T3 CoAF - Operational planning Dutch War - phase II

[zyxy]

How shall we proceed the Dutch War?

Current status

Our forces have razed the city of Arnhem as scheduled - with a little luck, the attack force contained exactly one horse too many. They are currently healing. They will be ready to take on Amsterdam on the 5-th turn after the current one.
There were a few setbacks during the last TC: the Dutch captured undefended Auchtermuchty, Delhi flipped back to India, and Sebadoh flipped back to the Netherlands.

Analysis

• Our main concern is Amsterdam. Once it falls, the remaining Dutch settlements are isolated and can be mopped up at our leisure. Also, this will relieve the culture pressure on Skye, our riskiest flipper at the moment. I don't know how many defenders Amsterdam will have, but I would guess 6 spears, at least 1 is vet (we've seen it), and 1 or 2 archers. This is double the force that was present in Arnhem, and so it should require about double the attack strength, or 16 swords. The best we can manage is 2 cats, 10 swords currently near Halls of Mandos, 3 from Strider's haven, 1 from the west region, and 4 or 5 horses, all vet/elite. That is not a lot, but probably enough, and leaves some regulars for defense in the northwest, and an elite sword for defense in the northeast.
• We might first strike at Breda if we wish. There are 2 swords (1 elite, 1 reg) and 3 horse that can strike on the next turn. By doing so we deprive the Dutch of silk. The risk is that the attack on Amsterdam may be delayed if we suffer losses.
• Sebadoh presents some danger, because forces from Sebadoh can threaten several of our core cities, most notably Oxford and BlackHole. We will need some horses to counter any attacks. Two or three should be enough, with more than three I would attack the city. These horses will have to be freshly trained or withdrawn from the front. I prefer the first, we'll need the forces at Amsterdam.
• Retaking Auchtermuchty should not be a problem. It is small, isolated, and has no defensive bonus. It can wait.
• Delhi will easily fall again in due time.
• We may experience more flips. According to MapStat, our total flip risk is somewhere between 8 and 12 percent per turn.

EDIT: here is a pic

 

[Bertie]

I don't think Amsterdam will be a tough as you anticipate. The AI has thrown a lot of troops at us, it appears, and it's hard to believe they have vast amounts left. Still, while we heal they'll have time to restock. For that reason I might consider sending several healthy swords and spears with the cats forward to Amsterdam, and begin to bombard the defenders. That might influence the Dutch to build archers to attack that battlegroup rather than spears to defend the city. I'd expect their archers to die on our spears.

Sebadoh is probably build spears at the moment; that should give us enough time to build horses rather than withdrawing them from the front.

Taking Breda should be fairly easy. I'd be tempted to go ahead and take it, but it's probably wiser to move those troops towards Amsterdam just in case that's more difficult to take than I anticipate.

 

[mastertyguy]

I agree with bertie. It should be easier. Bet maybe between 5 spears, in the worst case, and 3, with more luck.

 

[GenMarshall]

Now is the time to whipe the Dutch off the map and build culture buildings to prevent these annoying flips.

 

[Ranger99]

its kind of a bad situation, as we dont have spies and our emmbassies are shut down because of war...

but dont take Amsterdam TOO lightly the AI has a nasty habit of having A LOT of extra troops, remember Lisbon in Portugaul??

but overall i agree with your analysis Amsterdam should be our primary target, once Amsterdam goes we need not worry TOOO much about the other cities, but remember to be quick about it, we dont want any nasty surprises, and after the Dutch we NEED to build up our culture, we have an 8-12% chance of a CF, that means in our next seesion, odds are we'll lose AT LEAST one more city, NOT GOOD, so i say we should hold off our next war until our culture stacks up a little better.

 

[Nobody]

I don't think Amsterdam will be a tough as you anticipate

the war will be over by christmas

 

[Ranger99]

the war will be over by christmas

LOL

i love it!!!

 

[zyxy]

I like the idea of sending the cats in first -- although 2 cats will probably do little damage. We could also consider pillaging the irrigation and occupying the floodplains to starve Amsterdam to town size. Don't know how long that would take.

Does anyone know how many forces the AI places in its capital?
I always get the impression that the AI strives for a fixed amount of defenders, and will never send those out of the town. I think it's two for a normal town, some more for a city, and again some extra if it is the capital. For reference: Arnhem had 3 spears, 1 archer.

How many attackers do we need? Here's a quick calculation that gives a rough idea:
a spear in Amsterdam defends at 3.7 (10% + 25% + 50% bonus), our swords attack at 3, so the win probability is 3/6.7 is about 45% per round of combat.
Suppose there are in total 6 vet spears, that's a total of 24 hitpoints. We can expect to need 54 hitpoints to defeat those spear (45% of 54 is 24) , that's 13-14 vet swords. Better safe than sorry, so we may want a few more.

 

[Octavian X]

I'd think we'd be lucky to find only six spears in Amsterdam. My guess is something more along the lines of ten or twelve. In any case, we'd definetly require a majority of our offensive strength devoted somehow to the operation of capturing the Dutch capital.

 

[zyxy]

Octavian X: I hope you're wrong

I looked at our embassy screenshots from the 4/28 TC.
Kyoto: town, 3 spears (1 elite, 2 reg)
Chichen Itza: city, 3 spears, 4 javelin throwers (2.2.1) (all reg)
Paris: city, 7 spears (3 vet, 4 reg), 1 settler
Lisbon: town, 7 spears (all reg), 4 AC (elite), 1 horse (vet), 1 settler, 1 galley, some units we can't see
Madrid: city, 7 spears, 1 warrior, 1 settler (all reg)

So with the exception of the heavily defended town of Lisbon (that probably ran out of other things to build), a city size capital seems to have 7 defenders, plus possibly some attackers.

 

[Chieftess]

I wonder who's idea it was to leave our cities undefended in the first place...

 

[mad-bax]

Amsterdam has no wonders and the Dutch have been at war forever. IIRC it sent a sword from Amsterdam at the beginning of the last TC. The Dutch have no iron and is in republic. I would be surprised if there are any more than 3 or 4 spears in it. They are all probably vet though. The first one or two built might[/] have been before the rax it must have. I would also guess that the city must be deeply unhappy.

Now is not the time to panic. The Dutch conquest was too slow.
We can disect this if you wish - though it accomplishes nothing in this game.

1. We split the stacks
2. We took out the cities in the wrong order.
3. We didn't have enough fast units
4. We build too many defenders and not enough attackers
5. We were distracted by taking out stray enemy units.

At the start of the Dutch war, the Dutch had 3 times as many cities as us and the Emperor production bonus. There is no way that we could keep up in cultural progression. Every temple is two fewer units. Every Library 3. If we had tried to keep up in culture we would have 3 warriors and a spear and still be in our 80 tile hell-hole.

Two cities flipped. So what?
They flipped for the above reasons, plus bad luck. We are still way ahead of where we would have been without the wars. Wars we would not have been able to fight at all if we had built culture first.
If we had built culture first the game would be lost now IMVHO - or at least any chance of a 130K would.

Now CT: You gloated about how right you were in the turnchat, and again in the TCIT. Now you have done it yet again here.

Having established that you are wonderful, it would be nice if perhaps you could suggest what we should do, rather than what we should have done. We have to play the next turn, not the last.

 

[Chieftess]

Umm, I did mention about building temples and such. I mentioned that we sorely needed culture WEEKS ago, even mentioning the fact that we should have taken out as much of India as possible so that our cities aren't right up against their capital. Sometimes I just get frustrated at some of the lack of decision.

 

[zyxy]

I've thought a bit more about the Amsterdam problem. We don't know what their defenses are, but based on the embassy screenshots of the other civs I would guess 7 spears (I'll assume vet) and 1-2 archers. I can see two options:

• Storm: we'll need 16 vet swords to take the spears out (attack=3, defense=3.7 gives 3/6.7 = 45% win probability per combat round, and 7 / 0.45 is about 15.5 swords).
  I would prefer to have a few more because this calculation underestimates the true number a bit, and because Amsterdam may contain archers, and also just to be safe. We have 17 swords, 5 horse, 2 cats and some spears in the area. Apart fom this, there is 1 sword in Bentley, and that's all. A few more horse and 1 sword are under construction. We'll need a few horse for defense of the core, so in total we can get maybe 18 swords, 5 horse, 2 cats. This looks a bit risky to me, but it might work. It will take 6-7 turns to get forces in place.
• Siege: We starve Amsterdam to townsize and attack after that. We occupy all 6 floodplains in the Amsterdam city radius, and pillage all other irrigated tiles. Amsterdam has no harbor, so that leaves them with 3 bonus food from the city tile, 1 bonus food from the fish, and all other tiles produce only 1 food. Maximal sustainable size is 4, at the current size it would loose 6 fd/turn. That means about 6 turns for the first starvation, 3 more turns to get it to size 6.
  At size 6 the spears defend at 2.7, our win probability is 52%, so we need 13 swords to take them out, plus a few more for the same reasons as before. This looks more manageable.
  Downside is that this will take longer. We have 8 spears, 2 warriors in the area for pillaging and occupying, they'll need maybe 4-5 turns to do that. After that at most 9 turns of starving. All the time Skye, Mandos, Strider's Haven and what not could flip. Of course this also gives us time to (re-)take some other cities.

Oh, and one more thing:

I wonder who's idea it was to leave our cities undefended in the first place...

Mine.

EDIT: cross-posted with the previous 2

 

[Furiey]

Something that might help is Offa's town capture utility. Thread is here. I'm away from home at the moment or I'd try it myself.

 

[zyxy]

Furiey, thanks, that's a good utility. I'll blindly assume it calculates correctly, then here are some results.

First, if we attack with 6 elite swords and 8 veteran, then the probabilities of taking A'dam are:
99.9% if defense is 4 vet spears.
79.5% if defense is 7 vet spears.

Adding 3 reg swords in the last case brings it up to 95%. We'll get 98% by adding one or two horses. We can expect to loose about 6 units in this case, with hopefully enough left for a second round if needed.

Looks like this will work. I'll draft instructions to storm Amsterdam later today.

 

[Ginger_Ale]

We can also upgrade a warrior to swordsmen in Provolutia to defend the homeland / take Sebadoh.

 

[zyxy]

Ginger_Ale: that sounds prudent. I'll ask for the money.

 

[Ranger99]

yes, get the warriors upgraded, that is really important as warrors usually crumble against a strong defense.

and i like the siege option, less casaulties, more turns, its not that bad of a trade-off.

Are we razing Amsterdam???

or was that another city??

 

[Chieftess]

Something that might help is Offa's town capture utility. Thread is here. I'm away from home at the moment or I'd try it myself.

That looks similar to the battle calcs that are already out there....