The War, the Next War, and an island

[GePap]

A chance for peace, and checking Greece

Everyone want to go to war with France, and I think this has more to do with anti-French feelings than strategic reality.

Look at the power graph: the french are around the middle, while Greece rules supreme: should we not be chacking greece and not france? Joan is an ally, why not keep making use of that? also, why is no one mentioning the map?

We are rushing to get rion in the mountains and jungle: fine, to deprive Xerxes of iron is a good thing, but has anyone loooked at the land between Chicago and Boston? Its great! We could make a city in Flood plains, right next to an iron source. In 10 turns we could have a road connection from Apolyton to Washington (2 tiles of jungle stand in the way between Banana and NY), and then we could try to shuttle settlers between Apolyton and wahington, ruch for that area and get it before alex does, and if he does, we will die eventually...

If we spend as much time on careful planning, we can have 2 or 3 great more cities, just from a continuation of the anti-American war, we can cultivate a strong ally on our borders, while checking the growth of what is the strongest power now, intead of spending more time at war with a power greater than us. Gorwth thorugh peace is possible, once abe is out of the way. Lets seize the moment!

[OPD]

Also since those heathen persians appear to be getting the iron perhaps the settler should go to NY which looks like being autorazed.

[Kuciwalker]

We're not attacking Greece because that would be strategic suicide. It would drain all of our resouces, and we'd probably end up losing anyway.

[Aro]

I agree with GePap. France usually does not go to betray allies, and Jeanne could save us a lot of work fighting the civs in Abanabana... I really don’t appreciate the Germans so close, not to mention Montezuma. I suspect Mr. Bismarck likes banana pies…With the exception of France, everybody around want eat us, soon or later. Well, we must eat them first!

Someday, we will conquer the French, but they don’t scares me so much by now. At least, not until Jeanne cuts his hair off… It is horrifying!
But I only play in Warlord. In Emperor level, Joan D’Arc could be so nasty as others, you guys know better.

[Kuciwalker]

I actually like having the Germans above us. With the Aztecs just beyond them, it's more likely that they will attack each other than for Germany to attack us.

[GePap]

I started this post for a single reason: we are at war, but what our objectives are, how we wfit into the continent we now see, whether we can expand with less war: none of these things are ebign discussed!

Have we hald polls already? Have we already voted to go to war with France, or leave America crippled but not destroyed? Please, someone give me the links If we did already vote on these things. If we haven't, we need far more in depth discussion than what we have had, much more.

[Captain]

GePap

The french can wait. Let's look at our greatest threats and try to negate those before doing anything in haste. Why waste our time doing what is unnessary when we have other worries?

The road to the iron is critical. If we can get both irons, that'd be even better. If not, we should plan on having troops stationed near the Persian iron in the future, to be ready to cut the supply line.

As much as I'd like to check the Greeks, I can't see how to do that militarily. The hoplites are almost invulnerable without swords or knights. the only thing would be if they were stupid enough to send out unguarded settlers or offensive units without stacking with hops. Perhaps we can try to colonize as quick as we can towards them, that seems the only option for keeping them in check. Or an alliance with France against them. That would distract them from colonizing, but I doubt we'd take anything, and they might actually take some French (or Apoly) cities.

btw, a galley to swing some settlers around France might be worthwhile... but I think we should definitely be resettling America and the Ivory Coast first.

I am all in favour of using America as a placeholder, if possible. The iron spot near Fragrant Valley would be great, if we can get (Chicago?) in a deal, that'd be great.


---
(slight aside/threadjack: GePap, while I still say we are the legislature, I do see your point. Since our polls are necessarily [edit] NOT [/edit] binding (esp. on in game stuff), we're sort of a toothless (or emasculated) legislature. I definitely see the need for some second set of laws/policies to guide in-game decisions... such as that example of minimum treasury balance or pop-rush regulations or domestic defense plan...).

[Aggie]

Now that we have cmpleted the current war we can decide the next move. IMHO
1) specific items
use our army of workers(3 cap, one bought this last chat) to connect iron, dyes and new cities
2) Build temp in cities so we have a bigger control area and more advance warning of attack.
3) Build rapid reaction force of horsemen to react quickly
After this we can see where we stand
We probablty will want another war soon after that, the target was assumed to be france, but I would like to have some debate on that.
Aggie

[GePap]

Junior Strategic Observations:

Now that the first war with America is over, where do we stand? I have put together a list of things that we probably need to do, and also some observations about the othr civs and how they are:

We need to connect NY (Gaia is the new name) to BHQ, which should take at most 8 turns with 3 slave workers. We need a road to Ubergorsk to connect our iron.
We need defenses in Philadelphia and Atlanta. We can poprush a spearman in Atlanta.
We are building 1 temple (Ubergorsk), 1 archer, and 7 spearmen (total of 9 cities) currently, with a couple of the spearmen done soon. We should change some of those to either temples or other units.

Now on the other civs:

SOUTHERN TRIANGLE:

The southern triangle is made up of Romans, Iriquois and Russians. All these civs have space to the north to expand into, before meeting France. Iriqouis have yet to gain horses, thus still lack their UU. The romans have access to Iron, and thus their legios are available. They also have horses. Russia has horse, I believe. Of these three, Rome reigns supreme, Russia next and Iriqouis last. In such a situatio, the Romans will most likely get the main share of the land left open.

THE CENTER:

We are here, along with Greeks, French, Americans. The greeks have the largest civ, and are #1 in the histograph. they have horses but no iron yet, they have to wait for cultural expansion. They can expand both north of Americans, and towards an empty Ivory Coast.
France has horses, but has yet to connect the iron it posseses. France has room for expansion south of the mountains. The Americans are crippled and can do little for now.

THE NORTH AND WEST:

This area holds the Aztecs, English, Persians, and Germans. The Aztecs have horses but no iron. They have room to expand south, and east towards the english.
The Germans have no strategic resources, though they could have iron at Hamburg with cultural expansion. They can expand by destroying America, or heading west, to the lands north of us.
The English are the only other civ, besides the Romans, with Iron already. hey can expand west, to meet the Aztecs. The Persians don't have horses (I beleive), and don't have iron, though if Antoch expands, they will have access to iron. The Persians have little room to expand, already clashing with the English to the north, and have the jungle and Germans to the west.


PROSPECTS OF WAR: We have 4 immidiate neighbors, France, America, Greece, Germany. Persia is close also.

AMERICA: With the spearmen comming along, a second war with the Americans could be started soon. The Americans could create a city between Boston and Chicago and gain access to the iron there, as well as horses south of that. we could strike beofre that and destroy them, though not as quickly as this last war, and taking Chicago, on a hill, might be costly with Archers.

GREECE: Their Hoplites would mean a bloody war, and they have a large rear area and good roads, allowing them to move to the battlefiled faster than us. They migh also already employ horsemen, unlike the Americans. A war with the greeks could not cripple them early, and thus we might at best get only what cities we actually take in the war.

FRANCE: France, like Greece, has good roads and a large rear area. They might also employ horsemen unlike the Americans. They are also our only neighbor that may very soon have access to iron and swordmen. Like with greece, the fact that France has a good rear area and much room to expand, and access to resources, might make them far less likely than Abe to give anything up besides what they loose in battle.

GERMANY: The Germans lack major resources and are also more compact than Greece or France. At the same time, our armies must cross the jungle to get there, while they would move their amries internally. Germany is porbably a much weaker foe than either Greece or France, but there is less to gain also.

PERSIA: while Persia has a few cities close to Ubergorsk, their main cities lie after much jungle. It would take very long to move armies into position. Once the Persia's got Iron, the o****erattack might be too much.

ALLIENCES: We could use the Romans and Greeks vs. french, the Americans and French vs. Greeks, the Americans and Persians vs. Germans, the English and Germans vs. Persians.

[Harovan]

Good work, Gepap.

A few notes: The road to BHQ has highest priority and will be done by the slaves with other workers rushing by as the current jungle cleaning gets done.

About connecting the iron: I'm in favor to found an intermediate city, to ensure we control all parts of the road. Iron is a key resource, and worth another crappy city location. I will open a discussion thread about this, probably tomorrow.

[Will 5001]

A comprehensive report, great work GePap,

[Aro]

Excellent, GePap. Thanks

[Ninot]

Personally, i think we should get some settlers out to saturate the jungle inbetween our cities. if we lose out on the perfect 21 size cities of the future or not, i dunno, but our location is still a squeeze of sorts, so we should develop it as much as possible.

Oh.. and for post-war plans, im totally in favor of a buildup in everthing concerning production, culture and defense. But we dont need an offensive war anymore. I dont see wars neccesary untill the Middle Ages.

[DAVOUT]

Re: A chance for peace, and checking Greece

Originally posted by GePap
Everyone want to go to war with France, and I think this has more to do with anti-French feelings than strategic reality.

What is he talking about ?

[GePap]

Re: Re: A chance for peace, and checking Greece

Originally posted by DAVOUT


What is he talking about ?

What I mean is that many players may have had bad experiences with Joan in previous games, and thus, they want to go to war with France because they think, 'well, it might happen again'. So, I believe the desire of many to attack France has nothing to do with the notion that we need to fight that war now, but because people don't like the Frenh in the game.