Dtay is storing great people - if we only had a chariot on the galley we would have an 86% shot to snipe this guy (assuming a war declaration would put the chariot 2NE or 2NW of the city) - he's got a great scientitst too in the last five turns. YuriMack war-peaced with Plako. Retep, William and Bacchus seem to be doing the same thing. And Lewwyn got a shrine for a religion that Azza and Pindicooter are running.
A show of power from Yurimack - not that scary, but we aren't attacking through that before maces/knights.
GNP - we've been slightly behind Yurimack for a long time, and they are ORG, so there is a good chance that their conquest of m_h isn't going to set them back too much. So all my hopes of beating them to knights could be pie in the sky.
Power and demos - nothing interesting this turn.
Things still to do:
1. The worker at BoP - send him to the Island I think - we could complete the plains cottage, but I think grass cottages for France are more useful?
2. The worker at Om - chop the hill?
3. The worker at Konig - workshop? (the other guy can road the hill next turn?)
4. The Galley watching YM - stay there or head out to pillage?
Quick comment: I finished the turn. I played along the lines that I commented in the chat: E.g. I preferred mining a hill near Königgrätz so if we get a jungle growth onto that grassland tile that you wanted to workshop... It's my fault! I'll write more about big picture stuff in the evening.
Btw, we still have 11 hammers sitting in a bowman in BoP, decay starts soon. I guess we still don't know if those hammers turn into lbow hammers when we finish Feudalism and I'm also not sure if that would be good or not
(December 4th, 2013, 10:17)Old Harry Wrote: We should finish the bowman (can BoP produce 14 hammers in one turn?) more MP happy will be useful...
It can. It produces exactly 14 hammers if you give Horse tile to BoP and Cannae works a cottage. I can't log in anymore during this turn, so you need to do the switch. However, calculate that we can still finish market in 2 turns in Cannae (we want to finish that before we start saving money again on t135. It should be possible e.g. by giving gold tile to Cannae next turn, but just make sure that I don't remember wrong and we won't have too many hammers missing after this turn.
Just did a test in SP and it looks like we can keep building bowmen after Feudalism, but they'll be obsoleted by Machinery. Alternatively if we researched Machinery first we could keep building them until Feudalism came in. So I didn't bother changing tiles, it'll finish next turn. It does mean that we'll need more wealth next turn, but Dunkirk and Endor finish builds, so that shouldn't be an issue.
p.s. Thinking about it a bit more National epic might be better in Agincourt (if we're going to move the bureaucap to Cannae) as it has the most food of any city.
p.p.s. Also we've got a whole bunch of new posters in our thread that need units naming after them!
How to give us a chance to win this cursed PB - Whose sandcastle do we want to crash?
Low land quality.. Bla bla bla.. Squeezed central position.. Bla bla bla.. Suttree’s raging put us behind.. Bla bla bla.. M_H gifted mackoti his land.. Bla bla bla.. Ichabod’s getting easy addition too.. Bla bla bla.. Retep&pals are not expanding and ScooPinComLew will benefit… Bla bla bla.. PB8 seems to cause a peacefest there.. Bla bla bla… 18 cities won’t be enough.. Bla bla bla.. Something needs to be done… Bla bla bla..
You know this stuff right? So let’s get to the point:
Description: We try to end suttree’s misery as quickly and effectively as possible attacking mostly with knights.
Potential Gains: Low – We could capture 4-6 decent cities from suttree getting us to total of 22-24 cities. We reach at best the parity in city count with mackoti (quality-wise m_h’s land looks better than suttree’s closest cities) and other contenders who have more space. If everything goes well we can then decide whether we want to push forward towards mackoti, but probably we have lost a fair amount of units and our power is even in a good scenario only enough for defending and then we wait until we are attacked from all directions.
Risk level: Medium – This operation should be short, but it still opens mackoti an opportunity to punish us in the Peterloo area. Suttree already has a decent power so this attack is significantly more costly than attack on m_h was and there is a realistic chance of failing this if we try too much, too fast with too little resources.
2. Operation “Not Here To Make Friends” aka “2-Front War”
Description: We bulb Astronomy and surprise Ichabod, who is busy warring elsewhere, with a quick attack. We take his island cities and raze 1 or 2 coastal cities in order to decrease his Naval production power. We try to protect our gains by maintaining the naval superiority in the area and use only enough units (CR maces?) required for our alpha strike. Meanwhile our main land force attacks suttree with similar targets as in Operation 1. (While we’re destroying our relations we can take dtay’s island cities too…)
Potential Gains: Medium - We get 2-3 new island cities in the west and the same 4-6 cities from suttree. We also get decent gold from razing Ichabod’s capital… So theoretically we can reach 24-27 quality cities. 27 is already a more solid target for turn 170. However, we still have strong mackoti in the south and totally pissed off Ichabod in the west. And of course, at this point dtay might have eaten TBS in the north.
Risk level: Very high – We want to attack Ichabod with minimal possible resources and if we can’t reach the total naval control we are screwed. Our most western island holdings will be less than 10 tiles away from Ichabod’s core and even if we fail Ichabod will hate us for the rest of the game. As already said, suttree won’t be same kind of a walk-over as m_h and slowcheetah so devoting resources into west also decreases the probability of success there. And of course it makes us more vulnerable to mackoti as well..
3. Operation “Who’s Afraid of Big Bad..” aka “F*ck the Wolf”
Description: We seem to be building military to attack our nearby neighbor suttree, but in reality we want to surprise mackoti first by taking some quick gains in the former core area of m_h while targeting the ultimate goal of controlling the whole southern part of the continent after a series of successful battles. Suttree’s actions will have a major kingmaker role in this conflict and make this attack an incredible success or a total disaster.
Potential Gains: High – 4 cities in the first wave. 15 more during the next 40 turns.. If suttree would opportunistically join our side there is a real possibility of winning this war and taking a decent chunk of land from mackoti (and later from suttree). If suttree role-plays Switzerland everything depends on how prepared mackoti is and whether we can score some tactical victories in the battlefield. We might run out of steam quickly, but if we give mackoti some opportunities to make mistakes good things can happen. If suttree keeps hating us and attacks us opportunistically, things are difficult. We push with all we have towards mack and try to fight suttree back with the minimal amount of units. Without help from suttree an optimistic target result would be taking and keeping 5-6 cities from mack, which weakens his position significantly.
Risk level: Very high – Fair chance of whipping a lot of units and ending up with lots of bodies and only small land gains if any. Suttree gets a perfect chance to finally get his revenge and our Eastern cities are in danger. Even if everything would go smoothlyly, we will be vulnerable in the north and west for a quite long time and of course our Southern neighbors hate us even more than now.
4. Operation “Backstab” aka “Opportunism for the Win”
Description: We speculate that dtay, our friendliest neighbor so far, will want to attack TBS in the near-ish future. We try to remain as friendly as possible, maybe show some aggressive signs towards south and when the fireworks in the north start we wait until there is a major clash (WW tracking) and then we rush with knights and maybe boats towards dtay’s core. If dtay is slow we might want to try taking suttree out first and then sending our veteran troops north.
Potential Gains: High – If we catch dtay with pants down with injured army in the east we could do some real damage and eventually take the whole Northern part of the continent.
Risk level: Very high – Our borders are separated by a desert and dtay has decent culture in his border cities, which means that our attack will be spotted pretty early. That makes this plan pretty costly in any case. We also give an opening for our friends in the south and even if we don’t get attacked it is possible that we don’t really gain that much in the north while mackoti easily eats suttree and becomes even stronger.
5. Mixture of above or something else crazy..
How about building 8 Galleons in Jamestown and filling them with 23 knights and 1 settler and sending them towards Nakor before we even have met? Or boating plako with the only goal of razing GLH. Or just declaring to all our neighbors?
6. Let’s just turtle and hope that the rest of the civ world goes crazy and we pick the berries.
Yeah maybe PB8 continent explodes, Ichabod gets burned while attacking Slow+William, dtay gets beaten back by TBS, and mackoti and plako start a lurker-attractive naval war where complete armies sink. Meanwhile we take a city here or there, switch into Free Speech, birth GAs on 10 consecutive turns and win a totally deserved culture victory.
Ok, that was kind of fun..
Other stuff:
(December 3rd, 2013, 19:09)Old Harry Wrote: Having sandboxed the Astronomy bulb I'm not so keen any more. Is it in the tier of techs that have had their costs doubled? Our scientists get about 1750 beakers for a 4000 beaker tech, also Astro doesn't really enable anything useful on this map. Galleys and triremes can do everything we require for the foreseeable future. It would be nice to be the only one with Frigates and Galleons on this map, but we probably have more important fish to fry before that.
So lets ignore Astronomy in our choice between Maces and Knights.
Yeah, Astronomy is not necessary for most of the attack plans. It is absolutely necessary if we would attack Ichabod, but only nice to have if we go after mackoti. However, as you said, it's damn expensive and we want that at some point. There is no more efficient bulb target for Great Scientists than that. If we are sure that after our Guilds run we want to go towards Education line or Gunpowder and won't be needing Astronomy it's of course a right call, but if we decide in 30 turns that we want Galleons then we just wasted a major chance to get it in an efficient way. This is not a sales pitch, I'm still open for everything!
Quote:We could try to take it with Liberalism. But I'm not sure we'd stand a chance in a Liberalism race. Avoiding the first-to races has worked out for us so far...
I think Liberalism-train went already. If we had wanted that we should have beelined CS and organized our Golden Age earlier than in 15 turns. I would expect somebody to launch an Education-bulb sequence within 10 turns. Maybe Pindicooters or dtay, Lewwyn?
Quote:By the way is our National Epic going in Jamestown? Any chance of getting it before our golden age (probably not)?
Jamestown and Agincourt are solid candidates, but they also are rare cities in the sense that they have many nice tiles to work instead of specialists. I kind of like Omdurman (farms + lake + 2 food resources), but getting the city up and running and building NE there might be too slow. If we build NE it should happen before our Pacifism GA, I don't expect us to produce so many Great Persons afterwards. If we have NE, maybe 1 or 2. I guess we need to decide after Feudalism if we quickly take Aesthetics+Literature for Epics.
What's the tech-situation looking like vis-a-vis each potential opponent? Also you didn't mention attacking TheBlackSword, or just settling (if he hasn't already) that weird sub-continent behind him. Not that either of those are particularly viable ...
I think the relative tech-balance will be the most important factor in determining a target, and that fighting mackoti both would be ideal and is inevitable (so might as well do it on our terms). Let's face it, we can't win the game with him alive; if we choose to attack someone else it should be with the understanding that by doing so we are building up a better base with which to attack mackoti later. So I say we attack mackoti if technologically possible. If not, I'm not sure.
Also we must remember any one (or more) of these opponents may be plotting to do the exact same thing to us. I don't know how to apportion resources so as to have both the overwhelming amount necessary for the offence and the amount necessary for a robust defence simultaneously.
(December 4th, 2013, 17:54)TheHumanHydra Wrote: What's the tech-situation looking like vis-a-vis each potential opponent?
We don't know too much about the actual techs of our opponents apart from what visible units indicate and civic choices give away (I haven't done any C&D and I think OH has not being any for a while). On general level it's fair to say that by the time of a potential attack we will have tech parity with dtay, Ichabod & mackoti and would have tech edge against suttree (and maybe TBSJ). Of course it's possible that someone of our stronger neighbors skips the bottom part of the tree and goes for Education etc, which gives us a some kind of an opening.
Quote:Also you didn't mention attacking TheBlackSword, or just settling (if he hasn't already) that weird sub-continent behind him. Not that either of those are particularly viable ...
Attacking TBS core via land is highly impracticle, because we don't share that much of a border and we would create an enormous border with dtay. However, attacking suttree and then continuing with an invasion towards the island holdings of TBSJ is actually a relevant scenario to keep in mind.
Quote:I think the relative tech-balance will be the most important factor in determining a target,
Yeah, I think I agree somewhat but not completely. I believe that the possibility of surprise is the most powerful war tool. Suttree will probably be the weakest target tech-wise, but he is already on his toes and has a stack of 15+ cats and 15+ axes and ~6-10 spears. Even with tech edge it will not be too easy to kill him (maybe even impossible in economical way?). How many Knights do you think we would need to kill even his current units?
Quote:and that fighting mackoti both would be ideal and is inevitable (so might as well do it on our terms). Let's face it, we can't win the game with him alive; if we choose to attack someone else it should be with the understanding that by doing so we are building up a better base with which to attack mackoti later. So I say we attack mackoti if technologically possible. If not, I'm not sure.
Yeah, the problem is that we need to reach more than land parity with mackoti (at least eventually), because reaching land parity will already be costly even in the best case. We just don't have our own m_h or slowcheetah sitting next to us. Suttree's long-term prospects are probably even worse than what those guys had before being attacked, but he is ready for blood.
So yes, I agree with you, we need to improve our position a bit while weakening also mackoti or we need to improve our position a lot.
Quote:Also we must remember any one (or more) of these opponents may be plotting to do the exact same thing to us. I don't know how to apportion resources so as to have both the overwhelming amount necessary for the offence and the amount necessary for a robust defence simultaneously.
I think the starting hypothesis is that this won't be possible.. If we do something radical it will gambly in any case
(December 4th, 2013, 19:26)Gazglum Wrote: Terrific post Fintourist, one of the clearest strategy musings I've seen on this site. Best of luck with whichever plan you pick!
Thanks! It's maybe even too polite to call the above "plans" as strategy musings, because as you surely noticed they were all written with a tongue in the cheek and also very much just for the fun of it. We completely understand how difficult the execution of any of those described scenarios would be, but on the other hand, when possible, I like to consider briefly even crazy options. Maybe they wake up some ideas in Harry and help us coming up with something more concrete..
(December 4th, 2013, 21:14)BRickAstley Wrote: Wait, you're attacking all 4 at once? Props to you!
The end result might very well be the same regardless how many of those "operations" we select..
However, calculate that we can still finish market in 2 turns in Cannae (we want to finish that before we start saving money again on t135. It should be possible e.g. by giving gold tile to Cannae next turn, but just make sure that I don't remember wrong and we won't have too many hammers missing after this turn.
So let’s get to the point:![[Image: COPic1.PNG]](https://dl.dropbox.com/s/83jsvqf26acro8t/COPic1.PNG)
![[Image: COPic2.PNG]](https://dl.dropbox.com/s/vx17ugisrszhqu8/COPic2.PNG)
– This operation should be short, but it still opens mackoti an opportunity to punish us in the Peterloo area. Suttree already has a decent power so this attack is significantly more costly than attack on m_h was and there is a realistic chance of failing this if we try too much, too fast with too little resources.![[Image: COPic3.PNG?m=]](https://dl.dropbox.com/s/oo5s0np7pb0xive/COPic3.PNG?m=)
- We get 2-3 new island cities in the west and the same 4-6 cities from suttree. We also get decent gold from razing Ichabod’s capital… So theoretically we can reach 24-27 quality cities. 27 is already a more solid target for turn 170. However, we still have strong mackoti in the south and totally pissed off Ichabod in the west. And of course, at this point dtay might have eaten TBS in the north.
– We want to attack Ichabod with minimal possible resources and if we can’t reach the total naval control we are screwed. Our most western island holdings will be less than 10 tiles away from Ichabod’s core and even if we fail Ichabod will hate us for the rest of the game. As already said, suttree won’t be same kind of a walk-over as m_h and slowcheetah so devoting resources into west also decreases the probability of success there. And of course it makes us more vulnerable to mackoti as well.. ![[Image: COPic4.PNG]](https://dl.dropbox.com/s/a3mh96sbbp6nswi/COPic4.PNG)
– 4 cities in the first wave. 15 more during the next 40 turns.. If suttree would opportunistically join our side there is a real possibility of winning this war and taking a decent chunk of land from mackoti (and later from suttree). If suttree role-plays Switzerland everything depends on how prepared mackoti is and whether we can score some tactical victories in the battlefield. We might run out of steam quickly, but if we give mackoti some opportunities to make mistakes good things can happen. If suttree keeps hating us and attacks us opportunistically, things are difficult. We push with all we have towards mack and try to fight suttree back with the minimal amount of units. Without help from suttree an optimistic target result would be taking and keeping 5-6 cities from mack, which weakens his position significantly.![[Image: COPic6.PNG?m=]](https://dl.dropbox.com/s/jx8kunnzl0rm6j1/COPic6.PNG?m=)
