RP, 30AD

[Arrian]

Any chance any of our knights can get over there and hit Ansars on our turn?

Can we rush a pikeman in Toledo in our production phase?

RP is in deep, deep ****. And frankly so are we. But we've been there before.

-Arrian

[Aeson]

Ah... we're just where we want to be.

Remember before this all broke out we were looking at fighting RP then ND and GoW!

I think our cash is better used to help RP upgrade any surviving Horsemen, or upgrade some of our WC's up N. We should land by Port Isolation in the next few turns if that Hill is still open, see if GoW is prepared for any action up N.

[Aeson]

Our Knights from Toledo (3) could make it to P7, which would allow us to hit Z or L next turn. Knights from port NM would only be able to make it to Z9, which would allow us to hit L, but not Z.

[zeit]

Aeson- You took the words right out of my mouth...

I wasn't thrilled about helping RP at all, and the way things are shaping up means they'll be totally dependant upon us when this is all over, or they that will die, and we'll still be on Bob, probably. We could let RP and ND duke it out, with us providing assistance where we could do the most damage, and loose a few units as possible. Striking at GoW's core (or even border towns) could get them completely out of the picture- I'd just love to see some of those Riders riding home, while we make a short work of the others...

What worries me is how we deal with ND? a token force landing won't work, as they are in their GA, and could probably muster some defense even from scratch in 2-3 turns... I guess we'll have to wait until we've waned GoW before we could start to work on that.

What if we land on GoW with some Pikes and WCs? They have almost no mountain tiles, and no jungles, which makes our WC as fast as manuverable as knights- right now they are nothing more than coast blockers- I bet they could do some good, if only just to shake GoW up a bit (these border towns around PortOI are close to useless for them, but the psychological effects are not to be dismissed- that would be a proof of GS's long arm ).

[vulture]

Originally posted by Aeson

I think we should skimp as much as possible in Toledo and send some Knights W right now. What's the stack calculator say if we have 8, 7, 6, and 5 Knights in Toledo? We need enough so that Toledo is safe within reason, and RP needs as much 2 movement help in the W as they can get.

Don't know if the knights not in Toledo would come from the ones there (fortified when attacked) or the ones not there (unfortified when GoW attacks), so I've done tests for both scenarios.

If the four fortified knights are always in Toledo, then we have, for 5-8 knights in town: (columns are no. of knights, average GoW losses, average GS losses, % chance of losing town in first attack)
8: 6.26 6.13 0.00%
7: 6.06 6.24 0.00%
6: 5.78 6.38 0.05%
5: 5.44 6.56 0.50%

for fortified knights being the first ones to leave, we get:
8: 6.14 6.25 0.00%
7: 5.79 6.48 0.00%
6: 5.22 6.74 0.08%
5: 4.85 6.94 0.80%

For comparison, with all 10 knights in Toledo, GoW loses 6.50, we lose 5.95. Taking out 5 knights to go to Zaragoza saves GoW 1 more rider, and costs us 1 more knight, pike or MI.


So there is no real risk of losing the town whatever happens. I'll try and get some numbers on the number of times an MI has to defend in each scenario, which is probably a better test of whether we 'succeed' or 'fail'

[vulture]

For MI involvement, I'm listing no. of knights left in Toledo (as before), average no. of times a MI will have to defend, and the probability that we get away with no MI having to defend. First set is for keeping the fortified knights in Toledo.

8: 0.103 90.2%
7: 0.375 68.7%
6: 0.901 40.6%
5: 1.604 20.1%

Second set is for preferentially moving fortified knights out of Toledo:

8: 0.119 88.8%
7: 0.449 63.8%
6: 1.086 33.8%
5: 1.850 15.7%

So if we only leave 5 knights in Toledo, the odds are that we end up with 1 uninjured MI, 2 dead MI, 4 dead knights, 1 dead pike, 3 injured pikes and 1 injured knight. And 9 injured riders outside the gates. It would only take a small swing of bad luck to put us in a very bad position with those units. At the other end of the list, 8 knights looks fairly safe - we stand to lose roughly the same number of units as GoW, but some of ours will be pikes. It is unlikely (though not very unlikely) that they get as far as attacking MI. Personally, I don't think I'd be happy with fewer than 8 knights left in Toledo. That way, with a barracks to heal, they'll always be facing an uphill struggle in round 2, even if they have pretty good luck in round one. Less than 8, and good luck starts to tilt the battle too much in their favour for my tastes - except that we have reinforcements to arrive the next turn, but I can't remember what they are.

[Aeson]

Thanks for the comparison vulture. I guess we should probably put everything we can into dealing with GoW's initial stack first.

[Shiber]

When did Togas say he was going to play the turn?
And when will the fun at #MilOps begin?

[notyoueither]

[notyoueither]

They will be playing the turn between 5 and 7pm EST. I will not be able to be around.

[nbarclay]

Are you sure about 5-7 Eastern Time? In the chat, Arnelos said probably @7-9pm Pacific Time, which would be 10-12 Eastern.

[DeepO]

One request: ask if RP wants to set its research to Chivalry (0%). Further, I'm not sure if we can give gold to RP, I'm not sure if it gets added to the treasury of RP before they get the tech, and thus can upgrade...

DeepO

[Shiber]

By the way...
When we're holding a town temporarily, we are building something while we are keeping it, but if we don't finish it by the time that we gift the city back, the shields are discarded, right?
Well, why not switch all temporary towns (such as NM) to building Wealth? It won't give us much, but it's better than nothing.

[nbarclay]

Am I the only one who feels like attacking with units and then gifting a city to teleport them to safety the same turn is taking the gift-teleport trick/exploit a bit too far? That's not just taking advantage of it for movement purposes as has been done before in the Voxodus. It's a way to defy the normal mechanics through which if you attack, you run the risk of being counterattacked in turn. Granted, the loss of territory involved limits the use of the exploit to a certain extent, but it still gives the defender a major, unnatural advantage.

[Theseus]

I agree with Nathan.

We have been very slick in our mechanics thus far, but this is a bit much for me.

It's time to win this part of the game, at least, straight out.