Emperor Domination

[Melior Traiano]

Lurker's comment:

Nappy's canceling the Ivory deal must mean he's researched Industrialism. And since he has SAM troops, he's probably working on Apollo, which will be sped up by Aluminum, which is now revealed. And he only needs Flight to mass upgrade his Cavalry to Gunships. It's an uphill fight, but I think you guys have to go mano a mano with him to make sure he doesn't run away with the space race. He's ahead at least Rocketry & Industrialism already and the tech gap will probably get bigger instead of smaller because he's gonna be building Labs once Computers are researched.

As far as the actual warfighting is concerned, I think you guys should keep your main army around Carthage to fight a defensive campaign to whittle down Nappy's forces while a secondary army starts a campaign through America from day 1 of the war. It's getting late in the game, so might as well get a jump on capturing territory if there's not gonna be heavy resistance. I'm guessing GW will not be fielding Gunships by the time you invade, so your Panzers can capture the American cities pretty easily & rack up some nice XP along the way. By the time you capture most of the American cities, all forces should be ready to go over to the offensive & you can attack Nappy from both the west & the north.

BTW, maybe if you specify a city for Nappy to target, he might build actually build some transports & ship some of his troops out? Not sure if that'll work, but it can't hurt to try.

 

[lasombra]

hmmm, we need money to mass upgrade our cannons to artillery.

something must have gone utterly wrong with our diplomacy. I think we were too opportunistic in our trades. we should not have traded much with GW and nappy. but what's done is done and I just wanted to point it out for future games. (didn't mean to rant)

we should maximize food in sparta, so that we can keep drafting at least there. we need much more infantry, don't know how to get them though.

so do we agree on taking out nappy? i think that this is our best shot.

we need to figure out what kind of troops GW has. if they're not well diversified we can just go mop him up with cannons and some infantry support. I like melior's split stack suggestion.

yeah, let's tech to panzers...

I'd say declare war rather sooner than later, because our window is closing I think. it's not going to get much better any time soon. so make sure, we have enough railroads to move troops and then lets rock!

can we generate a merchant? would be really helpful with the money. but then again we can't ship him overseas anyways.

 

[Giaur]

We are taking Nappy for very long time. Declare war finally ...

 

[futurehermit]

I agree that a merchant would be good. We could always ship him to Mehmed's lands.

The way I see it, we have two options.

1) Field a navy and attack Genghis then Mehmed. Our power is on par with theirs so we should be able to fight them. Then use spies to try and keep Nappy from winning space.

2) Attack Nappy. If we go this route...if we declare now I think we're going to get smoked. Nappy has an incredible amount of troops, which will soon be upgraded yet again as mentioned. My sense is that if we attack Nappy, we will want to do it post-nukes. Have you guys seen that deity game that involved using nukes to create an ENORMOUS drop in power (the drop on the power graph was phenomenal). That is what I'm thinking here. Nuke his key cities, with the most troops, into the ground and then mop up with our army. I think that is our best shot to take him.

 

[johnny_rico]

I haven't seen the game in so long, it is difficult to make suggestions. I think the best idea is to backstab napoleon after he is at war with someone else. We do need to get cracking though. The delay only makes things more difficult for us.

Presently, Nappys military seems insurmountable but if we can get him to ship a chunk off to genghis and/or mehmed and weather the initial storm of what is left, he'll cave.

I'm not so certain I like the idea of separating forcing in a flanking effort. Washington serves as a nice buffer. Maybe it would be better to make sure Nappy and GW have closed borders so nappy can't use his turf for mobilizing his army.

If all goes well, we hit nappy where it hurts, sue for peace and technologies, beat GW into submission, and then pick it back up with nappy. We're probably going to need to double our real estate in a short order of time. Not to mention all the whipping and drafting can't be helping our popluation %age.

 

[futurehermit]

1) Washington is still a vassal of Nappy

2) Nappy has no transport boats of any kind

 

[Galileo44]

I am right now working on a game with the same settings, Freddy, standard, normal, continents and have finally launched my late-game war. I am very impressed by the power of bombers, as they will decimate any stack and allow your troops to move quite quickly through your opponent, just 2 and four move troops, no waiting for artillary. I think that getting flight/radio for bombers is a good goal as well. And nice turnset futurehermit.

 

[Melior Traiano]

Lurker's comment:

Not to mention all the whipping and drafting can't be helping our popluation %age.

That's actually something to keep an eye on, as you might end up in a situation where you need to capture more cities not to get over the land limit, but to get over the pop limit.

Also, working through some projections for where you guys will be techwise vs Nappy, I'm guessing by the time you field Panzers, he'll have Gunships. But if you DoW before he gets close to Gunships, he'll probably send a bunch of Cavalry after you, so you can preempt the mass upgrade. I'm guessing the window where you have Artillery but Nappy doesn't have Flight yet is going to be the closest to tech parity you will get. If you want to have the chance to take out Nappy's Cavalry before they become Gunships, there simply won't be enough time to build up a secondary army to take on GW. And Utica will be a defensive liability, because if Nappy goes after that city, he can march his forces right next to it & attack without pausing. Losing Utica might not be all bad though, as you might wipe out a lot of his troops when you retake the city.

Looking ahead, I'm not so sure the Nukes will necessarily be a silver bullet. As soon as the Manhattan Project is built, Nappy will put up Bomb Shelters. And he'll build SDI when Satellites are researched. Also, if he retaliates with his own Nukes, things can get pretty ugly. I'm not sure the big payoff will be there for you guys from researching Fission & investing the production to build the bomb project & then the actual Nukes. By the time you have a stockpile of Nukes to launch, Nappy might have SDI built already.

I think Flight & Radio will probably be the most useful techs after Industrialism. The long reach of Bombers & the fact that they aren't throwaway units like Artillery makes me think that they're the best investment in terms of research & production.

Also, if you can get Spies to knock out Nappy & GW's oil, that will make a huge difference. So much so that it'll be worthwhile to get Communism & do whatever you need to do to make sure the Spies have enough cash to make sabotage attempts.

 

[lilnev]

1) Taking all of Nappy's lands, plus those of Washington and the scraps that Alex has left will not be enough for domination. We'll still need to go overseas.
2) Taking all of Ghengis' and Mehmed's land will not be enough for domination. We'll still need to fight Nappy/Washington.

Conclusion: We have to fight two wars, one against a superior foe and one overseas. I think we should fight Nappy first, and soon. If we go overseas first, Nappy will just win. If we wait until nukes before making a move, I don't think we'll have time. I think on my turnset, I should turn off research to upgrade cannons->artillery. We've got 31 cannons and 40-some infantry. Once half the cannons are upgraded (four or five turns into my turnset I expect), I'll declare, planning to fight entirely defensively for the rest of my turns. I don't think we have enough force to field an offensive stack and play defence at the same time. Meanwhile I'll ramp up production as fast as I can -- coal plants in the cities that don't have them yet, emphasizing food to grow onto more tiles, converting hills back to railroaded mines. The production graph actually scares me a lot more than the power graph at this point -- Nappy has an even larger advantage, though I think we can regain some ground quickly. I'll take peace with Ghengis if I can get it. If I finish upgrading, I'll head for Industrialism.

Sound like a plan?

peace,
lilnev

 

[vra379971]

Could not have said it better myself lilnev.

Eulalia!

 

[futurehermit]

Sounds good to me. Nappy's empire being mostly farms and hammers make me think that he has been copying how I play

I still think we should target nukes sooner rather than later. If we want to do it after industrialism, that's fine, but they can make a huge difference. If I wasn't so lazy, I would find the link to that deity game I keep talking about...

 

[johnny_rico]

Sounds good to me. Nappy's empire being mostly farms and hammers make me think that he has been copying how I play

I still think we should target nukes sooner rather than later. If we want to do it after industrialism, that's fine, but they can make a huge difference. If I wasn't so lazy, I would find the link to that deity game I keep talking about...

Stop being lazy. I'd like to see it. Of course, me not going out and finding it myself has nothing to do with lazy.

lilnev, you're ideas sound solid to me. I'm glad the group has come around to deciding an overseas invasion is not the best course of action. If Napoleon goes undisturbed, he wins the game.

 

[vra379971]

I've done The Internet gambit personally in my last Monarch Mastery game.

It's safe to say that when the last tech rolled in I'd bankrolled about 100 to 200k in gold. The extra money allowed to pretty easily defeat the three civs who'd declared on me.

 

[Melior Traiano]

Lurker's comment:

I still think we should target nukes sooner rather than later. If we want to do it after industrialism, that's fine, but they can make a huge difference. If I wasn't so lazy, I would find the link to that deity game I keep talking about...

If you were thinking of http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=215169, bear in mind that in that game, the AIs were still researching things like Physics & Electricity when they started getting nuked. So no Bomb Shelters. In this game, it's almost certain Nappy will put up Bomb Shelters soon after the Manhattan Project is done. While it's true you can trip up his teching & production by spreading fallout, I'm dubious that you'll do much to degrade his Power.

 

[johnny_rico]

the only way I think the nukes work are to have rocketry first, research fission, and have a engineer available to build the manhattan project (or contribute to it). I think it is possible at that point to have some nukes before bomb shelters are up. The other possibility (ok there are two) is to build the nukes and nuke his stacks outside of his cities. No protection in the open field. We'll need more workers to scrub the fallout. It would be funny if your workers could become mutants.

 

[futurehermit]

hmm...well if that is the case with nukes then i am really concerned about our chances going forward. i scouted his lands a lot during my turn and he has loads of advanced troops. plus, when we declare on him, GW is going to add his meager troops to that pile. plus we have to be concerned with Genghis re-declaring at some point...

i agree we have to attack nappy. the question is...is there anything we can do to win vs nappy? even if we can get tech parity, or close to it, say via internet, his production is also outrageous...

 

[lasombra]

do as you suggested lilnev. let's get going. If we die, we die I'd say rather sooner than later, because it's not gonna get any better. and if nappy doesn't have navy we don't have to worry about our inward cities.

 

[Giaur]

I totally agree. Let's bunker ourselves. Let Nappy move first.

 

[futurehermit]

Alright let's do it. If we go down, let's go down swinging.

 

[lasombra]

as they say: Grab death by the balls and go down swingin'