SGOTM 13 - One Short Straw

The treb galleon sails two turns west and can hand off troops to the galleons currently near Utrecht. Those galleons are going to stay in that vicinity anyways so they're free to set up a short galleon chain. Heck, it can sail three turns west and make it back in time to meet the build-up for the eastern front since we're not going to do 4-2 whip cycles.
 
HITTING IN FORCE WITH A LOT OF TREBS AT THE START OF A WAR is apparently my new secret tactic (which won't be a secret since it's being written in our thread) for war success.

I'm not sure that's much of a secret... ;)

Depending upon how many units we want to shuttle from our Core to the west, we could form a mini-galleon chain with the 4 boats that do not sail north. They should have time to shuttle the 2 workers + treb plus another boat load of units if needed.

So, we have two options on the table:

1. Sail 3 or 4 galleons around the north. This limits our ability to move units (e.g. GG, units, workers) from our core to the western front. It also starts the war 3 or 4 turns sooner, which means that we won't have as much time to whip units out of Willem's newly captured cities, which means that we'll need to divert more units from our core to the western front. It also means that we likely won't have enough spare units to take Willem's last city (which could cause motherland :mad:) or Ragnar's ivory.

2. Build the Pig canal. This gives us the most flexibility. We keep our galleon chain in tact. We can easily move units from our core toward the west if needed. The war starts 3 to 4 turns later, so we'll have time to do more scouting, take Willem's last city and/or take Ragnar's ivory, whip more units, etc.

So, what do we prefer: Starting a war 3 to 4 turns sooner (which we may or may not have enough units for) or flexibility to use said 3 to 4 turns to capture an additional city or two, whip more units, etc.

Dhoom's analysis has me switching my vote to the pig canal...

EDIT: x-post with shyuhe
 
I'm not sure that's much of a secret... ;)
Well, it seems to be, since we apparently fear Castles. It's only worth fearing Castles if we can't hit hard (Bombard with multiple units) before the Castles get built.

I've seen a lot of misunderstanding about Bombardment on the forums and I have yet to see it explained properly until now, so I think that there is a lot of misunderstanding on the subject out there.


Anyway... what we cannot control is Cathy choosing to manually build a Castle. If she does so, then we are equally going to suffer whether we declare war on T + 7 or T + 11.

If she does not manually build one, then we should be landing a lot of Trebs (4 to 5--and I'd prefer 5 at her capital, since it not going to have any chance of having only 40% Cultural Defences with 2 Wonders in it) on the first turn of war, so that we can Bombard away the defences before a whipped Castle will have any real effect.

If we can do so, then we can actually LAUGH at Cathy if she whips a Castle, as it will be of less use to her than a Longbowman--IF we have a good amount of Trebs (the more Accuracy-promoted ones, the better, in my books) that land on the first turn of war and Bombard on the second turn before she will be able to whip a Castle. Even if she has already manually-built a Castle, having more Trebs will give her less time to build a ton of Longbowmen.



I really, really want to hit two Cities on the first turn of war. However, being practical, if we're going to do the northern passage, I'd rather just hit Moscow with 4 Galleons' worth of troops (using 5 Trebs + 6 Maces) and not hit a second City at the start of the war.


There is always the chance that non-threatened Cities will not whip Walls/Castles/as many units, so I would rather take that chance than attack 2 Cities with 2 or 3 Trebs each and then find Castles going up in both Cities due to the proximity of our armies at both locations but us not having enough Trebs to Bombard down the defences in time to make the Castles relatively ineffective.


So, if we vote for the northern passage, then I am going to push VERY HARD for both:
1. Only attacking Moscow on the first turn of war
and
2. Using 4 Galleons to do it


I still prefer delaying the war slightly (T + 11 instead of T + 7), since I think that "getting the war started sooner" is not equivalent to "ending the war sooner" when it comes to fighting an AI with Feudalism + Engineering. I actually think that the war will end more successfully (sooner and with less casaulties) if we strike with two reasonably-sized forces of Trebs backed by Macemen, and ideally I'd like to hit with 5 Trebs as Moscow and 4 Trebs at St. Petersburg, using 4 Galleons at Moscow and 3 Galleons at St. Petersburg.

We have enough Macemen already (6 Maces to Moscow and 5 Maces to St. Petersburg) as long as we don't lose any in our fighting, but we're short on Trebs (I'm hoping for 5 + 4 = 9 and we have 7 right now).


We can create 3 units from Willem's Cities by Turn 10, which allows us to lose 1 unit. Unfortunately, waiting for the 2 units created on Turn 10 to get into Galleons might take a while... okay, I'll open up the game... we could get the unit from Amsterdam into the war (i.e. landing next to Moscow) on T + 11 but we couldn't quite get the one from Rotterdam there until T + 12 (landing next to St. Petersburg). Thus, I don't think that we can count on that unit from Rotterdam.


So, if we take zero battle losses between now and then, we can strike on T + 11 with my ideal force of:
5 Trebs + 6 Maces at Moscow
4 Trebs + 5 Maces at St. Petersburg

and we'd just forget about that last unit coming out of Rotterdam.


Taking zero battle losses is a tall order, so obviously, if we can ship in a couple more land troops from our core Cities, we'll have some breathing room, without having to wait until after T + 11 to launch the attack.


We're really talking about the difference of 4 turns: T + 7 versus T + 11, but those 4 more turns will allow us to better prepare our forces to have overwhelming numbers.


Honestly, let's think about it. If you want 4 Galleons to sail out to another front (to Vicky or wherever), will we have all 4 Galleons ready at T + 19? If the answer is "no," then why can't we use the 7th Galleon against Cathy for the first turn of war? One Galleon can then sail back to the east, since after taking the first two Cities of Cathy's, we'll be facing Cathy's remaining Cities that:
a) Have less population points to whip
AND
b) Have less infrastructure (less likely to have a Forge)
AND
c) Would first need to build a Wall before they could build a Castle, so there's a bit of time there


The 7th Galleon that we own now can become the "last Galleon" to take part in the second front... unless you think that, say, T + 19 would be too late for it to arrive in our Core Cities' area, then it really is free to help out in dropping off troops for the first turn of the Cathy war. That "T + 19" is an estimate because I'm not sure which AI we're attacking, but that number would be smaller if we were attacking Joao or Isabella as part of our second front.



So, what do we prefer: Starting a war 3 to 4 turns sooner (which we may or may not have enough units for) or flexibility to use said 3 to 4 turns to capture an additional city or two, whip more units, etc.
While it could be less than 4 turns worth of difference to attack using the "Fort the Pig" approach, we might as well hit in force if we're going to delay these extra couple of turns, which to me means hitting on T + 11, even if it possible for the Fort to allow for a T + 10 attack. So, let's just think of it as a 4 turn difference.


To me, it's all about dropping a lot of Trebs off at each of Cathy's Cities (or at least at her 2 Walled Cities) at a time.


So, if we hit 4 turns sooner, I say send 4 Galleons and just take Moscow with a large force and forget about attacking St. Petersburg for a while, even though doing so means having boats out of position and not much of a chance to get a Fort anytime soon, but at least then we can focus on attacking Cathy's northern Cities, while hoping that not having units near her other Cities will keep her from spamming too many Walls + Castles + units.
 
Ok, how about this for a troop movement PPP:

T+0: move souther stack into galleons.

T+1: Assuming Willem does not whip any units into Rotterdam, attack with two trebs followed by maces. Send a mace from Amsterdam to grab Rotterdam worker. Galleon chain the two workers and unload them into Utrecht (galleon3 ends turn 1SE1E of Utrecht). Unload 3 boats of troops next to Hague. Promote Rotterdam mace to medic.

T+2: Conquer Utrecht (we should have more than enough troops). Now move the two workers onto the pig tile to start building a fort (15 worker turns divided by 2 workers = 8 turns). Send Rotterdam worker to help with fort. In the meantime, galleons 3, 4, and 1 head towards Moscow (ETA in 6 turns, can unload next to Moscow in 7 turns or T+9.

T+3: Load up 3 southern galleons with healthiest troops and move into Utrecht. Meets up with medic mace from Rotterdam.

T+4: Heal southern units in Utrecht. Remaining units heal in their current positions.

T+5: Unload 3 southern galleons next to Nij. Amsterdam out of revolt.

T+6: Raze Nij. Rotterdam out of revolt. Amsterdam whips mace, as it doesn't have enough hammers for a 2-pop treb.

T+7: Southern troop boards boats. Rotterdam whips HA (only unit that can catch the souther boats on T+8 leaving Utrecht).

T+8: Northern boats next to Hague, fill it up (including Amsterdam mace). Southern troops get in position against St. Pete. Fort finishes at the very latest on this turn.

T+9: Declare war on Cathy with a 3-3 galleon split.

Edit: if our troops are too injured after Rotterdam + Hague, we should skip Nij for now and concentrate on healing instead.
 
@shyuhe
Some questions:
Why the focus on building a Fort if we're just going to sail Galleons around to the north anyway?

Why raze Nijmegen and leave space to encourage Ragnar to expand to more Cities? Just for the reduction in Motherland Unhappiness? It seems kind of silly to raze a City of a crippled AI when another AI will be able to just fill in the gap with 2 or 3 more Cities that we'll have to capture later. I think that we'd want to check in a test game just how much this Motherland Unhappiness would hurt us--I suspect not very much, especially with the Cultural Slider under our control and I think that this value goes down after a war is finished (Cease Fire/Peace Treaty).

If we only have time to take 1 City down there, I'd say capture Ragnar's City, which would help to prevent Ragnar from expanding and would equally allow us to leave 0 troops there as we could take an immediate Cease Fire/Peace Treaty.


Do we really need that 7th Galleon in the east so soon? Can we not afford to bring it into play on the first turn of the war?


If we are not going to wait for Willem's Cities to come out of revolt (and thus produce some units for the war against Cathy) and if we are not going to wait for the Fort to come online (since we're sending boats around via the north), why risk our Trebs attacking Willem's barely-Bombarded or un-Bombarded Cities? Why not spend at least 1 turn Bombarding at both Cities before attacking? Doing so means the very real possibility of having 2 more Trebs instead of 2 less Trebs.


How many Trebs do you see landing at each City location?
 
@shyuhe
Some questions:
Why the focus on building a Fort if we're just going to sail Galleons around to the north anyway?
Back-up. If Moscow turns out to have too many troops, we can re-route the southern galleons and land them in 2 turns.

Why raze Nijmegen and leave space to encourage Ragnar to expand to more Cities? Just for the reduction in Motherland Unhappiness? It seems kind of silly to raze a City of a crippled AI when another AI will be able to just fill in the gap with 2 or 3 more Cities that we'll have to capture later. I think that we'd want to check in a test game just how much this Motherland Unhappiness would hurt us--I suspect not very much, especially with the Cultural Slider under our control and I think that this value goes down after a war is finished (Cease Fire/Peace Treaty).
I think we should skip Nij and concentrate on healing our troops. We can just take a peace treaty with Willem if he has cash, or a cease fire if he doesn't.

Do we really need that 7th Galleon in the east so soon? Can we not afford to bring it into play on the first turn of the war?
We don't have any troops to put into a 7th galleon in the west.

If we are not going to wait for Willem's Cities to come out of revolt (and thus produce some units for the war against Cathy) and if we are not going to wait for the Fort to come online (since we're sending boats around via the north), why risk our Trebs attacking Willem's barely-Bombarded or un-Bombarded Cities? Why not spend at least 1 turn Bombarding at both Cities before attacking? Doing so means the very real possibility of having 2 more Trebs instead of 2 less Trebs.
Waiting an extra turn slows down the canal build by a turn. This slows down our reinforcements from the south by a turn.

How many Trebs do you see landing at each City location?
4 for Moscow, 3 for St. Pete. If we lose a treb in our upcoming battles, we can 3 pop whip a treb in Amsterdam.

Edit: as an aside, Moscow has about 20 base hammers so without slavery, Cathy will take about 6 turns to build a castle from scratch.
 
Also, gold should do a 6--> 4 --> 2 whip since it will have an unhappy citizen at 6 right now (so it will be unhappy at 5 after a whip and at 4 with 2 whips).
 
Back-up. If Moscow turns out to have too many troops, we can re-route the southern galleons and land them in 2 turns.
So why not just aim to attack those 2 turns later but with more Treb support?

I recognize that you're trying to force a compromise here, but I would rather attack 2 turns sooner in force on Moscow or 2 turns later in force on both Cities than take a middle-of-the-road approach.


I think we should skip Nij and concentrate on healing our troops. We can just take a peace treaty with Willem if he has cash, or a cease fire if he doesn't.
If Willem will offer Theology, would we consider a switch into Theology? If not, then we'd probably better not take the tech, to reduce the number of AIs that will run this Civic and get +2 Experience Point for a lot of their units.


We don't have any troops to put into a 7th galleon in the west.
But we could have them if we kept the Galleon chain around. So, if we did have the troops, is there a belief that the 7th Galleon could get involved in the war on the first turn of war while still being able to get back to the east for our second front on time?


Waiting an extra turn slows down the canal build by a turn. This slows down our reinforcements from the south by a turn.
Well, it's a backup plan. It seems a bit risky to unnecessarily attack prematurely in support of a backup plan if doing so means potentially having 1 less non-replaceable Trebuchet for the primary plan, don't you think?


4 for Moscow, 3 for St. Pete. If we lose a treb in our upcoming battles, we can 3 pop whip a treb in Amsterdam.
How many of our Trebs could feasibly have the Accuracy promotion?


Edit: as an aside, Moscow has about 20 base hammers so without slavery, Cathy will take about 6 turns to build a castle from scratch.
Okay, so if we attack on T + 7, we might be able to avoid her building a Castle, but attacking on T + 9 or T + 11 will equally have her owning a Castle if she decides to build one or not owning a Castle if she decides not to build one.
 
Also, gold should do a 6--> 4 --> 2 whip since it will have an unhappy citizen at 6 right now (so it will be unhappy at 5 after a whip and at 4 with 2 whips).
I'd of course prefer to whip Military Units for now, but if we're that tight on Happiness, should we consider whipping a Theatre (or even a Forge)?
 
We can't take this much time to figure out the logistics for every single AI we attack. Really, either way will allow us to win, but I'm inclined to hit Cathy hard at both St Petes and Moscow. The easiest way to do so is to hit her a bit later so that we have enough troops.

I'd hate to take Moscow only as it would be hard to defend as we walk our troops through Cathy's land. If we take out her top two cities, her back will be broken and the war will go very easy from then on.

BTW, even if we don't have 4 galleons for Moscow, we should be able to send a galleon or two back to The Hague to pick up any additional troops we may need. We won't know what we really need until we scout her cities.

I don't want to whip infrastructure. I would prefer to use the slider or slow down whipping a bit.

I would like to play in 2 hours. Please cast your vote. No hedging. Pig canal in T+11ish or sail around the north in T+7ish.
 
No we don't need a theater yet because we will get additional happy from our conquered land soon. We will probably need theaters after we finish building a stack for our eastern front.

Ok, if we want to send 4 boats to Moscow, then let's change Stone to a galleon to make an 8th galleon. It can pick up 3 trebs from Paris, gold, and marble on T+1~2 as it sails by. It will sail halfway to Utrecht where it can meet the southern galleons to transport the rest of the troops before it sails back east. These trebs will make the quicker invasion time and give us enough troops to fill 7 boats. Since we're skipping Nij, the southern boats can set up a short chain.

Also, any trebs we lose on T+1 are replaceable by Amsterdam (unless we lose 2, which is unlikely).
 
I vote north.

We should continue aggressively whipping our core on T+2, T+4, and T+6 so that we can set sail for the eastern front by T+6~8 ish. We can push the slider to 30% if necessary to crank out the troops. Our cities will be unhappy after that so we can build theaters at that point. We also need the culture slider to get border pops in Willem's land anyways.
 
I vote north.

Are you proposing an agressive plan where we attack on T+8 or a more moderate plan?

I assume that you don't want to attack Nij, right?

Also, if we chain our workers to The Hague, it will delay the galleons getting around the north by at least a turn if not two, right?

We won't have the number of units that Dhoomstriker wants, but we should be able to get pretty close. EDIT: Forgot about your suggesting to steal 3 units from the Core.

We should continue aggressively whipping our core on T+2, T+4, and T+6 so that we can set sail for the eastern front by T+6~8 ish. We can push the slider to 30% if necessary to crank out the troops. Our cities will be unhappy after that so we can build theaters at that point. We also need the culture slider to get border pops in Willem's land anyways.

I'm not sure that we can grow fast enough to whip all our cities every 2 turns. Plus, we'll lose a turn when we revolt to Bureaucracy. I don't see how we can have 4 galleons and 12 units ready by T+8. If you think this is possible, please show me how we can have 16 units in 8 turns. EDIT: Especially if we're sending three more trebs from our core to the west.
 
@ shyuhe

I want to make sure that I understand your plan, which I think has changed a bit based on Dhoom's comments:

T+1: Assuming Willem does not whip any units into Rotterdam, attack with two trebs followed by maces. Send a mace from Amsterdam to grab Rotterdam worker. Galleon chain the two workers and unload them into Utrecht (galleon3 ends turn 1SE1E of Utrecht). Unload 3 boats of troops next to Hague. Promote Rotterdam mace to medic.

If we aren't going to attack The Hague until T+2, why the rush on Rotterdam? Also, I assume that Willem will move the worker into Rotterdam, so we'll capture him when we caputure the city.

T+2: Conquer Utrecht (we should have more than enough troops). Now move the two workers onto the pig tile to start building a fort (15 worker turns divided by 2 workers = 8 turns). Send Rotterdam worker to help with fort. In the meantime, galleons 3, 4, and 1 head towards Moscow (ETA in 6 turns, can unload next to Moscow in 7 turns or T+9.

I'm assuming you mean to conquer The Hague, not Utrecht. If we attack on this turn without much bombarding, there is a good chance of losing units. I guess it all depends on how many units Willem has there. Delaying one turn would delay the canal by one turn, but I don't think we're planning to use the canal before we attack Moscow, are we?

I think you proposed sending 4 galleons north now with a replacement coming from Stone. Is that correct?

T+8: Northern boats next to Hague, fill it up (including Amsterdam mace). Southern troops get in position against St. Pete. Fort finishes at the very latest on this turn.

Again, why the rush to finish the fort on this turn if we don't plan to use it?

T+9: Declare war on Cathy with a 3-3 galleon split.

4-3 split now, right?

Edit: if our troops are too injured after Rotterdam + Hague, we should skip Nij for now and concentrate on healing instead.

Skip Nij for now, right?
 
The faster we attack Rotterdam, the sooner it comes out of revolt and the sooner the worker is available to work on the fort. Both are good.

I think there are a few questions here:
(1) How many galleons do we send to Moscow;
(2) How many galleons do we send to St. Pete;
(3) How much of a lag are we willing to tolerate between our hit on Moscow vs. St. Pete; and
(4) Somewhat tied to 1 and 2, do we make a galleon 8 to take 3 more trebs to the western front (and make that the 7th galleon in the Russian front).

edit: The 8th galleon will sail halfway to Utrecht and meet the 3 southern galleons to pass off the troops before sailing back east.

I don't think anybody disputes these points:
(a) We don't attack Nij (troops need time to heal)
(b) We send the treb+2 workers from the core to the west using galleon 7. edit: this boat should sail back to the east and stay there in preparation for the east. Sorry, the workers get to Utrecht by galleon chain. I forgot that this galleon heads north if we want 4 going to Moscow.

The PPP I posted above allows us to hit Moscow and St. Pete on T+9 with 3 boats each. We can even do (4) above, which will give us 4 boats on Moscow and 3 on St. Pete. Since the canal will be completed, we can shift troops to the southern front if it turns out that we're heavy in the north (which a 4-3 split will almost surely result in). I don't want to wait until T+11 on the canal plan as we can get the same number of troops in place on T+9 by sailing around the peninsula, using a newly minted galleon from the core.

I would prefer to hit Cathy with a 3-3 split but if I can only get agreement on a 4-3 split, so be it.
 
The faster we attack Rotterdam, the sooner it comes out of revolt and the sooner the worker is available to work on the fort. Both are good.

I think there are a few questions here:
(1) How many galleons do we send to Moscow;
(2) How many galleons do we send to St. Pete;
(3) How much of a lag are we willing to tolerate between our hit on Moscow vs. St. Pete; and
(4) Somewhat tied to 1 and 2, do we make a galleon 8 to take 3 more trebs to the western front (and make that the 7th galleon in the Russian front).

snip...

I would prefer to hit Cathy with a 3-3 split but if I can only get agreement on a 4-3 split, so be it.

I'm fine with a 3-3 split. If we have to, a boat can sail back to The Hague and pick up extra troops (not sure what we'll have to pick up though without stealing 3 trebs from the Core) while we're bombarding the city defenses.

I would like to land at St Petes and Moscow on the same turn, so I don't want there to be any lag.

Worst case, we peek into her cities and see that we're outnumbered. We then whip as many units as needed from Willem's old cities and then strike. Not sending any more Core units west allows us to open up our eastern front that much sooner.
 
By ASAP, you mean the T+7 date with 3 galleons? What turn do we hit St. Pete under that plan? I think it's T+9 or so but I don't know for sure...
 
By ASAP, you mean the T+7 date with 3 galleons? What turn do we hit St. Pete under that plan? I think it's T+9 or so but I don't know for sure...

Yes, we would hit St Pete at soon as we could whip out enough additional units in Williams cities, and get them to St Pete.
 
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