Tactics and Strategy T130-T150

[damnrunner]

sounds good.

 

[mikotian]

maybe they really have no cats lol...

Hack > Cats

 

[Jimmy369]

I had a chance to look at our espionage status. Some math is in the spoiler, but the gist of it is this: in 2 turns if sancta does not spend the same amount of commerce on espionage as we do, we can have city visibility everywhere. After another 2 turns, we should be able to investigate all of their cities. According to the Demographics graph, though, sancta currently has a lot more espionage than us, but my guess is that they are splitting it between us and cavs. Also, we can see their research in one turn of 20% esp. All the above does not depend on our golden age for the values. I don't know the cavaleiros numbers but they are probably in a similar situation. That is all i have for now. Now too get my screenshots working to my satisfaction...

Spoiler :

Running at 100% espionage, we currently earn 370 esp. points/turn. We currently have 348 points against Sancta. After the golden age ends we will lose ~60 base commerce. Since I didn't see any espionage modifying buildings, I will assume that that will come straight out of our total. So when we are not in GA, we earn ~300 esp. points/turn. One of the highest cities to spy on will be Fog and Cloud. Currently the screen says it takes 859 pts to spy on F&C. I will round that up to 900 just for safety's sake. We need to earn ~550pts (900-350), and since we earn ~300 pts per turn, it will take 2 turns to see all of their cities. This is regardless of our golden age. In order to investigate the city, it currently takes 1434 pts. Following the same process as before, I'll round to 1500pts. We need to earn ~1150pts. Our rate of ~300 times 4 turns gives us ~1200 additional beakers, easily enough to spy on all their cities. Research can be seen at 408 pts. We need ~50 pts, so 1/6th of our total commerce. That is ~16%, so at 20% we can see their research in one turn.

 

[damnrunner]

maybe they really have no cats lol...

Hack > Cats

What is odd is we do see the 2 catas they have stationed with their Knights. Generally it makes sense to keep all the Catas together so maybe Sancta really is less prepared.

Can we run #s on their most recent demographics to get a better sense of military size.

Sancta is a very confident team - they may be confident that they can kill anything we throw at them tough superior play (and the alleged RNG hack). Hopefully hubris will work to our advantage.

 

[damnrunner]

That is good info regarding intel – but I think it is more important to tech rifles asap and then generate cash to upgrade units.

Also it may even be worthwhile to try and tech Corporation for the extra trade routes after we tech rifles and switch civics to Nationalism (this should only take 3-4 turns).

The fact is, Sancta can raise their Espionage to match any increase we do pretty easily. Also we already have good intel where it matters most from our spy in the valley. After our initial attack, however, I think diverting more commerce to intel may make more sense. But still, should this really be our team? We, by far, have the best multipliers with respect to technology – so if we have extra commerce that is not needed for cash upgrades we really should put it into science. Team Cav is probably a better candidate to boost ESp rates.

 

[Jimmy369]

I agree with your statements about team Cav being the better team to espionage, especially in regards to our own research capability. I think one thing about forcing Sancta to match our espionage is that it cuts into their research pretty heavily. Saturn is spending most of its resources fueling Sancta so they don't research much. If Sancta is forced to spend even half their research dollars on espionage, I think works out in our favour.

 

[damnrunner]

Thanks for the screen shots. It will be pretty hard to take Phoenix with that LB @ 100% defensive bonuses. If they had weaker defensive units doing an amphibious assault might be worth it – but vs. the LB it would be pretty ugly. I think we should do a surprise war declaration to kill the Caravel with a Frigate. It would be best to do this with 2 frigates in case Santca has a larger navy behind the 1st caravel to counter attack. Then we can start bombarding and blockading Phoenix. Also without the ability to work sea tiles the city will start to stave and will drop below pop 6 – this is good as then they can’t draft there.

 

[damnrunner]

Jimmy - lets see how Team Cav responds to the request we sent them about their commerce rate and tech goals.

At that point we can work out if their is extra commerce to allocate to esp.

 

[cav scout]

I have positioned 2 of our frigates just outside SANCTA's visual range. We can surprise attack their caravel in two turns if we want to. If we want to launch a naval attack down the road we could upgrade the galley to a galleon and with the carrack have a lift capacity of 6.

If we aren't planning on a naval assault in the near future we could feign one right now though as part of a deception plan. We could:
1.) attack with the frigates and start reducing defenses.
2.) upgrade the galley and make sure they see it and the carrack.
3.) move all the cats and maces out of Taraz 1 SW to our main stack- they will loose sight of them and might assume we are repositioning down by Haz.

There is a good chance that SANCTA would buy it, thinking we are doing a coordinated 2 front attack with CAV. But the question is- do we want them to reposition forces to Phoenix if we plan to attack there eventually?

 

[damnrunner]

I'd vote option 3, but then we should move some of our pikes into the city as it will be vulnerable to knights. We won't be able to attack Phoenix for a while and any units they take out of the valley will be helpful.

I assume that includes option 1 of attacking with frigates as well.

 

[cav scout]

Well 1, 2 and 3 weren't meant to be exclusive of each other- we can do all 3 if we want. Each adds a increasing level of deception.

If we move some units out of Taraz and SANCTA tries a spoiling attack it would take them 2 turns to attack the city with knights. So we can easily reinforce and attack them first with our stack 1SW of the city. This would actually be a good thing to draw their mobile stack in the open and attack it first.

 

[damnrunner]

I believe they could reposition out of sight and then do a quick 1 turn road to attack in a single turn.

 

[cav scout]

Well they don't have any workers close enough to road and we have eyes on their mobile stack too. But nothing wrong with being safe and making sure Taraz is well defended.

We we get ready to attack we should send our spy up past Dragon Tears to give early warning of SANCTA reinforcements and maybe cut a road or two on hills.

 

[damnrunner]

So we now have nationalism and Rifles. Start the draft next turn!

Tech Mil Trad? Should we go for that or leave it to MS?

 

[cav scout]

But shouldn't we wait 1 more turn to milk the most out of the golden age while we still have bureau as a civic?

 

[damnrunner]

It is an option - but every turn we delay we could draft 3 more redcoats. And we have the biggest bang right now when Sancta does not yet have Rifles or cannons.

 

[donsig]

Yeah I think 3 redcoats are worth the gold we'd lose by switching now.

 

[damnrunner]

Also if we are dropping down to 0% science any way (gold for upgrades) the lost benefit of the Bureaucracy multiplier is far less.

 

[cav scout]

Well its not just the gold but also the hammers.

And it doesn't get us 3 extra redcoats, it just gets us 3 redcoats one turn earlier. I don't think it would effect the size of our stack on the turn we move next to Zero.

 

[damnrunner]

Spys

I like the idea of a spy cutting a road. But recent screen shots show several workers in the area and they could likely rebuild the road in 1 turn. Also – what are our odds of cutting the road anyway. If it takes two spys and we have to pillage a farm and then the road our odds of success will probably be fairly low. Even if the odds are high (75% +) we would still have to assume that we will not succeed and our stack will need to be able to survive on its own. I think we don’t risk it and we keep the spys doing what they do best - looking around.

If we do want to do a covert op – a better option might be to cut the road connecting Dragon tears to Sancta’s core cities. That will slow reinforcements.