CoAF term 3 - Operational Planning: France, Spain, Portugal. Anyone else?

[zyxy]

The motto of this thread could be: fighting too many wars with too few troops. We're stretched too thin and have overextended a bit. What to do?

Here is a map with troop locations (our troops in red):

Our current objectives are to take the cities of Nanking (currently in French hands) and Murcia (Spanish). Furthermore, we have voted to eliminate the Dutch, which means taking the cities of Delft and Leiden.

We are at war with France, Spain, Portugal, Byzantines. The first three are hot, the last is phony sofar.

My initial thoughts: if we do not make peace with Portugal on this turn (of course the External Consul decides on that), then we will lose Shanghai, possibly also Tsingtao. The Portuguese threaten Shanghai with 2 AC's and 1 sword (1 archer is 1 turn away), the French threaten it with 1 archer and 1 longbow. It is defended by two knights (one badly damaged at 1 hp) and a knight army (badly damaged at 2 hp). Tsingtao only has 1 horse.

If we do make peace with Portugal, then we might be able to hold these two cities. I would move the army back to Tsingtao for healing, the horse from Tsingtao to Shanghai, and some forces from Ratopia towards Shanghai (they will take some time though). We might lose 1 or 2 units in Shanghai on the interturn. I would like to have a knight rushed in Tsingtao immediately (about 250 gold).

We will need to train more knights and move more forces to the front. Then attack Nanking, leave some forces in place to deal with French counters, and move others on Murcia. Hopefully we'll get to cavalry before attacking Murcia.

The Dutch can wait until we have dealt with France and Spain.

What do you think?

 

[Chieftess]

We need to pull back a bit and build up our knights first... (maybe to about 25-30, then upgrade to cavs), and build some defenses!! Our frontier is nearly being run over. One city is currently under siege, and our army is almost dead. If the army can fortify for one turn (either in the current city, or neighboring city), it can fully heal next turn -- new feature in C3C).

 

[Ginger_Ale]

I agree with Chieftess - don't be at war with the world yet! We need a few muskets for the chokepoint, but don't forget strategically placed Knights on the coast to deal with if the AI makes a landing of one or two units. So I would abandon Tsingtao (we can settle it later). Why don't we sign peace with Byzantines when we can, take Murcia and Valencia and sign peace with Spain, and take out the Dutch to counter flips, and then we can focus on France + Portugal. For now, try to hold on defensively at the choke while we attack other small nations.

 

[Bertie]

I agree we need to make peace with Portugal. In fact we already have a thread discussing possible peace options HERE . I actually favor making peace with Portugal & signing them to a MA against France (details in the referenced thead). The downside to this is we extend our war against France another 20 turns. The upside is we're receiving War Happiness from France, so as long as our troops aren't on French soil too long we should be OK. Of course we will need to keep a defense in the capture French cities to guard against a counterattack; but we'd probably want to do that anyway.

As Chieftess suggests, the real solution to our problem is producing more Knights. With more military muscle, many of these problems disappear. Our military has done a wonderful job with minimal resources, but we don't want to stretch our luck too far.

After we make peace with Portugal and take the last formerly Chinese city captured by the French (which I'm guessing we can do in another two turns), I suggest we let our French war lapse into a phony war for awhile. At our leisure we can clear our home continent of the Spanish cities and the two Dutch cities. However, I suggest we do this as soon as we have troops available to do so: hopefully in the next turnchat, or at the latest the one after that.

 

[zyxy]

Yes, we need more troops. I've asked for them, but knights take long to produce.
If we make peace with portugal, then we can hold on to Tsingtao I think.

It will take 10 turns or so before we can expect reinforcements in reasonable numbers. It will take a similar number of turns before we'll get cavalry. That looks like the right moment to deal with Spain, and after that Netherlands.

It could go faster, but that requires serious changes in the build queues.

 

[greekguy]

Make peace with Portugal and concentrate on building muskets (defense) and knights (future upgrades). Then, upgrade to cavs when we can and unleash them on the world.

 

[Ranger99]

we must PULL BACK, from this map we are WAY to thin, our borders will be quickly overrun unless we get more troops inside of them, from there a build-up of troops, and then more concentrated attacks, we cant take on the whole world...yet....

 

[Furiey]

We need Peace with Portugal and to protect our Army to allow it to heal. With a fully healed Army things will look different. If we lose the Army.....

A MA with Portugal against France should turn those Ancient Cavalry against the Archers by Shanghai and hopefully more we cannot see. We can get another Horse and Knight there next turn from the mountains and another Knight from Blacktopia a couple of turns later. We must be careful stripping too many away from Livertopia/Naples area as there have been several attacks by Spanish Med Inf. There are several Knights being built but these will take time, so we need to hole up and pick off the units as they come to us, not leaving units exposed ourselves and make sure we kill any Crusaders before they attack us!