The T120 Imperio NAP Expiry Crisis

[mostly-harmless]

About non-Slavery Imperio, I was thinking they might surprise us with a Golden Age and a non-Anarchy swap to Slavery in the beginning of the war.
However, they are still miles away (T140) from their second Great Prophet (Mutal - Stonehenge & Oracle). It will take 200 GPP for 2nd GP, right?

mh

[Swiss Pauli]

I moved mh's post into this thread as this (a) seemed a better place for it, and (b) I wanted to test the functionality in order to copy Sullla's SotE posts to set up the Urban Planning thread

[Swiss Pauli]

About non-Slavery Imperio, I was thinking they might surprise us with a Golden Age and a non-Anarchy swap to Slavery in the beginning of the war.
However, they are still miles away (T140) from their second Great Prophet (Mutal - Stonehenge & Oracle). It will take 200 GPP for 2nd GP, right?

It's 200 GPP for their next GP, but they could get it sooner than T140 by running specialists if they wanted.

One thing we shouldn't rule out is that Imperio have chosen not to run Slavery for either role playing reasons (which could be discarded in an emergency), or that they find real life slavery so abhorrent that they carry over this objection into a fantasy realm like CIV.

[mostly-harmless]

How dare you moving my posts!

Running specialists is not an option for Imperio, as they have only one building that allows hiring specialists.
That building would be the Islamic shrine in Lakamha.
The shrine was erected on T88 and gives 1GPP itself. It allows for 3 hired priests max.
a) Hiring all three priests from the beginning (highly unlikely) would have seen a Great Prophet popping on T108. Did not happen.
b) Hiring two priests from the beginning (still highly unlikely) would give them a Great Prophet on T118.
c) Hiring one priests from the beginning (again, why would they do that, if they have two GP wonders in Mutal) would give them a Great Prophet on T139.

Hiring two priests in Lakamha right after the shrine was erected to pop a Great Prophet in time for the NAP expiry to get a GA to give anarchy-free slavery swap, requires more fore-planning than I am willing to credit them with. Just think of all the tech trades that had to click into place for this scenario.

mh

[Swiss Pauli]

Given the recent developments, I thought I'd sketch out how I think this could pan out in a worst case scenario, and assumes we can't trade in MC:

1. Imperio DoWs, bribing Templars to close borders. We lose all foreign trade.

2. Templars complete Theocracy, getting Currency from Imperio, CS from PAL, and Compass from Banana.

3. Imperio meets Banana, and gets Machinery for Currency and *another tech*.

4. Templars dogpile with their recently upgraded Maces.

In terms of survival, I don't see a major problem for us, but we stand to lose competiveness if the war(s) drag on, particularly if Templars target A1 (using spy intel), realise they can't take the city (after we whip up defenders), and pillage our cottages instead. A lack of foreign trade would be particularly painful.

As to point three, we should be able to get MC (and therefore Machinery) ourselves before Banana meets Imperio. We should offer to help Banana meet Imperio with the proviso that they insist on a fair price for Machinery, and don't make the deal until after they give us Machinery. We should discuss this further in the Banana thread, as they asked us about this.

I can't log in atm to see what the other tech would be, nor the length of time it would take for Banana to meet Imperio.

[mostly-harmless]

Re. 1: I am not even sure we have intercontinental trade if only Imperio closes their borders.

We could try to lean on PAL to pressure Templars to keep open borders, as Imperio and Templars are not big enough to serve all PALs intercontinental trade routes. They would loose ~8gpt.

Should we be able to counter attack, Chichen Itza must be our #1 target to keep trade going.

mh

[mostly-harmless]

Someone help me out here, for our trade routes to stay alive and for our wine-gems deal with PAL it would suffice if PAL has open borders with Imperio and/or Templars, right?
Assuming that is correct, I understand that it won't help us much at the moment (should Tem & Imp close borders) because PAL has not scouted a route to RB. But, and here is the plan, we could (temporarily) gift them the scout and the galley and tell them exactly where to go to open up the trade routes again.

All this assuming the first statement is true.

mh

[Swiss Pauli]

AFAIK, that's not correct as I think uninterrupted OBs are required: look at that barb city and PAL blocking our link to Rabbits. Our trade route with Banana should be via Imperio and PAL (and not via Templar who don't have OBs with Banana).

[mostly-harmless]

Hmm, I can see the barb city blocking our sea trade routes, but do we really have a scouted route through PAL? We might be missing the odd roaded tile there.

EDIT: Yes, confirmed, we do not have a land route scouted to Rabbits.
mh

[mostly-harmless]

Looking at the map I have a few suggestion for unit movements before a potential DoW.
Lady Godiva should maneuver into a position where she gets teleported to Imperio's northern border, so she can bind forces there and potentially pillage a camp and a gold mine.
We could even consider, moving a couple of spears and axes to Imperios north right now for that purpose.

My initial thought was to have the galley go back north to threaten Imperio's 5 sea food resources, but it looks lie we will loose PAL trade routes if Imperio closes borders, regardless what Templars do. So the galley should at least continue S-SE to get a line of sight into The Warning and the stretch of coast to its south. That will give us a trade connection to PAL via Templars land if I am right.

mh

[Swiss Pauli]

Important note: I moved our new horse archer one tile south of Cape Town, so that Imperio can't see it. I'm going to move all new units out of Cape Town down there, to try and bait them into a foolish attack. At this point, I'm confident we can defend their attack, so I want them to try their luck, get totalled on the counter-attack, and then leave us an opportunity to start grabbing territory with a perfectly legit casus belli.

I think we should discuss this in the T120 Crisis thread. The alternative is to have enough visible force to deter them from attacking altogether, conclude a NAP, then we go after Templar. I'm unsure which I prefer, but I think it warrants discussion.

[Dreylin]

I think we should discuss this in the T120 Crisis thread. The alternative is to have enough visible force to deter them from attacking altogether, conclude a NAP, then we go after Templar. I'm unsure which I prefer, but I think it warrants discussion.

Personally, I would rather have Imperio's land than Templars....

[Swiss Pauli]

posts above moved from turnplayer thread

[regoarrarr]

I agree with what Sullla said earlier - I am hoping that Imperio DOES declare war, we totally paste them, and then use that as a trigger to (possibly eventually) take all their land.

[sunrise089]

I agree with the Imperio-hawks: Imperio has done more to anger us, they are the larger threat, and they have better land to grab.