Lizzy's rise to greatness

[Hercules]

any further news? any pics?

[mzprox]

we captured gaunlet city and destroyed it. we had to because many of rb's units have city raider promotion and our troops are more important now than a city. we will rebuild it with a settler.
There was only one maceman defending. unfortunately our first rifleman died in combat (we had 79% winning odds)
right now our forces are a bit weaker than rb's, and they have the ability to strike first with their many catapults. However I expect that they will not want to get into exchange in a bloody battle.
We are advancing slowly.. waiting for the rest of our troops to arrive.

[OzzyKP]

I posted the demographics screen and a bunch if other info in the intel ops thread.

[mzprox]

our goal now is to advance very carefully. Nice or not, we'd rather see our allies's armies take the main hit by egypt . I raised my concerns about the other two getting better land, but really it is just too unpredictable... we might fail to take much of rb's land and if we succeed there is india's suggestion that we continue as an alliance aginst maya&hre&natives.. So it's a very complicated game.. one way we have to be sure that we win, but also that we get enough spoils and we don't pay too much for it.
one thing you should know: we are not giving 10% to this war. we are building civilian buildings too, and despite the heavy draftings our economy is still a top one. I can see rb doing similarly and I'm sure india and aztec are doing it too.

now it's egypt turns, we can't log in. I can't post pictures now, but one statistic: before i logged out our military strength was second in the world . far behind egypt's, but we were the second strongest. GNP no.1, but egypt's potential is very dangerous.
I moved in 10 troops to the hill nw of egypt's city ('gaunlet'), i highly doubt egypt would attack us in this turn, more likely they will abandon it.
Once we take it however it will be in a not too well defendable position. if we try to hold it we might suffer heavy losses.. otherwise egypt will surely destroy the city. My hope is that egypt will focus on aztec's army.

[Hercules]

Very disappointed that Univ civ (HRE) loaned gold to RB, while seeming to be 'neutral concerned' at RB activity.

[Hercules]

Also, how much of our goal is to weaken RB vs strengthen ourselves? One concern is that if all three of us nibble off the cities closest to us we will get slaved down Spanish cities and the Aztec & Indians will get core RB land.

I understand that Mzprox discussed this with CFC and Aztec's re possible distribution of rewards.

[OzzyKP]

Also, how much of our goal is to weaken RB vs strengthen ourselves? One concern is that if all three of us nibble off the cities closest to us we will get slaved down Spanish cities and the Aztec & Indians will get core RB land.

[OzzyKP]

Agreed. Declaring war when we did and how we did is the right choice, but where do we go from here?

Egypt's north is undefended and can easily be taken, but once they upgrade their troops they can take them right back. We won't be able to hunt down their unupgraded troops to destroy them, they'll keep them out of reach. So what is our plan? Hope that the three of us can nibble off enough cities on the Egyptian outskirts to lower their productive capacity enough so as to win the long war of attrition that will follow?

[mzprox]

We can open discussion about anything. what to do, how to do it. Declaring war or not was not a question, it has been decided long ago, and we made promises to two other civs that we will act together. that was necessary so all 3 of us made heavy sacrifices for the goal to weaken rb before it's too late. We got peace offers from egypt, they even offered us a great person, but because of our agreements with aztec and cfc we couldn't accept it.. not that we should had anyway. I think this war will not hurt us as much as it hurts egypt.
Since war was inevitable we had to declare war as soon as possible: if rb moved first in the turn they could draft one extra soldier in each of their bigger cities before we take it. We wanted to avoid it. Our army is not ready yet, but it will be in a few turns and our land is not in danger, so we could declare war safely.
cfc will join the war on our side in 5 turns ,hopefully bringing cannons and grenadiers.

[OzzyKP]

Mz wanted to be first in the turn, so he made sure to declare as soon as the non-aggression treaty ended.

Discussing war objectives is a very good thing to do.

[Dinner]

Hmm, it seems like our army is mostly still 1-2 turns away from the border and not all in one stack. Is this because we have to declare war prior to actually moving our armies into enemy territory? Also, so far only one other country is at war with RB and I thought there would be at least one other. Has he just not declared war yet or has he reconsidered? I'm not seeing us being able to take more than one or two of RB's cities and even those will only be the heavily slaved cities which RB took from the Inca before his much larger army will be brought to bare against us. What are our objectives in this war besides just joining in with another civ in an attempt to some how contain RB? Personally, I'd like to grab as much of the former Inca empire as possible with special focus being set on luxury resources we don't already have.

[mzprox]

I had 5 minutes to log in, we declared war, from now it's safe to log in for everyone. You better check the turn order because in the second half of the turn we can't log in. (the mod will automatcally stop us if we try to log in, but we shouldn't anyway). I can play the turn about 24 h from now. (just to clarify: if the old pw would had been 'w', then the new one is 'www'.)


The plan is to capture the closest egyptian city then we will see what's next.

Ozzy, please post some pics and info about our empire, I will not have time to do it.

Some news:
-With massive upgrades (horsemen->cruisaries) aztec has built a big force, hopefully egypt will focus on them so we can capture some cities for ourselves easily
-We learned that uciv/hre was lending 800g to Egypt, strange because previously they told cfc that they are worried about egypt's power..
-There is a chance that cfc will make peace with maya, since we have an agreemnet with cfc that we sign naps together they will only sign the peace if we too extend our nap with maya to t200-210.

[OzzyKP]

Let me know when it is safe to log in and get info for everyone.

[mzprox]

i'm on vacation right now, I can play the turns, but only on a netbook. I asked ozzy to help me with the turn reports, but for now I ask everyone to not log in till the war starts (it will be very soon). it's important because of the turn order we want during the war (we want to move first). (because apolyton was down i couldn't warn you about not to log in i changed the password. (the new pw is the old one but written 3 times the same). I still ask you again not to log in untill i say you are free to do so. thx.

about the turn: we moved our troops in attack position but we will probably wont attack, just declare war to get the first position to move during the war.

[mzprox]

it's not a problem. that 100g is the first part of the loan we are agreed to.