Turn 76, 1000BC

[Blake]

You can always tell what cities a player has by going to diplomacy. Any city which isn't the capital will show up.

[Krill]

nope, they don;t have the land area for it, and their power chart supports the lack of any cities.

And our skirms have been there so long we should have seen a settler drifting past.

[Solomwi]

Originally posted by Hot Mustard


Actually, more than just the Skirmishers. Perhaps a breakdown is in order.

Best case scenario
- capture The Voice
- kill settler, capture worker
- have one or two Skirmisher defenders against two archers (I'm ignoring the remote possibility of three - even two is a stretch.)
- be well on the way to eliminating Vox, far earlier than planned

Worst case scenario
- all three skirmishers die, leaving us with only Cantona 'in the field', since our Axes are presently for defense
- no more chokers
- no line of sight on The Voice
- promotion(s) for city defender
- new Vox city will land somewhere

Please add anything you can think of

Time. The main thing Vox would gain from a failed attack is a lot of time before we could mount another serious attack. Depending on how completely we focused on getting another choking/attacking force over there, they could develop their area quite a bit toward stiffer defense, in addition to slipping that settler out to better ensure survival. That said, we could return with CR axes, rather than Skirms, and I'm not sure whether what they could do in the meantime would compensate.

I think the bottom line remains that this is the best shot we're likely to get, and passing it up is likely to be something we rue all the way down the line as the game goes.

[Harovan]

Our axes can play "midfield" (not too far away from our goal tho), since we need not to defend what's not threatened at present.

By the way, if we win, I would destroy The Voice, not capture (assuming only our badly beaten up thrid skirmisher makes it), because their 2 archers would probably take it back at once. Only if the 2nd skirmisher wins (I doubt the 1st will), we can capture it.

[Krill]

If we capture the Voice we see if the Archers disappear. If they do, due to vox being destroyed then we don;t have to abandon it.

[Hot Mustard]

Originally posted by Blake
We have a total of 60% chance of winning if we attack with every skirmisher regardless of odds (ie that 60% includes outcomes like the 3rd skirmisher winning at 5% odds...). Those are good odds, over all.

60% sounds great. How do you get that?

The first Skirmisher's odds are a mere 0.8%.

[Harovan]

Originally posted by Solomwi
Time. The main thing Vox would gain from a failed attack is a lot of time before we could mount another serious attack. Depending on how completely we focused on getting another choking/attacking force over there, they could develop their area quite a bit toward stiffer defense, in addition to slipping that settler out to better ensure survival. That said, we could return with CR axes, rather than Skirms, and I'm not sure whether what they could do in the meantime would compensate.

I think the bottom line remains that this is the best shot we're likely to get, and passing it up is likely to be something we rue all the way down the line as the game goes.

We don't lose any more time if we attack and lose than if we don't attack. Because if we don't, the opportunity is gone for good and by all means we need to return with catapults and axemen. By this time it doesn't matter if we have 3 more skirmishers or not.

What would really gall me is losing the power to choke.

Choking = small advantage over a long time. Attacking is a gamble, either we win big or we suffer moderate losses. What are our preferences?

[Hot Mustard]

The big picture should be considered as well

- if we manage to take Vox out now then we'll be able to play a larger part in the shaping of this continent, namely helping take out Banana and claiming more land earlier. Of course, the flip side of that is maybe AC and 'Nana freaking out about us and potentially joining forces to keep us in check.

- if we fail, then nothing has really changed in the big picture

[Hot Mustard]

Originally posted by Sir Ralph
What would really gall me is losing the power to choke.

Yeah, that would suck, as would the line of sight - knowing everything they build is immensely valuable. I suppose we could move Cantona down to choke, but I wager they would dogpile archers on him.

[Krill]

Also, consider the fact that AC are something like 400 beakers ahead of us in tech; we need to claw that back, and if we don;t have to get construction for cats to kill vix then we can go post sentries up north to watch banana while we grow like a weed down here. As Blake has said before, if we cottage all of those lood plains and work them then we can afford it and keep on teching.

[notyoueither]

Holy ****!

What are the oods of 3 skirms vs their city defender archer?

My first inclination is to say attack, however I would like to sim this a few times before I commit.

I can't be home until ~2 hours from now and then would need ~1 hour to create a sim and run it many times.

[Hot Mustard]

I'm thinking we should let the discussion continue tonight, and then we can conduct a poll tomorrow. Putting a poll up too early might sway opinions when we want everyone to come up with their own decision.

If you're not going to be able to vote tomorrow for some reason, then simply post your preference in this thread - Attack or Not Attack.

[Krill]

It's Kinda hard to sim it with 3 skirms. Probably easier to convert the code DeepO made for the combat calc to work for stack combat. All you would have to do is recalculate the effective strenght and hitpoints of the archer after 100 hp of skirm have been destroyed.

[Solomwi]

I was thinking more of the time in terms of Vox's gain than our loss. Without our choking ability, they'd be able to use that time more productively. Still, I agree with what you're saying here, SR. My preference is to take the reasonable gamble.

Looking at it from the other side, why would they give us such a golden opportunity? Aside from their just or missing our third Skirm, can anybody see a potential trap here, or other reason for them to deliberately present this chance to us? I think offering The Voice as bait and taking the chance of our razing it is a bit too much risk for the benefit they'd receive (assuming for the moment they've got a settler out there to keep themselves alive), though if they see this as their last gasp hope, meaning they don't have a settler out there, it might make sense. Mistake or desperate act in the hopes of our wasting our choking force on their one stout defender?

[Harovan]

Either way I go to bed now. I'll have a look tomorrow morning.

I vote for Arrians approach; if the first skirmisher inflicts a considerable dent in the defender's strength, attack with the other 2. If not, continue choking with 2 skirms and bring on some more.