Dhoomstriker
Girlie Builder
- Joined
- Aug 12, 2006
- Messages
- 13,453
Well, it is possible to BUILD a Fort in neutral territory. However, I have confirmed that a Galleon is unable to ENTER a Fort in neutral territory.
Hence, we need to know the algorithm for City Revolt time upon City capture.
Well, I did some testing, and here's what I see (at least for game settings similar to our own--I just World Built a ton of Macemen and they did surprisingly well unsupported by Trebs against Axemen and Archers, but I digress):
1. Upon capturing a City, the population will be reduced by 1 point
2. The City Revolt time seems to be purely dependent upon how many people are in the City that are left alive. So, basically, whatever the City Size of the City is when you attack it, minus 1
3. If population points are whipped away shortly before a City is captured, then those whipped population points do not count, which supports what I said in point 2.
4. Here is a chart of the City Sizes (after that 1 population point from capturing the City has been removed--which, of course, is not removed if the City is already at Size 1, followed by the number of turns of City revolt):
City Size after being captured: City Revolt Time
1: 3
2: 4
3: 4
4: 5
5: 5
6: 6
7: 6
8: 7
9: 7
10: 8
11: 8
12: 9
13: 9
14: 10
The Hage is Size 10. Assuming that it is not whipped over the next couple of turns, then we would look at the above chart for "9" and would see that The Hague would be in revolt for 7 turns.
It is possible that this number will be brought down to 6 turns if Willem executes a 2-pop-whip, which would bring the City Size down to Size 8 and thus the final capture value being Size 7, which, in the chart above, gives 6 turns of revolt.
So, our upper limit is 7 turns after The Hague is captured. Again, this fact supports bringing all 3 Trebs and both Macemen from 1S of Utrecht to The Hague, if we plan to go with the Fort approach, so as to be able to capture The Hague ASAP.
Incidentally, it should be noted that doing so DOES NOT adversely affect the northern Galleon plan, since neither of the 2 Galleons that can pick up troops would be able to make it to the northern passage in time. However, these 2 Galleons only have 0 and 1 movement points remaining, so the troops 1S of Utrecht would have to use the Roads to load onto these Galleons on the current turn, rather than walking into Utrecht and waiting for the Galleons to arrive.
Feasibly, with a bit of luck, we can capture the City 2 turns from now, since we'll have 4 Trebs and 4 Macemen landing in 1 turn from now, but if there are enough defenders to stop 4 Macemen, then a more realistic figure is capturing the City 3 turns from now.
So, that puts the Fort approach being ready to sail through to Moscow on T + 10 at the latest. Sailing to Moscow would take 1 turn to "almost" arrive there, so we'd land on the shores of Moscow on T + 11 at the latest.
In the "ideal" case, Willem will feel threatened by our units and will 2-pop-whip. He will have 2 chances to do so. If he does so, then we can take 1 turn off of that final total. Also, ideally, Willem will only have 4 City defenders and our Macemen will not lose, which would remove yet another turn off of that final total.
So, a realistic timing of when we can land troops beside Moscow is T + 11, with a best-possible case timing of T + 9.
I use Low Graphics Settings, so I can't conclusively see which squares around the northern continent really are Coastal or not... do we have someone who can conclusively say that we have a northern passage? If yes, then how many turns will it take for the furthest of the 3 (or 4) Galleons (none of which have movement points remaining on this turn, so the earliest that they could move is on T + 1) to arrive next to The Hague in time to be able to pick up troops, then spend 1 more turn before the troops can unload at Moscow?
Well, I took a look, and, assuming that all of the land has been uncovered up there and that we already see the edges of Coasts (I cannot tell, so do not trust this number as being any more than a minimum--it is possible that the amount of turns is higher than this value), but making that assumption that we have uncovered all land but not all of the Coast squares next to said land, then I count troops landing next to Moscow on T + 7 from a possible of up to 4 Galleons.
So, that's a maximum 4 turn difference.
What's not included in that difference are:
- How long it will take to get additional troops whipped from Willem's Cities
- What we could be otherwise doing with those Galleons for those 6 turns of travel (don't forget that the current turn's movement is used up, so 7 turns really means 6 turns of travel)
- Whether we will have enough troops that don't die to Willem's Cities and that won't be needed to garrison Willem's Cities to prevent unnecessary population loss
Given these unknowns, given that I'd rather simultaneously attack Moscow and St. Petersburg, given the 6 turns of our Galleons literally doing nothing, and given the fact that we have to decide NOW whether to commit 3 or 4 Galleons, I find myself still in the "Fort the Pig" camp.
However, if we do go for the northern passage, then I am 100% to commiting 4 Galleons to the task. Preferably, we'll have enough troops (I don't believe that 9 will be sufficient) to take down Moscow on the turn after we land--I'd feel more comfortable with about 11 troops.
Note that that 4 turns of difference can potentially be shrunk by up to 2 turns if we get lucky at The Hague. That 4 turns of difference is probably otherwise accurate, but I'm not 100% positive about the distinctions between the Coast and land squares in the north under the hidden squares.
I agree that a "combination" is out.
EDIT:
---
I think that I might have misunderstood the "combination" plan. What I mean is that if we're going to sail to the north, then we need to forget about building a Fort with our initial 2 Workers.
Nothing stops us from sending 1 Galleon to the north, as shyuhe seems to have been proposing, if we plan to build the Fort. However, that Galleon will probably have to arrive on T + 8 or later, since we don't want to risk delaying our Workers arriving to build a Fort.
---
If we're going to sail via the northern passage (which I really hope is a passage--it looks like it but I'm not 100% certain), spending even 1 more turn with our Galleons doing things other than spending 6 more turns sailing around the north will simply cut down the maximum difference of 4 turns between the two plans to the point that we will have basically decided on the "Fort the Pig" approach being for certain the way to go.
Therefore, if we're going around the north, we need to focus our Galleons on getting there ASAP.
We should not discount the value of being able to use the intervening time (6 turns' worth of Galleon movement, plus up to as many as 2 more turns before our Galleons need to get into position, depending upon the capturing time and City Size of The Hague) to finish off Willem and possibly take down one of Ragnar's Cities--meaning Ragnar expanding less, us getting +1 Happiness, us getting access to War Elephants after a trade with Vicky, and meaning being able to leave very few, if any City garrison units in Willem's Cities when we go to attack Cathy, due to the restored Happiness from not having Motherland Unhappiness.
It seems very realistic to be able to minimally take down Willem's last City within these 6 extra turns, which still gives us time to get our Galleons and units into position to go through the Fort and to simultaneously assault St. Petersburg. Ragnar's City may not fall in time, depending upon how lucky we get at The Hague, but if our luck fails us there, we'll have 2 extra turns to work with, which we might as well spend on capturing Ragnar's Ivory City.
War Elephants are cheaper than Macemen--90 Hammers for a War Elephant versus 105 Hammers for a Maceman--which is a worthwhile fact to capitalize on.
"Well, War Elephants don't have City Raider promotions!"
While that fact is true, we do plan to upgrade some Macemen to Combat I anyway, so War Elephants would really be no different in this regard.
"Well, Pikemen would hurt Elephants."
Yes, but I'd be more afraid of Castles than Pikemen.
"Still, I love City Raider promotions."
Okay, but there are Cities that won't have a Barracks, where we also probably won't have a lot of Hammers. We'd get either a non-City-Raider 0-Experience-Point Maceman or a War Elephant. The War Elephant would come cheaper, which means that over time, we could build slightly more units (90 to 105 Hammers gives a 6 to 7 ratio--7 War Elephants in place of every 6 Macemen--probably not a bit enough ratio to get very excited about, but it might mean the difference between being able to whip or not whip one more useful Military Unit out of some of our Cities, say, using overflow Hammers and a final 1-pop-whip in captured Cities that are down to Size 3, which IS a difference that could matter multiple times over).
"Yeah, but Macemen are cool."
Yes, they are, but they don't do nearly as well when Crossbowmen are involved.
"Okay, War Elephants are cool, too."
The real question in my mind for the northern passage approach is not:
1. How soon can we get there? (although if it turns out to be longer than I estimated, that approach gets worse)
It is also not:
2. Should we take 3 or 4 Galleons (we can fight about it, but if we're going to commit to this approach, let's be certain that it will work and bring 4 Galleons--another one can always be whipped elsewhere if we need it, but if we end up being short on Galleons in the north, there will be no way to recover, as we won't have the Workers shipped next to The Hague, so there won't be a Fort for a long time)
But it is:
3. If we do not capture Willem's last City (which we will not do if we send 3 or 4 Galleons via the northern passage, since we won't have time to make the attack work and still get to St. Petersburg in time) and are thereby forced to garrison our captured Cities with troops, while also only having minimum time to whip troops from Willem's Cities (at most 2 additional units by the looks of it, but it is questionable as to whether these units can actually make it to the Galleons for the initial assault in time) can we actually have sufficient troops to assault both Moscow and St. Petersburg at once?
I'm a bit dubious here,particularly since:
a) We have to break up our Galleon chain and use the "back" of the Galleon chain to sail around to the north, meaning that new troops whipped in our core Cities won't arrive in time
b) We essentially waste the power of our Galleons while they sail around, but then we are forced into tight timing of when to attack, so we can't kill off Willem and will lose troops to City garrisons--we won't even be able to ship in Warriors since our Galleon chain will be used up by sailing it all to the north
c) With the tight timing of when we'd need to attack Moscow in order for the "sailing to the north" approach to be worthwhile, I don't see us being able to get enough troops out of Willem's Cities (and we won't be getting any from our core Cities, as stated in point a) above), such that we will have insufficient troops to take down both Moscow and St. Petersburg before at least one of them builds a dreaded Castle
A Castle being built actually drags the war out by several turns, which in my mind, negates the turns "saved" by attacking sooner via sailing around to the north.
).
