AT loves it when a plan comes together!! [Spoilers]

[AutomatedTeller]

ok, so it's an emergency.

12 elephants, 9 cats, 5 axes, a couple of chariots. Pics later.

2 turns to feudalism, which can save our bacon if people take me up on our "will you sell us stuff?" - I've asked for some 800 gold for compass with various people - if we get half that, jowy will be facing 6-8 LB's instead of archers, and that will get bloody...

I closed borders with him (obviously) and am currently building wealth everywhere. Hopefully, people sell me stuff and I can build military.

Jowy's lost the game with this move, btw. I may be losing the game with his attack as well, but I'm not going to be easy to kill.

[AutomatedTeller]

Only pic that really matters:



That said, i think he made a mistake - I have visibility on his city, not on the tile 1N of the city.

[AutomatedTeller]

we are going to have something like:

2 spears
1 mace
1 xbow
6-8 LB/archers (depending on how upgrades from people)
1-2 catapults.
Walls

if they are archers, we get run over and it won't be pretty. If they are LB - well, we'll still probably lose the city, but he'll lose all his cats and half his elephants, at least.

1 of the LB will be CGIII on a hill in a city with 25% fort for something like an 18 defense, so that will take out quite a few attackers. My guess is that we lose the city and do serious damage to his stack.

the cats are a big problem, of course, and will do a lot of damage -

[AutomatedTeller]

so, I did some optimizing and whipped in an archer - with the overflow, we'll get an archer and then walls. If he spends a turn bringing down the walls, we'll get another spear. if he doesn't, well, everything is tougher.

We should also (I think) get a chariot in there, though maybe not. The chariot would maybe soak up some collateral. I think made a mistake in whipping earlier - should have dry whipped some chariots, instead of a worker and a catapult, from NCIS and Magnum PI. We'll see if that turns into a disaster or not.

[MindyMcCready]

Ok, I'm really holding back a rant where I go on about how we don't have that scout sitting on that hill between his cities that would have seen this and how you were a little dismissive when I went on about eyes in the area and how the GLib delayed Feudalism 10+ turns ago that would have deterred this "little" stack from coming on our doorstep definately would have sent Jowy towards TT and not us and how the GLIb is going to cost us a city or cities and nationwide military whips and how chokepoints are important to adequately defend and maybe we need military in that horses border city and why the heck did you think that you were going to have a happy peaceful relatiionship with Jowy!?!?!? and Jowy's been our #1 military risk since like the start of the game!!!

And for gawd sakes stop building wealth and build military....ok maybe I didn't hold back that rant so well.

Constructive feedback starts here:

Ok, so that's a pretty impressive stack. The combo of Elephants + cats are tough to beat since, even had we a decent stack of HA, we'd have a lot of trouble flanking away the cats.

So we have until T140 to fortify LALaw? He's playing last right so on T138 his stack will be on our hills WW of LALaw. T139 he'll be 1W of LALaw, T140 he bombards our defenses and maybe attacks. Sounds like we'll have Feudalism by then if not a number of LBs. (<-- why we don't need wealth builds).

First off, I don't see any real way for you to keep LALaw against that stack so don't get too committed to that. If we did make a stand there and then Jowy shows up with half a dozen HA after taking the city we would be in a lot more trouble if we've emptied out the nearby cities.

We need intel on Jowy. Mfg, Crop yield, gnp, city count. Also how much of his power is in that stack of doom? We need to have an idea on some key questions:
1. Are we going to see a stack of HA show up after he takes LALaw
2. Are we going to see a stack of HA show up down south?
3. What is Jowy's industrial capacity relative to ours. That's a lot of hammers/whips in that stack. Has this set him back? Can he sustain a second wave or is this an all-in?

On to the tactics:
Its pretty late for him to not have Machinery. As long as he has no crossbows he's vunerable to our Maces. I think that we need to trade land for time. Don't be too strong in LALaw but don't appear to abandon it either. Make him use up his cats on LALaw Archers/Spears/LB but pull the Mace/Cats back. We have until T144 (ish) before the next city can be hit by a hammer stack anyway. If we can put together a decent number of cats and maces and he feels confident of his chances maybe we can collateral his stack when he heads for a second city.

He'll have to garrison LALaw and heal units if he keeps it so that should use up a few of his units.

Essentially he's attacking us at a tech disadvantage. So if we play our cards right this might work out ok for us. Still its an impressive stack that Jowy's put together.

Oh yes, and I told you Jowy was a warmonger.

[MindyMcCready]

So assuming that he takes T140 to bombard walls and T141 to attack and take LALaw. If Jowy can sustain the attack then he'll just attack on T140 to have speed on his side. If this is an all-in he'll want to preserve his army and he'll bombard down the walls. This is a heck of an investment at this point in the game and generally people act to preserve their investments. My assumption is that he'll act to preserve his army in the hopes that this overwhelming stack would prove immune from attack and therefore the end of us. Without our LBs, this would probably be a good move for him.

If he wanted to strike fast he'd have brought HAs (althought we may still see them). If no HA show up then he's almost certainly here to hammer us down with a slow moving, preserve military mindeset.

T142/143 he presses on to 1NW LALAW.
T143/144 he forks 2 cities NW-NW of LALaw threatening Magnum PI and NCIS. If I were Jowy I'd go for the core so let's say:
-He should go for NCIS since he's opening up LALaw to us by taking Magnum first. If he does go for Magnum we could cut off his reinforcements.
-And boy if he goes for Magnum, let him have it. Put 3-4 longbows in there and that city will have bought us 5/6/7 turns.
T144/145 he's 1NW of NCIS.
T145 we need to attack out or suddenly show up with a whack of Longbows in NCIS and buy further time.

So the key question is how big of an army can we field in NCIS by T145? And do we have cultural control of all the tiles outside of LALaw (without having LALaw). We'll have to be careful of garrisonning NYPD Blue sufficiently as Lake Huron is a pain in the butt to get around.

If we can put together a sizable number of cats and Maces then I think that we should try to lure him in and then attack out. If we could pull this off then we have a decent chance of retaking LALaw in a reasonable amount of time. If that happens, Jowy's 'forked'.

[MindyMcCready]

If you upgrade the archer to a LB you lose the fortify.

Let's say a CGII Archer. Assume Jowy has stripped all cultural defense:
3 * (25% fortify + 50% city + 25% hills + 25% archer on hills + 45% CGII) = 7.35 + FS

Longbow CGII no fortify
6 * (0% fortify + 25% city + 25% hills + 25% LB on hills + 45% CGII) = 13.2 + FS

Well I was going to say that you might want to spend to upgrade the dogs over the archers but,...nevermind.

Yeah, you're right, this is going to get bloody for Jowy if we can get 6-8 LB in there. Still he's going to take the city but he might not have much left to make a run for a second city. That'll mean that he sits put in LALaw (or razes) if we want to bait a stack we'll need to carefully manage the defense.

And as for the likely coming Great General. I know that almost nobody does it but I think that I'd want to plant that GG in NYPD Blue. Barracks + GG + Totem = 8 XP. CGIII Longbows out the gate. Drill III: 4 FS + 1 FS + 40% less collateral. Is that worth it? Jowy's hasn't show HA yet. Probably not as the CG will defend first against catapults.

Ohhh, can't we build navy from NYPD? I see the wb in the unit selection but no Triemes or Galleys. I'm getting ahead of myself in wanting to boat Jowy's capital.

MORE INFO!!!! I NEED IT!

[MindyMcCready]

Oh one more thing.

If we are building an archer and land Feudialism does the archer autoupgrade to a LB or a crossbow? I seem to remember that it upgrades to a Crossbow so please be careful of that. Don't want any nasty surprises.

Haha, and I was just thinking that you shouldn't have closed borders with him. He might have pulled a Whoosit.

[MindyMcCready]

Another possibility:

If you do land Feudalism quick enough to mount an effective or at least painful defense of LALaw, you could consider offering Jowy peace. He may just march that stack over to TT rather than see it shreaded against protective longbows on a hill. Again, this is a heavy investment for him that he'll want a return on. Even bribe him with tech for peace.

But man i'm going to want to boat his capital in 15T if he does commit his troops against TT.

[AutomatedTeller]

The Glib was the right choice.

Paper and Compass was a dumb choice. Having Feudalism 10 turns ago would have allowed me to save gold and upgrade all those archers to LB.

Should have finished off Feudalism then - which echoes the path that led to my death in 34s, where I delayed getting xbows and had Commodore kill a city. I am nothing if not consistent in my over confidence that I'm not going to get attacked, in the face of absolute proof that we will

Azza gave us some cash, so we'll be able to upgrade 3 archers. Commodore did not, neither did cornflakes. Hopefulyl, commodore will see the attack and send us cash - it is quite in his best interest that Jowy gets hung up here. If Jowy breaks through with a large force, we are basically done and he and Cornflakes roll us up and I think that Cornflakes wins.

If you wish go lurk elsewhere, Mindy, go ahead

I guess I'll offer OB to Cornflakes - see if he takes it - for gold. We need it soon, though...

LB,btw, also take a lot less damage from cats. Without barrage, a cat does 12 hp damage a round to an archer and just 9 to a LB.