Turn 107, 430 BC

[nbarclay]

If all goes well, next turn, we'll be making our Inchon and Inchoff landings!

[Shiber]

YEEEEEEEHAW!!

[nbarclay]

Originally posted by Shiber

2) AFAIK we're not going on an active offensive anytime soon (especially now that Vox has pikes on the spinebreakers).
We won't be able to build WCs once we get Chivalry, so I suggect that we build WCs now and MedInfs later.

On the contrary, I envision an offensive right into the heart of Vox's core once we shuttle two or three waves of reinforcements to Inchon. My bet is that Vox is deploying most if not all of their pikes in the Dissidentville area and that they'll have few if any north of Inchon.

[Shiber]

[mode=monty-burns]
Excellent.
[/mode]

[Shiber]

Whoa, check out Madrid... stuck on 2 pop.
Of course, it has to be just a temporary condition... it's still funny though.

[Aeson]

1 turn Cats in Tempest.

The problem with Vox's Pikes is that they can actually move onto the flats and expect to at least hurt us when we attack, and might have a shot at taking Monsoon. 4-5 Cats almost eliminate that problem. Given our numbers of Cats right now, and that they are tied up in the E, Monsoon isn't entirely safe.

Also, Cats are rather overpowered in a fight like we should be expecting now that Vox has Pikes, slow.

[Aeson]

Likely a Palace jump in the making. Madrid wasn't very well centered for their empire.

[Arrian]

Hmm, good call, Aeson. I'd agree that they're probably looking at doing a palace jump inland.

Hey, ho, let's go! Inchon, Inchoff! Confucious say, kick ass!



-Arrian, who has had a few too many beers tonight.

[nbarclay]

Cats are at their best when they have multiple turns to pick away at an opponent. If Vox uses pikes for cover to make a move against Monsoon, what's going to matter most is being able to hit them hard the first turn. We don't have to kill everything that first turn, but we need to cripple what we don't kill to a point where we can count on defensive pikes to hold the city.

For that purpose, a MedInf is worth a way whole lot more than two cats. Two cats will, on average, take about one hit point off a pike. A MedInf has a better than 50-50 chance of killing a pike on flatlands outright, and if the pike survives, it's likely to be more seriously injured than cats would leave it.

On the other hand, additional cats might be interesting for the fighting around Inchon. Cats there would help in defending the city, in counterattacking troops moving into position to attack the city, and in defending and assisting troops that venture beyond Inchon to drive a knife deeper into Vox's heart. And moving our eastern cats to Inchoff when they're finished could be an interesting proposition; we could blast through Voxian forces trying to use the mountains to bottle us up and use our eastern galleys as well as our western ones to move reinforcements behind Dissidentville.

[Theseus]

I like Cats for the future as well... anti-naval batteries.

[nbarclay]

So are we decided that we want a few cats from Tempest?

I just had another thought on cats: if we station them at Arashi 4, they could move into either Arashi or Monsoon, take their shot, and still have another shot on defense if Vox has anything left to attack with. Of course we'd have to make very sure the city doesn't fall!

[Shiber]

More cats to finish the eastern stack quicker and to deliver to Inchoff would be sweet.

[nbarclay]

We don't have a good place to build additional cats in the east in time to do much good. Keep in mind that we only have to get rid of 12 hit points to get all five immortals down to one each, and that should be about a 4-turn operation; maybe 3-turn if we don't mind attacking while a couple immortals still have 2hp left. Besides, we already have seven cats east of the river, and I can't really see us needing more than that in Inchoff.

[Shiber]

How do we plan to take on D'Ville?
The obvious course of action would be to advance through the spinebreakers. Move forward, road, move forward again, deal with any enemy units that show up on the way with cats and medinfs and keep moving.
If Vox circulates their mountain defenses, it could take us much longer than we desire to reach D'Ville.
Another approach would be to advance from the north, ferrying units to Inchoff with our eastern galleys and to the road intersection above D'Ville with our western galleys and using the road to reach D'Ville.
Sure, jungle isn't as good as mountains when it comes to defense, but I'd like to see Vox try to hurt our pikes anyway. We can move 2 tiles each time and fortify at the end of the turn - that would give Vox 4.5 veteran pikes covered by fortified cats to go through. Plus, it won't be nearly as hard to break through Vox's defenses if we approach from that direction.
I'm not entirely sure about this idea, but I decided to post it for discussion anyway. Perhaps it has some merit.

[nbarclay]

Remember that someone here said fortification in the middle of the turn doesn't count.

Even so, if the road remains intact, I think coming in from the north is probably our best approach. With cats involved, Vox will have only about a 50-50 chance attacking our pikes even using veteran immortals. That still sounds pretty good for them, until you consider that any immortals who beat our pikes are dead meat when our turn comes. Overall, we could expect a kill/loss ratio at least close to 2:1 in our favor.

Of course if Vox pulls enough of their troops back from Dissidentville in order to deal with Inchon and Inchoff, a march on Dissidentville through the mountains will start looking very good.

But if Vox doesn't give us that opening, I view Vox's core as a higher piority than taking Dissidentville. After all, their core is where the lion's share of their production is, and it's probably seriously underdefended at the moment thanks to their large number of troops around Dissidentville.