SGOTM 22 - Anti-TSR

[LowtherCastle]

I'm out of the country Wednesday-Sunday. I'll roll the turn to T175, so I'll leave everything as if I'm done. But if we can manage Aksum 178, I'd like to finish there.

Sure. At least. I'd like to see you play through Gondar perhaps.

Maybe we can surprise attack Yeha T177 or T178. Keep it temporarily. Then let him send units to recapture and just keep pounding on it. It's not on a hill like Aksum.

In teh past teams have captured cities and left them undefended, inviting units to attack. I'd have to look at the save to give my opinion.

 

[WastinTime]

Culture bomb thoughts:

the culture bomb is not going to work nearly as well as it did in Damascus. The Aksum area is loaded with tile culture from multiple high culture cities, so the benefit of moving borders is lost. All we get is ~9 turns of revolt prevented. I'm wondering if the GArt could be better used somewhere else, or even for a 3rd Golden Age.

 

[LowtherCastle]

Culture bomb thoughts:

the culture bomb is not going to work nearly as well as it did in Damascus. The Aksum area is loaded with tile culture from multiple high culture cities, so the benefit of moving borders is lost. All we get is ~9 turns of revolt prevented. I'm wondering if the GArt could be better used somewhere else, or even for a 3rd Golden Age.

Definitely worth considering.

Can't see the save, but I'm thinking we need to evaluate
1. how easy Aksum will be to take on T178, and
2. how many units we lose.

If not T178, how many siege weapons do we need to add? Basically, we want Aksum asap, so we need to achieve some sort of optimum solution, balancing unit losses and turn losses.

Wiping out Zara's stack probably neuters Zara almost completely. Worth it at some cost.

 

[LowtherCastle]

Considering our total number of cities is limited, other uses of the culture bomb would be to
1) enculturate selected resources, and 2) prevent re-settling of cities.

 

[WastinTime]

Problem solved. While I was in bed, I came up with a plan, rejected it and came up with another. Yeha plan was rejected:

Spoiler :

Take the city and leave it empty to continually kill units on flat land with our city raider boni. Reasons to reject: We'd have to move 16 units or more there and bombard the castle for a while or do an expensive spy mission. And caravels could get in the way. And then we have to move everyone back to Lali. The real reason to reject it tho was that our other half army could get wiped out in Lali! Aksum is not a defensive group. It's an SoB.

Lali plan: We empty the city this turn. When it's retaken it will be 85% defense. We can bombard that down to close-to-zero in just one turn. When planning this from the horizontal position, half asleep, I was thinking Lali was non-hill. It's not So it won't work as well as Yeha, but at least the units won't be fortified like in Aksum. And there will be less.
Repeat if necessary.

 

[WastinTime]

I would also consider razing Lali some day. Especially if we lose all the buildings doing my SoB reduction plan. Again, from my dream-like planning position, I thought maybe Lali only had 1 fish and we would dump it. It has 2 and it's in a good location, so it would be useful, but not amazing. And the wonders: HangingG provides exactly 1 food to one city. Hagia: normally nice, but we don't have anything for workers to do. So, look around for a better keeper city.

 

[Pollina]

I don't share your pessimism regarding the Aksum attack. 40+ attackers (8 siege) will be enough to take it. Zara is not protective or aggressive. A guerrilla2 LB, a CG2 LB and a couple C2 maces are the scariest units he has. He's mostly building units that don't get a defensive bonus. His cats may even move out of the city with some luck. If we want to be safe, we can upgrade a CR3 praet to a mace, maybe 2.

One reason to not delay our Aksum attack is that he could get Gunpowder pretty soon and start spamming Oromos.

 

[Pollina]

I just realized that we don't even have to threaten Aksum to take it, thanks to our city revolt. We can just attack from Lali.

 

[Pollina]

Screenshot with Zara's stack and our units near Lali:

Spoiler :

 

[WastinTime]

I just realized that we don't even have to threaten Aksum to take it, thanks to our city revolt. We can just attack from Lali.

Wow, that would be awesome...if it were true.
Unfortunately, borders don't collapse when you revolt a city. Maybe they would if the revolt was 2t.

 

[Pollina]

Ah okay, good to know.

 

[WastinTime]

I don't share your pessimism regarding the Aksum attack. 40+ attackers (8 siege) will be enough to take it.

It might look OK now, but many units are pouring into the city each turn and we can't take it until T178 if we want our full size army.

 

[WastinTime]

Oddly enough, when I was eyeing up Yeha as a target last turn, Zara read my mind and sent 3 LBs towards it. However, if we move on Aksum, they can turn around.

Aksum 178 is still on the table. I have to look closer at it. Keep in mind: 8 siege kill no one. 7 of our attackers are chariots. They can't even kill a catapult--only redlined units. 4 of our units are LBs/Pikes. Leaving only 23 real attackers.

 

[Pollina]

Would be nice if we could somehow lure his stack to attack Lalibela (without capturing it). Maybe by moving most of our praets and our healer out and moving 3 more chariots and a pike in. Not sure if that would work.

 

[WastinTime]

Would be nice if we could somehow lure his stack to attack Lalibela (without capturing it). Maybe by moving most of our praets and our healer out and moving 3 more chariots and a pike in. Not sure if that would work.

All of his units can attack from Aksum, so we'd probably lose the city and our units. I don't see a problem with letting the city go. It will get smaller, but then come out of resistance faster.
It would delay Aksum 3-5 turns.

 

[Pollina]

All of his units can attack from Aksum, so we'd probably lose the city and our units. I don't see a problem with letting the city go. It will get smaller, but then come out of resistance faster.
It would delay Aksum 3-5 turns.

I'm not convinced that Zara's stack will be much easier to kill in Lalibela than in Aksum. We would have to kill even more units.

How many new defenders do we expect in Aksum? Aksum can't build more than 3 until t178. Are there any units in the fog? How likely is Zara to pull units from his other cities?

I've tested a bit with a "worst case"(?) scenario that has an extra 2 WE, 1 mace, 2 LBs, 2 HA in Aksum. So far, I have yet to fail to take the city with 8 siege, 20 praets, 2 maces, 7 chariots, 1 LB, 1 pike, 2 knights (C3+1 medic).

I expect that the barrage cats will either move out of the city or attack our stack once it is next to Aksum. Not sure how that would affect our odds to take the city.

 

[WastinTime]

I think you're right, Pollina. We can manage Aksum. I'll try to lure some units out with a mostly empty Lali and see if I can get Aksum's count down.

But I watch "show moves" and there are a lot of units that are on the move and can swarm Aksum. I'm guessing 25, but we already saw Sal patrol back and forth with his 3 WEs.

 

[WastinTime]

fyi, one of our trebs is redlined and hasn't landed yet (so won't heal), so it will be only 7 siege.

 

[WastinTime]

Continuing from here

Gilga has Education (T174)

T175
Some creative boating gets us 2 more Prats and a chariot for the T178 Aksum. We have 45 units over there :crazyeyes:

Darius loses a city to Hanni

T176

ibt: Zara's chariot attacks our Pike

T177
Gilga is first to liberalism He takes Military Tradition.

4 cats move out of Aksum to the North They could return, but can't hit our stack.

1WE, 1 Mace, 3 HA, 1 cat take the bait and approach Lali. I can cut them off so they cannot return to Aksum Not even the HAs can reach it.

Aksum has: 7 LB, Mace, WE, 2 Chariot (11 units)

No one is building caravels

This situation deserves a picture for the peanut gallery...

Spoiler :

Rome is already size 18 with currently 20 units and an excess of buildings, so we're ready for Aksum next turn.

Brennus : horse for Wheat + 13 gpt. Sweet. We get our Pig back. Reminder set to cancel Silver, get spice

Pausing to figure out how many units will approach Aksum, how many will defend Lali, and how many will cut off the stack's return.

 

[WastinTime]

Can spectators download saves and look at the game? If not, here's our overview.

Spoiler :

We've beaten on the two greens.
Orange and Blue are fighting

How can we get the east to start attacking someone? (Brennus wants too much money)