RB Pitboss #2 [SPOILERS] - Speaker and Sullla

[Ilios]

Is there an ideal size for the Globe theatre city? How much food surplus should it have?

[regoarrarr]

If you're going to use it as a draft camp, it should have +15 food at size 6.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=301733

[Sullla]

Right, Chikamauga comes up just a bit short, since it only has +14 food at size 6. That means it's almost able to draft every single turn; I think we can draft something like 11 out of 12 turns or something like that. That's pretty darn good though, especially in a game where it doesn't look like anyone else has a draft camp set up. Would you like a free musket/rifle basically every single turn? Yes, please!

Unfortunately the turn rolled over in the middle of the night local time for Speaker and me, which was a bit of an inconvenience. But just shy of 3am here, we could do our End Of Turn Hijinx with out Great Merchant:



As the text on the screenshot demonstrates, the two factors in a Great Merchant trade mission are distance from the capital, and the size of the target city. We looked over the whole map, and Kathlete's capital of Endor was the best such location in the entire world. Remember, because of the Toroidal worldwrap, the furthest distance lies in cities halfway around the world from Gettysburg - right where Endor happened to be. And at size 15, Endor is one of the largest cities in the world. (Nakor actually doesn't have any cities above size 14, last I checked.) So this was really the perfect location for us, and that huge payout of 1500 gold reflects our logic.

Of course, we're sort of in a hostile war buildup mode with Kathlete at the moment, and I doubt he would approve of us moving a Great Merchant through his territory! That's why we moved at the end of Turn 201, and then again at the beginning of Turn 202, Endor lying 10 tiles from our border and therefore just close enough to be in range of a double move. And naturally Great Merchants are one of the few units that can move through enemy territory without an Open Borders agreement. Anyway, this is obviously a cheese move, but given all the cheese we've had to endure from Kathlete at various times during this game, we're not feeling sorry or apologetic, and those of you reading this will just have to deal with it! :neenernee

Great Merchants also make pretty good scouts...



Speaker: note that Kathlete has a small knight reserve in Dantooine. We have to keep in mind that he's planning to counter-attack when we move in. We'll have to make sure that we have enough units on hand to prevent our catapults from being Flanked by these knights. Should be doable. This should info help us with our planning quite a bit.



With the money from the trade mission, we upgraded our knights to cuirassiers. All 17 of them, for a cool 850g. The idea was to disguise somewhat the fact that we had used our trade mission; with 1500 gold in our treasury, it would be really obvious, but with 600 gold, we could have just run a turn of 0% science. Not that it really matters here... Anyway, now all the knights have been upgraded, and we still have funds left over in the treasury for an emergency situation. Given that our income is going to plummet when we send 50 units into Ottoman territory, having some extra cash on hand to keep running 50% research would probably be a good idea.

Since we had requests for some more info on our military, here are some more pictures:



We've got 21 cuirassiers, 8 horse archers, 16 muskets, 13 catapults, and sundry other outdated forces. I drafted Spartansburg and Vicksburg this turn, which pretty much puts us up against the drafting limit. However, in 6 more turns we can start a new round at no penalty - and we'll probably be able to draft rifles around then out of each city!



Here's the Power graph. It looks pretty much how you'd expect. Kathlete is bulking up his border defenses, except at Cloud City which is empty and looks to be getting abandoned to us, so the next couple turns we'll try posting some ideas on how and where to attack. With Nakor pushing for Rifling tech, things are going to heat up real soon. Interesting times ahead!

[T-hawk]

If you're going to use it as a draft camp, it should have +15 food at size 6.

You want +15 food at size 5, right? Each draft happens at size 6 knocking the city back to size 5.

[Sullla]

Quiet turn - about all that happened was Speaker double-drafting two of our cities. Bad for the poor little Indian citizens, good for our military, which is now up to 19 muskets. I'm a bit busy this evening, so I'll post some more stuff for the new turn tomorrow. Getting real close to Turn 206 now and go time.

[Speaker]

Quiet turn - about all that happened was Speaker double-drafting two of our cities.

Figured it was okay since the cities had 22 happiness and only like 12 or 13 unhappiness. I'm really not as concerned with an extra unhappy face or two in our border cities. We will be leaning on them during the war for reinforcements as well. They'd better like it, or else. Hmm, where's that whip smiley face?

Fake Edit- Holy crap, Athlete actually ended his turn before it rolled over? Madness.

[Speaker]

Just a little something I cobbled together to whet your appetite. These units aren't actually all stacked yet, but they will converge in the next few turns, and will be joined by another half dozen or so units (including 4 catapults). This also does not include our smaller forces attacking various islands, which hopefully will not end up like Iwo Jima.

[Sullla]

Here's a quick update for Turn 204. Sure is quiet in this forum - maybe because it's Memorial Day weekend here in the States?



First I'll talk about the tech side of things. With the 3% bonus beakers we get from Nakor already knowing Replaceable Parts, and the standard 20% bonus pre-requisite discount, we are getting almost exactly 1000 beakers/turn at the moment. After we discovered Printing Press, I looked at the total number of turns needed to get to Rifling, and running 60% science at a small deficit got us there in 6 total turns, 3 for each tech. We figured that Rifling was important enough of a tech to do a bit of a push for, and burn through some of our excess Great Merchant cash. Afterwards, we'll probably drop back to 50% science and pick up the cheap Compass/Optics techs for caravels and to connect our whales. But in the meantime, Rifling tech due on Turn 209 (in time to do more drafting!)

Meanwhile, the screenshot shows how Nakor is going to get to Rifling next turn, T205. That's not soon enough to pose any real threat to us, although it could spell potential problems for Dantski or plako. (I believe they both have NAPs with Nakor that run through Turn 220 or so, fortunately.) Basically, we just want to keep pace with Nakor for now and make sure he doesn't get a clear military advantage. Nakor still lacks Horseback Riding, not to mention Military Tradition, so we have no fears of cavalry or anything like that. Also note that Nakor is currently running through a double Mausoleum Golden Age (24 turns) and he burned his own Great Merchant (from Economics) to run many, many turns of 100% deficit science. And we're still more or less keeping pace with him while supporting a vastly larger/more expensive army. Awesome.

Kathlete, on the other hand, has gone and researched Compass/Optics for caravels. That could be a bit of a pain, but much more so if he goes next for Astronomy. I'm hoping that we'll be able to put his core cities in dire peril very shortly, and that will direct his focus away from naval pursuits. Still, going to advanced naval tech is a nice form of asymmetrical warfare which could make life tough for us. Optics -> Astronomy could well be enforced on us as our next tech path.

OK, militarily speaking, Cloud City had one janissary inside this turn; if it's still there next turn, we'll have to shift two cuirassiers over here next turn to be safe on the attack. Just take note of this when you see it, Speaker. There's a good chance Kathlete will move this unit somewhere else, of course, since he doesn't seem to be defending Cloud City.



As Speaker showed in the other picture today, we've got a lot of units ready to attack over here in our main push:

16 cuirassiers
17 muskets
10 maces (2 Great Generals)
15 catapults

Over 60 total with some sundry other outdated units. And that's not counting the units attacking on the islands, which have close to another dozen contemporary units. So... we're in pretty good shape here.

The giant grouped stack is on the red tile, while the group on the left side of the picture is defending Spotsylvania in blue. There's one other group made up of 10 cats, 7 maces, and 2 muskets inside The Wilderness on the yellow tile. Most of this stuff will be moving 1E of The Wilderness next turn, which will be the staging tile for our attack. (Best of all, the staging tile will actually be invisible to Kathlete unless he has a unit with the Sentry promotion!)



Here are the current defenders in the Kathlete border cities. Nothing to sneeze at, but certainly not something that's going to stop us either. (Note to non-MP people: notice how Kathlete has to split up his defenses because we can "fork" both Bothawui and Corulag with fast movers? This is why you never want to have two border cities if you can avoid it in MP games. Not really Kathlete's fault here, since he settled most of these cities before Jowy perished. In contrast, see how the two peaks tiles block The Wilderness from being hit on the diagonals? It's a VERY strong defensive city, fortunately for us.)

Because both of these cities are on hill tiles - and they are the only Kathlete cities on hills anywhere in the west - we'd really like to take them out right away before he can pour in reinforcements. We will probably try to capture Corulag with our cuirassiers, and use our big slow-movers (with muskets and cats) to move up next to Bothawui, then capture it on Turn 207 and keep moving on to Hoth. That's Kathlete's Heroic Epic city, and our biggest target in this war. Once it falls, that should more or less be it for Kathlete's military.

As of what we can see right now, it looks like Kathlete's island cities (Alderaan and Dagobah) should fall with ease on the first turn of the war. Just about out of time to rush in more defenders to protect those cities (we have Sentry units with visibility on both of them).

Checklist of things to do next turn (T205):

- Don't move any units until the second half of the turn, per clock rules.

- Unload our Sentry horse archer and load 3 cuirassiers + 1 musket into galleys over on western island.

- Move workers into position on center island (I will handle this, Speaker).

- Move up all units onto staging tile on the main border. Move 2 cuirassiers over to Spotsylvania if that janissary stays in Cloud City.

That's all I can think of for now. Tomorrow I'll look at the Power bar graph and try to estimate the total military rating of Kathlete, to get a sense of what we're facing. Wish us luck.

[Darkmantle]

Are there any firm plans for how to proceed if you manage to capture Hoth?

What exactly is the objective of this war? Is it to completely capture the Ottoman empire? Or is there a point at which you would like to stop and consolidate.

[BobRoberts]

Cheers for the planning update! Nice lunchtime reading here.

Think it's doubly quiet as a lot of europe had May Day bank holiday over the weekend.