LowtherCastle said:
1. Do we build granaries next and where?
2. Do we build barracks next and where?
I would tend to say:
Yes, build Granaries in most Cities, but no, don't build any Barracks. In place of every Barracks, I would rather have 1 additional suicidal Catapult, which will do more damage than a single promotion on units will do.
That's just my gut instinct, but when you're Axe-rushing (which is essentially what we're doing--we're just extending the length of time when an Axe rush is viable by bringing along Catapults), you generally skip the Barracks.
Barracks work better with a late rush that does not have Catapults; with Catapults, the Barracks are frankly not needed and will actually slow down our capturing of Toku's Cities.
LowtherCastle said:
3. Do we settle Cows/Deer asap?
If we don't, then do the gained Hammers let us build more units and gained Worker turns let us Chop more units? I would think that the answer is "yes" for both questions.
It's more efficient to "break out" of our prison before we settle one of the last non-marginal Cities than to wait until we've settled all but the marginal Cities before attacking.
There is still a good chance that Toku will have Copper under his capital. Even if not, he can get it connected quickly. So, I'm in the "get an army quickly" camp, meaning 0 Barracks (Hammers invested in any Barracks to date can still be recouped at a later date) and meaning no Settler for Cow + Deer until after we've built a military force.
Building a Settler (say, for the Cow + Deer site) is a great thing to do after you have pop-rushed a couple of times and your people are too unhappy to let your City regrow.
Since Toku only have 2 Cities, we'll probably end up eliminating him. Oh well. Owning the land close to our capital is probably of more use than keeping him alive for strategic reasons, such as trying to get him to build the Apostolic Palace for us.
The big question to me that we need to be asking is "what size of a force will constitute a sufficiently large force" for us to consider declaring war on Toku?
Gold-E Locks and possibly Marble City will need a City Defender (such as a Spearman or an Axeman), but those can be some of the last-built units that are still moving to the east edge of our empire when we declare war.
However, how many units will we need in our Stack of Doom?
Let's assume a worst case scenario:
Toku has 5 Archers with City Defence II + Drill I on a Hills square with the River Defence bonus and full Fortification bonus in his capital.
How many Catapults do we need to Bombard for a turn or two and then suicide attack? How many clean-up Axemen (plus, say, 1 Spearman just in case Toku does get Chariots, since Chariots maul Axemen but 1 lone Spearman mauls a stack of Chariots) do we need to complete the capture of the City?
An absolute minimum of 5 Axemen + Spearmen would be required to kill off the 5 defending Archers, since Catapults can't kill defending units.
Once we have a feel for just how big of a Stack of Doom we will need, then we can consider how much of an impact having a few sacrificial Warriors can have on the situation. I have used sacrificial Warriors quite successfully in warring, which can sometimes lure an Archer to end its turn outside of a City and thus die but can also at least get an Archer to leave a City and return to a City, losing part of its Fortification bonus--the Archer will probably have fully healed by the time that we're ready to attack but it might be down to a 10% or 15% Fortification bonus. Ideally, of course, we'll "convince" the Archers to meet our Warriors in the field where the Archers can't get back to their City in time, leaving them ripe for the picking by our Axemen (I'd plan for 2 Axemen to kill each Archer--1 to make the kill and one to defend the other or to get an easy win if the first one dies).
If we DO get promotions, say from winning battles, I have found that Combat I is often a far better promotion than City Raider I for Axemen.
Mitchum said:
Should we switch espionage to Hammy any time soon since Toku will be dead within 20 to 25 turns (I hope)? We need enough EPP on him to see his demo data but that should be it, right?
EDIT: I don't have the game available right now (I'm typing in secret during my meeting), but I'm pretty sure Toku will be dead before we get eyes on his research. As long as we ensure we have enough EPP to see his demo data, we should be fine.
We could switch Espionage targets, since that switching will automatically happen if and when we eliminate Toku (which looks to be a very likely thing to have happen).
As you say, though, we need to be sure to keep getting the Demographic data on Toku.
Another way to look at the problem is that spending 4 Espionage Points per turn on Hammurabi doesn't do a whole lot, except probably cause Hammurabi to spend more Espionage Points on us. If we switch Espionage targets too soon and end up having to switch back to Toku, Hammurabi's resulting increased spending on us could make it take even longer overall to get Demographic info and Tech Research info on Hammurabi compared with the scenario where we only switch Espionage Targets a bit later.
If you're certain that we'll have the info that we need on Toku, we can switch now, otherwise we can delay doing so until my turnset.
The purpose of SW NW is to give our settler two paths to its desination, just in case forest growth blocks one of the two paths. Your proposal, SW W, delays our settling 1t if there is forest growth W of the settler during the IT.
If you pay attention and watch how quickly we raise an army, you can't help but become a better player.
