SGOTM 10 - klarius

[Offa]

The progress is really looking good.

I quickly altered my combat sim to allow defenders to have more HP.
I am not quite sure what the effect of forts is but I assumed it is the same as city walls (ie 50% boost). That gives these barb cannons a modified defence of 22: tough nuts. If they have 8 HP then attacking with 15 vet cavalry gives a 96% chance with an average loss of "just" cav. It will be even easier with cav armies but they aren't really needed. The tricky thing is that I don't know how the cannon will promote when they win battles: clearly they are almost certain to promote if this is possible.

Altogether this gives the pretty obvious result that we need to hit Evil's Stonghold with everything, and all at once before the other cannons can whittle away at our forces.

Klarius, of course, we know that this sort of finish is something you excel at, so sock it to 'em.

 

[Northern Pike]

with an average loss of "just" cav.

It would be useful to have the number here!

 

[Offa]

Oops . Good to see you are paying attention. 4.3, just 4.3. That's not too bad. However, you really do need to bring a lot of people to the party.

BTW, I just watched the end of USA drawing with Italy: a great result for the Americans.

 

[Northern Pike]

Yes, a bizarre and fascinating game. If it means that Bruce Arena will keep his job, that's a win in itself. The American coaching talent pool isn't deep, but I don't think that a foreigner could coach American players, with their slow, unusual development path based on college.

Still, if your leading scorer in the tournament plays for another country, you're probably not bound for glory....

 

[Own]

I'm gone for the momement, so can't look at the save, but from the turnlog things looks pretty awesome.

 

[AlanH]

Since it was at the beginning of the turn, I reload;

For future reference reloads are not permitted under GOTM rules - period. There's a thin line between a misclick and a mistaken move, and we have no objective way to distinguish between the two cases.

 

[Northern Pike]

Offa, can your simulator give the chances that a full-strength, three-unit cav army will survive an attack on a Barb Guard under the conditions above, by the number of hit points remaining to the BG? It might be useful to know when in the battle to send in the armies.

 

[klarius]

I was away over the weekend.
I got it now, but it may take some time.

 

[Offa]

A cavalry army with 3 cav, with 13 HP (2 vets one elite). I can't quite remember how army power is calculated but gave the attack strength as 9.

Defender power 8, mod power 22.

1. defender 8HP, attacker win 19% (retreats about 40%, armies can retreat I think)
2. defender 5 HP, attacker win 57%.
3. defender 3HP, attacker wins 85%.

Clearly it is tougher if the defender has >8HP.
Personally I think it's a bit wasteful of a cav army to attack these things without softening them up, unless it turns out they have unlimited opportunity to promote or something silly like that.

 

[klarius]

In fact the attack strength of a pure 3 cav army is 9 w/o academy 10 otherwise (BTW 4 cav with pentagon would give 10 or 12) .
The defense should be 22 if these things are really fortresses, but I cannot really decide if these aren't barricades, which would put it to 26. Then there is also the defensive freeshot, which has a high likelihood to take off a HP from the attacker.
More than 2 promotion steps aren't possible due to the fixed coding, so one can just put a maximum of 10 HP.

But anyways getting the exact probability doesn't help much. The RNG will make any sophisticated planning useless .

 

[Offa]

Then there is also the defensive freeshot, which has a high likelihood to take off a HP from the attacker.

Do they just get this against the first attacker, or every time?

I agree the exact probability doesn't matter. Assuming there is no backdoor, killing one of these guys is clearly critical, so you will need to hit them with as much as possible. Hopefully Evil hasn't got a stack of these things in the Stronghold .

 

[Northern Pike]

(retreats about 40%, armies can retreat I think)

Yes. This is the one purpose for which it matters whether an army is regular or veteran.

Thanks for the information.

 

[Ronald]

For future reference reloads are not permitted under GOTM rules - period. There's a thin line between a misclick and a mistaken move, and we have no objective way to distinguish between the two cases.

Sorry, I was under the impression that I was allowed to reload when it was a misclick and the turn can be 100% reproduced. Originally it was allowed I think, I was not aware of the change in rules. It won't happen again.

 

[AlanH]

I believe Cracker used to take a more relaxed attitude to misclick reloads, somewhat surprisingly. However, several posts by Ainwood and others since then have tightened the rules for the reason I gave.

That's why I raised it as a "for future reference" warning. I'm sure you didn't do it as an exploit.

 

[Offa]

I believe Cracker used to take a more relaxed attitude to misclick reloads, somewhat surprisingly.

Yeap, old Cracker wasn't exactly reknowned for his relaxed attitude. He did do some great things in GOTM though, especially his fascinating qsc analyses and his cleverly constructed games.

 

[klarius]

Just a little in-process report, breaking for the night.
As usual it takes forever to play such turns. I'm at turn 3.
Here a first look on Barbarian Stronghold.
There are at least 2 elite Guards in the city.

 

[Northern Pike]

Well, I take it you destroyed a Barb Guard in a mountain fortress. That's good.

 

[Offa]

What terrain is the stronghold on?

I presume you are ready to attack it? About 10 cav per 10 HP cannon should do it, if the Stronghold is on flat land. So we need all troops in on this attack.

Getting rid of Evils coastal towns is possibly more urgent: we don't want settlers on ships.

 

[klarius]

The stronghold is on flat land so that's good. But I don't have enough troops around, because I need to get to other towns.
I also diverted some cavs to the south in the hope to be able to react quickly to landing settler pairs. But I have by far not enough units to be able to control all the south.
Evil has at least 2 sets of transport ships guarded by 2 pirates each floating around. It's easily possible that that will be our problem .

 

[Offa]

Clearly a human player in Evil's position would retreat the remaining cannon back into the Stronghold. Hopefully Evil won't do this or we will be, shall I say, stuffed.

Evil has loads of free land to drop settlers onto. Surely he won't just keep them at sea.