T109.
We had a 5 person civ party today; plako, dtay, Adrien, HAK, and myself were all logged in at the same time! (looks like I just missed Gawdzak too) We chatted about how it would be really cool to start a pitboss this way, with all 11 players logged in at once, but probably be completely impossible. Kinda fun.
I founded the northern ToA city this turn, named after The Draw Play. I'll post a screenshot of that later today; I was kinda rushed playing my turn right before a doctor's appt. (I snuck out of work a bit early, heh)
Buildup has been going as planned, but I've been thinking more lately about this upcoming war with REMAI. Seeing their buildup (we are again 2nd in soldier count this turn, although only 1 more sword popped out), and being a little more critical about our own productive and logistic capabilities, leads me to think that we need to delay the invasion date a bit and rework our planned tech order. Basically, it's like this. A big part of the assumption that we're stronger than them in a bilateral build up is based off the equation that 15 cities is stronger than 8 cities, right? We can make more units out of 15 cities than they can from 8. However, that's a meaningless analysis in the short term. First of all, even if all of our cities *were* making invasion units (which they're not), some of our cities are very far from the front. If we wanted to attack in, say, 6 turns, these cities would need to produce units in the next turn to get to the front in time. Sure, they can provide sustain, but can contribute nothing more to the initial SoD. Second, most of our cities have not and are not producing military. A rundown:
1.) GoatKCD is building stable -> finish settler -> barracks, and won't be whipped.
2.) MoJ is building stable -> finish settler. no barracks here.
3.) Claretin has no barracks and produces 1 hammer a turn - better to finish the lighthouse here
4.) Klurfville has no barracks, although it can contribute a few garrison replacements after its stable; lets count it half
5.) PHis producing some troops (a sword and a war elephant, lets say), but is also working on our GA GM, so we can't whip it too much. another 1/2
6.) The Draw Play (TDP), Ma3, Twokinds (TK), and Oglaf are still brand new and can't contribute past a stables a piece.
7.) Groooming, Ray's Toilet, and RIPFF are all across the water, and the latter two have heavy whip unhappy. Maybe we can squeeze a single catapult from somewhere out there in time to mean anything?
So, its really only 4 total cities or so producing the bulk of our army right now. Assuming REMAI are going for total war to match our output so far (although it seems they too haven't touched their capital), that's probably very similar to their total productive output. Now, we have our ace in the hole of essentially 9 free horchers on top of that, but what would a T113 invasion look like? Here's an estimate:
us T113, planned:
7 swords, 1 spear, 2 axes, 1 chariot, 9 numidians, 3 cats. (23 units total)
REMAI T113, projected:
3 war elephants, 2 spears, 2 axes, 4 hwatcha, 2 archers (13 units total)
It looks like we have a big advantage here, but remember that we're going against holy city culture, so we'll have to putz up to the city (2 additional turns) then bombard down, giving them 5 more turns to gather units. If they're able to produce a few more war elephants and a few more hwatchas, we could easily get stalemated.
On the other hand, consider a possible T118 invasion. Delaying a few turns lets our further out cities contribute troops and lets us whip our closer cities harder - the tech plan changes that I mentioned earlier are to get Calendar immediately after Construction, 2T break-even. In addition, we can produce some war elephants of our own, better protecting us from deadly hwatchas and horchers. On the other hand, they'll be mostly whipped out by then, I think.
us T118, planned:
7 swords, 2 spear, 2 axes, 1 chariot, 11 numidians, 2 war elephants, 8 cats. (33 units total)
REMAI T118, projected:
5 war elephants, 2 spears, 2 axes, 6 hwatcha, 2 archers (17 units total)
They'd still be able to scrounge up some more troops en-route, I'm sure, but won't have enough to really contest our enormous stack, especially under the threat that our huge number of Numidians will pose to any sneaky Hwatcha strike.
With that in mind, where do all these extra troops come from, exactly? Good question... still gotta plan that out, rather than just wave my hands around...
We had a 5 person civ party today; plako, dtay, Adrien, HAK, and myself were all logged in at the same time! (looks like I just missed Gawdzak too) We chatted about how it would be really cool to start a pitboss this way, with all 11 players logged in at once, but probably be completely impossible. Kinda fun.
I founded the northern ToA city this turn, named after The Draw Play. I'll post a screenshot of that later today; I was kinda rushed playing my turn right before a doctor's appt. (I snuck out of work a bit early, heh)
Buildup has been going as planned, but I've been thinking more lately about this upcoming war with REMAI. Seeing their buildup (we are again 2nd in soldier count this turn, although only 1 more sword popped out), and being a little more critical about our own productive and logistic capabilities, leads me to think that we need to delay the invasion date a bit and rework our planned tech order. Basically, it's like this. A big part of the assumption that we're stronger than them in a bilateral build up is based off the equation that 15 cities is stronger than 8 cities, right? We can make more units out of 15 cities than they can from 8. However, that's a meaningless analysis in the short term. First of all, even if all of our cities *were* making invasion units (which they're not), some of our cities are very far from the front. If we wanted to attack in, say, 6 turns, these cities would need to produce units in the next turn to get to the front in time. Sure, they can provide sustain, but can contribute nothing more to the initial SoD. Second, most of our cities have not and are not producing military. A rundown:
1.) GoatKCD is building stable -> finish settler -> barracks, and won't be whipped.
2.) MoJ is building stable -> finish settler. no barracks here.
3.) Claretin has no barracks and produces 1 hammer a turn - better to finish the lighthouse here
4.) Klurfville has no barracks, although it can contribute a few garrison replacements after its stable; lets count it half
5.) PHis producing some troops (a sword and a war elephant, lets say), but is also working on our GA GM, so we can't whip it too much. another 1/2
6.) The Draw Play (TDP), Ma3, Twokinds (TK), and Oglaf are still brand new and can't contribute past a stables a piece.
7.) Groooming, Ray's Toilet, and RIPFF are all across the water, and the latter two have heavy whip unhappy. Maybe we can squeeze a single catapult from somewhere out there in time to mean anything?
So, its really only 4 total cities or so producing the bulk of our army right now. Assuming REMAI are going for total war to match our output so far (although it seems they too haven't touched their capital), that's probably very similar to their total productive output. Now, we have our ace in the hole of essentially 9 free horchers on top of that, but what would a T113 invasion look like? Here's an estimate:
us T113, planned:
7 swords, 1 spear, 2 axes, 1 chariot, 9 numidians, 3 cats. (23 units total)
REMAI T113, projected:
3 war elephants, 2 spears, 2 axes, 4 hwatcha, 2 archers (13 units total)
It looks like we have a big advantage here, but remember that we're going against holy city culture, so we'll have to putz up to the city (2 additional turns) then bombard down, giving them 5 more turns to gather units. If they're able to produce a few more war elephants and a few more hwatchas, we could easily get stalemated.
On the other hand, consider a possible T118 invasion. Delaying a few turns lets our further out cities contribute troops and lets us whip our closer cities harder - the tech plan changes that I mentioned earlier are to get Calendar immediately after Construction, 2T break-even. In addition, we can produce some war elephants of our own, better protecting us from deadly hwatchas and horchers. On the other hand, they'll be mostly whipped out by then, I think.
us T118, planned:
7 swords, 2 spear, 2 axes, 1 chariot, 11 numidians, 2 war elephants, 8 cats. (33 units total)
REMAI T118, projected:
5 war elephants, 2 spears, 2 axes, 6 hwatcha, 2 archers (17 units total)
They'd still be able to scrounge up some more troops en-route, I'm sure, but won't have enough to really contest our enormous stack, especially under the threat that our huge number of Numidians will pose to any sneaky Hwatcha strike.
With that in mind, where do all these extra troops come from, exactly? Good question... still gotta plan that out, rather than just wave my hands around...