RBP3 [SPOILERS] - Zara of the Ottomans

[ad hoc]

cat among the pigeons i see we were called backstabbing jerks :neenernee, fine by me. at least now we have a chance all be it small of winning. with three weeks to just sit and think about the game i think India expected us to just sit by and let them win it

any ideas on our next move.... inca or aztec?

[darrelljs]

My advice: never respond to someone being preachy, you'll only encourage them . You raise some interesting points. I am not sure its wise I respond to them here as I am a lurker now. I'll post my thoughts in the lurker thread for you guys to read after the game.

Anyway, I didn't want to come across as angry, hope it didn't sound that way. Good luck the rest of the way .

Darrell

[WarriorKnight]

My advice: never respond to someone being preachy, you'll only encourage them . You raise some interesting points. I am not sure its wise I respond to them here as I am a lurker now. I'll post my thoughts in the lurker thread for you guys to read after the game.

Anyway, I didn't want to come across as angry, hope it didn't sound that way. Good luck the rest of the way .

Darrell

Nah, I kinda expected a reaction like that from somewhere so I guess it's fair enough (although not in our thread). Guess we'll wait a bit to see what you think.

Our next move is probably Ruff as most of our army is on his/India's border. I think to be fair on him though I'll offer a 10 turn NAP. After that, Carthage is willing to lend us their army in our lands for a attack, and I think Maya can send something from the north too.

[Sockboy]

Hey, checking back in Looks like I missed the restart by a turn or two, but guess nothing major happened...

Anywho, we can get the road up to Krill pretty quick, should be in about 2 turns I think. The workers there were going to chop the forest to prevent Krill's army from camping out in it, but will now road it to help Krill's army camp out in it... It delays a chop in Koth, but it won't slow down anything appreciably.

Infrawise, we've got 4 unis currently being built. two will finish in 5 turns and the others in 87 and 114 turns. Obviously those last two will need to be whipped. There's chop coming into the laggards (Khitai and Ophir) which will reduces the whipping necessary, but I think it'll still be a three pop whip in Khitai, let's let it grow for the next few turns, maybe getting a draftee out after the chop once we know how many pop it'll take. Ophir is the other one, I think it'll be a two pop whip. So we might need to miss a draftee the turn before the whip comes in to make sure it's the right size. Just something to keep an eye on. Then we'll be able to start on Oxfords in Brythunia. I'll have to send some workers over there to help chop it out. After the unis complete Cimmeria will go back to units, I think we should start to get another GP out of Nemedia, and Ophir should maybe slow build a grocer or market? Not sure at 1hpt it probably doesn't really matter too much. Khitai will probably want either military or a hammam. Let's play that one by ear.

Buildwise we have Aquilonia, Koth and Zingara on military units. Brythunia will have a downtime of around 4 turns between ending it's current unit and starting on Oxford. I think it can get a worker out in the same space of time, which might be a good move. Any military is going to be slow out of here (10t or greater) so unless we want to delay oxford further there's not much point building another unit here. Alternatively we could just build cash if we want to grow here. Turan is on a courthouse for the moment, but will get a couple of chops to complete it soon, I'd like to overflow the chops into a hammam, but it might be better to get some units out of here. Thoughts guys?

Draftees should come from: Nemedia, Zingara, Brythunia, Stygia, Ophir
Draft in case of emergency: Cimmeria, Koth, Aquilonia
Cannot draft (yet): Turan, Khitai

We have a pretty high happy cap so we can consider doubling up on the draft unhappyness. Particularly in cities where we'll stack most of our military anyway (Brythunia, Khitai later on?)

Now a few questions:
What GP do we want next?
Where are we building Ironworks?
Also where is our oil? Do we have one of our own or do we need to go knock some heads together to make sure we get some? Can we get an exact location of the nearest oils from someone in PAT? Might not be critical whilst we're in PAT but that won't last forever.
What are we doing with EP points? I see we're getting Roman graphs at the moment, should we be focusing on Portugal or India instead?
Are we planning on revolting civics in the near future? To what?

Final thought. Not sure why we're planning on giving Ruff some breathing space. If it's because we need the time ourselves to make sure we don't die to a stack of cuirassiers from Inca or India then fine (and I kind of think we might). But if it's just to play nice I'm not really behind this move. If we wait too long it'll be a stalemate like it was down south. Let's get a stack of four/five cannon, mass our cats and rifles and move out. I'll try and leave a couple of workers in the vicinity to act as combat workers if we're going to move out soon, otherwise there's always stuff for them to be doing. If we wait for the space race to attack we'll lose, we need time to get those cities under our control, and developed.

[WarriorKnight]

Nice analysis as always SB. Couple of comments/questions.

Ophir should maybe slow build a grocer or market?

grocer > market, since Globe is in there. Otherwise 1hpt doesn't really do much, so it can be almost anything really.

Turan is on a courthouse for the moment, but will get a couple of chops to complete it soon, I'd like to overflow the chops into a hammam, but it might be better to get some units out of here. Thoughts guys?

How fast can Turan complete units without chops? As one of our newer cities I'm not sure it can keep up with the unit costs. If it can build stuff quickly then units would be fine but otherwise a Hammam would be good.

Draftees should come from: Nemedia, Zingara, Brythunia, Stygia, Ophir
Draft in case of emergency: Cimmeria, Koth, Aquilonia
Cannot draft (yet): Turan, Khitai

OK so your saying that we should draft Nemedia, Zingara, Brythunia and Stygia until the draft unhappiness reaches the cap? (Ophir will be draft as much as possible, make sure you inform me when you want to whip the Uni there).

What GP do we want next?

An artist (bomb) or an engineer (wonder) would both be useful. I don't think anything else would be useful to us ATM (scientist and merchant aren't nessecary for tech, and spy and priest are of marginal use).

Where are we building Ironworks?

I'm not sure. I always thought Aquilonia would be the best place for it, but with State property around the corner maybe there's a better option? Something to think about.

Also where is our oil? Do we have one of our own or do we need to go knock some heads together to make sure we get some? Can we get an exact location of the nearest oils from someone in PAT? Might not be critical whilst we're in PAT but that won't last forever.

I don't think we have any:

Hi All


Another resource (oil) distributed in a horribly imbalanced way: Carthage, HRE & Ottomans got screwed and get none. Mali captured Inca's source, but will not be able to hook it up until we can take Inca's capital. Cuddle has a spare between India & Portugal (Bison Burgers/Tallow). Most vulnerable Cuddle source seems to be Rome's (1NE of Shades City).


Swiss

What are we doing with EP points? I see we're getting Roman graphs at the moment, should we be focusing on Portugal or India instead?

Well, Rome is the only graph we're missing, which is why we're targeting them ATM. I can understand if you want to switch away from them though, in that case India would be a better target (Portugal isn't on our target list).

Are we planning on revolting civics in the near future? To what?

We'll need to go to State property sometime in the future, and US would be nice too. I dunno if we should switch out of slavery to Caste (workshop hammer) or Emancipation eventually but we'll figure that out later.

Final thought. Not sure why we're planning on giving Ruff some breathing space. If it's because we need the time ourselves to make sure we don't die to a stack of cuirassiers from Inca or India then fine (and I kind of think we might). But if it's just to play nice I'm not really behind this move. If we wait too long it'll be a stalemate like it was down south. Let's get a stack of four/five cannon, mass our cats and rifles and move out. I'll try and leave a couple of workers in the vicinity to act as combat workers if we're going to move out soon, otherwise there's always stuff for them to be doing. If we wait for the space race to attack we'll lose, we need time to get those cities under our control, and developed.

Your probably right. We don't have any cannons currently but we can get them fairly quickly. Also if we're going to be attacking soon then we'll have to make sure we draft as many troops as we can.

[WarriorKnight]

Had a chat with Carthage in game. They have a sentry in their stack and still have OB with Ruff, so they are going to spy on Ruff's cities. I didn't mention gifting their stack to us while chatting but I'll definitely bring it up with them next turn.

I did some more drafting and now we're 1st in power. I'll need to see what stack we can have when we decide to DOW. Preferably we'd like some cannons but it seems to take so long for them to get to the front. Any suggestions?

[Sockboy]

Had a quick look in game, most of our cities are 3/4 turns away from getting troops to the front. I'd suggest we try and attack in 5 turns, so t159ish. Basically if we start a rolling draft from the furthest cities, drafting every city that can reach the front, we should have a force of 10 or so draftees alone, plus all our mounted units, etc. We'll be able to get 4 cannon i think, definitely three (1 already built, 2 from Aquilonia, 1 from Koth). The cats from Khitai should be pulled as well for this assault. There's no point leaving them inside Khitai as they'll just get flanked away if/once India decide to one-move it. Better to use them on the attack to lower the defences I think.

Question for lurkers? Does anyone know what the opportunity cost of lowering defence v suiciding cats is? I assume we'll prefer to lower the defences of the city, but I might be wrong.

Speaking of Khitai, nice as it is for Cathage to have troops there, it's much better if they can gift the muskets at least to us (also they should move their cats out of the city) since if India declare and then move the Carthaginian troops won't defend.

Diplowise can we get someone else to Ruff's north to declare on him before we move? Even if they just move some troops into a stack to his north that would be good. Since he's renamed himself the Visigoths, I suspect he'll be happy to whip his cities into the ground.

Try not to draft exactly to the happy cap since we'll have WW to deal with soon, and I suspect it we won't be able to remove it as quickly as we could against the AI. Ruff has quite a bit of MP experience.

I'll assign an engineer in Nemedia for the moment, when we're running specialists there we can run a mix of artists/engineers. I think you're right that it's too late for an academy to be worthwhile, and the utility of bulbing is more or less over now. Might be worth remembering we've still got a GA on ice from the Bomb Krill campaign.

[WarriorKnight]

Had a quick look in game, most of our cities are 3/4 turns away from getting troops to the front. I'd suggest we try and attack in 5 turns, so t159ish. Basically if we start a rolling draft from the furthest cities, drafting every city that can reach the front, we should have a force of 10 or so draftees alone, plus all our mounted units, etc. We'll be able to get 4 cannon i think, definitely three (1 already built, 2 from Aquilonia, 1 from Koth). The cats from Khitai should be pulled as well for this assault. There's no point leaving them inside Khitai as they'll just get flanked away if/once India decide to one-move it. Better to use them on the attack to lower the defences I think.

Sounds like a plan.

Cats don't get flanked in cities, so they might not be that bad. I considered moving them to the front but I'm afraid it'll tip India off that we're going for Ruff. I guess that probably doesn't matter too much anymore since we've been drafting like mad and are 1st in power now.

Question for lurkers? Does anyone know what the opportunity cost of lowering defence v suiciding cats is? I assume we'll prefer to lower the defences of the city, but I might be wrong.

Well, suicide cats vs Rifles doesn't sound promising pure strength wise (5 vs 14) but still collateral the defenders. If the city has walls/castles then bombarding isn't going to work. I think suiciding them would be better as collateral damage would damage the stack in the city.

Speaking of Khitai, nice as it is for Cathage to have troops there, it's much better if they can gift the muskets at least to us (also they should move their cats out of the city) since if India declare and then move the Carthaginian troops won't defend.

Yeah, I'll mention it to them. Cats once again don't get flanked if they're inside a city.

Diplowise can we get someone else to Ruff's north to declare on him before we move? Even if they just move some troops into a stack to his north that would be good. Since he's renamed himself the Visigoths, I suspect he'll be happy to whip his cities into the ground.

That seems unlikely, at least initially. Maya's NAP cooldown finishes at T161 I think, so that might work. Mali is preoccupied with Inca and Rome and Byz is still part of CUDDLE.

Try not to draft exactly to the happy cap since we'll have WW to deal with soon, and I suspect it we won't be able to remove it as quickly as we could against the AI. Ruff has quite a bit of MP experience.

OK, I'll make sure to leave 3-5 happiness for breathing room in mentioned cities.

I'll assign an engineer in Nemedia for the moment, when we're running specialists there we can run a mix of artists/engineers. I think you're right that it's too late for an academy to be worthwhile, and the utility of bulbing is more or less over now. Might be worth remembering we've still got a GA on ice from the Bomb Krill campaign.

I was actually thinking we use our GA to bomb the city when we capture it. It would certainly help us keep control of the city if we capture it.

[WarriorKnight]

I actually think we can get away with declaring in 4 turns on t158, as that's when the 6 cats can reach the staging tile. I'm not sure waiting 1 turn would be worthwhile as Ruff would presumably still be drafting a couple of units every turn. Alternatively we could wait until Maya can declare as well (t161) although I'm not sure if they'll declare or how much they'll bring, so maybe that's not such a good idea. Sooner is better though as Ruff can just keep drafting away, and I'm certain India will assist.

[Sockboy]

Sooner is *much* better than later, especially since Maya have no clear plans to attack or threaten at all. It's a bit unfortunate they have a NAP, but we can't do much about it. Let's move in on t158 if you think we can I'll see if we can squeeze the cannons out of Koth and Aquilonia a turn sooner. Is there anyway we can check the defenders in Ruff's city without declaring? I was thinking there might be a tile somehere near Khitai which would give us visibility with a sentry promoted unit. I would greatly like to see what we're up against before declaring.

Good point about the walls/castles, although this has been a back line city until now (and with cavs and rifles about walls aren't a priority anymore) so he might not have them in this city. I guess we'll see what the defences look like when we arrive, but in my experience, attacking at tech parity into 65% city defence is pretty suicidal.

Oh and I didn't realise that cats don't get flanked in cities. Objection withdrawn

WRT drafting cap, the first drafting penalty should wear off a couple of turns after we attack in most of our cities, so maybe drafting to the cap isn't such a bad idea. I also recommend we draft Aquilonia once on the final turn it can send troops to the front, I think it's worthwhile doing in this case.

GA to bomb the city sounds fine, we should maybe leave him in Ophir on the turn we declare? I think he'd be able to move into Ruff's city and bomb on the next turn then. Will check. We should also start thinking about where to send our settler who's on ice at the moment.