SGOTM 15 - One Short Straw

GEL can whip 2 cats in time for the assault on Kyoto.

1. 2pop at pop4 on T82, work max food, 2pop at pop4 on T85. We lose some gold. Spear done T84.
2. 2pop at pop5 on T83, work food and gold, 1pop at pop4 on T85. Spear done later. Works gold non-stop.

This solution gets the cat 1 turn late for the Kyoto assault, which would be okay if we decide we want to bombard to get the CI axe a jump point:

3. 2pop at pop5 on T83, work food and gold. Spear done T85. 2pop cat on T86.

GEL can 2pop the cat on T83 at pop5, assuming we get the corn on T82, and then 2pop another cat on T85 at pop4, giving our Kyoto stack one more cat. The spear will
 
It's highly unlikely I'll have time to do anything useful in the morning, so I'll leave with one parting comment:
I'd prefer the 2pop on T83 variant, since that seems to allow the most flexibility.

I'll be back a week tomorrow.
Good luck while I'm away, Dhoom. I expect to see Kyoto, Babylon, Thebes, and Delhi :eek: in our hands when I get back. :whipped:
 
Genarally, I'm not a fan of 1-popping anything, especially when we're already at our :) limit. I'm also not a fan of not working the gold every turn. Plus, I'd like to see a spear in our initial stack too.

Since no option meets all of the requirements and allows us to attack on T86, I guess the less of all evils for me is option 1, which gets us 2 cats and a spear in our SoD on T86 at the expense of working the gold for some turns.

Option 3 isn't bad either but it delays our attack by one turn.

Option 2 is my least favorite because it has a 1-pop whip and doesn't give us a spear in our initial attack.

EDIT: ZPV, there are two 2pop on T83 variants... which one do you prefer?
 
LowtherCastle said:
I've never seen AI's stop at 6 defenders, more like accumulating 12 or 20, given the chance.
At 5 units, Toku kept building Spearmen, Axemen, and later Swordsmen with the AI_ATTACK mission... and said unit would wander away from the City and back to the City, even with our stack parked next to the City.


Thus, it is very feasible for us to only face 6 units defending if we are willing to Bombard Kyoto's defences down to 0% and is even possible to only face 5 units there.

The trouble is that during that timeframe, Hatty might attack and then her stack could end up in Kyoto or next to it and capture Kyoto from us... yes, the Castle and City Walls would be gone, but so would our army.


LowtherCastle said:
Since we can have 2 CRI cats available, it makes sense to send 3 or 6 cats ahead to bombard defenses for 1 turn (to 94% or 88%), if we attack Osaka on DoW-T0. Odds and jump points might be better for other units or less fortified archers, but we can't assume that.
Well, it's a gamble, but if we rush in with a larger stack, there is a chance that we'll only face 3 or 4 defenders in Kyoto and can just attack instead of Bombarding... but I wouldn't feel comfortable doing so with just 6 Cats.


Thus, I see us having 2 main options:
A] Go for a T86 attack, like LC suggested, but plan to Bombard for several turns
OR
B] Go for a later attack (probably more like T92) with the unit make-up that I suggested, but plan to skip Bombarding Kyoto and capture it ASAP before other AIs can get tempted to declare war on us


We'll probably end up capturing the City around the same time in either scenario. Scenario A] allows us to build fewer units--but only if we don't get declared upon by another AI. Scenario B] requires us to build more units but we can end the war decisively before the other AIs get any ideas (or before they can really reach us if they are immediately bribed by Toku).


Basically, it's a potential race to try and catch Kyoto with only 3 to 4 defenders while we have 9+ Cats there (I'd prefer 10 or even more, but 9 could probably still work) versus a smaller stack that attacks earlier and spends several turns Bombarding, while Toku builds up to 5 to 6 defenders.

A hybrid approach just doesn't really fly all that well, since he can quickly get to 5 defenders, and we don't want to attack 5 to 6 defenders unless we have a huge stack.


LowtherCastle said:
Kyoto could fill up with a lot of units suddenly
If said units have the AI_ATTACK mission, they can enter the City but will leave the City on the following turn, either going after a captured Osaka or temporarily moving toward the NE of Kyoto... at least, that's what happened in the test game.

It seemed that as soon as Kyoto had 6 units, as long as Toku had access to Copper or Iron, the additionally-built units from Kyoto were AI_ATTACK type of units. One of those 6 units was sometimes an AI_ATTACK unit that had wandered into the City.


LowtherCastle said:
Guess we might have time to go after Tokyo or Samsuto. That might speed up his willingness to talk to about 9 turns.
When I tested, there was indeed a difference by moving our stack toward one of his eastern Cities and threatening it relative to not doing so, in terms of what he was willing to give us for techs.


LowtherCastle said:
1. If we capture Osaka and move a SoD toward Kyoto all on T0, then on T1, I think it's better to move that SoD next to Kyoto before moving the reamining units around Osaka, just in case we want to heal them in Osaka or something.
I got confused on this point, sorry.


LowtherCastle said:
2. Each time we capture one of Toku's cities, we can check our diplomacy screen with Hatty, to see if she's close enough to accept that city as a gift. That might give us an indicator of how close Hatty nearest city is.
Good call!


LowtherCastle said:
An idea: We could gift Toku Mysticism and hope he starts building monuments in his cities, instead of units. His other two cities aren't getting any culture right now and we're putting serious pressure on Osaka, so he probably has code-related reasons to build them.
That's fine by me. The more Religious techs that the AIs get, the closer they will get to Feudalism, but in this case, Toku will be a marginal AI, so I don't mind doing it. We might open up a trade for him to get Polytheism, if we are really lucky.


Mitchum said:
1. We need to capture Osaka first and march through Osaka, arriving at Kyoto one turn sooner. This was discussed about 1000 posts ago
Okay, but it's a matter of the scale of our forces. If we want to go in with a minimalistic army (i.e. attacking on Turn 82 and hoping for the best), we don't really have this luxury.

Really, when playing Civ 4, if you go in with "just enough" or "just barely more than enough" units, you tend to lose a lot of them, but when you have overkill, you just keep the ball rolling. I'm not suggesting that we build an overkill amount of units, but I'm also not wanting to go in with an amount of units that "might work, if the random number generator isn't too mean to us."


Mitchum said:
2. No scouts. I see no value in building 4 scouts just to occupy squares. If we have enough cats and axes, we should be taking Kyoto on T+2 or T+3 at the latest. I'd rather have 2 more axes than 4 scouts.
Are we willing to pay the population price? The advantages of the Scouts are that they can be built using overflow Hammers and can still catch up to the rest of the assault force because of their 2 movement points. Building additional Axemen means more lost population points (from whipping) and more time before we can declare (due to the travel time of those Axemen).

It is, however, feasible that 2 Axemen arriving at the last minute could be within range to attack Osaka but not be in range to start by standing on the Corn... so, if that's the case, and if we don't mind some additional whipping, then sure, we can try and turn those Scouts into Axemen.


Mitchum said:
3. I think T86 is a good target for war declaration.
It's not the turn that we declare that I really need to base my PPP around but the mix of units that we have that I really need to go by. If we can agree on the size of force to use, then I can put together a PPP that tries to get that quantity of units within a reasonable timeframe, perhaps with timing of whipping of further-away Cities happening first, so that our final force arrives relatively simultaneously on the front lines.

That's why I want us to get some sort of consensus on what unit composition to use; it's hard to put together a reasonable PPP otherwise (i.e. a PPP where I'll feel confident that we'll be able to capture Kyoto given our chosen approach of Bombarding versus not Bombarding).


Mitchum said:
4. One axe should be enough for Toku's wounded archer in the SW if we can catch him on flat, bare land, which shouldn't be too hard after L "The Lumberjack" C played his turnset. Plus, we could whip another axe in an emergency should the first one die by some fluke.
True about the whipping... let's just hope that when the Archer wins, promotes, and heals, he won't also kill the next Axeman...


LowtherCastle said:
If you put the warrior W of the chokepoint, then he'll get attacked by the advancing barbs.
I was talking about 1E on the GRiv, to the east of the Lake. That said, putting the Warrior on the west Coast could work if we were going to just leave our Axeman Fortified on the GRiv For chokepoint... but since that's not the plan, then 1W of the Lake is probably not a good spot to go, I agree.


LowtherCastle said:
Use the "alt" key and hover over the victim to find out the odds, XP to be gained, etc.
I'll probably have to jump in and out of a test game for this part to work, since otherwise, I won't know how many XP I'll get from attacking across of a river versus not attacking across of a river until the choice has already been made. I'm fine with switching to a test game and back; I'm just saying that it's not as simple as waiting for a unit to arrive on the chokepoint and then checking out the combat odds.


LowtherCastle said:
3. I forgot to remind you that we have a partial (3h) spear build in NC also. After the next axe, that could be one of yoru beloved spears... Don't forget, we'll want pikes as soon as we get Engineering, so we only want bare necessity spears now, right?
If we don't go in with a "wait to build a large stack that will take down Osaka + Kyoto ASAP" approach, then we may need such an extra Spearman while we Bombard Kyoto and get attacked by Hatty.


LowtherCastle said:
5. Osaka. I wouldn't attack it till we take back the corn at the earliest and only if it has 2 defenders. As you said: Bombard to 0%, attack with unpromoted cat, then you should have good odds with a CRI cat, then either one more cat, if needed, then clean up. MOve other units towards Kyoto for pre-bombardment. But always maintain a flexible battle approach and if SHTF, then stop, take a deep breath, and maybe pause for analysis.
I found that the Bombarding was not necessary. I'll only do the Bombarding if we plan to Bombard Kyoto before attacking, i.e. if we don't mind a large stack of up to 6 units forming in Kyoto. Otherwise, we can't afford this extra turn that our Cats will waste.

It's really not about how many Cats/Axes survive but how many Cats I can send to Kyoto on the first turn of war declaration. Any Cat that comes a turn later means that we'll see another defender in Kyoto, at which point we might as well settle in for a long series of several turns worth of Bombarding Kyoto.


LowtherCastle said:
6. Research. Yes, Org Rel looks like it could be pwerful. Right now it would only cost an extra 2gpt. When we finish MC, I would switch the science slider to 0% and put all the overflow into Aesthetics. We don't need Poly for bulbing and we might get it for free later on.
Agreed. No sense dumping Flasks into Poly unless we find that we'll be forced to self-tech it. We won't really know until the turn after we obtain Alphabet.


LowtherCastle said:
7.I don't see how we have any time to lure units out of Osaka, because we want to capture it on T0 if at all.
That idea co-incided with an immediate war declaration (i.e. not even waiting for the Corn to become ours). Doing so would get us some Bombarding Catapults at Kyoto's gates ASAP. The luring in this approach did not work out and I decided that it made more sense to wait for the Corn to become ours, so please ignore this idea entirely.


LowtherCastle said:
But you'll also need some sort of garrison in GEL, I think, because of whip unhappiness, so keep that in mind.
Not if I whip again... :mischief:


LowtherCastle said:
8. I don't understand how OrgRel gets us Chs at half-price.
Org Rel gives us Forges within a reasonable timeframe (with 2- or 3-pop whips instead of next-to-impossible 4-pop-whips). A Forge + Org Religion = a 50% discount on a Courthouse, and we'll also get Happiness from the Forge to allow us to regrow and whip again to complete the Courthouses.

Otherwise, without Org Rel, we'd probably have to build Courthouses before Forges otherwise our economy would crash before we could complete the Forges. That's all that I was saying there.


LowtherCastle said:
9. Wonders. My latest thinking on the Pyramids is let someone else build it for us, because I don't see us working enough specialists to make it worthwhile. I also would skp the GLib and Hanging Gardens (aqueduct is too expensive). I think we should try to pay for our warring and research with cottages, spoils, and failed gold from HE, NE, Moai, and maybe SoA (which would be a reason to research Poly sooner, if we had some spare hammers to put into SoA).
If that's the case, then really I should be Chopping as many Forests as possible into military units.

As nice as a Forest Chop going into Failed Gold can be, doing so is not really nearly as helpful as putting a Chop into a Wonder in order to complete said Wonder sooner (i.e. to get The Great Library quickly, for example).

I tend to disagree about building The Pyramids and The Hanging Gardens, but we can cross that bridge once Kyoto is ours and comes out of revolt, based on what Wonders still exist. Even with the cost of an Acqueduct, we'll more than make up for building The Hanging Gardens with the extra population points that we will be able to whip.

The Pyramids are likely to end up on the other side of the world, in the hands of our Deity AI (which I'm assuming is on the other side of the world, to give it time to build up to Mech Infantry in some teams' games), if we let an AI build it. Other than that fact, I'm okay with capturing it, but the big value from The Hanging Gardens comes from building it yourself (similar to The Oracle).


LowtherCastle said:
12. Yes to chopping units now.
Sounds good to me.


LowtherCastle said:
14. As for bombarding Kyoto, if Kyoto has too many units when we get there, we'll just have to bite the bullet, bombard him to zero while bringing in re-inforcements.
Yup, that's pretty much the face of it. The question becomes whether or not we want to go in before having a really large stack and just start bombarding earlier versus waiting to get more units and then hopefully being able to skip all Bombarding at Kyoto.


LowtherCastle said:
15. Scouts. I agree with Mitchum. Scouts are not worth the effort. Not before T86 anyway. If he has lots of units, we might give it a stab. They will screw up our WarSuccess numbers a bit.
At most, one Scout will die. The rest just block his Hammer production. The theory is that if we can prevent a single unit from being built in Kyoto, they will pay for themselves in terms of the Hammers not lost on additional suicidal Cats and Axes, as well as the war success points not lost on said Cats and Axes.

Realistically, zero Scouts will die since he won't have an AI_ATTACK unit close enough to Kyoto in the massive-army plan.


LowtherCastle said:
16. DoP Trade points. By the way, it might be counter-intuitive, but the more kills we get, the better, even if it means Toku gets more kills. For example, a WeKill/HeKills ratio of 3/0 might yield 955 trade value, whereas 8/6 would yield 1484 points
The same could be said about Great General Points.


LowtherCastle said:
18. Ignoring Osaka.
If we go with a medium-sized stack and Osaka has 3 units in it, we'll be forced to ignore Osaka. If we have a large enough stack, then we'll still be fine with 3 Cats and 3 Axes, as the Cats will make that third unit weak enough. That's why I planned for using 3 Cats and 3 Axes in the massive-army plan, with any extras that can get used on Kyoto being "bonus" units.


LowtherCastle said:
especially after we get the corn, which we won't lose again.
We'd probably lose it again in the future, sometime after his Cultural Borders expand once more, but if that happens, it will mean that we really screwed up the Toku war.


LowtherCastle said:
20. Barrage I gives 12HP damage per turn versus 10HP without it. (Hence 20% more.) I ahven't tested whether it gets us a jump point, but I think I've shown that the CRI promotion will get us jump points in our situation, in both Osaka for the second archer and in Kyoto against the 1.5 archer.
The Cats at Kyoto won't expect to win any battles until the clean-up ones, at which point even unpromoted Cats can win. If we really want, we can use City Raider I Cats on Osaka, but I think that Bombard Cats at Kyoto is a better investment of the few promotions that we have on Cats.

That's 2HP more for several units (what is it, 5 units? 6 units?), which adds up. We don't care if our Cat survives by having better odds--the Cats are there just to wound the other units in the stack and we'll rely on the law of random numbers--i.e. attacking with enough units--to eventually get in a few hits on the top two stack defenders in Kyoto.


LowtherCastle said:
I think 9 cats, 8 axes, 1 spear on T86 is a good start.
I don't really see it.

That's not enough to take on Osaka without being forced to Bombard Kyoto down to close to 0% City Defences.

That's barely enough to take on Kyoto if we bypass Osaka (which means 1 extra turn of walking there), and that's if we are lucky--likely, we'll fall short even with those numbers, because that extra turn and no Scouts to block Toku's production squares will mean we'll almost certainly face 5 defenders in Kyoto... and that size of an army has a decent sized chance of not capturing the City, and a reasonably-sized chance of capturing Kyoto but losing it in a counter attack from roaming AI_ATTACK units or from Hatty if she declares.

It's this hybrid solution that I don't feel comfortable with. I would prefer to either go in sooner (like T83 or so) with a smaller stack and just start Bombarding away or wait until we have a larger stack and conclusively take down Kyoto without any Bombarding. A hybrid approach with a medium-sized army will likely leave me ending up letting the team down.


LowtherCastle said:
This solution gets the cat 1 turn late for the Kyoto assault, which would be okay if we decide we want to bombard to get the CI axe a jump point
I'm not concerned at all about jump-points, since delaying an extra turn is likely to mean an extra defender, which means that a unit or two having better odds isn't nearly as useful as fighting 1 less defender when we're talking about such a heavily-City-Defenced + River-bonused + Hills City.

I still might do the whipping that way, though.


I know that I'm sounding stubborn here, but I really don't feel comfortable with a medium-sized army going in around T86.
 
Dhoom, I think you misunderstood some of my T86 proposal. So here it is again, with one cat added.

T85
1. 7 cats, 7 axes to corn tile.

T86
10 cats, 8 axes, 1 spear now available at GEL+corn tile (spear's availability dpendent on choice of whips in GEL)

2. DoW. If more than 2 defenders in Osaka, then beeline Kyoto, otherwise go to Step 3.
3. Attack Osaka with an unpromoted cat.
4. If no damage to top archer, Plan C (whatever that is), otherwise attack other archer with CRI promoted cat.
5. Checks attack odds. If not favorable, attack with another unpromoted cat.
6. Kill of both archers.
Units used: 3 cats, 2 axes. Units lost: 1 cat + 30% chance 2nd cat.

7. Move 5 axes + 4 cats toward Kyoto.
8. Move new units in GEL to corn.

T87
9. Move 5 axes + 4 cats next to Kyoto and gather information:
* Does Kyoto have walls?
* a castle?
* barracks?
* What units does Kyoto have?
* What are their promotions?
* Does Kyoto have 3hpt production? (copper or invisible iron)
10. If Kyoto is attackable (not too many units), move everything from Osaka and the corn tile toward Kyoto, otherwise, decide if it makes sense to heal any units in Osaka, and send the others onward.

T88
11. Gather information about Kyoto:
* How many units and what are their promotions?
12. If Kyoto is attackable, bombard with all available cats and move all approaching units next to Kyoto.

T89
Status next to Kyoto:
2 100HP 3/2XP cats
5 100HP cats
1-2 ??HP cats
2 100HP 3/2XP axes
4 100HP axes
2 ??HP axes
1 100HP 3/2 spear (this turn or next turn, depending on GEL plan)

13. Gather information about Kyoto:
* How many units and what are their promotions?
14. If Kyoto is attackable this turn, capture, otherwise bombard.

etc.
 
Here are some other details from my analysis:

All of our 100HP cats have approximately equal chances of damaging the 3.0 archers. City defenses of 100% to 0%, change the archer's chances of no damage from about 33% to 26%. In other words, it's a complete crapshoot when and how much our cats will inflict damage on any 3.0 archers, especially against 1-2 First Strikes.
Spoiler :
Basically, the archers inflict 25HP damage on our cats per success. So our cats get 2-4 cracks at inflicting damage and the odds of winning each round are about 30%. We should inflict damage 2 out of 3 times and inflict on average 13HP per cat.
1. Cats cause 12HP collateral damage to archers, 14HP with Barrage I.
2. Cats cause 10HP collateral damage to axes, 12HP with Barrage I.

This means it depends on what is in Kyoto, whether Barrage makes any sense or not.

1. Archers can be brought down to 50HP with 4 attacks if one is Barrage I. (14 + 3*12 = 50)
2. Axes will require 5 attacks to reach 50HP since we have only 3 cat with 3/2XP. (12*3 +1*10 = 46HP)

-----

With Kyoto defenses at 88%, CRI cats have a significant jump point, from 66% to 81% against 1.5 25%-fortified, CGII archers.
 
Okay, ball's in your court, Dhoom. I'm done analyzing, because I feel like I'm the only one putting a concerted effort into this. I don't think your uber-army is feasible financially. I doubt you can assemble your uber-army by T92, but who knows, because no one has done any actual testing. All we really need is IW+Alpha+Kyoto for now.

Figure out how we're going to do it. I'll be happy to help.

One more detail: I'm ONLY concerned about jump points--that's the key to success here
 
Thanks for the analysis, LC. I think what you've laid out is feasible. We're going largely on speculation of how many units will be in Osaka and Kyoto. I think we need to go in with a reasonable stack that will be large enough to cover 80% to 90% of the likely scenarios. If we wait for a stack that can cover 100% of all possible scenarios (uber stack in Kyoto, losing a few 90%+ battles, etc.), we'll be attacking at least 6 to 8 turns later, which isn't worth it in my opinion.

It seems that Dhoom and LC are completely out of phase with respect to being on line. I think this discussion is very useful and good, but if we go back and forth like this, losing a day each time, we'll never get this turnset played. So, I propose the following:

1. Tonight, Dhoom puts together a PPP until T86 (or later) with:
a. LC's recommended SOD size of 10 cats, 8 axes and 1 spear
b. A different size based on justification for delaying our DoW and why this larger stack is needed
2. Comments on the PPP from the peanut gallery
3a. Dhoom plays 24ish hours after PPP was posted, incorporating comments
3b. If open questions after PPP and comments, I guess we lose another day while they are worked out.
4. Try to work out a time when most of us can be online for the turns from DOW until Kyoto capture.


@LC

I'd really hate to have to bypass Osaka and go straight for Kyoto. When I did this, and is sounds like Dhoom had a similar experience, Osaka had 5 defenders and 1 or 2 pops left after Toku whipped it to death.

If Osaka gets a third archer defender before T86, how many more units would we need to take Osaka before Kyoto? I assume 1 more cat and 1 more axe. If this is the case, I'd like to know how many more turns beyond T86 would be required to get them.
 
Re-thinking things just a bit, I see no reason to wait until anything close to T92. If nothing else, we DoW T82, capture Osaka immediately, move everything else to Kyoto, see what's going on there, bombard or not, accordingly. If Kyoto is overloaded with units, then Osaka comes out of resistance on T87, if it went from pop5 to pop4 upon capture, so we can build a cat for one turn, then whip it and put two chops into a second, getting cats on T89 and T90. Meanwhile, other units are coming along from our other cities, so clearly a T92 DoW date is too late.
 
LowtherCastle said:
1. Cats cause 12HP collateral damage to archers, 14HP with Barrage I.
2. Cats cause 10HP collateral damage to axes, 12HP with Barrage I.

This means it depends on what is in Kyoto, whether Barrage makes any sense or not.

1. Archers can be brought down to 50HP with 4 attacks if one is Barrage I. (14 + 3*12 = 50)
2. Axes will require 5 attacks to reach 50HP since we have only 3 cat with 3/2XP. (12*3 +1*10 = 46HP)
I thought that Collateral Damage was assigned randomly to non-stack-defending units.

I think that a some units (I forget which--some or all Siege units maybe?) are able to "absorb" some damage in that such a unit would randomly be assigned to be the target but would not actually receive any damage.

I wonder what happens in the case when a unit has already reached its lower limit (50 HP or whatever it is) for Collateral Damage--can it "absorb" some of the Collateral Damage or does it become an invalid target? The answer to this question could have an impact.


I would also think that the total number of units in Kyoto would have an impact (although I figure that we should expect there to be 5 units there given the timing of attacking using the warplan outlined by LC).

Unless there are objections, I could split the stack slightly so as to cover two of the GHFor squares and use a Warrior to cover a third production square.


LowtherCastle said:
One more detail: I'm ONLY concerned about jump points--that's the key to success here...

With Kyoto defenses at 88%, CRI cats have a significant jump point, from 66% to 81% against 1.5 25%-fortified, CGII archers.
Does that jump point apply for attacking across of a River onto a Hills square, too?

I'm assuming that we're also talking about full-health CRI Cats... i.e. if a non-promoted Cat gains 2 or more XP from fighting at Osaka but doesn't have full health, then giving it CRI won't help with this breakpoint, right? I.e. Such a Cat might be a good candidate for a Barrage promo, unless I have missed the mark.


Mitchum said:
If Osaka gets a third archer defender before T86, how many more units would we need to take Osaka before Kyoto? I assume 1 more cat and 1 more axe. If this is the case, I'd like to know how many more turns beyond T86 would be required to get them.
Since LC is pretty certain that a 3rd unit (probably an Axeman) is being built in Osaka now, we really should plan for a third unit to be there.

So, I'll try and come up with a plan that has +1 Axe and +1 Cat compared to what LC came up with and see on what turn I can obtain them.
 
1. I think your collateral damage understanding is correct:
* assigned randomly
* can be wasted on seige units (Toku can't build them anyway)
* can be wasted on units below 50HP

2. The problem with covering hammer tiles is that we can't even cover all of the tiles on this side of Kyoto and we don't know what's on teh other side. Even worse, though, is that we won't have too many defenders for our cats and only one spear, so I think they're safer together aren't they?

3. All of the caluculations I've given for Kyoto are for 25% fortified, across-the-river, on -the-hill, with-walls-and-castles, CGII archers. FUrthermore, the calcs are taken from the alt-mouse-over function so they can't be wrong.

4. Yes, I'm talking about 100HP CRI cats. Our cats won't get 2XP from battles, even if they redline a full-strength archer in Kyoto. But if we attack Osaka on T82 or T83, the CRI cat fighting at 70% odds might be back to full strength by the time we attack Kyoto. In that case, I'd probably save him for absolute mop-up to get him to 5XP.

5. The Osaka build will complete next turn if an archer and probably T82 if an axe. (Previously I predicted T83, but I think that was wrong, because Osaka's pop5 now.) If a unit completes on T82 I think it would be worth waiting a turn to DoW, because Toku moved the last axe out of Osaka immediately.

---

Dhoom, I'm prepared to agree on an early DoW and attack on Osaka, if you want to make a PPP for that. In fact, I think it might not be a bad idea to paln to play just long enough to capture Osaka and see what's in Kyoto. That alleviates some planning for now and might make further planning a lot easier.

There's one catch in all this: The derelict TOku archer between Marble and NC will be trapped to two tiles next turn: bananas and forest. We want to Dow and kill him when he's not in the forest, obviously. I think he'll be on the bananas on even turns, which is why ZPV originally suggested a T82 DOW. We have an alternative, though, if we want to be flexible about T82 or T83 to avoid the third defender in Osaka. We could T80 finish the NC chop, then T81/2/3 chop the derelict's forest. If we've decided DoW on T83, that worker finishes the chop, with TOku's archer on top of him, then we DoW, teleporting the worker away, then we attack the derelict on the denuded tile. This carries a risk of course of losing both the battle and then our worker, but I'm willing to take that risk.
 
In general, I don't use the barrage promotion on seige. I guess this promotion only makes sense when it is the first or second cat attacking to get the non-defending units down a few more HPs. However, I prefer the CR promotion because:

- An early, barrage promoted unit is almost surely to die, meaning it is a throw away unit, only doing 2 extra HPs of damage in our case. I'd rather use non-experienced cats first and save a CR promotion when it can up the odds of victory from 50% to 70% or 70% to 90% (or whatever the numbers work out to be). Then, you have a better chance of having the cat survive and gain another promotion.

- It sounds like we're going to be using a lot of cats and all units will be down below to the 50% limit with or without barrage. The only benefit I see of barrage in this case is if those 2 extra HPs of damge (or 4 or 6 after multiple attacks) get us to a jump point. If not, it "seems" that the barrage promotion was wasted.

- I'd prefer to have a CRII cat to a Barrage II? unit. I guess we could go Barrage/Accuracy but the odds of the barrage cat surviving are much lower.


Dhoom, feel free to split the stack depending on what you see in Kyoto when you first see what's there. Toku should have 16 total squares or so to work, so unless we can get to an improved tile, I'm not sure how much a difference it will make. The only downside would be if Hatty declares and wipes out our non-spear mini stack...

@LC What was the sabotage product number for Osaka last turn. I assume you already know this and can figure how many turns it will take Toku to complete an archer or an axe. Can you give an estimate for which turn each would be comlpeted and how many EPP that represents so that Dhoom can watch for it.

If possible, it would be ideal to attack before he could complete an archer (if that's what he's building). If not an archer and not possible to attack before then, maybe we can hit him before he could complete an axe. I think things are a lot easier with only 2 units in Osaka.

Building on what LC said about possibly attacking on T82, it's not the start of the war that matters but the DoP, right? If it's going to be 11 turns no matter what we do, does it really matter if we start the attack now and capture Osaka as LC said. Sure, Kyoto could have 5 units by the time we're ready to take it, but it probably has 3 already and will have 4 or 5 by the time we get there if we wait. Plus, we're stuck with this 11-turn window anyway (at least I think I read that). If we attack now, we'll know exactly what's in Kyoto and we'll have plenty of time to bombard.

Regardless of whether we attack now or wait until T86 (or later), I think we'll likely caputure Kyoto at about the same time (T90ish). If we declare on T82, we'll have peace 4 turns sooner than if we wait...

X-POST
 
Okay, I suppose if we're prepared to attack Kyoto after some bombardment, we could also plan to attack the unfortified axe in Osaka on T82 also. First the unpromoted cat, as planned, then the CRI cat as planned, then a third cat against the axe (presumably). That would probably only kill the first cat and migth conceivably give us some good odds for promoting a couple of axes to 5XP.

I haven't tested that, but you might give it a test to see if it goes smoothly.

xpost (This was meant to be a foolow-up to my previous post.)
 
I'm liking the attack on T82 more and more. Although, T83 looks good too.

If we attack on T82:
1. We don't own the corn yet, so our "advanced" party will end T82 in Osaka and be 1SE of Osaka on T83.
2. Toku's archer will be on the forest.
3. Completed unit will have less fortification bonus if it stays in Osaka.

If we attack on T83:
1. We should own the corn so our advanced party will end T83 1SE of Osaka, the same as the scenario above.
2. Toku's archer will be on a "clean and green" tile.
3. Our initial stack will have an extra axe plus whatever we build next in GEL.
4. Toku's axe could be out of Osaka.

Either way, if Toku is building a unit
 
BTW, to be clear, our stack on T82 will be 6 cats and 4 axes or on T83 it would be 7 cats and 5 axes. At least that's how I see it...
 
@LC What was the sabotage product number for Osaka last turn. I assume you already know this and can figure how many turns it will take Toku to complete an archer or an axe. Can you give an estimate for which turn each would be comlpeted and how many EPP that represents so that Dhoom can watch for it.
Here you go:



Note that we were still able to calculate his production before he built the barracks. We did that by guestimating how many hammers he was working for a few turns and watching the change in the Sabotage Production figure. Then we were able to derive an approximation of the hammer factor in that manner. The hammer factor varies slightly from city to city based on distance or I don't know what. It can also vary slightly from turn to turn in the same city, but not significantly, I don't think.
 

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Wait, Osaka now has a library, so the hammer factor should be 384/90 = 4.3, right?

EDIT: So he has 145 / 4.3 = 34 hammers into something. Granary, please!

EDIT 2: Dang, you said cheapest building...
 
T82
...
2. Toku's archer will be on the forest.
Dhoom, you need to observe his movement on T81. I'm pretty sure our Marble border pop will teleport him to the banans, and then he'll move to the forest, so on T81 you'll see him in the forest. Then he would have moved back to the bananas on T82.

We should probably verify his teleport though. I can do that tomorrow.
 
I just tested it. FYI: Our test game has him on the wrong square.

T80 - Toku's archer is right next to Marble City's cultural border.
IBT - Our borders pop, pushing Toku's archer to the banana tile.
T81 - Toku's archer has moved to the forest tile.
T82 - Toku's archer will be on the banana tile.

Based on this, should we attack on T82 while we can easily pick off Toku's archer? I'd rather not risk our worker or chop a forest outside our borders unless we have to do so. Not owning the corn on T81 is a big bummer for the T82 declaration.
 
Crap. I just hit enter again on T81 to see what the archer would do and he stayed on the forest for some reason. I would have expected him to move. I wonder if the fact that I just WBed the archer affected his movement. Of course, the unit had "City Defense" as his orders. :blush: What should they be and I'll test it again.
 
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