Welcome to the newcomers, key dates and links

[UnOrthOdOx]

I'm authorizing all folks to the Merc team as an interim action to getting the forums de-privatized.

Welcome, come in , and have fun. Feel free to ask questions and I'll do my best to answer.

If I get time, I'll compile the key turns and links in this thread.

And, kick it off with THE MAP.

http://www.apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=160388

Turn 1:

http://www.apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=151354

The Great Horse dispute.

http://www.apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=161368

Mercs saw a Horde settler stack heading for a set of ponies equi-distant between the Horde and Mercs. Mercs settled a turn earlier than the planned site to ensure we got ponies.

The Horde responded by sacking the city with archers, and fleeing from our axes that gave chase.

Sarantium, however, tried to move their own settler stack in, which royally ticked us off. They were eventually convinced of backing down by strongarm diplomacy and a show of force I once classified as "Smoke, mirrors, and chest thumping".

The great Merc militarization occured shortly after and smoke and mirrors soon became pointy things, with our primary military pump coming online.


With troubled waters on both borders diplomatically. War with the Horde, and a tenuous peace at best with sarantium, the Mercs took to getting Sarantium to view the Horde as a much better target than ourselves.

This involved, largely, a distractionary/pillaging force of 3 axes and a spear harrassing the Horde and preventing their growth.

In reality, while no "real" damage was ever inflicted by these troops, the Horde constantly had to contend with their presence, and their lack of growth from the time they enterred Horde territory is quite marked. With nice forests and hills around Horde lands, they were unable to mass a force to root our our harrassers, and went for a large chariot-keshik upgrade strategy in hopes of mopping the floor with us.

Meanwhile, back on the front, our power, and past history with the original Horde team, led Sarantium to decide the Horde was their best target. And things happened most quickly from our P.O.V.:

The Horde suddenly asked for peace, and an agreement was reached.

Sarantium got pissed at this peace, counting on our 4 units to aid their war, and requested us to rent those 4 units back. Which we agreed.

The Horde, now with peace in hand, asked to rent ALL AVAILABLE UNITS to attack Sarantium. And, this was also agreed to. KEY here was Horse Back Riding up front, and an agreement for some other techs later.

With both these contracts starting in 10 turns from the time initiated the Mercs, at this point, ceased researching all together in preperation for what was sure to be a coming storm.

Predictably, 10 turns later, when both teams discovered we had been simultaneously hired to hurt them as well as the other nation, all hell broke loose, but neither group had units in place to take care of our now-defenseless land. EVERY unit of ours was committed to these contracts.

We moved as ordered. The Horde sacked a Sarantium town before the two of them got their heads together.

Sarantium suicided the units they rented on the Horde Capitol. We moved as ordered. The Horde sacrificed our units on similarly defended Sarantium towns a few turns later. We moved as ordered even though it was clear this was a ploy to weaken us.

There was a big debate internally: Go for crossbows to deflect the incoming attack, or massively upgrade chariots to horse archers.

The Horse Archer plan won to save a Great Engineer for the Great Library.


More later.

[UnOrthOdOx]

Here's the power graph for the dialog so far.

[UnOrthOdOx]

By choosing the Horse plan, we made Chariots everywhere. This was key, in that Sarantium and the Horde were led to believe we had no cavalry units. The Horde had rented our only chariots, and those were destroyed. We made care to only show scouts our axes and spears.

In reality, we were building chariots, and mass upgraded them to horse archers.

Sarantium forces showed up at our border first. A large stack in the east, and a smaller stack in the south.

When the eastern stack fortified just in visual range, we figured they were either rebuilding Anhinga, or waiting for Horde to catch up to launch a coordinated attack.

Neither option was good for the Mercs. The good news was they only had 2 spears defending the army, to our horse archers. And, we launched the attack planning on losing 2 horse archers on the spears, but wounding them enough to let the other horse archers attack axes, then wiping out the axes with the remaining horse archers before cleaning up with our own axes.

Turn 110: Dark days, "Are we ***ed?" : http://www.apolyton.net/forums/showt...hreadid=171619


Turn 112: The daring assault on the Eastern Sarantine stack. And, The Exploit.

http://www.apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=171861

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I do want to explain the exploit here. What happened:

This was the first turn I played after the unofficial patch to get this game working because of BTS.

Well, I attacked with 2 horse archers, then turned on 'stack attack' to finish off. This gave us the results listed in the turn thread.

I finished the turn and closed Civ to post on the forums. (my PC at the time couldn't handle both at once) Noticing I wanted some more pictures, I opened civ back up, and attacked again, this time with stack attack on from the beginning...

The HP remaining on the surviving horse archers were different from the initial play, and Sarantium had a very wounded sword, but one less axe. Confused, I reloaded and tried again, same results.

I loaded this save many times. Turning on stack attack at different points. All had different results.

These were 6, fresh of the factory, identically promoted horse archers. ORDER of combat should have made NO difference in the result. My only conclusion is that somehow that stack attack flag was fiddling with the RNG.

Snoopy was told before I sent the save. I've recreated the error many times, some others have called me nuts.
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Turn 113, Horde preparing to invade:

http://www.apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=172108

The plan to deal with the Keshiks from the Horde was formed. Not with conventional spears, but with horse archers.

The Horde's stack had a mix of combat 1 and unpromoted Keshiks covered with archers. The archers, in a jungle, would have made a field day with spears anyway.

Fortunately, fresh off their victory against Sarantium, we had 4 Combat 2 Horse Archers, and a slew of Combat I's coming out of the factory. Still, the combat II's had to heal, and as a result, Echo had to be sacrificed.

The Horde sacked Echo, and moved up the west while that Southern Sarantium stack pillaged a gem, forted on a hill.... and never moved...

I'm STILL not sure what the hell they were doing with that thing. If they moved forward, we assured them the entire stack would die immediately. This was occasionally even true.

Turn 115: Horde moves in on Echo, what is Horde/Sarantium's plan? Even at this point, a combining their stack with Sarantium's stack would have been deadly for us...but, they press north alone.

http://www.apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=172312

More later, but that should point you in the rate period of history with the turnthreads.