SMC Business

[Thud]

Sorry for my lack of orders, turnchat attending, and general absense. I traveled to a conference in Maryland, and upon arriving found that my laptop's hard-drive had managed to get itself fried at some point in transit. So, I've been unable to access the internet for more than 3 minutes since Friday.

Anyhow, I do have some important things thought up. I'm planning for a war with Germany, and only Germany, at this point. It seems to be accepted as prudent, and I feel this is a war in our general interest. Not too far in the future either. Way I see it there are 3 plans worthwhile exploring:

1.Roadcage's original loot, pillage, etc. plan.

2.Capturing all valuble cities, dividing his empire. Generally E_T's plan.

3.As Unortho aptly put it: "Wipe them out. All of them."

One of my primary objectives is to make sure that we don't put a drain on our economy with this war. That means no truly significant unit production increases. It also means we get something from Germany. I don't care particularly what. We also want to knock Otto from the tech scene (space race? I'm talking long term knock out here)

So, I'm inclined toward a modified 'number 2'. 'Number 3' will eliminate the culture problem, and is certainly long-term, but I feel infeasible in our current state of affairs. 'Number 1" is feasible, and I would have no quarrel with enacting it, but I have concerns as to how long-term the chaos will be, whether explorers are worthwhile to be building, and whether we gain anything directly. Again, I'm not saying that it isn't these things, I'm just concerned.

Also, I still want deputys. ManiacStarSeed expressed interest, apparantly, but that's it.

I'll be posting more detailed plans and information as soon as I get a computer capable of running Civ3, most likely Friday.

[adaMada]

Thud,
Glad to hear you're back .

Are you aware that the Zulu declared war upon us last chat?

-- adaMada

[E_T]

Sorry to hear about your laptop, I hope you didn't lose anything vital.

We do have 9 Exploreres in the works and one that was built this turn. I should have 3 Setters ready in 16 turns too.

Because we now have RR, I'm working to get the network built and then getting the production output increased afterwards.

I have Mil Units interspersed with Improvements builds, so the drain to our economy is not that noticable, so that shouldn't be a problem.

If we go the Industrialisation route first, we should have several Factories online by D-Day and that will increase our Munitions output while the war continues and concludes.

E_T

[Shiber]

Glad to hear you're back.
Regarding explorers, I reckon that sadly, the window of opportunity for this will surely close before D-turn.
Regarding the war with the Zulu, you can read about it in the turnchat thread. here's the link.

[E_T]

Originally posted by Shiber
Glad to hear you're back.
Regarding explorers, I reckon that sadly, the window of opportunity for this will surely close before D-turn.
Regarding the war with the Zulu, you can read about it in the turnchat thread. here's the link.

Shiber, I'll have all 10 of the Explorers up before too long and I could get more. It is a good stratigy and will be implemented. So we don't completely cut Berlin out of the loop on the first turn, we'll get it the next.

The AI is more concered with getting individual cities RR'ed before they work on connecting them up, so we will have an advantage in that respect. I have connected up 7 to 8 cities (still working on the PW stuff) while Otto has built 2 RR tiles in far off Cologne, and they've had Steam Power for 4 turns. I am not worried, you shouldn't be either.

E_T

[Shiber]

I'm afraid I'm still very pessimistic concerning this. D-turn is in 16 turns, probably.
Anyway, if we do choose to follow this strategy, it is imperative that we disconnect Berlin on the first turn of war. If we do that, they won't have a chance to change their builds to military units. If we completely disconnect Berlin only on the second turn of war, they'll change their builds to military units and even if we cut off their strategic resources, they'll still be able to complete those units. I ask that all efforts be made to ensure that this plan goes well, or most of its huge advantages would be lost.

[canyontree]

The problem with Railroads is that they need to be pillaged twice. We have identified the 8 tier 1 Berlin tiles, their wine tile, and the Nuremburg/Berlin/Stuttgart road junction tile.

The 8 Berlin tier 1 tiles are critical. The other two are gravy. We will need to increase the explorer count to 16 from 10. 16 will probably allow for the secondary objectives as it is doubtful that Berlin will be completely railroaded. even with enogh explorers, the pillaging may not be complete on D-Turn as explorers cannot evict anything, and only 3 of the 8 Berlin Tier 1 tiles can be attacked on D-turn.

Most likely, Berlin and all of Germany will go into disorder if Berlin is successfully isolated. All we really need to do is get them into a government change. They are not Religious so the Anarchy period will be long and effectively cost them one tech even if we inflict no other damage

We can just pillage pillage pillage and bombard Berlin down to size 1 and refuse to capture it until all of our other objectives are met. Capture anything else we want before assaulting (as opposed to bombarding) Berlin.

Try to downsize or capture selected other cities so that when Berlin falls, the Capitol moves to somewhere that is out of the way. And bring in a settler to claim the Berlin city site.

Berlin + the two cities near Staging Point are approx 40% of Germany's beaker potential. That is more than enough to take them out of the tech hunt. Of course we can take as much other stuff as our war weariness will allow.

[Panzer32]

Originally posted by Shiber
I'm afraid I'm still very pessimistic concerning this. D-turn is in 16 turns, probably.
Anyway, if we do choose to follow this strategy, it is imperative that we disconnect Berlin on the first turn of war. If we do that, they won't have a chance to change their builds to military units. If we completely disconnect Berlin only on the second turn of war, they'll change their builds to military units and even if we cut off their strategic resources, they'll still be able to complete those units. I ask that all efforts be made to ensure that this plan goes well, or most of its huge advantages would be lost.

1. We can make totally sure all of Berlin's outgoing roads are pilliaged by producing more explorers than we need. (we need 10; say 13 or so)

2. I am not sure why D-turn needs to be so far away? Maybe I am just naive, but since we lose much if we wait too long (Germany gets infantry), how about we go earlier than planned.

3. Remember - riflemen need no strategic resources. I assume that the reason we would cut Berlin off is to deny them building cavalry, and luxury resources. I expect to see many drafted riflemen in their cities.

[E_T]

One of the reasons that we don't want to go now (or sooner than 16 turns) is that we don't want to break any turned based agreements. We will take a very big rep hit if we do.

Also, we need to be prepared for the eventuallity of Germany bringing someone else in against us. We can go after Otto now, but we won't have that extra preparation that we will have in 16 more turns of Military build up.

FAM Arnelos is looking at a couple of choice MPP's that will help reduce this risk somewhat. We are also drafting from a few select cities to help with this somewhat, too.

Another thing that we need to remember with all of this planning is that we are Exporting 3 Luxuries to Germany. If they are left to ride all of the way up to D-turn, Germany will have to deal with the sudden loss of those 3 luxes. They don't have the Super Powered Cathedrals that we have, and will likely have a few cities go into unrest (or close to it) when we declare.

E_T

[Arnelos]

E_T and Thud,

What I need as FAM is a scheduled TIMELINE and some idea of when the war would actually START (taking this annoying phony-war with Zululand into account). Once I have that information, then I know what I'm working with in terms of doing all the appropriate diplomatic manuevering and whether agreements with Germany should continue to be signed after a certain date.

Thank You

[E_T]

We can go to war with Germany in 16 turns, IMHO. I'll have the stuff ready by then. I've added 2 more Explorers (total of 12) and 3 Settlers (one for the Explorer Jump off City and the other two to replace Razed Cities). I don't think that I'll get any more than that, without significantly effecting Mil Unit or Major Improvement Scheduals.

E_T

[roadcage]

How many more Cav, Rifle, Cannon (above what we see on the 1110ab save) will be ready by D-Turn?

We need to Build Staging point on D-Turn minus 2 so enough workers to road can move onto the two actual jumpoff tiles that turn

Build road on D-Turn minus 1 and move in more workers to rail on D-turn so we can hide our mobilization ie bring forces from all over the continent.

Since we will be looking at Cav vs Rifle fortified in cities, we will need LOTS of Cannon to bombard them into the red.

Major changes since Reiseling/Staging Point:
Reiseling had simultaneous bombardment then attack of Hamburg and Stuttgart. We will probably need to concentrate this bombardment and do these cities in series rather than parallel due to anticipated high rifleman counts. Want to maintain pressure (units in position to attack) the second city, but wait for bombardment.