Cape Town Theatre Command

[Dreylin]

Can someone check the culture % on the flipped tile between CT & Chichen Itza this turn, and then again next turn.

I just had a paranoid thought that Imperio may try and flip it back and then would be back able to get next to CT in a single turn.

Although while writing this I realised that they don't have the requisite tech to build culture, so probably can't do this. :duh:

[mostly-harmless]

We have still increasing percentage (57/42) on that tile.

mh

[Dreylin]

Imperio's stack has exited Chichen Itza....

[sooooo]

Hmm, intriguing. Our spy (built next turn) needs to get a move on!

They could just be baiting us to move in.

Rebuilding the road down from cape town just got more urgent!

[sunrise089]

I thought about making a new thread, but these two existing ones will probably suffice.

Anyways, lets discuss Operation Joshua (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Jericho).

*With the Imperio army located, we have visibility onto the vast majority of the Templar and Imperio combined military.

*Our enemies do not have visibility on most of our army.

*As long as Templars and Imperio don't merge their armies, our existing Cape Town and Pink Dot garrisons are sufficient to defend our territory against their opposing armies, even if those armies were to grow up to 50% larger than they currently stand, provided we merely want to hold our territory and cities.

*Therefore we have a short-term opportunity to divert our military production into a third army without risking our cities, so long as we can draft to play catch-up.

*So one proposal:
-->Our cities produce knights.
-->We use these knights to replace macemen defending Pink Dot.
-->When we have an army of 7 macemen ready, we send them, our central horse archers, 2 workers, and about 6 catapults into our forest next to Jericho with no warning.
-->Neither Imperio nor Templars will be able to reinforce the city with their armies, so we can cat the defenses down and hit the city in one turn. With only a single unit that will have odds versus macemen we can take the city with only 1-2 losses.
-->The next turn we road the forest we've been holding and send the cats back to their normal stations.

*Why macemen and not knights? They're cheaper, will be obsolete sooner, and will have about the same odds versus the city defenders, plus once we take the city we'll have units with defensive bonuses available if we want to keep it.

So......

1) Assuming we can capture the city with minimal casualties, do we want to?
2) If yes, do we want to keep it?
3) The only drawbacks are we loose 2 workers from other tasks and we get our cats out of position for about 5 turns. Worth it?

[darrelljs]

I vote yes, and would like to say yet again I'm glad general sunrise is on our side .

Darrell

[mostly-harmless]

1) Yes definitely. Even with medium casualties we should make the move to strengthen our diplomatic position.
2) Yes we want to keep it, now that we are decided on Upper Burgundy.
3) Worth it!

What is your estimated time for attack assuming we get Guilds this turn?

mh

[sooooo]

Sounds like a plan! However, I'm not immediately convinced that we want to keep the city - we have plenty of time to discuss this.

[Swiss Pauli]

I'm in favour of attacking Jericho: someone needs to break this stalemate, and I think we're best placed to take that risk.

As I see it, the problem isn't taking Jericho, but holding it: we have to assume the main Templar stack near Pink will attack Jericho on the 2nd turn (they're five tiles away), i.e the turn we capture it. It being Templars source of Iron, they will surely prioritize this ahead of a difficult assault on Pink. We can slow them down by pillaging road(s) with a spy or two, or if we're lucky they might be in our territory when we attack.

The safest play, of course, is to raze it.

The best plan might be to raze it and replace with a settler of our own, using the culture slider to get a 1 or 2 turn border pop.

(I think this would benefit from a new thread, or to be moved into the Pink Dot thread, as we're proposing to divert forces away from Pink, not Cape.)

[mostly-harmless]

I looked at the cultural situation at Jericho.
The Jericho tile itself will be outside Templars borders. However, the 1st-ring tiles E, SE, S will be in firm grip of Constantinoples culture. Luckily E & S are mountain tiles.

On the other hand, Constantinople has its 4th ring expansion coming eventually reaching out to Jericho.

mh

[sooooo]

Music to listen to while capturing Jericho:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5l08Q5NyMjw

[sunrise089]

@M_H - We can attack Jericho on turn 147 if want to. Our 2-movers are already positioned properly, so they're ready to go now. 5 maces and 3 cats can move up from Pink Dot in time, and the remaining mace or two can move down from Cape Town. There are problems moving so quickly though:

*Pink Dot is almost totally undefended, so we had better hope the Templar units retreat towards Jericho rather than press up on Pink.
*Any units we use from the Cape Town garrison will be visible by Templars the turn before we move them in. We should discuss which tile looks the most like a simple repositioning rather than a prelude to an advance.
*We would need 9 cats to fully bombard down Jericho's defenses for a t147 attack, leaving Cape Town with only a single cat.

I think an attack on turn 149 might work.
*T144 - Jericho's defenses stand at 42%.
*T145 - Jericho's defenses stand at 38%.
*T146 - Jericho's defenses stand at 34%.
*T147 - Jericho's defenses stand at 30%. Units from Pink Dot move NE onto the desert road tile between the peaks. 2 cats from Cape Town move south along the road no later than this turn....we may want to move them south and then past Jericho earlier to disguise what we're doing though.
*T148 - Jericho's defenses stand at 26%. 2 workers, 5 maces and 4 cats from Pink Dot, 2 knights and 2 cats from Cape Town, and all of our 2-movers from the central garrison move into the Jericho forest. Also as of t148 we need at least three knights to have been produced and stationed south of Upper Burgundy in order to relieve the Pink Dot defenders sent north.
*T149 - Bombard defenses with 6 cats down to 2%. Sacrifice 1 cat attacking the city. Maces attack (only the one attacking the healthy crossbow at 9.6v11.7 won't have odds) and capture/burn Jericho. Workers road the Jericho forest.
*T150 - Chariots/horse archers cut any roads connecting Templars to Jericho or the city ruins. Any cats not needed for a counterattack return north, and can hit Imperio attacks on turn 151. Likewise any horse archers unused in the battle can head south should Templars advance on Pink Dot, and can attack Templar units on t151.

Here's what our armies would look like if we go with a T149 attack. This assumes we'll configure Pink Dot, Airstrip 1, and Something Fishy as necessary to produce three knights before we move in, and that Cape Town will produce a pair of knights itself.
*Cape Dot army - 9 strength-8 units, 2 pikes, 1 axe, 2 cats, 4 archers.
*Pink Dot army - 3 knights, 1 elephant, 2 pikes, 1 longbow, 2 archers.
*Jericho army - 2 knights, 6 maces, 7 horse archers, 1 pike, 7 cats, 2 chariots.

The touchiest situation would be if Templars move their entire force against Pink Dot on t148. They could hit the city on turn 150 before any other RB units could make it inside the city. However, we will have odds with all three of our horse archers and the elephant attacking out against the Templar stack. If we manage four victories, that will only leave the Templars a horse archer, crossbow, sword, and three chariots to kill a longbow, 2 pikes, and 2 archers in Pink. Even with three cats, that isn't happening against a 40% city on a hill. And remember, if Templars wait a turn to bombard our horse archers are back in the fight.

All that said, I'm very confident about this plan, provided Templars don't reinforce their southern army with 2-3 more high-strength units before turn 148. If they do we're going to need to either delay the attack or be willing to slave an equal number of units of our own in the south.

@Swiss - As long as we pillage the roads connecting Jericho to the Templar land I hope they try to retake the city. With all of the cats we'll have on hand and our 2-movers at more or less full health we'll crush their stack of maces and crossbows. It would be touchier if they could hit us on turn 149, but they can't due to a lack of roads.

[mostly-harmless]

Sounds solid.
There is a chance that Templars are on a castle build in Jericho. (estimated completion time: T149/150) I will have to watch that closely from C&D.

EDIT: Scrap the castle, Templars don't have stone, so the modifiers to work out properly. I am currently leaning towards a wonder build.
Base hammers = 7 * (1+0.5[industrious]+0.25[org-rel]+0.25[forge]) = 14hpt (see C&D). Chichen Itza?

mh

[darrelljs]

However, I'm not immediately convinced that we want to keep the city - we have plenty of time to discuss this.

Here's a thought. The way the turn orders are forced, we could send something along the lines of this after we are on the clock:

"We are taking Jericho this turn. We plan on razing it. However, if you are willing to [insert concessions here], we will simply capture it and then return it to you as part of the peace deal. You have until we play our turn to respond."

We'd have to trust them of course .

Darrell

[Swiss Pauli]

The touchiest situation would be if Templars move their entire force against Pink Dot on t148. They could hit the city on turn 150 before any other RB units could make it inside the city.

I'm not sure about this: if we're taking a lot of cats from Cape Town then there's a risk is that Imperio learns we've moved a good few units out of the immediate vicinity of Cape Town (from a Spy, or from Templars), and moves in their stack to attack on the turn we move our ex-Cape units into the forest by Jericho. (If they move earlier then we can simply postpone the attack to deal with Imperio.) If this happens, would we be able to get back to Cape in time to hit Imperio's stack before they attack the city itself?

We might have to do an emergency whip or two at Pink, but I'm sure we could hold off Templars even with a reduced garrison.