The Great War Thread

[Charis]

We are in a major state of emergency. Strong steel and sharp minds will prevail, we will not panic.

I'm opening up this thread to seek suggestions, feedback, *tactical plans*, cries against the war, thoughts of targets, etc.

This thread is specifically geared toward our citizens. All cabinets members, especially the Military, will be following this thread, I'm sure. Others may spawn as polls as questions arise.

With this vehicle for the people to be heard, I must ask your indulgence in **NOT** posting in the Military Department thread for this Great War. We must have low noise ratio, sanity, and clear answers for our president there.

Thank you, my fellow Phoenaticas!
General Charis

 

[Immortal]

first and foremost, we should have all of our cabinet ministers have some input as to what we should do. I would like it if all of our goals are made clear and concise for the enxt time we play. It is imperative that our function is set before we play or the war will cost too many lives and end in stalemate with out own humiliation.

 

[Knight-Dragon]

Originally posted by Charis
This thread is specifically geared toward our citizens. All cabinets members, especially the Military, will be following this thread, I'm sure. Others may spawn as polls as questions arise.

With this vehicle for the people to be heard, I must ask your indulgence in **NOT** posting in the Military Department thread for this Great War. We must have low noise ratio, sanity, and clear answers for our president there.

Does this incl the other leaders? Preferably, everybody shld post here in regards to the military matters and leave the Mil thread exclusively as the Mil Dept's formal reporting piece. I notice that other leaders too clutter the thread much with inter-dept discussions.

 

[donsig]

Our Vice President has suggested (in the military thread) that we rush build a spearman in every city that can't complete one in 5 turns. Assuming he is excluding Fox Nest from this plan that would be include every city except PDX. I don't think we need to do that.

He has also suggested walls and barracks. PDX has a barracks, Pherris will have one next turn and Shailonegha in 3 turns. I wouldn't start any more. By the time a city made a barracks then a spearmen it could make 3 spearmen. 3 regular spearmen are better than one veteran spearman. A city could make 5 warriors in the time it takes to build a barracks and a warrior. We've got to gets units in the field. They will have plenty of opportunity to become vets.

Walls may be needed in a couple key cities, I'm not sure.

It may be time to put settlers on hold or we may need one more. That's a tough call. We have one now.

 

[Charis]

Immortal... well said.

Knight... the other leaders comments in the Mil thread have been appropriate and helpful so far, so no, I'm not suggesting making the thread completely "read only". Just trying to stem off what I expect could otherwise be a flood.

Donsig... any new barracks would be whips I imagine, not via shields (too slow, and as you said, worth 2-3 spears)
In my mind, walls are a measure of pure desperation, with zero value past the size-6 stage. Then again, if we see 6 legionaries, 5 hoplite-swordsman pairs, 5 horses and 7 bowmen coming at us, darn right we'll want walls. (And personal bunkers )
Walls won't save a city defender by warriors or one spear, but they can help a city with three spears hold off an army of 6 pretty handily. Add a barracks to heal those three every turn and you can really hold off a much bigger force. Rough priority would be: *a* spear, then a barracks, then two more spears, and only then walls (I speak of border towns). If we find for some reason one city becomes a magnet for all forces, that's another special case for walls. On settlers, imho they absolutely must wait. They suck dry two more defenders and take 30 shields. We couldn't hold the new cities if we wanted to.

Question -- what to do with the just-hatched settler in Eyr?

The NW or SE question just got *REAL* dire!!
- Horses would make a LOVELY addition to our arsenal. The "Hill" sight catching horses, coast, spices and wheat is a super site. But it will be on the VERY front line and would need 2-3 spears, a rushed barracks, walls. May as well name it "Alamo"!
- The lovely verdant area NW of the capital is far, far safer, and could be held with a warrior or a spear for quite some time, and it would out produce the other town. Just no resources from it.
And *NO* one is going to settle back there now. Before there was a concern "would hate to see someone settle there." The would receive the full brunt of immortal wrath now if anyone dared settle in our backyard now.

I'm leaning about 52% to 48% toward NW and wonder what others think. Basically, if someone DOES settle the horse spot, we let it grow to size 2 or more, go with full throttle mil (including the NW city gettng involved) then go TAKE rather than found there. Of course the AI tends to not pick the exact best square you would have. Hmmm.... Egypt has a settler near our eastern town. Going for the iron right there, or further to the horses?

General Charis

 

[donsig]

I noticed those Egyptian squatters, too. We'll have to check and see if the Eyr settler could even beat Egypt to those southern horses. It might be worth trying to beat them - the settler could always move back north if it loses the race. It would be a shame to waste time moving back and forth but this settler may be our only hope of a southern city for quite a while.

I know I have a reputation as a warmonger but I'm really a softie at heart - I never whip my citizens! That's why I always think in terms of shields. I do like the idea of spear then barracks then more military units. By the time the first spear is built we'll have a better idea if anyone's going to actually send forces into our country. And if they show up early we can always switch from spear to barracks and (cringe) get that whip out.

I really think that once we get some warriors retained and these other countries see our true strength we will be able to make some peace treaties.

You know, I tried that gpt deal trick one time on the Persians of all people. They took the deal and attacked me anyway.

 

[Mr Spice]

For a start I would like to see some more detailed information on what actuallly happened during the last session. I thought this was what the presidential thread was for, but when scanning it I only found a statement that we are now at war with all of our neighbours. Could someone who participated in the chat please write a more detailed summary? And could we please make that a tradition, something for the one responsible for the chat to do after all sessions?

 

[disorganizer]

you can see it in the chat-log

we should really urgently make ally with the egyptians.
maybe not against the babs, but the americans? this could keep our backyard clean as they would be very busy fighting each other.

i propose switching from wonder to something else. maybe we can capture a wonder during the war, but we need the shields in fox nest for warfare

im happy i live a bit off the frontline!

 

[donsig]

Could someone who participated in the chat please write a more detailed summary?

A quick summary from memory. Please check the chat log for details:

1) Citizen worker in Shailonegha adjusted for more shields.

2) Discussion about what to build in Eyr. Temple was switched to warrior(?) then a settler was built there.

3) Embassy established with Aztecs with an eye towards allying with them per General Charis's advice. The embassy was 59 gold. Monty asked for well over 200 gold for the alliance against Babylon. He would only go as low as 217 gold and it was decided not to pay that much as it would seriously hamper the retraining of our warriors as immortals.

4) The Domino Alliance: Babylon allied with Iroquois. Next turn Iroquois allied with Aztecs. Next turn Aztecs allied with Americans. Next turn Americans allied with Greece. Next turn Greeks allied with Romans. That's where the turns stopped.

5) There was discussion about what to build in Civanatoria and PDX but by then the war had widened so spearmen were started.

Those are the points I remember.

 

[Shaitan]

I concur with the majority that we need to ally with Egypt. The question is who to ally with them against. I vote for Rome.

WHAT?! Rome? Is the Foreign Affairs Minister smoking something?

Nope. Here's the skinny: We are currently border threatened only by America. It will be a loooong time before any of the other civs we are at war with will be able to present troops. By the time they do, we should be in a position to sue for peace favorably. Our target was and still is America. The most important thing regarding Egypt is to make sure they don't declare against us. Our second goal with Egypt is to put a bunch of their troops away from us and their homeland. This way their home defense will be weakened if we need it that way later and their troops will be out of place when that b!tch Cleo decides to backstab us (Cleo ALWAYS backstabs me - she's worse than Haburabi).

Putting Egypt against Rome should divert Roman troops (the closest to us) to Egypt instead of our own fair lands. It will also bring Egypt into contentious contact with several of our enemies. Cleo is not likely to back down to demands that she leave foreign territory so we will likely get Egypt to war against some of our other adversaries.

Foreign Policy Plan Recap:
Embassy with Egypt
Alliance with Egypt vs. Rome
Egyptian troops march to Rome, cause conflicts with lesser powers, possible Egyptian conflict/DOW on lesser powers.
Roman troops divert to Egypt (closer for them).

Any thoughts? Criticisms? Alternative ideas?

 

[disorganizer]

this could work. is there still someone else we can ally with? maybe we can get another war going between 2 ai-civs. as they search allies, we could indirectly start a world war. as we are far off, we could attack america without loosing reputation, and the other civs fight each other further south

 

[Shaitan]

Originally posted by disorganizer
is there still someone else we can ally with?

There are others we could ally with but right now we have only enough cash to buy one ally if we want to upgrade our warriors to immortals. Egypt is the must have ally because we must prevent them from being brought into the war against us.

 

[eyrei]

Originally posted by Shaitan

There are others we could ally with but right now we have only enough cash to buy one ally if we want to upgrade our warriors to immortals. Egypt is the must have ally because we must prevent them from being brought into the war against us.

I completely agree that we need to get Egypt on our side. I believe this should be done on the next turn, and that they should be brought in against the Greeks. I think it is worth considering that we also get them to ally against Rome, and pop-rush a few immortals rather than upgrading all at once. This would probably divert the second wave of Roman soldiers away from us, so that once we fought off the first wave, we would have some time to concentrate on America.

On a military note, I strongly suggest we send a couple of our regular warriors into the southern wilderness to watch for enemy stacks coming our way, so that we might be prepared for them.

 

[Shaitan]

Originally posted by eyrei
I completely agree that we need to get Egypt on our side. I believe this should be done on the next turn, and that they should be brought in against the Greeks.

Setting them on Greece would let them get their troops in action faster but would mire them down right there. Rome would eventually get their assault force to us. Bringing them in against Rome not only gets the Roman Legions off our back but also puts Egyptian troops across the Greek path - much chance for mischief and we don't have to pay for it. We can likely get Egypt to DOW on Greece for free.

Any specific pros for Greece that I'm overlooking?

 

[eyrei]

We need to check to see if Greece and Egypt have a ROP agreement. If they do, it is imperative that we get them to fight, or we will have Greek soldiers at our borders in just a few turns. I believe the Romans got a pretty crappy starting position, so they are probably not very powerful. Also, Egypt will probably use the money we give them for the alliance to bring in another civ against their new enemy. This could well be one of the civs at war with us, but not actually allied with Greece, which would cause quite a bit of chaos, and effectively take Greece and that civ out of the war against us. If we could get Egypt to war with Greece and Rome, this would compound that effect, and may almost entirely prevent any large force from making it to our borders.

 

[Grey Fox]

I think that we should make the Egyptians ally against Greece. Greece was the 3rd most powerfull nation in the world, and if they can really fight some with each other. If we would send Egypt against Rome (which seem weak on their starting location), they would probably sue for peace before their soldiers even reached Rome (if they would even send any). But if a war brakes out between Egypt and Greece there would deffinatly be some fighting. Even some cities exchanged.

The ones with the biggest changes of coming to our lands (except for america) is the Aztecs and Greece.

 

[Shaitan]

Good points Eyrie and Grey Fox. One problem though is the cost. If Greece is significantly more powerful than Egypt it will cost an arm and a leg to get the alliance. I'd say we should indeed try for an anti-Greece alliance first. If that looks too expensive, go for an anti-Roman alliance. Since Egypt and Greece are neighbors it's possible that there is already bad history between them and Cleo will jump at the chance to attack.

 

[donsig]

We will run into the same problem trying to ally with Egypt that we had in trying to ally with Monty. We wanted the Aztecs as allies but there was no debate about how much we were willing to spend to procure that alliance. The president had to make a descision on the fly. We're setting the poor guy up for that again.

How much are we willing to pay to get Egypt to ally with us? Let's decide as a nation before the turn chat so Grey Fox will know what we want.

Remember, we will need to spend to establish an embassy in Thebes first. It cost us 59 gold to find out Monty wanted over 200 for an alliance. The cost of the embassy must be figured in to the cost of the alliance.

I also urge everyone to remember that we need gold to retrain our warriors. That has been our plan for a long time and switching now is not a good idea.

We may want to upgrade some warriors before approaching Cleo. If she's gonna want half our money for an alliance we might as well spend some of it first.

 

[eyrei]

Originally posted by donsig

We may want to upgrade some warriors before approaching Cleo. If she's gonna want half our money for an alliance we might as well spend some of it first.

Unfortunately, in a few turns I almost guarantee that the Egyptians will sign on against us, if we do not ally with them first. I think we need to spend as much as it takes to get an alliance with them. We make enough gpt that we will recover pretty quickly.

 

[donsig]

We have 3 warriors in Pherris and the barracks will be done next turn. we could upgrade those before talking to Cleo...

...unless the consensus is to establish the embassy and talk to Cleo before we end our current turn.