We are at war

[DeepO]

instead of disbanding, I would attack the reg immortal. It's a 1 in 10 chance (roughly) that Ouch wins, but if he doesn't, it's only a 1 in 24 chance that imortal gets promoted.

Further: indeed, RP most likely has no galleys, or 2 at most. This map is now 7 turns old, at which time they had no scouting done on their coast, and I doubt that they were going to leave their galleys in port. In those 7 turns, they might have build 2 galleys, but I doubt it.

DeepO

[Aeson]

It's 100% that it gets promoted if it wins. 2 victories in one turn is an automatic upgrade.

[nbarclay]

We already attacked the regular immortal once and lost (not just retreated), so he's guaranteed promotion if we attack him and fail. That's a one in ten chance of killing three hit points' worth of immortal, and a nine in ten chance of giving Vox an extra hit point's worth of immortal if your odds are correct. 0.9 x 1 = 0.9, while 0.1 x 3 is 0.3. So the expected value is for Vox to gain 0.6 hit points' worth of immortal if we attack (although they might have to rest and recover from the damage). That's not a move I like.

Nathan

[DeepO]

Oh, of course. My apologies... disband him.

DeepO

[Aeson]

The Warrior by Dissidentville could move 9, to get a better view of everything. If he see's more Immortals it could really change where we want to move other forces, or how many upgrades to make.

[nbarclay]

Forces moving down their road wouldn't be visible yet, so the only way he'd see anything is if Vox ferried some troops around Grog's vantage point by galley prior to their attack. I don't view that as likely, although it's not impossible. I'd rather pull Hack back for upgrade.

[nbarclay]

I've got to go for a while. I'll probably be back, at least for a while, a little before 8:00 P.M. Apolyton time.

[Shiber]

Believe it or not but I just had an interesting conversation with Eli, over the phone.
We've met in IRC and I decided to give him my home # and cellphone #. We talked for some 20 minutes.

Eli turned out to have a somewhat weak character. It was much like talking to someone over the Internet who seems very confident and appears to have a dominant personality, only to find out later that he's really a... well, nerd.
I abused that and dominanted throughout the entire conversation, while not giving out anything of value (AFAIK). We had a nice talk about all kinds of other things, such as world issues, so by the time we got to the game I could verify that he's honest and managed to somewhat submit him... not sure I'm using the right terms here. Anyway, here's what I found out, which IMHO is reliable:

1. Vox are attacking us because they believe that they have no other choice. They don't see themselves as being able to do more than liberate West Wittlich. They believe that in order to expand, they have to do this over us. I got the impression that they greatly underestimate our strength.
2. Vox are dividing their forces to deal both with Bob and ourselves. Eli says that they have several immortals on Bob. I've made sure not to mention to him that GoW (and possibly ND too) don't intend to go to our continent (Hot_Enamel even said that their horsemen would be massacred; surely ND too understands what could happen to their swordsmen as soon as they land).
3. As I said, Vox tend to believe that they have no other choice. I got the impression that they're heading down the path of "dying in a blaze of glory".
4. Thought this was interesting enough to mention: during the Vox-Lux crisis, when Vox took out Portia, there was a lot of tension within Vox and Beta decided that "they've had it" and pulled the plug at Lux, only to find out later that a Lego galley was merely two turns away from Vox, ready to make contact, and give Lego contact with Lux so that Lego could give them a city on their continent.

[DeepO]

Makes sense... he would reach Arashi before any immortal could threaten a city. However, he is regular, we would have no scouting at all up there, and Arashi needs to rush its barracks before it can upgrade.

Come to think of it: do we have enough cash / desire to rush the barracks in Arashi, at least partly?

DeepO

[DeepO]

Another question: can workers reasonably rush a fortress on the tile 9 from Arashi? A road would be nice as well, but a fortress seems to be a reasonable demand in our situation. If Vox marches down the spines with 8-12 immortals, we're going to have a fun time defending.

DeepO

[Shiber]

Correction: Eli contacted me, and said that he was wrong about the Vox-Lux affair. It seems that Lego was 2 turns away from reaching an agreement with Lux, and 10 turns away from reaching them.

[Arrian]

I'd love to get some workers working on a fort + road to help our spears block their immortals. The question is whether or not we can feasibly defend them while they're doing it.

-Arrian

[Aeson]

If we leave Monsoon completely unguarded they are likely to see that next turn with their Spear...

Possible scenario:

Perhaps we should set a trap? Their Immortals by road (if they are sending them) will take 3 turns to get to the Mountains NE of Monsoon. We can have 6 WC's and 2-3 Swords in Arashi by then, keeping enough Swords in Hurricane to defend it (and the WC's can respond within 2 turns if necessary... we need 2 turns warning on the E coast.)

We see 2 Immortals, we gave them enough gold to upgrade 2-3 more depending on how much they had, and 6 is probably a good estimate for how many they had previously. So 9 Immortals. It looks like they are drawing their Warriors back to upgrade as well, so 11 Immortals within 4 turns. 2 of them accounted for at least temporarily.

The 2 out in the Desert are a bit of a concern, but are out of the picture as far as being threatening for the next 2 turns. They could load on the Galley, the Galley moves, then drops them off on the Mountains next turn. If we send our Spear in Sandstorm 88 of Tempest we can beat them there to force them off the Mountains. We can also put 2 units on the other Mountains to deny landing (Warriors/Swords). The 3rd Mountain has a Worker on it already to deny landing.

That would put Vox at 3 turns before they could threaten Hurricane, and keep them from coming on the Mountains. If their Galley turns back, we will know it this way.. and it simplifies things greatly.

The WC's all at Arashi, with Spears ready to move 9 onto the Mountain if needed, or into Monsoon. Next turn our upgraded Swords can move to Sandstorm if the Galley has moved back (our Spear will be in position to know if we move it first). From their they can either attack the E Desert Immortals (if our WC's haven't cleaned them up yet), or move into Arashi. We want everything in Arashi (other than Hurricane's defense) in 3 turns. Rushing the Barracks there (and then building a city wall) might be a good idea too.

If Vox see's an undefended Monsoon will they go for it? Maybe... if they do we can hit them with 8-9 units, and the WC's with enough movement left over to move into Monsoon or back to Arashi depending on how things go. The Spears can move into Monsoon if we can hold it after the battle, or can fortify on our Swords if not.

If they don't go for it, we are still in the best position our troops can be in.

[Arrian]

I like it, Aeson.

-Arrian

[Aeson]

I'd rather have our Workers build up EotS into a 30 shield per turn city for our GA.. and if we can spare the cash, Tempest's Aquaduct is going to pay off very quickly. The Northermost worker can move to 9 of Arashi to build a road there, being joined by the worker 7 of Arashi the turn after. That will give us 3 turns to get a road there, which will be in time to use before Vox can get Immortals there.

Ctrl-Shift-M verifies that Vox doesn't have any Horses right?