SGOTM7 - Team Wacken

[WackenOpenAir]

With the SoZ being built 825BC, i guess we can expect the first AC next turn ?
If so, and we do build an army, we should do it right now and move it on top of the hills. Then there, the horses and swords can retreat and be protected. Else, the AC will take out the damaged horses on the mountain probably.



And Xevious about you not feeling in your element, don't worry. You had the most difficult turns in the game so far. You play well, i think you are an underrated player when MB gives you deity level while the rest of us he assigned sid qualification. Also do i think you give yourself too little credid regulary. You are no less good than the rest of the team at all.

 

[Offa]

I think building a sword army is clearly correct. We ought to fill up the army completely, and just except that it will be stuck in India. Taking out the Indians is definitely worth it, and the army can stay behind afterwards to defend.

Our PRNG luck seems to have been pretty poor, but the leader makes up for this.

Do armies ever retreat?

 

[Offa]

A sample simulation:

3 swordsman army (attack 4) and 6 vet horses v city with (edit) FOUR reg spears gives 95% chance of taking city. if swordsmen were available instead of horesemen then only 4 would be needed for the same chance. In practice the chances are better, as the town can be taken in 2 or more turns, trying to attack just with the army.

I think we should build swordsmen not horses as they are effective in lower numbers.

Our position looks good.

 

[Wotan]

Do armies ever retreat?

I have seen it happen, but cannot remember if it only applies to "2MP+" units in it. Since the army lets each unit in it attack in sequence I guess it has to do with the abiltiy of the unit not the army. My guess is thus that it will not if filled with SMs.

Keep the discussion going. I will not play until tomorrow night at the earliest.

 

[Offa]

This is pretty obvious but I will say it anyway. A swordsman army won't be attacked, so we can hide all of our horsemen underneath it. That way we don't have to bother attacking or defending against any Indian units in the open, and can just take out the cities. All of the horrible attrition of our units in the open will cease. As a swordsman army has the same movement as horsemen this arrangement will work very well. As I said before I strongly favour an army over the FP.

The AI can be tempted to leave cities. For example, you can land a warrior on the coast somewhere just out of range of the Indians and they will send lots of units to attack it. I have never had much success with this kind of thing but it can work very well.

If our position gets stretched we can abandon our captured indian town enabling us to concentrate entirely on the Indian capital. Hopefully this won't be required.

Re research: maths for catapults is clearly very important, but we have some chance of getting it in a trade, whereas monarchy is very unlikely to be available in trades, and we could really do with it.

Re our position compared with others teams: I think the combi factory might account for much of the difference in the starts. Teams which did go stright for the combi factory would have expanded slightly slower, and consequently have had a much worse time with barbarians than us. Something like that (although much worse) happened to me a while back in the Greek gotm33 where I hoped to trade for pottery, but didn't get it and so delayed my settler factory set up and got hammered by barbs when I had no outer buffer towns.

I have been pretty convinced by this game of the importance of deferring a combi factory until at least a few settlers are made.

 

[WackenOpenAir]

Do you prefer keeping the army on Indian land after it is done instead of using this little gifting trick to get it home?
I really think it would be better to get it to our homeland after we captured India.

Even if it does not retreat, it should definately be swords in the army. a 3th movement is not that important.
With swords in the army, it is actually kind of nice to have horses to travel at double speed instead of lonely swords. Also can horses take out a unit in the open and then retreat back in the stack.

Therefore, i suggest using horses against the rest of India and reenforcing it with horses only. Swords will be better against The zulu though. The horses we will still have remaining after India can very well be used against the Arabs and for home defence, so i do not think we should already start to build swords now.
I think we should build horses until victory against India is in sight and we don't expect to need more reenforcements.
Then, when we are ready with india, we will have started producing swords and we will have some horses surviving from India as well.
Our next priority then is to remove cultural pressure. Using the swords on the zulu and the horses against the arabs. We can at that point decide wether to continu on Zulu or Arabs.

At the moment i prefer to research monarchy. Building galleys in the corrupt coast cities is pretty ok with me. Also 1 harbor.

 

[dmanakho]

Good morning to all spaminators from east coast...
I see we are still alive and have a wonderful MGL waiting for the executive decision. Haven't read all the posts, obviously that will take some time, but i do believe sword army will be a great help to achieve our goal of capturing India with SoZ. So i vote for the army to be created.

 

[WackenOpenAir]

Nice, most of us seem to agree on the sword army.

I suggest we make the army right now and move out as the horses are healed. If offa is correct about his A+6 vs 5 spears, then we are in a very good position as we can attack with more than that.
Don't bother about lahore. just heal our units and move out with all we got.

When i am home, i shall see more precisely what we can do regarding the reenforcements and the healing of those horses on the mountain before the second AC will come out. The more we can attack with, the better.

 

[grahamiam]

thanks for the analysis WOA having just finished my 2nd cup of coffee, it is now clear that it is correct, sword army is definitely worth more than 200 shield FP.

also, i agree with offa that we can probably get math in a trade, we just have to make sure that we meet people while there's still an opportunity to trade something.

 

[Offa]

I think teleporting troops is too cheesy (and possibly banned). The army could continue to do good things in India, and we might be able to persuade the AI to attack the Indian island instead of our own.

My question earlier about retreating armies was because I thought they don't retreat, which is strongly against loading them with horsemen.

I agree, as I said above, that horsemen travel very well with a sword army. The problem with horsemen compared with swords is that you need more of them to achieve the same effect. Losses are pretty similar.

Re my simulaion, I think I mistyped the findings ,I meant 4 spears. If they have 5 spears you need three more horsemen. The figure would be right it Delhi was a town, but it isn't. I don't think it is relevant though as the way to do it is just to keep killing one spear or two per turn with the army for 2-3 turns, before chancing any horseman. The army has a 99.6% chance of killing a reg spear in a city, so our luck is seriously out if this doesn't work. That way you take a little longer to take the city, but won't need so may troops. Obviously if it is about to hatch an ancient cavalry then priorities will change.

 

[Xevious]

Ok, so as of now there are only 3 swords in India, 2 vets healed and a 1/5 elite. There's still a worry about Lahore flipping, and I was breathing a sigh of releif every turn I left troops in it. I still think the horses west of Delhi should go pillage the iron mountain (again, assumed to be NE,2N of where they are now.) They can get there in 2 turns (NE,N and then N), staying on mountains the whole time. That would also give us the rest of the layout of India.

 

[WackenOpenAir]

What is the use of attacking multiple turns with the army ?

It wont heal in between turns. After 2 spears (which is one turn) it is very possibly so damaged that it will need healing before doing a 3th attack.
A city that is under attack also is likely to rush build more defenders. I'd send everything and attack all in 1 turn.

Only if it is so healthy after 2 spears that it can be expected to last another 2 spears, then i think it is a good idea.
Also of course it is important that the city doesn't produce an AC while we are delaying the capture.

 

[Offa]

The army can probably afford to take time to heal. If we can summon up enough troops then an all out attack would be best of course.

AS a slight dark cloud: perhaps team Grumpy's cuture loss is because they are revolting to monarchy, in which case they are looking pretty good.

 

[WackenOpenAir]

hmm yes. very true. Most likely a revolution indeed.

That would indicate a revolution after 350BC. We should be able to make that date without difficulty, and we will have India by that time as well.
So it that dark cloud is not that dark

 

[WackenOpenAir]

825 = turn 0.
Turn 1, 6 and 11 will be a AC for the AI.



The 2 horses from mainland can be transported with ship chain next turn. They will be well in time for any plans we can make.

I am assuming the horses around Lahore did not move last turn.
They will be healed turn 2.
These would be in position for attack at turn4.

We now total 10 horses in position by turn 4.



The swords and army is a more delicate problem. The 2 veteran swords are at risk of attacks and might not get home in healthy condition. We just need to hope they will get home healthy.

We have 3 vSwords and 1 eSword in India. It is of course prefered to join the eSword in the army as it cannot make new leaders.

Healing the eSword outside Lahore takes too long, healing it inside comes at flip risk.
The best option would be to join it in the army together with the vSword in Lahore on turn 1. Then have the army heal. I think the army will heal 2 hp per turn, meaning it would be healed on turn 4. Turn5, it can be in position for attack. Just in Time.
On turn4, it can do 1 move and 1 attack. So that would be 1 extra attack the turn before and 2 attacks on turn5. If the rng allows us, the army can take out 3 spears like that.

So turn5, we will have 10 horses and 1 army with at least 1 eSword, 1 vSword and what remains of the 2 vSwords by the time they get home.
This could be sufficient.



In this plan, all units present in India are used except 1 of the vSwords and the 2 damaged horses on the mountain.

If any unit needs to be killed, or if the city flips and needs to be retaken:
If both vSwords reached home without being attacked, any such tasks should be for one of the vSwords.
If one of the vSwords is damaged, it could be sacrificed to take a shot at an enemy unit and if it doesn't win, at least damage it so that the units we will still need recieve minimal damage.

In case of emergency, the 4 horses that are now healed and in a stack could attack arab units if they desembark the first turn. They only need to be in position at turn5 and thus will have 2 turns to heal 2 hitpoints.
If the first turn nothing comes from the arab boats, we could fill the coast line with them to prevent anything from disembarking later.

Of the 2 horses on the mountain, only the healthiest could reach home and be healed to be in position on turn5. The other cannot.



That is all not counting one thing: the AC. I am afraid it will move south and kill our eSword next turn.

 

[WackenOpenAir]

BTW, do we really want to build a regular sword in Kafa?

 

[dmanakho]

I think teleporting troops is too cheesy (and possibly banned). The army could continue to do good things in India, and we might be able to persuade the AI to attack the Indian island instead of our own.

teleporting is cheesy but it is an allowed trick. Our team did it in SGOTM5 and M-B didn't oppose it.
However we can leave army in India. If we do it we won't need to keep no more troops but that single army on Indian island for protection.

 

[Wotan]

An interim report...
Since we are in agreement about the Army I used my lunchbreak to play a few turns. We are at 710BC and we own Delhi!!! Army plus 11 HMs attacked. 3 HM died.

Will continue playing tonight.

 

[WackenOpenAir]

An interim report...
Since we are in agreement about the Army I used my lunchbreak to play a few turns. We are at 710BC and we own Delhi!!! Army plus 11 HMs attacked. 3 HM died.

Will continue playing tonight.

Delhi at the cost of 3HM !
That sounds marvelous

 

[dmanakho]

Super,
I must believe you have crushed Indians by the end of your turns.