Turn 133, 90 AD

[Shiber]

4P, 5K, 3 MedInf in Toledo (plus 4 cats)
5P, 2K in NM (plus 1 cat)
6K on the mountain blocking easy access to Pamplona
1 K and 3 MI to land this turn with movement available

The Great Wall completes this turn.
Toledo is under no threat (unless we see more riders coming from the south), so we can move lots of units out, including 5 knights.

If RP can rush walls in Barcelona during pre-production so that they'll have walls when they open their turn, they can gift Barcelona to us if it comes under threat from riders and we'll be able to employ the benefits of the GW and get a nice defensive bonus of +135% in Barcelona (walls + GW + grasslands + fortification).
We also need to come up with a way to prevent GoW from attacking Pamplona with their big stack (although it seems more likely that they're moving south).

RP is stuck with workers that completed a road but can't move out of danger this turn. They are threatened by one rider with 3 pips on a mountain.
AFAIK there's no way to attack that rider with a medinf this turn. A cat can hit it but it can't retreat, and it'll most likely miss anyway (40% chances of hitting). Shall we bite the bullet and attack with knights (45.5% chances of winning, almost an even fight) in order to save RP's workers?

[Theseus]

Are we still encumbered by rivers?

[zeit]

I think not, we do have engineering...

[Theseus]

Pamplona96: 4 K hold fast, and 2 move to Toledo 2.
Toledo: 5 K move to NM7.
NM: 1 P moves to Toledo2, and 1 C moves 22 toward Barcelona.
Reinforcements: 3 MI move 11 toward Barcelona, and 1 K moves to NM.

[nbarclay]

Odds would be slightly against us on the first strike, but weight of numbers shifts the average losses to just a little in our favor throwing multiple knights against a single 3hp rider. (Of course the worst-case situation would involve our losing multiple knights, and if we win, we'd need heavy support on NM 6-6 after we take it if we don't want GoW to return the favor taking advantage of numbers to make up for bad individual odds.)

Speaking of taking out 3HP riders, cats from Toledo moved to Toledo 2-1 could ping the two riders adjacent to that tile. With luck, that could set up another situation where healthy knights could use weight of numbers against injured riders. (In that case, MedInfs could lead the attack, with knights from P6-9 dealing with retreats.) Of course the cats would definitely need adequate cover against a possible GoW counterstrike, but a failed counterstrike against that hill could pretty much wipe GoW out.

Shiber, if you're playing the turn, don't forget to reshuffle laborers to keep Hurricane at 15 shields. If I remember right, Sandstorm can shift from a fur to a mountain and give the tile to Hurricane without interfering with its growth. Right now, Hurricane and Sandstorm are the main really tricky economic balancing act.

Also, you probably want a worker to chop the forest by Dissidentville to help speed up its granary, but there's no huge hurry on that.

[Shiber]

I'll have to reshuffle workers and stuff!!

I have the turn but I won't play it now. It's almost 6 AM in the morning, I only got back like half an hour ago from a (cramped) club where a (great) local band did some (excellent) covers of Metallica (the good years) and Iron Maiden.
I'll play it when I wake up.

I had an idea regarding Barcelona. Now with the GW walls are super-powered, so we have to make good use of that. If RP sees that GoW has moved to the area of Barcelona when they open their turn, can they build walls in Barcelona in pre-production and then gift the walled city to us? Barcelona also lies on a hill, I think, which would make it a super fortress (hill + wall + GW + fortification = +175% defense!!).

[Shiber]

Oh, what the heck... for you guys, I'll do anything.

Isabella offers 31g and WM, accepting...
Vet Galley produced in Wittlich. GoW has a pike in PoI and a spear on the hill next to it, both vet, and two reg galleys in Wittlich-4 (3/3, 1/3). We have a 3/3 galley in PoI-2 and a 4/4 galley in Wittlich (the one we just built). Shall we attempt to sink GoW's galleys? (the odds are on our side)

THE GREAT WALL IS COMPLETE!! Now all that's left is to build the Great Door, the Great Windows, the Great Roof and the Great Furniture

Btw, I was wrong earlier. Barcelona is on plains, but that still gives us +135% if we have walls and fortified units there.

[Shiber]

A cat from NM can move 4 and fire at the lone rider. If it hits that rider becomes 2/4 and gives our 4/4 knights a much easier job (66.3%, vs. 45.5% if the rider remains 3/4).
But if we move the cat in to fire, it will fall... OR, we can use it as a trap for GoW. If they send a rider to capture it, then that rider is lost next turn (it can move to a hill, but we'll still have medinfs to attack it so we'll have a good 'losses-in-shields ratio' compared to GoW). If they use the cat then they cannot disband it and that cat is ours next turn. If they disband it - that's the price for luring a rider, and losing a 20 shields unit is not that bad. If they bring more riders to guard it in an attempt to keep it - HA HA! More heads to chop off.

Btw, can we get RP's two workers to re-road Toledo-2? (it's been cut)
They can reach the tile this turn. How long will it take their workers to do the job?

Btw2, a definite to Nathan's proposal regarding the cats in Toledo. We can move out lots of units out of Toledo now (it's got barracks and +135% defense) so we can guard those cats well.

[Shiber]

Oh, and Vox now has 7 1-pop cities, filling up most of northern Lego Land (loose build pattern). And now, sleep...

[Shiber]

Behold the many wonders of internet hosting

http://www.securitywriters.org/counter/the_latest_sav.sav

Correction to what I said earlier, the 6 knights on the mountains can cover the NM cat (they should go there anyway if we want to be able to reach Barcelona before GoW does) (but not fortify, and they'll be sitting on grass) if we move it to NM-4 to fire at the lone GoW rider. However, we can move some pikes out of NM into NM-4 to cover the knights and the cat and fortify (we can do it because NM is not under immediate threat, unless of course GoW can break through this particular stack).
I suggest that we fire at the lone rider with the cat and then attack with a knight from NM and see what happens.

Now I'm really going to sleep.

[notyoueither]

It is highly probable that GoW is trying manuevre us off that mountain at Pamp 6 9. I would not move those Knights, if I cared for the future of Pamplona.

[nbarclay]

We rushed the galley in the north last turn specifically for the purpose of attacking the GoW galleys, so if you don't attack, we've wasted an awful lot of gold.

For other maneuvers, we're up against the "biggest stack" principle: the principle that an attacker with a bigger stack gets a chance to hit wounded units with healthy ones. With mountains for defense, the defender needs at least about half as many units as the attacker to inflict a favorable loss ratio. On flatlands, the defender needs a larger stack than the attacker just to avoid giving the attacker a bigger advantage than is inherent in four offense against three defense, and if we would let GoW attack us on flatlands, we'd better make sure they don't have (and can't take) a mountain to retreat onto after the attack. Hills are somewhere in between, but we want at least almost as many defenders as GoW can send attackers.

Also note that we have to keep in mind where GoW's units can retreat to after they attack. If we don't hold both NM 4-4 and NM 4-4-1, or if GoW can take one of those tiles from us, GoW can pull victorious units that attack NM 4 and unts that retreat instead of losing outright back onto a mountain. So we end up letting GoW attack us with favorable odds without being able to get favorable odds for a counterattack in return. Similarly, sacrificing an undefended cat at NM-4 requires that we hold NM 4-4.

I just opened the save and realized that GoW did a lot more pillaging than I'd known about from RP's screenshot. They took out the roads at both T2 and T1-2, so the idea of having cats bombard at T1-2 is out. That's also going to slow down our forces a lot in getting from Toledo to anywhere useful, but at least GoW can't get back to Toledo to attack it easily. We probably need to move most of our forces from Toledo to T2-1 anyhow just to get them somewhere useful, maybe holding back a couple pikes in Toledo for defense.

With Toledo's knights pretty much out of action for the moment, our best shot at holding Barcelona if we want to try is to start some pikes in that direction now. But if we try to do that, we could easily find ourselves facing a major "biggest stack" problem unless we're willing to leave NM mostly uncovered (probably leaving a pike and three knights there and moving the pikes that are there now and the new units we land other than the knight toward Barcelona). Of course if we take over Barcelona, GoW has the option of bypassing Barcelona and going after Valencia and points south. If they do that, there's no way we could possibly keep up, and in the meantime, we'll have lost time going after ND.

Another option would be to defend Barcelona with a single pike, throw practically everything we have in ND's direction, and hope GoW keeps up their pattern of not attacking cities with GS stacks of unknown size in them. That would be a serious gamble, of course.

[nbarclay]

Originally posted by notyoueither
It is highly probable that GoW is trying manuevre us off that mountain at Pamp 6 9. I would not move those Knights, if I cared for the future of Pamplona.

Not to mention the fact that leaving our knights there is important if we want to be able to counterattack ND when (and assuming) they throw a lot of Ansars at Pamplona.

[notyoueither]

I don't have the save yet, can someone fix that?

me at hotmail.com

[Harovan]

fixed