Turn 128, 10BC

[Aeson]

I was thinking the KNights would serve useful in Scouting/Counterattacks, especially if GoW stays out of it. ND, to take cities fast, would need it's Ansars to outpace their Pikes. In such cases, we would be in a position to kill Ansars with our Knights, and bring the Pikes to cover them.

If RP gets in trouble of losing Pamplona or Zaragosa (by Ansars outstripping their defenders and getting lucky), our 3 Knights could very well end up saving our Cats and major cities from capture. We'd probably win the attacks, killing 3 Ansars, and then ND has to either attack our Knights (giving RP respite, and at not too bad odds for us as most the surviving Ansars would be damaged), or try to take a city with their reduced offensive capacity and with our Knights poised to retake it even if they succeed.

[Theseus]

[QUOTE] Originally posted by Theseus
Coupla things:

I'm not a huge fan of pillaging resources, although obviously MP includes many many tactics that are not applicable in SP.

I find it hard to believe that the roleplaying faction of RP would go so far as the latest PM to Sir Ralph... yeah, I'm paranoid about a gangbanging on us too, but...

I shot a PM to Vel... I think he'd like all this, even if only to what / understand the dynamics.

I think General Theseus is about to convert to Catholicism (even though I am Scottish (er, Jewish) myself ), and go on a bit of a rampage...

[nbarclay]

By the way, there's one serious complication to the transition from peacetime to war production. We already have 81 shields accumulated in Tempest, so we'll lose a little over 30 switching it to a knight (by the time next turn's production is added). I hate to lose that, but we probably need the production.

My current thoughts on production are:

Monsoon - finish harbor, 2 turns.
Whirlwind - switch to knight, 5-7 turns depending on tile allocations.
Arashi - Alredy in two-turn pike mode. May look into irrigating and working more mountains to switch to two-turn MedInfs at some point if the war continues long enough.
Tempest - Switch to knight which finishes next turn, and switch to two-turn MedInfs.
O.G. - Continue work on harbor.
Bolderberg - Switch to knight (finishes in three turns) and then build 3-turn pikes and/or 4-turn MedInfs.
Typhoon - Switch to knight; finishes in two turns if I'm juggling things right. (I hate to do it, but it's another extra knight for our second wave.)
Sufa - switch to pikeman; completes next turn.
Bolderberg: Switch to MedInf; completes next turn.
EotS - Four turns from finishing a knight, and five from growing. Growth may make it practical to produce three-turn MedInfs if I can get the tile mix right.
Hurricane - Finish its harbor in three turns, build a couple two-turn pikes, and then start probably alternating MedInfs and pikes.
Blizzard and Inchoff - finish their temples for access to better tiles for more production and to help our culture.
Dissidentville - Let it grow and make it a production center as best we can for now. Don't worry about moving it until after the war.
Cyclone - Keep building workers.

[Aeson]

Resource disconnect and upgrading is optimal for 'small city' empires. We've gone with more a 'large city' empire, but in the north we are still small.

We could sell the Harbor, and pillage HH1 and HH11 (as opposed to pillaging an extra tile that Elipolis will need). That would give us 5 10 turn Warrior factories, average of a Warrior to upgrade every other turn.. though they all will come at once.

Not sure that using those cities for Workers won't pay off more in the long run though. An extra Med Inf every other turn would be pretty nice though, and the timing would be about right. The other thought would be to build Horsemen there, about half rushed with gold. They'd be 140g Knights.. and would be a means to keep our gold going towards Knight production/upgrades after we've finished all our current upgrades.

[Aeson]

What about Sandstorm? Still a Worker/Settler pump?

[Aeson]

Also, where would the best Catapult production be? Looking long term, we want lots of Cannon and tons of Artillery. Probably keeping our number of Cats to about 50% the number of Pikes.

Catapults will make good units to deny landings...as they can ping away at any ships that happen to stop by our shores.

[Aeson]

What if we went with the Great Wall? It's 3 Knights worth of shields admittedly... but I think it could end up being worth 1000's of shields in the long run. Our Walls will be better, and more importantly, GoW/ND's walls won't.

If we have the 16 units necessary for wave two already, I think it might be worth considering. If we need Tempest units to fill the Galleys though, probably not.

[DeepO]

So we stop prebuilding a wonder in Tempest, then? It's not unreasonable as we'll likely be having a few chances on leaders, but still...

SS I would keep in growth mode, we still need settlers.

Inchoff: if we can use a settler from SS to found a city there in about 8 turns, do we still need a temple build? That could become another pike / MI.

Aeson, I agree that pillaging our iron might not be ideal, but still... with a lot of planning we might probably get away with it. As to horses builds in the North: maybe... but 140 gold knights are kind of expensive, if you can have 40 gold MIs in the same time. We're not bulking with cash, especially not if we want to continue research the coming 20 turns.

DeepO

[DeepO]

cats... good idea. But we still have some lousy cities like Elipolis we should keep busy Elipolis won't build a FP anyway, that's for sure now.

DeepO

[nbarclay]

Okay, I'll replace three MedInfs with three knights in the first wave. I agree that GS knights could do nasty things to ansars trying to attack Pamplona.

The logic behind my proposed force mix is that I'd rather consolidate two waves into a massive strike force before we start serious offensive operations. Once we do that, knights can provide an ample offensive punch, but I'd like to have a few cats to help out on defense.

[DeepO]

oh, and the Great wall: hmmm... it crosses continents, right? but how long would it take to complete, shouldn't we have gone into full attacking mode already by then? But indeed, denying it to ND and GoW is worth a lot, they have walls in many cities already. They have to think about it, though.

DeepO

[nbarclay]

Originally posted by Aeson
What about Sandstorm? Still a Worker/Settler pump?

That's my thinking at the moment, but I'm not quite sure. I'll look at it more closely once it finishes its current settler next turn.

[asleepathewheel]

Originally posted by DeepO
oh, and the Great wall: hmmm... it crosses continents, right? but how long would it take to complete, shouldn't we have gone into full attacking mode already by then? But indeed, denying it to ND and GoW is worth a lot, they have walls in many cities already. They have to think about it, though.

DeepO

6 turns in temepst. sounds like a good enough idea to me. Might save us, not sure how much however.

edit: or 5 turns if the workers are juggled a bit

I'm fuzzy on how it works, cause I never build it. It only doubles the city walls (strong against barbs too, I know) does it do anything on size 8 and up cities? (is the size 7 bug still in effect with the gw?)

[Aeson]

Remember that we'll probably need to supply RP with Iron shortly. 3-4 turns and they could very easily have lost Vigo. The Iron colony couldn't be defended even if they build it, which I don't think they are planning to.

[Aeson]

is the size 7 bug still in effect with the gw?

It was in 1.14f, not sure now. Also not sure if walls are targetted by bombardment first in size 7+ cities... anyone know?