Amica, assuming that Thoth doesn't sally, charge right in? Bombard? (I think 4 accuracy catapults should do?)
Oh and if this works out, do we keep it, or raze and settle on the grassland hill? The problem with that is that it makes further cities in soon to be former Rome awkward. If we keep Rome we'll orphan a fish but huh...
ah and I'm a colossal idiot and the GA isn't in range of Rome, because I wanted to be extra cute.
Tough battle, but that was always going to happen against fortified praetorians over a river and on a hill. Also I forgot one accuracy promotion, so the city maintained 5% culture defense . He had not used his catapults, which will now be much less useful with his few remaining hitters being severely wounded. I pulled 4 fresh knights from Hastur, which I may regret yet if Commodore chooses just this turn to invade (with generals appearing in the event log I wouldn't blame him). But if we take the capital next turn they can return to defend in time actually.
Amica predicted that Samurai would be more useful than the knights, which turned out quite correct! Also the awesome looks! Fun fact: Drill 3 Samurai (which I had got to withstand the catapult barrage) actually got better odds against praets than C3. Should I start 1 turning Samurai again in the capital, instead of knights? After all Commodore is sporting a bunch of elephants...
So, looking forward curiously to the Commodore / yuri dogpile...
I actually have animations always on. Battle is so rare in MP that I enjoy going it slow, which of course is also good against tilt (well I still tilt, but slower :P)
Commodore is going all in:
right call from him. Spoiler: what we have at home is definitely not enough to deal with this.
So we have to bring in more. But I miscounted tiles, and retreating cavalry from Rome will come out two tiles short (that would not be the case if we had control over the tile SWW of To The Strongest, where we have 48%).
Which leaves just one solution....
The spy saw a decent stack of yuri's so, we can't keep the city. Maybe it would be possible with a GG medic if we could keep the invading force in place to defend, but we have to race home (through the now liberated culture) and bring in hitters.
Luckily yuri has no visible cavalry and also no settler in sight, so I'm hopeful that we can manage an orderly retreat.
The hero conqueror samurai has to do what a samurai has to do, sadly:
Then the unspeakable happens:
I use Alt+C to select the whole stack there, but the stack contains a worker, who promptly chops our superawesome lumbermill . We can build a workshop to go from 3/2/2 to 2/4/0 which isn't horrible, but it also costs a much needed health point in More Light
At least Brute can use the lumber to 1turn a Longbow.
Oh and we were pretty lucky destroying Commodore's fleet:
It was all C1 vs C1 battles. We could also have lost 3 ourselves and still sank all of his (assuming decent hits in the losing fights), but of course this is much nicer, especially as we'll now have 3 C2 triremes.
And yes the rolls agaisnt Thoth probably were above average as well, the inevitable 90% samurai loss nonwithstanding...
fingers crossed for next turn, it's gonna be fun. But I really have no idea how it'll turn out.
So we dig right in. The samurai go first. They should be just enough to take out the elephants, and then the knights can charge into Horchers and melee and flank catapults galore meanwhile.
Except -
The horse archers defend. Why is that? Does it have to do with them being immune against the samurai's first strikes?
Oh well. Cut into the horsies then.
Here's the log:
Again I can't complain, we dind't lose a single > 80% fight as far as I remember. The only bummer was how, as tradition wants it, our GG unit loses its firstfight despite good odds (third time in this game). Of course I was greedy - I put the GG on a horse archer for the free upgrade, but I also wanted to use him this turn to take out a unit.
And here's what remains:
Still a huge load of catapults, but at this point they're just free XP.
The big strategic decision now is whether we press the advantage against Commodore, or wrestle with yuri for control of former Rome. Either way we need to heal for some turns, and maybe yuri makes the decision for us meanwhile and attacks Hastur. I don't really fear him, as his stack is so slow. On the other hand we now have next to no catapults left, so attacking into crossbows/pikes is tricky.
Our citizens meanwhile have little understanding for heroic defense of our homeland.
Apparently they really prefer the knights to stay back at home doing parades. And this picture is after I sent MPS from Hastur, which in turn also went unhappy, as did Vivo. And Commodore also pillaged the ivory camp for the second or third time this game to make up for his troubles.
Hm, so the knights of course would've had a much harder time. On the other hand, the unpromoted elephants can now promo heal immediately, including for whatever fights they won (opposed too having to wait for turnroll), so we might actually take some losses there yet, together with the catapult barrage. But I think promoting would've been better yes.
My gut feeling says that shock promoted HA's would probably have killed the odd samurai extra, but then they would be hard pressed to take formation against knights later. Personally I'd probably have promoted some, but left others to promo-heal.
![[Image: woohoo.gif]](https://www.civforum.de/images/smilies/woohoo.gif)
. He had not used his catapults, which will now be much less useful with his few remaining hitters being severely wounded. I pulled 4 fresh knights from Hastur, which I may regret yet if Commodore chooses just this turn to invade (with generals appearing in the event log I wouldn't blame him). But if we take the capital next turn they can return to defend in time actually. 
.
Why is that? Does it have to do with them being immune against the samurai's first strikes? 
.
