I forgot to tell we have 17 turns of NAP with CivFR.
Attacking WPC is almost sure thing - why would we miss on 2 easy cities (one of them in clearly our territory which we allowed them to settle), beside Bistrita having some moral scruples
Lets hope we get to this situation to have those 2 cities available at t200 and not ot4e conquers them before this.
So, we will need to make the more important decision about who of the big fishes we want to attack - CivFR or CP and when.
Reasons to attack CivFR first are good.
- CivFR can be attacked earlier - 210 for both us and Poly
- CIvFR we believe will fall easier than CP when attacked on two fronts we believe.
- CivFR have nice cottaged land
- MZ proposed already that we kill off CivFR together and split the spoil
- we will have NAPs with CP in that time, making us secure from attack from them for at least 20 turns to do our job
- our NAP with CP will forbid them giving help to CivFR
- the french turnplayer is almost 100% sure less experienced and dangerous in both military strategy and military tactics than CP's Bemep and Ot4e
There are of course downsides too.
- we leave CP alone to consume their newly conquered WPC land and generally leave them alone to develop as whole, which might be very dangerous. We might find out we killed CivFR only to fall against uber-advanced CP.
- in case ot4e dont find a way to subsidize CivFR with money and/or army and they seems doomed, he might well join the attack on them and conquer most of the French cities when purposefully or not, French give most resistance to us with Poly and not fight as seriously CP. This is quite possible scenario. Remember Spaniards throwin all at us while French had easy time in their backyard, or Germans choice to fight exclusively WPC and not RB, which resulted in WPC managing to not take a single city from them for the whole war, even while RB took almost all of German cities. Or in the most recent example, CP attacking WPC and having to fight the bulk of their armies, where if we attack WPC will take only almost empty cities. So in the end, we might actually enrich CP more instead of depriving them from an ally.
We have quite a good reasons to attack CP too:
- we go after our real competition
- we will have way easier initial time because of our Sistine powered culture we will win second ring of most if not all ex-RB cities.
- we might have Uciv join us against CP. Bistrita said Uciv are mad at Ot4e and want to stop their NAP and Uciv are preparing for war with third power in military.
- we wont leave time to ot4e to establish his empire and somewhat will take him by surprise, at least messing with his plans seriously, because I am 100% sure he relies he will get NAP with us, while we can simply deny him NAP now.
There are downsides here too.
- If we choose to fight Ot4e, we will be alone for the first 15 turns - we can cancel NAP earliest t213, while Poly and CP have NAP to t230. Most probably we will have no NAP with CivFR too, so we will be in 2vs1 position again with us on the worse end of it. In case we bring Uciv along (need checking with them when they can attack CP), we will still be 2vs2 for the first 15 turns.
- MZ is already committed to attacking CivFR at t210, so he might see us wanting to fight CP instead as somewhat betrayal
So, we have to decide what we do. There are of course hybrid variants - like preparing to defend vs CivFR at t210 and preparing to attack CP at say t220 or 230 ?
What you have to say guys? Do we give CP a NAP? To which turn? (ot4e said he will want NAP to t220 or 240 as he have NAP with MZ to t230) Which civ/s we attack and at what date/s ?