Strategy Discussion - Metagame

[Zeviz]

Originally posted by mostly-harmless
No way we will amass the necessary 700+ espionage points in time.
mh

Over 700? That almost rules out that possibility. If we are going for Cats, can we arrange with PAL to sell them HBR for Math and/or Construction (I don't remember how the costs compare)?

[mostly-harmless]

HBR and Math are the same beaker cost.

A little cost calculating:
HA are 50hammers each
I assume we want 3 stables as well, 60h each
plus a handful of auxiliary troops (axe & spears)

So the current plan of 20HA will cost our industry 1180h+aux troops.

We can currently get say 40hpt throughout the empire.
Lets assume we can increase that by 1.5 (more pop, new cities) by the time we have researched HBR. Not every hammer can be spent on military, so lets say around 55hpt when starting on stables and HAs? That's 22 turns +aux troops + 6 turns HBR research. Say 35 turns from the time we start HBR until we declare war. That is without cats. And we have to clear a couple of tech before that (Monarchy).
So we are now on T85 and we are aiming on attacking not earlier than T130.

Is that roughly the correct timeframe?
Are we confident we are not facing longbows by then?

mh

[sunrise089]

No, merely that we're even more likely to face longbows waiting until Machinery.

The best I can offer to speed up the time is going no stables, no auxiliaries, using our workers to chop, and slaving our cities. Doing that I doubt it will take 22 turns to make the HAs - after all in MP you often need to make huge armies quickly. Of course all that doesn't take into account we don't win by killing a single rival in the demogame, so we may not be able to create an army as fast. I just don't know how much more to offer in the short-term to defeat a neighbor with better resources than us.

[Swiss Pauli]

Dug-in LBs aren't much worse than facing spears, and they are a lot more costly. I have a feeling that Templars may consider Feudalism a bit overly defensive seeing as we have no Iron, and even though mh may be right about no Colossus, they'll surely want MC's cheap forges.

It's clear that if we go for this attack, we have to go full on and probably found at least 1 'chopville' to get the necessary units out.

[mostly-harmless]

Obviously I am no expert in MP warfare, but what about we raze Jericho now (or soon) with axes?
And once we raze it we leave it at that and settle Pink Peaks.

Can I get some thoughts from our generals on this please?

mh

[Zeviz]

I would vote against this for political reasons: Once we attack somebody, they become our enemy forever. Not only that, but we'll be marked as "dangerous aggressors" by everybody else. So we shouldn't start a war unless we expect a sizable benefit. Gaining control of a large portion of our continent, complete with securing a second set of strategic resources is a strong enough benefit. Planting our flag on a single resource in a border region isn't.

[Sullla]

Although I am not opposed to military action, I am opposed to sacrificing growth and economy to do so. Personally, I just feel that time is on our side in this game. We've got room for a full dozen cities on our landmass. Even with Jericho, Templars have room for about seven. Why fight them four cities against four when we could fight them with a sizable lead in population, resources, and possibly technology?

I see war in the short term as unpromising, war in the medium term as more promising, and war in the long term as extremely promising. Templars actually have a pretty strong military at the moment; C&D has them pegged with something like 2 axes, 2 spears, and possibly a chariot. We could not beat that at the moment, and our far-flung possessions are a defensive nightmare right now.

Yes, it's disappointing that we don't have iron, and the mapmaker deserves a serious protest after the game for shafting us so egregiously. But I think the key question comes down to this: is iron SO important that we're willing to risk our whole game on a questionable early attack? I just don't think this is the right era to make a move offensively. My thinking all along was to try and slingshot Nationalism, and use our advantage in number of cities to draft maces or Oromos (UU musket) to take out one of our two neighbors. That might not work... but then again, it might!

At the very least, let's keep the debate going and our options open. We can gauge Templar military strength with an extremely high degree of accuracy through C&D, so we'll have plenty of warning of any buildups and can determine when/if the moment to strike.

[sunrise089]

I suppose Sullla is right. It partially depends on how likely C&D thinks enemy offensive action against us is. On the defensive, I sure don't like lacking iron and elephant, but obviously we can mitigate that by waiting until gunpowder to begin military action.

So despite being a hawk, I'm fine with expanding and biding our time (though I would like so horse archers before too long) if we can turn the other cheek from Templar treachery for a while.

[Kylearan]

Hi,

I think we all agree that we have to wage war on our continent at one time or another. The question of when the best time for this will be is not an easy one though...I admit I haven't logged into the game myself, and while all the information everyone posting here about our situation is excellent, it cannot fully give me a "feel" for the game as I would have gotten logging into it myself. So take my opinion with a grain of salt.

Originally posted by Sullla
Although I am not opposed to military action, I am opposed to sacrificing growth and economy to do so. Personally, I just feel that time is on our side in this game.

Is time really on our side? Maybe it is against Templars, but against PAL? Even against Imperio I'm not so sure...not taking into account any research alliances not involving us that will emerge in the near future.

We've got room for a full dozen cities on our landmass. Even with Jericho, Templars have room for about seven. Why fight them four cities against four when we could fight them with a sizable lead in population, resources, and possibly technology?

Assuming their land is better than that we can settle, and already improved too, my answer would be because then we can start playing catch-up to PAL earlier. The downsides would be that we might become isolated diplomatically, being aggressive so early.

Templars actually have a pretty strong military at the moment; C&D has them pegged with something like 2 axes, 2 spears, and possibly a chariot. We could not beat that at the moment

I agree, but maybe we can with the stack of 20 horse archers Sunrise suggested.

is iron SO important that we're willing to risk our whole game on a questionable early attack?

Not attacking would be risky as well. Once Templars and/or Imperio have knights, and realize that we have a full dozen cities against their seven, *and* we have no iron, they might come to the same conclusion as we did that aggression might be the only long-term option...and they would also realize that their window of opportunity would close once the gunpowder age appears.

This could be prevented by good diplomacy and/or trading for iron. But my point is that it's not only risky to attack now, but that not attacking is risky as well.

My thinking all along was to try and slingshot Nationalism, and use our advantage in number of cities to draft maces or Oromos (UU musket) to take out one of our two neighbors.

That's a very good plan, and let's hope our opponents haven't read your game reports too closely!, but I'm weary if we will be able to gain the tech lead on Templars/Imperio required for that plan. Diplomacy and trading between human teams in multiplayer make this a lot more difficult to do than in single player.

At the very least, let's keep the debate going and our options open. We can gauge Templar military strength with an extremely high degree of accuracy through C&D, so we'll have plenty of warning of any buildups and can determine when/if the moment to strike.

I agree. I don't want to sound too hawkish; actually, I'm fine with not attacking with horse archers and wait for another opportunity, as not succeeding at this early war would ruin the game for us completely, without much chance to recover. I'd just like to point out that waiting is very risky too, and we might regret not having used this window of opportunity later on, if it proves to be the only one we had.

-Kylearan

[mostly-harmless]

I believe that we can come out ahead if we get a second settlement wave going.
Aggressively settling Pink Dot was our initial risk we took and it paid off.
However we have not reaped the awards yet. Settling Southern Marble and Colored Mollusks will do that and give us two additional good cities.
And we have yet to fill in our backyard with cities. The recently spawned barb city is not an exceptionally strong one, but still fits nicely with dot map.
If we pursue expanding for now, we can get three additional cities in 10-12 turns and there will be still 3-4 good cities spots for us to place.
Templar and Imperio each have one maybe two good spots left to settle. That's it. They will have to plateau out soon.
And that's when our larger land = bigger economy will start to pay off.

PAL will run into Rabbits and Banana at some point. They also whip their cities like mad. Apart from the capital, their cities sit at around size 2 most of the time, indicating that PAL lacks the worker force to improve the terrain at the same speed as they are settling. I am pretty sure we have by far the strongest worker force and can get ahead of everyone else once we get some additional happiness and translate this into working improved tiles.

Also I do not consider Templars nor Imperios current military as any threat to us. Plus we have a NAP with Imperio which seems to work nicely.

We have to assess the situation constantly, of course, but for now I am in favor of getting that large land we claimed to our benefit.

mh

[Kylearan]

Hi,

Originally posted by mostly-harmless
Templar and Imperio each have one maybe two good spots left to settle. That's it. They will have to plateau out soon.

I hate to play Cassandra here, but that's exactly the reason why I think not attacking them is risky. They will run out of sites to settle shortly before knights become available...

But if we can prevent an attack by diplomacy and/or trading, I agree we might be better off not attacking them now.

-Kylearan

[Swiss Pauli]

Looking at the short term - especially if Imperio sling Feudalism - then we'll need HBR asap for defensive reasons. I suggest to propose a swap with Maths to PAL as the next trade.

Seeing as both longer term military options require us to gain a tech edge, I think a Philo lightbulb would be a strong play. Aside from being a pre-req for Nationalism, we can use it to trade in one of the expensive techs we need on either path (CS, MC, Machinery).

Of the two units to draft, I think Maces would be more effective as I think there's less risk of them having a big stack of HAs to flank our cats, and Spears will see them off. If we delay to Oromos, I think they'll be spamming out the Knights, which are much more problematic, esp as Oromos will defend, not Spears.

[sooooo]

I'm just going to throw this one out there and expect others to do the work for me (): Can we use the great artist from music to lightbulb nationalism?

[Swiss Pauli]

Originally posted by sooooo
I'm just going to throw this one out there and expect others to do the work for me (): Can we use the great artist from music to lightbulb nationalism?

Iwas going to propose this until I realised it was blocked by Divine Right (and to a lesser extent by Theology). Linky:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=140952

[mostly-harmless]

To get to Gunpowder as quick as possible we would "only" need after Monarchy (if I remember correctly):
Metal Casting
Feudalism
Machinery
Guilds
Gunpowder

That's not too long a way IF we beeline for it, is it?

mh