LowtherCastle said:
I've never seen AI's stop at 6 defenders, more like accumulating 12 or 20, given the chance.
At 5 units, Toku kept building Spearmen, Axemen, and later Swordsmen with the AI_ATTACK mission... and said unit would wander away from the City and back to the City, even with our stack parked next to the City.
Thus, it is very feasible for us to only face 6 units defending if we are willing to Bombard Kyoto's defences down to 0% and is even possible to only face 5 units there.
The trouble is that during that timeframe, Hatty might attack and then her stack could end up in Kyoto or next to it and capture Kyoto from us... yes, the Castle and City Walls would be gone, but so would our army.
LowtherCastle said:
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.
Well, it's a gamble, but if we rush in with a larger stack, there is a chance that we'll only face 3 or 4 defenders in Kyoto and can just attack instead of Bombarding... but I wouldn't feel comfortable doing so with just 6 Cats.
Thus, I see us having 2 main options:
A] Go for a T86 attack, like LC suggested, but plan to Bombard for several turns
OR
B] Go for a later attack (probably more like T92) with the unit make-up that I suggested, but plan to skip Bombarding Kyoto and capture it ASAP before other AIs can get tempted to declare war on us
We'll probably end up capturing the City around the same time in either scenario. Scenario A] allows us to build fewer units--but only if we don't get declared upon by another AI. Scenario B] requires us to build more units but we can end the war decisively before the other AIs get any ideas (or before they can really reach us if they are immediately bribed by Toku).
Basically, it's a potential race to try and catch Kyoto with only 3 to 4 defenders while we have 9+ Cats there (I'd prefer 10 or even more, but 9 could probably still work) versus a smaller stack that attacks earlier and spends several turns Bombarding, while Toku builds up to 5 to 6 defenders.
A hybrid approach just doesn't really fly all that well, since he can quickly get to 5 defenders, and we don't want to attack 5 to 6 defenders unless we have a huge stack.
LowtherCastle said:
Kyoto could fill up with a lot of units suddenly
If said units have the AI_ATTACK mission, they can enter the City but will leave the City on the following turn, either going after a captured Osaka or temporarily moving toward the NE of Kyoto... at least, that's what happened in the test game.
It seemed that as soon as Kyoto had 6 units, as long as Toku had access to Copper or Iron, the additionally-built units from Kyoto were AI_ATTACK type of units. One of those 6 units was sometimes an AI_ATTACK unit that had wandered into the City.
LowtherCastle said:
Guess we might have time to go after Tokyo or Samsuto. That might speed up his willingness to talk to about 9 turns.
When I tested, there was indeed a difference by moving our stack toward one of his eastern Cities and threatening it relative to not doing so, in terms of what he was willing to give us for techs.
LowtherCastle said:
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.
I got confused on this point, sorry.
LowtherCastle said:
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.
Good call!
LowtherCastle said:
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 fine by me. The more Religious techs that the AIs get, the closer they will get to Feudalism, but in this case, Toku will be a marginal AI, so I don't mind doing it. We might open up a trade for him to get Polytheism, if we are really lucky.
Mitchum said:
1. We need to capture Osaka first and march through Osaka, arriving at Kyoto one turn sooner. This was discussed about 1000 posts ago
Okay, but it's a matter of the scale of our forces. If we want to go in with a minimalistic army (i.e. attacking on Turn 82 and hoping for the best), we don't really have this luxury.
Really, when playing Civ 4, if you go in with "just enough" or "just barely more than enough" units, you tend to lose a lot of them, but when you have overkill, you just keep the ball rolling. I'm not suggesting that we build an overkill amount of units, but I'm also not wanting to go in with an amount of units that "might work, if the random number generator isn't too mean to us."
Mitchum said:
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.
Are we willing to pay the population price? The advantages of the Scouts are that they can be built using overflow Hammers and can still catch up to the rest of the assault force because of their 2 movement points. Building additional Axemen means more lost population points (from whipping) and more time before we can declare (due to the travel time of those Axemen).
It is, however, feasible that 2 Axemen arriving at the last minute could be within range to attack Osaka but not be in range to start by standing on the Corn... so, if that's the case, and if we don't mind some additional whipping, then sure, we can try and turn those Scouts into Axemen.
Mitchum said:
3. I think T86 is a good target for war declaration.
It's not the turn that we declare that I really need to base my PPP around but the mix of units that we have that I really need to go by. If we can agree on the size of force to use, then I can put together a PPP that tries to get that quantity of units within a reasonable timeframe, perhaps with timing of whipping of further-away Cities happening first, so that our final force arrives relatively simultaneously on the front lines.
That's why I want us to get some sort of consensus on what unit composition to use; it's hard to put together a reasonable PPP otherwise (i.e. a PPP where I'll feel confident that we'll be able to capture Kyoto given our chosen approach of Bombarding versus not Bombarding).
Mitchum said:
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.
True about the whipping... let's just hope that when the Archer wins, promotes, and heals, he won't also kill the next Axeman...
LowtherCastle said:
If you put the warrior W of the chokepoint, then he'll get attacked by the advancing barbs.
I was talking about 1E on the GRiv, to the east of the Lake. That said, putting the Warrior on the west Coast could work if we were going to just leave our Axeman Fortified on the GRiv For chokepoint... but since that's not the plan, then 1W of the Lake is probably not a good spot to go, I agree.
LowtherCastle said:
Use the "alt" key and hover over the victim to find out the odds, XP to be gained, etc.
I'll probably have to jump in and out of a test game for this part to work, since otherwise, I won't know how many XP I'll get from attacking across of a river versus not attacking across of a river until the choice has already been made. I'm fine with switching to a test game and back; I'm just saying that it's not as simple as waiting for a unit to arrive on the chokepoint and then checking out the combat odds.
LowtherCastle said:
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?
If we don't go in with a "wait to build a large stack that will take down Osaka + Kyoto ASAP" approach, then we may need such an extra Spearman while we Bombard Kyoto and get attacked by Hatty.
LowtherCastle said:
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.
I found that the Bombarding was not necessary. I'll only do the Bombarding if we plan to Bombard Kyoto before attacking, i.e. if we don't mind a large stack of up to 6 units forming in Kyoto. Otherwise, we can't afford this extra turn that our Cats will waste.
It's really not about how many Cats/Axes survive but how many Cats I can send to Kyoto on the first turn of war declaration. Any Cat that comes a turn later means that we'll see another defender in Kyoto, at which point we might as well settle in for a long series of several turns worth of Bombarding Kyoto.
LowtherCastle said:
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.
Agreed. No sense dumping Flasks into Poly unless we find that we'll be forced to self-tech it. We won't really know until the turn after we obtain Alphabet.
LowtherCastle said:
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.
That idea co-incided with an immediate war declaration (i.e. not even waiting for the Corn to become ours). Doing so would get us some Bombarding Catapults at Kyoto's gates ASAP. The luring in this approach did not work out and I decided that it made more sense to wait for the Corn to become ours, so please ignore this idea entirely.
LowtherCastle said:
But you'll also need some sort of garrison in GEL, I think, because of whip unhappiness, so keep that in mind.
Not if I whip again...
LowtherCastle said:
8. I don't understand how OrgRel gets us Chs at half-price.
Org Rel gives us Forges within a reasonable timeframe (with 2- or 3-pop whips instead of next-to-impossible 4-pop-whips). A Forge + Org Religion = a 50% discount on a Courthouse, and we'll also get Happiness from the Forge to allow us to regrow and whip again to complete the Courthouses.
Otherwise, without Org Rel, we'd probably have to build Courthouses before Forges otherwise our economy would crash before we could complete the Forges. That's all that I was saying there.
LowtherCastle said:
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).
If that's the case, then really I should be Chopping as many Forests as possible into military units.
As nice as a Forest Chop going into Failed Gold can be, doing so is not really nearly as helpful as putting a Chop into a Wonder in order to complete said Wonder sooner (i.e. to get The Great Library quickly, for example).
I tend to disagree about building The Pyramids and The Hanging Gardens, but we can cross that bridge once Kyoto is ours and comes out of revolt, based on what Wonders still exist. Even with the cost of an Acqueduct, we'll more than make up for building The Hanging Gardens with the extra population points that we will be able to whip.
The Pyramids are likely to end up on the other side of the world, in the hands of our Deity AI (which I'm assuming is on the other side of the world, to give it time to build up to Mech Infantry in some teams' games), if we let an AI build it. Other than that fact, I'm okay with capturing it, but the big value from The Hanging Gardens comes from building it yourself (similar to The Oracle).
LowtherCastle said:
12. Yes to chopping units now.
Sounds good to me.
LowtherCastle said:
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.
Yup, that's pretty much the face of it. The question becomes whether or not we want to go in before having a really large stack and just start bombarding earlier versus waiting to get more units and then hopefully being able to skip all Bombarding at Kyoto.
LowtherCastle said:
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.
At most, one Scout will die. The rest just block his Hammer production. The theory is that if we can prevent a single unit from being built in Kyoto, they will pay for themselves in terms of the Hammers not lost on additional suicidal Cats and Axes, as well as the war success points not lost on said Cats and Axes.
Realistically, zero Scouts will die since he won't have an AI_ATTACK unit close enough to Kyoto in the massive-army plan.
LowtherCastle said:
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
The same could be said about Great General Points.
LowtherCastle said:
If we go with a medium-sized stack and Osaka has 3 units in it, we'll be forced to ignore Osaka. If we have a large enough stack, then we'll still be fine with 3 Cats and 3 Axes, as the Cats will make that third unit weak enough. That's why I planned for using 3 Cats and 3 Axes in the massive-army plan, with any extras that can get used on Kyoto being "bonus" units.
LowtherCastle said:
especially after we get the corn, which we won't lose again.
We'd probably lose it again in the future, sometime after his Cultural Borders expand once more, but if that happens, it will mean that we really screwed up the Toku war.
LowtherCastle said:
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.
The Cats at Kyoto won't expect to win any battles until the clean-up ones, at which point even unpromoted Cats can win. If we really want, we can use City Raider I Cats on Osaka, but I think that Bombard Cats at Kyoto is a better investment of the few promotions that we have on Cats.
That's 2HP more for several units (what is it, 5 units? 6 units?), which adds up. We don't care if our Cat survives by having better odds--the Cats are there just to wound the other units in the stack and we'll rely on the law of random numbers--i.e. attacking with enough units--to eventually get in a few hits on the top two stack defenders in Kyoto.
LowtherCastle said:
I think 9 cats, 8 axes, 1 spear on T86 is a good start.
I don't really see it.
That's not enough to take on Osaka without being forced to Bombard Kyoto down to close to 0% City Defences.
That's barely enough to take on Kyoto if we bypass Osaka (which means 1 extra turn of walking there), and that's if we are lucky--likely, we'll fall short even with those numbers, because that extra turn and no Scouts to block Toku's production squares will mean we'll almost certainly face 5 defenders in Kyoto... and that size of an army has a decent sized chance of not capturing the City, and a reasonably-sized chance of capturing Kyoto but losing it in a counter attack from roaming AI_ATTACK units or from Hatty if she declares.
It's this hybrid solution that I don't feel comfortable with. I would prefer to either go in sooner (like T83 or so) with a smaller stack and just start Bombarding away or wait until we have a larger stack and conclusively take down Kyoto without any Bombarding. A hybrid approach with a medium-sized army will likely leave me ending up letting the team down.
LowtherCastle said:
This solution gets the cat 1 turn late for the Kyoto assault, which would be okay if we decide we want to bombard to get the CI axe a jump point
I'm not concerned at all about jump-points, since delaying an extra turn is likely to mean an extra defender, which means that a unit or two having better odds isn't nearly as useful as fighting 1 less defender when we're talking about such a heavily-City-Defenced + River-bonused + Hills City.
I still might do the whipping that way, though.
I know that I'm sounding stubborn here, but I really don't feel comfortable with a medium-sized army going in around T86.