, so hopefully most of the warriors he'll be defending with will be without relevant promos.

Hopefully, 8 Pyre Zombies, 2-3 Warriors, 1 Scout, and 1 Griffon, will be enough to take his cap. I did some sims and found I could do it against up to 12 Warriors. I don't know how many he will be able to fit into the city, but his current power is low, and his hammers are even lower:


he is last place in MFG right now, and even should he swap to as many hammer-producing tiles as possible, that's still not a lot of production, so I'm hoping he won't be able to put more than 12-14 Warriors in his capital. I also determined it is worth delaying the attack by a turn to avoid attacking across a river, especially for the turn(s) after the first one. During the attack, my first two PZs should die, at which point I'll get odds on subsequent attacks. The next turn I'll lose 1 or 2, then clean up (ideally).

At home I'm going to build a settler to claim the nearby copper. I thought about delaying the attack until I get it, since having an extra point of power on all my PZs would be fantastic, but I don't think I can afford to delay that long (8-10 turns before I hook up the copper). If DaveV doesn't build up his military in the next few turns, I might go ahead and delay the attack until I have copper.

[Mr. Cairo]

hmm, is this the action of someone who thinks I'm only building a road to make a trade route:


I don't know. Time will tell however: if there's even a little spike in his power after next turn I'll know that I tipped my hand and triggered an earlier reaction. (I'm assuming his cap can build a warrior in 1 turn, but with his mfg so low, it might not. In which case any response wont be visible on the graphs for 2 turns, but that'll be the turn I launch the attack so I should still know, not that it'll make any difference).

But, one thing that is useful to see is that he's keeping units at this city and is working that corn. If I can take this city (as opposed to it being auto-razed) then I can launch my attack earlier AND get bronze weapons to my units before attacking his cap (since I'll have a connection to this city and can upgrade the units there). Now obviously that would give him a lot more time to get prepared, but with a higher base strength on my PZ, and just having more of them, should hopefully make the conquest slower, but inevitable, wheras before I was hoping for a quick strike against his cap to knock him out before he can really build up.

So my plan is to wait one mroe turn to bring the last straglers together with my main force then move forward the turn after. I *think* the city will have grown by the time he sees my PZs. The farm was completed this turn, so the food would have been added when he hit end turn. Then when he hits end turn on the next turn (while my stack is still out of view) it'll have grown and I'll get to keep the city. Unless he worked a no-food tile the turn the city was built. I think, PBEM mechanics are difficult to wrap my head around sometimes.

Anyway, that's the plan. So to that end I'm going to further sacrifice future development and build the city directly on the copper:


The settler is three turns away and I hope to have a road built right towards it by then. The Spider is an issue, and there's a Lion nearby, I have one scout with Animal Mastery (or whatver the promo is called) so with one warrior softening the spider up I hope to be able to capture it, which will come in handy.

If all goes according to plan, I'll take Market Garden, connect it to my trade network which has copper and thus upgrade all my PZs and Warriors in that city, then I'll march on his cap. Ideally he'll have tried to defend Market Garden and will have that many less Warriors in his much tougher cap (cultural defenses).

If it all goes pear-shaped I'd like to at least take Market Garden, and then declare war on the barbs and take Deluoc, which is already well improved. it wont make up for what I've sacrificed to get here, but it might be enough for me to build up beyond what Dave can deal with and finish the conquest. I'll still be really far behind, but at least I won't be a victim for the fourth game in a row.

[Mr. Cairo]

Well, for some reason I forgot that he could just move a unit on that hill to join my Workers and Warriors, letting him see my PZs in the barb city.

But he did so with an injured, well-promoted Warrior.
So, having lost both strategic and operational surprise, it's time to brute force it. But first, a little finnesse. I moved the Warriors 1 tile N, then had my workers chop that forest to get rid of the defensive bonus (hilariously giving Steinvik 1 hammer). I then declared war, telporting my workers 1N, and attacked with a Shock PZ. It had good odds, but I still got lucky and it won flawlessly.
Here's the situation at eot:


Market Garden grew, so I'll be able to keep it, and those units on the corn are still there so they wont have any fortify bonus in the city. He's also moving Warriors up to rienforce Market Garden, which is good news for me.

My Griffon did some scouting closer to his core:


but then it went back out to sea. It's too precious for me to lose. Once I take Market Garden, I'll heal it up there.

Here are my cities, in case anyone is interested:











Power graph:

[Mr. Cairo]

Dave left one unpromoted Warrior on the hill in front of the city. My Shock PZ that killed the Warrior flawlessly last turn had 96% odds before I promoted it further, so he took on the task and killed the Warrior once again. It got enough xp from that battle that I could promote it to C3 afterwards. This is the current situation:



This is going better than expected. Even injured, that C3+Sh PZ gets ~70% odds on the top defender in Market Garden, although I wont be risking it. Only the C2+Sh Warriors are good defenders, so one sacrificial PZ will weaken them both enough that I shouldn't need to sacrifice any more to win the next battles. If I have to I'll sac a Warrior, but I don't want to lose more than 1 PZ.

I don't know what Dave is thinking here. With Warriors against PZs defending in either a stack or peicemeal is a losing strategy unless your stack is so large you can absorb the losses and damage, which his isn't.
He should instead be gathering up as many Warriors as he can, and use the mobility his roads gives him to attack my stack once he can do so from 2 tiles away.
If I were in his position I wouldn't have let Market Garden grow and retreated to the cap. Then leave enough Warriors in the cap that I would need to sacrifice some PZs to take it, but keeping the main force of Warriors 2 tiles away that can retake the city. Especially since at that point the PZ stack will be split up and will start to suffer from it's own explosions.

Back home, after not moving for dozens of turns and just before I was planning to kill or capture it, the Spider moved:

Hopefully it'll attack and get very injured killing the Warrior, so my Scout can capture it afterwards. In three turns I'll have the copper for Bronze weapons on my Pyre Zombies and I'll begin the march on Dave's capital.

[Mr. Cairo]

If there are any lurkers following this, I'd be happy to answer any questions or respond to any comments.

[Jabah]

Lurking this (globally) but no question for now

[Hitru]

Same here, you have lurkers even though we are not that active in posting.