Strategy Discussion - Metagame

[Swiss Pauli]

Originally posted by mostly-harmless
So are we aiming for a local struggle to wrest control of Iron from them or all out destruction?

With the amount of tile overlap, we would probably have to (all but) destroy Templars in order to get a good return on our investment.

One suggestion I would make is to invite Imperio to join once we take Jerusalem, and invite them to take Damascus. I hope that a double-team would cause Templars to throw in their hand.

The coast line south of Jerusalem is more or less know to us, as is most of the terrain from tile bleeding.

It's not the terrain that's important, but more how far Jerusalem's culture extends, as such a landing relies on the element of surprise to be effective.

[mostly-harmless]

Well Jerusalem's has its fourth ring.
If they settle another city in the southern jungle (near the stone) we can forget about surprise attack from sea.
mh

[sunrise089]

Wow, lots to read today.

I agree with the plan to hit Templars and take back our iron. I don't agree with the long tech route to one-move maces.

What I would do is this (assuming Templars chop the forest 1NW of Jericho):
1) Tech Horseback riding
2) Build Horse archers
3) Tech music

The attack goes like this:

Turn X, 1 second left: Move horse archers, 4 workers, and the artist from Music into the forest at the old Pink Peaks location.

Turn X+1, start of turn: Declare war. Horse archers capture Jericho, workers road the forest tile and the open grassland time, artist moves into Jericho and bombs.

Turn X+2: We have movement with all of our units, and likely can use some Templar-built roads. It should be easy to take Constantinople, maybe even on another one-move.

After that we can pillage the land around Jerusalem and cut the roads, and then move in with cats and take the city on our own time, maybe the same time-frame as the original maces plan.

Of course the difficulty is disguising our power to Templars and not getting attacked by Imperio, but that's true under any plan.

@Mostly_Harmless: Is there any way to prevent Templars from seeing our power chart? Like for example if we ran all of our espionage points towards them? Also, do we know the total number of culture in Jerusalem? I'd be interested in world-building an artist bomb and seeing what we could take.

EDIT: @ The expansion-hawks: We could still build settlers during the time it takes us to research horseback riding. If we're worried about loosing music we could even research music first, building settlers all along. So I don't think this has to eliminate the expansion plan.

[regoarrarr]

I like it. Do chariots upgrade to HAs? If so we could continue building Chariots and do a mass upgrade.

[Swiss Pauli]

Well this plan requires HBR, Maths, Construction, Aesthetics, Lit/Drama & being first to Music. I guess we'll need a LOT of Horse Archers and some cats.

Mace-Attack requires Maths, Construction, Metalcasting, Machinery and Civil Service. I guess we need a good amount of cats and maces.

[Sullla]

Hmm. I like the idea from sunrise. One thing to keep in mind: people who are not used to MP usually don't build that many spears. The AI just doesn't build gigantic stacks of horse archers the way human players do. The key to beating humans is surprise, and that's why 2-move units are so powerful.

As far as I know, there is no way to conceal your Power rating on the Demographics screen.

I wouldn't go so far as to say "bend our whole civ in this direction", but I do think it has serious potential for us to keep in mind. And it's certainly compatible with our current plan to head towards Literature after Monarchy.

[Swiss Pauli]

Originally posted by Sullla
Hmm. I like the idea from sunrise. [...]
I wouldn't go so far as to say "bend our whole civ in this direction", but I do think it has serious potential for us to keep in mind. And it's certainly compatible with our current plan to head towards Literature after Monarchy.

I'd have to disagree with not bending our civ to that end: if we're going to go to war then we've got to fully commit to the plan. What we don't have to do, as you write, is to decide this now.

[mostly-harmless]

To answer a few questions.
I do not think it is possible to hide our power rating. There are two ways for them to see it. The obvious one from the graph. Currently the costs to the see the demoGraph is 74 with Templars. They already have a lead in espionage points against us and amassed ~140. Raising enough espionage points against Templars to hide our demographs can't be done on any sensible timescale. Also keep in mind we nned some espionage points against Rabbits & Banana.
Even if we were to succeed with the above method, they could still look at the demoscreen numbers and assume their Best Rival is RB and be prepared.

Chariots do not upgrade to HorseArchers but to Knights.

Jerusalem's culture is currently 795c (4th ring) with 12cpt. Constantinople is at 11c (2nd ring) with 1cpt.
That will change of course as libraries and monasteries come online.

Jerusalem will be tough to take. It is protected by river on 7, 4, 1, 2, protected by mountains on 8 & 6, has one tile (3) access to coast. So the only feasible option is to attack via the cow tile (9).
(coordinates are NumPad keys).

Regarding the artist bomb: I think there were some not-very-obvious mechanics at work when culture bombing. (remember in depth analysis on this done by the team in RB29d-Cultural Extermination). I am not sure how good an artist bomb is against "old" culture. Also I don't like to keep Jericho.

mh

[Kylearan]

Hi,

I would like Sunrise's plan as well if not for one thing: The double move involved. Re-reading the rules it seems to be legal, yes, but I think it's against the spirit of the rules.

Using the Templar's settler "double move" as casus belli and following up with a much worse double move is more than problematic IMHO, and might cost us a lot of diplomatic credit. I know I would be *very* careful towards any team that bends the rules like that! The move would be illegal while at war, and doing it to declare war is darker than grey IMHO.

The rest of the plan sounds fine, and it might even be doable without the double move. I have no experience with capturing cities with horse archers, but I trust Sunrise that it's doable without too high a cost.

-Kylearan

[mostly-harmless]

Remember that quote from SunTzu or what the guy was called about only fighting a battle when the outcome is clear.
So the move against Templars have to be as overwhelming as possible and not depend on a double move.

mh

[sunrise089]

Thoughts:

@Swiss: My plan does not require math or construction. 2-move stacks are about speed, no need to burden them with cats.

@M-H's first post: I'll take your word as gospel that it isn't feasible to block our charts from Templars, but I would sure feel better if they were left guessing.

@Kylearan: Lots of civs are doing shady stuff, we can't be puritanical to a fault. Templars double-moved a settler and deceived us with border agreement talk, PAL is essentially tech brokering in a game with it explicitly banned. Would you feel better if we made the double-move less overt? For instance if we settled and bombed our own city at the end of one turn and then one-moved Jericho at the start of the next? Or are we deciding any attack must give the enemy time to reposition their units and slave all of their cities?

@M_H's second post: I readily admit I'm not experienced at eliminating teams of single-player role-players. It may not matter that Templars have time to reinforce their border city or slave units. But I don't know how allowing them those things makes an attack somehow less overwhelming. My concern with a 1-move stack is that we can't expect Templars to sit idly by while we tech the military branch and then build units. We all know in civ the defender has a strength advantage, so if we give up surprise, I question how (for instance) our mace+cat stack will be that much stronger than their longbow+cat stack. I think it's essential to throw surprise back into the mix to gain an advantage.

All that said, I'll certainly assist with the mace plan any way I can, but I fear a "ram a big one-move stack down the enemy's throat" will be difficult to pull off against another human who can go all-out on the defense better than an AI.

[Swiss Pauli]

Originally posted by sunrise089
After that we can pillage the land around Jerusalem and cut the roads, and then move in with cats and take the city on our own time, maybe the same time-frame as the original maces plan.

(my bold)
Cats are needed, sunrise, maybe not for T1 of the war, but we may be struggling to tech much under the weight of units by the time the war starts, so we'll certainly want to have Maths by that stage.

As to the double move, can't we avoid it by settling Twin Peaks and roading (then chopping) the forest tile in question (workers guarded by 1 move units)?

Lastly, I have an idea for a divertion: as you can't see what's in Galleys in BtS, how about we send some empty boats to Jerusalem to pin down defenders, or get them whipping triremes? By the time we get to the unloading point for tile 3 and they realised they've been 'done' it's too late

[mostly-harmless]

If we settle Twin Peaks, Pink Peaks can't be settled and Jericho is too bad a spot to keep especially if we plan to take over Jerusalem and Constantinople as well (the place is terribly overlapping).

The Swiss Trireme Feint is a nice idea.

mh

[sunrise089]

@Swiss: Touche. I must read my own posts more carefully, thought of course I still think it's easier to knock Templars down a peg or two and THEN build research construction.

As for settling Twin, sure we can avoid the double move that way (we can also avoid it by moving a horsearcher stack at the end of one turn and then not attacking until 12 hours into the next one), it's just a question of how much we give up by letting them know the direction of the attack.

As far as galleys go, I tend to think they're not worth it. The problem is if we build 3 galleys and make them think we've filled them with 6 horse archers, all they need to do is position 3 spears to cover the boats. That's few hammers than the boats themselves cost, and I imagine we tip our hand earlier since we have to give them time to see the boats and react. The above is subject to change though if the terrain is more favorable to us for surprise from the boats...but in that case it would probably be better to have units in them rather than merely feint.

[Swiss Pauli]

Originally posted by mostly-harmless
If we settle Twin Peaks, Pink Peaks can't be settled and Jericho is too bad a spot to keep especially if we plan to take over Jerusalem and Constantinople as well (the place is terribly overlapping).

The Swiss Trireme Feint is a nice idea.

I think keeping Jericho is the price of this strategy, and is worth it if we take Jerry and Conny. Seeing as we're ORG it won't cost much to keep, and if we decide to go cultural the bomb will stop other civs spotting the play very early.