Target Cities - see Harry's e-mail

[Beta]

Harry sent around an e-mail with two pics of the border area.

I think you are dead on about the western city site. It was pretty clear from when they first built it. And I think it is target numero uno. And - as it may be far away enough from their capitol, we can probably take this one over without razing. Let's just not leave too many troops in it, just in case.

Now - the eastern one - I figure it is a cultural expansion - but not sure. I suspect GS may be packing their cities in fairly tight. Hmmm...??

[Edit by HarryH]
Here is the email text and the two pics Beta is referring to:

Attached are two pics of the GS border. One from 1025 BC and the other from 1000 BC. Notice the change in the border. This could indicate another city has been settled or it was caused by border expansion possibly indicating their capital is close.

http://apolyton.net/upload/files/HarryH/GS_border_1025BC.jpg

http://apolyton.net/upload/files/HarryH/GS_border_1000BC.jpg

[HarryH]

I think GS is packing tight as well. If you compare the western city site plus the blue dots on the agreed border map you will see the sites are not that far apart.

The nice thing about the western city site is there is a path of mountains down to the city site. Mountains that provide safe passage from charriots. I expect we will find a stack of spearmen on that mountain next to the city. That may prove costly. We will have to wait and see what other options we have once the terrain in the area is revealed.

[Beta]

And given that target city - I was also planning road construction. With two workers we can connect Dissdentville to Numero Uno in 10 turns. It inolves roading the two mountain tiles south and west of Dissidentville, and then the connecting grassland tile.

3+3+1 turns for roading those tiles, plus 3 turns for the moves. This is faster than going east through the cut in the jungle and then coming south on the grasland tiles. It will also be a more direct route for re-inforcements from the Dissidentville barracks.

[argha]

I have not looked at the file yet, but going this route sounds like it will have a greater chance of success, the mountains will give us extra protection plus extra line of sight

[Konquest02]

You might want to look at this thread... (http://apolyton.net/forums/showthrea...threadid=77451) I think it's the most thourough analysis of City Placement that came out of the strat forum since a little while... People of GS are likely to follow something similar...

--Kon--

[Beta]

Thanks for the reference Kon! And a good read too.

I suspect that is exactly what they have done. We saw the blue border on the east coast - the one you can just see at the souith edge of the map - very early in the game. And GS was very, very touchy about us exploring any further. I believe that is their second city's boundary - which means the central core is probably fairly close.

That is both good and bad. Good because if we catch them unawares and hit them hard - they may not recover. Bad - because as Theseus has mentioned in the referenced thread, the cities are probably three tiles distance and ready to reinforce each other.

But - that is not necessarily a bad thing either in my books. We will get to the first cities before they have pikemen. Immortals can easily handle a 2-defence unit - even in a city. We will take some losses - granted. But if they do mass their defence, and we can take out a lot of units early - they will have a tough time to re-arm.

They will need to drop back to despotism to pop rush. That will probably be a last resort. Otherwise building spearmen will still take 4 or 5 turns for the average city, and swordsmen 5 or 6. By then - another city will be gone.

This is going to be interesting.

[Konquest02]

It's almost certain that GS is playing some kind of 3-tile city spacing (C-T-T-C) and they might have some "temporary camps" in the middle of all this (C-T-C). This is really effective when waging war as reinforcements can come from at least 3 cities in the same turn, which is a lot.

But I agree with you, if we hit them hard enough, they might not get a chance to get back on their feet.

By the way, I am preparing a "Best of the Strategy Forum", but you might want to look by yourself. Look especially for the Apolyton University Spoiler threads (AU 1xx and AU 2xx) as the reports from many players really show some typical playing styles we might encounter...

--Kon--

[Wittlich]

Kon - I am impressed!

I first the motion of giving Konquest02 the title of "Strategist" for Vox Controli.

Who will second the motion?

[argha]

I'll second, saw some of his post in the AU threads

[Beta]

I'll third.

[Beta]

OK - now we have a new target. See last turn's screen shots. We have two choices as I see it:

1. split off two Immortals from the first wave to take it out

2. bypass it with the first wave and use follow-up immortals to do the job.

Given that it will likely not have a strong garrison, and given that it is still too small to produce much - I vote for option two. Let's not divert part of our main punch to deal with it. Get it later.

[mjmacy]

I agree with Beta and with Kon. being our strategist.

[Wittlich]

I say bypass the city for now - let our reinforcements deal with it.

[Eli]

I agree.

We should go for their core cities without delay.

[HarryH]

Option 2. The city will get auto-razed if we take it early. It will need to grow. Let the second wave take it. I would like to keep that city.