War with French

[2metraninja]

Well, it begun.

Declared them a war. Their GM stayed in our territory as we expected. I blocked his main routes for escape with our GSs. Let them have good time speaking about Great Persons things and Nobel prizes this year.

Killed the French archer who was in our south front to not pillage mines and harass our workers and supply lines.

 

[Sommerswerd]

OH! I thought you would wait to discuss a little longer . Well now the only thing to do is to figure out what to say and how best to say it.

 

[Maga_R]

OH! I thought you would wait to discuss a little longer . Well now the only thing to do is to figure out what to say and how best to say it.

Yeah, that was sudden :-( Pity archer dead already.

Perhaps say that we were surprised by their threatening the war and wanted to immobilized their GM until situation is clarified? Us not killing GM on the spot should show some good will

 

[Maga_R]

I think there is also a slight chance RB is behind it - would be a master-move on their part They wanted us to go for an easier target, remember? And even hinted they may not want NAP extension turn 173 if our Zulu war would "turn out badly" - sounded like an empty and rather lame threat at the time, but now it is sort of happening ...

 

[YossarianLives]

Here are some pictures of the limited knowledge we have of CivFr's lands:

Spoiler :

These are their borders west of their capital. You can see that this is nowhere near any Zulu cities. The Isthmus north of Ambassador SC is probably similar to the isthmus between us and RB.


This is a very outdated screenshot of CivFr's northern lands. We have since uncovered these with our chariot, but all the screenshots were zoomed in so I thought this picture gave a better representation of their land. Just imagine that this is blue.


And here is a rendering of where the cities are that CivFr is claiming. Nongoma is actually probably 1 tile southwest of where I drew it here. Note that they want to also settle two more cities west of Nobambo and Nongoma.

For anyone who wants instant access online, on your home computer and/or on your phone to the dozens of screenshots that 2metra takes of every turn, simply register at Dropbox and tell me the email you used so I can share the folder with you. DropBox is absolutely, 100% free and easy to use.

Their GM stayed in our territory as we expected. I blocked his main routes for escape with our GSs. Let them have good time speaking about Great Persons things and Nobel prizes this year.

 

[YossarianLives]

Well, CivFr ended turn, but not before returning us the favor and killing our scouting chariot ambassador sc. We're up now, I'm interested to see how the battlefield looks now.

 

[2metraninja]

They elegantly evacuated their GM starting a GA. Kinda suicides him themselves. Or just preparing for long war, knowing the ZUlu land is essential for the future of our both nations?

 

[Sommerswerd]

So not only do they show that they consider us worst enemy and not worth talking/negotiating with, we also missed our chance to just go ahead and kill the GM ... as we already decided was the best course of action if we were not going to apologize and sue for peace.

Oh well, lesson learned. Now that we are waist deep in this War to the death with CivFr we have to figure out how to destroy or cripple them before turn 175 when we have to turn our flank and go fight RB.

 

[2metraninja]

They are mad at us for sure, but if they consider us evil and sworn enemies is another thing. We can work a bit on this.

In worst case scenario, we will have to defend on 2 fronts in 25 turns. Not impossible at all. The Zulu lands will pay for themselves providing all the units we need to defend solely from there. So we will have our main lands work for opposing RB.

 

[2metraninja]

Actually, this war can help us in the long term. We ask Ot4e for longer NAP than they have with CivFR now (t190 they have). We will know if he plots something with them for our destruction and possibly prevent such case.

Also, we can use him and his desire to fight RB to our advantage. We tell him to tell CivFR (who dont know we are part of the anti-RB alliance) that we will send army against RB if we get long NAP with CivFR. Because Ot4e said CivFR promised to send army against RB. This way we can test French readiness to fight RB. If they are eager, they will sign NAP with us and send army to help Ot4e. If they are not, Ot4e will know what liars are French and will not look at them as friends anymore, but can help us against them instead. Or 100 other possible scenarios Lets make lemonade with the French lemons.

 

[YossarianLives]

Just as good ally, MZ told me this:

MZ: about 10 troops in the border city
me: Maya are French, right?
MZ: yes
me: what troops they have there and in which city?
MZ: some horse archers, axemen, holkans. it1s the city SW of izmir

what a pitiful force

That's actually very useful info for us. I'm not sure, but considering Poly's location, I think it's safe to assume that these units are in the city closest to Chinook. These are the units that CivFr is going to move in with before the real army they have just started drafting / whipping is ready. That's almost definitely enough to take Chinook, but nowhere near enough to take and hold anything else from the Spaniards ( maybe CivFr can take more Spanish cities if they are emptying them out and giving them away, but those units will fall to our army just as easily as the Zulu units are falling)

 

[YossarianLives]

Double post

 

[YossarianLives]

I've had a crazy idea. Taking a look at the latest pictures that bistrita posted in the Spanish War thread, I noticed that there are just 5 tiles of unclaimed, undeveloped land between our newly captured city of Nongoma, and CivFr's core city of Tirecul (not sure of the spelling there, but it's the city immediately west of their capital MissClick). We have cleared out all Spanish troops in this area.

We could potentially road through the desert isthmus and be deep in CivFr's core in just a few turns. This could catch them completely by surprise, especially if they're moving all their troops up north to try to take and hold Chinook and Nobamba. An army of Knights at their doorstep would be a powerful incentive for them to give up any claim for Spanish land and sign the long-term NAP that we want.

Just a thought...

 

[Maga_R]

I've had a crazy idea. Taking a look at the latest pictures that bistrita posted in the Spanish War thread, I noticed that there are just 5 tiles of unclaimed, undeveloped land between our newly captured city of Nongoma, and CivFr's core city of Tirecul (not sure of the spelling there, but it's the city immediately west of their capital MissClick). We have cleared out all Spanish troops in this area.

We could potentially road through the desert isthmus and be deep in CivFr's core in just a few turns. This could catch them completely by surprise, especially if they're moving all their troops up north to try to take and hold Chinook and Nobamba. An army of Knights at their doorstep would be a powerful incentive for them to give up any claim for Spanish land and sign the long-term NAP that we want.

Just a thought...

I think we have to decide if we want to do hardball - or a softball ;-) You know what my preference would be ;-) I would rather not try both at the same time, I am afraid it can be disastrous Although on the other hand this is probably the exactly the bad cop/good cop idea, which is supposed to be very effective... But I am pretty sure they would hate us for sure for trying to put knife to their neck for the second time, this time in a definitely a pre-meditated, well-thought manner, not opportunistically, like with the GM.

 

[2metraninja]

This is great idea, Yossa and I would love to try it any day of the week.

Still, we need to talk and see if we can have peace. And we must capture Spaniards. They might give us good fight.

But if it comes to it, they can well feel the pain of fighting determined and devious enemy

 

[bistrita]

Yossa's ideea its great, now i am gelous why wasnt mine.

 

[Sommerswerd]

How fast can we pull this off with FWs?

Would switching to Serfdom make them able to do it even faster?

Really bold plan Yossa!

 

[YossarianLives]

2metra very kindly saved some pictures of the area in question into our Dropbox folder:

Spoiler :

Hmm, not sure if the pictures are not showing, or if it's just my slow computer refusing to load them... Anyways, the top picture should show the southern lands we just conquered from the spaniards, and how close they are to CivFr. The bottom picture should show the CivFr area that we could easily threaten with Knights. 2metraninja or bistrita would need to comment on how quickly we could build a road and get our knights into position.

Whatever we decide to do, we should get a unit in that isthmus to give us warning in case the French try something similar against us.

 

[bistrita]

well we can atack in 3 turns in 2 beeing on hill near tirecul and need for that totaly 15 workers turns wich its very esy for us to do.so french will have a very nasty surprise.

 

[Sommerswerd]

I wish we could move our Spy near the SoD out in front to see what their defenses are. It would be nice to take/raze two of their best cities and cripple them, then pillage all the cottages around them. It will take them 50 turns to recover.