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Supercharrihitstouristicharryshallowdocious

Turn 251

Well our "attack the weakling" plan finally happened. Cornflakes got a bit of warning - probably due to our 33 cuirassiers charging through TBS' open borders towards him.
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Anyway this is where his zone defenders are, moving toward Mincemeat. They can reinforce the city before next turn, so we might just bypass it and it's 60% defences entirely and go for the capital instead.
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Meanwhile this is where our expeditionary force landed. We should be able to take the city next turn and land a whole bunch more units the turn after, possibly hitting ChocolatPretzel amphibiously. Perhaps.
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Demos and power. This is the reason we're attacking someone we don't border. Interestingly CF has peace treaties with TBS and Pindicator, so this is a 1 vs 1 for a little while. Unless Pindi/Commodore decide to attack us...
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Turn 152

Cornflakes brought up enough stuff to make us retreat from Mincemeat. We went back into TBS' borders so that we can 1-turn the city if he moves any pikes out of it. If CF sends a worker to find out where we went he'll notice that TBS is massing a small strike force of knights on his border as well. mischief
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If we attacked Mincemeat or he caught us in the open with his cats we'd initially both have lost about 20 units each, but then we'd be stuck in his territory and vulnerable and we really need those cuirs for when our peace treaty with TBS runs out.
[Image: 152.jpg]

Meanwhile, this turn we're again confident of taking Chex Mix next turn (if CF doesn't have a big stack of knights in range - his small stack of knights shouldn't be able to do too much damage, hopefully.) We also have a bunch of units on boats to threaten/take Chocolate Pretzel if he doesn't reinforce it or reinforce our attack on Chex Mix if needed.
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Military builds continue and you'll notice that we're making -4 gold at 0% research! hammer
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TBS can now build privateers and only requires Astronomy to get to frigates. But he should be after Pindicator, right?
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Demos and power.
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Turn 156

It's been four turns of dancing around and wishing our forces were more joined up than they were, then splitting up our forces a bit more to probe for weakness, then lamenting the lack of a doom stack, etc. The confidence about taking Chex Mix in the last report was a little overstated (CF had some cuirassiers and knights in range and won the hammer exchange), but some reinforcement and a bit of ping-pong with a force that surprised Peppermint Bark from the north means we're now in Chex and Choco Pretzel, with a strong force poised to hit Cashew Bars next turn. (We bombed the culture down to 13% this turn.)
[Image: t156%20%287%29.jpg]

But we think CF finally made a mistake (he's played the war wonderfully so far, managing to bloody our nose badly a couple of times from a position of real weakness). Our cuirassier stack moved past Mincemeat to threaten Cashew, but we added a couple of oromos to it, and blocked his pikes off with a couple more oromos. In his haste to save the capital he piled all the pikes from Mincemeat into our stack, killing 7 cuirs, 2 wellies and 4 oromos. However he lost 10 pikes doing that, and the rest are somewhat injured. If we can clean them up then Mincemeat might be on the menu... (sorry)
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- C2 cuir vs 4.9/6 C2 formation pike - 72%... WIN - 3 hits.
- Cuir vs 4.9/6 C2 formation pike - 50% (7% withdraw)... WIN! 1 hit

- Cuir vs 4.9/6 C2 formation pike - 50% (7% withdraw)... WITHDRAW! 4 hits each smile
- C1 Cuir vs C2 formation spear - 79% (3% w/d)... WIN! 2 hits
- 11.2/12 Cuir vs 3.8/6 C2 formation pike - 89% (1% w/d)... WIN! 1 hit smile

- 9XP injured c2 Cuir vs 1.4/6 C2 formation pike - 99%... WIN! 2 hits
- 7XP injured c2 Cuir vs 0.6/6 C2 formation pike - 99%... FLAWLESS WIN!
- 7XP injured c2 Cuir vs 0.6/6 C2 formation pike - 95%... FLAWLESS WIN!
- Cuir vs 0.6/6 C2 formation pike - 99%... FLAWLESS WIN!
- Cuir vs 0.6/6 C2 formation pike - 99%... FLAWLESS WIN!


That was amazing! If that sort of luck holds then taking Mince should be a piece of cake. I wasn't going to until I consulted Vodka... If we can get it (burn it?) for the cost of 3 units that would be even better.
[Image: T156%20vodka.jpg]

First let's see how tough the pike is.

- Cuir vs C2 formation pike - 9% (14% w/d)... LOSS - 3 hits jive
- C2 11.2/12 Cuir vs CG Longbow - 48% (8% w/d)... WITHDRAW! (4 hits each! biggrin )
- C2 11.2/12 Cuir vs CG Longbow - 54% (7% w/d)... LOSS (3 hits)
- C2 11.2/12 Cuir vs C2 formation spear - 68% (5% w/d)... WIN!!!! (cuir down to 3HP!)
- Cuir vs C1 spear - 69% (5% w/d)... WIN! (1 hit)
- Cuir vs C2 formation pike - 86% (2% w/d)... WIN! (2 hits)
- Cuir vs 3.1/4 C1 spear - 86% (2% w/d)... WIN! (1 hit)
- Cuir vs 3.7/8 C2 mace - 96%... WIN! (4 hits!)
- Cuir vs archer - 96%... WIN! (3 hits)
- Cuir vs 2.2/6 CG Longbow - 99.9%... WIN (4 hits!)
- 9.4/12 C2 Cuir vs 1.2/6 CG Longbow - 99.9%... FLAWLESS WIN!
- Cuir vs 1.2/8 C3 mace - 99.9%... WIN!
dancing

The (Confucian holy) city comes with Barracks, Granary and Courthouse and 7 turns of revolt. It'll be a bit swamped by TBS, and while I don't see any CF units in range to recapture our main focus is the capital and preserving our injured stack, so the city needs to burn.
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Up north this is the stack that surprised (and eventually burnt) Peppermint Bark. I wasn't sure here if these oromos should pillage or run (not enough movement to catch the 2 oromos and 7ish cuirs on the hill). But decided that running to this roadless tile makes our oromos more likely to survive or at least pull some American units out of position to hit our stack. Now will we be able to take Whipped Cream next turn?
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In international news this looks like zone defence. Our peace with TBS has 3 turns left to run, but we're still hopeful that he's more focussed on Pindicator than us. Tarsus could be his easily if he wants it, but he's got a stack of units poised to hit Gav's former capital. Pindi should fall back and concentrate his forces for his culture attempt, but will he realise?
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Demos and power.
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I have wanted to write something about the game for a while and really need a break from work (who thought that asking for 12 page research plan on maths to be written with word that has poorly bolted in formula editor in it was a good idea?) so here it goes.

First of all, it's little bit sad to see game end like this. No discussion, no nothing, just complete silence. For the game it was also disappointing as we were in good spot (and Pindi clearly agreed by conceding to us). Looks like we had red diplo position right and neither him or TBS were planning to stab us, leaving us with clearly most cities after we would have finished Corn. Still, real life comes first and I hope Pindi is getting stuff sorted out.

I did not feel like we played up to our standards in this game. I can't speak for OH but for me it was mostly due to real life keeping me busy (it should get better soon though!). For times I was not able to participate as a real joint player as I usually try to do. Also turn pace was bad through most of the game and even when we did get turn per day it was often too late for me to really participate. I kind of liked sequential but turn pace must be better for it to work.

I feel like our start was ok and we had really good demos for a while, but sometime after landing mids i feels like we kind of lost focus and went some time on autopilot (and for some weird reason left only single archer in city that TBS could boat from fog, for example. That was easily on us and should not have happened). Also our war efforts at the end were not as good as they should have been, we were bleeding units that we should have not lost in north, for example. But good defense by Corn, I don't want to take anything away from that.

Decision to forgo guilds and go for cuirs was intentional and we know it's not optimal when we did it, just wanted to try something new. But not having banks and merc hurted us more than we thought later on, our eco was behind others clearly in late game. Also not having relevant unit to attack with for a really long time hurted us a lot through missed opportunities.

On the positive side I feel like we used PHI well and our plan of using cheap GE to get tons of free hammers worked beautifully. When we rushed for cuirs we got quite unlucky not to land GS to bulb edu, that would have brought cuirs to us maybe 3-4 turns earlier, which would have helped. I still feel like PHI is great in advanced start. Ethiopia did not do much for us in this game as we did not manage to use GM spot to bulb currency as originally planned (IIRC we got 2nd engy instead).

GG all and see you next time
Completed: pb38, pb40, pb41, pb42, pb46 and pb49
Playing: pbem78
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The ending was a disappointing way to empty out the shark tank. Expected more blood. There were a few of us reading along despite the slow turn pace and sporadic reporting.
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(September 3rd, 2021, 14:07)civac2 Wrote: The ending was a disappointing way to empty out the shark tank. Expected more blood. There were a few of us reading along despite the slow turn pace and sporadic reporting.

Yeah, the turn pace really hurt this game. I won't be starting a game with Gav or offering to play after TBS any time soon. I think the players were setting too high a bar for quality of play leading to glacial play (TBS), burnout (Pindi) and disengagement from us (see the lack of reporting). On that basis I think Cornflakes wins, as it sounds like he had fun all the way through...

Anyway, I owe you a few more turns worth of reporting and finally found the motivation/time.

Turn 157-160

I played turn 157 on my crappy laptop, so cornflakes' counter-attack on our stack, our counter-counter attack, the capture of Mint Brownies and capture and artist-bomb of Cashew Bars all go undocumented.

We resume normal service on T158 where we're wondering which city to hit next. Taking Pinnekjott, then Caramel Popcorn, then Dominostein seems like the quickest way to unite our attacking forces, so we put enough Cuirs in range to beat the Pinnekjott garrison (5 minutemen, 2 catapults) this turn.
[Image: t158%20%282%29.jpg]

This is how much that clash hurt our power. Suddenly we're a little concerned that TBS and Pindi might think we're vulnerable.
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On turn 159 Pindi sniped an empty Sugar Cookies - it's fairly reasonable that he doesn't want us having a gateway to his core, but this was still a little agravating. CF added an extra musket and pike to Pinnek, we didn't want to hang around for 1-movers to help out, and waiting one more turn to bring up more cuirassiers would allow his fortification to swing the odds in his favour, so in we go...
[Image: t159%20%285%29.jpg]

- C3 cuir vs C1 CG1 Minuteman - 63%... LOSS (4 hits)
- C3 cuir vs C1 CG1 Minuteman - 63%... WIN! (down to 5HP eek )
- C3 cuir vs C1 glowing pike - 65%... Withdraw (us at 5HP, eek him at 60HP, not great as he can promo-heal)
- C2 cuir vs C1 Minuteman - 64%... WIN! (down to 5HP eek )
- C2 cuir vs C1 glowing Minuteman - 64%... LOSS (down to 40HP)
- C2 cuir vs C1 Minuteman - 66%... WIN! (down to 62HP)
- cuir vs C1 Minuteman - 30%... WIN! (58HP)
- cuir vs injured glowing pike - 87%... LOSS (20HP)
- cuir vs injured glowing c1 minuteman) - 99%... FLAWLESS WIN!

It was obviously a surprise that we attacked - killing glowing units is always fun! The city should be an easy win next turn, but TBS has a lot of units hanging around, so if he wanted to wipe out our stack he easily could. We sent him a somewhat desperate fish-fish offer, but I'm pretty sure he's focussed on keeping Pindi in check and these units are pointed at him.
[Image: t159%20%287%29.jpg]

So could we move on Caramel Popcorn next turn? Let's see how CF manoeuvrers his defenders... Our 1-movers will join the cuirs next turn if we can't just snipe the city
[Image: t159%20%288%29.jpg]

On turn 160 TBS sent back some fish and burnt Sugar Cookies, so we're emboldened to try and speed our conquest of CF as much as possible. Pinnek is an easy target:

- Flanking cuir vs injured Flanking cuir - 68%... LOSS (down to 3.7/12)
- Pinch cuir vs injured minuteman - 95%... WIN! (1 hit)
- C2 cuir vs injured Flanking cuir - 98%... FLAWLESS WIN
- Injured C2 cuir vs scout - 99%... WIN!!!

We get a granary, forge, bank and 110 cash. smile
[Image: t160%20%284%29.jpg]

This is the way the game looked for us when the game was called. Caramel was reinforced enough that I didn't want to go straight in.

Hitru was rightly a little dubious about my manoeuvring around ChocolatePretzel, on his JustOneMoreTurn Cornflakes took back the city and killed a few units (although he lost units to do it). I JustOneMoreTurned back and retook the city, and put our stack next to Caramel, which should fall on t162.
[Image: t160%20%285%29.jpg]

I've offered CF to carry on with a 2-player game to see how the war plays out, so I won't go reading threads until I know if we've properly finished. It's been a impressive defence from America from such a crazily low initial power, but it felt as though we'd broken his back, and given no interference from TBS or Pindi could have taken the rest of his territory with fairly minimal losses.

[Image: t160%20%287%29.jpg]
[Image: t160%20%286%29.jpg]
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