Turn 132, 70 AD

[asleepathewheel]

good move by GoW.

Have they entered their GA yet? does sacking an undefended city count?

[Randolph]

All this quantitative analysis and we miss the oldest chess move in the book.
Interesting in a more abstract way they're using a pin: our forces are generally held down due to the jucy RP cities behind us. Well maybe I'm getting too creative

[Shiber]

Opening 70 AD

GoW offers peace treaty. Right...

[DeepO]

we didn't miss it, IIRC... it was just deemed impossible to keep that mountain, and Toledo defended. Maybe we should have put 2 knights on top of that mountain, but I doubt it would have done much good

DeepO

[Aeson]

Maybe we should have a talk with GoW before just flat out rejecting the peace treaty offer (at least to find out if they meant to offer it). They haven't been above 'fake wars' in the past to fullfill their contracts, maybe they would want to run one now against us?

Surely the public forum festivities would make ND think we are seriously at war with GoW... and then GoW could have their 'peaceful GA' (just they are at war with us and RP) while hiding their troops somewhere out of the way, or even hitting ND when they feel like it. They tried something of the kind during the Vox war, and maybe they are thinking of the same sort of thing now?

[DeepO]

yeah, not a bad idea. We could ask them if they simply meant to offer us a GS-surrender treaty, or in case they would be serious, want to withdraw all their troops from our territory, back to where they came from. Perhaps they would go for that... however, as long as units of them are in our territory, we keep the right to fight them (similar to what we did to Vox).

DeepO

[Shiber]

I'm refusing GoW's peace offer since it is not accepted on their side (we can send our own accepted peace offer at the end of our turn and it'll be like we accepted GoW's offer in the first place).
Shall I use the 4 cats in Toledo to bombard GoW's stack?

What's our plan?
GoW is most likely going for the mountain 96 of Pamplona (every other route is either unsafe or long). If they go this way unhindered, we'll be unable to help RP defend against GoW's riders. IMHO we have no choice but to block their approach, even if it means compromising on defenses in Toledo and NM.
The question is, how many defenders shall we use and where shall we position our units?

[Shiber]

Defenses available for NM: 5 pikes, 3 knights, 1 cat (all vet and fortified). We can pull in extra knights from Toledo and they can even fortify. Defense bonus in NM is +100% (hills + city).
Defenses available for Toledo: 10 knights, 4 pikes, 3 medinfs (all vet and fortified, 1 pike is elite). Defense bonus in Toledo is +60% (walls + grass).

[DeepO]

defense bonus for NM is bigger: GoW ould be attacking over a river.

Further, I agree we should try to block the mountain near Pamplona, otherwise RP is toast. Sad thing we need one more turn on our GW...

Shiber, I thought more troops could be unloaded into Sirocco, joining the defense in NM? otherwise, we definately need to take some troops from Toledo... even after cat fire, those 14 riders are a grave threat.

Also, has it changed in last patch that units are fortified if they can be fortified in the turn, instead of having to be fortified while all their MP remain?

DeepO

[Shiber]

I suggest that we plant a few pikes on the mountain in Pamplona-96. They can't fortify, but they can still eat up a lot of rider HP.
GoW can take an alternate course, but then they'll be at least one turn late.

Hey, wait a minute... correct me if I'm wrong, but can't GoW reach Pamplona-99 this turn if they wanted to? They can move 1 on a road in neutral territory (wasting 1/3 MP), move 1 to a hill (wasting 2 MP) and with 2/3 MP left, move to the mountain 99 of Pamplona.

[DeepO]

no P99 is unaccessible.. by moving off their mountain they lose 1 MP. Going to the hill would mean the end of the 3 MP. They could go to P63, but I don't see much good coming from that

DeepO

[Shiber]

Originally posted by DeepO
defense bonus for NM is bigger: GoW ould be attacking over a river.

I'm not sure.
I think they can use the neutral road 2 of their current location, and then move 3 and attack NM.

Shiber, I thought more troops could be unloaded into Sirocco, joining the defense in NM? otherwise, we definately need to take some troops from Toledo... even after cat fire, those 14 riders are a grave threat.

I already took the troops that can reach NM this turn via galleys into account.
Btw, shall I fire at GoW with our mighty catapults now?

[Aeson]

I was thinking something far more devious (and probably not acceptable to us ). But something of the sort:

GoW captures NM or Toledo (probably Toledo) this next turn, we only leave 1 unit in the city, so they can start their GA.. capture a city... and then gift it back to us to get their units home. They don't lose anything, it looks like they are fighting us (taking Toledo, and then losing it back to us...we'd just need to rush a Worker or starve the city to make it look right), and they end up with a 'peaceful' GA.

If GoW really wants peace with us, we could probably work something out, and ND would fall pretty fast. We could offer GoW the land they would have had up north (or most of it) from ND for 'free', and we take an 80 to 100 tile chunk of Bob for ourselves as we were originally hoping for. RP keeps what they had before the war, and gets a bit of ND too. Instead of ND controlling the S of Bob, RP does.

ND pays for not being willing to allow us our 'fair share', and RP takes their spot. Then we are looking at 4 remaining civs, roughly the same size each, and a tiny Vox. RP and Lego would still have their GA's to come.

I think it would be better for us and GoW (and certainly RP) than Lego starting to pull away during a long and bloody conflict between RP+GS and GoW+ND.

If the city gifting isn't desireable, we can work other ways out.

[Shiber]

Shall we request a chat with GoW?

[Aeson]

We have close to 23 hours left to play the turn, lets not rush things yet Shiber.