SGOTM 15 - One Short Straw

[Mitchum]

Nice work, LC! You set Dhoom up nicely to take all the glory in capturing Osoka/Kyoto.

If no one objects, I'm thinking of having the freedom to clear-cut any and all remaining Forests within our Cultural Borders and put them into Military Units.

Well, how many axes/cats/spears do we really need after we capture Osaka and Kyoto? The reason I ask is two-fold:

First, I was under the impression that we'd stop fighting for a spell after capturing Osaka and Kyoto, threatening Tokyo, and getting Alpha and IW in a DoP. We could push on if we wanted, but both Hammy and Hatty seem to be a bit far away. Pushing on would be costly with respect to city maintenance, grinding our research to a halt. Plus, Hatty may be tough to reach if we have 10 turns of peace with Toku.

Second, we're about 20 turns away from Engineering/Machinery/IW. When we mobilize for war again, we're going to be mixing in trebs, swords and pikes in the mid term and maces or mounted units in the longer term. Having excess cats, axes and spears is just going to cause a drain on our economy and upgrading them will be costly.

We're 3 turns away from MC. I would propose that once we have enough units to safely capture Osaka/Kyoto and secure the NW, we start building infrastructure like forges and barracks instead of all-out unit production.


I noticed that the warrior is still fortified on the sheep tile. He may be better served on MP duty somewhere (i.e. GEL once our stack moves out).

 

[LowtherCastle]

We might need to capture Tokyo or Satsuma also to get Alpha and IW (and Archery) from Toku and we're going to lose a lot of units all together. That will bring our power down, but we should still get trade value because Toku's will also drop.

 

[LowtherCastle]

My analysis shows that we're likely to need at least 2 axes per defender in Kyoto, after attacking with 6 cats. We can have 12 axes and a spear ready to leave GEL on T86. That gives us enough for 6 defenders. But there's a problem. We're likely to lose 3 axes trying to kill the two archers in Osaka. That leaves us with only 9 axes (2 partially damaged from cleaning up Osaka) and a spear. So if Kyoto has six or more defenders, we'd come up short...

---

GEL gets the corn back on T82 in the test save.

Dhoom, when will you be putting together a PPP?

 

[Mitchum]

We are running short on time and have a lot of turns still to play. I think Dhoom should plan to play the first part of his turnset by Tuesday or Wednesday. I don't think we have time to optimize every beaker. I'd be fine with a high-level plan going forward detailing builds, general worker actions, troop movements, tech path, etc.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

1) Possibility of a naval assault from Hammy.

How much of an advance warning would we like to have, though? Is "no Coastal view by our units" sufficient time to react? Do we want a unit 1E of the Lake (i.e. leaving the chokepoint open but also being able to see at least some of the Coast squares to the west?

2) Spearmen for Toku, in case of Hatty dogpile.

I'd still feel safer with 2 Spearmen, but 1 will be the absolute minimum that I will want to go in with. It will probably be that we'll wound Archers, wound Axemen, re-wound the Archers, kill the Axemen, then kill the Archers, in that order, but I see what you're saying, so I'll go in with 1 Spearman.

The instant that Hatty declares war on us, though, I'll be building more Spearmen.

Barbs are now coming to attack us, because we withdrew the warrior from the choke point. Our axe can wait on the deer tile (or Zlat-W) and attack across the river any unpromoted barb warrior who arrives at the forested chokepoint for 2XP. This will rapidly get us our 10XP unit, which otherwise can take a long time. We just need to allow barbs to keep spawning.

Are Barbs currently on a "rush civilization" mode or will they just randomly come our way?

If I take a Combat promo with the Axeman, will doing so screw things up?

Should I have a second unit to guard the Axeman, such that if a second Barb unit is just to the NW of the chokepoint square, we won't risk dying in a counter-attack on the following turn?

If a Barb Archer or Spearman appears, how should I respond with our Axeman? Wait for the unit to enter our territory 1W of Zlatorog on the GRiv square?

Also, in regards to building a Road on that GRiv square 1W of Zlatorog... I forget... does the existence of a Camp mess up Forest-spreading? I believe that I tested it and that the answer was "yes, a Camped Forest cannot spread to another square," but I'm not 100% positive about that point. It will be nice to know, as it will be very useful to have a Road on the the GRiv 1W of Zlatorog as well as on the Deer, to give our Axeman the flexibility to make an attack and return to the Deer, should it turn out that we need to engage an Archer or Spearman on a square other than the GRiv For chokepoint square.

Actually, on that note, will a Barb even enter our Cultural Borders at this point? If not, then maybe a different approach will be needed if a Barb Spearman or Barb Archer appears.


Perhaps a compromise solution will be to keep the Axeman on the GRiv square that is 1SE of the Lake (2W of Zlatorog). From there, he can provide a bit of visibility on the Coast and can also see any unit that appears to the NW of the GRiv For chokepoint square... if it is a Barb Warrior, we can move 1NE onto the Deer, while if it is a Barb Spearman or Barb Archer, we can ___________ (please fill in the blank).

It would still be nice to have a second unit nearby to defend our Barb Attacker, but such a unit can probably come out a bit later.

2. I agree with ZPV. We have never seen a Hammy or any other wb come along the western coast. AIs ALWAYS send out scouting wbs. For Hammy to have an armada, he'd have to build it in a secondary city, which is possible not likely. Plus, I doubt AIs are even coded to create armadas when they have a land route. By all means, move our scouting axe westward to see the coast a bit, but don't worry about an armada. Worry about a 10XP unit.

Well, I'll want to keep the Axeman near Hammurabi "out of the way" of Barb units anyway, to avoid doing too much spawn-busting or too much kill of Barb units on his own (two 5 XP units are not the same as one 10 XP unit).

Perhaps there will be a position near the Coast that could spot either a land-based army or a sea-based one, but if there isn't such a square, then ensure that we spot a land-based army will be the position that gets used.

I played around with ending the turn a lot in the test game, and many AIs decleared war on their immediate neighbours, even though the world war running Buddhism as their State Religion, so it is very possible that Hammurabi has it out for someone else, instead. We shouldn't rely on this possibility, but it is a very real possibility.


Thanks for the explanation about what to look for on the Espionage screen. Essentially, if I am eyeing-up the Espionage costs on a turn-by-turn basis, I should get a feel for the relative increase in cost, so that I can re-spend on Hammuragawa ahead of us losing demographic data on him.

I recommend you put the warrior just southeast of the lake so you can see if a nasty archer is about to arrive. If so, Just send our axe to the choke point and the archer will either turn around or sucide itself at bad odds.

Okay, I guess that you have answered the Barb Archer question... would I do the same for a Barb Spearman? Or is a Barb Spearman supposed to be treated more like a Barb Warrior, just that perhaps I attack it on the Forested square but not across of a River, or something?

No finesse intended. I wanted a few axes in GEL for safety and in case we decided to quickly attack OSaka. Dhoom, note that GEL has a spear in the queue with 20/35h. I deliberately put the overflow into him instead of an axe because you now have the flexibility to pre-build an axe or a cat this turn, 2pop next turn, and the spear is completed on T83 either way. I agree with ZPV that we don't need more than 1 spear. It will have 3XP.

Roger that. Okay, so am I free to promote the Toku units with non-Woodsman promotions, i.e. all of them Combat I, then probably the first one to 5 XP as Medic I and others as one of Combat II, Shock, or Cover, as I see fit? Or are we also still trying to cultivate a Woodsman II unit, even if doing so will potentially cost us a delay of, say, 5 turns in capturing Kyoto? I.e. What's the priority? Capturing the Cities or getting a Woodsman II unit?

I agree with you about another cat, actually. I put axe in the GEL build, but cat is probably a better choice.

Ideally, I'd like to do something like:
War Declaration Turn = Turn 0
Move a Warrior next to Osaka on a flatland square (expecting that if he gets attacked, he will die, so rather than giving him a defensive bonus, we'll want the unit that kills him to have no defensive bonus)
Move our stack of Cats and Axes next to Osaka but on a different square

Turn 1
Bombard all of Osaka's defenses
Attack with 1 suicide Catapult (it may get lucky and even retreat)
Attack with Axemen... I'll likely be facing 3 Archers, unless my Warrior-lure works, and if the odds are still terrible, it might be good to attack with 2 Catapults first... thus, having extra Cats will be of use

Please do NOT chop either deer forest, though.

Okay, okay, I'll restrain myself (heh, heh, I wasn't actually planning on cutting those).

You set Dhoom up nicely to take all the glory in capturing Osoka/Kyoto.

No pressure, huh?

We're 3 turns away from MC. I would propose that once we have enough units to safely capture Osaka/Kyoto and secure the NW, we start building infrastructure like forges and barracks instead of all-out unit production.

Now that Hinduism is spreading, I believe that Organized Religion will be of great use here... no-Anarchy switch into (and out of) Organized Religion... Forges can be whipped more easily... Hindu Missionaries can be whipped without needing Monasteries, to allow other Cities to whip Forges... then Courthouses will be at half-price cost (for as long as we are able to pay the High Upkeep Civic Cost of Organized Religion, and once we eventually learn Code of Laws).

I noticed that the warrior is still fortified on the sheep tile. He may be better served on MP duty somewhere (i.e. GEL once our stack moves out).

He'll be my AI-luring unit... I can always build a Scout or two after the war starts or from a whip overflow if that approach works and our Warrior dies.

GEL gets the corn back on T82 in the test save.

Well, I could either pretend that we won't get it back or else I could just plan to play up until that point for the first bit of playing time and then proceed with a plan for further turns once we know whether we'll get it or not.

We can have 12 axes and a spear ready to leave GEL on T86.

Is that the turn that we want to attack on?

I thought that we wanted to attack on T82.

Note that if we do get the Corn, we'll be able to attack Osaka on the same turn that we declare war, which would mean no whipped defender, but Toku could still manually build another defender within that timeframe.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Question for LC:
Which of those Barb units in the west near Hammy's lands died on our exploring Axeman, if any?


What's our take on Wonders? Try our best to first Chop The Pyramids in Kyoto, followed by Chopping The Great Library there sometime in the future? The Hanging Gardens somewhere?

If not there, is there any other City where we might want it, i.e. so that I leave the Forests alive for said City, such as Delhi? I.e. Does anyone object to clear-cutting (but with leaving the Deer Forests in place) for any particular City?


Warring at Osaka
In the test saved game when I declared immediately (before waiting to get control of the Corn square), Toku did not whip a unit in Osaka but continued to build a Barracks.

Bombarding the defenses took 3 Cats.

Attackign with a non-promoted Axeman = 15.5% chance of winning
Attacking with a Combat I Axeman = 19.4% chance of winning
Attacking with a City Raider I Axeman = 19.4% chance of winning


Attacking with a non-promoted Cat = 24.5% survival odds
Attacking with a City Raider I Cat (we only have one with a promo on it so far) = 29.3% survival odds


Personally, I'm not a major fan of the City Raider promotions against Protective opponents, nor for the first war (i.e. before you have Combat II or Combat III stack defenders to protect them)... they can work in your favour at certain breakpoints but if the defender has high City Defence, then you can actually lose out relative to Combat promos... it's only really when you have more City Raider promos than they have City Defence promos where you really start to see this promo pull ahead of Combat promos, but then they won't help at all on defence.

Since Toku is Protective, I don't plan to use any City Raider promos, as, if he's promoting his units to City Defence II, then there is a negligible difference (sometimes in his favour, sometimes in ours) but we lose out on defence.


It will somewhat suck to attack Osaka using suicidal Cats if he only has 2 defenders, but then again, the Cats have a chance of retreating and will be guaranteed to do damage to the second defender, while a suicidal Axeman could die without doing any damage at worst case and at best can only really hope to wound one of the two units.


The nice thing, though, is that a second and possibly a third Catapult attacking will have a relatively high chance of withdrawing, which would make us be able to win all of our Axemen battles. As such, I think that I will plan to use three suicidal Cats on Osaka as long as there are 2 or more defenders in the City, with the hope that if we get lucky in the first battle, we'll keep 1 to 2 of those Cats or that if we fare poorly in the first two battles, we will at least damage the defenders sufficiently to be able to not lose any Axemen.


If we delay declaring war for too long, Toku will have a chance to start Chopping some of his our future Forests, but other than that, the longer that we delay the start of the war, the more conclusively we will be able to end it... it's just about finding that tipping point where we'll be all-but-guaranteed to be able to capture both of Osaka and Kyoto without totally overkilling it on units.


That said, I'm not TOO concerned about having more than sufficient units--I'd rather end up with 4 extras than 1 less than what was needed... we WILL need military police units, since we are low on Warriors for that purpose, and it will be nice to have a couple of Catapults still around in case Hammy or Hatty sends a stack of doom at us, since Cats are just what the doctor ordered for an enemy stack (Trebs are a total waste to use in such a scenario).


Also, if it turns out that I have better than hoped-for war success, we can disband units, if needed, to simulate the combat losses that we would have otherwise sustained. More realistically, though, given some combat testing that I have done, we have been underestimating the amount of forces required to take Kyoto.


In the test game, Hammy declared war on us a few turns after we declared war on Toku... essentially, Hammy declared on us as soon as Hammy's stack had arrived at our borders.


One nice thing is that Toku seems to stop spamming Archers at a count of 6 Archers defending his capital. So, if we are comfortable fighting such a force, then in reality, the sooner that we declare war after having a force that is sufficiently large to take down Osaka, the better, as we can start Bombarding his defenses down to 0%.

If, on the other hand, we'd rather only face, say, 4 Archers in Kyoto without 1 or 2 of them being fully fortified, and are willing to attack when his City defences are at 100%, then we need to wait until we have a huge enough stack to take him on all at once.

I realized that the test game doesn't have Toku owning Copper, so I gave it to him under his capital. He mostly built Axemen (but also 1 Spearman)... he still pretty much kept a maximum of 6 units in his capital.


The longer that we stayed at war, though, the more AIs that declared on us in the test game (Louis declared on us several turns after Hammy declared on us).


Since he probably has a Barracks and is Aggressive, we'll probably face Combat I + Shock Axemen... meaning that we'll want to go heavier on the Catapults.


I tried sitting there Bombarding but it really takes a very long time. So, probably our best bet is to just go in with reasonably-overwhelming odds and attack Kyoto without doing any Bombarding at all.

Every Catapult that we have gives us efficiency in our Hammers-to-usefulness ratio, but we also have to have sufficient Axemen to be able to kill units, since Catapults don't kill anything.

Also, it'll be a "do or die" kind of thing... if we attack and can't win, then we'll probably have to sit there Bombarding for many, many, many turns to come and may even need to sue for Peace if and when the other AIs start dog-piling us.

So, I think that we played it right by Oracling Construction; I just need to make sure that we have sufficient Catapults before we pull the war declaration trigger.


Interestingly, although he was running Slavery, Toku didn't appear to be doing much, if any whipping, and was just manually building his units. Theoretically, if we do have several Scout units, we can "occupy Kyoto" by putting a unit on every square on the west side of his capital, thereby reducing his production power.

By sending in Scouts, we can pretty much cover all of his western squares on the second turn of war... and if he does kill off any of the Scouts, he'll have lost any Fortification bonus that those units of his had.

Is it worth building roughly 5 Scouts just to reduce the chance of Toku having 1 more unit when we arrive on his doorstep? I think that the answer is "yes," since the cost of one more defender is going to be, at a minimum, 1 Cat and 2 Axes dying and 1 more Axe to kill the defender will probably be required for each additional defender that Toku has.


If, for some reason, he already has 5 or 6 units in his capital when we arrive, then we'll just switch the plan to a slog of a Bombarding game, since he's unlikely to have more than 6 units in his capital at any one time.

 

[ZPV]

ugh. It's difficult to quote you directly to answer points, Dhoom. I'll try and answer themes.

1) The axe near Hammy. I'm happy for him to move SSW, where he can see the coast, but don't forget that axe is there to spot a land stack coming too, so don't go too far off the beaten path.
2) Levelling up vs barbs: liaise with LC on this one. We don't really want to attack an archer or spearman/axeman across the river onto a forest - those are better to move onto the chokepoint. If they don't suicide, they provide a buffer against Hammy.
3) Our DoW. I didn't realize quite how many units we'd need, so t82 might not be realistic. I'd like to save our warrior to lure a unit from Kyoto, not Osaka.
4) If you plan to use cats against Osaka, then we'll want more in total, and consider Barrage I.
5) With a Castle, each cat removes 2% defences. We can't sit there for 8 turns to bombard that all away - Toku will just stockpile cheap archers.
6) I'd like you to promote "cleanup" units to CR1, if at all - they'll be going to CR2 next, which will be useful into the future.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

1) The axe near Hammy. I'm happy for him to move SSW, where he can see the coast, but don't forget that axe is there to spot a land stack coming too, so don't go too far off the beaten path.

Okay, so the idea will be to check to see, if possible, whether or not Hammy's capital (or whatever City we will see) has Coastal access... then get into a position where we'll be able to see any land army marching out... if that almost means being able to see a sea-based army, we'll call that a nice-to-have bonus.

2) Levelling up vs barbs: liaise with LC on this one. We don't really want to attack an archer or spearman/axeman across the river onto a forest - those are better to move onto the chokepoint. If they don't suicide, they provide a buffer against Hammy.

Roger that. If it's not a Barb Warrior, we will try and defend from the chokepoint.

I'd still like feedback on what promotions to give to our Axeman. Perhaps Woodsman ones... that way, we won't alter the odds of attacking Barb Warriors across of a River, but we will increase our odds of winning on defence, which can only give us 1 XP anyway, so we might as well defend as strongly as we possibly can.

3) Our DoW. I didn't realize quite how many units we'd need, so t82 might not be realistic. I'd like to save our warrior to lure a unit from Kyoto, not Osaka.
5) With a Castle, each cat removes 2% defences. We can't sit there for 8 turns to bombard that all away - Toku will just stockpile cheap archers.

He will be more likely to stockpile Axeman in Kyoto from what I saw when I gave him a Copper Resource.

If we aren't Bombarding, then time is of the essence--we need to attack ASAP after declaring war.

Since Toku has NOT been whipping units like crazy, I'm actually quite tempted to ignore Osaka, with the thinking that we'll have roughly 4 to 5 more units to use on the initial assault on Kyoto.

Technically, we don't really lose any time by taking Osaka first, and it's faster to bring reinforcements to Kyoto if we capture Osaka, but we're probably better off just going in with a sufficiently large stack and using all of it on Kyoto. Osaka can die easily later, but every turn of delay to take down Kyoto greatly delays our capture of said City.

4) If you plan to use cats against Osaka, then we'll want more in total, and consider Barrage I.

City Raider Cats are better in terms of survival rate, but I think that you're on to something here... Barrage will cause more collateral damage. If we're going to gun straight for Kyoto, then we don't care if the Cats survive or not nearly as much as we care how much damage they do... so, sure... all Barrage promos... the Cats will probably all die anyway at those low odds, so we might as well get that fractional amount of additional effectiveness out of them.

I've heard that sometimes the Barrage promotions actually don't have any effect, due to breakpoints on their effectiveness, but I can at least aim to test an unpromoted Cat versus a Barrage Cat in the test game... since our test game doesn't have random seed on reload, it should be a pretty quick test.

6) I'd like you to promote "cleanup" units to CR1, if at all - they'll be going to CR2 next, which will be useful into the future.

Again, if we're going to gun straight for Kyoto, then whatever promo will give us a marginally better benefit will make sense. I'll probably need to run a test game scenario at that time with a top-level unit having the same health, same promos, and same Fortification bonuses just to compare them.

That said, my guess is that Combat I will beat City Raider I since the Kyoto units will already have a very high defensive bonus, thanks to the Castle.


If we use the Warrior, our stack of units, and 4 Scouts (which can get to the front lines relatively quickly thanks to their 2 movement points, meaning that it shouldn't take us that much longer to build them--we can always whip Cats or Axes and use the overflow on Scouts) then we can cover all of Toku's western Hammer squares, with the hope of reducing his total unit count in Kyoto by 1, since, if he plays the real game like the test game, he'll be relying on base Hammers instead of whipping to produce his units.

I'll, of course, want to test out this scenario in the test game, because it could be that if his production output is below a certain threshold, he might actually be encouraged to start whipping.

 

[ZPV]

Marching past Osaka: I don't like it, but it's a necessary evil.
C1 vs CR1: when the result of a battle is in doubt, then yes, go for C1 since that will be better for our odds. Actually, forget what I said about CR2. We're unlikely to use Axes in future wars.
Barrage: there was a fix at some point, that broke barrage for tanks (before they removed it from tanks), but it now provides 20% more damage, rather than effective strength, so it definitely will have an effect.
Woodsman of the West? Sure. Fine by me.
How many cats? The test to do is see how many it takes to reduce all-but-one defender to 50% health. After that, if axes still don't have good odds, a further cat will have much better odds because it withdraws after getting the opponent down to 25% health, and we can promote it after another battle against Osaka/Satsuma/Whatever.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Marching past Osaka: I don't like it, but it's a necessary evil.

It looks like if we do it, we'll face 4+ defenders in Osaka (when we eventually go to take the City) and we'll definitely see a whipped unit in Osaka, whipped shortly after the war begins. Kyoto was still not being whipped and Osaka was only whipped that once, but Osaka will be harder to take later.

Still, it's a matter of how much time we are willing to spend building up before declaring war versus promoting and healing any surviving units from the Kyoto assault and just using them to clean up Osaka.

It does suck that Osaka will only be at Size 1 instead of at Size 3 when we capture it, but the "cost" of capturing it sooner is going to be roughly 5 to 6 units not surviving or being extremely wounded to the point that their participation in the Kyoto assault will be all but limited (plus the fact that we'd need a 6th to 7th unit to defend Osaka, or at least one of the surviving 5 to 6 units that had a reasonable amount of health remaining to act as the defender.

Actually, forget what I said about CR2. We're unlikely to use Axes in future wars.

Works for me.

Barrage: there was a fix at some point, that broke barrage for tanks (before they removed it from tanks), but it now provides 20% more damage, rather than effective strength, so it definitely will have an effect.

Okay, you are right (I just tested it). Barrage has a marginal bonus amount of collateral damage... to the point that we'd promote all of the Cats attacking Kyoto with Barrage and then attack with those Catapults first, with the hopes of further reducing the strength of a unit that will later become the "top defender."

How many cats? The test to do is see how many it takes to reduce all-but-one defender to 50% health. After that, if axes still don't have good odds, a further cat will have much better odds because it withdraws after getting the opponent down to 25% health, and we can promote it after another battle against Osaka/Satsuma/Whatever.

Two quick tests resulted in:
- 8 Cats for 4 defenders (a mix of Archers and Axes defending) got the defenders down to a point where Cats would do no further damage (i.e. additional Cats could no longer attack) and our Axes had really great odds, even with the Castle's full defensive bonus
- 14 Cats for 5 defenders (one more Combat I + Shock Axeman plus a couple of additional turns of fortification on the units there)

A huge stack of Cats will be of use in countering other AIs' mobile stacks, so building them isn't a complete waste, but I don't foresee us being able to pump out 14 Cats before we declare. Given these numbers, I don't see how we can reasonably justify capturing Osaka first.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Does anyone know if a wounded Cat will produce the same amount of collateral damage as a full-health Catapult?

If yes, then we could possibly justify going for Osaka if we are willing to start the war a bit later and will throw at least 3 Cats at Osaka, with the expectation that 1 or 2 of them will survive and will suicide on Kyoto.

Errr, no wait... actually... I think that we should capture Osaka.

Okay, so, if we control the Corn and then end our stack's turn on the Corn, and are willing to commit, say, 6 units to attacking Osaka, then we can send the rest of our army toward Kyoto 1 turn sooner, thanks to using Osaka's Road network.

Doing so had Kyoto with only 4 defenders in the test game, but that is with Toku only having Copper for a short period of time... it is still feasible that he will have 5 defenders when we arrive, but at least they won't all have a full Fortification bonus.

I tested again and this time it took 10 Cats to attack 4 defenders in Kyoto before Cats could not attack again. Assuming that we had a roughly 2-to-1 ratio of attacking Axemen versus defenders, then we could afford to attack a bit sooner with Axemen (say, after attacking with 6 Cats), if only to drastically reduce the power of the top stack defender or two, to make the other Cats have a greater chance of surviving.

We'll want to bank on needing 5 to 6 units for Osaka's 2 defenders... if he has 3 defenders there when we are ready to declare war then we'll just have to ignore capturing Osaka... and we can skip Bombarding and be pretty confident that 5 (6 in the worst case) units can clean up Osaka. We may get lucky and only need 4 units or may have some of our Cats survive, but I'd bank on needing 6 units just so that we don't come up short at Kyoto.

So, let's assume the worst case and say 3 Cats and 3 Axes for Osaka.


Then, let's say 10 suicidal Cats for Kyoto, plus 7 Axes and 1 Spear.

We can also build 5 Scouts to make our lives easier, basically investing in the hopes that by building these Scouts, we'll save a few Cats and Axes from needing to be used in battle.

If we bypass Osaka, we'll probably still need a similar total amount of units, thanks to Toku getting an extra turn to produce units in Kyoto.


Thus we will want:
3 + 10 Cats = 13 Cats
3 + 7 Axes = 10 Axes
1 Spear for Kyoto
1 Warrior
4 Scouts

Is that overkill? Only if we get lucky in our battles. If we have bad luck, that amount should do it.

Note that those counts do not include:
- the 3 Axes to the north-west (1 scouting Hammy plus 2 to deal with the incoming Barbs--I really think that the timing of doing so is not all that amazing, since I'd much rather just leave a Warrior on the chokepoint and send Axes to the west for now)
- 1 or 2 Axes to deal with Toku's Archer in the south-west
- any Axes needed for Military Police units


Is it ridiculous to go in with this amount? Well, we can go in with less and hope that the random number generator plays in our favour... but... we're going up against an Aggressive, Protective AI that has a River bonus, Hills-based, Castle-defended City; we need to expect it to be difficult... we'll still be the first team by far to capture Kyoto... so, I'm not really too concerned about "over doing it," other than the fact that we won't have much Gold to our names soon and the Unit Supply costs and Unit Costs will definitely take their toll in the short term.

That's what we committed to with our strategy, though, so I think that it's worth executing in a manner that can all but guarantee success.

Plus, as I said, the other AIs like to dogpile us the longer that we stay at war... so, justify it however you want, but it's easy to believe that we'll lose 5+ units in any war that has an AI declaring war on us (don't forget that it takes them twice as long to discuss peace, giving them plenty of time to do damage to our forces), so given that we could easily be dogpiled or have Toku bribe in other AIs, each valued at us losing 5 units, then the total count of units that I'm talking about (which would help to end the war quickly and reduce the chance of others fighting against us) is not that bad at all.

 

[ZPV]

Two quick tests resulted in:
- 8 Cats for 4 defenders (a mix of Archers and Axes defending) got the defenders down to a point where Cats would do no further damage (i.e. additional Cats could no longer attack) and our Axes had really great odds, even with the Castle's full defensive bonus
- 14 Cats for 5 defenders (one more Combat I + Shock Axeman plus a couple of additional turns of fortification on the units there)

A huge stack of Cats will be of use in countering other AIs' mobile stacks, so building them isn't a complete waste, but I don't foresee us being able to pump out 14 Cats before we declare. Given these numbers, I don't see how we can reasonably justify capturing Osaka first.

Whoa!
I meant, how many, before they no longer do collateral damage? After that, you get up to one extra cat-attack per defender if you want it, to knock each one from 50% down to 25% (with much better odds than an axe sending them from 50% to 0%).
We don't need 14 for that - although the extra cats won't hurt going into the future.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Whoa!
I meant, how many, before they no longer do collateral damage? After that, you get up to one extra cat-attack per defender if you want it, to knock each one from 50% down to 25% (with much better odds than an axe sending them from 50% to 0%).
We don't need 14 for that - although the extra cats won't hurt going into the future.

I didn't pay attention and must get some sleep, so I'll have to test it tomorrow.

That said, we could use either 2 Axemen, with the first 1 dying, or 1 Cat and 1 Axeman after the "no more collateral damage" point has been reached, with the Cat almost certainly surviving, due to it retreating from the fighting when the low-threshold of the defender's minimum hitpoints has been reached, with the Axeman having a very strong chance of winning.

The major differences are that a Cat costs slightly more Hammers but won't be a throw-away unit, on average, relative to the extra Axeman being a throw-away unit.


Also, a Cat that retreats can mean a battle win (or at least not a loss--I'm not sure how retreats are calculated), which can translate into free Flasks by having more overall war success against Toku (or at least less negative war success from less suiciding of Axemen).

 

[ZPV]

I didn't pay attention and must get some sleep, so I'll have to test it tomorrow.

That said, we could use either 2 Axemen, with the first 1 dying, or 1 Cat and 1 Axeman after the "no more collateral damage" point has been reached, with the Cat almost certainly surviving, due to it retreating from the fighting when the low-threshold of the defender's minimum hitpoints has been reached, with the Axeman having a very strong chance of winning.

The major differences are that a Cat costs slightly more Hammers but won't be a throw-away unit, on average, relative to the extra Axeman being a throw-away unit.


Also, a Cat that retreats can mean a battle win (or at least not a loss--I'm not sure how retreats are calculated), which can translate into free Flasks by having more overall war success against Toku (or at least less negative war success from less suiciding of Axemen).

Yes - something like 9 cats and 7 axes will have more survivors than 6 cats and 12 axes. I'll check the retreat code for war success, but it's definitely better than suiciding an axe.
edit: It looks like retreats give no war success or war weariness, but it's still better than a loss.
edit2: It also looks like wounded cats still do collateral damage normally.

 

[LowtherCastle]

Okay, this is an unusual scenario for early game warfare because those archers are so untouchable. Catapults are clearly the uber-unit here and I wish I'd built more of them, but I think we're still okay, because we can switch our Delhi+GEL+Marble builds to cats and have 9 cats + 8 axes + 1 spear ready for a T86 DoW. (One of those axes would come from NC, via roads at Delhi NW+2NW.)

Kyoto
Attacking an archer with an axe might cause 13+HP of damage to one archer.
Attacking with a cat might cause 13+HP to the vicitm plus as much as 10*6=60HP collateral damage. So we have these ratios:

Axe = 13HP/35h = 0.37 HP/h
Cat = 73HP/50h = 1.46 HP/h, roughly 4X the value (against 7 or more defenders)

That's not including the catapult's ability to bombard defenses.

The next problem is attacking the 1.5 25%-fortified CGII archer in Kyoto, which we're likely to encounter 2 or 3 of. We have these jump points:

Defenses   Axe / CRI / CI     Cat / CRI
--------   ---   ---   ---    ---   --- 
  100%     29%   32%   34%    66%   69%
   [COLOR="red"][B]94%[/B][/COLOR]                              [COLOR="Red"][B]81%[/B][/COLOR]
   [B][COLOR="red"]88%[/COLOR][/B]                 [COLOR="red"][B]50%[/B][/COLOR]
   78%                        81%

Since we can have 2 CRI cats available, it makes sense to send 3 or 6 cats ahead to bombard defenses for 1 turn (to 94% or 88%), if we attack Osaka on DoW-T0. Odds and jump points might be better for other units or less fortified archers, but we can't assume that.

Of course, we could also bombard for 1 more turn to get the jump point for unpromoted cats against the 1.5 archers.

---

Osaka
Osaka currently has 19h in an archer or axe, completing T81 or T83, respectively. But I'm assuming that unit will leave, just as the last axe did. So, against the CGII archer, our unpromoted cat will do 17HP damage per hit and on average gets 2 hits before dying (25% odds of survival). Then a CR1 cat has 70% odds of surviving against the CGI archer. Then we send another cat if needed and axes clean up. That would leave 6 of 9 axe+spear-escorted cats to move on toward Kyoto to bombard for one turn. The other units catch up 1 turn later.

---

Then at Kyoto, we play it according to what we get. There are a number of options and we don't need to decide in advance. The damaged cats might attack first, third, fifth, not at all, or whatever makes sense, based on what's there. We could even play that turn together, if Dhoom wants, making group decisions or stopping for analysis. That's going to be a pretty important battle.

---

One more note. I believe Toku has built about 3 axe/spears so far, and about 7-8 archers. So if we bombard too much or move too slowly, Kyoto could fill up with a lot of units suddenly, and I've never seen AI's stop at 6 defenders, more like accumulating 12 or 20, given the chance.

---

DoP Trade Points
If things go reasonably as planned, I think we should have no problem gaining enough points with these two cities alone, to get Alpha+IW and maybe Archery thrown in.

Refuse To Talk
Toku will probably be willing to talk after 11 or 12 turns. That's soon enough for the Machinery/Engineering bulb. Guess we might have time to go after Tokyo or Samsuto. That might speed up his willingness to talk to about 9 turns.


.

 

[LowtherCastle]

Notes to Dhoom:

1. If we capture Osaka and move a SoD toward Kyoto all on T0, then on T1, I think it's better to move that SoD next to Kyoto before moving the reamining units around Osaka, just in case we want to heal them in Osaka or something.

2. Each time we capture one of Toku's cities, we can check our diplomacy screen with Hatty, to see if she's close enough to accept that city as a gift. That might give us an indicator of how close Hatty nearest city is.

3. The sooner you write up a PPP, the sooner you can include notes like this, if you want, before they vanish into the abyss of the OSS thread.

 

[LowtherCastle]

An idea: We could gift Toku Mysticism and hope he starts building monuments in his cities, instead of units. His other two cities aren't getting any culture right now and we're putting serious pressure on Osaka, so he probably has code-related reasons to build them.

 

[ZPV]

An idea: We could gift Toku Mysticism and hope he starts building monuments in his cities, instead of units. His other two cities aren't getting any culture right now and we're putting serious pressure on Osaka, so he probably has code-related reasons to build them.

That's a good idea.

 

[Mitchum]

Wow, a lot happend since I went to bed last night. I have a few comments:

1. We need to capture Osaka first and march through Osaka, arriving at Kyoto one turn sooner. This was discussed about 1000 posts ago (i.e. lost in the abyss of the OSS thread).

2. No scouts. I see no value in building 4 scouts just to occupy squares. If we have enough cats and axes, we should be taking Kyoto on T+2 or T+3 at the latest. I'd rather have 2 more axes than 4 scouts.

3. I think T86 is a good target for war declaration.

4. One axe should be enough for Toku's wounded archer in the SW if we can catch him on flat, bare land, which shouldn't be too hard after L "The Lumberjack" C played his turnset. Plus, we could whip another axe in an emergency should the first one die by some fluke.

What is your estimate for when you can have a PPP ready? Maybe have one to T86 where we amass our SOD on the corn and another through the capture of Osaka -> Kyoto which may be played a turn at a time if there is a timeframe where most of us can be on line.

To reiterate, we are getting short on time and future turns are only going to be more complex and take longer. I don't think we can take all week discussing this without playing any turns... Plus, we don't have bbp to jump in an bail out LC in the eleventh hour like last game. My $0.02.

 

[LowtherCastle]

@Dhoom: Responses to your posts from last night

1. I don't see any good way to watch for a Hammy armada. The scout/axe can go SW next turn, but then N, where it should fortify. From there, we get 6 turns of advacned warning of an SoD coming from Babylon, rather than only 4 turns warning. If you put the warrior W of the chokepoint, then he'll get attacked by the advancing barbs.

2. Zlatorog. When I opened the choke point last turn, all three barbs started in our direction. No barb suicided on our axe. Instead he went 1E of my sticky note. Yes, barbs will enter our culture now. Yes, forests spreads from the camp, but we'll need a farm at Zlat-W anyway, so go ahead and road it. That's the direct path for units from the south to Hammy. Per ZPV: attack unpromoted warriors and heavily damaged units across the river, otherwise put the axe in the forest and let him be attacked (or avoided) by barb archers/spears (I think it's a bit too soon for spears and axes anyway). Use the "alt" key and hover over the victim to find out the odds, XP to be gained, etc. When the second axe is completed in ZLatorog, he can be used for protection if needed. But, yes, we are looking for a WoodsmanII or even III with these barb attacks, in addition to 10XP. I would use our warrior at Zlat-2W for advanced warning. Until the second axe is built, he can alsl help protect our axe on teh chokepoint if he's heavily damaged after attacking a barb.

3. I forgot to remind you that we have a partial (3h) spear build in NC also. After the next axe, that could be one of yoru beloved spears... Don't forget, we'll want pikes as soon as we get Engineering, so we only want bare necessity spears now, right?

4. Excellent call on promoting our TOku axes with CI. That gets us to a jump point with 88% defenses in Kyoto.

5. Osaka. I wouldn't attack it till we take back the corn at the earliest and only if it has 2 defenders. As you said: Bombard to 0%, attack with unpromoted cat, then you should have good odds with a CRI cat, then either one more cat, if needed, then clean up. MOve other units towards Kyoto for pre-bombardment. But always maintain a flexible battle approach and if SHTF, then stop, take a deep breath, and maybe pause for analysis.

6. Research. Yes, Org Rel looks like it could be pwerful. Right now it would only cost an extra 2gpt. When we finish MC, I would switch the science slider to 0% and put all the overflow into Aesthetics. We don't need Poly for bulbing and we might get it for free later on. We might need spare cash for our Toku campaign, so we should probably go to 0% for now, although I haven't done any testing on that and it's nice to go 100% while we're working those scientists.

7.I don't see how we have any time to lure units out of Osaka, because we want to capture it on T0 if at all. A lure at Kyoto makes sense but only on the turn before we're going to attack, because Toku can't attack units 2 tiles away across that river. He doesn't have COnstruction yet, the klutz. But you'll also need some sort of garrison in GEL, I think, because of whip unhappiness, so keep that in mind.

8. I don't understand how OrgRel gets us Chs at half-price.

9. Wonders. My latest thinking on the Pyramids is let someone else build it for us, because I don't see us working enough specialists to make it worthwhile. I also would skp the GLib and Hanging Gardens (aqueduct is too expensive). I think we should try to pay for our warring and research with cottages, spoils, and failed gold from HE, NE, Moai, and maybe SoA (which would be a reason to research Poly sooner, if we had some spare hammers to put into SoA).

10. Which reminds me, we still have a few hammers in a barracks in Delhi. I suppose we want the foge there first, but then barracks would be useful so we can build failed gold for HE there, or maybe we'll actually build HE there, since the second copper makes that a better HE city.

11. I agree on having more than enough units. I'm always a bit conservative with that. Furthermore, if we're going for fastest finish, we really shouldn't be thinking in terms of pausing our warring. We should go pedal-to-the-metal and figure out how to afford it. That's where I agree with your phasing out of poprushing and into growth, working food, mines, and cottages.

12. Yes to chopping units now. After we have Kyoto, I would prefer to use chops for various things, depednign on the city. If Kyoto has enough hammers to be our HE city, then we could use chops for the HE and then a treb SoD. I was calculating that these mini-seig-SoDs are a bit short-sighted in this game. Much better would be one that's big enough to bombard AI-capital defenses to 0% in 1 or 2 turns and then move onto the next capital, because travel time is too slow to build new SoDs for each capital.

13. Don't worry too much about us getting dogpiled. Once we secure Kyoto, it chokes off all attacks to our empire from Hatty. Once we get Babylon, I assume it will be the same. Then we'll just capture a new capital, AI by AI (or more likely two by two, with two fronts).

14. As for bombarding Kyoto, if Kyoto has too many units when we get there, we'll just have to bite the bullet, bombard him to zero while bringing in re-inforcements. Sooner or later, we'll be too powerful for him.

15. Scouts. I agree with Mitchum. Scouts are not worth the effort. Not before T86 anyway. If he has lots of units, we might give it a stab. They will screw up our WarSuccess numbers a bit.

16. DoP Trade points. By the way, it might be counter-intuitive, but the more kills we get, the better, even if it means Toku gets more kills. For example, a WeKill/HeKills ratio of 3/0 might yield 955 trade value, whereas 8/6 would yield 1484 points, assuming power, city count, total pop are otherwise the same. The rule of thumb is basically, the more kills the better, as long as we don't lose an inordinate amount in the process. The reason for this is the 3X for threatening his city.

His RefuseToTalk time, on the other hand, grows longer as he gets more kills. That's why he's probably not going to want to talk for 11-12 turns. (That's also a reason for you to not worry about getting dogpiled--good chance it's going to happen. Big deal.)

17. Getting dogpiled. Speaking of getting dogpiled, just as soon as you see Hammy's SoD leave his borders, we need to stop and discuss our plans. We'll want to DoW him, as you pointed out, to halve the RefuseToTalk time, but when? We'll need to decide how we want to play that, i terms of shortening the war, worker stealing, tech trading, or some mix of the above.

18. Ignoring Osaka. When we're ready to DoW, we could still decide whether to beeline Kyoto or not. We can analyze his power graphs on that turn to determine how many more units he's produced and decide what makes most sense. Kyoto is far more important than Osaka, especially after we get the corn, which we won't lose again.

19. Osaka may lose more pop if we delay it, but then again, Kyoto may have more when we capture it. I care more about Kyoto.

20. Barrage I gives 12HP damage per turn versus 10HP without it. (Hence 20% more.) I ahven't tested whether it gets us a jump point, but I think I've shown that the CRI promotion will get us jump points in our situation, in both Osaka for the second archer and in Kyoto against the 1.5 archer.

21. 13 cats, 10 axes... I think that's overkill. I think 9 cats, 8 axes, 1 spear on T86 is a good start. We keep building units for at least 2 more turns. We just need to decide Osaka or not, get a glimpse into Kyoto asap, and decide whether to attack immediately or bombard and re-inforce. Since we're goint o wait 11 turns to DoP anyway, it's no biggie, I don't think.