SGOTM 13 - One Short Straw

OK, it looks like we have three people on board for a simultaneous attack on Moscow and St. Pete ASAP with a 3 - 3 galleon split. The 3 galleons going to Moscow will take the northern route.

I'll update the PPP and aim to play in about 2 hours.

I propose that I play a mini two or three turn turnset, which should find us just about done with William.

Open Item

Do we want to galley chain our workers to get the pig canal done ASAP? Or would we rather sail them (and the treb) there the slow way with Galleon 6 and a mini-chain at the end. If we plan to hit Cathy ASAP, I suggest that we send those 3 galleys north now, which means that the canal won’t be done by the time we declare. Having 3 galleys in the north sea isn’t a bad thing as they can be used to shuttle troops to her northern cities.

We will not rush to build the canal. Instead, we will load 2 more trebs on the eastern galleon and ship them to the west. Three galleys will set sail north on T+1.

Proposed whip cycles per city:

William Campaign
Ragnar Campaign
Cathy Campaign

Victoria/Joao

Other

I'm pretty sure we will need 3-4 turns to fully heal our units after Willem so it's unlikely that we will invade Nij. As you mention, we can re-evaluate after taking Rotterdam + Hague.

I don't think we can scout Moscow in advance of declaring war, as that unit will get bounced back to Hague when we declare.

We don't need CR3 maces in the east from the GG -- we need them in the west if at all. We can evaluate this after the mini-set to take two cities as it will partly depend on where he spawns.

We can chain the workers over to Utrecht in time to meet a two-pronged attack on Moscow + St. Pete. The only reason to not chain them is if we're going to hit Moscow a turn or two before St. Pete. At this point, I'm fine with either of these options.

NOOOOOOOOOOO! The forum ate my rushed message.

Okay, summary: 3 + 3 split is good.

Forget the canal.

Do not ship our 2 Workers west.

7th Galleon will try its very best to get 3 Trebs to support the Cathy war.

There is no need for a "southern Galleon chain" beyond 1 Galleon out of the 3 being used for 1 turn, since all 3 Galleons are needed in the war... it is the LAST Galleon of the three to arrive that matters.


I like the point that we can add additional troops to stacks (either in the north or the south). The key point is to drop as many Trebs as we can on the first turn of the war.

Pick up any straggling Macemen afterwards.

Land Combat Macemen in favour of City Raider Macemen first, if there are enough troops to need more than 3 Galleons.


Do our best to keep our Trebs alive. That means Bombarding at Willem's 2 remaining core Cities.

Things that I missed from my lost-to-time message:
Send 3 Galleons to the north ASAP. We have 0 need of a Fort Canal this way, so there is no reason to delay sending these Galleons to the north.

The "backup" consists of landing City Raider Macemen after the initial wave of troops attack, should we somehow have more than enough units to have more than 9 units attacking Moscow. There is no need for a "backup" Galleon. Hopefully, we won't lose our Galleons to Barb Galleys, but at least the Galleons will be empty. In this worst case scenario, we'd somehow manage to make 2 Galleons work, with a careful selection of troops (probably 3 or 4 Trebs and 2 or 3 Combat Macemen in the initial landing, although it won't be ideal, of course).

If we do build a Fort, it will be with the Rotterdam Worker and there is no need to build it on the Grassland Pig square--on the adjacent 2 Cottage squares being built slowly over time is fine.

By the time that our northern Galleons are "done" up there and are ready to come back to the south, they'll likely be at the north-western edge of the continent and can just sail south from there anyway. We may never need that Fort Canal.



Be prepared to delay Bureaucracy if it means being able to get 2 more Trebs into the 7th Galleon (whatever the Galleon to the far east is called--I'm calling it the "7th Galleon" since I don't know which Galleon it is--the one that already has a Treb in it).

Obviously, if you can't get the Trebs to the front lines in time, then 1 Treb is all that we can go with, but 2 Trebs are better than 1 and 3 are even better.

If the ONLY way to get a 2nd or 3rd Treb is by whipping in Paris pre-Bureaucracy, then be prepared to do so and we probably will just forget about the Bureaucracy idea, as it's a medium-term gain instead of a short-term gain anyway.

I'd still prefer to switch into Bureaucracy, but I put a priority on getting as many Trebs as possible in the 7th Galleon such that they can arrive in time to land at St. Petersburg using 1 turn from one of the other Galleons as part of a Galleon chain. If getting these Trebs means delaying Bureaucracy, no worries. If the only way to do it is to whip in Paris pre-Bureaucracy, it sucks, but it is better to have that Treb, so do it.

shyuhe said:

We can chain the workers over to Utrecht in time to meet a two-pronged attack on Moscow + St. Pete. The only reason to not chain them is if we're going to hit Moscow a turn or two before St. Pete. At this point, I'm fine with either of these options.

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Hmmm, how quickly do we think that we can hit St. Petersburg without going after either of Willem's 5th City or Ragnar's Ivory City? Is it possible to do on T + 7?

If not, then you have a point that we have the flexibility to move our Workers, but perhaps 2 Forest Chops and shipping 3 Trebs to the west is going to work out better for us anyway.

I don't think that we need the Fort Canal at all, so we might as well get the Hammers from 2 Forest Chops, right?

I agree about not building the canal. It seems to be at odds with our plan of hitting Moscow ASAP by sending our galleys north on T+1. I can whip a treb in both Marble and Gold on T0, revolt to Bureaucracy on T+1 and get the best of both worlds. The workers will continue chopping with this plan.

Cool?

shyuhe said:

We don't need CR3 maces in the east from the GG -- we need them in the west if at all. We can evaluate this after the mini-set to take two cities as it will partly depend on where he spawns.

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We might not be able to get the GG to arrive before T + 7. However, after the initial drop-off of troops, we could have the 7th Galleon collecting the Great General while the southern Galleons could form a chain to get him up to the front lines as soon as we can.


I suppose that if the choice is between 3 Trebs or 2 Trebs and a Great General, we'd take the Great General. However, we can't count on the Great General appearing in a western City--if he appears in Iron City, then we can't use him for quite a while, right?

EDIT: cross-post

Dhoomstriker said:

Hmmm, how quickly do we think that we can hit St. Petersburg without going after either of Willem's 5th City or Ragnar's Ivory City? Is it possible to do on T + 7?

If not, then you have a point that we have the flexibility to move our Workers, but perhaps 2 Forest Chops and shipping 3 Trebs to the west is going to work out better for us anyway.

I don't think that we need the Fort Canal at all, so we might as well get the Hammers from 2 Forest Chops, right?

Click to expand...

We can hit St. Pete the same turn that we hit Moscow if we don't go after Nij or Ragnar's ivory. It will just be one unit short of a full boat, I think.

Mitchum said:

Pig: 4 -> 2, always working fish and pig

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Maybe change it to something like the following (use your own wording so that you will remember):
Pig: 4 -> 2, always working fish and pig, also always working a coast at size 4 (which includes the current turn)

I can whip a treb in both Marble and Gold on T0, revolt to Bureaucracy on T+1 and get the best of both worlds.

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So, would doing so mean that Galleon 6 (the 7th Galleon) would be able to shuttle-over 3 Trebs without the support of the Galleon chain, meaning that we could send 3 Galleons towards Moscow on T + 1? If so, that plan does sound good (lots of Trebs, no need for a Canal since we're sending 3 Galleons to the north ASAP, no need to worry about Ragnar's Ivory City since we are rushing Cathy ASAP, etc).

I'm still a bit concerned by shyuhe's comment that he doesn't think that we can hit St. Petersburg at the same time (T + 7). I don't have the game open right now, but is the concern mostly that we won't have fully-healed units? If that's the case, then troops can land in 2 waves, as long as we are putting down as many Trebs as possible at the start of the war with sufficient stack defenders to keep them from being dying.


EDIT: Cross-post: okay, then I am fine with hitting simultaneously ASAP (T + 7) and ignoring Nij + Ragnar's Ivory City.

I'm OK with you playing a few turns.

No the boats will hit Moscow and St. Pete at the same time. It's just that we will only land 8 units next to St. Pete, I think.

shyuhe said:

No the boats will hit Moscow and St. Pete at the same time. It's just that we will only land 8 units next to St. Pete, I think.

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Well, getting those 3 extra Trebs (counting the one that already exists on Galleon 6) and being careful to try and keep our existing Trebs alive would give us as many as 9 Trebs, which was my ideal number anyway.

I believe that the number of Trebs and not so much the number of Macemen will matter more.

If possible, we might be able to land a support troop or two--a couple of turns after declaring (if we still haven't captured Cathy's Cities yet)--that get built out of Willem's lands.


I suppose that there is also the small risk that Cathy will try to capture one of Willem's Cities, but even if she did so, it would mean splitting-up her units, and she'd stop after capturing a single City, and she also would have the captured City be in revolt, so I don't think that it would be a terrible thing to have happen.


It is a shame that we won't get the Great General in time, but being able to attack 4 turns sooner at simultaneous locations and multiple Trebs at both locations will hopefully be "good enough" anyway.

I've get everyone's comments. I'll plan on whiping 2 trebs on T0 to supplement our western fron vs. Cathy. When our GG appears, we'll have to figure out how to get him to the west and when...

I'd still advocate taking Cease Fires, even if Willem were to offer us Theology.

As for Theology, since we won't use it and since we don't want to hasten the other AIs learning it by getting that tech ourselves, it is good not to take this tech in trade.


We might as well plan to take Cease Fires after:
a) We own Willem's 4 core Cities
AND
b) We have sunk Ragnar's 2 Galleys

There is not necessarily a rush in taking the Cease Fires, so we could always delay them for up to a few turns after the above goals are met. Getting them sooner means being able to Re-open Borders sooner, which could help when Willem's Cities come out of revolt (we can always look in our Cities at that time to see if we are using any Domestic Trade Routes). Of course, if we don't have a need for the Open Borders agreement for additional Foreign Trade Routes, then the only "rush" to get Cease Fires would be to discourage these AIs from more troops--but Ragnar has the highest Unit Spam probabily in the game, so he'll build them anyway, while Willem won't have the production to build any units anyway (and will probably want to build a couple of City defenders even when at peace), so again, there is no real rush to take the Cease Fires.

I will say that I am dubious about sending in a land-based scouting unit to look at Cathy's Cities, unless we will be able to load that unit onto a Galleon on T + 6 (so that it could unload on T + 7).

I've seen some crazy things happen with unit teleporting upon declaring war that you would totally not believe unless you saw it happen, which means that there is a very real risk that this unit would be a "throw away" unit, as it could easily end up in an isolated corner of Cathy's empire--isolated from our troops but not from hers.

Since we are going to attack regardless of how many units that she has, I'd rather go in blindly than have 1 less Maceman to attack with.

I can check St. Pete with a galley and not scout Moscow... That will happen after this short turnset though.

Are we still planning to build an 8th Galleon (I think that shyuhe suggested building it in Stone City)?

Having an 8th Galleon in the east could give us a bit of flexibility in getting a Great General to the front lines. Having 2 whipped-Galleons would give us a bit of a Galleon chain, even.

I have no idea what the feasibily of getting these Galleons would be, but I'd prioritize the Trebs first, but would consider getting one or two Galleons before Bureaucracy if we have the City or Cities in which to produce them--we'll need them anyway and doing so might give us a chance to get a Great General to the front lines within a reasonable amount of time.

I think that we're agreed that we don't really need the Great General in the east.

No rush to get the Great General to the west before the war on Cathy starts (I don't think that it's going to be possible), but if we can aim to get it there shortly thereafter, it could be worthwhile doing (if all that it means is initially building less land units for our eastern front in a City like Stone City or wherever).

One final consideration with attacking The Hague:
Each Treb that attacks and successfully retreats can gain 1 Experience Point, which, depending upon the unit, may equal another promotion.

Our Trebs should probably all get City Raider I for their first promos (I don't see a good reason to get any other promo) but it is that second promo where we see cool gains, like in the Accuracy promo or City Raider II.