SANCTA Embassy & Intelligence

Ok, it took a while, but I feel up to speed on this part of our game. That last letter to teh ninjas was absolutely :rotfl: btw. Yes, this is exactly what I was looking for. Good fun and great strategy talk. Great thoughts there mikotian! Welcome aboard!
 
SANCTA have 23,000 more soldiers than us. They have at least one Axeman over by MS and must have at least one in their home area for defence. They also have more pop which will mean at least another 1,000 soldiers.

Our chariots are worth 8,000 so if we add all this up then that means if SANCTA only have one scouting axeman and only 1 axeman in defence the maximum army they could be sending our way is 18,000 worth of soldiers.

This could for example be 3 spearmen and 1 axeman. But that would require them all heading directly our way, which I think is unlikely.
 
But we agree that IF THEY DID send 3 spears and 1 axe that they could destroy us, given the Army we have now right?:(

To me, that makes me feel like our basic military / defense strategy is to HOPE that SANCTA does not attack us. If we see SANCTA as our primary rival, why wouldn't they see us the same way?
 
If I had to bet, I would say that there is very little chance of Sancta attacking us soon. It would be a very aggressive gambit on their part and it could easily lead to their destruction.

Assume that they have an army of 4 coming to us this instant.

It will probably take a number of turns for them to arrive. Thinking from their perspective, this would give us plenty of turns to build a counter army. If they lose this fight, it would be terrible for them.

Also, it would be nearly impossible to hold our cities, given our distance to their capital. Of course, they might keep our holy cities. So assume that they destroy us, except for the two holy cities... It would slow their tech considerably until the cities they capture become profitable, and it would leave their homeland extremely vulnerable. Can they afford this? There are 3 other civs on the map.

Now, they don't know exactly what kind of military we have (do they know we don't have copper or iron?). Their army could be defeated, and they are aware of this possibility.

If this happens they would end up making a semi-permanent enemy, and have an undefended homeland...


The thing we have to worry is if they are already allied with Saturn, and there is a combined army heading toward us. If that's the case, the risk for Sancta is smaller... and we are probably screwed.

Or maybe they are just going to kill us "just cuz".

How many turns until we have iron?
 
We could tech archery fast and rush archers.

They could hurt us but they would hurt themselves more.
 
If I had to bet, I would say that there is very little chance of Sancta attacking us soon.

Also, it would be nearly impossible to hold our cities
That kind of seems like we are still hoping SANCTA (or barb spears/axes) don't attack.

And they would not need to hold our cities, they could just take the workers and pillage $$$ and then burn the cities. No upkeep cost that way. They actually MAKE money.

We could tech archery fast and rush archers.
That would hurt alot, slaving all our cities for archers. They would be hurt less, since they could just walk away when they see us slaving.
 
That would hurt alot, slaving all our cities for archers. They would be hurt less, since they could just walk away when they see us slaving.

I agree with you that we should get iron as soon as we can - but I am not too worried about being attacked.

They could hurt us yes - but attacking with no hope of taking a city means they will have wasted a lot of production and will be far weaker in the long run.

If they attack us both of our teams would fall very far behind. I don't think it would be in their interest to hurt themselves just to hurt us.

Right now I imagine they are very busy with barbs as it does not look like their land forms an easy to defend bottle neck like ours.

But yes we do need iron.
 
SANCTA have just teched Sailing btw. If we offer them Open Borders they'll see that we don't have any copper/iron so I'd suggest we keep borders closed!

Assuming there are no natural boundaries between our two territories, I reckon it's 18 tiles between Inner Sanctum and our the borders of Oskemen.

The quickest I can get an Axeman out going for corn-gold city first is T90. So SANCTA have plenty of time to send a force over to us. But we can see when they build a force.

The only times SANCTA could have built an Axeman (6000) or Spearman (4000) recently are:

54 - Spearman possible (or 2 warriors).
59 -Axeman AND Spearman (+10000 in one turn)
62 - Axeman (built in Inner Sanctum, spotted by wb)
68 - Axeman possible

(Assuming no warriors have been killed or disbanded) SANCTA can have a maximum of 3 Axemen and 2 Spearmen. Or 2 Axeman and 3 Spearmen.

We know MS met a SANCTA axeman a few turns ago (cT69) so this must have been the first one that was built on T59 surely.

If SANCTA sent every unit they had spare (and left no-one behind to deal with barbs) the biggest force they could send against us would be one Axe and 2 Spears and these could all reach us at the earliest by turn 80 if they went directly for us. But the don't know where we are...

Most of their score has come from gradual increments of 2000 or 1000 suggesting they have built a lot of warriors. Perhaps they aren't a sheltered as us and have put more fog busting units out? Or perhaps they are using warrios for exploration by land? Our wb did spot one along the coast as far as the mountain range (marked on the map).
 
SANCTA have just teched Sailing btw. If we offer them Open Borders they'll see that we don't have any copper/iron so I'd suggest we keep borders closed!

Assuming there are no natural boundaries between our two territories, I reckon it's 18 tiles between Inner Sanctum and our the borders of Oskemen.

The quickest I can get an Axeman out going for corn-gold city first is T90. So SANCTA have plenty of time to send a force over to us. But we can see when they build a force.

The only times SANCTA could have built an Axeman (6000) or Spearman (4000) recently are:

54 - Spearman possible (or 2 warriors).
59 -Axeman AND Spearman (+10000 in one turn)
62 - Axeman (built in Inner Sanctum, spotted by wb)
68 - Axeman possible

(Assuming no warriors have been killed or disbanded) SANCTA can have a maximum of 3 Axemen and 2 Spearmen. Or 2 Axeman and 3 Spearmen.

We know MS met a SANCTA axeman a few turns ago (cT69) so this must have been the first one that was built on T59 surely.

If SANCTA sent every unit they had spare (and left no-one behind to deal with barbs) the biggest force they could send against us would be one Axe and 2 Spears and these could all reach us at the earliest by turn 80 if they went directly for us. But the don't know where we are...

Most of their score has come from gradual increments of 2000 or 1000 suggesting they have built a lot of warriors. Perhaps they aren't a sheltered as us and have put more fog busting units out? Or perhaps they are using warrios for exploration by land? Our wb did spot one along the coast as far as the mountain range (marked on the map).

They can see our resources without open borders as well since we have trade network.

As for military, remember they get power through population as well
 
They can see our resources without open borders as well since we have trade network.

As for military, remember they get power through population as well

That's what I thought, but in-game it says we're not connected yet, which is odd...

If we are connected then we still need to decide if we want OB. It could help our religion spread over...
 
That's what I thought, but in-game it says we're not connected yet, which is odd...

If we are connected then we still need to decide if we want OB. It could help our religion spread over...
I don't want to spread religion to SANCTA before we have a holy city. One of the reasons we are trying to beeline Monotheism is to try to deny them the happiness (and other bonuses) religion brings. Until we have a chance of making :commerce: by spreading religion to them, I think we should hoard religion.
 
I think getting OB with SANCTA is a good idea.

The chance to spread religion s great. Even if we don't have a shrine we woudl still benefit from the intel.


On the SANCTA army issue. I recall that when we found their capitol it had an axeman in it.
 
That's what I thought, but in-game it says we're not connected yet, which is odd...

If we are connected then we still need to decide if we want OB. It could help our religion spread over...

the only reason to not be connected is barb coastal city! that means possible barb galleys soon as well..This calls for metal casting after monotheism..unless cavaleiros agree to tech it..
 
i don't have bts - you no longer get to see their cities - that sucks but I guess it was fairly unfair.
 
Yeah, I don't like the fact that SANCTA can now build Triremes... if we go for MC next we should try and pursuade Cav to go for Aesthetics. Or at least they go for MC while we go for Aest.
 
I think it is plain obvious we need metal casting, forges with gold happiness bonus, synergy with OR, need for an industrial base, more military, naval defense. All in all a very compelling choice, as opposed to more gamey strategies.
 
We should delay the OB to them. We need to keep the barb city a secret, so we can take it ourselves for many reasons, and hide why an OB is impossible for now. As we get closer to redcoats, we spring an open borders proposal on them, as we need the intel then.
Then we need to deny them Christianity, Islam and Taoism as well.
 
Are we sure the lack of a trade network is because of a barb city? Perhaps we need to tech sailing since we are the ones that have the visual on the coastal "path" to Sancta. They have sailing but they don't know how to reach us.
 
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