Turn 100, 570BC

[Arrian]

Fortress ZOC (like bombard ZOC) only kicks in when moving troops from one adjacent tile to another.

-Arrian

[Shiber]

I hoped so, thanks.

[vulture]

With the choice of producing 1 Med Inf or 2 horsemen in 2 turns, which gives better value?

Attacking a 2 defense unit (immortal or spearman) on open ground:

2 horsemen win 77.8% of the time, losing 0.44 units on average (about 50% chance of not losing any units).

1 med inf wins 79.2% of the time, (so losing 0.2 units on average).


Attacking a 2 defense unit on a mountain:

2 horsemen win 43.6% of the time, losing 0.72 units on average.

1 med inf wins 50.0% of the time, losing 0.5 units on average (no big surprise there).

All calculations for healthy veteran units. So, in terms of the combats we are going to be facing, the med inf has more killing power and durability than the horsemen. OTOH horsemen are more useful for picking off wounded units and units with defense value of 1 (and can better defend a town in an emergency by weight of numbers). Med inf are obviously less vulnerable to counterattack in mountains than horsemen. Horsemen can upgrade to knights soon though, although it takes a lot of cash.

In terms of immediate usefulness, I'd say the med inf wins out, but once we have enough for immediate needs (namely holding our cities and taking out the main Vox stacks) then horsemen become more useful.

[Arrian]

In terms of immediate usefulness, I'd say the med inf wins out, but once we have enough for immediate needs (namely holding our cities and taking out the main Vox stacks) then horsemen become more useful.

That's basically what I was trying to say. Looking at the medium to long term, Horsemen are the way to go. Med Inf are a short term need, and we do have some already. A few more ought to be enough.

-Arrian

[Shiber]

Good way of presenting the numbers vulture.
I mostly agree with Vulture and Arrian. I think MedInfs have a longer lifespan/"usefulness-span" than you describe. An attack on D'Ville should be carried out by MedInfs covered by pikes IMHO, and the same thing goes for a landing. In these two situations the fast movement of the horses is not useful to us, and we don't want to give the enemy's militaristic units free upgrades by attacking them on mountains or inside cities using weak units.

[vulture]

What are the possible timeframes for getting chivalry through trade? We surely want to stockpile some horse units in preperation for upgrading to knights (at which point MI become largely obsolete, although cheap to build). Until then the MI are the main combat unit, with horses/chariots looking for easy kills for elites, and for mopping up wounded or exposed units (if they come off the mountains). (Should we make use of the healing effects of upgrading wounded WCs to full health horsemen, or is that not the best use of money at the moment?)

But MI are only vital until chivalry, and if that comes soon then the MI window of usefulness is quite small (although I suspect that given a choice between 2 MI or a knight for attacking D'ville over the mountains, the MI would win out).

[Arrian]

Vulture,

WCs no longer upgrade to horsemen. That was short-lived, and removed. I forget when it was patched out, but it was a while ago.

-Arrian

[vulture]

Shows how long it is since I last played the Egyptians...

[nbarclay]

Arrian, I'd like to get one more pike out of EotS no matter what. If Vox stays holed up in the mountains north of Hurricane, I'd like to be able to replace the swordsmen currently defending with pikes so we can upgrade the swords to medieval infantry. Then we can decide whether to go in and attack with medieval infantry or to keep the Voxians bottled up (with WCs ready to pounce if they come down off the mountains) but use at least most of the medieval infantry farther north.

[Arrian]

Ok. We are going to need a fair number of pikes in order to invade Vox (and for operation Inchon, should we choose to do it).

-Arrian

[Shiber]

I tend to believe that Vox will not attack Arashi nor Tempest this turn. I think that it's very possible that like last time, Vox will avoid attacking the big scary walled hill city where we are prepared for them and go elsewhere. They must understand that by going further and deeper into our territory they are only putting themselves in range of more attackers, so my guess is that they'll move 6, to Sandstorm.
I think we have to prepare for this possibility.

We have 3 (?) catapults in Tempest which can move 6 and fire at the immortals with a ~60% chance of hitting. We can move a few pikemen from Tempest (which will no longer be under immediate threat) to defend the catapults should Vox still have immortals left in that stack by the end of the turn. Oh, and another cat from Sandstorm (we can rush it at the beginning of the turn, right?) would be nice (it'd have a ~65% chance of hitting).
Afterwards, we can send MedInfs and swords from the area of Hurricane (we should have 2 MedInfs in range). Since we don't want to run thin in that front, I'd send only one MedInf to kill the unit at the top of the stack, and finish the rest with healthy WCs from Sandstorm, Arashi and Tempest. If too many of our attacks fail and we'll absolutely have to do this in order to save Sandstorm, we can send another MedInf from the Hurricane front.
Finally, use the 3 cats in Arashi to bombard the spearman A9, invent the Internet and win the game. Or alternatively, we could wipe it out and join the Izzard team.

[asleepathewheel]

Vox is on the clock.

Is this the turn of the game for them, or do they chicken out and hold on the mountain. So eager. I bet the hold this one for some time.


edit: well I certainly missed on that last one, vox has already sent to lego, not long now hopefully

[notyoueither]

Hmmm. They moved quickly. Must have had a plan in place that was not disrupted by anything we did during our turn.

They moved on. Either to SS or futher down the Spinebreakers. They may have fortified too, to await a new stack approaching Arashi.

[asleepathewheel]

Originally posted by notyoueither
Hmmm. They moved quickly. Must have had a plan in place that was not disrupted by anything we did during our turn.

They moved on. Either to SS or futher down the Spinebreakers. They may have fortified too, to await a new stack approaching Arashi.

I suspect the latter. they have seen what happens when they set foot on the flats. Of course, they probably think we lost a lot to take them out, instead of only losing one WC. This team is a mystery.

[Aeson]

Alexman's post about city walls has me thinking we should try to get Arashi up to size 7 ASAP.

In reality, it's only the bombard defense that expires when the city reaches size 7. The defense bonus remains until the walls are sold or destroyed, no matter what the size of the city.

This would put our Pikes there up to 83.7% against a Vet Immortal before factoring in the Cats.

If Vox parks between our two cities, I think this is our best defense to keep from losing Arashi in a sandwich with their next stack. It could probably get us up to 3 turn Med Inf or even 2 turn Pike/Horses as well.