Operation Bloodbath

[regoarrarr]

Okay so let's start talking about this. As several people have pointed out, our team seems to do very well whenever we set a defined goal. See Library, The Great and Gardens, The Hanging.

So, the first step is defining our problem. Doing that with building a wonder is fairly easy while something like this is a bit more complicated, of course. But while just saying "Let's draft Oromos and kill Imperio" is good from a basic overview, it needs a bit more definition for us to optimize the plan.

I'm copying what someone (sunrise?) said over in the Metagame thread as a place to start.

-Many (20?) Oromos, all drafted
-10 cats
-10+ knights/horse archers
-10 combined Elephants and Pikes (I prefer Elephants)
-4 missionaries
-6 theaters at half-cost
-Globe Theater

So, what else do we need?

* In addition to the assault troops mentioned above, we need to make sure we bring along enough garrison troops, as well as making sure our homeland cities are adequately garrisoned.
* Techs: Gunpowder, Nationalism and Drama in addition to our current build of Engineering are really the only ones we NEED, right? Possibly Theology?
* Workers / Settlers: How many of each of those are we wanting to build before we attack. They won't go on the attack so to speak, but any production spent on them is production that can't be spent on the attack force
* Infra builds: In a similar vein - what kind of infrastructure do we need in our existing cities? Anything spent on infra can't be spent on the attack force.
* What else?

If we are agreed that THE power play for us is a quick assault and takeover of Imperio's lands as soon as we possibly can, then we need to focus everything we have on getting the agreed upon forces.

If we can start answering the above questions (as well as the ones that I just don't know enough to even ask), I will sketch out a rough plan which will let us figure out at what approximate turn we can attack, and whether we are currently research or production limited.

[sunrise089]

First, we should consider we have essentially two options:

A) Extra promotions route. This requires Theology tech, the aforementioned 4 missionaries, and a great person to use for a golden age OR an extra turn of anarchy. You guys know my preference is for a golden age that involves a swap to a religion, organized religion, and then nationalism and theocracy all during the same golden age.

B) Not sweat the promos and save hammers and beakers.

Other thoughts:

*Garrison troops - Unprompted Oromos are ideal. Maybe include a few pikes, but they are must less versatile. So I don't think we need to build any units just for garrison purposes

*Homeland defenders - Again, I'm more or less opposed to this. I've found any extra troops are always better used in the attacking stack. My thought is this is covered by the ability to whip/slave as needed and because any drafting plan will see some units still moving forward from the back cities when the main stack moves out. Oromos that couldn't make the attacking stack can stay back to defend until cities fall, and then move forward into the new cities. All we need to keep at home is enough to credibly delay any Templar stack that may exist, otherwise we weaken our offensive forces too much.

*Techs - I think you're forgetting Guilds, but that is optional. Knights are nice to exploit lightly defended back cities...horse archers will as well but will have heavy losses (worthwhile in 2-city elimination MP but probably not here).

*Infrastructure - Barracks and whatever else we can slot in timing wise. We can calculate the hammers, so if we're tech limited we don't need to build military in earnest until we're X turns away from nationalism/gunpowder.

*Workers/settlers - We should have several (4) workers with the attacking stack if possible to take advantage of roading opportunities. I think we should settle all of our backline cities before the attack, but not settle the "bad ass" spot.

[mostly-harmless]

Good idea to come up with a rough time table and plan of attack.

*Garrison troops - could be our obsolete archers in the backyard cities. We could accumulate some cash for emergency upgrades.
But then again, I don't think we will have to deal with a counter attack that far behind the front line. After all the front with Imperio is pretty short.

*Homeland defenders: same as above and what sunrise says.

*Workers/Settler - I don't think we need to train extra workers for the Operation. When we go to war, we should use all available troops and resources. That means using existing workers as front engineers. In terms of settlers I see the following spots for us to grab (not all necessarily before the Bloodbath):
- Bad Ass
- Burgundy (the wine city)
- South Jerusalem
- Northern crap city I
- Northern crap city II
We should probably have a couple of settlers in reserve when we bloodbath to quickly resettle the gained land. (I believe razing cities is the established practice in MP?) Chichen Itza for example fits perfectly into our dotmap.

Questions:
* Do we have one large killer stack that wanders from target to target or will we attack on multiple targets simultaneously?

mh

[regoarrarr]

Okay, trying to sum up what I'm hearing and with some of my thoughts

OPEN ISSUES (please respond):
A) Can we get a vote for whether or not we want to consider Theology. As Sunrise pointed out upthread, the costs of going down this road are: Researching or trading for Theology (potentially around 4-5 turns of research including cash buildup time), using a great person on a golden age (or a turn of anarchy) and 4 or so missionaries (30 hammers each IIRC). Sunrise is for this. I think I lean against it but could be persuaded, but if you do vote no, can you give a reasoning as to when if ever you see us adopting religion.
B) Question for one of the MP experts - Do we have one large killer stack that wanders from target to target or will we attack on multiple targets simultaneously?
C) Do we need "combat settlers" in the attacking force? Is razing cities the way to go? I have included 4 workers in our attack force below.
D) Does my assumption of an increase of 0.5% per turn in our research abilities seem valid (see Research abiliites section below)
E) Actually, feel free to check all my assumptions. I've basically guessed at many of them and could use feedback as to whether or not they are even close to accurate.


Here are our current garrisons, from the most recent (T123) thread.

A1: Spearman / Warrior
PD: Spear, Axe, Archer, HA
CB: Archer
Cape: 4 Archers, Axe, 3 Spears, HA, Mace, Elephant, Cat
SFishy: Archer
Green Acres: Archer
Mellow: Archer
Saxon: Chariot

Blue:
Twin Peaks:

So, copying from above.
-Many (20?) Oromos, all drafted
-10 cats (50)
-10+ knights (90)/horse archers (50)
-10 combined Elephants (60) and Pikes (60) (I prefer Elephants)
-6 theaters (25)
-Globe Theater (300)
-4 workers for front line operations.
-2 additional workers for new cities
-2 settlers for Burgundy and Twin Peaks
-3 barracks (50) - for GA, SF, MY
Research: Paper (858), Education (2574), Gunpowder (1716), Philosophy (1144), Nationalism (2574), Drama (429) and the remaining (5) turns of Engineering.

Optional:
-4 missionaries
-1 great person
Research: Theology (715), Feudalism (1001), Guilds (1430)

Research abilities
The research assumptions:
* Any other techs that we get (Calendar, etc) we will trade for.
* Our research ability increases very slightly over the next few turns, with our increasing cities / sizes slightly compensating for the fact that we will be adding new cities as well as possibly switching over to more hammer heavy (lighter on commerce) configurations.
* In my calculations, I have not made any adjustments for pre-req or other-civ-knowing boni.
* We get a Great Scientist in 8 turns (T131) and another in 46 turns (T169)

So, from a research perspective, we did (are doing) Engineering (1430 beakers) in 9 turns, an average research rate of 159 bpt. The above techs are 9295 beakers. If we assume a 0.5% increase in bpt each turn, we complete that in 57 turns (T180), at which point our research is 205 bpt. Seems reasonable anyways. That is our worst case (no trades). Adding the latter 3 techs adds another 14 turns (T194). Going from a best case, if we assume we can trade for Drama, Philosophy, Nationalism and use our scientist to bulb ~1500 beakers of Education, then we need 3648 beakers for the base path, which we do in 22 turns (+5T for the rest of Engineering) (T150). I think this is our absolute best case.

Production capabilities
For production, here are my assumptions
* Our new cities (from Saxon on) will contribute nothing to our war force.
* We will found Burgundy and Twin Peaks (as well as Blue) before the invasion.
* The 3 new cities can have garrisons from some combination of A1's warrior, the 4 archers at the Cape, and some of the garrison at Pink.
* The 2 HAs, Mace, Elephant and Cat we already have at PD / Cape will be part of the invasion force.
* Because I'm ignoring food, I am going to assume that workers cost 30 hammers and settlers cost 50, with the other half coming from food. This is probably not incredibly accurate but close enough.
* Green Acres, post Globe, can draft 2 Oromos every 3 turns. Our other 5 cities other than Cape (A1, PD, CB, SF, MY) will draft 1 Oromo each.
* Upgrade costs: Spear->Pike is 100 gold, Axe->Mace is 130, HA->Knight is 135.
* We will chop 10 forests across the empire
* We will whip away 10 citizens across the empire.
* Our production per turn will increase 1% per turn.

Our estimated production per turn is (just guessing because I don't have the game in front of me)
Cape: 30 hpt (when working on military, and after it grows and uses the plains forest)
A1: 15 hpt
PD: 15 hpt
CB: 7 hpt
SF: 13 hpt
MY: 10 hpt
GA: 5 hpt
Total: 95 hpt

10 cats (50), 6 elephants (60), 9 HAs (50), 3 pikes (60), 6 theaters (25), 1 Globe (300), 6 workers (30), 2 settlers (50) and 3 barracks (50) cost 2370 hammers. Assuming the 10 chops and 10 whips brings it down to 1770, which we can have done in 17 turns (T140).

So we're definitely research limited. We are also limited by the ability to build the Globe in Green Acres. We need Drama, 6 theaters and the Globe (300 hammers) in a city that is not a very strong research city. We can aid that with a few chops as well as some strategic whip overflow, but considering we can't even start for 10 turns or so, it's an issue.

Taking all that into consideration, I think that the earliest we are going to war with drafted Oromos is T160.

We also have the ability to build Oromos from scratch (rather than drafting them, at least at first). 80 hammers means we can build a little more than 1 per turn, empire wide. This would mean that we don't have to research Drama, Philo or Nationalism (though we can't bulb Education w/o having Philo). And we don't have to build the Globe or the Theaters (though we probably should build some if/once we can). So that's 1600 hammers of Oromos minus 450 hammers of theaters, or net 1150 hammers (another 10 turns worth). So production-wise by T150. Research-wise, Paper, Edu and Gunpowder is 5148 beakers, but Theology, Feudalism, Guilds, Gunpowder is only 4862 beakers. Which is 30 or 28 turns after Engineering, or T158 / T156. If we could trade for Theo and/or Feudalism, and if we use our upcoming Scientist for a Golden Age, I think T150 is possible, if we start now.

So, thoughts on this? Which path should we proceed? If we go for non-drafted, we can always follow up with some drafted ones. We still do need to build Oromos after we research Gunpowder (obviously) which means that to get 20 Oromos we're talking another 15 or so turns after we get Gunpowder. So maybe T160 is what we should shoot for. But we're definitely research limited in our ability to go to war.

[ruff_hi]

I haven't read thru the whole post (will do later) but my feeling is that we forgo the theology route because ...

1) we are researched limited
2) needs GA or anarchy plus sinking some hammers
3) drafted Oromos still get their default promotions / abilities: 1 First Strike, Immune to First Strikes, Starts with Drill I and Drill II

Further, I would not build Oromos - one of the powers of draft is the instant-army nature. I would want to keep this up our sleave (ie our Oromo army) for as long as possible and building them might let the cat out of the bag.

[Zeviz]

We should consider as many trade possibilities as possible:

1. Buy Philosophy from PAL for Engineering (adding a guarantee that we will not go for Liberalism)

2. Buy Theology + Drama from Templars for Engineering (they obviously will not be buying construction from us)

3. Buy Guilds for Gunpowder from Banana. (The way this works is that they will first research Guilds, then give it to us and we research Gunpowder and give it to them.) This is an unusual trade, but hopefully our relationship is close enough for them to agree. The deal might also cover some of our beaker debt to them. (We promised them a credit of 1000 beakers for not trading with Imperio.)

[Sullla]

Or, better yet, we see if we can trade Engineering to PAL for Philosophy, and then race in and snatch Liberalism/Nationalism ourselves. If PAL doesn't produce a Great Scientist in the next dozen turns, we have an excellent chance to pull that off. One reason why I advocated Engineering as the current tech was to throw off PAL, make it look like we had no interest in Liberalism. They'll probably be confident enough that they have an insurmountable lead to trade us Philosophy, then we knock our Paper very quickly, lightbulb Education, and steal Liberalism before they know what happenes. PAL's pause to stop and research Optics first was a mistake.

Of course, this is all pure speculation.

[sunrise089]

First let me clarify my desire for Theology - I believe we'll likely be able to trade for it without suffering an opportunity cost (in other words trade for Theo or just not trade at all). Plus if we avoid the Theo route due to the required golden age we need to factor in the anarchy turn to swap to Nationalism.

Next as far as drafting versus attacking earlier goes, I think we have to draft. With all of the defensive advantages in civ, and with the (extremely pro-defense) double-move restrictions I think we have to have overwhelming numbers to win. I think only the draft allows that in a one-on-one war.

Now for the bolded questions above:

-I vote for Theology
-We have one killer stack until the enemy stack is killed. Otherwise we won't have enough units to soak up collateral.
-Razing is done in MP because auto-raze is turned on I have no idea what is best in this case....but if we desire to eliminate Imperio for the game then we may want to consider keeping their cities.
-I have no objections to your assumptions, but I also have zero micro management skill


PS - Nice work on all of those numbers rego!

[T-hawk]

I would like to understand exactly why is Liberalism so valuable, as compared to just researching whatever tech would be slinged? We have no need for Lib itself. Free Speech will long be behind Bureau, and Free Religion is marginal absent faith diplo hate and behind Theocracy anyway too.

In single player, Liberalism is gold in trade value from dumb AIs and in sandbagging the sling to something expensive. But here, I see it only amounting to a discount of a couple hundred beakers on Nationalism or Astronomy. That's not trivial, but it's also not worth spending the research cost of Education to get there, when military operations will eclipse universities for much time to come.

I think we're fine to punt Liberalism and Education in order to focus on our real goals, Gunpowder and Nationalism.

[ruff_hi]

I think we're fine to punt Liberalism and Education

I think I know what the expression 'to punt' means but I couldn't find it in any glossary of American to English expressions. All I could find was this - but it sort of implies to get rid of a bad penny and I thought it meant to 'get rid of' without the implication of 'something bad'.

[sooooo]

I am for Theology and Islam if we can trade for it from Templars. Religion will be really useful to us, not just for drafting but for loads of things. It's worth the turn of anarchy. Even if we don't get theology, Airstrip One needs a monastery and can build some missionaries when it has spare time.

I am not in favour of liberalism. I am also not sure about education. I am leaning towards going the guilds route to gunpowder.

[regoarrarr]

@Sullla / Zeviz - I am fine with any and all tech trades that we can make. But I'm not entirely confident that we can pull any of those off, especially the ones regarding Liberalism.

I also agree with t-hawk and sooooo about not bothering with Paper / Edu / Liberalism and focusing on our real goals, which are Nationalism, Gunpowder, and domination of this continent.

One mistake that I made in the original post is where I said we'd have a great scientist on T131 and T169. I neglected to remember the National Epic, currently due on T133. So, our 2nd great person (300 GPP) will be a scientist / artist, due on T149. One other thought I had was to hire an engineer in A1, and if we pop an engineer, use it on the Taj Mahal, or if it's a scientist / artist, use it on a golden age. This would also make our great people pop on T131, T145 and T164.

[Dreylin]

One other thought I had was to hire an engineer in A1, and if we pop an engineer, use it on the Taj Mahal,

Or the Globe....

[regoarrarr]

Or the Globe....

Ooh that is a possibility.

[Zeviz]

Can somebody run some numbers to see whether production or research will be biggest limiting factor for us.

Here are a few specific questions:

1. When will we have all techs (Drama, Philo, Nationalism, Gunpowder) assuming no trades besides Guilds?
2. How much military will Cape Town produce in that time?
3. If we put China Beach on military (perhaps even whipping elephant instead of worker), how much will it be able to produce in that time?
4. If we go Forge->Military in Pink, how much will it produce? What if we skip Forge?
5. If we go Barracks->Military in Something Fishy, how much will it produce?
6. How much could A1 produce if we took it off infrastructure builds?

7. How many troops total do we expect to need? (This is what we'll have to get from the rest of our cities.)