Yeah, I'm still here waiting the next turn.
It was nice having the weekend off for Easter, and I had time to play some other games for a change. While this PBEM game has been a lot of fun, I won't be too sad when it's over since it does eat up so much time. While we're waiting on Japper to play his next turn, let me throw out some thoughts on the big strategic issue that we'll have to confront in the near future. Do we continue with our potential plan to attack England/Nubia around Turn 125-130, or look to sign a Declaration of Friendship with them and try to attack Russia/Germany instead?
Attack England/Nubia
I'll lay out the "Pro" case first. The basic idea would be to launch a timing attack around the acquisition of cavalry and frigates. Rome builds Venetian Arsenal around Turn 122/123, instantly finishing five quadriremes that become ten quadriremes on the next turn. Along with the two quadriremes already finished, they become a full dozen frigates already out on the map on Turn 125. Meanwhile, China uses its massive faith income to keep purchasing one horseman per turn, setting up a giant horseman into cavalry upgrade that comes online at the same time. We hit England/Nubia with 12 frigates and 6 caravels at sea, combined with the current Roman army + a dozen Chinese cavalry on land. The naval force should be almost unopposed based on what we've been seeing thus far, and it would have the goal of capturing Nan Madol, razing Valletta, and razing every English city on the eastern ocean. If this operation went as planned, England would be crippled as a naval power and the eastern ocean secured for the rest of the game. We could then shift the Roman fleet into another ocean and use it to pressure Russia/Germany, perhaps sailing north of our continent and then joining up with the Chinese navy to raid the Germany and Russian northern coast. We could never do that so long as England remains a power in the eastern ocean, so the thinking is to remove England's coastal presence completely, then send the navy off to raid the rest of the map.
On land, the whole idea would be to have mass cavalry before England/Nubia had the appropriate units to defend. If Nubia can't make it to field guns, then it would be a one-sided slaughter. Crossbows have 30 base melee strength while cavs have 62 base melee strength - that's a one-shot kill right there. Of course it wouldn't be that easy in practice, not with Chinese Great Generals and terrain advantage and so on, but the fact remains that cavs with 5 movement points can easily chase down crossbows with 2 or 3 movement points. The Nubian units would fall very quickly unless they could reach field guns. However, field guns aren't that difficult of a tech to research and there's a very good chance that Nubia could have it ready by Turn 130. Cavs would likely get slaughtered by field guns and that would cause our whole plan to fall apart.
The worst case scenario would see us falling into a bloody stalemate, or even a losing war, in the former Khmer and Kongo territories while Russia/Germany sits back and runs away with the game. If Russia/Germany are our most fearsome opponents, shouldn't we be working together to defeat them, not England/Nubia? Furthermore, signing a Declaration of Friendship with England/Nubia would not stop us from attacking Nan Madol and Valetta, their pet city states. Our whole army is going to be over by England/Nubia at the end of this war, so does that mean that we should sign a Declaration of Friendship with them to focus on the other team, or use it to attack them? I don't know. I don't have any easy answers to this question.
Sign a Treaty with England/Nubia
I've already laid out most of the arguments in favor and against this above. A Declaration of Friendship with this team would let our army (and navy) focus on Russia/Germany instead. However, would we even be able to get them over to Russia/Germany in a timely fashion? Where would we attack Russia and Germany if we did want to get aggressive with them? We certainly would not be in a position to pull off a timing attack against Russia or Germany, not with our current Declaration of Friendship lasting until Turn 145 (roughly), long after the possibility for a cavalry attack will be gone and the immediate punch of Venetian Arsenal + frigate upgrades will have worn off.
I think this mostly will come down to how risky we want to play things. The high risk / high reward plan would have us planning the attack on England/Nubia. It's the best opportunity to leverage our strengths into more territory and the chance to cripple one of our major rivals. This plan would have us looking to take out England/Nubia as a major player in the game and then turning to deal with Russia/Germany. The problem is that a ton of things could obviously go wrong, and we could be handing the game to Russia/Germany on a silver platter. The safer play would be to sign a Declaration of Friendship with England/Nubia and then wait to see what happens. However, it's a really passive and boring way to play the game, and it's more of a "playing not to lose" than playing to win approach.
Again, I don't have any answers right now. I think we continue to wait and avoid signing deals for now and see what happens. Just trying to lay out some of these thoughts right now while I have the time.
