Intersite Game - Turn Discussion Thread

[mostly_harmless]

Those whipped Vassalage Longbows will be tough nuts to crack. Good luck WPC.

mh

[Sullla]

WPC has zero chance to take any cities, and will get nothing out of this war. They were finished the moment they moved their stack north last turn.

So the situation is that the Germans teched Feudalism last turn; they revolted into Vassalage this turn and whipped longbows in virtually every city. The felt confident enough that they did not have to whip longbows at the swapping penalty last turn, only doing so at Worms, where they have a longbow inside this turn after 3 pop whipping it at the swapping penalty last turn. Webringen, Weil der Stadt, and Wanzleben, will all have 2 promo longbows next turn. All of those cities have walls, and they are also all on hills. The Germans also pulled defenders out of Worms this turn, leaving only a longbow, spear, and axe inside. Their defending has been very good since the opening turn of the war, almost exactly what I would have done.

I don't think that it's worthwhile to spend a turn bombarding with catapults at Worms, because there's only 3 units inside. We will probably do better to sacrifice a couple of maces to clear out the defenders. Every turn we delay means more units to fight, which is why I suggest pushing forward quickly.

We will take Worms this turn, and Helm S Klamm next turn (T154). Weil der Stadt will have an elephant, a spear, and a longbow inside next turn; we can likely take it next turn, but only at the cost of losing all of our two-movers, which is almost certainly not worth it. I do not suggest moving after it. Anyway, we can move into Worms with the main stack this turn, and be in a position to hit Webringen on T156. Unfortunately, because of WPC's idiocy, this will also give the Germans time to bring their main stack back down to defend the capital. I was ranting about this yesterday, and it still bears repeating: they horribly screwed up our operations when they moved backwards last turn. So long as they were pushing on the northeast, the Germans had to keep their army divided. Now they can send everything after us, and keep a small force of longbows up there, which is plenty to stop WPC. Argh. I hate my life sometimes.

So everything is shaping up for some kind of massive battle around T155-156 outside Webringen. The good news is that we'll get a Great General this turn in taking Worms, which we can use for a Medic III chariot, and that will basically shield us from their catapults. If they try to collateral us, we simply heal up for a turn and we're back to full again. We need to take Webringen, and then it should be fairly easy to take Weil der Stady / Wanzleben. With luck, we should be able to accomplish this by Turn 158-160. At that point, we should try to sign peace with the Germans, unless we've managed to kill their entire army or something. They've teched the appropriate counter units to a mace/knight army, which are elephants and longbows. Wading through an endless sea of longbows behind city walls is far too bloody to continue for long. We can take ONE city that way, by sacrificing all our cats for collateral damage, and Webringen is the one target where that's the correct choice. If we take everything to the west and south of the capital, we'll end up with 7 cities from the war, roughly similar to this map:

Everything except Wismar. It's not what we want, but I believe that continued fighting beyond that point will be counter productive. We'll have to come back later with cavs and rifles to finish things. The German economy is destroyed from this war, they will not be able to tech to another generation of military technology.

Still, we need the capital because of its massive cultural presence. We must push on and take Webringen or pretty much everything we've taken thus far will be useless. As for WPC, they get absolutely nothing due to their total incompetence. Even if they would take that tundra city, it will be so crushed by German culture that it will be useless. If there's any way to do so, we want to push for them to move back on Warendorf again. Their stack is utterly irrelevant if it goes further north.

I plan to play tonight's turn at 6pm (1800) local time EST. Thoughts and suggestions are welcome. Please stop focusing on the CFC chariot, it's not important at all in the grand scheme of things.

[kjn]

I defer for the war strategy to you and Speaker, but I think that several of the German cities (including Webringen) hold whipped elephants, not whipped longbows.

A longbow is 50H, and with 20H or more invested it will be a 1-pop whip. The highest amount of hammers after a whip would be 79H. Webringen has 89H invested.

[Sullla]

I will dance for joy if we're facing 2 promo elephants and not 2 promo longbows. I simply find it hard to believe that a team would tech Feudalism, wait a turn to avoid the swapping penalty, change to Vassalage, and whip out elephants instead of longbows. It doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Maybe though.

[Speaker]

I defer for the war strategy to you and Speaker, but I think that several of the German cities (including Webringen) hold whipped elephants, not whipped longbows.

A longbow is 50H, and with 20H or more invested it will be a 1-pop whip. The highest amount of hammers after a whip would be 79H. Webringen has 89H invested.

Whipped Elephants would be a god-send. There haven't been many of those in this game so far...

Sullla's basic plan is sound. Push up to the capital ASAP, then take everything west, and consolidate. It will be bloody, but that's fine. Drafted macemen have no substantial use for us after this war. Reducing the Germans to those 6 northern cities will render them irrelevant, and we can start preparing for the next conflict. No need to waste resources on "total war." Since this is a no tech trading game, they can never catch up in tech. Catapults, Elephants and Longbows are a pain to attack, but not a threat to attack.

WPC really screwed us over with their "strategy," but that's pretty much to be expected when you rely on poor players. Hopefully the Germans decide that their game is ruined anyways, so they may as well try to inflict as much pain on their long-time enemies before they go out, rather than fight tooth-and-nail for their capital. Any way we can encourage that line of thinking would be great.

[kjn]

I will dance for joy if we're facing 2 promo elephants and not 2 promo longbows. I simply find it hard to believe that a team would tech Feudalism, wait a turn to avoid the swapping penalty, change to Vassalage, and whip out elephants instead of longbows. It doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Maybe though.

Agree. But you can take a look at the list in the German War thread that I put in, as well as the raw production data in the C&D thread. The Germans haven't whipped out plenty of longbows yet. Of course, they have plenty of overflow to put into longbows. Take Webringen with a conservative estimate:

T153: 89H now into War Elephant, +12H (plains cow, PH city tile, plains hills mine, grass mine), for 101H
eot: Elephant finished, 41H overflow
T154: 41H overflow into longbow, +12H (as above)
eot: longbow finished, 3H overflow

[mostly_harmless]

I plan to play tonight's turn at 6pm (1800) local time EST.

So is that actually EST with daylight saving? In which case it is midnight in central Europe, whereas EST makes it 1am.

mh

[scooter]

He definitely means EDT, so yes with daylight savings factored in.

[TheHumanHydra]

Is there going to be another live video (is that just an assumption now)?

[mostly_harmless]

Cool, midnight bloodbath at Worms then!