SGOTM 15 - One Short Straw

[LowtherCastle]

With no roads to the north of Satsuma in Hatty's area, we have no concerns about losing the city if we only have one defender in it after we capture it. That means that we'll only have to use 5 of our 8 units that are capable of killing off a unit. So I guess we need to decide:

1. How many cats, if any, to use for bombardment.
2. How many cats to suicide, if any, before we attack with our treb.
3. Which 5 units to use to kill off the 5 defenders in the city.
4. What to do with the remaining 3 units and however many cats weren't used in the battle.

Right now, without the CRI promotion, the treb has 50% odds of survival. I'm not sure what the odds become after the promotion... or after we bombard for 1, 2 or 3 turns. I'll see if I can get the combat calculator to work.

EDIT: Nope. Couldn't get it to work.

Treb against CGII TOku archer 72%
CRI treb against the same 80.7%

I say we knock down the city defenses first, using
0/2XP cat
3/2XP cat
3/2XP cat
then immediately attack with the CRI -promoted treb, followed by
2/5XP CRI cat
4/5XP CRI cat
1/2XP cat

That uses up all the cats. Then if we will be able to move any units back to Tokyo, I would consider saving the xbow for that, if the axes can mop up Satsuma, because that xbow will be an excellent defender for Tokyo. I'd also try to get a cheap 2XP for the pikeman if possible and if an archer is heavily damaged use the spear on him, so we can send as many axes back to Tokyo.

 

[LowtherCastle]

Yeah! The fact that Toku is the only AI with Compass, which he received as a gift, implies that the road through Hatty is NOT a dead end. EDIT: Pedal to the madal, boys. The path to the Buddhist founder should be shorter through Hatty since we're already 2 AI deep. We aren't even one AI deep in our conquest north...

Maybe Toku met someone with a caravel?

 

[Mitchum]

Maybe Toku met someone with a caravel?

I doubt anyone has Optics already but you never know...

BTW, it looks like PD played one turn at a time for several turns in a row starting on T109. My guess is that they started their war against Toku as late at T110 since that is the spot where their Power drops for the first time. They must have waited for a larger stack of more advanced units... If true, we started our war about 20 turns sooner than them. This is a reversal of the past two SGOTMs where they started warring sooner than us. It will be interesting to see if we can press our advantage and stay ahead.

Regarding Kakumeika, if they are going Cultural, it's going to be very tough. Limited tech trading due to no tech brokering and poor trading partners means that they'll have to self-research just about everything. Having hostile neighbors means that they will have to divert a lot of hammers toward their military, which delays a Cultural game too. With their power as low as it is, I doubt they've broken out of their Toku/Hammy prison yet. Thier land for expansion will be limited...

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Remember the German/English/whatever Cultural Borders? It's likely that Hatty and Toku met another AI (or more than one other AI), but since all of the AIs (that we have met) have Open Borders with each other, it would be reasonable to assume that this other AI or these other AIs have Open Borders with Hatty and Toku...

which means that we should have seen an AI Scout if said AI can reach us by land. I wouldn't be surprised to see that we have to settle a City next to the Lake in the middle that is surrounded by Peaks and then sail Galleys for like 10 turns before we can land on the shores of the next AI.

Then again, with No City Razing, such a situation could be unfair if an AI settled in a bad spot, so either Neilmeister had to pre-settle such a City or else had to set up Resources there such that an AI would only settle it in one spot. Then again, that idea could be totally wrong and it could be a solid wall of Peaks, with us required to build a Coastal City (like Satsuma) and Galleys/Galleons in order to sail around the eastern side of the landmass... or else that body of water to the east could be just another big Lake that may be blocked by Peaks in the north... it's all too hard to say.

All that we know is that Toku can MEET another AI and since I am pretty certain that Toku didn't sneak units past us toward Hammy, that just means that an AI's Cultural Borders are visible... but getting to said AI may not be possible across Peaks... unless we pull off some really tricky move with teleporting units by gifting a City to Hatty and having our units teleported over a set of Peaks, but I'm not sure that teleporting works that way, as I often find that you are "returned" to the area from whence you came when teleporting is involved.


I don't have an explanation for the revealed squares when a City was captured as I haven't really paid attention to that detail in my games. Plus, normally, I have Open Borders and scout out my enemies before attacking, so it's not a situation that I usually run into where I'm defogging land when capturing a City.


Yeah, I was thinking about the whole "protect the Super Medic with a 5% Fortification bonus" idea but then was disappointed to see that I'd left an unpromotable Axeman in Tokyo. I hasn't previously considered the idea since we weren't really in a position where one unit could have more of a Fortification bonus than another unit. Ah well, such is life.

Ah, yeah, Hatty's War Chariot could feasibly move 1S GRiv For Road, 1SW GHRiv Road, 1W PHRiv Copper Mine Road, 1NW GRiv Road (1SW of Tokyo) to attack our Super Medic. So, yeah, 2SW of Tokyo is where we'll have to put our Super Medic. Good catch!


Yeah, AIs like to send out 1 Sword + 1 Settler Settling Parties... but is there going to be any space for Toku to settle it somewhere? Could he also perhaps have a Galley or a Work Boat or two out exploring to make up for the missing Power?


Satsuma will be useful for a few Forest Chops and then as a gift to someone, say, Cyrus... if he'll be stupid enough to accept it after taking Tokyo.

Later, we could recapture it, put Hinduism in it, gift it to Hatty, and hope that she'll exert her own Cultural Influence in the City sufficiently for the City to become a Liberatable-to-Hatty City in the future.

We want to attack flatland Memphis from the south.

I.e. Specifically, 1S of Memphis or any of 1SW, 1S, or 1SE of Memphis?

Okay, my calcs show that it does NOT pay off to chop into the forge this turn, but rather take the forge to 30h naturally over the next two turns. Furthermore, I see us having two alternatives for completing the GLib: 1) T120 and 2) T121.

Do your calculations take into consideration the possibility of using Tokyo's Forest (after having gifted-away or lost-to-Hatty the City of Tokyo) into The Great Library at some point?

Like, can we benefit by Chopping and whipping the Forge now while still having a later Chop for The Great Library?


What if Toku has 6 units in Satsuma by the time that we attack? What if he has Walls? What if, as LC fears, he settles another City? We can't necessarily rely on eliminating him. Thus, we can't rely on getting a bunch of Happy people in Kyoto. I still want to push for Chopping the Forest and whipping the Forge in Kyoto to deal with the Unhappiness problem now.


Let's say that Toku has 6 units or a Wall and we end up using 7 of our 8 attackers to capture the City. Which unit do we want to still have movement points remaining? An Axeman probably, right? (Ideally, probably the Crossbowman, but I'll probably need to use the Crossbowman in an attack on Satsuma, just to hope that we won't need to use all 8 units to attack and hopefully capture the City). Err... nevermind, it looks like LC has already answered this question:

Then if we will be able to move any units back to Tokyo, I would consider saving the xbow for that, if the axes can mop up Satsuma, because that xbow will be an excellent defender for Tokyo. I'd also try to get a cheap 2XP for the pikeman if possible and if an archer is heavily damaged use the spear on him, so we can send as many axes back to Tokyo.

So, the priority for units to send back to Tokyo, if any can be sent back at all, would be Crossbowman 1st, followed by Axemen, right? I.e. We're happy with Hatty having 2 War Chariots and only 1 Spearman? Or should the priority be more like Crossbowman then 1 Pike/Spear then Axes?


Does Bombarding for 8% Cultural Defences, 8% Cultural Defences, then 4% Cultural Defences really help more than Bombarding for 8% Cultural Defences, 8% Cultural Defences, and then causing more Collateral Damage with a Cat, perhaps even before our Treb attacks?


To get Opis (the Fishing Village) from Hammy, we'd have to Demand it. He'd probably refuse. Actually, he'd be forced to refuse, since we're still in an enforced Peace Treaty, right?

I think that he's only offering it up because it's a City that's closer to us than to him and has 0 Culture in it so far.

Obviously, if a trading window appears where he's willing to gift it to us, I'll accept it... even if we can't get credit for Liberating it to him, as you say, we'd mess up his current production and Food collection, and since he has owned the City in the past, he'd still accept it from us (but could him being in Financial Troubles get in the way of him accepting it back?).

If we do get the City from him, I'll rename it to Fishing Village before gifting it back to him, so that we can use the name that we seem to use more often.


We guessed that the Kakus Sword-rushed Toku, right? They may have spammed a ton of Swords to take down Kyoto and then stopped their war there. Or, they might have just captured a City or two to the east of Kyoto. It does look they have stopped their warring, though, and the only feasibly close enough target for them to have attacked would have been Toku.


The only clear thing that I can get out of the Plastic Ducks' graphs is that they are continuing to warmonger.

 

[Mitchum]

I don't recall guessing that the Kakus sword rushed Toku, but if they did, they would have lost quite a few units and we would have seen a drop in their power graph, right? Plus we would have seen a steep climb in power leading up to it which they didn't have.

Regardless of what they other teams did, our direction is set. I just enjoy speculating.

 

[LowtherCastle]

We'll want to attack Memphis from 1S. Not 1SW, which is a river crossing.

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Satsuma has 4h in its current build, so he could 1whip
walls
archer
axe
sword

unless of course, he has another partial build, but that's unlikely. Walls are the least likely of the above builds to have 4h because it gets 100% production bonus, so that would have to mean he just started it last turn and didn't have any overflow from the previous build.

His culture graph starts at zero when we captured TOkyo, so I assume that means Satsuma didn't have the monument yet. It doesn't show any change from 2cpt to 3cpt, if anything, it tails off in the last few turns, inexplicably. May behe just finished the monument. We'll see. Satsuma will have at most 5 units plus walls or six units.

I don't think we want to suicide any cats on Satsumo before the treb. We want to minimize our losses, thus WW. I think there's no WW for withdrawing from combat. So yes, bombard culture to 0%.

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Tokyo will have another pike from Osaka on T114, when Hatty's big SoD is ready to attack. We just need as many axes added, if possible.

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I did not calcs for Kyoto assuming the forest 2W of Tokyo.

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I wouldn't accept Fishing VIllage from Hammy by liberation. We want to capture it for WarSuccess, imo. It's easy pickins.

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I'm game to leave our Medic in Tokyo this turn. I'll take the 96.7% odds in exchange for +1 movement promotion. Plus, then we can move him to heal our seige and attack units next turn at Samsuta. This gets them rolling toward Memphis at least one turn sooner. THere are always going to be some risks when you go for GOld... Takers?

 

[Dhoomstriker]

So, do we see gifting Tokyo to Cyrus again (to give him Satsuma) as a reasonable possibility? Note that once he has owned Satsuma, we wouldn't have to gift him Tokyo ever again, since he'd always accept Satsuma again after we capture it from him.

If so, then Tokyo's Forest is up for grabs for Kyoto.

I would prefer to mitigate our risk with not being able to eliminate Toku by Chopping Kyoto's Forest now. If we capture Satsuma, there will be no pressure on us to HAVE to whip the Forge, but we'll have the option to do so if we:
i. Fail to capture Satsuma within 1 turn
OR
ii. Toku settles another City with his missing Settler + Swordsman/2 Archers/Galley+Archer or whatever he has

It's a lot of pressure to put on me to have to capture Satsuma within 1 turn and if the battle odds aren't going in my favour, it might not happen.


As for the Super Medic, I am against risking him. If you recall, I wanted him to be a Scout unit. He's not supposed to engage in combat. A 99%+ battle, maybe... but no lower, and I'd prefer 99.5% or better.

He won't need 2 movement points until after we're done with Hatty and find out whether we need to march our stack to Hammy or not. Until then, he's fine with 1 movement point, so I see no point in risking him now.

Further, if we put too many defenders in Tokyo, Hatty will be more discouraged from attacking, but with fewer defenders, she might just try our luck... which would be to our advantage, since then she'd have her 2-unit-pillaging-stack attacking on a turn without Catapult support, which would also give our units a chance to heal in between battles.

 

[magnusmarcus]

I'm game to leave our Medic in Tokyo this turn. I'll take the 96.7% odds in exchange for +1 movement promotion. Plus, then we can move him to heal our seige and attack units next turn at Samsuta. This gets them rolling toward Memphis at least one turn sooner. THere are always going to be some risks when you go for GOld... Takers?

If its anything like the luck I've had with Great Generals he'll be toast. Sure let him stay.

 

[LowtherCastle]

So, do we see gifting Tokyo to Cyrus again (to give him Satsuma) as a reasonable possibility? Note that once he has owned Satsuma, we wouldn't have to gift him Tokyo ever again, since he'd always accept Satsuma again after we capture it from him.

If so, then Tokyo's Forest is up for grabs for Kyoto.

I would prefer to mitigate our risk with not being able to eliminate Toku by Chopping Kyoto's Forest now. If we capture Satsuma, there will be no pressure on us to HAVE to whip the Forge, but we'll have the option to do so if we:
i. Fail to capture Satsuma within 1 turn
OR
ii. Toku settles another City with his missing Settler + Swordsman/2 Archers/Galley+Archer or whatever he has

It's a lot of pressure to put on me to have to capture Satsuma within 1 turn and if the battle odds aren't going in my favour, it might not happen.

No pressure. Kyoto is anyway turn by turn, as you might have noticed--I've had to redo my MM every turn so far... By the way, we're going to 3whip the forge in 2t either way, iirc. The temple whip is the pressure-release valve if TOku builds another city or whatever. We're good to go.

If we decide to gift Tokyo soon, it won't be this turn or next turn. For sure we'll want to get our current flow of units past first. Plus, we'll want to do some calcs on War SUccess and how many cities we need to gift and re-capture to get a decent tech in the deal. It would be nice to gift him at least three cities (Memphis too), or whatever it takes to get the tech. Plus we'll want to do it while the big cities are still in revolt, preferably right after we caught the last one. In any case, we don't have to re-capture them right after we gift Tokyo and don't have to gift them all in the same turn. SO we might have a chance to chop that forest into Kyoto and save a turn on teh build. Just not yet, imo.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

We're good to go.

So... are we going to do the following?
Worker 2 (NW + N of Kyoto): Move 1SW to the GRiv For and Chop it Mine and STOP on the GHRiv For
Worker 6 (on the GH Mine 1NW of Kyoto): Move 1W onto the GRiv For and Chop the Forest, to complete the Chop into Kyoto's Forge Move 1W onto the GRiv For and Chop the Forest and STOP

If we decide to gift Tokyo soon, it won't be this turn or next turn.

Of course, but I was thinking closer to around T117 or something, so that Chopping the Forest might speed up The Great Library.

 

[LowtherCastle]

So... are we going to do the following?
Worker 2 (NW + N of Kyoto): Move 1SW to the GRiv For and Chop it Mine and STOP on the GHRiv For
Worker 6 (on the GH Mine 1NW of Kyoto): Move 1W onto the GRiv For and Chop the Forest, to complete the Chop into Kyoto's Forge Move 1W onto the GRiv For and Chop the Forest and STOP

That should work.

As for the Super Medic, I am against risking him. If you recall, I wanted him to be a Scout unit. He's not supposed to engage in combat. A 99%+ battle, maybe... but no lower, and I'd prefer 99.5% or better.

He won't need 2 movement points until after we're done with Hatty and find out whether we need to march our stack to Hammy or not. Until then, he's fine with 1 movement point, so I see no point in risking him now.

Well, the primary reason to leave him there is so he can go heal at Samsuto next turn, then come back, if needed to heal at TOkyo. Meanwhile the healed Samsuta units can proceed to Memphis. In short, it speeds up everything. THere are lots of risks in this game, each quantifiable in a different way. One risk is not capturing cities fast enough, which can cost us more maintenance risking a STRIKE and allow Hatty to build more units, prolonging our engagement, costing us yet more maintenance and also reducing her cities to smaller pop, thus costing us more maintenance by failing to work as many captured cottages, etc.

All in all, 96.7% are pretty good odds, in my book. We' been slowing down to a snail's crawl. Pretty soon we'll be in a dogfight for the Wooden Spoon.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Well, the primary reason to leave him there is so he can go heal at Samsuto next turn

Assuming that I capture Satsuma successfully, a unit in Tokyo can only move as far as the PHRiv For square next turn. So, is that our plan? Have wounded units remain on the PHRiv For healing while having the Super Medic join them?

Note that we get additional healing by moving units into our Cultural Borders (which they won't be inside of) and also into a City. Of course, moving units for a turn means zero healing at all.

Where will our units be teleported when Hatty's Cultural Borders expand? I think that it's an important question that we'll need answered before we can consider doing such a thing (i.e. before we can consider moving our Super Medic to a square that Hatty's Cultural Borders will overtake), as Hatty will own the PHRiv For to the NW of Satsuma and the Plains square 1N of Satsuma two turns after we capture Satsuma. We don't want to move our Super Medic there only to find that it got teleported onto a flatland square and then died when Hatty attacks us, right?

 

[Mitchum]

Moving units inside Satsuma also saves on maintenance. In any event, we don't have to decide where to heal right now. With respect to the super medic unit, I agree with LC on keeping him in Kyoto EDIT: Tokyo. 95% odds are good enough for me. I doubt she'll attack anyway...

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Here's what would happen:
1. We fight Satsuma and hopefully capture it, with some wounded units remaining on the PHRiv For (which, since they already attacked, have 0 movement points and thus cannot heal this turn). Our Super Medic would move to join them... he'd potentially become the stack defender, but no worries, since Hatty probably has her sights on Tokyo:

Spoiler :

2. On the next turn, our units on the PHRiv For would stay in place, along with the Super Medic, so as to start the healing process:

Spoiler :

3. On the turn after that, our units would get teleported into Satsuma for free, where those that are still wounded can probably finish healing for a turn:

Spoiler :

I'm not really a fan of risking the Super Medic, but 3 of our 5 active players want him to remain in Tokyo, so there he will remain. At least we won't have to worry about our Super Medic being teleported to an undesirable location.

Still, there is the risk that Hatty will attack with 2 War Chariots as well as her Swordsman, but then I guess a Catapult would come up as the defender before our Super Medic Axeman, so really it's just the possibility of the Swordsman attacking that we have to worry about. Let's hope that your gambling pays off!

 

[Mitchum]

@ Dhoom There should be no units teleporting as long as we stay at war with Hatty, right?

 

[LowtherCastle]

Our units on the hill will heal 35XP per turn. The one in Satsuma 45XP. That might be enough. If not, it's actually great that they'll teleport into Satsuma for free. That's free 10XP, if needed.

Good luck, Dhoom!

xpost: Darn, you're right, Mitch. That's means they'll only heal 30XP that turn...oh well, probably plenty enough.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

@ Dhoom There should be no units teleporting as long as we stay at war with Hatty, right?

Errr, good point... which is a bad thing, of course. So, presumably, our units will want to manually move into Tokyo on the turn after they attacked, rather than getting trapped in Hatty's territory when they are wounded (costing us Unit Supply Gold and time if we stupidly leave them on the PHRiv For square).

Ergo, the Super Medic moving to the east WILL NOT HELP ONE BIT, as there will be no one for him to heal.

So, the only value of defending with the Super Medic is to get +1 XP, which we can get at a later time much more safely.

Finally, we want Hatty to attack with her pillaging stack, and leaving the Super Medic out of Tokyo will give her a bit more incentive to attack instead of to keep pillaging.

Thus, I find it extremely hard to justify leaving the Super Medic in Tokyo and would like to go back to using this idea:

3. Our Medic would have 96.7% odds against the sword. Not good enough, so I suppose we should move him to Tokyo-2SW.

Other than that, I think that I'm ready to play.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Well, I started playing...

Moved Worker 3 and our stack of doom to the PHRiv For

Moved the Spear + Axe that were previously guarding Worker 3 into Tokyo

I have yet to move the Super Medic but can still do so

Whipped the Treb in GEL and stole back the Corn

Osaka whipped the Crossbowman and will work a Farm and a Hamlet... doing so lets us regrow in 3 turns; working 2 Hamlets would only let us regrow in 5 turns; overall, we'll do better but the option still exists to work 2 Hamlets instead for +2 Gold per turn for 3 turns, as opposed to growing faster, which will net us +1 Gold and +1 Food per turn for the 2 turns after we have grown

Kyoto switches to working the Corn + Copper and keeps building the Forge

Tokyo whipped the City walls and works a GRiv Farm

There's nothing interesting to show, really, other than seeing how many units we have in our stack of doom and in Tokyo (although I'm almost certainly going to run that Super Medic away!!!):

Spoiler :

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Does anyone know how to enable the option that tells you when a build item will start to experience Hammer decay? I'm not exactly certain that I have that option enabled.
Anyway, for the record, Zlat's Pike and Crossbowman both have 54/60 H each, and NC's Work Boat has 22/30 H. If those numbers go down next turn, then I don't have the right option turned on, since I'm not currently seeing any warning for those units about Hammer decay, although I'd prefer to figure out the answer before ending the turn if anyone knows how to enable said option.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

We move our Spy to the NW... I suppose that there is a greater risk of him getting caught sine there is at least 1 AI military unit on the same square as him... does anyone know if having more than 1 military unit on a square further increases the odds? He's sharing a square with a Horse Archer and a Chariot.

We get a view of Wheat City (Borsippa), which doesn't appear to have a Worker yet:

Spoiler :