(February 26th, 2015, 20:47)Ceiliazul Wrote: Did you decide not to use the great artist in the shrine city?
Yeah, we discussed that and originally decided against it. From economic perspective getting rid of 9 turns of anarchy is weaker that other usages of a great person, so basically the question is whether we need an artist bomb to hold the city. So far we have believed that we can hold the city without it, but if the future proves us wrong... This is something that can be pointed out as a mistake. We had this turn so many things to discuss that we did not chat about the artist, OH might have put it on a boat towards the shrine city just in case..
Currently we have 42 bodies in the shrine city of which 13 are infantries + we still have the next turn time to reinforce it before dtay can attack. Next turn dtay can attack us with max 9 cavs assuming he does not manage to get rid of pindi's culture somehow. So the first real attack can happen in the 2nd half of turn 203. If dtay commits totally he can then get at least 18 cavs + ~10 rifles + support from airships in place (but again he would need to get rid of pindi's culture E of Shrine city or we can attack out and kill his rifles next to the city). That' still not really enough so the question is whether dtay will keep adding more and more troops in the area.
We of course need to also take into account pindi's remaining ~20 units in the east (2 cuirs + 10 CKN + ~8 melee). However, the turn order which we have is practical from our perspective: We play --> Dtay --> pindicator. This means that pindi sending his 10 CKNs and dtay following with his hitters does not happen naturally / without some diplo-ish arrangements and we get to heal, promote and react after pindi's move and before dtay can attack. I guess this exact moment might in fact be the best moment to cause us losses with a following sequence:
1. Pindi sends everything against us and leaves Avernus empty
2. We reinforce in the best way possible (our units are not yet fortified so they won't heal, just some promo-heals)
3. Dtay captures Avernus with a lonely cav he has in range
4. Dtay attacks us with his airships and 18 cavs + possible rifles that he moves forward this turn
The above sequence still does not lead us to immediately losing the shrine city, just costs us a decent amount of units + it would require some mind-reading between pindi and dtay... so I'm not thaaat worried about it.
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The real problems can be created if dtay just commits everything he has to screwing us and just keeps bringing more units + Dreylin commits everything he has in the west and those two attack us simultaneously. Unless EPs screw us we should get a good visibility of how Dreylin is advancing next turn. He has a big stack, but he still does not have Mil.Trad so it will take at least couple of turns before we need to deal with Cavs in the west.. FYI, it's pretty clear that he is making a move. He closed borders with us last turn.
Due to the Dreylin threat the culture bug around the Madrigal is F*cking annoying. We would really like to consolidate our current gains fast there so once Dreylin arrives, we would not look vulnerable. Let's see what pindi does and whether we can recapture Madrigal next turn, then we should be a lot wiser about our options and threats.
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Macro-wise we really aren't making it too easy for us. Our core is already squeezed between two strong civs, BGN + Dtay, and now we are attacking the middle part of a new continent where we will open a 2nd front with dtay + new fronts with Dreylin and WilliamLP. The last one hopefully is busy enough currently though.
But well, our conclusion was that BGN's land advantage is big enough that we need to improve our position further and we considered this as the best of our options. Fast attack + fast consolidation might make a risky move like this successful and speed up our own space race timing. So far everything is still possible: 11 cities captured during the first two turns, next turn the count should be 12 or 13 depending on whether Madrigal is ours. And we haven't lost too many units (2x inf, 2x cav, 1 cuir). There is still plenty of time to fall on our faces, but let's see.
This ended up being a much longer reply than I planned :P