Aaaarmy Training, Sir!

Turn 112 sound good for the a war, anyone? I think I've got it so we can deploy 6 HAs on Marble while moving our 13 HAs in Germany towards Madrid.

Please excuse the hand drawn numbers:



Okay, so bear with me here.

Red dots represent cities. The Cyan dots on the bottom represent 4 HAs on the Jungle Cyan and 2 HAs on the Plains Cyan.

For gathering the forces, I think 6 HAs are the minimum for making a stab at Marble. To accomplish this, the HA from Aksum goes to the Sugar tile 2W of Gondor. Gondor will have to double whip next turn (T111) because that's what Gondor does. Gondor's Whip HA goes to Sugar on T112, both land on Plains Cyan T113.

The 4 Jungle Cyan troops have a choice. We can capture Hittite and still get all them to Jungle Cyan, but then we have to somehow defend Hittite and we'd have 2-3 injured HAs running to Marble. If we choose not to take Hittite, then these guys can take their leisurely time getting to the Jungle Cyan on T113.

For the Northern Troops, we can get the wandering HA N of Munich in position in time for a T112 invasion. We should also whip Munich's HA (sad, 1 pop but having the boots on the ground better than efficiency here). They should be on the tile 1E2N of Frankfurt. As you can see, I'm not even considering Toledo, we should march these guys West and put some pain on Izzy.

T114 We take marble we our 6 HAs. This is where taking Hittite matters. As our northern Calvary moves into position to fork Barca and 2 AU on T116, we could try our luck and move most of these guys out of Marble to combine with our forces. It could mean we use whatever's left of this stack to help our main one take Both Barca and 2 AU on the same turn, or we use these guys to free up as many HAs from the main stack to get to Madrid by T118.

Sorry if this isn't *the* plan, but I felt it was important to at least get some of the possibilities out there with actual turn times.

@Shivv We should look for some Prophet points just in case. They're handy for GAs as well, which are going to be way strong with our very wide empire. If these AIs are going to refuse to build wonders we're really gonna want MoM

I'm glad we're putting the goals high ;-)
I think my army movement plan gets it to Madrid 1T sooner, but whatever. I'm affraid Cyrus might send some of his wanderers to Hitite, so I vote for taking it this turn. Also, it's true the 'northern Fe city ain't that great', so we better keep the settler for a better spot.

ShiVvV said:

@WW--that plan looks great!...I'm glad someone thought of it.

@ pigswill--yea, I can't get too excited about the northern Fe city either. Settling it now probably hurts us more than it helps us. Maybe hold off settling there and save settler for the 2Au site. Agree.

Would be nice if Izzy would finally get that Jewish shrine built before we take Barcelona. If she doesn't...is it worth considering Moai + Jewish temple + any other temples (from religion spread) in Essen to get our own GProphet? Agree
We can pick up Poly from Cyrus now. He almost has Math and will give Poly for Math + Meditation. Ehhh....we might want to hold off on tech trades until Currency is in though. Better wait and get some spare gold. Maybe even get Poly along with Calendar from Izabella in the peace deal.

Do want to start chopping the Palace in Berlin as soon as Mids are finished? Agree
We'll be able to chop a good many units from Munich but once those trees are gone that city will be tapped out. See below.

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Hmmm

I don't think we should plan on building too much units at this point. I'd say we'll be probably forced to build wealth. The conquest gold from the 5? spanish cities will barely be enough to get us to Currency –> CoL. After that, chop cheap courthouses. Also, if we switch to Representation next turn, choping cheap libraries for specialists everywhere might be in order.

@ Quip and WW--T113 DoW vs. Izzy
I think we're better off focusing on capturing Izzy's marble city and Toledo as immediate war goals. We may regret bypassing Toledo. We should capture Hittite this turn (T110)(with archer as first build)--hopefully the HA on the southern gold mine won't be needed for this and it can move to the marble city rally tile.

I still favor the rally point for HAs from Frankfurt being the tile 1SE of the marble. Moving to this tile is the only way I can see that we know what Izzy has in the marble city before our DoW against her. Our forces reach this tile on T112 for a T113 DoW.

As long as Izzy only has the 2 archers in Toledo, we can surely take Toledo on the turn we declare with 4 Frankfurt HAs positioned 1W of Frankfurt. So all but 4 HAs can move this turn towards the marble city rally tile. (The archer in Hamburg needs to head to Frankfurt this turn. Put archer at head of queue in Hamburg and 2pop whip it next turn).

Scout works its way back along roads peeking at Cordoba and Barcelona along the way. He may not survive this war

The worker located 2N1W of Frankfurt moves to tile 1W of Frankfurt next turn and roads it (this helps the far north HA and the axe to reach Toledo).

It is essential that we road the gf tile 2W1S of Gondar towards marble city asap. We can use the worker farming near Askum (quits on farm now) and the worker 1E of AA to work on completing these roads as quickly as possible. The Hittite worker finishes its road and roads to Hittite via the gf tile 1E of Hittite.

Munich--I'm not in favor of 1pop whipping this turn. We have a chop completing in 2 turns here with more chops from that busy worker to follow.

I'd like to whip the library in AA now into a spear. And Munich makes a spear after the HA with chops/whips. These spears become frontline garrisons (in marble city and Toledo) just in case Izzy throws some chariots against us.

Berlin just chops out the palace for now.

We wait until we have currency to revolt to Rep. Postpone trading bronze<>ivory until we have currency also?...or take the trade this turn rather than risk losing the trade? Obviously take whatever gpt for resources we can.

Barcelona is the big prize. The 2Au city site is a good second prize. Depending on how things go we may be able to push for 2Au if Barca is too heavily-garrisoned (hill city too). At very least a temporary ceasefire or full peace for techs with Izzy should be available options to us once the peace with Biz expires and we can finish him off. Or if things going well vs. Izzy we just stay at war against her and finish Biz off at same time.

Oh...the spy we have now should head to Stuttgart for its glorious iffy-tech steal mission! I suppose Lalibela should finish its spy and Hamburg can finish its spy after the archer we bump ahead in queue. Set espionage this turn against Izzy and our spies head towards Barca?

The problem with just grabbing marble/toledo is that it isn't really worth the war right now. Toledo is still jungled to here and back and Marble will have a hard time stealing the corn from Barca. If we had those two city sites on an isolated map, and corn wasn't there for marble (which it won't be for probably +20 turns), we'd hold off on settling them. Toledo can also be totally cut off from the spanish trade network quite easily. Even if Isabella does have iron in her two hidden cities, Toledo will get no benefit from it.

Bear in mind we're also expecting to get Peace quickly against Isabella, as her production bonuses will win out once she has secured metals. I just think if we aim too low then we could be stuck at war, and a prolonged war is something I don't know if we can win. If we're going to keep the horde marching, I think it behooves us to make sure we're doing something profitable.

In case it isn't clear, I'm suggesting we do the T116 path which nets us Barca/ 2AU and Marble, Yellow to blue path, we can forget Pink path to Madrid for now unless we run into really poor defense, better to keep some healthy HAs on top of the stacks in Barca and 2 AU. If we just march up one big stack from marble then we're not only losing the advantage of forking cities and pulling units out of their fortify bonus, but we'll probably end up with a gassed stack looking at metal units by T120.

@Quip
Wouldn't we not also reach the 2AU/Barca forking tile (1SW of the mountain peak) at T115 by coming up from marble city (after taking it on T113) with the majority of our force? This path also enables a possible shot at Barca on T115 (the stack would reach 2E of Barca on T114). If no shot at Barca then proceed to fork tile reaching it T115. The Scout will give us some info about Barca too btw...probably just before he's killed.

Toledo would be attacked with minimal force required to take it (4-6 HAs depending on strength of garrison at T113).

A positive for us proceeding this way is getting rid of the Spanish culture between marble city and Toledo and that road connecting them--which lets us get our healing HAs up to front quicker.

It seems that either way (if I'm understanding your plan correctly) we end up at 'fork' site on same turn. The path you outline probably does put us there with more and healthier HAs on T115, but no Toledo. My idea (the safe, standard, blah one ) affords us a chance for a T115 shot on Barca (not an option in your plan).

I'm good with whatever. Am already out of my real comfort zone (= painfully slow diplo or space victories accompanied by passive warmongering !) so am enjoying seeing how others' minds work.

Edit: P.S.--I forgot. Another thing to consider when comparing plans is that with either one, we really need some recon on marble city to know what we're facing.

Guys, too much RL at the moment, including dental problems.

Please go on without me. I will continue following the thread but I don't expect any coherent gameplay from my side.

The biggest difference is, and I'll stress now it may be based on a faulty assumption (AI vision = Wherever their units can move to + natural sight and AI reaction to cities in danger), but:

The staging tiles for the southern force on T112 would be hidden from Izzy's AI view (Presuming doesn't have a worker in or on Marble), so it would be likely that our forces would drive Izzy to start moving units out of Marble and into Toledo when we declare. Then once we show our smaller force from Marble, she either has unfortified units that were heading to Toledo back in Marble, or she would have to shuffle archers from Barca and Madrid to cover Marble.

Also, and this is really nominal but trying to be exhaustive, Ninja route to fork would probably force izzy to send reinforcements to 2 AU (We'd be 2 tiles away but blocked by mountain on T115) Which means we could possibly catch some archers right on our fork spot.

I think if we can get any bonus shifting of units then it would be worthwhile and give us more bang for the buck on our HAs.

However, now that I can envision your plan (I didn't realize we could get most of our forces from Frankfurt to marble in 3 turns), It could work. Here are my thoughts:

-The Toledo Stack (3 HA frank, Wandering HA, Capital HA and Munich HA) needs that road 1W Frankfort to meet up with the marble stack on at 2 AU/Barca fork turn 116. Cannot make it to T115 Barca attack spot. Munich HA with chop can join the 4 in Frank in time for Toledo attack. Wandering HA can't attack Toledo, but can T116 fork.

-We're looking at 11 HA available for marble stack: 8 from Frankfurt, the 5 HP HA next to Hittite (Use healthy ones for Hittite plz), Goldhill HA, and the HA we whip in Gondor. 2 HAs attacking Hittite can't attack Marble until T114.

-We're leaving 2 HAs that are going to be 1 turn too late to be able to attack.

So a run-down at how we stand at T115 with both attacks and some pros and cons because I apparently can't organize right now:

Kitchen Sink:
Cities: Toledo, Marble, Hittite
Surviving Marble stack in position to attack Barca (7-9 HAs hopefully)
Surviving Toledo stack (4-5 somewhat healthy HAs) 1 turn from Barca 2 AU fork.
Doesn't need whip in Munich
Needs Worker road 1W of Frank.
Hittite attacking Has maybe useful if we decide on T116 fork, not T115 though.

Ninja:
Cities: Marble, Hittite
Northern Stack 1 turn away from fork (13 healthy HAs).
Surviving marble stack 1 turn from Barca (2-3 somewhat healthy HAs, maybe)
Needs whip in Munich
Worker can chop instead.
Hittite HAs can clean up Marble, possibly giving us another healthy HA for Barca. (Even wounded, Hittite guys we can use for clean up in Marble to spare other healthy HAs any chance of damage on the way up.)

Either way, both will probably work, Izzy is playing some sort of clown game right now. I just think we'd better dot the i and cross the t's. I do feel better knowing we can get more units than I thought involved.

shpeka said:

Guys, too much RL at the moment, including dental problems.

Please go on without me. I will continue following the thread but I don't expect any coherent gameplay from my side.

Click to expand...

Sorry to hear that, shpeka--especially the dental stuff. From experience I know things like that can shut down whole world until fixed.

If your situation should change in future and would care to jump back in please say so. I will remove you from roster per your request and will update the OP to reflect the change.

Good Luck!

Roster
1. Solyaris
2. Walter_Wolf
3. Lymond (UP)
4. yena (On Deck)
5. ShiVvV
6. Packers5280
7. pigswill
8. Quip
9. Deonnim

Quip said:

snip
So a run-down at how we stand at T115 with both attacks and some pros and cons because I apparently can't organize right now: You could've fooled me

Click to expand...

Kitchen Sink
A non-trivial consideration considering our economy (0gpt @ 0% slider right now; with negative gpt @ 0% once our forces out of our territory) is the simple fact that we get more capture gold by not bypassing Toledo. Plus more war success vs. Izzy = more willing to negotiate peace sooner [I think??]. Also, taking Toledo + MarbleCity should remove Izzy's culture control over the jungle road tiles connecting these cities which will help us position our forces towards forking tile.

Ninja
But taking Toledo means delaying the threat by us having fewer, healthier units in 2Au/Barca fork as you demonstrate. Coupling this with fact that we can't know what's in marble city until we move thru/adj to it we'd kinda be gambling that we're able to get sufficient force down there to take Marble.

2Au Push
As a 3rd, not at all thought through option which basically focuses on maximum, fastest threat to 2Au I thought I'd attach the following pic. We'd attack Toledo with most of our force from Frankfurt. Move 3 HAs from Frank south to the Marble attack tile this turn to join the gold HA and the whipped HA from Gondar. Would give only 5 HAs threatening Marble (bare minimum, maybe should move 4 from Frankfurt south?) for a T113 DoW.
Everything else hits Toledo from the tile 1W of Frankfurt then proceeds diagonally NW towards 2Au. We'd forget the forking tile threat to Barca to focus on taking 2Au.

Edit: Actually this probably isn't 'maximum, fastest threat to 2Au' but it does take Toledo. Bypassing Toledo does in fact give us more force vs. Barca/2Au. I'm rambling now but just another attack path we might consider. Perhaps Lymond can shed some light.



And my last comment . I suppose we still have the option to not declare on Izzy at all and just build infra/wealth push to CoL.

Hey fellas..I will take a look at things this evening with hopes to play by tomorrow. Sorry...been very out of touch with this game for a while with the SGOTM heating up and other things.

Good news is my teeth are ok!

lymond said:

Hey fellas..I will take a look at things this evening with hopes to play by tomorrow. Sorry...been very out of touch with this game for a while with the SGOTM heating up and other things.

Good news is my teeth are ok!

Click to expand...

Always a good thing Lymond. I realize you guys have been tied up with SGOTM (I've been peeking).

Another newbie question to the group:
If we don't have Feudalism but an AI we're attacking does, would we have the option to vassal them?

ShiVvV said:

If we don't have Feudalism but an AI we're attacking does, would we have the option to vassal them?

Click to expand...

Nope...must have the tech

@ShiVvV

If we capture Toledo and/or the gold site too soon, Bismarck gets Iron access before we're able to DoW him.

The main goals are Barcelona and Madrid.
Marble site is on the fastest route towards the main goals.
The majority of our forces should focus on getting them before she manages to reinforce them.
They only had two archers in each of the main goal cities last time we scouted. They have decent culture, so archer reinforcements would probably hurt us.
The gold site and Toledo can be captured with eventual new forces coming from our empire and the remainings of the Barca/Madrid main stack.
It's probably enough to keep one healthy (or slightly injured) HA in counquered cities. The rest can move on.

arrgg! Sorry, fellas....RL hit me hard the past week and haven't even been around. I'll get on this today....thanks for your patience

lymond:
redefining 'relaxed'

I think I've redefined "tool" No more excuses, I will get on the case this evening. Really sorry to have slowed this down. I will just play my TS this evening based on the discussion above and my discretion, so we can move this on to the next dude.

Izzy needs to be dead like yesterday

Tech pace seems a little slow - globally speaking. Rep should help us a lot. Have to do more analysis.

Definitely agree with Pigs....that iron city is not worth settling any time soon, if ever. Iron is not an urgent need anyway.

oh..what's the deal with all the spies? steal Monarchy?

Yeah, steal Monarchy. If you think there's too much of them, cancel one of the builds I'd say.

I've just looked at the save, and there's an Isabela archer roaming around the Essen/Hamburg territory. Make sure to watch him around the time of the DoW.

cheers

Played turnset late last night so could not post a report. I'll post one up later today. Quick summary:

1) Things went well with the war (Annoying that practically all our HAs were shock) Took peace with Izzy leaving her in the same boat as Biz and got Calendar in the deal, which timed perfect to the jungle clearing I was doing.

2) Monarchy steal thingy was bad idea. I didn't catch that we were suffering a severe espionage penalty with Biz causing almost double the price of Mon - even at 50% spy. So I had the dudes sitting in the city for most of the turnset wondering why we could not even get the option to steal just assuming we needed a few more points until I finally looked at the EP screen..ugh. Only thing I can think of is either we've done some spy missions already or Biz is running couter-espionage. (NOt sure how him having a spy in Stutt impacts costs, and I assume he has one in there...otherwise I just thought his spy reduces probability)

3) HG built very quickly in Berlin with timely duct whip and chops. TGL started there. I think this should be our GP farm, although I had started to groom it for Bureau cap. However, I think Madrid will make a fine cap. Good chance at Parth too.

4) Scouted that tile E of Berlin, which should have already been done. Discovered Fish for decent city so moved that settler over there. (at the time thinking it would be good helper city for berlin as well, but still good on it's own) Madrid should be cap now though, so Berlin can be reconfigured for GP farm.

5) Economy looks bad at first glance, but many CH have been built or will finish very soon and we can start building wealth in many cities, plus any gold from trading. CS is very close otherwise. Should have no problem getting Music after CS, unless the unknown AI somehow gets it, but I assume he is isolated or stuck in hell behind Monty.

Pics:

Traded for Poly with Cyrus early on. I constantly monitor trade value and whether AIs are teching something. Cyrus was close on Maths as he would give nothing for it, so it was time for this trade:

We gots ah mahbal. I took Toledo on first turn of war by setting up HAs 1W of Frank on first turn..not waiting for healing..just attack attack. Meanwhile I used workers to road toward Barc and Madrid to speed up attack :

I waited a turn to switch to Rep to finish Currency so we could get gold options asap..he extra happy was certainly welcome. Aeths and Lit came in very quick and capture and trade gold were helping fund things:

Again, Church was clearly close on Curency so not bad trade. Not sure if OR will be used anytime soon, but the gold certainly helped:

Catalonia will not be seceding this game..oh no no no. You may notice a chariot 1SW of Barc. Actually a stack of Iz units (chariots, archers and a settler) moving SE to settle (note that settler ). At this point are front lines are quite injured, so I called a ceasefire here to heal and be secure, while reinforcements arrive (plenty on their way)

Speaking of that settler. That little party finds itself SW of marble city in a couple of turns ceasfire. I'd say it is time to rekindle that war and snipe that settler, which I indeed did:


Ha..Madrid fell easy as pie. I already knew it was poorly defend before the ceasefire, but didn't have the manpower to take it then. So with troops amassing in Barc, just simply hop over to attack position on first turn, then take it. I think I lost one unit on that city, leaving plenty to move into position on Cordoba, as well as kill some archers outside that city:

I'll make this trade any day:

Izzy, you don't really think I'm gonna let that settler live do you? (Cordoba, obviously fell the turn before.)

I think it was very much worth keeping Iz alive to get Calendar in peace, which was sorely needed and our workers had just finished clearing jungle on several resources.


Other notes:

a) Tech wise we are doing pretty nicely. I was able to push us forward through several techs in 10 turns with CS close once we can get some gold. Some CHs already builts and many more are close. Some cities can just build wealth for now too.
b) Note that avoid growth is on in Hittite for granary trick. Turn it off next turn.
c) Can easily wipe Biz whenever. Hate that city placement though. I'd consider resettling on the gold tile for clams.
d) I actually had a WB in process for scouting SE until I found that fish city, so WB went for that. However, I would like to get some scouting done, although we might get Paper fairly soon.
e) Not sure where we want to take this game. HAs may still have a little life, but maybe it's time to hunker down so that we can tech focus to Curs. Oromos/trebs are kinda fun though, but Curs are always the better play.
f) We have a GS. I seen to BErlin initially to create academy but then considered that might not be Bureau cap anyway. Might be best to save for bulbing at this stage, since we don't have a developed Bureau cap anyway.

Lastly, push out TGL and NE in Berlin before Music. Focus on growth for now in high food cities, so that we can max out GPPs in those cities during a golden age. MoM would be nice too, if not yet built, ut not sure where we can get it up fast. Need to analyze that...need forests.

If I recall, we wanted this to be a wargame, so Domination is probably in the cards. Question is where they last AI is...could very well be in iso somewhere so Astro would be needed. We can confirm this maybe once we get Paper.

edit: Madrid I think we work out perfectly for MoM. It should be able to take all those forest around it. Seville will pop soon and we can pre-chop/pre-mine while waiting for Madrid to pop. Oh, adjust tiles in Hittite for max food as it should max as much food this turn while avoid growth button is on to fill granary.

Wow, looks awesome.

You took 7 cities of her. Maybe we should just kill her now that we're rolling.
Nice catch on that fish.

We should probably start considering victory conditions now to rail the game accordingly.

cheers