New Plans for Spain -- Discussion

[Togas]

I hereby call all of the nobles of Spain and the great tribal leaders to gather in Madrid at Palacio del Togas to help us draft a new 20 turn plan for our future.

Furthermore, I ask those who have privately expressed an interest in serving as General of the Army of Spain to post here his plan to not only bring our army up to date, but to also explain how he would create an army that had a strong offensive capability, where he would station the troops, how he would attack Neu Dem, and what minimum units he would need.

At present, we now have 4 workers. Once the forest is cut outside of Madrid, the Arnelos slaves should be put immediately on the road from Madrid - Pamplona. Our newest slaves, Ruby slaves, shall build the road from the other direction.

The question that haunts me is this -- Should Saragossa continue to build a spearman or are our worker needs so dire that a worker should be built in this city instead?

I would also like to know if Pamplona can build another spearman before this settler. Ruby_Maser, please inform us of the consequences of adding a spear before a settler.

--Togas

[Arnelos]

[ooc]

Having ISP troubles since last night (stupid Verizon...).

I'm current online, but not at home. If I'm able to be online at all today, I'll be in the SPDG chat. If there's an RP chat and I can get online, I'll join it, though.

[/ooc]

[DAVOUT]

As Saragossa will grow more slowly than Pamplona and Madrid, I would suggest not to build a worker or a standard spearman, but directly barracks.

[GodKing]

I will things over this sunday if possible (it should be). Can someone direct me to the latest save? The last one I looked at is probably 5 turns out of date now I am afraid.

I do not want the military post, but have an idea for a plan that I wish to propose and would like the current save to do it with.

First thing I would suggest is to slow down our turn around time until after we have a plan. That means taking 20+ hours to do a turn and pass it on instead of 20 minutes. This will give us a bit more time to do our planning.

[OliverFA]

My plans are more defensive than ofensive. Though we could take a risk and go on an attack against the Neu Demons (I like to call them that way, who was the first to do that? ) I honestly don't believe that this would be the best for Spain, for several reasons:

- At the moment we are weak, and this gives us very few chances to win if we attack.
- We are not in a need of land, since we have a lot of land to settle here.
- We should try to delay the beginning of the war as much as posible, and starting the war ourselves is not a good way to do it.

What we need is a good way to protect and consolidate what we have. Then, and only then, we can think about attacking other lands.

With that in mind, our diplomats should try to continue presenting RP as "peace loving hippies" and maintain good relations with the other civs (specially ND) as long as posible. Meanwhile we would complete our infrastructure (finishing all the needed roads), build as many units as posible, and send them to Saragossa and Santiago to protect them. Of course without forgeting about keeping and small force at the other cities.

An important thing to consider is that ND is looking. So, our military units shouldn't end their movement outside Saragossa or Santiago, where ND could see them and figure we are preparing something. Let's keep them inside the cities, where the enemy cannot see how many of them we have. The road between Saragossa and Santiago will help us to move units from one to another in just one turn.

The new worker at Saragossa would be really useful for us. Not only in linking the iron, but also after that. Remember that iron has a chance in 800 to deplete. Very unlikely, but still we don't want it to happen. Also, only one connection to the iron is a weak position, which could be exploited by ND pillaging our road and privating all our cities (except maybe Santiago) of the iron. For that reason the two workers should build a second road directly from the iron to Pamplona, and after that connect the second iron.

To end with the plan: I would assign every city a role in that 20 turns scope (and posibly later if the situation don't change) based on its geographical placement and situation.

Santiago and Saragossa:The cities on the front. Should build mainly defensive units (spearmen), with some ofensive ones, but not much. They shouldn't build warriors with the idea of upgrading to swordmen later, because warriors won't be of much help in case of an early ND attack.

Pamplona: We are (or fear that will soon be) in war, but we must not forget to continue expanding, even at a slower pace. Pamplona is the ideal candidate for continue building mainly settlers and workers, changing to military units if the situation gets really bad.

Madrid: Since Madrid is relatively far from the front, is the city where warriors should be built with the idea of upgrading them to swordman ASAP. After the iron is connected, Madrid should still build swordmen and continue sending them to the front.

Barcelona: It is still a very small city, but it is also the ideal candidate for building a wonder, either the Great Library to be able to put more money in our treasury or the Great Wall to protect our cities from our enemies. As with Pamplona, if things get really bad, then it can change to build military units.

And this is an overview of what I think would be best for our nation at the present moment.

[astrologix]

Togas,
I mostly would have the same plan as Oliverfa. I think it's too early to plan an attack. We should wait 20-25 turns, following the above plan, and then reevaluate the situation.

[ruby_maser]

Re: New Plans for Spain -- Discussion

Originally posted by Togas
I would also like to know if Pamplona can build another spearman before this settler. Ruby_Maser, please inform us of the consequences of adding a spear before a settler.

Sorry to get this out so late, but just to look at it quickly, I'd say its gonna add 5 turns to the end date for completion of the settler, 4 if we are lucky. I'll do something more in depth hopefully by tommorrow evening. I will be out of town until that time, though I disagree with doing it this way

[History Guy]

The attack should coincide with the expected Neu Demogyptican/Warmonger War. In that case, we'll have the vile Arabs with their pants down. The real trouble would be the Chinese!

[DAVOUT]

Some thoughts concerning the present situation and the very short term, assuming ND has only one stack of five swordmen.

1. Our position
If ND wanted to take Santiago, they would first take Saragossa, and then Santiago would fall easily.
But if ND decided to wipe out RP, they would likely attack first Pamplona; their forces could arrive unseen through the jungle at three tiles of Pamplona. Their scout is possibly just scouting their way through the jungle. I think that the warrior near the scout should go E, and that the spearman going to Pamplona climbs on the mountain to lookout in the jungle. It would be useful also that Madrid Exped comes back right south near the lake, in the jungle. The warrior near Santiago would be useful on the mountain E of Saragossa, to lookout the jungle, enabling the spearman to resume his journey to Pamplona.

The defence of Saragossa and Pamplona would be made by three spearmen stationed on the shielded tiles on the road, and reinforcing the garrisons of 2 spearmen already (or soon to be) positioned in each city.

2. Their position
I think that the settling of Marlowa is more a defensive move than an offensive one; it protects the access to their capital and the horses. They will have to do something as well for protecting their iron which is dangerously exposed. It will be anyway one of our very first objective if they started a war against us.
Marlowa, not yet connected by road to Neu Theben , and at 3 tiles of Saragossa and Santiago, is our first target. It could be razed with four archers and a spearman. Building veterans archers will have to be contemplated when Madrid will have barracks without being connected yet to Pamplona.

[ThePlagueRat]

Buenos Diaz compadre!

Mostly I agree with the other cavalieros here in planning defensively. If the dictator want us to strike offensively against e.g. NDevils, we should grab the opportunity of them involved in another war and have the neccesary units available and trained before that. Right now it do not look like a good idea to strike forth in such an offensive manner, so I hope it's not the general will of Spain, or the dicator, to do this yet.

Building the army of Spain:
The Spanish army must coordinate the plans with the workforce and the Slave Master, to successfully complete the road to Madrid ASAP. Madrid with barracks will in the future be vital to the success of the Spanish army. Other cities infrastructure will have to suffer from this prioritizing of Madrid. Remember this is a no.1 production base. Other cities can do fair enough in producing spearmen and additional offensive units.

Defense and offense:
What is the most important for our defense is to have enough offensive units. Our goal in a war will be to counter the enemy offense, and go on towards his vurnerable spots. I believe Neu Theben is still one such vurnerable spot according to this image http://www.geocities.com/tom_ogas/spain.html
But it's not where we should strike first, if this is to be the faith.
That would be too obvious, so we should strike two places. The first should be a pillage/decoy mission. And then both can go towards Neu Theben. We should sort out the details about this when the situation demands it.

Units:
We do have access one nice to defending-offensive units in the horseman. It's one of the best units to patrol inside our borders defensively. The swordman is also good for this when hiding inside cities and forts. If we are to defend ourselves even better, or lay sieges of enemy cities later, we should by all means aquire swordsmen too. I have experienced many more traits about units and will come back to this later.

[Arnelos]

Originally posted by oliverfa
Madrid: Since Madrid is relatively far from the front, is the city where warriors should be built with the idea of upgrading them to swordman ASAP. After the iron is connected, Madrid should still build swordmen and continue sending them to the front.

At 40 gold a pop and not enough money to even upgrade our EXISTING warriors to swordsmen, we simply don't have the cash for that plan.

It would be more efficient to just build veteran swordsmen themselves at 30 shields rather than warriors->swordsmen at 10 shields+40 gold.

[OliverFA]

I thought our goal was to have at least 160 gold. And by that time we have 146 gold if I'm not wrong. So we'll probably be able to upgrade 5 warriors to swordsmen

[pikesfan]

Shouldn’t we be building a barracks somewhere?

[roadcage]

Assuming we accepted the LI offer of 40 gold for Math, and the slider was tweaked to 70% sci, both of which I believe that Lord Togas did as part of the 1575 turn, we have 146 gold + 6 per turn. Now the barracks of Madrid is either
2+4+7-2=11 (2 spear,barracks less forest credit)
or
2+7=9 (1 spear,barracks with forest credit on next build)
turns away.

So barring other uses of funds, we should be able to afford 4 maybe 5 warrior upgrades once the barracks are operational.

Manuel de Leon

[OliverFA]

well all that forest choping is for the barracks. Isn't it?