Turn 106, 450 BC

[nbarclay]

I need to go back to work, and I'll finish the turn when I get back. The current tentative plan is to keep Inchon/Inchoff on schedule using the modifications I posted a couple messages ago. The cats will head for the Sandstorm front, keeping out of Vox's sight. I'm inclined to keep the MedInfs in Arashi for the moment, aside from the units staging for Inchon, and not to go after Arashi 8-9 right now.

If anyone wants to go with something different, speak up. I may be able to get in the discussion a little while my code is compiling.

[Shiber]

Nathan's plan to keep Inchon/Inchoff on-schedule: Yea.
Moving the cats to the SS front: Yea.
Not advancing to A98: I'm convinced. Yea.

[Shiber]

I get the feeling that Vox wants to move pikes to the spinebreakers front and then move masses of immortals to Monsoon, covered by pikes. That actually plays well for us, since they're drawing troops away from the Inchon sites.

[nbarclay]

Turn and shots sent.

[FrustratedPoet]

Hmmm ... bad luck on this turn guys.

I can't see any real benefit to cutting Vox's Iron supply anymore. They'd be able to negotiate a trade with somebody very quickly as it seems like the other teams are all very happy to work against us.

[zeit]

I'm glad we took out the Voxian boat- I hope they had troops on that one (though I doubt it...).

Good call on D'ville and A98. Things certainly change now that Vox has Pikes. It doesn't hurt our efforts on Inchon and Inchoff that much- except for our Med Inf. counter-attack potential against pike protected Immortal stack.

On a second though- in the short term, it could actually help us!

What Vox should be doing right now is upgrading spearmen, and producing them. That means they're producing less Immortals, which is just what they need to counter our agressive-defensive tactic. Planting a city to cut their roads thus forcing them to attack us makes us enjoy the benefits of defending, while Vox will have little immediate use for their Pikes...

[nbarclay]

Vox needs a harbor before they can get foreign iron, and the production and pop rushing they use for that would undercut their troop production. So even if they can get iron back online and do their upgrading before we can mount a further offensive, we'll hurt them. And there's a chance, especially if they spend too many units counterattacking, that we might be able to get some fast-movers in and play a bit of havoc before Vox can get their iron supply restored.

[Shiber]

I agree with Nathan's analysis regarding the harbor and the advantage in Vox switching to producing pikes.
Btw, do you think that we can ask ND not to trade iron to Vox while our war continues? (of course, we'll ask only after we've carried out Inchon, in order not to expose our plans)
We can make it sound fair - ND delayed our war efforts by denying us the 200 gold, so in order to repay us and start anew, they will not comply to any requests from Vox to get iron. This will leave Vox with one possible client - RP (since GoW only has one source of iron). I'm not sure how many sources of iron RP has, but if war breaks out on Bob, they will no longer have a coastal trade route with Vox.

[nbarclay]

Shiber, you just gave me an inspiration. We could assign two galleys to interdict the coastal trade routes between Vox and all of Bob except Port Isolation. Stopping GoW from setting up a trade route through Port Isolation if they really want to is probably not practical, but the rest can be cut off with two parked galleys.

[vulture]

Can we though - my experience of similar situations suggests that as long as one of the two civs has a trade route, they can trade. So although we block (abstract) Vox trade ships, RP and ND can still send their trade ships through since we are not at war with them, and so Vox can succesfully trade for iron. Whether this has been changed in PtW / a patch / MP I don't know, but I know I've tried it before and been disappointed in SP.

[Shiber]

Nathan, that's so simple it's brilliant!
Vulture: it will work. All we have to do is to block an all-coastal route. Even if any Bobian ships can get around our blockade by spending one or two movement points in sea tiles and ending in coast, it still won't count as a trade route.

I say we go for it. We'll need some galleys at home to block any Voxian attempts at making any additional landings and to continously send forces to the Inchon sites to keep them alive, so we have to decide how many galleys we want to dedicate to this.

[vulture]

Has anyone tested this in MP? I know for a fact that this isn't how it used to work in SP, from bitter experience (when it was part of my cunning strategy to block some trade between two civs to muscle in on the luxury deals).

[nbarclay]

From my rather limited experience in SP (having my own trade cut off due to wars), I got the impression that having one civ at war with the blockading civ is enough to cut off trade. But a test sounds like a good idea.

[Shiber]

Hmm, wait a sec...
Now that I think about it, during the first Civ3 SPDG, the Germans were trading iron to the Persians through our territory while we were at war with the Persians. We had to cut off one of our own roads to cut Persia's iron supply.
Maybe this was changed in PTW, though...

[ManicStarSeed]

Hey wait a second.... Lets count for a moment, It has been my experience that the number of resources= number of players+AI. That gives us 6 in this world. After this war we have control of three sources. That leaves three iron tiles between the three other civs.

Also, lets force the trade taking control of the iron. It will prevent warrior upgrading and tax the Voxian system more. It will not alter the outcome. Just extend time.

It will seem arrogant if we try to prevent the trade short of embargo and/or blockade....

Blockade....That is an idea....

Mss

Mss