Next turn - 1550bc

[Jayne]

1900bc - South warrior continues exploring and finds a hut.

1850bc - Popped hut reveals one barb horseman, which kills our warrior.

1800bc - RF builds settler, starts temple.

1750bc - CFC discover Currency, start Mysticism.

1700bc - Barbs land near LC: 2 archers and leader.

1650bc - Ellie heads back towards LC. Disaster! Whilst checking for possible unrest, discover that LP won't grow before settlers are built. Change production back to Diplomat.

1600bc - LP builds dip, starts settler. Ellie kills single B.archer. Other B.archer kills LP defence warrior. Injured B.horse from hut commits suicide in Ipec. Warrior made vet.

1550bc - Neum builds temple, starts Wonder.




Lots to discuss, but I'm hoping we're ready for Friday. Otherwise I'll play next Tuesday.

FYI: €129 in the bank, €5 profit/turn, 7 turns/tech

 

[funxus]

Other B.archer kills LP defence warrior.

I assume you mean LC?

For anyone who wonders how many HP ellie has left, it's nothing, and she wouldn't be able to take out barbs.
Either we'll have to pay the barbs money or let them take LC, which doesn't support any units but have a 30s production towards a settler for our new SSC I think we should pay if we can...

 

[funxus]

Too bad with LP settler If we get to keep LC we'll need to make sure that the settler won't finish before 6 turns, so place the RGLS on a GL until you see that they will grow before settler is done

 

[Jayne]

Yes, I did mean LC. No barbs harassing LP...... so far!

 

[TheViking]

Despite the HP problem the elephant still has a very good chance to kill the barbarians since they are in pretty bad shape too and the elephant has more attacking points than an archer's defensive points.

I always attack in situations like this (often with success) if something big is at stake and in this case it is - losing LC or paying the barbs $$ is very bad so to me it is absolutely no question that attacking the barbs is worth the risk.

 

[Leowind]

Very bad luck with LC Beyond being severly damaged, Ellie cannot attack with a full movement point left (I'm sure she's down to 1 MP), so will be attacking at less than even her damaged strength. Add that to the fact the Archer is on defensive terrain, I don't hold out much hope for her winning by attacking. She does, however, have time to move into LC to give the Archer somebody else to attack. Would this only delay the inevitable, or give us time to RB better defenses?

Even if LC survives, it is down to 1 pop point, so may not be able to produce settlers for awhile. This seriously damages our SSC plan. We need an alternative.

 

[TheViking]

Originally posted by Leowind
Very bad luck with LC Beyond being severly damaged, Ellie cannot attack with a full movement point left (I'm sure she's down to 1 MP), so will be attacking at less than even her damaged strength. Add that to the fact the Archer is on defensive terrain, I don't hold out much hope for her winning by attacking. She does, however, have time to move into LC to give the Archer somebody else to attack. Would this only delay the inevitable, or give us time to RB better defenses?

The barbs would attack and in that case the elephant has (almost) no chance of survival since it has a defense of 1 vs. an archer's attack of 3. This would reduce LC in size down to 0, i.e. raze it.

 

[TimTheEnchanter]

Haven't loaded the game but I tried to run the battle outcome projections for the elephant attacking. I thought it would be close to about 50%, but then Leowind brought up the point about attacking at partial strength. That will bring the likelihood of success down around 20%. I think we just have to rest the elephant and let them take the city. If the amount they ask is really low, you might consider paying to keep the shields, (which need to be redirected to a defender, anyway) but I wouldn't empty out the majority of the treasury.

We'll just have to name the next city Lucy's Revenge.

 

[Duke of Marlbrough]

If the payment option is chosen, we could always reduce our treasury by rush buying in our other cities and they should ask for less.

If we have 300, they will ask for 300, if we have 50, they will ask for 50.....

 

[TheViking]

One thing to take into account: The elephant is a veteran, the barbs are not.

If it is not cheating it would be interesting to collect some statistics on the probability of a successful attack by creating and studying a similar situation in a different game (I know it would be cheating to use this game to collect these statistics). Would that be cheating ?

On the subject of paying the barbs, we have $129. IIRC the barbs will simply take the city without giving us the option to pay if our $$ drops below some threshold (probably $50).

Maybe we should name our next city "Barbarians SUCK !!!" ?

 

[Duke of Marlbrough]

No, it would not be cheating to run tests to see if we may survive the attack in a different game. But, how accurate would the tests be with trying to compare two damaged units?

 

[TheViking]

Then I'll attempt to collect some statistics from similar situations in different games.

 

[TimTheEnchanter]

Real tests are probably a good idea, so if you can get a setup that is similar (similar damage amounts) please do some real testing.

Vet status gives us a chance to win.

I've been using Kobayshi's battle outcome simulator to try to get predictions, but I'm having trouble getting the inputs squared away.

First I am using the following assumptions:
Elephant is 90% damaged, leaving only .1 hit points.
Barbarian archer is defense of only 1, not 2. That is the wisdom from Marquis de Sodaq's Combat Guide(section 3.n).

I am making the assumption that the archer is NOT veteran, but that may not be the case since he defeated the LC defender. If the Barb is a vet also, we're screwed.

I am not entirely sure how the rounding works on the battle calculations, but I assumed that the elephant had an attack of 4
base 4 * 1.5 vet *2/3 for having moved down the river 1 square), and the archer defends at 1.5 with the forest under him.

I ran the test with the archer at 20% remaining and 30% remaining. If he's at 20%, the ellie gets around 50% (or a little under) chance of success. If the archer is at 30% remaining, the ellie wins only about 1/3 of the time, according to Koby's spreadsheet.

Also note in Sodaq's combat guide that on deity, the barbs get a 50% attack bonus on deity, so the Ellie wouldn't stand a chance in defense. The city would be razed, and the ellie lost.


However, in my research I found this thread from 'poly that says (look for the Gits about 6 posts down) the Barbs will not ever raze a size 1 city when it is taken. We could save the money, let the barbs take it, then send the LP diplomat over there to buy the city back. We should get an archer and diplomat (the barb king) in the deal. Since it is (1) our city we are liberating, (2) the gold-less barbs and (3) a very small city, it should be quite cheap to buy back. I can't guarantee this would work, but it might be worth it if someone (Viking???) could set up a test to verify that the city won't evaporate and find out how much it will cost to buy back.

One odd thought... When the barbs take a city, it continues to make the type of unit that captured the city. If the Barb Leader moves first, will the city then build barb leaders? I doubt it would happen, and now's not the time to find out, but it would be a cool cash cow if it did work that way!.

The other alternative is to use the shields already in the city to build a defender, then pay the asking price to the Barbs. The defender will be built right away, so we should be safe, and then we could try to lure the leader out in a couple turns to get the money back. The risk with this approach is that I thought the barbs could sometimes ask for more gold than you had.

 

[TheViking]

A major factor: We are not allowed to bribe cities. If we were this would be absolutely no problem and would advantageous since we would get the city back with interest (one or more units) by bribing. This is one of the big reasons I strongly prefer to attack the barbs.

Also the barbarians disappear if/when we pay so we will not get the chance to get a refund by capturing the leader.

 

[Duke of Marlbrough]

TheViking is correct that we have the self-imposed rule of no city bribing or Tim's idea would be very feasable.

I'm afraid we are going to have to risk the attack or pay the bribe, or both.

BTW, a diplomat (leader) cannot take a city. I think if you have very little gold (under 50) they may ask for more than you have.

 

[TimTheEnchanter]

Oops. Forgot about the no city bribes. No wonder it seemed to good to be true.

For some reason I thought the barbs sometimes stayed around when you paid them off. Sorry. I guess I'm just full of goofs this time around.

I don't think the odds are with us if we attack, so I'd probably go for the payoff. My thinking is that if we attack and lose, we lose our best unit. And if for some reason they ask for more than we can pay (someone correct me if they don't ever ask for more than you have), we lose the unit that would be most likely to retake the city.

 

[Duke of Marlbrough]

From my notes it looks as if you have less than 50 gold the Barbs will just walk into the city. So, I'd spend down our gold, by rush buying the temple and a settler and then pay then the 50 gold they may ask for.

Also, the Barbs should disappear once we pay them off.

After looking at the save, I wouldn't risk attacking. If we had a couple more slivers of red on elle, I'd say go for it, but I don't think she'll make it and it would be a shame to lose her and still have to pay the gold.

 

[funxus]

Are we sure we'll get the option to pay for the city? Sometimes I don't, sometimes I do.

I like the idea of RB temple and help LP settler a bit, pay the barbs, decrease production in LC so that it will grow before settler is built and then build two warriors for defence (one for SSC).

We wouldn't be able to get ellie into LC anyway because of ZOC.

 

[Jayne]

I think they ask for half your current funds, but there maybe a minimum limit where they just attack you instead. I know in my experience they usually ask for money (I don't think it's ever been less than €50or €60) . Also, maybe they only ask for money if they have a leader.

I think leave Ellie where she is, hope they demand money, pay, then move Ellie back to recover. She could then eith stay in LC or head to SSC with the settler.

Maybe someone can post a poll?

 

[TheViking]

As an input into the decision on what to do, less than 12 hours from now I plan to post some statistics from a different game on the probability of a successful elephant attack in similar situations.