Wag the Dog

[Aeson]

The cease fire included a 'no advancing into GS territory' clause, so would work the same way.

[Theseus]

I like Aeson's communique from "It becomes clear..." on.

In fact, I love it.

And I would agree to the words "An GS doesn't want it either."

Old IBM phrase about where you want customers' thinking about competitors:

FUD

Fear Uncertainty and Doubt.

[nbarclay]

The big question is, would Aeson's message be more likely to lure them into an attack now or to get them to doublethink themselves out of attackng quite yet? (I think we definitely want them to go ahead and attack; we'll have the numbers to stop them, and the more riders we kill, the fewer forces we have to tie up worrying about what GoW might do.) If they're already primed to hit Toledo as quickly as they can, nothing we say can help but it could make them doublethink themselves out of doing it. The ony way Aeson's mind game is a winning move is if their current plan is something other than to go ahead and hit Toledo.

So the question is, what do we think they'll do if we do nothing in particular beyond what we've already done?

[vulture]

What numbers will we have in Toledo next turn and the turn after? From what I saw in the chats and turn threads, We have three knights there now, which next turn get the fortified bonus. Next turn 3 vet and 1 elite pike arrive, and 3 vet MI, which all get the fortify bonus the turn after. So GoW can attack while we have 3 fortified knights and the rest unfortified. Plus 4 catapults.

Those aren't good odds. We run a 12% chance of losing the town immediately, and the single most likely outcome is that we lose 7 units, they lose 5 riders and have 2 retreat. Then they have 7 servicable riders against 3 defenders, which are probably a mix of wounded pikes and MI (no barracks in Toledo?), so we need large reinforcements coming up.

[DeepO]

What they do? wait for ND. It looks ND was not able to breach the defenses at Zaragosa, meaning that RP can hold... if however ND would have won, and not seen any of our troops, I'm sure GoW would think twice, if they suspect 'large amount of troops" from us in RP.

OTOH, they have ND to think about, and if they really didn't tell them so far we have a NAP (which I don't buy, BTW), ND will be pissed for sure. So they could pressure GoW to finally fulfill their contract, which ND has paid upgrade money for (where else would GoW get the gold to upgrade 14 horses to riders, while researching Chivalry at near max speed)

DeepO

[DeepO]

vulture, it's more then that: 7 more knights are on route, and will be in Toledo before they have the chance to attack.

DepeO

[Shiber]

Vulture, Toledo has walls (I'm not sure if you put that into effect) and barracks, and we'll have 6 extra knights by the time GoW attacks.

[Arrian]

When is the soonest they can hit us? The turn after this next one?

If we can manage to delay their attack for one turn over that, wouldn't we have the Great Wall?

-Arrian

[Shiber]

Edit: wow, a double-post edited to be used as a normal post!
Arrian, we'll have the GW in 3 turns. That means that GoW has this turn (the one they're holding right now) to get into position, and the following two turns to attack, and afterwards we'll already have the wall, if my count is correct.

[Arrian]

Hmm... looks like we'd need to delay them for 2 turns if we want the GW to be done in time for their attack. I don't see that happening.

So nevermind that angle.

Given that, Nathan's right - we want them to hit us soon, so we can deal with it and move on to other things (helping RP against ND in the West).

-Arrian

[vulture]

I included walls, and assumed Toledo is on grassland/plains (not hills). The turn they are currently playing, they can move onto one of the mountains near Toledo (T98 or T96), then we make our next turn's move, and then they can attack. So only units that get there on our next turn can defend.

Still, with 6 (or 7) extra knights obviously we can't lose. Amazingly, the effect of the extra, unfortified knights is that GoW come off worse than we do - 6.3 riders lost on average, compared to our 6.0 average loss (1.7 riders retreat from combat). I'd guess we lose 1-2 pikes and 4-5 knights, so in terms of shields worth of units lost, we come out ahead (they lose 1.8 knight equivalents more than we do, about 120 shields), and have better production to replace the losses. Looking nice now.

[nbarclay]

There are walls and barracks in Toledo, so it's fully equipped from a defensive perspective. Only six of the seven knights en route will be able to reach Toledo in time, but that would give us nine knights (three fortified), four pikes (one elite), four cats, and three MedInfs against GoW's fourteen units.

Actually, now that I think about it, having GoW wait a turn could be good for us because the additional units that reach the city next turn would have time to fortify and additional knights could reach the city. And if GoW dilly-dallies around longer than that, at least they won't be in their GA (although I'd still rather start ripping into ND and shifting wealth and production generating capacity back from ND to RP).

[Arrian]

The only problem here is that, while the 6 extra knights (so 9 total) will make sure we hold Toledo, without more pikes, those knights will do most of the defending. Combat losses will be very expensive. True, they will be expensive for GoW as well, since Riders cost the same as Knights, but it would be nice to trade pikes for Riders instead (though at least the Knights will prevent retreats).

-Arrian

[Theseus]

I think the more we scare GoW, the better. Things sound... interesting on their team. We want to give the more hesitant among them something to work with, but not so much that more aggressive don;t win out.

In other words, I am hoping for a one turn delay in their attack on Toledo, but not much more than that.

[Arrian]

Actually, now that I think about it, having GoW wait a turn could be good for us because the additional units that reach the city next turn would have time to fortify

Very true. Delay helps us from a tactical perspective in Toledo. It may hurt us, however, from a strategic perspective re: RP vs. ND.

-Arrian