Tactics and Strategy Turns 100-120

[Sommerswerd]

As I have said before, I agree with attacking before Rifles, I would even suggest attacking before the 30 turn timer (for Cavalieros help). SANCTA is expecting an attack from us... They will be ready for that no matter when we attack. But they are not expecting Cavalieros to help.

So if we attack first, and alone SANCTA will might assume Cavalieros is not helping again, and send their whole army to meet our attack, which will allow Cavalieros to exploit their weakness from behind.

A "bare bones" attack is not adviseable IMO. We already tried that and it sucked big time. We should have enough units in the stack to account for the sick troops, bad weather, etc that are expressed through unfavorable RNG rolls.

Even assuming that we go with the 26 units instead of 40, how long will they take to build?

[Indiansmoke]

Where exactly is behind?

and why should we lose all our army to give Cav a chance?

[Indiansmoke]

Originally Posted by damnrunner

As to what to include in our stack.

These are my thoughts. Also we will be attacking long before we get redcoats. We may be able to bring up Grenadiers, but we should not base plans on getting them. Our greatest strategic advantage will come from cannons.

This would be a pretty bare bones stack for the valley in my opinion. But I think it could get the job done with a similarly sized stack from Team Cav.
10 siege units
3 Xbows
2 Pikemen
2 longbows (we will need to defend a newly captured cities)
3 musketmen
3 maces
3 knights

That is 26 units. If anything I would add additional siege units and knights.

In the talks we Cav we agreed that Cav will bring about 75 units stack and we will bring about 35.

The stack will be mainly knights cannons and some maces/pikes. My thouhts are 15 knights, 2-3 pikes - 5-6 maces 6 catas and 5-6 cannons.

First city we wil take is zero and we will raze it not capture it. hopefully Cav will take TKY for us and then we can assess the situation.

[Kaleb]

If we aren't planning a naval raid soon on Phoenix is it worth making it look like we are? Any troops SANCTA divert there will take a long time to be relocated back to they TKY-Zero front.

Oh and SANCTA are now starting to properly develop their frontline cities - which will be nice when we take them - definitely raze Zero though

We should build more spies soon and consider getting a courthouse and running a spy specialist. Visibility is so much more crucial in a multiplayer game than in SP. If we're lucky Confu will also spread a bit (we already have visibility in Phoenix because of this) and help our ESP.

[Indiansmoke]

Originally Posted by Kaleb

We should build more spies soon and consider getting a courthouse and running a spy specialist. Visibility is so much more crucial in a multiplayer game than in SP. If we're lucky Confu will also spread a bit (we already have visibility in Phoenix because of this) and help our ESP.

Kaleb visibility in enemy cities that have your religion was changed 5 versions of the game ago. You no longer have visibility in cities with your religion.

Visibility in phoenix is because our cultural border is on that mountain.

Great spy would be great but difficult to get one now. In any case we should have a couple of spies ready to go in Sancta land to scout before we attack.

[Kaleb]

Having your state religion in a city gives you a discount on all espionage operations in a specific city. View city, steal tech, poison etc. We can see what's around Phoenix at the moment as if we had a spy in the city. This happened on the turn confucianism spread in that city.

Have a look next time you login

I was thinking of running the spy specialist mainly for the ESP boost.

[Sommerswerd]

Originally Posted by Indiansmoke

Where exactly is behind?

and why should we lose all our army to give Cav a chance?

What I mean "exactly" by "from behind" is... from the West or Northwest... Since we will be attacking from the South...right? I hope that makes sense.

And we will not lose our army. When we start the attack, SANCTA will move to defend. We can siege, withdraw, harrass, avoid engaging them etc., until Cavalieros attacks. Hopefully they move more units to engage us, so that Cavalieros can capture their weakly defended cities.

We can't do it the other way around, because if Cavalieros attacks first, SANCTA will KNOW that we are waiting in the wings to attack. They will not leave Zero undefended to engage Cavalieros. They are expecting us to attack at any minute.

Sorry for not explaining more precisely what I meant. I thought some of this would be obvious. I realize that my posts can be verrry long sometimes, and I am trying to cut back...

The reason I write such long posts, is I try to anticipate all the concerns/issues folks have or might have, and address them in one post. I was trying to make my post shorter by not explaining those two things Smoke asked about... I can see that I failed. I will just continue being as thourough as possible. Sorry again.

@ Smoke - What about the other parts of my inquiry? Specifically, how long will it take to build our army? 35 units you say? How long will it take?

Finally, I am very confident that 5-6 siege units is not enough. We should bring some catapults too or more cannons.

[Indiansmoke]

I am not sure how that happened but we can build teh heroic epic. I thought that we needed level 3 unit to do that but it seems no...maybe it changed with the patch?

So this needs to be build asap. My first thought would be shymkent as it is the most developed has a good base hammer output, Other choice is Kyzylorda as it will have bigger hammer base output, but it will take very long there.

@ Sommer...the units will be build slave, cannot go into detail fro every city no, but by experience I can tell you that we will have them. Propably shymkent & capital just build and the rest slave

[cav scout]

Kyzylorda is the best choice for Heroic Epic imo.

[Indiansmoke]

made a few moves in the screenis what our spy can see.

Thespy still has 2 moves and what is left to decide is

1. what do the 2 workers on shyment do? I say 1 goes to chop on the hill outside BFC and the other on hill to improve...or both finish farm and farm towards new city.

2. Library slaving at iron city, I suggest we do it this turn as well as the library in Pavlodar.

[Kaleb]

I would slave the catapult in iron city first, overflow into Moai - and then slave the Lib

hmm, how quick can we regrow? I have lost track of when we last put hammers into the Cat. I'm just concerned about hammer deterioration but if that's not an issue then let's do the Lib first

I would use workers to farm.

[damnrunner]

I agree on slaving the cat and overflow going into the Moai. How close are we on the Moai btw? Once we build it we will probably want to stop slaving in this city.

Also I don't know if building a library and uni in the iron city is totally warranted. I think we decided not to rush 6 unis and follow up with oxford. But we did decide to build libraries and universities in cities which have large commerce output (Haz, Shym). We only want to build libraries in cities that can really benefit from them.

I think we may be better off building the Heroic Epic in the iron city. With Moai it will have good production and it can also build sea units in a pinch.

[Sommerswerd]

I think that Cavscout, Donsig, Smoke and all wanted to max out on libraries/unis while we are still in Org Rel. Clear majority. I did not agree, but that is the way we are going IIRC.

[Sommerswerd]

About Slaving, Slaving, Slaving...

I get slaving for granaries, workers, settlers, needed health improvement buildings, or happiness buildings. It makes sense to sacrifice population for stuff that grows population even faster... I also get slaving for military in emergency situations (like war & barbs).

I don't get the slaving for libraries/unis as much, unless you need it just for culture, which we dont.

[mikotian]

btw when we do attack, we should attempt to attack at the same time as Cav, if possible...

And I think if possible, we should let Cav attack first. We don't know what kind of siege Santa would have, and when attacking, it's almost certain that a smart enemy will attack you with collateral. And if Sancta sees us+cav building units, you can bet your ass they are not going to stand idle. We should expect to be hit with a big stack very soon after crossing into Sancta territory. In fact, the best possible solution for Sancta when faced with two enemies is to try to defeat the two stacks separately while taking advantage of movement bonuses within their own cultural borders, and allow the healing of injured units while ceding a bit of territory.

I really suspect the first stack to enter enemy territory (or the first stack to threaten a strategic city) will be bruised very badly if not crushed. I'd much rather that be a Cav stack, IMO.

[Indiansmoke]

Originally Posted by Kaleb

Having your state religion in a city gives you a discount on all espionage operations in a specific city. View city, steal tech, poison etc. We can see what's around Phoenix at the moment as if we had a spy in the city. This happened on the turn confucianism spread in that city.

Have a look next time you login

I was thinking of running the spy specialist mainly for the ESP boost.

Yes you are right, Phoenix we can see due to espionaze. The cost for that is about 220 while the next cheapest Sancta city is 400!

It must be the distance from our capital and the religion.

[Indiansmoke]

Originally Posted by Kaleb

I would slave the catapult in iron city first, overflow into Moai - and then slave the Lib

hmm, how quick can we regrow? I have lost track of when we last put hammers into the Cat. I'm just concerned about hammer deterioration but if that's not an issue then let's do the Lib first

I would use workers to farm.

What you should be worrying about is losing hammers from organized for slaved pops. For 2 pop slave that is 15 hammers. Hammers deteriorating are only 1-2 hammers per turn.

[Indiansmoke]

Originally Posted by Sommerswerd

About Slaving, Slaving, Slaving...

I get slaving for granaries, workers, settlers, needed health improvement buildings, or happiness buildings. It makes sense to sacrifice population for stuff that grows population even faster... I also get slaving for military in emergency situations (like war & barbs).

I don't get the slaving for libraries/unis as much, unless you need it just for culture, which we dont.

The point of slaving libraries and Unis is triple.

1. The sooner we have Oxford the faster we tech.
2. It is not worth growing working suboptimal tiles like a sea tile or a 2 food farm. It is better to slave those tiles of (provided you have the food which we do) and get the infrastructure faster in place, when you have the buildings then you can grow.
3. We are in organized and will remain for a limited time period, so we need to get the best of that.


Now, Sommer...you are getting free lessons here for months now

Not to worry though, I am not asking for a check in the mail

[Kaleb]

Originally Posted by Indiansmoke

Yes you are right, Phoenix we can see due to espionaze. The cost for that is about 220 while the next cheapest Sancta city is 400!

It must be the distance from our capital and the religion.

Yes, both factors give us a discount. Btw if we ever want to run any missions on SANCTA it may be worth leaving phoenix to do it in

Having a Shrine for the religion also gives a boost to ESP

[Kaleb]

btw if we want to have units to upgrade to Cannons shouldn't we build a few Trebuchets? They cost more hammers to build than Cats and will therefore be cheaper to upgrade.