RBTS2 - Defense!

Unless I have my maths wrong (and ignoring the cost of the tech), its approximately 4 bowman to each musket.

ruff_hi said:

Unless I have my maths wrong (and ignoring the cost of the tech), its approximately 4 bowman to each musket.

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Very nice work Ruff. So it looks like our next turn should be zero melee, and multiples of four bowman for each musket (assuming we have the musket tech). Since we need a stack in the south and lots in the north, would one 4+1 group in the south and 2 groups in the north work? I also like the idea of retreating some obsolete units into the cities that are unprotected.

Roster

Sullla
Zeviz
scooter <<< up now
Ruff_Hi <<< on deck
sunrise089 <<< are you back?

One other think that we maybe should have thought about for prior rounds was getting some collateral damage promotions on our cats. Weaken some incoming units and then kill them off by attacking them with cats (not bombing them). It might be a little late for this one now.

ruff_hi said:

Roster
sunrise089 <<< are you back?

Click to expand...

My situation hasn't changed. I have internet access. I have no access to a PC that can run Civ, and will not for another week.

sunrise089 said:

Very nice work Ruff. So it looks like our next turn should be zero melee, and multiples of four bowman for each musket (assuming we have the musket tech). Since we need a stack in the south and lots in the north, would one 4+1 group in the south and 2 groups in the north work? I also like the idea of retreating some obsolete units into the cities that are unprotected.

Click to expand...

Slight correction: We need lots of units in the south and only one and a half 4+1 group in the north. The south needs more Cats and/or Rocket Carts as well. During my round about half of the enemies attacked through the south, and we have much less than half of our strength there.

The actual number of enemies in the south might have been lower, but they didn't arrange themselves into massive stacks, making them harder to kill quickly with collateral damage.

Sorry for the delay, I meant to have this up yesterday, but RL intervened, and well, you know how that is...

This round we're going up against 40 Psycho Samurais, here's a look at them:



I started by adding the Musket tech as well as the Riders tech:




I bought 3 longbows, which brought the cost of longbows very close to that of the muskets, so I bought 2 muskets, and then 1 catapult on top of that. This left 430 extra plus hut money, so we'll see how this goes.

Having a look around, it was hard not to notice our uber jungle warrior, here's a look at this ridiculous guy:



That's just wrong. The second jungle warrior only has two promotions woodsmen 1 and 2, so my goal is to give him the experience this round to get him leveled up. By the end of the round I added woodsmen III, and Strength I and II.

So I started, and I did notice that all the places Ruff marked as safe were completely safe, but two different times a Psycho samurai decided to veer off course and attack one of our ranged stacks! Once in the south:



There was a longbow stacked with that catapult, and one unit attacked and killed the catapult. I put a sign on that square, and moved the catapult to a different hill, and was fine the rest of the round, in fact, the hills or the southern passage were never even approached the entire rest of the round...

Here is the second, more troubling incident:



Yes, this was the only time this happened, and I didn't move the stack, and I am considering this to be a fluke, but it does make a case that we have to be aware that they do sometimes take unorthodox routes for no apparent reason. That's all there was to note this round, every single attack went to our fresher Jungle warrior in the north (the hill warrior saw no action). Here's the huts for this round:



I believe that puts us on the Suicide Grenadier level... so this is where things heat up a bit. Ruff, here's the money you have at your disposal:



2678 for the bandwidth-impaired. Once again, sorry for the delay, and here's the save:

Round 12: Big Bada-BOOM

Why is it that the long dreaded round 12 falls to me? I guess this is what happens when you play 4th in a team of 4 . This round had us facing 20 Suicide Grenadiers (str 5, movement 1). The only real issue with this unit is that you lose a unit if you win your battle or not. Thus, the only safe way to play this is to kill all of these guys with range weapons. If earlier rounds are any guide, expect that later rounds will mix these guys in with units that you can kill by direct battle (ie zombies, panthers, warriors, etc). A mixed stack of suicide grenadiers and zombies would be dangerous to units battling directly. The grenadiers would have to be removed from the stack by range units.

BTW - last round (Seppuku) against Psycho Samurai ... these units might also be suicide units (seppuku means hara-kiri ... ritual japanese suicide).

Here is what I do with our money ... no tech, just ranged units. Pre turn army on the left, post buying spree on the right ...



I moved the scouts out to act as range finders. I also moved our cats forward as well as our bowman and muskets. I think that I found a safe tile for the northern squad. I know that I found a safe tile for the southern squard. I quit the hill as I didn't like it that units attacked us there last round. It seems that running along the top of the southern range of hills is one of the preferred routes. I moved two tiles off that range but still covering it as well as the southern route that runs diagonal from the south to the northern jungle.

The northern group of 3 cats is on a safe(?) tile but I did have 1 unit that looked like it was taking a route to enter that tile ... it didn't get close as I killed it off. I am not sure that the northern cat tile is safe. I am pretty sure that the northern scout tile is safe ... it might be a good idea to move the cats to the scout tile.


(why do I spell safe as save?)

Most (approx 75%) of the units this round came from the South. A few came over the very southern mountain range but then cut back to the mountain range that I moved the units off. The main paths are shown below ...



I found 2 huts ...



... but Sullla shouldn't have any trouble finding at least 4 huts (do you get better results if you pop them with scouts?) ...



http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/64034/RBTS2_Round12_AD-5580.CivBeyondSwordSave

PS: Notice my graphic glitch? Seems that my PC wants to build the space elevator.

Wow, the "lights to heaven" bug. I haven't seen that since back in pre-release testing. Looks like there are still some fishy things floating around with graphics card compatibility.

More great turns from scooter and Ruff. Looks like we survived the dreaded suicide round without a hitch. Any suggestions on what to get next? I'm leaning toward adding a few maces (and trying to get them promoted up to Woodsman III) but mostly continuing the ranged unit spamming.

oh - we have had some really lucky jungle growth ... I meant to post a picture ... look at the jungle on the hill and it is a hill that I expect AI units will want to walk thru ...



Also look at this jungle ... this is a major route for the AI before they branch out ... we should get a woodsman unit there too.

Oh the new jungles are sweet...

I'm not entirely sold on maces, I think our resources are better spent investing in ranged units, but I'm okay with it. Reason being, we just played a round where we killed every single unit with ranged weapons, and the only time our jungle warriors get attacked is when we let units through to get experience.

BTW, great work Ruff on the suicide round.

Don't get over confident. The suicide grenadier are only str 5 and travel 1 square at a time. I expect we will start to run into stronger (and faster) units shortly. The good thing from my point of view is that I will not have to deal with them for the next 3 rounds .

Round 13: Only Mostly Dead

Wow, things have certainly changed since my last turnset. We have units EVERYWHERE! Ruff's instructions and arrowed maps are a huge help; if only all succession games were so easy to follow. According to the info panel on the right side of the screen, we have 140 units coming after us this round - ouch! No clue what that consists of, but we can't afford to take chances. I pick up Macemen tech for 1200g, then spend the remaining 1000g on one maceman (160g) for the forward jungle tile that just grew, and a catapult (480g) and bowman (260g) for our southern bombard stack. That leaves 122g for next round - hopefully, we'll have enough forces on hand this round.

Here's our map, with units all over the place:



I can see four huts before even getting started, which yield 51g, 79g, 67g, and 74g (271g). Our eastern scout pokes around for the final one, but I don't really care too much if we miss out on it. 2000g per round covers purchases pretty well on its own. Of course, as soon as I type those lines, I find the last hut with 72g inside. So much for trying to predict things!

The enemies are indeed a mixture of zombies and suicide grenadiers:



Moving at only speed 1 though, we should be good. I hope.

There were some zombies moving through the southern hills; I was a little worried that they might stay down there, but (as Ruff predicted) they diverted north right into the teeth of our defenses. Whew. Score one for AI predictability!

We take out our first suicide unit:



Die, you fiend! The zombies are basically a total non-threat; they're just bodies providing cover for the kamikazes. Fortunately, we have plenty of longbows (a full twelve!) to snipe out the suicide bad boys. Good riddance.

Ruff's southern "save" tile in the north is actually not safe at all, as there are units moving through it. Good thing we already moved the forward cat stack north, out of harm's way... I delete the sign, however, to avoid confusion.

There was certainly no lack of enemies to kill...



But our ranged units mercilessly cut them all down. Frankly, it was a total slaughter; we could have killed every single unit without them even touching our melee guys (although I let as many zombies through as possible for the free XP). Keeping zombies alive to attack (and die) was actually the hardest part of the round. I did lose a scout when the AI moved onto a tile that we previously thought was safe (on the southern half of the north front), so be sure to replace him on the cheap. Our maceman took the brunt of incoming attacks, going from 0XP to 61XP in a single round! He can probably take out Monster Tanks now with the resulting Woodsman III/Combat V combo, heh.

Sorry about losing our Scout; everything else went quite well. We have 2465g to replace him next round, so I'm not shedding too many tears. I apologize for not typing a longer report, but things were rather mundane. Shoot, shoot, shoot, and eventually everything dies.

http://www.garath.net/Sullla/Civ4/SG/RBTS2/RBTS2-AD-5725.zip

Sullla
Zeviz <<< UP NOW
scooter <<< on deck
sunrise089 (skipped)
Ruff_Hi

Nice work. Please tell me that you also replaced the 'save' signs with 'safe' signs.

Nice progress.

I am curious about anti-tank guns, and we might be able to afford one just to try it out. Or we could get spying tech, because spies will probably become necessary soon. (We have only 7 rounds left.)

I have the save and will play either later today or tomorrow.

Things are going very smoothly, so I'll just play the round right away.

We don't have enough money for anti-tank gun, so I'll buy spying tech and a spy instead. Spy costs 1440$, which eats up most of our cash reserve. I leave the rest, because I want the next person to be able to afford the anti-tank gun. (We've spent lots of cash getting the techs, so I want to get a chance to play with that toy. )

Round 14 - "How he got in my pajamas, I'll never know" I wonder what that name could be referring to.

We see 3 huts right away, so we will have decent hut income even before exploration.

The first enemy we see is an Elephant Rider (14 strength, 2 speed). There will be only 40 of these guys, so I am not too worried. Meanwhile, our scouts find fourth hut. And fifth. Cash: 87, 73, 72, 61, 73.

Each catapult did 35% damage, so the 3-catapult stack was just sufficient to kill an elephant.

Surprisingly, I lost a scout in the tundra, in a place where I didn't expect any attacks. Sorry about that.

On a more disturbing note, 3 elephants in a row are heading straight for our northern catapult stack. The spot where it stands is obviously not safe, unless those elephants will decide to change course at the last minute. I am going to erase the sign. I suspect the only "safe" spots we've seen were safe because AI randomly had chosen other paths for its units.

A new elephant heads towards our Catapult stack every round, but I don't move the stack, because it can kill exactly 1 elephant per turn. Meanwhile, our main stack kills an elephant heading towards trebuchets, along with a few others. I will let some elephants through to let maceman get some experience, but will try to make sure all of them are badly wounded.

I hadn't even noticed our southern stack until half way through the round. (Or I noticed and then forgot about it.) I guess that means we have an overkill of units at the moment. I'll leave at least one unit in each stack unfortified for the next player.

Hill fighter next to mace is also taking some hits. It seems all the units are going through one of those two squares.

This round was very uneventful, with Hill Fighter taking most of the hits, and getting Medic promotions. I recommend giving Medic promotion to all of our units to help them recover damage more quickly.

We will also have to move the northern catapult stack soon, because they were just barely able to kill incoming enemies every round. When enemies get toughter, or more numerous, they'll probably be overwhelmed.

Good work, wow these turns are flying fast. Got it.

Okay, I came across a very irritating and bizarre bug while I was playing. I was just playing and early on, suddenly our elite hill warrior in the north as well as the elite mace that Sullla built just disappeared... They hadn't even been attacked yet (and there's no record of it in the combat log), but they were just gone. I halfway wondered if it was the invisible unit bug, but no, they're definitely gone, confirmed by enemy units walking on that space unimpeded. The round is called "Minefield" so my only guess is that random squares kill off units, but that seems like a totally bizarre feature... Any ideas, I guess we'll just roll with it and I'll finish this thing off, but just a heads-up. Any lurkers experience this? Anyways, I'll have the report up later tonight.

yuk - I haven't seen that. Do we have a spy around ... maybe there are invisible units that auto-kill units. I know that only scouts can see the panthers.

ouch That's a very annoying "feature". We have a spy with the main stack in the center of map. Try moving him to the area to check if he can find anything.