OK, we're less than 10 turns away from our war campaign against the German team. Let's start doing the tactical planning in earnest.
As a background for those who haven't been following the full game, we've been planning a war against the German team (Isabel/Inca) for an extremely long time. Their team signed something like a 100 turn Non-Aggression Pact (NAP) with our team earlier in the game, and then had their expansion drastically slowed in a war with WPC. That foolish conflict left both teams weak, technologically backwards, and sitting in exposed positions along our border. We didn't get much of a response from the Germans diplomatically, while WPC was very active in trading resources and soliciting an alliance. That made this a relatively easy decision: ally with WPC and fight a 2 vs 1 war against the German team when our NAP ended on Turn 150.
Over the past 50 or so turns, we successfully put the planning into place for this war. We devoting all of our resources towards winning the Liberalism race and slingshotting Nationalism with the free tech. (Sadly the second part of this plan, building Taj and taking the free Golden Age, did not take place.) We revolted into Nationhood civic, and we've drafted 15 maces in the first wave, with another 15 to follow in the final turns before the war starts. We have Heroic Epic finished in a strong city, we have forges up in our top production cities, and we're heading towards Guilds for knights. We should have the units in place to prosecute a war against a technologically backwards team with no longbows, maces, or pikes.
Let's talk tactics. Here is an overview of the German lands:
![[Image: ISDG-907s.jpg]](http://dl.dropbox.com/u/19563179/ISDG/ISDG-907s.jpg)
The German team has two central cores, based along the two fertile river valleys that run through their territory. The one in north borders WPC territory, running through Willhelmshaven, Wittenberge, Werendorf, and the cities further north. This was the subject of the earlier German/WPC conflict. The southern river valley runs through Wasserburg, Worms, and their capital of Webringen. This will be our main focus at the start of the war.
The basic idea is to snipe off the German city in the southwest sitting on our border, while focusing our main force along that southern river valley. We push through those cities, and then roll up the rest of the German flank from the south. Here's what that looks like in more detail.
![[Image: ISDG-908s.jpg]](http://dl.dropbox.com/u/19563179/ISDG/ISDG-908s.jpg)
We'll start in the southwest corner. Wolfratshausen is a completely indefensible city location. We can hit it with 1 movers out of our territory, not even needing 2 movers. I think we'll want something like 3 maces, an elephant, and a war chariot around here. We shouldn't need much more than that, unless we see reinforcements in the area. 2 movers should go with the main force.
The staging tile to attack is the red X indicated above. Amazingly, the German team does not have vision on that tile (!) It seems incredible but they don't. Vision does not travel two tiles on the diagonal unless you have a hill/peak tile, and they founded the city on flatland. We can put our forces on the red spot on T149 and attack without even needing to leave our territory on T150. This looks to be pretty straightforward.
Unfortunately we cannot keep this spot due to the heavy pressure from the nearby CivPlayers cities. We will have to raze and replace one tile north, on the white dot. We'll make sure to have a settler in place when the war starts, probably 3 pop whipped out of Ditchdigger. I have drawn the future borders with CivPlayers in green here. We will not control that gems tile, so don't bother shedding any tears over it. We can hold the rice though because it's second ring for us and third ring for both CivPlayers cities. We will need to chop/whip a theatre in the new white dot location, but otherwise should be OK. That's actually a stronger city than the one the Germans planted, and we plant another city five tiles east of white dot later on, after the Germans are gone. This part of the war is pretty easy.
Now for the main front, where things get more interesting. I spent some time thinking about this, and unfortunately there's no way to hit Wasserburg with 2 movers without the Germans seeing the stack coming first. We would need Engineering tech to make that possible, which we will not have on T150. As it turns out, the best place to put units for an attack on Wasserburg is inside Cutting Edge, which is another tile where they do not have vision. Again, someone can double check this, but as I understand the vision rules, they cannot see into that city. We'll stage units further back, move them into Cutting Edge T149, and then on T150 they move as indicated next to the city. We run over Wasserburg, roading the grassland hill as we go, and the stack can then immediately move on Worms.
We actually only want to move in as many units as we need to take Wasserburg via the route just explained. The main force should move along the other arrowed path. We start southwest of the city (well, on another staging tile further back prior to T149), and on T150 move northwest of the bananas. German team spots our stack for the first time. Workers also move onto the jungle hill tile that sits right on the border. We road the jungle hill T150 and move through that onto the pigs T151, the same time that we capture Wasserburg. Now we have two forces pushing towards Worms and the German core.
This is the next step, a push northwest up the southern river valley through the German core. I went ahead and drew in the cultural borders for these cities, so that you can see what tiles will be freed up as we capture these locations. The white arrows show the most likely lines of advance for our units. There's one mistake here though; the arrow heading northwest from Wasserburg should be a tile south, to push through that little gap in Worms' culture. We can move from the grassland hill south of Wasserburg NW-NW (with worker roads) and be only two tiles away from Worms. After Worms, we take the capital next to free up its enormous cultural pressure and take down the German team's best city.
If we're able to take Worms and Webringen, then the map really opens up for us. Weil der Stadt only has 20% culture borders; if the capital goes down, it can be moved along the diagonal with ease. We may be able to snipe it quickly with 2 movers, it depends on how they choose to defend in practice. Wanzleben would also be extremely exposed and pretty easy to take once the capital fell. In the east, dropping the capital opens up another line of attack on the diagonal at Wismar, if we road the desert hill two north of Wasserburg. That could be a nice target to hit with knights once we start getting them on the field in large numbers.
Beyond this, it starts to get too much into the realm of theory to do much planning. We'll have to see how the war is going and proceed from there. The basic idea would be to keep pushing north and secure as much as we can until the German team is dead. I have no idea how successful WPC will be; I'm thinking not very succesful at all. If we can get them to tie up some of the pre-existing German forces, then I'd be very happy with that. We don't actually want WPC getting many of the spoils, after all. We want the whole southern river valley and as much of the northern one as well.
Overall, I know that this is fairly basic from a planning perspective, but we want to have a good sense of where we're going as a team before we start. The most important thing is picking our staging tiles and how we're planning to move at the very start of the war. After the curtain goes up, it's all going to start changing, and we'll have to think on the fly. But the better our initial planning looks, the less like we are to run into some kind of drastic setback.
While we're waiting on me to get home tonight and play the current turn, let me know what you think about all this, and what suggestions you would make. Thanks.
As a background for those who haven't been following the full game, we've been planning a war against the German team (Isabel/Inca) for an extremely long time. Their team signed something like a 100 turn Non-Aggression Pact (NAP) with our team earlier in the game, and then had their expansion drastically slowed in a war with WPC. That foolish conflict left both teams weak, technologically backwards, and sitting in exposed positions along our border. We didn't get much of a response from the Germans diplomatically, while WPC was very active in trading resources and soliciting an alliance. That made this a relatively easy decision: ally with WPC and fight a 2 vs 1 war against the German team when our NAP ended on Turn 150.
Over the past 50 or so turns, we successfully put the planning into place for this war. We devoting all of our resources towards winning the Liberalism race and slingshotting Nationalism with the free tech. (Sadly the second part of this plan, building Taj and taking the free Golden Age, did not take place.) We revolted into Nationhood civic, and we've drafted 15 maces in the first wave, with another 15 to follow in the final turns before the war starts. We have Heroic Epic finished in a strong city, we have forges up in our top production cities, and we're heading towards Guilds for knights. We should have the units in place to prosecute a war against a technologically backwards team with no longbows, maces, or pikes.
Let's talk tactics. Here is an overview of the German lands:
The German team has two central cores, based along the two fertile river valleys that run through their territory. The one in north borders WPC territory, running through Willhelmshaven, Wittenberge, Werendorf, and the cities further north. This was the subject of the earlier German/WPC conflict. The southern river valley runs through Wasserburg, Worms, and their capital of Webringen. This will be our main focus at the start of the war.
The basic idea is to snipe off the German city in the southwest sitting on our border, while focusing our main force along that southern river valley. We push through those cities, and then roll up the rest of the German flank from the south. Here's what that looks like in more detail.
We'll start in the southwest corner. Wolfratshausen is a completely indefensible city location. We can hit it with 1 movers out of our territory, not even needing 2 movers. I think we'll want something like 3 maces, an elephant, and a war chariot around here. We shouldn't need much more than that, unless we see reinforcements in the area. 2 movers should go with the main force.
The staging tile to attack is the red X indicated above. Amazingly, the German team does not have vision on that tile (!) It seems incredible but they don't. Vision does not travel two tiles on the diagonal unless you have a hill/peak tile, and they founded the city on flatland. We can put our forces on the red spot on T149 and attack without even needing to leave our territory on T150. This looks to be pretty straightforward.
Unfortunately we cannot keep this spot due to the heavy pressure from the nearby CivPlayers cities. We will have to raze and replace one tile north, on the white dot. We'll make sure to have a settler in place when the war starts, probably 3 pop whipped out of Ditchdigger. I have drawn the future borders with CivPlayers in green here. We will not control that gems tile, so don't bother shedding any tears over it. We can hold the rice though because it's second ring for us and third ring for both CivPlayers cities. We will need to chop/whip a theatre in the new white dot location, but otherwise should be OK. That's actually a stronger city than the one the Germans planted, and we plant another city five tiles east of white dot later on, after the Germans are gone. This part of the war is pretty easy.
![[Image: ISDG-909s.jpg]](http://dl.dropbox.com/u/19563179/ISDG/ISDG-909s.jpg)
Now for the main front, where things get more interesting. I spent some time thinking about this, and unfortunately there's no way to hit Wasserburg with 2 movers without the Germans seeing the stack coming first. We would need Engineering tech to make that possible, which we will not have on T150. As it turns out, the best place to put units for an attack on Wasserburg is inside Cutting Edge, which is another tile where they do not have vision. Again, someone can double check this, but as I understand the vision rules, they cannot see into that city. We'll stage units further back, move them into Cutting Edge T149, and then on T150 they move as indicated next to the city. We run over Wasserburg, roading the grassland hill as we go, and the stack can then immediately move on Worms.
We actually only want to move in as many units as we need to take Wasserburg via the route just explained. The main force should move along the other arrowed path. We start southwest of the city (well, on another staging tile further back prior to T149), and on T150 move northwest of the bananas. German team spots our stack for the first time. Workers also move onto the jungle hill tile that sits right on the border. We road the jungle hill T150 and move through that onto the pigs T151, the same time that we capture Wasserburg. Now we have two forces pushing towards Worms and the German core.
![[Image: ISDG-910s.jpg]](http://dl.dropbox.com/u/19563179/ISDG/ISDG-910s.jpg)
This is the next step, a push northwest up the southern river valley through the German core. I went ahead and drew in the cultural borders for these cities, so that you can see what tiles will be freed up as we capture these locations. The white arrows show the most likely lines of advance for our units. There's one mistake here though; the arrow heading northwest from Wasserburg should be a tile south, to push through that little gap in Worms' culture. We can move from the grassland hill south of Wasserburg NW-NW (with worker roads) and be only two tiles away from Worms. After Worms, we take the capital next to free up its enormous cultural pressure and take down the German team's best city.
If we're able to take Worms and Webringen, then the map really opens up for us. Weil der Stadt only has 20% culture borders; if the capital goes down, it can be moved along the diagonal with ease. We may be able to snipe it quickly with 2 movers, it depends on how they choose to defend in practice. Wanzleben would also be extremely exposed and pretty easy to take once the capital fell. In the east, dropping the capital opens up another line of attack on the diagonal at Wismar, if we road the desert hill two north of Wasserburg. That could be a nice target to hit with knights once we start getting them on the field in large numbers.
Beyond this, it starts to get too much into the realm of theory to do much planning. We'll have to see how the war is going and proceed from there. The basic idea would be to keep pushing north and secure as much as we can until the German team is dead. I have no idea how successful WPC will be; I'm thinking not very succesful at all. If we can get them to tie up some of the pre-existing German forces, then I'd be very happy with that. We don't actually want WPC getting many of the spoils, after all. We want the whole southern river valley and as much of the northern one as well.
Overall, I know that this is fairly basic from a planning perspective, but we want to have a good sense of where we're going as a team before we start. The most important thing is picking our staging tiles and how we're planning to move at the very start of the war. After the curtain goes up, it's all going to start changing, and we'll have to think on the fly. But the better our initial planning looks, the less like we are to run into some kind of drastic setback.
While we're waiting on me to get home tonight and play the current turn, let me know what you think about all this, and what suggestions you would make. Thanks.
