Turnplayed Thread #4

[T-hawk]

The only unit I did not move there was Charimatic, our Combat II horse archer who is at 1.0 strength and 9/10 XP, thus cannot promote next turn. That HA looked too damaged to do any fighting, and I thought we might as well keep it inside Jericho to start the healing process.

I would move it. 1.0 strength is still 17 HP and it can defeat a unit with 10 HP or less. It serves as insurance against _just_ falling shy against the last defender. The difference in healing between being in Jericho or on the adjacent tile is not great, especially with the Medic III arriving.

- Do we want to move Adria (uninjured Combat I mace) onto the SE tile as well?

I agree.

One other question - what are Winston and Erik up to? Can they get to fixing Templars' road negligence around Jericho?

[sooooo]

What are our options for displacing the Crossbow&Axe from their central hill? We need to dislodge tem so we can get the engineering corp in to improve on Templars woeful road network.

I suggested moving the knight and Betty who are in UB to the tile 2W of Jericho to intercept them.

@Sullla: Yes, I'd like you to move the units. Sunrise is away and I'm heading out soon. Plus I always mess up the great generals when attaching them to a stack with more than one unit in it. Please also hit End Turn when you are done.

- Do we want to move Adria (uninjured Combat I mace) onto the SE tile as well? That would make Adria the top defender if Templars decided to attack the stack on that tile. Because Templars cannot reach Jericho except by going through the SE tile, I am in favor of doing so. Thoughts? Unless I hear otherwise, I plan to log into the game and move her in a few hours.

Yes, I think so. I also think moving the pike is wise.

We'd be better off luring a mace out of con to attack so i'd leave our maces where they are

I doubt that would be good for us - the mace would sit 2 tiles from Jericho then and we wouldn't be able to hit it with a mace of our own.

Replying to mh's points:

- Spies. If this game has shown one thing, it is how quick spies die. I am not sure I like us wasting hammers on those suicide recon missions.

I don't think this is true - the spy that revealed Imperio's stack was incredibly important. I felt much safer attacking Jericho knowing exactly where Imperio's units are.

Red Herring: The city does not have a hammer in a Trireme but 2hammers in a longbow.

Really? I could have sword it put a turn into a trireme on T147. We should put a hammer into a trireme then. It doesn't cost anything but we get the option of emergency whipping one if needed.

China Beach: Courthouse or Monastery

I think CB does need a monastery, but may as well build another knight while we still have horses, right? It can go for the other two when it doesn't have horses methinks. Also it can only build a confucian monastery. Not got Islam yet. Actually that's a great point - we should be spreading more religions to Airstrip One so it can build more monasteries. No real rush because we aren't going to increase the science slider for a long time. So yeah, I think CB should go knight (double-whip), confucian monastery and confucian missionary. Is the courthouse for the espionage? We will whip a courthouse on T154 at Mellow Yellow. CB has fairly small maintenence compared to some of our other cities.

Should we request Banking from Banana? Is this still part of some deal we have with them?

I think we should request it as soon as the deal with PAL goes through. We don't want PAL backing out. That's a silly deal PAL made, because they are effectively giving 500 gold to two teams for the tech. We have no deal specifically, but tech for tech deals are probably not relevant any more.

One other question - what are Winston and Erik up to? Can they get to fixing Templars' road negligence around Jericho?

They have roaded this turn and are waiting for instructions for next turn. I guess it depends on what Templars do.

[Sullla]

I suggested moving the knight and Betty who are in UB to the tile 2W of Jericho to intercept them.

@Sullla: Yes, I'd like you to move the units. Sunrise is away and I'm heading out soon. Plus I always mess up the great generals when attaching them to a stack with more than one unit in it. Please also hit End Turn when you are done.

sooooo - I answered this before, but there are about a dozen different posts flying around and I'm not surprised it got missed. We need to keep the Mounted stack in Upper Burgundy for the moment in case Templars move their main stack against Pink Dot. If they move those units back into their territory to defend, then we're free to push them up to the front. Only in UB can they cover Pink, Cape, and Jericho simultaneously.

Given the broad consensus from the team, I will move the mace Charsi onto the SE tile as suggested, as well as our injured HA (thanks for the suggestion, T-Hawk). I will also merge our Great General with Lady Godiva and move her up to the Jericho area for Medic III duty. The other chariot, HA, and knight in Upper Burgundy will remain there for the moment (for the reasons stated above). Then end turn, as that should be our last movement. We have the remaining 32 hours to discuss builds, etc.

With regards to the Templar crossbow/axe group on the hill in the center of the map... well, we can mop them up at our leisure if they stay there. A Combat I knight gets something like 70% odds against them already - they are no threat. Once we have security in the Jericho area, and know whether or not Imperio is going to move in against us, we can take them out. It's mostly likely that they'll retreat back to Jerusalem this turn, given the collapse of the Templar front lines. I'm expecting the Pink stack to retreat as well, honestly. Really, aside from hoping we can raze Constantinople - and I really hope that we can, as that would utterly cripple Templars - we can't do too much planning right now until we see how Templars respond. Based on what they do with their Pink attack stack, we have a number of options available to us. If they pull back, we really might start thinking about that jungle city east of Something Fishy.

Oh, any thoughts on what tech to sit on while we run 0% research? We selected Theology because I know that was mentioned in one of the tech threads, but that can easily be changed.

[Sullla]

Units moved as stated, turn ended. Great General Medic III Godiva is in Jericho. SE tile:



Templars have not yet logged into the game. Gonna be an interesting reaction when Hercules sees Jericho gone and this stack in his territory.

[mostly-harmless]

I suggest to move the Const raze party 1E next turn. If we move SE (as was visible in Sullla's earlier screenshot) we might be more susceptible to attacks from the (roaded) tiles south.

mh

[Dreylin]

I don't think we can do that and attack; an Oasis is a 2-move tile isn't it?

[MyOtherCar]

Great job team, especially general Sunrise.
Imagine how Templars will feel when they log in again!

@ Dreylin: Never heard of that: oasis is just a one move tile imo.

[sooooo]

Just to clarify: Red Herring has 2 hammers into both a longbow and a trireme. The confusion came from the fact that it is making 2 hpt due to the city being on a plains hill. So we'll continue with a library. It should hit size 6 at almost the same time that we want to draft from it.

I was thinking that a bank at airstrip one should be good after the longbowman. At 0% science it gets us +22 gold per turn.

Also, I'm beginning to think that Organised Religion is straight-up better than theocracy, even if we will be drafting units. I mean, the oromos still come out at drill II and that's great. The +25% bonus to buildings is proving really valuable. I think we should research paper at 0% science, because it's a tech we will definitely self-research whereas theology is more debatable.

[Zeviz]

I also prefer Paper to Theology as temporary tech. We could theoretically get Theology from Templars when they capitulate, but Paper we'll have to self-research.

Are we sure that we want to sacrifice our mounted force razing Constantinopole, instead of saving them for an attack on Jerusalem?

PS Should we move a few more units away from Cape Town to lure Imperio into attacking?

[T-hawk]

Oasis IS a 2-move tile. I get tripped up by that all the time when moving workers to road one.

Paper as nominal tech sounds good to me. Theology really isn't worth the beakers to research. Just to recap, our impending plan is to lightbulb Optics then research Astronomy?

Zeviz - We aren't sure about sacrificing our mounted force towards Constantinople until we see what's in the city. We don't intend to lose more than one or two units to do it. If there's more than a couple archers on garrison, we'll pass on it until later.

[T-hawk]

I logged in and made the following actions:

- change nominal research to Paper
- requested Banking in game from Banana
- "canceled" a superfluous "Build Road" order on Winston (his current tile is already roaded)
- noted that Pink Dot can grow one turn sooner if it changes from hill to grass forest next turn, without losing a turn on the catapult. (If it works a cottage instead of forest, it will delay the cat.)

I also peeked at PAL's production. The Warning is up to something big, it's at 196 hammers right now. No idea if that's the Taj - hopefully it is because we're in line to beat it. Heliopolis is at 109, the only other PAL city with any sizable number.

No moves from Templar yet with 26 hours on the clock (10 hours on Templar's clock.)

[mostly-harmless]

Will do the C&D for PAL production later today.

mh

[ruff_hi]

templar logged in about 25 mins ago. I'll cracked open the game - couldn't see any changes. Banana canceled the Iron deal.

[Sullla]

Templars logged in a second time right at the 16 hour mark. They've tried to play hard and fast with the timer rules so many times, I logged in afterwards to see what they were up to:



They're moving in against Pink Dot! Oddly enough, Templars did not move their crossbow/axe mini-stack, which would have made more sense. While this is obviously not good, we should probably be OK, although it's going to force more whipping and upgrading of units. Here's where we can pull additional units on defense:

- We have two pikes and two archers in Pink; we will have to upgrade at least one (probably both) of those archers to longbows.
- There is an elephant playing zone defense NW of Pink that can return to the city.
- The longbow guarding the hill moves NW-W and can make it into Pink with no problems.
- We have a knight, horse archer, and chariot in Upper Burgundy saved for exactly this situation, who can move into Pink.
- Something Fishy produces another knight next turn. We also probably going to have to whip the cat in Pink, unfortunately.
- The leftover maces and cats from Operation Jericho can make it to Pink by T152. This is one turn after Templars can attack the city (T151), so if they pause to bombard the city, we'll be in great shape to shred their stack on the counter attack.

Now that Templars have moved in, we probably DON'T want Imperio to move in as well, because we're necessarily going to need a couple of the anti-Imperio units to move down to the Pink area. Hopefully sunrise will be back tomorrow to take a look at all of this and give some input. My take is that we're going to suffer some damage, but shouldn't lose any cities. Most of that Templar stack is obsolete anyway. Three longbows in a city on a hill, plus pikes, elephants, and knights, should be enough to hold them for a turn or two until reinforcements can arrive. (If Templars go for Something Fishy, we have even more time to reinforce, and therefore are in better shape.)

I dunno what Hercules is thinking here. Suicide attack from Templars prior to giving up on the game, maybe?

[TAD]

They probably think that Pink Dot is lightly defended thanks to the assault on Jericho, so they hope they can take it for real and this would hurt us more then them.