ZPV said:
Hammy's stack comes into view. He has a C1Shock sword, two CR1C1 swords, a C2 axe, a C2 spear, a C1 chariot, and a C1 horse archer.
Do we still have our Forest at our chokepoint?
ZPV said:
He can trade CoL and Fishing.
The city is on a hill and has no resources in its inner ring. "No losses" isn't that likely. I'd really rather not capture it yet if I don't have to. If it gets us a tech, fine, but he doesn't have one cheap enough.
Once we learn Fishing, Hammy will (likely) have Sailing to trade to us.
Capturing the Wheat City may not seem to be all that useful on the surface, but if we can bring along a Worker, we can feasibly Chop a couple of Forests, whip it down to Size 1 if it has grown to Size 2 by the time that we have Chopped some Forests, and then gift it away.
Part of our idea of wanting to gift and recapture junky Cities requires us to have "space" to place these giftable Cities. There's probably some space around the Wheat City to place additional such giftable Cities.
By the time that we are ready to give away the City (after some Chopping), we can probably give it to someone else (Cyrus if he still has 3 Cities? Shaka for peace plus Shaka having ownership of said City? Hatty if it's before we declare war on Hatty so that we can immediately recapture it and then gift it to someone else that hasn't owned it, like Shaka or Cyrus?) The idea of gifting Wheat City to an AI other than Hammy is that we'd then, in the future, be able to build another couple of nearby Cities that could be gifted to the AI that receives this City as a gift by us also first gifting them Wheat City if they don't own Wheat City at that time.
LowtherCastle said:
5. Plan to stay at war with Hammy till our Hammy SoD is ready to move on his cities and beyond.
Note that there isn't any particular rush to capture Wheat City if we're planning on staying at war with Hammy for a while--we can always aim to capture it later.
LowtherCastle said:
6. Keep in mind that for an AP victory we want some AI with a minimal amount of "base" negmods to build on with our liberated-city plusmods. That could be Hatty if she's isolated and doesn't rack up lots of negmods for us DoWing her friends, since she won't have many friends, if isolated. Or it could be Hammy if we never DoW him. So this DoW from Hammy could be considered a "gift from a friend." Alternatively, we will also rack up plenty of trade points with Hammy and maybe get HBR or other techs from him in a DoP.
One thing that has been tickling at the back of my mind is that:
I *THINK* that there is a -2 hidden negative Diplo modifier for "We lost the war to you," i.e. "We had less War Success than you in the war."
I'm not certain if the code around that functionality actually works, as I haven't really seen it happening in the past, but it is hard to tell with hidden attitude modifiers.
If that's the case, our tactic of declaring war and re-liberating Cities may have to be executed on a massive scale in order to make up for all of the negative attitude modifiers that we will suffer (-3 for a war, -2 for winning the war).
LowtherCastle said:
I would get the 3/2XP axe fortified on the chokepoint immeidately, in case the HA is somehow free of the sword, although I assume they're linked together.
Speaking of Hammy's Horse Archer, are we worried about our Axeman near Hammy being attacked by Hammy's Horse Archer? If yes, I guess that there's no point in moving him, as he should have +100% Defensive bonus as long as he is still fortified on the GHFor square.
If, of course, his Horse Archer dies and he doesn't have any additional 2-movement-point units and he sends his stack of 1-movement-point units at our Axeman and if our Axeman can safely run to our chokepoint, we'd run our Axeman away, but other than that case, I guess he should just sit tight (assuming that he's still on the GH For square).