SMC office 1824AD: Zulu wars

[shade]

the Zulu war's aren't going as good as I expected(I think this might be due to the help they get from all other AI's...but still they will go down

Lets restate some goals:
Bapedi will be bribed, question remains: will we do this even this turn or will we wait 'till we have captured their capital: Zimbabwe on wich we rae currently closing in?

Zimbabwe, beeing their capital will be our first serious concern.
The city is walled and I think it will be a nightmare trying to take it without taking those walls down. Therefor it miight be interesting to start the 4 conquered zulu cities on a Diplo-(rush)-build strategy. (Mpondo,Ulundi,Swazi and Ngome) Let them build diplo's and send them in until the wall's are gone.Then we can send in those cannons and cavalries we have.... but this might be considered expensive and way to slow.
Our Friends the Zulu's are in Republic so we might want to take advantage of our abundance of units there.

We can just surround the city and take all squares that could produce shields(cfr map: red dots: all 10 extra squares we should occupy are shown)...this would reduce their defence in 1 turn to 1 unit(1shield in their city square?)
This way we might be able to take them out swiftly and with a minimal loss of units.
(personally I think this tactic might be the best we have...although it will put many units in volnurable spots for an entire turn.)

after this we could easilly take out the left over cities by bribery. So we can move on to those 2 American cities to the west of the Zulu-homeland.

The Blue circles on the map are unit's that should be taken out asap. The crosses are some interesting points to put up sentries so we aren't backstabbed to easy by those Germans.

Hlobane and Tugela will have to wait until troops/diplo's pass by to take them over.

Shade

[Six Thousand Year Old Man]

A few of the options here were hard to choose among. We should bribe where it's cost effective. Taking out the capital first would be cheaper, obviously, but we need sources for the diplos and units required to take out the capital, of course. So I feel we should bribe some of the smaller, cheaper Zulu cities... the Prez should use his judgment on this.

Bring down the walls, definitely.

Sentries are not something I really believe in when we're in conquest mode. Before we know it, the sentry posts will be well behind the front lines.

[cavebear]

I like the general idea, but I have some suggestions.

It would be *wonderful* if we could get the defending Rifles (should be 3 of them in the city now) to attack single Fanatics outside the city, and to stack our Cannons on the RR for full-strength assault relatively protected from attack.

First, we kill the Rifle with 1 or 2 Fanatics.
Second, we move Fanatics to RR squares on both sides of the city and one side of Islandhlwana (fortified).
Third, we move other Fanatics to as many city-squares as possible, in accordance with SMC's idea of starving the city. Some of these Fanatics can fortify.
Fourth, we move our Cannon and Rifle to 2 stacks on RR protected by the fortified Fanatics closer to the cities. 1 fortified Cavalry will also occupy a city-square.

[shade]

STYOM: there are really a lot of stacked units there(one stack had 12 or so?)

Cavebear: like the plan

(oh and the bribing would only be if it were cost effective of course)

Shade

[Sparrowhawk]

Cavebear, this isn't the complete plan is it? Because for this plan to work, we need to make sure we have units on ALL shield producing squares of course, and from your diagram, the mined mountains south and east of Zimbabwae don't ahve a unit, same with one of the grassland (w/shield) squares east/southeast of the city, and perhaps others? I am certain you are aware of this, but would like to see a more comprehensive plan about what units are going where to attempt to deprive Zimbabwae of its defence capabilities.

[cavebear]

There are a few city squares we can't get at to put a unit on because the Settler/City positions block movement. And that Settler is going to be expensive to kill (I have the worst luck trying to kill Settlers!) Killing the Settler will prevent us from making other moves to protect our stacked units west of Zimbabwe, I think.

I think we can knock Zimbabwe shield down to near 0, but I don't see how to get them into negative shields, unless we allow them more food production.

Well, instead of moving the Cannon SE of the city 1 west to attack, we use it to kill the Cannon 1 south. Then instead of moving the Cav SE of the city, it occupies the mined Mountain SSE of the city and hope there is no Cannon waiting out of sight to kill it. It *might* get Zimbabwe shields negative.

That's about as far as I can evaluate the possibilities and guess at what squares the city is using. Is it better to starve them or reduce their shields?

Anyone better at evaluating this change, please speak up!

[cavebear]

(Oops., quoted instead of edited)

[cavebear]

With Sparrowhawk's suggestion of occupying the mined Mountain, and noticing that we can cover one other food square (NNE), here is a possible plan.

[Sparrowhawk]

Not sure we are all talking about the same plan here, my understanding of our Minister of War's plan is that we "starve" the city of shields, not of food, and his map above indicated the shield producing squares which we would need to occupy.

While our President is correct that we could starve the city, this would take much longer and be much greater risk to our units. I think we need to use the Minister of War's plan with your adjustment of Fanatics just outside the city to try to lure the Riflemen to attack.

As for what squares the city is using, I thought you had investigated this city and posted the screen shot in the tale of the years thread? Regardless, what squares they are currently using will not matter if we occupy a number of squares, as they AI will try to use whatever remaining squares we leave available, which is why it is imperitive that we occupy all shield producing squares (with the exception ofthe city square) to reduce their defence on the turn following to the number of units that the city square can support = easy victory.

Question is.....is this possible with the city radius, and the settler you identify, and trying to simultaneously kill the existing riflement and cannon?

[cavebear]

My understanding of the SMC's plan was that occupying all the city-squares we could would decrease both food and shields. I thought the intent was to provoke a revolt to possibly reduce a unit or two from lack of shield support but that starving the city might also lead to some lack of ability to support units. As a Republic, the Zulu civ could collapse into anarchy if the capital is revolting. I agree with this idea.

I fully expect to make the suggested moves on 1 turn and then attack the 2nd. We do not want to leave our units subject to attack from inside the city when they can heal from the Barracks there and attack again on a further turn. Whatever we do this 1824 turn, we should feel assured of capturing Zimbabwe in 1826!

Perhaps I misunderstood the plan though. I suggest that our SMC take the ideas presented so far and present a more definitive diagram of the moves he thinks would be most beneficial to us on the next turn and possible the turn after that.

(Your move SMC) And that plan will probably be our definitive plan for the attack on Zimbabwe.

[shade]

hmm, sorry for the misunderstanding the idea was to deprive them of shields(don't care about the food, it will be our city soon )
If we do that only 1 turn they can have no more then 1 of their own units in that city(except if they have their units placed in different cities then their homecity )

Shade

[shade]

I used Cavebear's last map(that's why there are all those extra arrows )

[cavebear]

Um, I think you can't move past a city or unit when we are at war. Are you sure we can make all those moves?

And I think you have 3 units moving from the 2 that are SSE of the city.

All the Zimbabwe units are homed to Zimbabwe (according to the 1822 Dip investigation)

[shade]

yes that one might be a problem....

Shade

[cavebear]

Redraw the map maybe?