(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.
This is how much that clash hurt our power. Suddenly we're a little concerned that TBS and Pindi might think we're vulnerable.
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...
- C3 cuir vs C1 CG1 Minuteman - 63%... LOSS (4 hits)
- C3 cuir vs C1 CG1 Minuteman - 63%... WIN! (down to 5HP
)
- C3 cuir vs C1 glowing pike - 65%... Withdraw (us at 5HP,
him at 60HP, not great as he can promo-heal)
- C2 cuir vs C1 Minuteman - 64%... WIN! (down to 5HP
)
- 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.
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
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.
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.
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.