The T120 Imperio NAP Expiry Crisis

[regoarrarr]

And if they dont' declare war, I think we already have enough of a casus belli with the copper pillaging. I mean REAL wars have been fought over less

[T-hawk]

But of course the problem comes in backing up our swagger. We can employ the best microanalysts in history, who can't do squat against macemen if we lose our strategic resource supply.

Our window of actually conquering territory is not until Gunpowder and our solid resourceless unique unit. Let's keep that in mind...

[Swiss Pauli]

I'm agree with T-Hawk insofar as our time to conquer territory is not now. We might be able to smash Templars around the time we get Guilds, but for now any war will hurt our economy more than we'll gain. We have no strong city defenders, so we'd have to go on a razing spree.

If we're relying on our Imperio being incompetent in war then that's one heck of risk to take. Templars have shown themselves to be grasping little so-and-sos lately, so we shouldn't rule out them closing borders after accepting a bribe. Given we're evenly matched with Imperio in terms of unit strength on open ground, casualties will be high on both sides. Imperio, in fact, has the advantage of LBs when it comes to defending their cities. We need only look at PAL's struggles with Rabbits after we gave the latter Archery to see that it won't be easy to get the better of Imperio.

If Imperio declares on us then they're setting our agenda, and that can't be to our maximum advantage. I'd favour trying for a NAP, so that we have the chance of starting our military expansion according to our timetable.

[sunrise089]

You're right of course Swiss. I was just thrown off by the "go after Templar stuff" above. My order of preferences is 1) war with Imperio later, 2) war with Templars later, 3) war with Imperio now, 4) war with Templars now.

[regoarrarr]

Okay then. So with (at least the possibility of) war in 2 turns, is there anything that we want to think of? Here are a few random thoughts

What do we do if Imperio declares war on the brink of T120? (Or is our NAP good through T120 and they can't declare war till T121?). I know that generally we have an idea of what we want to do, but specifically - are there any actions that we want to take / not take?

Do we have volunteers waiting to be available as the turn rolls over?

Do we want to make any kinds of moves right away? Or is there any advantage to waiting till they play and giving ourselves extra time?

Sullla - are you comfortable with playing MP war turns? Or is there another team member that should play them?

I don't know the answers to any of these questions. I have next to zero MP experience (and am not even really a very good SP player). But I figure that rather than reacting rashly when it happens, we should come up with the answers to these (and possibly other related questions) now, so we're all on the same page with what we do, if and when Imperio (and/or Templars!) declare war.

[sunrise089]

As long as there are no double moves we're fine. There are all sorts of time-sensitive MP combat tricks, but they aren't an issue if the enemy cannot move next to our city and then attack it quickly. (12 hours isn't quickly).

[sooooo]

If Imperio were remotely sensible they would cancel open borders with us. We'd lose Banana's iron, PAL's ivory and gems and all of our overseas trade-routes. Of course we would lose all of these things if they declare war too.

We need to get the RBS discovery to sail through templars' waters and get a trade route via the southern coast.

EDIT: Hmm, or maybe our road link to Templars' eastern coast is enough to preserve the intercontinental trade routes?

[Swiss Pauli]

As I understand it, as long as there's a route with between us and Templars without fog we'll be OK: we don't have to have to have cleared all the fog ourselves. I don't think there's enough space for a barb city to spring up down there. And FWIW SF will get a border pop next turn.

[darrelljs]

Well, T120 has come and gone. My nightmare was some kind of co-ordinate DoW from our continent mates, but instead nada. Did Imperio feel they lacked the sauce needed to take our goods? Are they waiting for those last few crucial Medieval units to complete (since they can't whip them ). Are they still trying to convince the Templars to double team us? Or, was their military buildup purely a deterence?

Darrell

[sunrise089]

I suspect they're hoping to out-build us (sad if they can't, since we have only one city on military most of the time). I think they're at least smart enough to whip the last round of units, so some empire-wide whipping would serve as a war warning for me.

I'd say that if we manage to turn out a mix of strong units (HA, cat, mace, jumbo) at the rate of 1 every 1-2 turns we'll probably deter the attack at this point though.

[sooooo]

Our power jumped slightly ahead of Imperio's this turn. I wonder if both of our power keeps rising at this current rate they may be tempted to divert their attentions to templars (who have poor production).

Sunrise: possibly you could suggest which units we need to build. Say templars have 5 catapults. How many HAs would we need to flank it? I would guess that most of the HAs would die because they are facing elephants. Also to defend against catapult/elephant/HA stacks, should we build more macemen or more elephants?

[sunrise089]

Let's assume equal numbers of units.

If we have, say, 4 catapults or more the battle goes like this: our four cats hit and die, our elephants hit and kill their elephants, our horse archers hit and kill their horse archers AND kill/wound their cats, and finally our bonus obsolete units mop up.

In that case we don't need many maces...they have a slightly easier counter (level 2 promo versus level 3) and crossbows come a little earlier than pikes.

On the other hand, with zero or 1 cat...I hit with the one cat, take the withdraw promo on the HAs, and hope we had enough to kill the enemy cats. If we did, I'd want all maces in the city receiving defensive bonuses if the enemy was left with more troops than us.

In terms of pure numbers, we want even numbers of elephant, cats, and HAs until we have at least 5 cats.

[Zeviz]

In this case, should we focus on Elephants instead of HAs? (According to C&D thread, Imperio has 3 elephants, but only 1 HA and 2 chariots. And they seem to be training more Elephants than HAs.)

[sunrise089]

I advise a 3-way split because the HAs are still super-useful as 2-move defenders and attackers even aside from their flanking bonus.

[Swiss Pauli]

Well, T120 has come and gone. My nightmare was some kind of co-ordinate DoW from our continent mates, but instead nada. Did Imperio feel they lacked the sauce needed to take our goods? Are they waiting for those last few crucial Medieval units to complete (since they can't whip them ). Are they still trying to convince the Templars to double team us? Or, was their military buildup purely a deterence?

Well, maybe I should rename the thread to the T124 Imperio/Templar crisis, as this is the turn when the former could have their units in place to declare war, and it's also when our NAP with Templars expires.

Looking at it from Imperio's perspective, they really missed their window of opportunity by respecting the NAP that's just expired, and now they find themselves caught between two stools: attack us now, and they get caught in a stalemate, but if they wait much longer, we'll be even more powerful. Their logical alternative would be to go after Templars, but turning down a 50 turn NAP with us doesn't seem to indicate that they have this in mind.

Templars are the wild-card here: they certainly aren't a threat on their own, but they could hurt us economically and militarily by closing borders. It'll also be intriguing to see what they get in return for Theology; I can see PAL trading them CS, and Imperio Compass, but neither us nor Banana have much use for the tech (though it would unlock Edu).