Turn 390AD

[Cort Haus]

I wonder if Lego supply intelligence too - they could spy on our cities.

And the Knights on the boat and the ones in Barca? - get em all back top Stormia this go if possible, then bring the boats back next turn for another load?

[asleepathewheel]

Originally posted by Cort Haus
I wonder if Lego supply intelligence too - they could spy on our cities.

And the Knights on the boat and the ones in Barca? - get em all back top Stormia this go if possible, then bring the boats back next turn for another load?

Thats what I was thinking about the knights.


And I'm 99% sure that lego has been spying on us for GoW and ND. Not a doubt in my mind. But what were we to do? declare war on lego and vox and be at war with everyone? pr nightmare. plus, since most of our units are always outside cities, not entirely useful, unless a siege, ala pamplona.

[Cort Haus]

At least Lego's turn is after after GoW, so intel on Barca would come too late.

This looks an excellent plan, sleepy you're on top form today
As you say, we can get all knights off this way and many of the other units - depending what GoW do. With that road cut, they can't charge up the desert to Barca-87 where our knights are.

The boats that were following the coast north and south could both head back, and the southern one could pick up the cats in Barca. the northern was going to reinforce the northern fleet and would take three tirns to get there - that might be too late.

[asleepathewheel]

great.

hopefully Theseus or Arrian will be able to check on these plans and add to them if needed. We can hold the save for about the 24 hours, or until some others check in.

Also, we need time for RP to respond, want some input from them on our abandoning their old cities, would hate for some confusion from them to interefere....

[Cort Haus]

How about the Barca stack goes not into town but to Barca-89. That's two tiles from Sirocco, Barca and NM and they could jump into boats from there too.

We can pull off 16 units this turn, and 12 off the following turn. That's 28 units including all 12 knights safe for certain, and enough to line our beautiful west coast from Typhoon to Eliopolis. Priceless.

The turn after that Gow can have hit us, but we'll have galleys available for another 6 units, with 10 berths for any survivors who got to kiss our possibly-only-saltpeter away on the following turn, when we get gunpowder.

We tried, we came close, but we can't get the SP out, even if it is there. At least we can get out more or less intact

[asleepathewheel]

Sounds good to me.

There's even the possibity that GoW will delay a turn or two, perhaps they are moving those cats in to attack us in Barca...

[Cort Haus]

Proposed evacuation.

Dunkirk Day 390AD:
5 knights
4 pikes
3 cats
3 settlers
1 worker

Dk-Day +1 (400AD)

7 knights
2 workers
3 MI


Remainder (9 pikes, 2 MI) can hole up in NM (better defence) or Sirocco (easier escape) and take a beating if GoW want to spend some riders.

Dk-Day +2 (400AD)

If they survive they could be joined by 2 more pikes and 1 MI coming in from Pamp & Toledo, and on the following turn

Dk-Day +3 (410AD) or Gunpowder-day

8 galleys would be in position to evacuate any survivors.

[Theseus]

I just got on... can;t stay up too late.

You guys see the news about the patch?

[asleepathewheel]

wimp.

yes, great news about the patch.


Do you have time to examine what CH and I have been discussing, before we have to send the turn?

[asleepathewheel]

CH

I was thinking that we could evacuate everything but the knights. My thoughts are, if they do a slower advance (for the cats) we might be in position to hurt them. I think we could evacuate all the knights anyway, but it might be more flexible. Do you follow me? hmm, need more thought. maybe it would be best just to pull everything out asap.

[Theseus]

I'm not loading the save, just working from the 380AD screenshots... (and coming from an Xmas party)

Is there more pillaging that we should do to slow GoW down? I'm thinking Barc8 and Barc 87. Further, if we are ultimately abandoning Bob, part of the strategy is to make re-settlement as tough as possible for ND and GoW... shouldn't we be pillaging everything possible, especially high value tiles?

Are there any improvements we should sell?

Do we need to be thinking about the loss of the Barc spices?

Do we need to inform RP that we are Dunkirking off of Bob? Are we expecting them to defend at Pamp and let it be taken? Or should they abandon Pamp and thus teleport to N. Stormia (I don't remember the turn order)? Should some of their low value units (I remember an Archer or Spear) be used for pillaging? Are there improvements they need to sell?

Do we have the capacity / excess in southern Galleys to send at least a couple south as a picket?

What is our thinking re the vast number of luxuries that ND and GoW will now control?

We need a publicity plan re our defeat on Bob (god that pains me to say out loud).

In terms of S. Stormian defense, we should start to look at having sufficient units to at least occupy the dangerous landing tiles, and our Knights (good recovery plan, sleepy!) to roam for the rest. I LOVED Arrian's thought re using Cats as coastal defense... perhaps we could focus our good cities on GWs / economic / scientific builds, and our less productive cities on re-building the Cat Corps. On that note, we will soon want to upgrade to Cannons, so let's start saving shekels.

There is jam on the friggin' magnet.

[Theseus]

Originally posted by asleepathewheel
CH

I was thinking that we could evacuate everything but the knights. My thoughts are, if they do a slower advance (for the cats) we might be in position to hurt them. I think we could evacuate all the knights anyway, but it might be more flexible. Do you follow me? hmm, need more thought. maybe it would be best just to pull everything out asap.

CH has gotta be needing sleep, so I assume the turn will be played tomorrow.

What did you mean by the above quote? If we follow your pillaging plan at Barc 44, I would assume GoW will be coming in at Barc 41... no use attacking them there. Do I have it wrong?

[notyoueither]

If you want to slow down the rampage of the riders...

use pikes to pillage roads. I pike per road every second road tile. Bye bye road bonus. Or a combo of pikes/knights, just keep the knights out of range of the bad guys.

[vmxa1]

The patch looks very promising.

I asked Vondrack to send me the save, who knows when.

I seem to remember some exports of luxs, are any coming from Bob? If so will we have some to fullfill any trades?

[Cort Haus]

Our only lux on Bob is a single silks at Barcelona, so we'll be losing 1-2 happies per city depending on whether or not a mkt is present. This could prompt the current mkt build at Bolderburg to go to a library, as there is less lux benefit.

If however we can make peace with the Bobian powers there's every reason to think that they might want our incense & furs as much as we'd like their lux - so trade is a reaslistic possibility - especially with ND.

Alternative plans for the endgame on Bob may therefore be to either pillage heavily with Pikes or somehow to use our knights to
inflict some damage. If we try the latter we just lose all our knights. The former would have better value, but gives them good chance of leaders.

On the pillaging - yes, of course it would be nice to have a fully scorched earth exit - but how could we have done that when we're trying to hold the land for possible saltpeter and defensive maneuverability? These contradictions abound - and having this unknown resource factor causing headaches with our entire "should we stay or should we go" policy has made clarity of direction impossible and compounded problems for us.

Every time we admit to ourselves that we've lost on Bob we try to hold out for something and get further punished for it.

We cannot retreat, fight, pillage, defend pamplona and get out alive. At some point we have to cut our losses and GO, or have nothing left. That point is now, I fear. Alternative plans would need fleshing out.