The Quixotic Adventures of Sancho Panza--A Greek

[jshelr]

Feeling like Rocky saying "not so bad" while taking another one on the chin

We had had enough of the Babs wandering around. Since Egypt and Germany were at war, we declared war on Egypt and bribed the Babs into joining. Hope it does not hurt our gpt reputation, but I'm willing to pay cash. Otherwise, we don't have enough units to even put up a resistance if alex suddenly (finally) shows up.

I'm sure everyone is waiting breathlessly for the results of the next turn war with the barbs:

putting hoplites out as targets did not work. the barb horsemen won't attack them

the germans did some work, attacking barbs with three units

amazingly, the barbs did not take a hit point from the regular hoplite -- promoting him to elite. He's in a hill fort as we figured we might as well change production last turn.

[jshelr]

A low level war went on for a couple of hundred years or so. The Persians sent in horses that bounced off our hoplites.

We are building markets -- high risk for the short term, but completely necessary if we are to have even a long-shot chance. the constant military harrassment couple with all the jungle is not starting to bite.

Alex laid off the bribed alliances for a long time, other than persia.

As you can see, our citizens are happy despite no entertainment !! Doubtless they have confidence in our leadership.

[jshelr]

Or, maybe they don't like what the nightly news has to say about the Romans

This alliance move by Alex hurt. We had a city defended by an archer that a germanic rider happened to be travelling past. Whoops.

My guess is that Persia and the Babs are now powerful enough to send over sufficient troops to cause real problems. As before, we will be patient. But, even if this works again and we can get out of the situation, we have clear evidence that continued application of the bribed alliances strategy for a few thousand years will eventually be a major burden. We have one hoplite army and it's going to have to be speedy to keep the homeland relatively safe.

When the legionaries arrive, and where are they, there is not going to be the battle I hoped for

[jshelr]

Alex politely informed me that a small contingent of Romans is about to pay a visit.

This is great news, as it indicates I'm about to be put out of my misery. But, I'm going down fighting so he at least gets some fun out of the exercise.

We have no offensive fire power at all. We will rely on blocking maneuvers to make him fight our hoplites as best we can hoping to avoid too much pillaging.

There is little realistic hope. But we were able to generate one lame (almost pathetic) response, relying on the unreliable Persians to help us.

There is also a small chance that the Romans are not really coming and that this was a good headfake, designed to get us to spend gold.

[jshelr]

Maybe Xerxes will take this battle seriously and bribe other civs to help Or, maybe not.

[Mad Bomber]

Originally posted by vmxa1
The one used does not support C3C, it has no level for Demi or Sid.

Which doesn't matter. The difficulty level only matters against Barbs and there are no bonuses against barbs in Demi and above.

[vmxa1]

Holy cow Mad Bomber, you could have included a quote so I knew what the reference was about. I had to look back quite a ways.

Anyway I don't follow the part on the barbs. The combat calc is for units, barbs are not units, but rather two types of units (warrior and horsemen).

My point was that some units are not present in that tool, as they did not exist before C3C. Not to mention some tools handle armies and they were changed a great deal in C3C. Others such as Elephants changed. None of it is crucial, but just an FYI.

Sorry for any confusion.

[Mad Bomber]

Originally posted by vmxa1
Holy cow Mad Bomber, you could have included a quote so I knew what the reference was about. I had to look back quite a ways.

My point was that some units are not present in that tool, as they did not exist before C3C. Not to mention some tools handle armies and they were changed a great deal in C3C. Others such as Elephants changed. None of it is crucial, but just an FYI.

Sorry for any confusion.

Oops. I forgot to include the previous reply. There is an option to manually input the stats of the attacker and defender, so that even if the pull down menu does not include the unit, you are still able to calculate the odds. Also the calculator handles units up to 20 hp. The only real dificiency is that it does not take army bonuses into account, but how often do armies really fight where the odds are not at least generally known?

Anyway I don't follow the part on the barbs. The combat calc is for units, barbs are not units, but rather two types of units (warrior and horsemen).

Barbarian bonuses affect combat odds, which is what I thought you were refering to with the reference to Demi and Sid.

[jshelr]

And the screen makes a cool picture, IMO

[jshelr]

We are hoping (but not expecting) Rome to appear with a stack of knights. If knights come, we can probably make them attack hoplites. The shield-to-shield loss numbers are truly great for Greece in that case.

Rome knows this. So, he is more likely to come with a stack of simple legions and bombardment units. Then we are screwed. If we block a tile, he will simply bombard the exposed hoplites and lose few if any attacking units.

Meantime, Rome is still at war with Persia but had a RoP with Egypt. Here's hoping that a relatively cheap bribed alliance might catch a few of Rome's units offside

[jshelr]

By the way, we've surged into seventh place on the power rankings

[jshelr]

The Romans are trying to cross to Greece, but they must be having some problems, don't you think

more fun and games with the ai. this frivolous action is only delaying the inevitable.......

[vmxa1]

I am just cracking up at all the alliances in these games, very funny.

[jshelr]

This entry is to illustrate a mental block I've got and I think others also share.

The key tile here is the ruins of the city. By the time the turn gets to Rome, Egypt will have a settler/spear pair on that tile. But they will move off it before Rome's subsequent turn.

Alex is going to move his army to threaten 4 cities simultaneously, by placing it on the westernmost jungle tile. But the only city he can attack and successfully escape from is the city furthest north east -- Marathon.

We should build a fort there this turn. But we do not, because we stupidly treated the ruins like the jungle in our addled head.

Meanwhile, all our allies refused to take a nibble from the army. This is usual AI behavior.

Our army is sword -- hoplite -- hoplite, a useful unit earlier in the game which is not the right mix now.

[Mad Bomber]

Have your worker @ Argos-6 start a fortress, then move that Hoplite army there and fortify it. It should give Alex something to think about. The only city he can threaten at present is Argos, the rest are a tile to far. Hopefully you have a few bombardment units handy.