[SPOILERS] - social distancing with pindicator

[naufragar]

Just wanted to chime in to say that I appreciate your battle screenshots. They're super legible.

[pindicator]

Appreciate that Naufrager!  Sometimes it's hard to convey the battlefield and not also clutter the screen up at the same time.

So I fell asleep on the couch shortly after my post last night, and when I woke up there were still some things around the house I needed to do - anyway, we'll get to the turn later today, after my coffee's kicked in.  Probably for the better as I was really starting to stress out about Superdeath's horchers.  The problem is he could easily move everything in the picture back to threaten the capital:  the horchers on the boat could load up, and all the other units could go back to the tile he was on last turn and then we're looking at 18 attackers into the capital.  No problem next turn for the capital, I'll have enough spears to stuff in.  Ah, but then he shifts again and threatens either Yamhill or Clatsop.  And now with a stack of 18 I can't defend those cities - he'll over run my defenders and the spears in Tillamook will be too slow to catch up.

I'm starting to see Krill's point about Numids.  Not that I liked his solution about butchering their uniqueness, but they definitely are in a bad position relative to horse archers.  The only unit I can make are spears and he can just dance around them as long as he's smart.

Really the problem I have to overcome here is that Superdeath has control of the center of the battlefield.  It's like chess, right?  He has the center of the board and he can pivot his knights to threaten the whole board at his whim because of that.  My knights on the rim ... are dim.  So what I really need to be fighting for here is the center of the battlefield - I need to get all of my spears to that hill SW of the capital and control the battlespace.  Then he can't.  If I stall he's just going to keep pushing up the power in the center while I have to increase my power in 3 cities at once to keep up.

If I attack I probably don't kill his stack.  I will be taking advantage of my Numid's traits though - keeping a unit with innate 30% withdraw for defense just seems silly.  So I imagine the numids will kill 2-3, retreat with 2-3, and lose 3-5.  Better keep those numbers on the low end, so kill 2, wound 7.  Then I have 4 spears that should then all win because the odds will be better than the ~70% they are getting right now.  And the sword should also then win.  That leaves him with 2 horchers in that main stack.  Now he can't threaten more than 10 against the capital and I'm freer to move my spears up to the center.

Downsides are I'm going to lose most of my Numids.  I really would like to keep them around because as soon as the horse archers gets expelled I want to be able to quickly take the fight to Superdeath.  In addition, my Numids are my best units for defending the lands I took from Gira - everything else is too slow.  And as always the downside is that I get unlucky on the first few rolls, lose too many units, and then I probably lose Yamhill and all of Giraland and Superdeath just snowballs away.  He wouldn't even have to take my capital to win - he'd just need to bottle me up and claim all that land to the south and west.  (Oh how nice to only have one neighbor!!!!!!  )

I'm going to think a little bit if there are any alternatives I like, but it seems more and more obvious what I have to do.

[pindicator]

By the way lurkers, what would you do here? Post in the spoiler thread, it's a real puzzler.

[vanrober]

Hello Pindi,

I played with Gira the game, and it has been a pleasure to read this post, so much good and nice information that hopefully will help me become a better player, right now i barely win on monarch difficulty so it was just impossible vs your brain, we new that i think.

I'm not sure if you will see our post to see the random decisions we made, but im going to try to resume them. We tried to make the second city in that forest, not even in the plain of yamhill, just beacause we were thinking on monuments and 1 tile less of distance cost. Also we thought our area was done on the east so we though that either we take that city or we would be constrained in that area. we didnt have AH yet.

Also tried to make the tataras and mathematics to get then those trees choped and build up a group of spears and axes, but you comed faster. Several of those forest were just 1 turn to chop and with road to that goal.

The useless war we didnt end was with the aim of making you waste some hammers and slow you a bit. Instead of that we get a useless war nad some upkeep cost for our units. Maybe with one of those warriors we wouldnt lose a city by the barbars (you are not the unluckiest of the game i think hehehe).

It would be really instructive if you could tell me the cities you would have build in our position. We didnt make more than 4 cities for the fear of more costs and be unable to defend them.

Also i read a lot about getting 100% o 0% investigating but not any other percentage and i didnt see you doing so, isnt it better? Ive seen you were posting where was the break even point, what breakeven is the one that makes you think you builded too many cities?
And the last question, how do you know how many people investigated a tech?

Thanks in advance.

Pd: Im spanish and my english is kind of terrible, sorry if your eyes bleed too much.

[giraflorens]

I agree with everything Vanrober said. I also enjoyed reading this thread. I am astonished by the degree of detail and clearness (as Naufragar pointed out).

Also I want to add that I admire the lovely way of addressing to the other players (I am not ironical). I appreciated, even we you were pissed off by our warriors.

It was a pleasure to play with you, and I hope to play far away from you the next matches.

[pindicator]

Finally playing the turn, after the AI Tournament stream ended.

And we have gotten lucky.

We have gotten VERY lucky.

But that has opened the door to a game mechanics question I need answered before i can finish the turn.




I have spawned a Great General in Clatsop. I have a Great General Spear in Tillamook that is promoted C2.

If I move the new GG, the spear in Clatsop, and the GG Oliver Cromwell Spear in Tillamook all to the tile circled in yellow, then attach the GG to the normal spear everything gets 7xp. Actually, we'll add another unit but that's beside the point. This will use up all the movement of the units involved.

My question: If I then use the GG on the normal spear, will I be able to promote both that spear and the Oliver Cromwell spear to Mobility so that they both can then attack the horcher stack?

[Cornflakes]

That is a very interesting question. Pick an IMP leader, sim some combat to earn GG’s, and test it in the sim? EDIT: I think you can also just Worldbuilder add GG’s in a sim

[GeneralKilCavalry]

If you mean morale, then I think so, but you best simulate this in worldbuilder.

[pindicator]

Yeah, I meant Morale. Whoops

That is an excellent suggestion. I just world-buildered it and it works! That's 2 more spears for the attack!

[pindicator]

098

This was very much a make-or-break turn, which was why I had been dreading playing it.  But no matter how I thought about it, I couldn't see any better option than to attack out.  My spears had odds in the 70%, and my healthy Numids were coin flips when you factored in the withdraw.  However, a few bad dice rolls - especially with the spears - and this attack could end very, very badly.

I thought about starting with the Numids to protect the spears, but I figured I would lose too many Numids to justify that.  Better to lose on average 1 spear then half my Numids.

So we started with the spears. Also, I'm going to try putting combat in 'code' tags just for some better formatting.

Code:

C1 spear vs C1-Shock horcher (73.4%) - FLAWLESS WIN
C1 spear vs C1-Shock horcher (73.4%) - win
C1 spear vs C1-Shock horcher (73.4%) - win
spear vs C1-Shock horcher (68.3%) - win

Now that's a great start!  Odds were that we should have lost 1, and I was really scared of losing 2.  Those were all 3xp wins, and suddenly I was within spitting distance of my next great general:



Now it was time for the Numids.  A C1 Numid was almost identical to a C2 Numid (46% chance of survival compared to 49%), so I sent in the only healthy C1 Shock Numid I had in the area first, and then the C2 Numids

Code:

C1-shock Numid vs C2 horcher (22.9% win / 23.1% retreat) - loss, 2 hits.  horcher to 66hp
C2 Numid vs C2 horcher (27.2% / 21.8%) - FLAWLESS WIN!

A flawless victory when I only had 27% chance to win!
That flawless victory also earned me 4xp, which translated into 12 GG points.  A great general was born!  But would he show up nearby or way off in Giraland where he couldn't affect the battle?



How about right next door?

And here was where I got the idea I explained in the previous post.  I had a spear in Clatsop, I could attach the new GG to it and have another hitter for my fight against Superdeath's horcher stack.  But then I remembered the old Morale trick, where if you expend a unit's movements and then promote it to Morale it would have another point of movement to use.  Would this also work with a unit that was already a GG and was just given XP from another GG?  So that was what my question was really about- wondering if I could make this work with 2 different GG units.  And it turns out you could!

So we set it up:



I also included a 3rd spear from the capital, this one a C2 spear that I would promote to formation.  Perhaps I should have attached Belisarius to this guy instead but I wanted to get a stronger anti-cav unit.  A c2 spear going up against a shock horcher is 77% odds; a formation spear jumps up to 90%.  I also included a C2 Numid so I could get formation on that unit as well.  Now we had 2 more spears that could hit Superdeath's horchers this turn!

I sent them in next:

Code:

GG C2-Morale Spear, Oliver Cromwell v C2 horcher (88.9%) - win
GG C1-Morale Spear, Belisarius v C2 horcher (77.9%) - loss

Alas, poor Belisarius!  The savior of the Carthaginian people, his actions alone made victory possible.  He had his own battle won, the evil Superdeath horse archer on the ropes, but then like Hector at the gates of Troy the cost of holding off the enemy was his life.  He's earned a city named after him for all he made possible this turn.

Even with the general lost, the battle was going far better than I had envisioned.  I thought i would kill most of his horchers in the main stack and leave a few wounded survivors.  Now we were in position to wipe out the stack completely.  It would have to be the Numids that would finish the job:

Code:

Formation C2 Numid v Sentry Horcher (75.1% / 7.5%) - loss!  And only 1 hit done!
C1 Sword v 66hp C2 horcher (87.9%) - win
C2 Numid v 78hp Sentry Horcher (85.2% / 4.4% ) - win
Numid v 34hp C2 horcher (99.4% / 0.2%) - win

Another bit of bad luck in losing a 2nd Numid at good odds, but in the end we kill 9 horse archers at the cost of 2 Numidian Mercenaries, 1 spear, and 1 great general.

And most important, the center of the battlefield is now under my control!


The rest of the turn was straight forward.  I arranged some cities for a little more growth because production isn't quite an emergency.  And I have gold connected next turn!  Up at Lincoln I spent 80g to upgrade the warrior to a spear, whipped the axe there to completion, and moved up the fresh spear from Malheur - a unit that I thought I would need for the capital now freed up.

I also realized I made a mistake.  I thought Superdeath had grabbed Currency last turn - that was not true!  It was Mjmd's screen I was looking at, thinking I had clicked on Superdeath.  So only Mjmd and Mr. Cairo have Currency (maybe Charriu - he's the last civ for me to meet).  Superdeath could still be teching for Construction, which means I need to pillage the elephant tile if at all possible.

But next goal is definitely to retake Coos, give my capital a better buffer, and make it a narrower front for my spears to work against his horse archers.  After that we make galleys.

Still, the prospect of elephants looms large.  I have been thinking that maybe I should have gone for Construction ahead of Currency myself, but then looking at my finances after the turn rolled...




Ouch!  My break-even is now at 10%.  If I had gone anything other than Currency I would have been dead in the water for 20 turns trying to get there.  Still, I can't help but think that I'll be seeing elephants and catapults soon.

PRO: 8 (353)
FIN: 9 (287)