Deathmatch: the Bears' enclave

[Beorn-eL-Feared]

Well, he seems decided to get a heal: nothing moved, horses are back to 2HP.

Should I take the hill? If you open up the hill he may jump on it or not, but for it to be convincing and useful it needs to be this turn. If he lets me go on the hill, I get a defence bonus he won't try to face and I'm in a no-river attack position against his stack for later. You get a lower defence forest but still will be able to catapult him down a little.

If we go this course I'll take the horse grass this turn.

I don't really see any other brilliant alternative.

Either way, whatever we do, I'll send one legion across mountaintops eastwards.

 

[Beorn-eL-Feared]

... and for some odd reason, the computer won't take C3C today. It runs NWN2 and Civ4 (not 'fine', but they run) so it's a config glitch of sorts, but I'm still working on that. Hopefully tomorrow I'll have something, otherwise thursday for sure.

 

[Whomp]

OK can you give me a picture of what your'e thinking with legions. We have another stack coming btw. To be expected I suppose.

 

[Beorn-eL-Feared]

One HD2600 in the box and I'm back in play.

That simple: I roll in behind you on the hill next turn. You should also move your warrior out of the way, up there. Next turn I'll have available workers to road under my feet as I engage Niklas. If he plays coy, I'll send troops towards his base but will make sure to road as I go, to be able to reinforce either way.

 

[Whomp]

B--I got the GW save but not yours.

 

[Beorn-eL-Feared]

My side is still slippery but he's just biting for time, eventually I'll catch him.

Here's the situation: he moved, kindof weird, especially since he has some units not fully healed and he didn't leave someone on the mountain to claim a defence tile +vision ... anyways, we need to control it. I will climb a Legion up there if you don't have a spear to spare.

Otherwise I would move one (two?) legion up on the forest and fortify the tile I'm on. Be prepared for his horses' onslaught, the rest will be MW fodder. Let him move first, you have a dreadful stack there.

Will finish my turn when you confirm me you have a spear lying around for the mountain, or not.

 

[Whomp]

I would block with the legion on the mountain and then the other stack will be stuck since they took such a battering on his last round.
This one needs our attention and I think we can take it down quite a bit.

I'd like to use the spear fortified on the forest north with my swords/cats while I hit his stack with the MWs. I know it's across a river but this will be the best chance for low land hits. It will be near impossible for him to run through either of us without taking more hits on his attack units with either stack.

 

[Beorn-eL-Feared]

Alright, legions are split, fingers crossed for him to move onto us.

 

[Beorn-eL-Feared]

I was really agressive with my legions, hoping they'd think we're desperate. I sure do wish they bring whatever forces they have to attack. That would be devastating for them. Until then, I'm about 5g short of a legion upgrade

 

[Whomp]

I'll send the cash...

I think tactically I was wrong on my attack. In hindsight, I should've waited for them to hit me.

 

[Beorn-eL-Feared]

The only mistake was cover, as far as I'm concerned. You had good enough odds to attack, not to leave units standing there to be shot at. You want odds to be at least as favorable as the ratio of unit costs when you attack like this, including the counter-attack cost-odds.

This is partly why MW's are so tempting to attack: 30 shields down if you go kill it with an EW, 20 even if it takes 2. Legions on the other hand would take a lot of fire to go down and not be worth the 30 shields they cost me, for them.
So I can go all out legions while you'll need more spears (I wouldn't say and more swords though, MW's are awesome with cover, and moreso the cheaper the cover is).

There will be a next time, though

 

[Beorn-eL-Feared]

Just got my save, do you remember what you had for troops in there? AKA do I need to take out 1, 2 or 3 EW's?

I'm done with Niklas' not wanting to fight, I'll send my 6 worker doom squad upstream within 3. I have enough legions to make the grass shiver all the way to Continuation anyways.

 

[Elephantium]

Request from the peanut gallery: I'd really appreciate a few screenshots of the big-picture view of your land - the Council types have been posting more pictures, and it's fun to see how the game is progressing. It would be even more fun to see both sides of the story

 

[Beorn-eL-Feared]

Since we're not relying on outside advice (did I actually say that? ), we didn't bother doing it a lot so far. So if there's interest, I'll post the super gigantic world map from our side, when Whomper tells me how nuts I have to go against the blue stack.

 

[Beorn-eL-Feared]

I couldn't fit the whole thing all the way to Continuation in the one picture, especially zoomed in, but here's what it looks like.

Spoiler this is big :

 

[BCLG100]

The last update we got at cdz you guys were on their border! what happened?

 

[Beorn-eL-Feared]

Yes, we had a scouting party on their border

On the northern choke, I tried pushing the frontline further but Niklas outmade me in unit count. Now I have more cities and a GA so I should be able to put together a sizeable counter-counter-attack.

On the southern pass, they went from disorganized horse pumping to Enkidu swarming. We're still good to go but you can't push forward against that, not before building up more mounties and catapults - more expensive units, but ones that survive much better as well.

So all in all we are back at home defending but in a good position. Gen_W is in Monarchy right now which implies he is totally strapped for gold, with all the Enkidus. Niklas had a slower start to cripple me and it hasn't paid off. We've been in Monarchy for what, 20 turns more than they have? I think this will make a difference in the end. This, and the middle ages we'll reach ages before them.

I wouldn't call it a "calculated" setback, because you just roll with the puck in this kind of game, but we're in good, controlled shape. We'll have to manage against a strong civ: Gen_W is way ahead in pop and score so he settled a lot and probably grabbed good (AGR) land. OTOH Niklas has an obsolete UU and a crippled empire (with a mined cow capital, I must remind everyone).

I have a strong empire with well developped tiles during a Monarchy GA, they'll never get that chance. I'm not using it for infra, however, since we have neither the techs for infra nor a big interest in making it past the point where you build up a number of settlers, workers and legions - except if we do knights.

Whomp has a more difficult position but he's AGR/COM, possibly the 2 best traits for effortless comebacks: passive food and corruption killing is huge. Both our UU's are arguably better than knights for their costs so we'll most likely go for Feud-Mono-Chiv-Eng. I do Mono and Eng, he does Feud and Chiv. This enables him to build templars, me to build trebs, and it doesn't disable my legions. Legions are beyond awesome in multiplayer because of the scary 3 defense. Mounties are great but the 1 defense is dangerous, so knights could be worthwhile.

Thus this game is still up for grabs and I plan on making a strong move soon, right after Niklas' brand new assault.

 

[Beorn-eL-Feared]

GrrrRRRRrrr, Gen_W showing some teeth

Spoiler a roar and a claw waving :

Some recent highlights (ignoring the battle results that fell within expected ranges)

Turn 89:
Council loses an 84% odds to win battle.

Turn 90:
Council loses a 89% odds-to-win battle.
Bears win 3 straight battles that each only have a 55% chance to win.

Turn 91:
Bears win a 39% battle and 35% battle back to back – and every battle that turn without fail.

Turn 94:
Council loses a 92% odds to win battle.

Last turn:
Bears win a flawless stream of 6 battles, odds of winning on each are between 48% and 63% at the highest.

Seems like I'm detecting a trend there…
And that's not even going all the way back the original warrior of doom who could win battles with the odds 98% against him.

So basically, this thread should be called the "Niklas & cubfan6506 v Whomp & Beorn-el-Feared & RNG" thread.

Does this mean Niklas and I can get a third player to join our team?

Emphasis added on the bold line: the odds have been bad for them, but not devastating - only devastating for their morale, if anything. They're not happy with the odds , and I can't blame them, although there is a really strong trend showing up here: fate favors the bold.

You don't see them with elite units on the field: they don't attack. They wait and wait and eventually, we attack, take chances, and the puck has rolled for us. Make that a lesson learned from this game for everyone

I'd tell them to try and move their units' butts a little more but, you know, that would be against our own best interests.

So I'm having a hard time wiping that little grin off my face right now

Whomp and I have been chatting by IM and PM a lot, so that would increase our post-count somewhat, but not quite to that level. What usually happens is we have similar ideas and agree within 2 lines anyways. With the amount of active lurkers on the other side, however, there's bound to be all kinds of ideas thrown around and I must say I'd be willing to call it "Complete Team Council v Whomp & Beorn-el-Feared & RNG."

Spoiler the RNG on our team, eh? :

But that debate is for another time. I don't like arguing with Niklas anyways, he always throws these arguments that he knows make no sense /are already refuted and then I'm all mixed up, my arms fall and I lose my motivation to reply.

Whatever the de facto settings of this game are, I've been enjoying it, from the "OMG there's jags everywhere and he'll capture one of my cities for sure" turns to the "I hope I can pull 4/6 battles and at least the other ones should do some damage" ones. So it's all good.

But for the sake of thoroughness, let's just mention that you're all welcome to chip in on that topic. I wouldn't like it if this became a thread for everyone to discuss game strategies, but game questions and off-game chatter are always welcome - I try to answer them as well as I can, as the last post can illustrate.

 

[Empiremaker]

I think that it generally balances out. In the MTDGII, The Council got lucky with some battles. Now their luck has turned here. Whatever, in the long run the RNG will balance out (unless you forget to make your sacrifices ).

 

[Empiremaker]

Double Post.