Turn 100, 570BC

[alva]

Attacking does seem to be much more lucrative then defending so far..

[Shiber]

Just out of curiosity... which catapult missed? Which city did it fire from and when did it fire in the order of 6 catapults?

[vulture]

BTW, since I'm off, does anyone with a C compiler want a copy of the stack combat calculator (with instructions) in case we want to see what we can get away with for defense / attack with the new pikemen arriving in the area? As it stands now, in Arashi we have about an 80% chance of losing 2 or fewer pikemen (about 30% chance of losing none, 30% of losing 1, 20% of losing 2 - very roughly). Not critical, since it is pretty easy to esimate what we can get away with, but it might be interesting.

[nbarclay]

The plan was to add two pikes to Hurricane 8 and one to Sandstorm 6, bringing us up to six and four pikes in the two cities, respectively. Our new Bolderberg pike can head 8-8-8 to near Tempest, and our new EotS pike can go where EotS pikes traditionally go.

Questions:

1) Do we want to shift Arashi from production mode to growth mode?

2) Do we want to switch EotS, Hurricane, and/or Tempest to horsemen now, or wait a little longer? My inclination is to build one more pike in Hurricane so we can rotate swordsmen back to Hurricane for upgrade without reducing our defensive capacity from its current level. Past that, another pike from EotS this turn and one from Hurricane the turn after would let our new galley from Sufa pick up a pair of pikes to go after Vox's roads. Similarly, I'd like to get another pike in Tempest so we can (if all goes well) break a couple pikes loose for our western galley.

So for production, my current thoughts are EotS and Hurricane on pikes, Tornado on medieval infantry, Cyclone on workers (we'll especially need some extras if we make peace with Vox), and Arashi and Bolderberg on WCs. The other production priorities don't especially need to be decided this turn. I don't care strongly whether we keep Arashi focused on production or try to focus on getting it growing again.

[nbarclay]

The cat that missed was either the second or the third from Tempest. (The stack in Tempest attacked first.)

[alexman]

How many turns for Arashi to reach size 7 in growth mode? How many shields does it produce in production mode?

[Arrian]

Nathan,

I'd do a pike in either EotS & Hurricane, and a horseman in the other. Cyclone... is there a reason we wouldn't want it producing WCs?

Arashi... Med inf (so production) for now.

Regarding loading 2 pikes into a galley for a shot at Vox's iron... I'd think we'd want a pike & a med inf. We may have to fight our way onto their road in order to break it.

What's the galley situation?

We have 2 on the NE coast. Where did Vox's galley go?
We have 1 off the W coast. Can we still see GoW's galley?

We have 2 more just completed, right? One on each coast?

-Arrian

[Arrian]

Oh, one more thing...




Our catapults rocked this turn.

-Arrian

[nbarclay]

At present, it's producing ten shields per turn. If we put it in maximum growth mode (and if we don't mind wrecking Sandstorm's growth in the process), it can grow evey two turns, so it would take six turns to hit size 7. If we'd do that, we would get our next WC out of it in three turns instead of one.

From strictly a defensive perspective, the growth would probably come too late to make a difference. But from a perspective of longer-term production, putting the city in growth mode has some advantages.

[notyoueither]

I would strongly advise against planning for peace until the Vox stacks are actually moving away. Until they do, continue producing pikes, med inf, and fast movers everywhere.

re less pikes now, why is Vox's stack sitting? Could it be they are expecting significant reinforcements?

[FrustratedPoet]

Originally posted by notyoueither
re less pikes now, why is Vox's stack sitting? Could it be they are expecting significant reinforcements?

That's what I'm afraid of too, and I think it's a real possibility that we'll see some stacks of galleys appearing on our West coast in a few turns time.

[Arrian]

They're waiting on that road to be finished so they can come down the mountains next to Monsoon with a bunch of immortals.

Which is why I want more attackers. A stack of immortals coming down that road can either a) come down and go after Monsoon; or b) move on Arashi9.

If it's a) I want to be able to counter with lots of fast attackers. If it's b) I think we have enough time to produce any extra pikes we will need. I'll want more med inf to kill 'em off after our cats beat 'em up, though.

More attackers needed.

EDIT: another possibility is a GoW shuttle run of troops into Voxian territory. That would mean horsemen and immortals, making the threat much more serious.

-Arrian

[alexman]

I agree with Arrian: let's build more attackers, and leave Arashi in production mode.

[nbarclay]

The GoW galley is out of sight. Vox's galley stayed the same place; I'm tempted to move one of our galleys 8-4 to see whether Vox has troops parked on their road or whether they're expecting the colony itself to be our target. (They redeployed a spear from the colony mountain to the other mountain beside it to make sure we can't land on a mountain.)

If it looks like Vox is stationing troops on the road, we probably need to land with more than two units. Land-get attacked-move-get attacked-pillage looks like too much of a long shot for a pike and a medieval infantry; immortals from either Dissidentville or Elipolis could get there in time to help out. A pair of pikes seems like our best two-unit option; we'd have to be able to land directly on the road, but if we can, odds are Vox would need three immortals in range to hit us immediately for us not to have a survivor to pillage.

By the way, it occurs to me that we may want Tempest producing three-turn medieval infantry instead of two-turn pikes.

[notyoueither]

Do we sink the Vox scow?