Focus #1 - The Spanish War

We've talked a lot about attacking Spain. If we want to do it soon, we should start preparations now. In this thread, I'll give my opinion on what should be done to succesfully attack Spain.

Goals
The most important question to ask about any plan is, of course, "why?". A military campaign could help the following goals:

1. Eliminate one rival.
2. Get access to more useful resources. Spain has a lot of nice resources, gems, bananas, copper, dyes. All these resources could be ours.
3. Land grab. We currently have 4 cities, which is way to little. Taking Madrid would give us another city. And razing Barcelona would make room for another city. With the Spanish (and barbarian) territory, we could easily get 6-8 good cities in our empire, which would be quite enough to play for a space race later.
4. Remove cultural pressure from Arkadia. Arkadia, our commerce city, will be very important for the future of our empire. However, it is suffering from heavy cultural influence from Spain. Arkadia will never be able to reach it's full potential without razing at least Barcelona.
5. Pillage and raze money. We could get quite a bit of cash from pillaging and razing Barcelona, well enough to pay for the upkeep of our military campaign.

So, reasons enough to attack Spain. But we will need to get some military before we attack. I suggest New Girugevan builds a barracks and then starts cracking out axes, as they're the best city attacker we've got at the moment. Edorai should be building Horse Archers, and Arete should start with horse archers, and change to axes as soon as it gets a connection to the copper (that's a priority for our workers!). Meanwhile, Arkadia focusses on commerce, to keep our economy afloat, and get to construction.

Our wonderful great scientist Ptolemy can be settled in Arkadia, our science city. This will immediately give us +6 :beaker:/turn, significantly improving our science output. We should direct our research towards Mathematics and Construction, to grant us access to the powerful Catapults and War Elephants.

Of course, we should change our civics to Hereditary Rule to allow our cities to grow, and increase their productivity. We could also adopt Slavery to facilitate production, but that's not necessary.

It would be best to start the war when we have enough forces to knock out Barcelona, as Barcelona should be the first immediate goal of our campaign. I also suggest sending a small task force of 2 Horse Archers towards the copper north of Madrid, to pillage it and prevent the Spanish from building more spearmen/axemen. We should then march towards Madrid, and hopefully by then we will have our first catapults, to bombard their cultural defences. After taking Madrid, Hatsheput will be finished (she might have some other cities by the, but those won't have a chance to survive once Madrid is down).

I think we have put off the war for too long and it will be in our best interest wait.

Just to let everyone know, there was only one archer in Barcelona two turns before i finished, so with any luck, should we go to war, they won't be able to reinforce quickly as Madrid is more that two road tiles away.

I think we should go to war, not so much for gameplay reasons but it might encourage a bit more participation.

Joe Harker said:

Just to let everyone know, there was only one archer in Barcelona two turns before i finished, so with any luck, should we go to war, they won't be able to reinforce quickly as Madrid is more that two road tiles away.

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They have slavery and could have another Archer or even worse a Spear in one turn. Even if they don't is it worth starting a war just to raze a city. I think we should wait until we have Swords and Cats and take her out quickly. Saving the Samarais and Trebs for Lincoln.

First of all Trebs are unnecessarily far away (AFAIK, we dont even have MC, much less Mach?).

You mention changing civics. I might be dumb but I find info hardly accessible. I would like to know if we have adopted Hinduism and if we have, are we running any religious civics? As I dont always have access to the game, I cant just check the save myself, and I would like an update on techs/map/diplo/civics/religion.

Trebs come with engineering iirc so in reality they're going to be more usefull with samurai.

Ya, I apologise I meant Catapults with the Swords and Trebs with the Samurais.

You mention changing civics. I might be dumb but I find info hardly accessible. I would like to know if we have adopted Hinduism and if we have, are we running any religious civics? As I dont always have access to the game, I cant just check the save myself, and I would like an update on techs/map/diplo/civics/religion.

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Ask the current leading faction, the Triad

(I don't believe we have adopted Hinduism, and I'm sure we're not running any religious civic, as we don't have the necessary techs yet).

They have slavery and could have another Archer or even worse a Spear in one turn. Even if they don't is it worth starting a war just to raze a city. I think we should wait until we have Swords and Cats and take her out quickly. Saving the Samarais and Trebs for Lincoln.

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Cats can come ~20 turns from now, so if we want to hit her then, we should start preparations now.

Heh, I'll ignore that ironic comment since I was part of the Triad . Anyway, I looked at the interum TS and it looks like we don't have Hinduism adopted yet, neither a religious civic. I still need to know what cities have Hinduism. AFAIK, only Arete(?)

Diamondeye said:

Heh, I'll ignore that ironic comment since I was part of the Triad . Anyway, I looked at the interum TS and it looks like we don't have Hinduism adopted yet, neither a religious civic. I still need to know what cities have Hinduism. AFAIK, only Arete(?)

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I believe Arkadia as well. Anyway, I think it's a good idea to adopt Hinduism, as it'll improve our relations.

Yes, adopting Hinduism and a religious civic ASAP is crucial. We may even want to spread it, maybe to Lincoln?

Lincoln is already a Hindu.

Why would we adopt a religious civic? There's not a single one worth adopting right now IMO.

civplayah said:

Yes, adopting Hinduism and a religious civic ASAP is crucial.

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We have no religiuos civics until we get Monotheism.

Thanks for starting this thread, dutch!

I agree on war with Hatty. I want Cats and War Elephants. So, Math->Construction.

Agreed?

Further, we will need 4-6 War Elephants to reliably take out any city.

Agreed?

So, peaceful landgrab for now, adopt Hinduism, do some tech trading, build up the military, then go to war.

Make it so.

An analysis was posted in the Strategy Academy thread.

I don't think we'll need 4-6 WE to take out a city with one archer in tbh which is what hatty has in pretty much every city.

It's not what she has now, it's what she will have in that many turns. It will be more like 3 or more archers per city plus whatever she techs. We can get by with fewer catapults if we don't mind multiple bombardment turns.

I don't see why she would have 3 archers. most AI, even on monarch, still only keep a couple of Archers in their cities at all times, occasionally you see more but thats normally because they are waiting for a settler to arrive and to act as an escort.

Let's get to Construction and scout her out and see what she has then. But WEs are going to be more effective that Swordsmen vs. Archers anyway and it gives us time to develop our economy some more.