Turn 137, 170 AD

[notyoueither]

GoW is doing the same thing. ND cut them off from iron.

If anyone had any qualms about cutting our own iron, they should be laid to rest.

[notyoueither]

I would like to give back Toledo this turn, as well as pillage two of those road tiles to it's NE. That will require moving a pike adjacent to that ND mi, unforted, but our mi is right behind it.

[notyoueither]

5 pike an 5 mi can load on the boats this turn. That leaves 1 vet galley emplty to act as an escort.

We can land on the near side of V next turn, as well as pushing 8 knights to V 8 8.

That should give GoW some doubts.

[Velociryx]

Sounds like everything is coming along about as planned!

-=Vel=-

[notyoueither]

I will be delayed a short bit... please feel free to discuss.

[Shiber]

Definitely cut the iron this turn.
Not only because GoW is doing it, but IMHO also because this allows us to use only the low-production towns for cheap upgradable troops, while the cities that can build expensive troops all by themselves continue to do so.

[DeepO]

Ah, I thought so... it makes a lot of sense of GoW to do this. My guess is that they will take turns with ND: 5 turns iron for ND, 5 turns for GoW or something like that. One thing in our advantage is that they went full speed on invention, so they have less gold to upgrade. However, it is very likely that they are going for invention to be able to build Leo's asap...

nye, do you mean pillaging the roads which were meant to go from Toledo to that sacked city? It would be a good idea to pillage those... the ones next to Toledo itself should of course stay there.

As to the invasion of Valencia: go ahead. 5p, 5mi and 8 knights sounds like a nice force to begin with. Now let's hope that that will be enough to draw forces away from Pamplona. Any ideas on reinforcing that area, btw?

DeepO

[Shiber]

GoW and ND don't even need to pillage any roads. ND can declare war and send peace accepted and no one would notice, since they play one after the other.
So, they'll be building warriors in their GA and upgrading them with Leonardo's Workshop. This should give us a hard time, guaranteed. We'll have to do our best to maximize our efficiency, as well as hope for a victorious elite and a leader which we can use on Leo's... though we might want an army and the Heroic Epic, but then again there aren't any other cool wonders that we can build in the near future and we can use the next leader for an army... but that's a discussion for another thread.

[DeepO]

warriors? not likely.. horses yes. Oh, and by declaring war, they would be disrupting their lux supplies too much, my guess is that they will pillage. At least, that's how I would do it, but we should take into account that most likely those teams do not have the abundance of workers we have.

I'm curious on Leo's: they can't build it instantly from their capital, as the GL is only 400 shields, Leo's is 600. Would they have another prebuild going? Otherwise, we should invade them before they have a chance of completing Leo's (we should be able to calculate how fast they can get the last 200 shields, if he who plays the turn has a precise estimate when GoW gets invention, and starts Leo). We might be able to do this: if it takes them 10 turns, and we only need 7 to invade with 50 units, we could face loads of cheap, unupgraded units. But it is a timebomb: if we would run a bit late, we would get a whole ****load of riders running over us.

DeepO

[zeit]

Speeding our invasion to GoW: definitely, but perhaps its ND and not them who are prebuilding? We definitely have to seek out and seize the prebuild town before completion, and if not, take over that city ASAP.

About the 8 knights- I don't know, we don't really need those, and they could recieve some nasty bruise from 3-movers, who could probably attack and disappear- we should stick to the ground pounders, and move our knights either covered, or on hills, at least while we're dealing with riders attacking and not defending (as will be when we attack S).

[DeepO]

zeit, the way I see it is that the knights are needed for both mop-up duty, and by letting GoW believe they have a big force they need to counter in Valencia. After all, this remains a kind of deception for our invasion up North, but a deception without any force behind it won't work...

Of course, we need to be careful in how we use those knights, but we've got enough pike cover which we can use if we take it slowly.

DeepO

[asleepathewheel]

Yeah, we need to hit them in the north, soon. Once they get leo's... yikes

[asleepathewheel]

note: as long as GoW builds leo in their capital, they can't do something wonky like gifting the leo city to ND so they would have the cheapo upgrades as well.

.....wonder if they would try that?

[DeepO]

asleep, that would be a clear exploit... if we would see that, it would probably not take much to stop it, or to get Lego on our side...

DeepO

[DeepO]

turn orders: we should also start moving workers to the tiles we're going to pillage. We don't need roads, but mines on those iron sources sure would be handy.

Is there any plan yet on what we're going to build as upgradeable units? Oh, and can we upgrade a couple of WCs before we pillage our iron? We seem to have an abundance of gold for the moment, but let's keep a certain reserve in case we or RP has some emergency. 200 gold should go a long way.

Are there any other things which still need to be decided before nye can play the turn? galley movement? I'm counting a minimum of 6 turns before our galleys can arrive North to invade GoW. 7 if we need to wait on the Valencia ones. Would that make a good time for an invasion, 8 turns from now? We should be able to get a sizeable force ready by then, but I'm not sure if they all can reach up North in time. For that purpose, wherever possible, I propose to make the slowmovers as Northly as possible, reserving the South for horses / WCs.

DeepO