Preparing for a possible invasion.

[zyxy]

Workers use up attacks but do not block landings. This is really a last resort IMO.

Niklas: the workers are building a road on a coastal mountain and the others are going to the NW corner in an attempt to conenct our towns up there. I'll have another crew build a mountain pass.

EDIT: the mountain N of The New Yard seems stronger than the gems one.

Do we need some time to discuss? The 24 hr time limit is just a bit too early for me to play tomorrow, but I can easily ask a few hrs extension.

 

[tomasjj]

Workers use up attacks but do not block landings. This is really a last resort IMO.

Yeah, probably so. But I'd rather lose a couple of workhands than getting a decent city razed by the vermin.

 

[Aigburth]

I quite like the earlier idea of putting a worker in the coast block to lure them into a place we want them to land, leaving a gap looks intentional and a trap however a worker might just fool them.

 

[General_W]

Worker swarm has got to be a last resort imo.

However, I agree with Aigburth - the gap where we want them to land will look more convincing with a worker in it.

 

[peter grimes]

I quite like the earlier idea of putting a worker in the coast block to lure them into a place we want them to land

Yes! Beat them at their own game, so to speak

But I really am not too comfortable letting that happen if we don't have a swarm of catapults to decimated their health before our Ancient Cavalry attack their landed stack

 

[cubsfan6506]

You can land on workers.

 

[tomasjj]

I am not suggesting that we just throw all workers in their face, but more like using them as a decoy/magnet/block when we are short of options and need to buy some time to get units closer.
Or like Aigburth suggests, use them cunningly along the coast.

 

[cubsfan6506]

I believe that if we let them land this game is lost.

 

[donsig]

Remember the possibility that they will try to land before turn 129 but not attack or declare war. I think it is ok to use workers to block on turns 126 and 127 if need be. I assume BABE can't land on one of our workers without declaring war and they won't do that until turn 129 or 130.

In light of the astronomy versus gold from FREE letter I suggest we hold off on upgrading slow moving units if we can. I'd rather let FREE finish astronomy and then send us what gold they owe us. In the mean time I'd only use gold to rush horses and shore up the defenses on the northern island (rush walls and a harbor or enough warriors to block the island).

We definately want to prevent a BABE landing if we can.

 

[cubsfan6506]

If they land without declaring war we should attack. I also think we should post in the U.N that any units landed in our territory will result in a declaration of War. I like the idea of moveing units into the mountains.

 

[Paul#42]

I too would not upgrade slow units, rather use that gold to rush horses.
It would take too long to upgrade and get them to the coast.
Slow units should block unroaded tiles.

We must be extremely cautious when we prepare a trap, watch for ship chaining and other surprises. We need like double the number of units to attack the invasion force and must still maintain the rolling barricade for the remaining fleet.

If we direct the fleet to the north, we should buidl and rush some warriors on the islands as they are the cheapest blockers. And there are several unroaded spots to block. And our harbor towns should build a couple of galleys to keep that naval battle option - but no rushing galleys.

On astronomy: I'd really like FREE to get it soon - but would they really launch an attack on BABE?
The only to do such an attack are we - but we won't have the spare units.

What if BABE just surrounds all continents to spread some fear and slow down the overall tech pace?

edit:
@cubsfan: I don't like our horses & ACs on unroaded mountains at all! It can be crucial that our units have more then 1.0 moves so they can still move after the attacked.
And: You are not supposed to move ANY units in the game unless you are the turnplayer. You are only allowed to do changes you can revert on the same turn, i.e. micromanaging or moving sliders. No moving, no worker actions. Please do not do that again.

I like the idea to block empty tiles with a worker - just to prevent a undowed landing. Just if we have too few units to maintain the complete block. WE want the war happiness.

 

[cubsfan6506]

Perhaps after this a great Saber Free and Council armada.

 

[AutomatedTeller]

Taking a look at the save, I noticed a few things:

The Chamber is building a colloseum, and should stop - that has to be switched to a barracks or a musket.
We can micro-manage that to produce 20 spt, if we want, and create 2 turn MDI or 3 turn muskets, or micromanage it to get the most money (by using water) and make 2 turn horses. I'm ok with 2 turn MDI, as we can use them to handle invasions in our core.
We should think about turning our worker factories to build military, as well, though they may not make enough SPT for that.
We have lots of workers who can be set up to build forts along our internal road structure.
We have unclaimed tiles - 1 of which is to our west. Theoretically, that is neutral land and BABE has a right to land there. I do not believe we can allow that to happen - should we poll our allies as to how they would view a landing on unowned land on our island?
Also, in the Silo...
should we rush a court and try to micromanage it to produce 2 turn horses? WIth a court, the corruption is capped at 90% and if we micromanage, we should be able to get 15 SPT out of it.

 

[Paul#42]

The Chamber is building a colloseum, and should stop - that has to be switched to a barracks or a musket.

But we have to build Cope's somewhere. Should we rather switch The Treasury to Cope's? It's probably okay if we just delay Cope's build by ~5 turns in The Chamber - but if it might take longer, I'd prefer to waste 50 shields in The Treasury...
Second advantage would be that TT could also build 2-turn-horses...

We can micro-manage that to produce 20 spt, if we want, and create 2 turn MDI or 3 turn muskets, or micromanage it to get the most money (by using water) and make 2 turn horses.

horses sounds better for me. Offense is the best defense.

We should think about turning our worker factories to build military, as well, though they may not make enough SPT for that.

Against. Workers are still very important, we need more roads and less jungle.

We have lots of workers who can be set up to build forts along our internal road structure.

I'm not used to playing with forts (never build one ). Are they of value if we don't want BABE's to run around anyway? Roads seem better to me.

We have unclaimed tiles - 1 of which is to our west. Theoretically, that is neutral land and BABE has a right to land there. I do not believe we can allow that to happen - should we poll our allies as to how they would view a landing on unowned land on our island?

No need, we have to block it!
At least with a worker.

Also, in the Silo...
should we rush a court and try to micromanage it to produce 2 turn horses? WIth a court, the corruption is capped at 90% and if we micromanage, we should be able to get 15 SPT out of it.

Can we reach 15spt?
A court won't help that because exactly the 15th shield is lost (at 10% waste) with or without court (at 16%). At 14 or 16spt it would gain a shield
It seems a better investment to me to shortrush horses there... Can we build any 20d-builds? No Walls... Explorers come with Astro? I finally found a reason to get that tech quickly

 

[AutomatedTeller]

well, we can get to 17 SPT by taking tiles from other cities and working forests. Heck, we can mine plains - we have a bunch of workers off clearing jungle now.

 

[peter grimes]

I know that we have the capability to train 15 horses next turn... but what about catapults?

The more catapults we have, the easier it will be to reduce the strength of Babe's stack. I'd hate for us to inadvertently promote several of Babe's units during the initial onslaught, and catapults will really reduce that risk.

 

[Paul#42]

But catapults are too slow. If BABE does not take our first bait as a landing spot, we will have trouble to follow their forces.

And they have a bad hitting ratio. Trebs are just slightly better.
Yet I like them too, they don't need rax and they upgrade to H'watchas.
But I doubt they will be useful before railroads.

As a compromise, we could rush 5 trebs in the towns north of the currently threatened area. How about that?

 

[donsig]

I'd rather build horses than catapults if there is still a chance of preventing a landing. The rolling blockade can shift one tile west and the landing zone can be blocked another turn though we'll have to use 2 workers.

For now I would continue on with Sistine's in The Treasury and switch The Chamber over to military. We can figure out where Cope's will go after the threat has passed.

Spend the 500+ gold to rush horses. Other ideas:

• Perhaps we should also rush the walls in The Lookout for 32g.
• We can have two warriors in the one-tile islands for 20g and two shields wasted. Not sure whether they should go to the northern island or the mainland.
• We could forego the library in The Greenhouse and rush a galley for 24g. Either that or waste 4 shields for a spear. Could then build/rush warriors there.
• I'd let the library finish in Chamsuri's Cove or even rush it for 20g. The border expansion would help.
• Not sure what is best for The Chamber. We'd finish a musket or temple in one. Also a barracks but that would waste 9 shields. I think I lean towards the musket.
• Horses would be rushed in: The Admirlaty (76g), The Igloo (will finish w/o rushing), The Silo (80g), The Institute (40g), The Areie (90g), The Aboretum (64g), The Meeting Room (60g), The New Yard (will finish w/o rushing), The Nursery (56g), The Pier (will finish w/o rushing), The Marina (16g), The Lodge (60g), The Shallows (108g), The Black Seal (116g). That's 14 for 766g! I'd forego the one in The Shallows way up north. That's 13 for 658g.

If we spend 658 for horses, 32 for walls, 20g for warriors, 24 for a galley and 20g for the library that's 754g out of 1238g which leaves 484g. We can shut off research and make 144gpt. If we let Free continue researching they can finish astronomy in 4 then they could work on chemistry and metallurgy.

We can currenly get chemistry in 5 turns with a 29gpt deficit. Four turns of 70% reseach then costs us 112g leaving us with 372g. However, with 16 more military units building next turn we incur an additional 32gpt in unit costs. Over five turns that is 160g. So this would make our margin 212g plus what we could make by reducing research the turn before getting chemistry plus what FREE and SABER would send us. This puts us in a position of limited rushing while we research our way to our unique unit.

I think it's better to turn off research and let FREE research for us. Here's where building ToE comes in. FREE gets us to metalurgy so we can concentrate on fending off BABE and then we repay them for the MAAP II imbalance by building ToE for the alliance.

 

[zyxy]

Location of BABE galleys on turn 126:

(NB: this is a composition of two images, one before our galley moved and one after). Total number of BABE galleys is 12. We have only one here.

 

[General_W]

I agree with building horses over catapults/trebs for now.
Since we're short on units, and BABE can spread their galleys out all over, we desperately need the flexibility that horses offer.

I see Donsig's point about FREE doing the research, but I think it would be better for us to get the gold and do it ourselves. As zyxy noted elsewhere, we should certainly finish Chemistry, as we're nearly there anyway, and I'd personally rather have the gold and the flexibility to make the decision on the pace of researching Metallurgy ourselves without having to get FREE's agreement on it.

Donsig's gold analysis is all well and good, until we start losing units and need to start rushing even more units with even fewer shields built up in our cities bins. The potential exists for things to get very ugly and very expensive very quickly.

If all goes well, then fine – we'll spend FREE's gold on researching Metallurgy.
If all goes badly, then I'd like to have the gold already in hand to rush units.

It may not be the most efficient, but it IS the most flexible… and I think that's vastly more important right now.