CTR1 -- Jump Without Looking (the Deity Virgin Sacrifice)

[mad-bax]

Silly me.

Looking at the save Boston is the best place for a new palace IMO.

Attacking England is going to be quite tricky. The obvious landing point is near Canterbury. However, this city is on hills, and likely to be size 7 by the time we get there. The terrain between Canterbury and London and York is really bad for an offensive campaign, but it does border with the Iroquios.

Norwich has spices and is a long way from the capital. I think this would make a good place for the second front. If we can deprive England of spices, keep thim in democracy and prolong their war agaist the Iroquois this would be good.

Strategically, we need to take York and Nottingham (Horses and wines).

So I would include a couple of explorers in with the first attack force to pillage the salpetre south of Canterbury. I would send a dozen Cav against Norwich (about 30 miles from my house ). But I would revise my estimate upward for the attack against Canterbury from 12 to 18 Cav and 2 explorers. The Elite Sams should reinforce the second front against Norwich, which will have weaker defences and should give a greater yield of great leaders.

I would not sign an alliance against the English with the Iroquois as they will probably be our next target and they will be on the menu long before that deal runs out.

The war against the English will be make or break for us I think.

Good luck Space:

 

[ChrTh]

@mad-bax: Flips? To whom? The Indians destroyed the Americans

 

[ChrTh]

A couple things:
If we don't want to build Cav (rather build Sams), then just disconnect the Saltpeter.
But do we have Military Tradition? I didn't see any mention of it.

I still don't like the idea of War with England...I'd rather take out the Indians first...but as long as they're fighting Persia, I rather not intervene. Why don't we want to take the Iroqi again?

 

[a space oddity]

Yeah, we do have Mil Trad, so do the English BTW. They are the tech leaders. I was contemplating disconnecting the saltpeter, mainly for allowing us to build cheap pikes to replace the sams that are defending the new cities.

We want to take them out before the Iroqs because we'd sit on an island with a weak rather than with a strong civ. But this is an SG, we need to agree on the tactics here. Either we continue the warmongering for a bit or we turtle up and start building. I'm rather new at warmongering so I'm willing to try a bit more, but I'm inexperienced at it too, so it's a risk..

 

[Earp]

1. Normally, I would leave the sams in the border cities and upgrade them to cavalry after we get nationalism and build riflemen. I think it better to build 80 shield cavalry than 60 shield muskets. The samurai defend as well as muskets.

2. Boston looks like a good site to me. How many turns would it take to hand build it? We should not upgrade the elite Sams and fish for leaders against England.

3. Buying temples and building workers is a very good idea. I am not sure if all of the corrupt cities need temples. If border expansion of a neighboring city is enough to fill in the gaps, maybe the city does not need a temple.

 

[a space oddity]

Originally posted by Earp
1How many turns would it take to hand build it?

Oh, just a mere 490 turns

Thing with my first point is, if we *are* going to war against England we need to rally our attacking forces and waiting for nationalism will put England in too strong a position. So that's why I am considering disconnecting the saltpeter and build pikes. I'm a bit nervous about it though so that's why I wanted to discuss it.

 

[mad-bax]

ChrTh:

You are right. The conventional wisdom would be to take out the Indians. This is slightly more palatable now since they do not have MT. But, remember, their military is stronger than ours and they are on the same landmass. Also they have no techs for us to extort. They do have the Pyramids though.

The English are at war with the Iroqs. If we join in against the English they will be comparatively weak. The risk to us is low as they will not be good at crossing the water to attack us, and will be too busy against us and the Iroqs to try.

We could just take a deep breath, and use the fact that we are not at war with anyone to build our way to a tech lead. But this has risks. If one of the warring civs begins to win against their enemy, they will become huge. The English are the most likely to do this as they share the same landmass with their foes.

The easiest thing to do is nothing and try to build to a win. The English and Persians have better territory than us and their cities are better developed. Long term I think we'd lose.

The Simplest expansion strategy is to take out the Iroqs. Apart from land, they have nothing to offer and our corrupt new lands will be on the same landmass as the most dangerous civ.

The conventional route would be to build a Cavalry army and rid "our" landmass of the Indians. Since their military is strong, and they have the pyramids, and better lands and a more developed core, this is doable but will be drawn out and painful.

If we take on the English we can take 6 cities. Canterbury, York, London, Norwich and two others (can't remember their names). This will finish the English. We get Wines, spices and 3 techs in addition. We then take out the Iroqs. Sure it's risky and difficult. So if people feel it's not a good idea then that's fine by me.

We are at a kind of crossroads, and I think we need to lay out exactly what we are going to do over the next 40 turns or so before we start to meander aimlessly to a loss. I think that Space should sit on her hands for a couple of days and wait for this decision process to be chewed over by everyone.

Whats the English saying about singing from the same hymn sheet?

I don't want to drive the process here, It's just that my style of play always relies on a plan. Whatever the plan is I'll support it 100%, but I do want a plan.

 

[Earp]

I am all for having a plan.

I like the 'attack the English' plan better than the 'attack the Indians', or 'sit and build' plan. We will never be able to out build the AI on diety. I think one of our advantages is our ability to launch an invasion and wage war overseas.

If we decide on the 'attack the English' plan, we need to think about the make-up, timing, and location of our invasion and what our goal will be. How many cavalry do we need? 20? How many cannons? 0? How many muskets? 0? How many explorers? 2? How many Galleons? 6? When will we invade? As soon as our force is ready? Where will we invade? Near Cantebury? Is our goal the six English cities mentioned above? Will we be sending ovre re-inforcements?

 

[a space oddity]

Like I said I'd like to go warmonger too, just to see how far you can go, even coming from a hole like that . The masters at the game say upgrading cheap units is cheaper than building expensive ones. I think this is even more true with the level of corruption we're having now.

Samurai -> Cavalry is 20g each
Pike -> Musket is 60 each (but pikes are ok for now too)
We have 222 in our coffers, and making 118gpt. Buying Temples will cost us too but we could limit those.

How about signing an ROP with the Iroqs? That way we could land safely and make use of our fast units. The English are bound to have boats that will be a treat we have to consider too. You know, that famous Man-o-War (which comes with magnetism and needs iron and saltpeter BTW so definitely take out Canterbury that has both).

 

[ChrTh]

All the negative nancies! I have proof that one can win on Deity without fighting a single battle! (I'll post that in Stories & Tales tomorrow) ... that being said, now that there has been some semblance of justification and strategy laid out, I am in support of war against Liz.

However, I would suggest we give mad-bax the honor Space and I should probably reconstitute and build our forces. I suggest the following attack approach: Cavalry in the fore to decimate a city's defense, followed immediately behind by Samurai to take/hold the city. Any suggestions on how many we should have of each (including boats) before Operation Bangers And ?

And what is the english saying about singing from the same hymn sheet?

 

[mad-bax]

pink spot = landing point 1
Orange spot = landing point 2
Cyan Spots= targeted cities
White squares = pillaging target

Two points of attack. Norwich and Canterbury.

Norwich: Attack with 8 cavalry and 4 Elite Samurai initially. Reinforce with 8 Cavalry on Second turn of war. Take Norwich (thus disconnecting spices). Rush Temple and get spices inside city radius. Move troops to Newcastle and reinforce there with the following 8 Cavalry before taking city.

Canterbury: Attack starts 1 turn later than Norwich, so we can declare war nicely. Attack with 12 Cavalry, 2 Elite Samurai and 2 explorers. Explorers go to saltpetre and pillage it. 2 required in case first fails. But should be able to do it in one turn. Risk of enemy unit on tile. Take Canterbury then proceed to mountain. Attack London from mountain in conjunction with Norwich Forces.

Reinforce with 4 Cavalry near Canterbury.

Consolidated forces take York and then Warwick. This is necessary to get new English Capital in Coventry and reduce flipping probability.

We will then own all the good English terrain. So we are looking at 32 Cavalry and 6 Elite Sams and 2 explorers. We will then need 6 riflemen (which we will be able to build by then) to garrison these cities.

We should be able to generate a leader for the palace jump if we use the Sams against weakened defenders.

Wha'dya think guys?

My apologies, I forgot to resize the image.

 

[mad-bax]

I forgot that we have Magellans. so we can start the attacks simultaneously. Result!

 

[ChrTh]

Bad post...move along...nothing to see here...

 

[Earp]

What is the advantage of landing SE of Canterbury instead of N of Canterbury?

Do we want to split up our invasion force?

I kind of like the idea of signing a ROP with the Iroquois and launching the attack from their territory. I'll work on an alternate plan using a ROP.

 

[ChrTh]

Two things:

1) I think we should take Hastings in order to have a southern coastal city for launching naval attacks from that direction (against the rest of England)
2) We should try to get Leeds and the city North of it as part of peace; if we can't, we might want to take them on our own

 

[a space oddity]

Mad, did you take into consideration the English already know Nationalism? They are at war now and already producing mil units. Does anyone know how long they've been at war? How recent is the map? It seems to me they haven't hurt each other much yet.

So, back to the building plan:
a. Hurry temples, start workers in corrupt cities.
b. Start cavs in Rax cities and use Sams as defensive units. We postpone markets and banks... but go ahead with aquaducts.
c. Upgrade vet samurai that are not needed for defense.
d. Build and time galleons, they need to be ready at the same time as our troops.

The attack plan seems solid. Too bad our troops don't have a good defensive terrain between Norwich an Newcastle. We do need to send in some defense too. We can use the roads once the town is ours.

 

[ChrTh]

@space: Sams provide just as good defense as Muskets, so if we don't extend our Cavs too far past our Sams, we should be ok on that front

 

[Earp]

Here is an alternate plan attacking from Iroquois territory.

I tried to end each turn on defensive terrain and not attack across rivers. I think we should group our forces for the attack on London.

 

[mad-bax]

Originally posted by Earp
What is the advantage of landing SE of Canterbury instead of N of Canterbury?

If we land on the iron we can get to the mountain south of Canterbury in one turn. The iron is on a hill. Splitting our forces is good in terms of being able to attack 2 cities in one go and depriving the English of Spices. They won't be happy. Also the plan is that the forces will combine in 3 turns to attack London.

Space: Yes, nationalism is a bummer. Depriving the English of Saltpetre will only prevent them building Cavalry, not Riflemen. They will also be able to conscript riflemen in all their pop 7 and over cities. It's scary, but I had to do it in the Spanish game. The AI rarely attacked me with riflemen as they are considered a defensive unit, but a little RNG luck either way makes a big difference. Your building plan is exactly what we need to do until we have 9 Galleons (six for initial assault and 3 for reinforcements). But delay is death. The feeling of security we get from having riflemen in all our home cities pales compared to the sick feeling in the gut you get when you attack a city only to find you run out of units leaving a single red lined archer in charge of your city.

ChrTh: We can take those cities too. I only highlighted the pop 12 cities because we need to relocate the English capital somewhere sensible for us. The other cities you mention (along with Nottingham) are strategically important.

Earp: An ROP with the Iroqs would allow us to attack from their territory and would give us an advantage for one turn. But we would be attacking a pop 12 city defended with (from experience) 1 vet rifleman, 3 Pikes and an archer. I think that this would be rather like trying to eat the elephant. Also we would have to wait 20 turns before turning on the Iroqs (wouldn't we?). However, we don't have to attack the Iroqs in the next 20 turns. We could take Liverpool and Nottingham and relocate our capital in London.
The reason I am reluctant to do this is because the Pyramids are in Paris. At some point they will be ours, and they will only give us granaries on our home continent. A capital oversees would then be less appealing. Having said that, I think your plan is good and would have no problem putting it into practice.

The Elite Sams would have a defensive role in my idea (better than cavalry) as ChrTh says. I don't expect my plan to be the one we go with, it was just meant to provoke discussion - which it has

 

[a space oddity]

I'd like our capital to stay on our continent. I think we're better of with one strong core. The American lands are not that bad. The other advantage would be that the AI will always see our southern cities as weaker, keeping our core far from the fighting zone. This would be good for a Space Victory (can't help -ing when I write this...)

Of course now we'll have to face the other decision, what is our ultimate goal? Space or Dominition? If it's the latter then it could be better move the capital to London.

I kinda like the idea of dominition from where we were...

edit: we still have a deal with Lizzy that lasting 14 more turns, so it'll be Mad's last turn where he can make the move . And we still have to hear from SHard and Wanderer how they feel about the England war.