Tense stuff. I'm on holiday now, so even less focussed than usual, but FWIW:
I can understand the desire to get rid of SoZ, but what's he strategic objective here? Punch Joey and get a more stable border? Not a bad idea in itself, but are you ready when he responds angrily?
Don't get me wrong: it feels like you need to be doing something to recover expansion, and GJ is your major existential threat in the short term, I'm just not clear on where you see this going in 10t time.
My feeling is that geography makes Krill your natural medium-term ally, but I can't see how to leverage that now.
It may have looked easy, but that is because it was done correctly - Brian Moore
Good questions, shallow_thought. To me, the advantage of hitting State of Zijin (and possibly Seven Mysteries if he leaves an opening) is that the resulting more-favorable border, along with the military we built for the purpose, will leave us more ready when GermanJoey responds angrily than we would be if he attacked us deliberately and at a time and place of his choosing. Doesn't mean there aren't better strategic options - again, I design plans like these as logistical puzzles more than anything else; if they support our actual strategy, that's kind of a bonus! We're going to need some kind of military regardless, but we don't have to bend our whole civ into it like the plan I posted suggests....
I've (hopefully correctly this time) corrected the plans for Nambui and Kokejin, and corrected and extended plans for the eastern galleys and workers, in case we do carry through this plan; I also updated this information in the more-complete description up-thread:
Nambui: T143: Keshik complete with 11 (base) overflow. Start another Keshik. T144: Nambui is size 16, growing onto a farm, and starts a Chariot. T145: Chariot complete. Resume the Keshik and WHIP it for 1 pop, giving up a farm. T146: Knight complete with 19h (base) overflow. Start another Knight?
Kokejin: T143: WHIP the Cat, giving up a coast tile; hire an Engineer, and work the bare plains tile and a citizen specialist. (Yeah, I know. The things we do for one extra Knight!) T144: Cat complete with 20h (base) overflow; start a Keshik, still working the ridiculous city configuration. T145: WHIP the Keshik, giving up the Citizen specialist (finally) but still working the engineer and the bare plains tile. T146: Knight complete. Resume the Longbow. Finally drop the plains tile.
Galley/Worker/Unit Logistics for the Eastern sea:
T143: The Worker near Sugabala completes a road. The Galley near Oljei Baajii moves 2NW toward Sugabala. The Galley already on that tile WAITS while the Swordsman disembarks into the city. THEN that Galley moves 1NE toward Kokejin and ends its turn with one move remaining. If the Worker on the other Galley has not yet disembarked, it does so now, onto the forest. Only after this has been done does that Galley moves 2W to the Whales.
T144: The Worker in Sugabala's forest begins a chop. The Worker on the adjacent tile moves into the forest. The Cat just completed in Sugabala and the Swordsman standing in the city both move 2NW to board the Galley on the Whales. That Galley WAITS for the Cat and Swrd, and then moves 2W to the fort. The Catapult from Kokejin boards the adjacent Galley, which WAITS for the Cat and THEN moves 1SW to the tile with the other Galley, where it WAITS yet again; the Cat boards the 2-move Galley, which WAITS to confirm it has "1/2" cargo space, meaning the Cat is aboard, THEN moves W-NW into the strait between Sugabala Island and the mainland. Finally, the last remaining Galley moves back 1NE toward Kokejin.
T145: The Workers in Sugabala's forest complete a chop. The Galley on the fort WAITS while its passengers disembark and move 2SW toward the front. It continues to WAIT while the Elephant just completed in Muqa moves to the fort and boards it. It continues to wait while the Galley near Sugabala Island moves W-NW around the island toward the fort, and the Cat on that Galley disembarks onto the fort and boards the Galley there. THEN, once it shows "2/2" cargo space again, the Galley on the fort moves 2NW through Oljei Taikhu into the northern sea. The Galley near Kokejin remains in place.
T146: The Galley near Kokejin WAITS for the Knight just completed in the city to board it. THEN that Galley moves 2NW toward Muqa. One of the Workers from Sugabala Island can board it if desired. The empty Galley between the iron mine and the mainland moves 1NE to the Whale and WAITS for the Knight just produced in Sugabala (and one of the Workers from the island if desired) to board it. THEN it moves back 1SW to the position it just left. The Galley on the northern sea moves W-SW into Bulugan, where its passengers disembark, then move 2SW.
(September 16th, 2017, 16:02)shallow_thought Wrote: I can understand the desire to get rid of SoZ, but what's he strategic objective here? Punch Joey and get a more stable border? Not a bad idea in itself, but are you ready when he responds angrily?
If there is a good time to hit Joey, it will be before he gets Engineering and Guilds. I think this is our only chance of getting the border we like. The existing border is a potential disaster for us, having to spread our forces out thin. If we somehow can get rid of State of Zijin our border would be much more defensible long term. All our 3 potential target cities (Nambui, Oghul Qaimish and D-mishi) are on hills and have enough units to defend them adequately for the time being. Perhaps the most important objective for us is to make sure that no 2 turn attack on Borte or Toregene could be made in the future.
As for Joey`s reaction, there is a chance that he`ll be very angry with the loss of his aggressive border city plant (it`s protecting his all-important GL-city Seven Mysteries after all!), but hopefully he`ll calm down soon.
Also, I`m not saying that the attack on Joey is set in stone. We could easily switch target if Joey builds enough defenders. (There is a limit on how many Longbows we realistically can bang our head against).
The buildup is well under way, we whipped a massive 8 cities this turn! Our neighbors are probably going to be a little bit nervous about that. Seriously, I`m looking forward to the reaction of Gavagai and Joey in particular. Joey moved his sentry Chariot back a tile so that it`s not under threat from our Spear. Our Workers are finishing the Watermill there next turn. Hopefully, I`ve managed to follow the plan but I had to derive from it once. Muqa would actually have completed the Keshik if it were to work the plains forest so it now works another coast tile instead. Hopefully it won`t delay any Knight build (I really don`t know the numbers here).
Apart from the whips, nothing much happened. Gavagai got another Great Scientist. I`m really glad that we got the Open Borders with Krill now as our economy would have been much worst without them.
Working a citizen and a plains tile in Kokejin isn`t fun but it`s all for the greater good of the Empire. Annoyingly, Oljei Baajii can`t whip its Lighthouse yet. Vulcania is borrowing the clams as it has a Lighthouse and desperately wants to grow.
We`re now saving gold again. Being on the right side of +200gpt is nice.
Graphs and demos: Two things stand out. Look at Krill`s crop yield. It suddenly dropped a long way when he started his Golden Age so he must be working a lot of specialists. Also, Joey surpassed us in military. It`s really nothing too scary but still something to bear in mind.
Great catch on Muqa! You did exactly the right thing there; none of the Knights will be delayed.
I'd be inclined to turn science up to about 20% actually, just to make sure we don't fall a few beakers short of Guilds following additional whips. I don't know how close we are though; it could be there's no problem.
I'm sure you're already aware that GJ can and probably will keep moving his sentrry chariot back and forth to and from the forward tiles, so we should assume it is or will be able to see as if standng on both of those tiles at all times. The Workers should probably finish the watermill and workshop at this point, and then move away. I'll try to suggest something specific later on, but we're probably going to need a Galley just to carry them at this point.
The number of longbows in the city is actually unlikely to matter that much unless he just stuffs the place to brimming (which he might, having seen those workers on the border already, but we'll see). What I'm really worried about is the fact that he's teching Guilds. We should be able to beat him to Guilds by at least one turn, but if it's only one turn and he commits heavily to instant knights the way we're doing, we might have to completely change course at the last minute. Fortunately, our sentries can be used (well, one of them may have to be sacrificed) to make sure we know what we're getting into before we commit to an attack.
I`m confident that we`ll get Guilds in 2 turns when we turn on science, even if we whip away a lot of tiles in the coming turns. Gavagai just logged in as the last to play. Maybe I`ll play the new turn if it rolls soon. It`s a bit too early for a turn split with Joey to matter and we don`t really have any vulnerable units. (I assume he doesn`t attack our Spear with with sentry Chariot). Joey`s Chariot will certainly go back and forth now to get vision of all the tiles deemed to be dangerous for him.
We`re actually planning to attack at least one fully fortified CG3 D1 Longbow on a hill, with a 60% defense bonus! That`s pretty insane. We`ll have to discuss a back up plan when the estimated time of attack gets closer.
A turn with a lot of interesting action. Well, we might be forced to switch targets after all (I made all moves according to the plan but we haven`t burned the bridges just yet). Joey is 2 turning Guilds! At least we`re comfortably 2 turning Guilds ourselves. Also, Gavagai seems to be on an Astronomy beeline here. That`s probably bad news for dtay. Speaking of dtay, he`s got a whopping 2000 gold in the bank! (Gavagai and Joey have 800 and 700 gold respectively). I actually met Joey in game, he had a screaming baby and was unable to finish his turn now.
So what do w do now? Maybe I should have abandoned the plan altogether, but I think we need to discuss whether to press forward or to go back to teching peacefully. Right now (it`s really way too late already) both Joey and Gavagai look rather.. unappetizing so to say. Should we hit Dark Savant once the peace treaty is up instead? He`s surely a weaker target than the Ottomans or the Greek. I really don`t want to attack dtay.
More thoughts and demos/graphs coming up tomorrow. Have a nice day!
EDIT: Couerva offered basically the same deal as Krill, Sugar for Stone. I rejected it but I think we ought to give something back to him for our long lasting friendship so I might just offer it back tomorrow (if you don`t strongly disagree).
EDIT again: I offered the deal and he accepted.
I logged in to take a few screenshots. Gavagai`s capital is size 20 now! Well, we`re working all the strong tiles in Borte`s bfc so I`m not so concerned about that. Joey finished the Parthenon this turn. He`s building a few Wonders here.
I`m really concerned about the fact that Joey is getting Knights at the same time as us. Right now I`m thinking about cancelling the attack. At the same time, we`re nicely set up to hit State of Zijin in a mere 4 turns. Joey can`t fill it with that many units in just a few turns. We certainly need to decide on our path forward now.
We can`t realistically can expect to gain anything from a war with Gavagai. Making an amphibious assault on a civ that`s about to get much better boats than us is not the way of improving our chances of winning the game.
As a back up plan we can still attack Dark Savant. It`s possible to hit Tulearean Forest from the fog. He doesn`t have that many defenders in the city just yet. If the place will be stuffed with Pikemen, we`ll have to think carefully before commiting. Mist is not possible to attack from the fog unfortunately so there we`ll have to bring overwhelming numbers.. The biggest problem would be to bring enough ships in place to ferry over our troops. The logistics are just a nightmare on this map.
Yuri will probably be dead in a couple of turns. It looks like he`s down to 2 cities now.
(September 17th, 2017, 15:07)JR4 Wrote: We`re actually planning to attack at least one fully fortified CG3 D1 Longbow on a hill, with a 60% defense bonus! That`s pretty insane.
I did a bit of simming, and it turned out to be way less crazy than I expected. If we have a full turn to set up and hit the city with Cats (I doubt if we'll bombard even once - just suiciding a few Cats against the top LB) we wouldn't even be likely to take very heavy losses - as long as we have enough Cats and Knights. Given GJ is getting Guilds at the same time as we are though, there is a chance he could get a sufficient force of Knights to within three tiles of State of Zijin to rip apart our Cats and other slow-movers before they can attack. Attacking that city without Cats, especially if he has a remotely significant number of Longbows there, is a much different (and probably indeed crazy) proposition. If we hit State of Zijin, we would do it T149, after declaring war T148. If we do go through with the attack though, we can rethink it as late as (midway through) T148 itself. Note that in general, if the attack is going through,all of the Galleys that can do so should reach the N of the Peak (2S of Danashri) by the end of T146, and all the slow-movers participating in the attack (apart from those we plan to borrow from the Oghul Qaimish garrison) should be on board as of T147, at which time the flotilla would re-stage S of the peak with their full loads of passengers unless GJ has a possible sentry unit within range of the forest hill where his Warrior is standing. In that case, the new staging tile would be 1W of the peak.
If we are going to cancel the attack on State of Zijin, we should probably offer GJ a fish-for-fish deal as soon as we decide to do so for sure. If he rejects without re-offering, we'll be glad we built a lot of knights and a decent number of cats even if we don't attack anyone with them - but we'll also need more Longbows in Oghul Qaimish.
So, thoughts on some possible moves for T145, apart from following or abandoning the plan above:
- We can imitate GJ's sentry chariot by sending the sentry Keshik to the sheep, and then if nothing is threatening the plains tile SW of the sheep, move our sentry there for a slightly wider view.
- The other Sentry Keshik (currently in Nambui) can move to the banana just south of Toregene to give us more options going forward, while the Chariot about to be produced there promotes to Sentry and takes over the Keshik's previous assignment.
- The Workers on the watermill obviously have to go elsewhere. At least one of them should probably be placed in a position such that it can't road the critical tile next turn. Maybe that gesture would be too little too late though. (Either way, it would be nice to get that spear back into the city ASAP.)
- There's probably some more stuff I'm missing. Generally speaking, attacking Gav or GJ on purpose is indeed reckless, and is warranted here only to the extent we think it will make it easier to survive an inevitable attack from one of them later on. If we take State of Zijin, the task of defending our empire will be far from over. Likewise if we don't attack it of course.
