The Spartan Academy

[Theseus]

This may be premature, but I very much envision a town 3 tiles directly north of EotS, and a road network that extends 3 tiles north of where the Worker is currently (NW of EotS).

This will get any / most fastmovers coming from south of the river to the grassland 5 tiles north of EotS efficiently.

Pray to the Storm Gods that we aren;t facing an E-W jungle belt.

[nbarclay]

Where does this idea of a town three tiles north of EotS come from? It's contrary to anything I remember noticing in the city placement thread.

Nathan

[zeit]

You seem to eager to start a defensive war, but that, as dominae said, is fighting against the odds. Our terrain dictates that we attack, not defend. Of course, we have to find a way throught the jungle, and Vox would do well to defend this way (if it exists) or any opening we make in the jungle wall. Anyow, our top priority should be scouting their land, and the second would be to block their way, and perhaps make them think are lands are closer than they think.

[Dominae]

Originally posted by zeit
You seem to eager to start a defensive war, but that, as dominae said, is fighting against the odds. Our terrain dictates that we attack, not defend.

Actually I think we have the advantage defensively (War Chariots in mostly open terrain), but where are disadvantage offensively (assuming more Jungle in the Voxian lands).


Dominae

[nbarclay]

It's not that we want a defensive war so much as that we feel a need to be prepared for one if Vox forces one on us. Actually, once we're ready to fight, there would be significant advantages if Vox starts it because (1) it looks better to the rest of the world and (2) immortals would be much easier to deal with on a suitably prepared killing field outside Vox's borders than within their borders where they get a free shot at our WCs before we can get to their cities. (Not that I wouldn't enjoy it if they instead go for a builder strategy and neglect their defenses.)

Nathan

[Dominae]

Some points after looking at turn 21:

1. War Chariots are now effectively useless for us offensively. Unless we focus our resources on hacking or roading Jungle (which will not work IMO...takes too long), we need to start planning for Swordsmen if we want to fight the Voxians.

2. We need to keep track of every Voxian unit we see. Perhaps we could start a seperate "unit-tracker" thread, or just use this thread.

3. I suggest we move all our Warriors up North, and use a couple for interference. We could leave one back South to escort Settlers for now, but we really to need to get a strong presence in that "neck" area.

4. Claiming the bottleneck should be one of our short-term goals. I'm not for sending a Settler out there right away, but rather once we get 6 or so cities founded. If the Voxians grab it, we're in for trouble.

5. How do explore up North but prevent the Voxians from coming South? Is it even possible to arrange this?


Dominae

[DeepO]

Originally posted by Dominae
1. War Chariots are now effectively useless for us offensively. Unless we focus our resources on hacking or roading Jungle (which will not work IMO...takes too long), we need to start planning for Swordsmen if we want to fight the Voxians.

I would think we need to get a road to there anyway, we need extra workers for this. WCs are far from useless if they can reach the jungle from EotS in 2 turns.

3. I suggest we move all our Warriors up North, and use a couple for interference. We could leave one back South to escort Settlers for now, but we really to need to get a strong presence in that "neck" area.

Whow... hold on. I agree we need a lot of forces close to Vox, but don't forget that we still don't know if there are barbs around. We got huts, so barb activity could be anything in between sedentary and raging, we need to foresee something here too. In Nathan's test game, I didn't know the setting, but those barbs were a considerable force to keep in mind, that same thing could happen in the real game!

5. How do explore up North but prevent the Voxians from coming South? Is it even possible to arrange this?

I'd like to see some screenies, but quite possibly, Vox is going to want to block the ishtmus as fast as we want it. we should need one warrior scouting up there before trying to block it ourselves, if only to keep them from blocking us when only 1 warrior is in place. But all this depends on the layout, and I haven't seen any screenshots (yet).
Diplomatically, we could agree not to pass the site if they don't pas to our side, but I would rather know where they are exactly, and how their capital is founded. And no way they are going to agree that we can walk around near them, if they can't do the same to us.

DeepO

[Dominae]

Originally posted by DeepO
I would think we need to get a road to there anyway, we need extra workers for this. WCs are far from useless if they can reach the jungle from EotS in 2 turns.

I agree, that's why I said War Chariots are now useless to us offensively. With no path through the Jungle (see the latest screenshot), we need Workers to make it possible for our WCs to pass through. This will take a while. If we start on WCs now, they will be patrolling our lands with nothing to do. We may very well clear a path eventually, so I should not say that WCs are completely useless to us on offense, just so in the short term.

Originally posted by DeepO

Whow... hold on. I agree we need a lot of forces close to Vox, but don't forget that we still don't know if there are barbs around. We got huts, so barb activity could be anything in between sedentary and raging, we need to foresee something here too.

I'm guessing Barb activity will be very low. Regardless, one Warrior is sufficient to hold the fort until we begin producing more units (our second city should make a couple before starting on a Settler). Military presence in a bottleneck is very important.


Dominae

[Shiber]

I'd prefer not to expose our units to the Vox's sight. If they suddenly see five warriors emerging from the fog of war (even if we announce that they're only there for exploration purposes) they'll assume that we have several other units at home, panic and start building up on military units. On the other hand, if we don't expose more than two warriors to Vox then they'll take a more relaxed approach and invest in settlers and culture instead of spearmen and archers, which is just what we want.

[Dominae]

A show of force could go either way, IMO: it could signal to them that we're aggressive, or just that we want to protect our (peaceful) interests. I doubt Vox's decisions will be swayed by a few Warriors so early on in the game.

In any case, we can always push our Warriors up North but make sure that Vox doesn't see them.


Dominae

[DeepO]

Well, the barb comment was just a warning. I found that many times already, we have assumed something (e.g. being isolated) before the time was right, only because the turns are going so slowly we think we're farther ahead in the game then we are. The barbs can be the same thing: It's possible to play 20 turns without barbs in a game, only to find out that they actually are numerous, and aggresive. I'm not sure on the exact mechanism, but surely it seems that only after a while, camps get founded, and not from 4000 BC. (could be something like for every hut taken, one camp is created, for every camp destroyed, a new appears). It is entirely possible we have 2 or 3 camps on our future lands already.

I'm not saying I believe barb activity will be high, but so far, I see no reason to believe it will be low either. We should assume the worst at this point.

DeepO

[DeepO]

Oh, BTW, I read somewhere of the possibility of Vox upgrading warriors to immortals, but I douubt we will see mass upgrading. First of all, it is a tactic that can be considered quite advanced, and I don't think Vox is that. But most importantly: you need gold to upgrade, and where would they get it from? the only gold in the game seems to come from huts and barbs, as everybody will probably research at full speed. I doubt many are considering trading techs or minimaps for gold already, so most likely they are as broke as we are. Hence, no upgrades, meaning that we should have at least a limited amount of time to prepare for a possible attack.

DeepO

[Arrian]

DeepO,

I wouldn't assume away a warrior -> immortal upgrade strategy. One thing we need to watch as time goes on is Vox's treasury. If they suddenly start to accumulate gold, it's a good bet they are planning on using it to upgrade units. On the other hand, if they're smart, they would do the upgrades 1-2 units at a time over 10 or so turns, to hide their intentions.

It's not really all that advanced, is it? It's just turning gold into shields, which in SP is certainly worth it, and even though the dynamic is a different in MP, the basics are still there: upgrading allows you to build a powerful attack force without a large shield investment. The penalty is slowed research, but in this case, the ensuing GA would fix that.

-Arrian

[DeepO]

O, I'm not saying they won't do it, but still... I'm sceptic. You might not consider it a very advanced tactic, but it took me a long time to master it. I agree it remains possible, but MP gives a few problems, one of which is that you can't rely on AIs for your research. Building up a decent treasury would be hard, but if they decide to stop all their research, and squarely go for an update budget it remains possible, and would be one of my preferred tactics with immortals as well.

One question though: how would you monitor their treasury? You can't see it like you can in SP as trades are only 1 way, you don't see what they can offer you. I guess the F8 power graph should give us some clue, so a screenshot of that would certainly be appreciated, but that's not really a easy graph to read.

DeepO

[DeepO]

A last observation before the night: how many warriors would Vox have at this moment? We're already seeing 2 of them, and assuming their capital isn't empty, there should at least be one more. Which means 3 warriors, which is, without forest cutting, what you would expect in turn 21. If this is true, their entire force of warriors is heading for us, wouldn't this suggest the contintent we're on is only populated by Vox and ourselves (as none of their warriors is heading another direction)?

DeepO