Military Architect Thread

[delmar]

Might be hills as well. Just like North of our capital. Beyond that, who knows what. Hopefully not sea.

[delmar]

Worst case scenario

Originally posted by Tiberius on the Master Builder poll thread
About the build order issue:
- delmar, you seem to assume that if we are in the vicinity of one of the other teams, they have built already 3 warriors and are heading in our direction with all 3 of them!

The above reminded me of the idea of preventing surprises based on estimated progress of other teams. As the issue at hand is military threat, I thought it would be appropriate to bring this up in this thread.

I generated a standard map with 8 Civs and checked the distances between starting positions. 5 of the civs had a neighbor in the 11-13 tile range, and 1 of them had 2 such neighbors.

If someone starts with Warrior Code and a forrest+game tile next to his capital, then he can build an archer in 7 turns.

If this archer heads towards our capital (by share chance) and disturbes some angry warrior on the way, he might become veteran or even elite.

To translate this into our situation, we might see an elite archer appearing on Gold Peak around 3100BC. If I were the commander of this archer, and saw an empty capital, then I would swiftly move to that capital and attack even if by then a regular warrior was defending it, because I would be reasonably sure that it is the only unit in that city.

You can replace the above archer with a warrior, which could reach Gold Peak as early as 3300BC, even if he had to take a rest after the angry warriors attacked him. I am not sure if I would attack a regular warrior defending a capital with an elite warrior, but I am quite peaceful in general so I can imagine that there are some who would.

If I were the Military Architect, based on the above I would oppose any plans that leave the capital undefended any later than 3100BC and would strongly favor plans that include at least 2 warriors or 1 merc per city.

[redstar1]

As the Military Architect I suggest that the risk is minimal and exploration is currently top priority.

[Spiffor]

I don't believe we'll see archers anytime soon. For all teams, exploration is the top priority early on, and they won't want to take twice more time to produce an explorer.
But even if a team (only Glory of War started with WC) is enough self confident to build an archer, the chances it finds us immediately is very slim.
I think ZargonX' proposal, to build a third warrior to defend Legopolis before building a settler is most reasonable. The only real threat is Barbarians for now, except if we are completely undefended.
Archers will be a threat soon enough, but not before another team discovers us.

[Sharpe]

Based on the new 3600BC map in the Chronicles of Legoland thread, I think the exploration path proposed by Zargon are still valid.

Howard should continue along the northeast hills for one turn and then turn north into that hut. Hopefully we get something useful and not barbarians out of it.

Conan should also continue along the course proposed by Zargon.

The new water that has appeared to the northwest is either a lake or the ocean, and likely the Plastico river flows west into it.

I think that we might have to start exploring south soon if Conan does not reveal anything more interesting westward next turn.

[Tiberius]

Originally posted by redstar1
As the Military Architect I suggest that the risk is minimal and exploration is currently top priority.

This is my opinion, too. We'll have to take some risks from time to time, and this one is minimal with great profits, IMHO.

[vondrack]

Well, the team forum is quite quiet, considering the fact that we have at least two or three possibilities of where to move our scouting warriors next. Kloreep and Sharpe responded in the Discussion for the Chonicles thread (thanks, guys!), but that's far from enough for me to have an idea what the team thinks of the situation. Does anyone have any preferences? Opinions? How do you want me to play the next turn(s)?

[delmar]

Originally posted by vondrack
Well, the team forum is quite quiet, considering the fact that we have at least two or three possibilities of where to move our scouting warriors next. Kloreep and Sharpe responded in the Discussion for the Chonicles thread (thanks, guys!), but that's far from enough for me to have an idea what the team thinks of the situation.

I guess then the Military Architect should decide what to do with the warriors.

Nonetheless, here is my opinion: Howard should go to the West, because moving NW will reveal less tiles. Next move should be to the North, unless we can clearly see that there is nothing further but Mountains. In general, Howard should keep going into this North-North-West in a zigg-zagg line for a while (unless he finds the end of the land, of course).

Conan is a tougher question. As we have only one warrior in Legopolis and we are building a settler, I probably wouldn't dare to pop the hut either. This pretty much decides the question where to move: North-West, and then up North. Note however that we are very likely to get screwed this way, regardless whether that narrow piece of land is a peninsula or a connection to another big piece of land. In the former case, it is not critical to explore it (although this means only a few wasted turns, so it's not a big deal). In the latter case however we will probably want Conan to continue moving up North for the foreseeable future, leaving the area SW from our capital unexplored and the hut unpopped. I think we should start developing a plan for this case.

Or we should bite the bullet and pop the hut.

[redstar1]

My personal view is that warrior to the north should move west and we should pop the hut

[Tiberius]

Howard: W
Conan: SW and then exploring south (I'm afraid to open the hut, because in PtW the barbs tend to avoid direct confrontations and would probably go toward Legopolis and destroy our improvements). Of course, there might be a tech in the hut. I'd wait for one more unit in Legopolis or the return of Howard and after the discovery of Pottery.

[ZargonX]

I think we can hold off a few turns on the hut, so long as we don't see anyone coming up through the jungle towards it. Hopefully, Conan can give us fair warning if anyone is moving in that direction, and we can make a bee-line to pop it.

[Jack_www]

I just played our current turn. I was not sure what to do with our Settler so I sent it towards the dyes and cow. The Warrior at the tip of our land mass i sent back down towards our city so he can explore somewhere else. THe other warrior I moved it on a near by hill. I hope that The moves I made go along with what you guys want. If not pm so to correct me.

[vondrack]

Originally posted by Jack_www
I just played our current turn. I was not sure what to do with our Settler so I sent it towards the dyes and cow. The Warrior at the tip of our land mass i sent back down towards our city so he can explore somewhere else. THe other warrior I moved it on a near by hill. I hope that The moves I made go along with what you guys want. If not pm so to correct me.

Yes, I guess that's what "majority" wanted... Two or three of us form the "majority" these (holi)days...

I will update the Chronicle as soon as I get the "just-before-the-end-of-the-turn" savegame from you.

[delmar]

Bump

What's our defense strategy w.r.t. Farmerville and the workers it is going to produce?

[Sharpe]

I assumed that the merc we are building in Legopolis (merco polo anyone?) would be going down to Farmerville and we can use MercG and Merciless to cover our core area.