Strategic directions - long-term planning

[sunrise089]

3) Besides, if CFC is heading for Grens next to go with their cannons (they almost definitely are),

Are you sure they're actually going for steel next? Teching chemistry could be their route to communism. Especially since they're in pacifism, which doesn't make much sense if they're preparing an army but would make sense for pumping out a quick great scientist o bulb sci method.

After 'how much does apolyton draft?' this is probably the second big question we'd love to answer over the next few turns. If they're going towards Communism that suggests either no hostile intentions (seems odd considering no willingness to sign an NAP with us) or the sort of haphazard dogpile Speaker thinks is likely. CFC is much less scary if they're coming in with only their existing army of ~30 medi/renaissance units.

[Mardoc]

3) Besides, if CFC is heading for Grens next to go with their cannons (they almost definitely are),

Are you sure they're actually going for steel next? Teching chemistry could be their route to communism. Especially since they're in pacifism, which doesn't make much sense if they're preparing an army but would make sense for pumping out a quick great scientist o bulb sci method.

After 'how much does apolyton draft?' this is probably the second big question we'd love to answer over the next few turns. If they're going towards Communism that suggests either no hostile intentions (seems odd considering no willingness to sign an NAP with us) or the sort of haphazard dogpile Speaker thinks is likely. CFC is much less scary if they're coming in with only their existing army of ~30 medi/renaissance units.

Yeah, a lot of our debates right now seem to be taking different assumptions for what we're going to face, when. I personally still think there's a chance that we're not actually going to be invaded, people just want to be secure next to the #1 military power without tying their hands. Apolyton's early heavy drafts might make sense if they're selling Jannissaries and rifles to CivPlayers for defense, as one possibility. I can imagine CP making a deal of cash up front for rifles. They'd want them delivered early enough to defend against us if we aim for the T170 preemptive attack option.

Of all the weeks for Kjn to have his vacation... . Ah well, it's only a game.

[darrelljs]

Of all the weeks for Kjn to have his vacation... . Ah well, it's only a game.

I was thinking the same thing . It seems like we should run cash as long as possible, regardless.

Darrell

[Sullla]

CFC is not going for Communism, at least not any time soon. They need Liberalism for that, which means researching Paper, Education, Liberalism, Printing Press, AND Scientific Method before they can even start on Communism tech.

10:1 odds that they are going for Steel. It can't be much of anything else.

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

3) Besides, if CFC is heading for Grens next to go with their cannons (they almost definitely are),

Are you sure they're actually going for steel next? Teching chemistry could be their route to communism. Especially since they're in pacifism, which doesn't make much sense if they're preparing an army but would make sense for pumping out a quick great scientist o bulb sci method.

After 'how much does apolyton draft?' this is probably the second big question we'd love to answer over the next few turns. If they're going towards Communism that suggests either no hostile intentions (seems odd considering no willingness to sign an NAP with us) or the sort of haphazard dogpile Speaker thinks is likely. CFC is much less scary if they're coming in with only their existing army of ~30 medi/renaissance units.

Yeah, a lot of our debates right now seem to be taking different assumptions for what we're going to face, when. I personally still think there's a chance that we're not actually going to be invaded, people just want to be secure next to the #1 military power without tying their hands. Apolyton's early heavy drafts might make sense if they're selling Jannissaries and rifles to CivPlayers for defense, as one possibility. I can imagine CP making a deal of cash up front for rifles. They'd want them delivered early enough to defend against us if we aim for the T170 preemptive attack option.

Of all the weeks for Kjn to have his vacation... . Ah well, it's only a game.

That seems like a very optimistic viewpoint for us. Apolyton has been drafting heavily lately too:



Please excuse the poor handwriting, but...that's a lot of rifles. Dashes to the side are 1 pop drops, and almost certainly exclusively drafted rifles for T164-5. T163 is likely a mix of 5 drafts and build queues single pop whipped with Janisseries to convert to Rifles EoT (tech before production). Underlines are double whips, double underlines are triple whips.

Max of 5 drafts each of the last three turns with the number of rifles possible written in, so 23 rifles in 3 turns. I think we're delusional if we seriously entertain any thought that these guys aren't coming for us. Look at the way their population rebounds each turn. This was set up probably with a lot of very high food boxes just so they could max draft/whp once rifling came in. By my highly unscientific count, that's 36 pop in 3t. T160 (most recent C&D data), we had Apolyton with 124 pop. You don't whip off that much population and generate that much draft anger unless you're fully committed. They're coming for us, this isn't defensive at all.

[antisocialmunky]

I think we need to just switch everything to military after the current builds are done with.

[mostly_harmless]

With looming threat of CFC cannons in our core, I would be prepared to fall back to the red line in the west.


The question is whether we should carefully reach out to the western enemies to see if they would be happy with that much land gain. I see those two as one entity as far as this conflict goes, so peace negotiations have to take place with us and those two one table. I doubt they have planned to invade much deeper than the red line. Civplayers has pretty much stopped major whipping/drafting since two turns.
So maybe we can offer them that we retreat to the red line and call it a day. This would allow us to deal with CFC in earnest.
And once the eastern front has been resolved, there is always the WPC land that wait for us and UnivCiv on T200.

Thoughts?

[scooter]

That's very worth considering IMO. They cannot get further than that line, as soon as we have Rifles they'll be out of gas and things will stalemate. Now at the same time we might still lose a ton of ground on the eastern front, but what good does that do them exactly? Potential sales pitch:

1) Retreating to that line gives them both a considerable boost in land, and it drops us down several pegs. We would be virtual equals with them in this game, which is what they wanted - a level field
2) Remind them that CFC is basically the leader now, and they would be once these cities fall (and CFC takes a city or two of ours). Tell them that if they take this deal, it'll keep CFC from getting TOO far ahead by taking our core cities. Also point out that our core cities are very valuable, and CFC would get immense value from those if we were to let them walk in and take them.
3) If they accept, we're looking at a world where CFC is the slight leader, and RB/Apolyton/CivPlayers are all pretty even in 2nd place with different strengths and weaknesses. I think that's a world that is pretty good for them, overall.

So I do think this is a case that should be worthwhile to them, because they are well aware we're about to get Rifles and effectively end their parties in the west. The question is whether that's something we want to pursue.

Anothre real perk here is the only city out of those that I will be sad to lose is Brick by Brick. That one is a real blow. The rest of those cities are middling. We get to keep the core German cities that have tons of towns to grow onto, and that's valuable for a hopefully-someday economic recovery.

At first glance I am very tentatively in favor of trying something like this. But I really welcome more discussion.

[scooter]

Also, the point that all that WPC land is effectively free land later in the game is an excellent point. We don't need the land west of the red line. We DO need to get out of this western war so we don't collapse to CFC in the east (and hand CFC the win in the meantime).

[mostly_harmless]

Pretty much sums up my thoughts. Now we don't want to pitch it to them to desperately, of course. But this is for the finer diplo minds to work out, not me.

mh