The T120 Imperio NAP Expiry Crisis

[darrelljs]

Hmm...so both the Templars and Imperio turned down NAP extensions? That looks like handwriting on the wall to me.

Darrell

[sooooo]

I moved the chariot to see if the imperio worker was continuing the road and he is not! He is nowhere to be seen.



Weird. Their chariot moved into our territory and out again to check the garrison at Cape Town.

[mostly-harmless]

If the Chariot can move one more tile, I suggest to go 1SW to check out the tiles between Imp & Tem.

mh

[Swiss Pauli]

With Imperio completing Machinery, I would expect to see some 5XP Maces to be seen soon in the Imperio army, which would explain the recent queue shuffling.

[Swiss Pauli]

But having to face down Imperio is a lose-lose situation, as PAL will only get that much further ahead. (And their population is really starting to pull away from the rest of the field now, with PAL no longer needing to whip military.)

I would strongly recommend that we send another email to Imperio, telling them that we will both lose if they declare war on us, and asking AGAIN for a non-agression pact so we can both stop this insane military buildup. Imperio has done nothing but build units nonstop for the past dozen turns in their major cities. It's like they're willfully sabotaging their chances of winning the game just to screw us over...

Frankly, I'm out of ideas as to how we can dress up our offer of a NAP to Imperio as something that would be beneficial to them. We tried the stick last time, only for them to go get an even bigger stick to hit us with We don't have any carrots to offer (that I can think of, anyway), but let's see if we can come up with a proposal they might see as a win-win...

[T-hawk]

Well, think about it from Imperio's POV. We're bigger and have a strong UU only a few techs away. They will lose the long game. Their only chance to win is to attack as soon as manageable. If they're going to go down, better to do it in glory.

Also, this military buildup really isn't costing us much, as Sullla has pointed out before. We are (or should be) devoting only Cape Town to unit production, while the rest of our cities are doing plenty of building for the future. Status quo is OK for us. Imperio has to make the first move.

[timmy827]

I may actually have some time now to put in my thoughts for a change. But first I need to ask a noob question as I have zero MP experience.

Presumably if/when Imperio attacks they will try to double move to the tile 1NE of Cape Town (just before timer expires). Does this mean that as soon as the clock turns over, both sides can throw their units at the other stack as fast as they can click?

I'm concerned about relying on horse archers to flank their catapults. Their weakness against elephants means that they do less flanking damage as well; would probably need around 6-7 successes to kill the cats. And since collateral damage isn't affected by their fractional health, knocking all the cats to 25% life doesn't help all that much. My preference would be for more catapults (at least more than 1) to beat up their field units to give our maces/phants an edge against theirs.

[Kodii]

Presumably if/when Imperio attacks they will try to double move to the tile 1NE of Cape Town (just before timer expires). Does this mean that as soon as the clock turns over, both sides can throw their units at the other stack as fast as they can click?

There are strict rules set in place about double-moving in war for this demogame. If you check out the main BtS demogame forum, you'll see how double-moving got messy in the PAL-Rabbit war, and caused many a delay. I am unsure of the exact wording of the rule.

EDIT: Here it is

The Double Move Rule : 48 hour turns

1. No double moves during a time of war, except as noted below.

During times of war all concerned Civ's should allow for 1/2 the turn timer (24 hours) to pass between moves if the other Civs involved in the war have not moved since a concerned Civ has moved.

In other words: You cannot make moves during periods of war until either one of two things have occured:

i. All other concerned Civs in a war (being at war in game) have made moves/completed one turn since you have made your moves/completed a turn.

ii. 1/2 the turn timer (24 hours) has past since you made your moves/completed your turn.

The reason "made your moves/completed your turn" is worded that way is that a team can log in make some moves, log out, log back in and make more moves. Once a team makes ANY moves the requirement that says a team must make a move/complete a turn is fullfilled.

[Sullla]

Aside from what Kodii posted about the double-move rule, also keep in mind that we have an archer and chariot watching Imperio's every move in their territory. (Why Imperio hasn't closed borders is beyond us. ) Imperio's stack is almost entirely made up of one-move units - they only have one horse archer and two chariots - so we will have plenty of advance warning before they begin the attack. It's literally impossible for them to sneak up on us, at least not without closing borders first.

In terms of defense, we're definitely planning on adding more catapults in the near future. sunrise recommended building elephants first, because we can't build them if we lose our ivory supply, and we can always build resourceless cats. Our defensive strategy would look something like this:

1) Hit Imperio stack with catapults (ideally at least 5)
2) Eliminate elephants with high-attack units (maces/elephants)
3) Destroy Imperio cats by flanking with horse archers

Maces make things slightly more complicated, but only slightly so. We can still continue to build elephants, horse archers, and cats to form the bulk of our defense. Because of the double-move rule, Imperio can't strike before we have a chance to hit them with our siege stack, meaning that so long as numbers are roughly equal, we will win. Combat in BTS highly favors the defender, thanks to flanking.

[mostly-harmless]

As far as I can see we are looking now at the earliest DoW date = T125 and a first possibility of Imperio attacking Cape Town at T126.

If they delay even further they might be in for a surprise as the somewhat important tile between Cape Town and Chichen Itza will change hands (to us) soon. It is currently at 42%. Loosing that tile will mean one additional turn of warning for us.

mh

[Sullla]

Longer than that, mh. If they move right now, they can be outside Cape Town on T126, and ready to attack on T127. And that's only if they start moving their stack immediately, before the current turn ends (T123). We essentially have a 3-turn grace period between when they start moving and when they get to our city.

We're in very good shape to meet and destroy their stack if it chooses to come after Cape Town. Unfortunately, 42% is still ages away in terms of cultural border clashes - maybe another 20 turns for that tile to change over, if not more. Whatever though, Imperio is not going to get through our defenses unless something crazy happens.

[regoarrarr]

How are our defenses looking for a non-Cape Town attack? Either just Imperio or any kind of joint attack

[Sullla]

Imperio can't really attack anywhere except at Cape Town; if they try to send their units through Templar territory (which I do not think would happen, for trust reasons) we will spot it ahead of time, and move units accordingly.

Templars would not have much luck if they tried to strike at Pink. We have an axe, spear, and archer in the city, plus a partially-built horse archer in production. Any move against Pink or Something Fishy will be spotted long ahead of time, and with tons of cities in the area to whip emergency units, we should be fine. It would set our development back, no question, but I'm pretty sure we could avoid losing any cities.

The one real weak spot in our defenses is a sudden move out of Jericho straight for Airstrip One. We are working on fixing this, by building the Pink/Cape road and researching Engineering to speed up our reinforcement time. For the same reason, I'm advocating that our next settler go to Twin Peaks, which will plug that gap with a fortress garrison. Even if we would fail to hold Twin Peaks, the delay would likely enable us to scramble enough soldiers to protect the rest of our territory.

We would be in trouble if facing an Imperio/Templars combination, but we're working on that as well diplomatically.

[sunrise089]

@Timmy - Here is my thinking in valuing the flanking ability of cats.

Lets say RB and Imperio each have 20 units. Perhaps 10 strong one-movers, 5 cats, and 5 horse archers. The goal is to kill their units as quickly as possible - why allow them the ability to retreat or promote/heal, and why delay a counterattack? Here is where flanking matters:

Event 1: RB uses our 5 cats on the enemy stack. We loose all of them. RB - 15 units, Imperio - 20 units.

Event 2: RB attacks with all of our elephants and maces. We win every or nearly every battle against their wounded troops on flat land. RB - 15 units, Imperio - 10 units.

Event 3 - RB attacks with our only unmoved units, our 5 horse archers. They win every battle against the weakest enemies AND kill the cats due to flanking damage. RB - Nearly 15 units, Imperio - close to 0 units.

This is much more difficult in MP because the enemy will generally 2v1 a front and have many more units, and also because the defender has at most 8 seconds to do all of this before the enemy either hits with their cats or moves their 2-movers to threaten other cities. In SP though I see it as a slam dunk.

[sooooo]

Here's a picture of the current Imperio front for those who don't log in that much.