Preparing for a possible invasion.

We have several things to consider to prepare for a possible BABE invasion. Feaudalism is definately more important to us now than it was a few turns ago. Changing to a republic is also something we should look at very closely.

Aside from starting this focused discussion my contribution is a look at BABE's shortest invasion routes. We can only guess since we do not know which major land mass they started on, nor do we know where they started on that land mass. We also have not explored enough of the waters off our southeast and northwest coasts to be sure if shallows exist. I think they do and have updated Aigburth's map to reflect my conjectures. If I am right then each major land mass is only 12 to 14 tiles away from every other major land mass. In addition, BABE will be able to safely sail to any other major land mass in only three turns. This does not take into account the starting point for an invasion fleet, only the various jump-off points available. It also does not take into account any pre-positioning of an invasion fleet BABE has done. (We can only hope they realized someone else would try to build the Great Lighthouse and so didn't bet the farm by prebuilding a lot of galleys.) Here's a screen shot of the invasion routes I see:



If we're really unlucky BABE can land on our southeast coast very quickly. The only other short invasion route is to our northwest coast. These are the places I'd recommend for lookouts if we can spare any.

Good points!!

We should send both our galleys straight to the choke points!!

Urgent!

We would take some time to upgrade some warriors and send them there even to take out 2-4 MWs. I want them to need a real force of >10 MWs to beat us, not 2-4 MWs per turn landing and accumulating in the fog of our hinterland.

There aren't real choke points in the sense we can prevent BABE from sailing through but they would make excellent look out points. Trouble is, the better look out spots require a turn in deep water. We have only two galleys right now. Is it better to send them through dangerous waters and risk losing our only eyes or keep them safe (but still near the choke points) till we can make more eyes?

I think we need to discuss the switch to republic. I'd hate to see us go through a long anarchy while BABE lands. It seems to me that right now we need production, growth and feudalism. I think we should seriously consider delaying our government switch until we have proper defenses in place.

Well, delay it untill we get Feudalism, and maybe a few turns after that so we have the chance to get some pikes.

If Babe lands with a large force in the next 10-20 turns, we are hosed, anyway.

When in anarchy, we can borrow money from FREE/SABER to upgrade warriors.

I don't see any reason to delay going into republic. The arguments will stay the same no matter what.

I do think that if we get feudalism as our free tech, or FREE does, then it may make some sense to delay... but really, being in republic is the key for us, and switching faster gives us a better chance at a lessened anarchy.

How does switching faster give us a lessened anarchy? Do you mean the faster we revolt, the sooner we'll be in republic?

I don't agree that if BABE lands in the next X number of turns we are toast. That depends on what we do in the next X turns. We sail along as we have been then, sure we will be hosed. We have to alter our course significantly so we can ensure our long term viability. Our traits will make us stronger as the game goes on but only if we remain viable. I do not see an immediate switch to republic as keeping us viable. That's nothing more than crossing our fingers and hoping BABE shops elsewhere for a victim. Is that really all The Council can do?

Not switching to republic right now means no anarchy and we keep producing shields (and defense). It also allows us to complete the forbidden palace and get a second core group of cities producing defense. Even if we don't get feudalism as a bonus tech we'd have it soon after our FP is done. Staying in despotism for now also allows us to continue research along with FREE which would allow us both to progress towards gunpowder AND education.

I'll try to get some numbers together tonight if I get a chance, but I think we should put our coastal cities to work making galleys (for look out duty and to try to sink any purple ships in case of war - or even for a blocake of choke points). I also think our inland cities should get busy making defensive units. We also need a barracks if we want to be able to upgrade warriors. (Our iron will be connected in about 4 turns.)

BTW, we are weak compared to SABER and strong compared to FREE.

donsig said:

I'll try to get some numbers together tonight if I get a chance, but I think we should put our coastal cities to work making galleys (for look out duty and to try to sink any purple ships in case of war - or even for a blocake of choke points). I also think our inland cities should get busy making defensive units. We also need a barracks if we want to be able to upgrade warriors. (Our iron will be connected in about 4 turns.)

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Some galleys and spears. A few rax at strategic points.
We can't block BABE's galleys, we can't block sea tiles. Only risk a galley to reach a forward outpost if a backup is stand-by.
But we need to play the game to our strength and The Council's strength imo is not pikes and MDIs but cats and later H'watchas (on railroads ). That's why I'd like to keep military production to a necessary minimum at some risk - If we want to be 100% save we won't be able to compete in science and commerce.

donsig said:

BTW, we are weak compared to SABER and strong compared to FREE.

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Now that is interesting... We should be watching that.

The problem, as I see it, is if we forget about Republic, totally pause our infrastructure builds and focus on military – There are still only 3 possible outcomes…
1) We still can’t save ourselves, and just hurt BABE more on our way down.
2) We do beat them back, but we’ll survive only as a severely handicapped nation.
3) BABE doesn’t attack, and we limp along still badly handicapped because of our builds.

Frankly, I really dislike ALL of those options.

On the other hand, if we get the SoZ, switch to republic and work on keeping a modest military response force – our 3 possible outcomes are:
1) BABE attacks early, and we’re totally annihilated.
2) BABE waits a while to attack, and we’re far enough ahead technologically that we can effectively beat them back and still keep our economy rolling.
3) BABE attacks someone else, and we go on to thrive in the late game as planned.

Yes – one of those options is really bad. But I personally like to have at least the chance of a good upside in my strategy. Skipping Republic and focusing heavily on military at this stage just sounds like planning for 3rd or 4th place to me.

So – I’d vote for Republic with modest attention to military.

In the turn 92 save we're average to SABER and still strong to FREE. Supposedly FREE has no contacts other than us. Good thing for them!

I understand what our strengths are but we have to survive to get to that point! We can only fight a war with what we have on hand. We made our bid to secure safety will we could get to the units we want to fight with - but we lost that race and now we should prepare to fight in earnest. We have a better chance of winning if we get some defense (beyond warriors) in place before we go into anarchy. A few galleys could be instrumental in locating an invasion force at sea and perhaps could even sink a ship or two full of mounted warriors. We can't block the sea and ocean squares but we can block the 4 coastal tiles and force BABE to spend time in open sea (or sail the long way) to get to us!

We need some pikes and galleys right now more than we need a republic.

Now that's a General

good analysis, 100% agreed.

If we play chicken, we'll lose this game anyway, maybe later.
Our only chance in this game is science and commerce.

If we are rated strong compared to FREE, we already did more than average in military.
However I doubt the real strong rivals would see much difference between weak and weak...

General_W said:

So – I’d vote for Republic with modest attention to military.

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Just cross posted with the General.

If we switch to republic right now we cannot give any attention to our military. We couldn't even upgrade a warrior because we don't have a barracks! I'm not suggesting we stall the revolution for eaons - just long enough to give that modest attention to our military and navy. Can we at least slow down long enough to see a) what free techs we get and b) how long it would take us to build a few galleys and pikes?

Is delaying the switch to republic for even ten turns a game breaker?

I'd love to have a quick rax in The Admirality, if only for veteran ACs.
How about starting rax next turn, whip 1 pop from 10 to 30 shields the turn after and get the rax?
I'd even join a worker to get the missing 10 shields - or disband a warrior.
edit: Okay, no worker to join around, we could disband a warrior and get 8spt @ size 5 with a clown (or scientist) - send a warrior from The Chamber for MP?

That won't delay our republic, and we could upgrade warriors if necessary.


edit: quite a discussion here at 1:15 am local time...

I should be playing Cotm 36

Getting a barracks in The Admiralty would certainly be good - it would also allow us to upgrade warriors even during anarchy if need be.

As for my idea above about blocking the coastal tiles in the middle of the ocean, well, it won't do much since (as I had forgotten) the torch allows galleys to end their turn in sea squares. But still, it would be nice to have a stack of galleys near our SE or NW coasts. In 10 turns we could have 9 galleys (3 from The Admiralty, two each from The Ways and The Bayou plus the two we already have).

Paul#42 said:

I'd love to have a quick rax in The Admirality, if only for veteran ACs.
How about starting rax next turn, whip 1 pop from 10 to 30 shields the turn after and get the rax?
I'd even join a worker to get the missing 10 shields - or disband a warrior.
edit: Okay, no worker to join around, we could disband a warrior and get 8spt @ size 5 with a clown (or scientist) - send a warrior from The Chamber for MP?

That won't delay our republic, and we could upgrade warriors if necessary.

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I like this plan!

I'd even be "ok" with a delay of 1 or 2 turns... but I think a 10 turn delay would be a mistake, for the reasons I posted about above.

Part of the equation for number of turns of anarchy is dependent on the # of cities we have. The fewer cities, the lower the anarchy. Being commercial helps with that, too, I believe - it makes the number higher.

Do we have a rax anywhere? If we don't, then maybe we do need one before we go to republic. But if we do, then we can set up 5 or 6 warriors to be sword upgrades.

I'm with Paul and General_W on this. We need to take a gamble to have a shot at victory. There's no point in playing for second place (or worse) IMO. And please, let's not panic.

Whenever we switch to republic we will be vulnerable during anarchy. In that sense, the sooner the better. BABE hasn't found us yet, they may want to scout around first, and they may be going for another target, or they may not attack at all.

If we start building a huge military, then we cannot switch to republic at all because of maintenance. This strategy would kill any chance of staying ahead in the science race.

If BABE attacks, we cannot really hope for victory anymore. We don't know where the attack would come from, almost certainly it would be a concentrated assault of, perhaps, a dozen troops. We cannot put 6 pikes in every town, and therefore pikes are not even that helpful. The best defense force would actually be horses, and later knights, IMO. Most likely outcome is that we'll lose most of our towns, whatever we do, if BABE attacks within 20 turns.

On the rax in The Admiralty: sounds good, and we'll get vet ACs. Although it seems to me there's still 10 shields missing from the equation, or do you want to postpone anarchy for a turn? (Then the best procedure is to build rax for two turns, and then whip and take our anarchy). That's ok I guess, although every turn postponement increases the risk IMO, and some MM is aimed for anarchy right after discovering Poly.
Please keep in mind that we only have gold to upgrade 3 or 4 warriors to swords. This is assuming we don't draw Feudalism (MDI are more expensive).

In any case, we'll need to know what to do when the next turn comes to us.

zyxy said:

On the rax in The Admiralty: sounds good, and we'll get vet ACs. Although it seems to me there's still 10 shields missing from the equation, or do you want to postpone anarchy for a turn? (Then the best procedure is to build rax for two turns, and then whip and take our anarchy).

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Yes, I wanted to postpone anarchy so we get the final 10 shields to finish the rax.
Well both variants need another two turns after SoZ which means a delay of one turn to revolt. But yours is certainly better as it does not need to get 10spt after the pop rush which was the problem in my suggestion and needed a warrior disband or a worker join and caused additional happiness problems.

I guess that single turn delay of Republic is worth it if we are getting veteran ACs from the start and have a rax to up some warriors even in anarchy.

We should at least get the barracks build in The Admiralty before our revolution. If we are invaded by BABE we could call on both FREE and SABER for additional gold for upgrades.

I still think we could (and should) prepare ourselves for an attack. We don't know where they would come from but we have an idea of the direction they would most likely come from. Well, right now it is two directions but with some help from SABER we could locate BABE's homeland and then we'd know which direction to guard. As I pointed out we could have 9 galleys in ten turns and stage them at the most likely invasion area choke point. Even if only 4 of those galleys made it to the choke point we'd have a shot a sinking some of their loaded galleys. If BABE is still shopping for a victim they might think twice about attacking us if they saw we had a fleet - it would imply we're not going to lay down for them.

I also don't see ten more turns of despotism as putting us behind in the tech race. The whole point of MAAP II is to keep us at parity with FREE through the middle ages. We're not going to be ahead or behind either way. And if FREE is BABE's victim we can always deal with SABER. Those ten turns might also get us to chivalry (depending on our bouns techs) while we prebuild some knights or build horses for future upgrade if need be. Yes, we will be vulnerable during anarchy but which is more vulnerable: anarchy with warriors or anarchy with a navy and some land units to fight back with?

One last point, about our anarchy. The majority of the Council prefers an immediate switch (or a one turn delay for a barracks). If the anarchy period is based on the number of cities we have, does it make sense to delay building those cities until we are in anarchy? Could we position the settlers but not settle in hopes of a shorter anarchy? (We might still have to settle one to clear a barb camp.)

Switch to Republic after the SoZ and Barracks are in place. An anarchy now is phenomenally less risky than an anarchy in 10 turns. Babe doesn't know where we are, and there's no way that they are 'cruising' around with boats full of attackers this early after getting the lighthouse. In other words, this is our only certain safe window for a revolution.

10 turns from now, there may be extremely compelling reasons for not revolting - which would doom us to despotism for even longer. As zyxy mentioned, there's no need to panic and build up forces immediately - that's like responding to a wolf's howl in the night by throwing TNT out your windows!

peter grimes said:

As zyxy mentioned, there's no need to panic and build up forces immediately - that's like responding to a wolf's howl in the night by throwing TNT out your windows!

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I bet that would scare the wolves away. Hey, TNT reference.

Are we sure BABE doesn't know where we are? SABER knows where we are. If SABER knows BABE then it is possible BABE knows where we are.

I'm crossing my fingers for a short anarchy period for us. I do hope once we're back in business we can build a navy.