The War Room

[mzprox]

In this topic we can discuss everything related to war. Preparations, diplomacy, plannings and eventually the battle moves.
Everything else goes into the main turn report topic.

short summary about civs:

RB/Egypt: biggest land, biggest army, biggest score, very advanced, they are the big bad guys who need to be stopped somehow. We have NAP till t170 and agreements with cfc/aztec that we will not extend it.

civFR/Maya: big and advanced cities, high research potential, moderate armies, they are at war with cfc. We have NAP till t180 and we also promised we will not extend the nap

cfc/India: big potential, determined players, they killed the zulu, very likely ally against both Egypt and Maya. Nap till t200

civplayers/Aztec: good economy weak army and production potential, friendly nation, ally against egypt.

Uciv/HRE: suprisingly good economy, but they are not active in diplomacy. we don't know where they stand. we have nap with them till t210

wpc/Natives: very backward civ.. they are just waiting to be killed, possible working with RB. We have nap till t200

Inca: will be exterminated in a few turns

[mzprox]

We believe that we can not let EGypt develop in peace after they got Inca's land. Even more we can not let them taking out an other nation, and they have every means of doing it as their war with inca did not weaken them. (inca used most of their armies to destroy wpc).

However it's questionable what can we accomplish. by we I mean us, india and Azteca.

Cfc has nap with egypt till t175, we probably should not start war before that, but cfcis also at war with maya so we don't know if they can make peace or maya will becomew egypt's ally.
I think Egypt even could get rifling by t175 or a bit later, and that wouzd make a direkt attack against their homeland fail.
We are too considering to strike on maya first so we could split their land and fight Egypt an other time.

[mzprox]

Trade with aztec:
I'm negotiating a trade with aztec. a trade which will be good for both of us I think. If you remeber we have talked about giving units for their gem, we extend this trade, currently in the following form:

We deliver them 7 drafted riflemen, looks a lot, eh? But don't forget it is our interest too that RB won't take aztec's cities, so partly it's defending their cities. we also give them our stone to help them building walls and castles.

we get the following: the gem resource till t190 with possible extensions, 4 catapults, 3 workers, 3 missionaries, the spice resource with no ending date specified. 400 gold loan to help us getting rifling asap.

This is kinda big deal, basicly for the gem and the loan we give them 2 units, the other 5 is traded for 100 hammer worth of units each. The gem and spice will allow us to draft even more soldiers, the loan will allow us to start the drafting sooner, catapults will be needed, and that 3 workers is alo great. missionaries are good too, because buddhist temples give extra production, also it will increase our votes in the apostolic palace which might be needed.

[OzzyKP]

Go for the trade.

I'm really not sure what to do on the war decisions though.

[mzprox]

Right now none of us is sure about what to do. We continue to collect information, predict our capabilities and meanwhile build up the best army we can.

[OzzyKP]

Giving it some thought, I would advise against going to war with Maya. Our goal should be to weaken RB, period. Teaming up with CFC to attack Maya will probably benefit CFC more than us.

Ideally we should get Aztecs & India to join us in a war against RB/Egypt at the same time that CFC/India is still at war with Maya. Our goals need to be to weaken Egypt AND India.

[mzprox]

There are many problems which make things complicated:

-egypt is bigger than any of us and should not be left in peace while we remain the same size
-egypt's army is huge and they can draft even more soldiers if they are in danger so if we want to win we need to make huge sacrifices ourselves
and at this moment i don't think any of us would be willing to do that. And ofc none of us will do it unless they are sure that the other two civ will make the same level of sacrifices-and even then, if we do everything for victory and we do win it's just as important to get fair share from the spoils, which is also hard to balance. RB main army will most likely face one of ours, destroy it, while the other two civ will have much easier time to go and plunder, get cites etc.
so
-it requires big investment (i'm talking about as much slaving and drafting as possible, crippling our economy)
-it's risky, victory is not guaranteed
-we must watch that cfc or azteca will not just come out of this relatively stronger
-we must also be careful with maya and HRE, espcially the former may decide to backstab us, but if they stay out their relative strength might increase.

So the attacking of the maya is a valid alternative as it would give us more land and we could go against egypt an other time, maybe with a more solid tech lead. But all in all I think we will decare war on Rb anyway.

[OzzyKP]

The danger with the Maya war is that it will cost a lot of units/hammers/population that we could be sending against RB while they have a chance to consolidate their conquests and build up to prepare for the eventual war with us. I don't think time is on our side.

[mzprox]

Maya is quite angry on cfc and promised a war "till the end" to them. Now if we work with cfc against egypt that will most likely will move maya and egypt closer, possibly they will ally. so it may become an RB+maya vs us+india+aztec war, hre is quite inert, aztec has a longer nap with maya than the rest of us.

[mzprox]

We have our first two janissaries, I think i will keep it about 2 janissary/turn drafted and in 3 turns we can start woörking on the real army and produce riflemen.
Meanwhile many cities are working on barracks and trebuchets. the latter will be upgraded to cannons as soon as they become available (should be around t175).
I told aztec that we will only trade some riflemen for catapults and/or workers, about 100 hammer worth for each rifleman so we get more sieges this way, and also a few more workers to help us build road.
In the meanwhile we are building galleys, one of them will participate in the trade with aztec carrying the troops the other first will plant us a city on the iceislands then will carry our forces against egypt. We will get good use of our +1 naval movement bonus.

[mzprox]

I had a talk with the Aztec and India representatives. We agreed that we must do extraordinary efforts to win this war, because egypt will do the same, and if we fail to contain them now we will probably won't have an other chance later.

However this raises questions: how big effort is big enough? Egypt will continue to draft 5 soldiers each turn, produce units in many of their cities while going fast for rifling.. and they already have a big army. To match that all 3 of us need to do similar efforts, slave, draft and concentrate only to win this war. India has promised to slave and draft a huge army, but they won't be ready before t175-t180.(the problem i see here is that if egypt starts drafting rifles we can no longer attack, but they can easily overpower aztecs or even cfc with the help of maya.

Then.. what about after the war: it is expected that all nations who participate will be weakened relative to those who just develop in peace: Maya, HRE... So came india's proposition that the 3 of us (we, aztec, india) agrees to not attack each other until we finished off everyone else.
Tbh I don't like this alliance, but I have to agree that it is logical: how else could we go on full war efforts if we would not give in everything, but watch what will happen after the war.