Plan for Term 5

Ok, now we need a solid plan, and from what I've seen in discussions (and what is logically easier).

First turnchat - We take out Greece, and most of Egypt.
Second Turnchat - We take out the rest of Egypt, and get ready to research Motorized Transportation.
Third Turnchat - We set sail for England.

Here's a thought for England - Do we want to attack with Marines? (Bombard units with artillery from transports).

Fourth Turnchat - Possibly head for the Zulus to claim the chokpoint.

Fifth Turnchat - Start building airports and tanks everywhere!

We may not even be ready for Persia until a few turnchats, however, we are strong compared to the Aztecs. Speaking of the Aztecs, should we rush/build a palace in Cattaraugus, or one of the more central cities there? It's a far fetched thought, however, does trigger a Forbidden Palace bug (we get less corruption). Although, DR, and surrounding cities get more corruption. We'd also have to build up the new core. Might not even be worth with, but we'd get more GPT.

We may even need to pump out tanks for 20 turns, along with defenders.

it sounds pretty good to me

Cowardly. (I may change my POV after seeing the save).
Don't wait for England. Strike them next, possibly even at the same time as Greece. Marines will do fine, but what are you afraid for ? Landing a small number of cavs is enough to take out England. OTOH Marines can be left behind as defenders.

1st TC: Greece and England.

2nd TC: Egypt.
3rd build up to Motorised transportation.
4th TC: Strike at the heart of the Persian mainland, using transports as ferries. Sign the Zulu and Aztec into it; get them to fight eachother. Muchos guerros, big war, grote oorlog, grosses Krieg, Guerre grande !
5th TC: Get nukes and fire ICBM's !

Don't make a sequential list of whom to kill in which order, but think what is best for Fanatica.

Best for Fanatica is to grow our population and increase our production and commerce. To do this, we have to keep our people happy. And the best way to do it is via lots of luxuries (we don't want to spend a lot of our hard-earned money on it). And even less do we want to pay other civs (especially Persia) with either technology or money, unless really necessary.

Now let us look at the proposed campaigns:

Greece: We gain no new luxuries. We conquer no wonders. Thus this war is only to advance to conquest victory and as a stepping stone towards Egypt. Greece also has a trade with Persia, most likely incense. Thus we will deprive Persia of it. Good.

Egypt: We gain no new luxuries. But we conquer Magellan's which increases the speed of our navy. And we will get a world monopoly on incense. We also conquer Sun Tzu's, but it will not help us much since we will not build many units on this continent.

Thinking about it, we have the wrong strategy: It will much better to land an overwhelming force of infantry, artillery, and cavalry outside of Thebes and capture it the next turn. With barracks everywhere, the following war will be much easier. We could form a military alliance with Greece to deter them from attacking us and weakening the Egyptian defense. I think it might be better even now to switch strategies, but that is open to the MoD.

England: We gain a world monopoly on silk, which is good. But we will/should delay the attack for 20 turns and trade again for silk now. If we build a harbor in Avon Nova, we can easily shuffle troop in 1 turn and heal injured fighting vessels. Switch now.

Zulus: We could get 2 luxuries "for free". Thus I advised a good time ago to prepare the Zulus Campaign. Regrettably it was not done. IMHO it should get preference NOW and not be delayed much further. Better we get furs and gems from the Zulus, than give the Persians the ability to deny it to us.

Aztecs: Weaklings. I would pull them into the fight against Persia to weaken them even more. Then finish them fast as the last of our "competitors".

Persia: The main opponent. They have good size population, production, luxuries and resources. They also have important wonders (Pyramids, Leonardo's). Thus I would attack them rather earlier than later, i.e. with the Aztecs' support.

Summary and recommendation:

1. Switch strategy w.r.t conquering Thebes/Egypt before Greece.
2. Build an alliance with Greece vs. Egypt.
3. Keep Peace with England for 20 turns (at least). Trade for their silks and embargo Egypt. Build harbor in Avon Nova.
4. Start the Zulus Campain REALLY SOON, i.e. begin moving into position the next turnchat. Build harbor in Happy City.

One of the reasons (just to add) that I want to take out Greece and Egypt successively is because our troops are already there. Greece should be a cake walk, being relatively weak (we can just let their units attack us first. Knights vs. Inf isn't the brightest thing, but the AI does it). We can also shuttle over a few more infantry, then, while that war is going on, build the occasion cav, and infantries (we need to build up on that), and build other infrastructure.

One thing I have noticed doing the final FA Summary for this term - Greece is currently in Anarchy, can we use this to our advantage?

We seem to have 3 strategies on offer here, CT's, tao's and RM's. Do we want to poll them?

Yeah, I think Greece's anarchywrksbest for this plan. Uhh, wait, that didn't sound right. I think we should attack now that they're switching. Most likely, Greece just got democracy, and that's what they're switching to. We can really give them a world of hurt the next 2 turns. In fact, for 1 turn, we might not even be fighting at all. We'll be on the unroaded (and roaded) jungle tiles, going for their next cities.

I say we do this:

Attack Greece this turn (We could take out a good 5 cities), attacking their knights along the way (they have quite a few of them).

Take Argos on turn 1 of the turnchat, and get ready for Corinth, Athens and Knossos.

Turn 2, take out the above mentioned cities, and head for Delphi and Ephesus.

Then we'll plan for the Egyptian war. We will have to bring workers over to clear jungle and build rails though, and continue to bring over the artillery.

So, the final plan would be:

1 - Attack Greece now, and the war will last until turn 2.
2 - Give a few turns to heal, build up the rail net in those cities, rush culture, and keep building up infantry, cavs, and artillery.
3 - Turn against Egypt (maybe between turns 5 and 7).


Just to note, we do have a galleon in Greek territory, but do we really care about our rep now? After all, once Egypt is under our control, we'll be focusing on tanks, and shipping units to England. Persia and the Aztecs are really the only civs left. The Zulus are just hanging in there.

Also, one important note if we're gonna attack Egypt next: Egypt is 1 tech away from Replacable Parts. Infact, they could very well be researching it now. This is where artillery comes in, and comes in huge. We need LOTS of artillery. I don't know how many units we'll be facing, but we need to be well prepared. This also means more infantry. Egypt is 80% railed, too, so we don't need to worry about workers this time. At best, we also might have the ability to build tanks in 12 turns.

I can set up a plan to set up a ferry service for our troops between the mainland and the city on the Greek island.

Our troops are already over there... Besides, the galleons are already set up so that they can load and unload twice in 1 turn. (load in the city, move 1 south, unload, move 1 north, load in the city, move 1 south and unload, then move north again back into the city).

MIA will state its full plan tomorrow, when I have time to type it up. Basically, in a nutshell, it involves force, slash and burn and the DP to have MapStat out and check every turn.

I don't think we need mapstat just yet. We'll need it once we get a foothold on the other continent. We need a *LOT* more cavs, artillery, and especially infantry.

I'd like a good 10-15 more artillery, and 10 more cavs, especially with Egypt coming up. I'd also like to pump out more infantry. Maybe our semi-productive cities can build barracks, and start building infantry (if they take less than 10 turns).

I think we can take out the Zulu cities we want with only 8 cavs and 4 infantry. We could produce these cavs while the Greek and/or Egyptian wars are ongoing, load them onto galleys, and send them toward Zululand during this turnchat.

Other than the omission of a Zulu war to establish a base and hijack luxuries, CT's plan looks good to me.

The basic strategy and sequence should work fine. There are, as I see it, essentially 2 phases to CT's plan.

Phase 1 - "Clean up the Weaker Powers" - Greece then Egypt then England (or possibly Greece then Egypt, while we dispatch the expeditionary force to England which stikes when it arrives). Do we really need to wait for TC3 to embark vs. England? Why not get some forces underway asap. Basically we should be able to hit England pretty much simultaneously with Egypt. How does this sound?

Phase 2 - "The Big One" - Zulus first (we will need that choke-point), then Aztecs then Persians. Oh Boy!!! By the time we get around to the Persians they may well prove to be formidable adversaries. Massive forces, naval bombardments, aerial warfare - the works!! We will need to build in some recovery and reinforcement pauses during Phase 2, but it promises to be a showdown not to miss.

Go for it

Originally posted by Lecky
Phase 2 - "The Big One" - Zulus first (we will need that choke-point), then Aztecs then Persians. Oh Boy!!!

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Oh Boy No!!! It is much better to form an alliance with the Aztecs vs. Persia. Once Persia is gone, their (Aztecs') troops will be easy pick-up in the foreign land with no way back home, because we control the chokepoint.

If we get the chokepoint, Aztec troops can't get through...

Originally posted by Chieftess
If we get the chokepoint, Aztec troops can't get through...

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We should not SETTLE on the chokepoint, but from New Hlobane and New Swazi our artillery has a nice killing field.

So that we can be clear about our end target, while we discuss the details I have put up a poll for Do we go for a Conquest Victory? getting this decision made will enable us to focus on the goals of this term, we can then discuss and poll the steps along the way.

Originally posted by Chieftess
Ok, now we need a solid plan, and from what I've seen in discussions (and what is logically easier).

First turnchat - We take out Greece, and most of Egypt.
Second Turnchat - We take out the rest of Egypt, and get ready to research Motorized Transportation.
Third Turnchat - We set sail for England.
Fourth Turnchat - Possibly head for the Zulus to claim the chokpoint.
Fifth Turnchat - Start building airports and tanks everywhere!

Click to expand...

I like how you think Chieftess. Greece, Egypt, England and the Zulus have been a threat to our empire for too long now. They also happen to be sitting on the land that belongs to our settlers. Not that I support Ultra-Militarism, but is there a way to step this up a little faster?

We may not even be ready for Persia until a few turnchats, however, we are strong compared to the Aztecs. Speaking of the Aztecs, should we rush/build a palace in Cattaraugus, or one of the more central cities there? It's a far fetched thought, however, does trigger a Forbidden Palace bug (we get less corruption). Although, DR, and surrounding cities get more corruption. We'd also have to build up the new core. Might not even be worth with, but we'd get more GPT.

We may even need to pump out tanks for 20 turns, along with defenders.

Click to expand...

It's good to see that you are planning ahead for Persia and the Aztecs too.

Originally posted by Kato
I like how you think Chieftess. Greece, Egypt, England and the Zulus have been a threat to our empire for too long now. They also happen to be sitting on the land that belongs to our settlers. Not that I support Ultra-Militarism, but is there a way to step this up a little faster?

Click to expand...

yeah, if we build more military units... Egypt has rails in place, so that will help out a lot.