Apocalypso Now!!!

[Provolution]

APOCALYPSO NOW

I declare I want a last medieval war with Rome in order to get 2-3 cities and prepare the ground for a cavalry/Rifle war later on due to war weariness issues.
With vassalage and several promoted units I am more than certain we will win the war. It will be a short, targeted, expedient and economic feasible war with few losses.

The German War divided us, let us make the Roman War a War of Unification!

Those that support such a war either this turnchat or the latest next turnchat, please sign here.

 

[xr006]

The conquest of Rome and new cities on the east coast will secure the continent and that is the top priority right now in my opinion.

 

[Hyronymus]

I'm in favour of such war but only under a few conditions:

• Cities to conquer: Arpinium, Hamburg, Dortmund and possibly Antium
• We use our Knights to capture Dortmund
• Attack doesn't start until we formed 2-3 offensive battlegroups, 1 at Arpinium and 1 at Dortmund
• We keep enough defensive units in our border cities to form city guards, also for our conquered cities.

We can discussions my conditions of course so please feel free to add to it or question them.

The bonus with capturing Antium is that we are able to pinpoint the romans in the Northwestern corner of the island easily.

 

[Provolution]

I agree Hyro, I had similar thoughts. Let us do this, so the 2nd war becomes quicker and easier. It will also be nice to get some promotions for the West Point Wonder.

 

[Provolution]

The plan could go like this...

The Knights go for Dortmund (Battlegroup "Knight" or "K"), conquer it and hold it with as many units that are needed to garrison it.

The best macemen with most promotions of city raider as well as a few pikemen go for Antium. (Battlegroup "Mace" or "M").

The second tier macemen as well as some axemen and the worst keshiks go for Hamburg in Battlegroup "Lake" or "L". Remaining Knights from Dortmund will serve as reinforcements here.

What is left of our force would form a minimum force needed to take Arpinium, and would comprise of all remaining assault infantry not taking part in the other actions, as Arpinium is not that developed. This could be some average macemen, spearmen as well as chariots, as a sort of reserve assault formation.

When we leave vassalage, the ideal is to have only very high promotion units left in the assault force, meaning we use the least experienced troops as cannon fodder to feed promotions to the military elite.

Later on, this cultivated elite force would be the core of the expedition corps that would ensure the Space Race by being able to take special cities for us later.

 

[Nobody]

I agree with this lets kick some roman arss. I got a question for ya provolution, along time ago i remember a demogame where we were slowing knocking out the enemy civs one at a time. You thought it was a boring way to play the game, what was it you called this? and do you want this game to fall into this type of thing again?

 

[Provolution]

I think the term I used for that game was "Embryonism", meaning "being hatched out of an egg and grow slowly like a one-celled creature without strategy, direction or intent". The nomer for this group was "The Embryons".

The reason some citizens wanted that line of thought, was that they had an idea that the AI had some sort of inalienable "human rights" (AI rights?), which would mean we could not attack them in force, take too many cities and so on. They placed so many weird non-game rules on warfare, that the game become a true metagame. People were heavily competing for the localization of wonders and the Forbidden Palace, wanting "their city" to become the biggest.

Wars were considered an unnecessary evil as building troops stole capacity from the city-building competition. I think we had 5 polls on the location of the Forbidden Palace, and we saw numerous dirty moves to get that building.

People had so many awkward reservations and principles, that we had to make several polls just to take one small city from the Zulus.
as part of DG5 sort of emphathized with the small binary creatures that inhabited Civ-land. Actually, I still laugh when I think of DG5, how weird and fun it really was. Heck, I even miss my nemesis from that game.

For this game? It has more turned to become a principal debate on polls, rules, citizen rights, conventions, moral upper hand and so on. The gameplay and fun aspect is totally forgotten. If I was into the civil rights movement, I would probably sharing the buss seat with Rosa Parks (well, I do support civil liberties, I just find activism boring) and going to rallies near the National Monument, not playing this demogame.

The problem is that Civ4 is frankly a more challenging game, so subplots and metagames do not really have that much room, but surprisingly enough, it is quite big this game. I think the reason why is the cartoonish constitution, but that is a personal opinion. The Demogame 5 constitution, was for all its flaws, much more gamer friendly and interesting than this one.

The only addition of note I like is the DP institute, which is a good advancement.

I think this game frankly needs a war, not more hollow building and debating, and we got the tools to do it. I am not even a warlord, but would like someone to produce a few juicy plans to do this, and I back them.

 

[grant2004]

[*]Attack doesn't start until we formed 2-3 offensive battlegroups, 1 at Arpinium and 1 at Dortmund

Do these battle groups require additional production of units?

If producing units and bringing them to the front takes 7 or more turns there is no reason to attack with a medieval army, because by that time we should be able to (assuming the fastest tech path is approved) upgrade all of our knights to cavalry and use them as the primary attack force supported by remaining medieval units.

 

[Hyronymus]

I think we could do with some more infantry but to be honest I thin Provolution has a better eye for such things.

 

[fed1943]

I support total war on Romans and start it as soon as possible.

Best regards,

 

[grant2004]

Oh, just looked at the save again, it appears the Romans have two double city defense crossbowmen in one of their border cities, I don't know if this will be a trend throughout the empire (we should send some more missionaries) but those will be the most formidable defenders we've faced because in addition to their +45% city defense they have a +50% against mellee, the majority of our attacking force at the moment. Whether we attack before or after a cavalry upgrade we need to make sure that mounted units are the ones chosen for attacking that city.

 

[dutchfire]

Oh, just looked at the save again, it appears the Romans have two double city defense crossbowmen in one of their border cities, I don't know if this will be a trend throughout the empire (we should send some more missionaries) but those will be the most formidable defenders we've faced because in addition to their +45% city defense they have a +50% against mellee, the majority of our attacking force at the moment. Whether we attack before or after a cavalry upgrade we need to make sure that mounted units are the ones chosen for attacking that city.

As I said before, their defences shouldn't be underestimated. I firmly believe that attacking them now will lead to significant casualties. That's why I would prefer a short (it was 7 turns, wasn't it?) wait for Cavalry. That will dramatically reduce our losses. The best thing about Cavalry is that they also get a 30% retreat bonus (more with flanking promotions).

 

[grant2004]

I believe Cavalry actually turns out to be 8 turns, I had simply added the turns before, rather than constructing a tech path in game, rounding adds another turn.

Also another bonus of waiting for cavalry is that we'll have to also research gunpowder, if these city defense crossbowmen are common in roman cities musketmen promoted form our current macemen would seem more capable of defeating them.

 

[Joe Harker]

I don't think you can promote macemen to musketmen, you certainly can't in BTS

Mine you cavalry would be a big bonus and make the war so much easier

 

[dutchfire]

I don't think you can promote macemen to musketmen, you certainly can't in BTS

Mine you cavalry would be a big bonus and make the war so much easier

Correct, macemen upgrade to Riflemen/Grenadiers. Nothing promotes to musketmen.

Mind you, it's way more economical to build new units from scratch than to upgrade them (unless they have a lot of promotions).

 

[DaveShack]

I think archery units promote to muskets, but don't have the game open to check.

 

[Provolution]

the 7 turn, or as you say 8 turn limit is a misnomer, since we are talking about actually grouping the units (takes time), building the right mix of units and fit this into the build queue (takes time) and fitting new research goals to fit army (takes time). This 7-8 turn campaign as I would call it, is more because of love of horses than of hate of Romans, and I would argue that our forces, correctly placed with enough catapults and so on would do a good job for some limited objectives. I would like to reiterate that this war, with shorter supply lines than the next war, would require a buik of our infantry, and yes, the infantry will serve us for the rest of the game much more than cavalry does, so we are back to the infantry based army with some cavalry, not the other way around.

 

[DaveShack]

We have 1200g, so we can afford quite a few upgrades. Build knights and upgrade to cavs if we want a better mixture.

 

[Provolution]

I also think upgrading mostly knights to cavalry would be the key, but also do the same with spearmen to pikemen.

The advantage with upgrades, is that we can upgrade the knights before the attack on Dortmund to knights. I guess the most experienced Roman troops are there, so we may as well send them there.

That said, we need to produce some infantry the next turns, so we can have the two-three infantry-based battle groups ready.

 

[dutchfire]

I think archery units promote to muskets, but don't have the game open to check.

They don't

Upgrading Knights could be done, but if we want to upgrade, City Raider Riflemen can do serious damage.