Now to military matters.
First, some general strategy. I agree that we need to retreat our units and let Rome come to us, killing their units piecemeal. I agree that keeping the warrior alive is a must, since we relly need that sword upgrade. I don't agree with taking Vilnius, it's a poor city and a bit far, I think we need to set our eyes into Ostia and Antium. Those cities don't have a district up, nor are they building it, so those are keeps if captured.
Those two cities plus a city to the NE of the barb camp would form a nice core of land. I think we can work from that position to make further gains against Rome or even America. Anyway, I think we can try to mount a counter attack after the retreat, when we kill a part of Rome's forces, and gun for those cities.
Opinions?
On the tactical side of things, we have two theaters. Here's the northern one.
My idea here is to attack the archer with the sword and finish it with the archer, moving 1NE before attacking. The sword is on a hill, so it's safe from counter attacks from the warriors and next turn it has a promotion to heal. I think the sword ZOC will prevent the warriors from reaching the archer, but even if that doesn't work that way, only one warrior can attack the archer and that's not enough for a kill. Notice that the forested hill has a road, so an archer could come from the fog and shoot the sword, but that won't be enough to kill it, I don't think.
The other option would be to kill the southern warrior. It's too risky, in my opinion, because the sword will be too exposed. The only thing that option would accomplish is in the second theater, on the south:
By killing that warrior, we could move the red-lined archer into the forested hill and prevent the scout and spear from killing it. That's the best chance I see to save that unit and it's a pretty bad one, since it'd require the AI to goof it up and not kill the archer with its archer. Considering this, I see two options for that archer. Either we pillage the district, which gives us some faith and delays Rome Prophet, or we hurt some Roman unit.
We could try to combine the red-lined archer attack with attacks from the other archers to finish some unit off, but I don't think that's a good move. I think the rest of the army should just retreat. I highlighted the path I think the warrior should take, we'll need 5 turns before we can upgrade it, and a few more turns to place him in an useful spot. The big deal about losing warriors is that upgrading warriors to swords is the quickest way to get a powerful army going. And since we already finished IW, and we have a source of Iron, we cannot build any more warriors, just straight swords.
Anyway, I think the warriors should move as shown and that the archers should both move 1 NE each. It's not the safest retreat route for the southern archer, but going 1E will mess up with the warrior movement on the following turns and the unit will just take too long to reach a meaningful area of the map. Better to risk taking a shot than making the unit useless for so long. After the second 1NE move, the archer will be safe due to the terrain anyway.
Finally, we know Rome has Masonry, as Rome is building walls.
I think we pillage the stone with the scout, which will speed up PP. And I think we should try and pillage the other stone tile, to further speed up PP. I don't see better uses for the scout right now and since Rome is building walls, it won't be finishing a unit any time soon.
Those are my thoughts for the turn. Comments and discussion is not only appreciated, but it's what a SG is all about.
First, some general strategy. I agree that we need to retreat our units and let Rome come to us, killing their units piecemeal. I agree that keeping the warrior alive is a must, since we relly need that sword upgrade. I don't agree with taking Vilnius, it's a poor city and a bit far, I think we need to set our eyes into Ostia and Antium. Those cities don't have a district up, nor are they building it, so those are keeps if captured.
Those two cities plus a city to the NE of the barb camp would form a nice core of land. I think we can work from that position to make further gains against Rome or even America. Anyway, I think we can try to mount a counter attack after the retreat, when we kill a part of Rome's forces, and gun for those cities.
Opinions?
On the tactical side of things, we have two theaters. Here's the northern one.
My idea here is to attack the archer with the sword and finish it with the archer, moving 1NE before attacking. The sword is on a hill, so it's safe from counter attacks from the warriors and next turn it has a promotion to heal. I think the sword ZOC will prevent the warriors from reaching the archer, but even if that doesn't work that way, only one warrior can attack the archer and that's not enough for a kill. Notice that the forested hill has a road, so an archer could come from the fog and shoot the sword, but that won't be enough to kill it, I don't think.
The other option would be to kill the southern warrior. It's too risky, in my opinion, because the sword will be too exposed. The only thing that option would accomplish is in the second theater, on the south:
By killing that warrior, we could move the red-lined archer into the forested hill and prevent the scout and spear from killing it. That's the best chance I see to save that unit and it's a pretty bad one, since it'd require the AI to goof it up and not kill the archer with its archer. Considering this, I see two options for that archer. Either we pillage the district, which gives us some faith and delays Rome Prophet, or we hurt some Roman unit.
We could try to combine the red-lined archer attack with attacks from the other archers to finish some unit off, but I don't think that's a good move. I think the rest of the army should just retreat. I highlighted the path I think the warrior should take, we'll need 5 turns before we can upgrade it, and a few more turns to place him in an useful spot. The big deal about losing warriors is that upgrading warriors to swords is the quickest way to get a powerful army going. And since we already finished IW, and we have a source of Iron, we cannot build any more warriors, just straight swords.
Anyway, I think the warriors should move as shown and that the archers should both move 1 NE each. It's not the safest retreat route for the southern archer, but going 1E will mess up with the warrior movement on the following turns and the unit will just take too long to reach a meaningful area of the map. Better to risk taking a shot than making the unit useless for so long. After the second 1NE move, the archer will be safe due to the terrain anyway.
Finally, we know Rome has Masonry, as Rome is building walls.
I think we pillage the stone with the scout, which will speed up PP. And I think we should try and pillage the other stone tile, to further speed up PP. I don't see better uses for the scout right now and since Rome is building walls, it won't be finishing a unit any time soon.
Those are my thoughts for the turn. Comments and discussion is not only appreciated, but it's what a SG is all about.
That little quirk in the combat rules already cost me units on previous games and now I have it screenshoted. I'm guessing they have heights for the tiles and both forest andhhills raise height by one, which allows lower terrain attacks. In Civ 5 it worked logically, where you couldn't shoot from a hill over a forested hill, but neither could you shoot over a hill into a forested hill.
Can the cheap districts save us?