Operation Joshua

[Kylearan]

Hi,

Hmmm.....well that's actually a pretty decent behind-the-scenes stack. However the beauty of the Joshua plan is our units sit in defensive terrain until they actually attack the city, so if Templars don't have the units in Jericho on T149 we're still in good shape.

You mean we will still be in good shape taking Jericho, right? But how do we deal with that potential hidden stack afterwards?

What I mean is, I think the plan is to take and not to raze Jericho, so can we really hope to hold it? Reading up on your plan, any surviving cats and horse archers return to the northern/southern armies to defend against the existing stacks. So in the worst case, a 60k stack could easily retake Jericho, correct?

It's not my intention to play Cassandra here, and I'm still in favor of Operation Joshua, but I'm not clear on our plans how to deal with Jericho after we successfully killed the garrison.

-Kylearan

[sooooo]

I predict that Templars' remaining troops will be split between Jerusalem (defend capital against naval assault) and Acre (defend against banana). I think the plan is to use chariots and horse archers to cut the roads off. That way the counterattacking stacks will have to spend a turn in open territory outside the city, where we will still have 6 healthy catapults to hit them with.

But I share your concern and clearly razing the city is still an option to consider.

[sunrise089]

Yes Soooo, as long as we can cut roads (and we have 8 mounted units in play) Templars can only hit our city with 2-movers or by moving off the road network. With the obsolete units they have they will be absolutely wiped out by 6 cats. Without elephants or knights, horse archers along can crush anything the Templars can throw at us as long as we can cat the stack.

The biggest concern will be if Templars try to retake the city with their "hidden army" and simultaneously advance on Pink Dot. In that case we won't be able to pull units from Jericho to cover Pink and will have to slave units, but that still isn't the end of the world.

[sunrise089]

Guys, make sure to check back here early during T149. I'll post the play-by-play of the Jericho attack and we can discuss whether to keep or raze the city as casualty reports come in. Therefore expect me to spend a lot of time logged in during T149.

Sorry for the double post.

[sooooo]

Just a FYI: The grass tile 1SW of Jericho was unroaded when we misclicked the horse archer into the adjacent forest. So unless they have roaded it in the meantime the catapult/axeman mini stack on the hill will not be able to reach the city in time.

[ruff_hi]

Guys, make sure to check back here early during T149. I'll post the play-by-play of the Jericho attack and we can discuss whether to keep or raze the city as casualty reports come in. Therefore expect me to spend a lot of time logged in during T149.

What is the ETA on this battle (Edit: Looks like Friday morning)? Do we want to set up some real time chat (ie via Y! messenger) or telephone (skype?) hook up to streamline this?

[sunrise089]

Doesn't matter does it Sooooo? The hill the 2 units are on isn't roaded, right?

What is the ETA on this battle? Do we want to set up some real time chat (ie via Y! messenger) or telephone (skype?) hook up to streamline this?

I plan to start attacking right when the timer ticks over, that way we'll have time for some discussion.

I'd be happy to hang out on a messaging chat room, or you could use my clan's TeamSpeak server if you have a mic.

Realistically though using the forum is probably the best to ensure enough people can comment. I plan to make my first post "how many cats should be bombard with and how many should we attack with," but we need to know how many total defenders we'll face before we can ask that.

[regoarrarr]

In the meantime, can you post (I'm sure you probably have already), what the current city defense % is, and how much (4%?) it goes down per cat?

Maybe what odds we currently have with various combinations?

I know I read someone (Memphus @ CFC maybe?) who creates test saves to do battles, and runs them through various simulations to figure out where the best odds are.

Does something like that make sense?

[sunrise089]

I've made some test saves, it's just tedious with so many units in play.

The city currently stands at 26% defenses and each cat lowers defenses 4%. We have 7 cats, so next turn we can totally lower the defenses if we want.

I can tell you right now that every cat will make the city more likely to be captured with minimal losses to our maces and knights by attacking rather than bombarding. BUT we'll loose most or all of the cats.

My feeling is that we should bombard with 5-6 cats and attack with 1-2. That will leave the defenses at 2-6% and the defenders lightly damaged. Our knights have 35% odds on the city right now, and that should change to about 50/50 or better once the defenses are knocked the rest of the way down. Our maces, if promoted to city raider, will have odds versus every unit except for the crossbow.

[regoarrarr]

Okay - so let's use this time before we have to attack next turn to narrow down our options.

#1 - we have to decide how many of our 7 cats to bombard with
#2 - what are the options on what units to start the attack with?
#3 - how many units (of which type) would we say is "too much"?

[mostly-harmless]

I would use 4 cats for bombard and 3 cats to attack.
Unless Templar pull lots of units our from Constantinople (and I personally think that there is no "hidden army", the missing soldier points are just spread across their land) we should be fully committed to the attack. If the battle is too bloody, we raze the city.

mh

[kjara]

I've finally caught up with most of the recent history:

It seems to me that how many cats we should use depends on if we want to try to keep the town? I believe the current plan is to keep it?

It seems to me that if we keep the town, that we won't be able culturally take the square one se of jericho, and thus won't be able to hit a force with cats before it hits us from templars. [Edit I guess we could burn the road if we have an extra turn in there and want to risk sacrificing a unit?]. Thus we would want to use more cats, and try to preserve the rest of our force both in numbers and in health to eat the collateral from the few cats that they have(I believe the latest count was ~4?). However, the cats could be useful against the imperio force at mutal if imperio tries to combine forces(aka templar cries for help and imperio sees it as a chance to kill a stack of ours) and tries to attack from the ne rather than spending the turns to circle to the se. We can raze the road that I'm expecting is one ne of jericho(it could be that we know no road exists, which also works) and be able to cat this stack as it attacks(since desert means they can't offensively road it and attack on the same turn?). Thus it seems that we should be willing to sacrifice an extra cat or 2 if we are going to try to hold the city, since we will only be able to use them against a imperio army and will want the higher odds for less damage and less losses. [Edit: ok I've relooked at some things, and realized I don't have a good grasp where the templar harassing force is. Do we know how many turns away from jericho is it?--some of this only holds if it can hit us the turn after we take the town.]

Do we plan on making one of the horse archers a medic if one of them hits 5 xp?

[sunrise089]

@kjara - It is very unlikely the Templars would be able to hit us with their southern stack in two turns. They would need about 3 workers already in place to do it, and they would need to have that plains hill south of Jerico roaded, which I don't think is the case.

Certainly though, we do want to make it hard on Templars to re-road the desert tile 1SE of Jericho if we keep the city. In the short term we can keep a mace and knight there, but in the long term we desperately need to control at least the city's first ring of tiles.

[sooooo]

The last time we saw the tiles 1NE and 1SW of Jericho they were unroaded. I predict their only road to Jericho is the desert 1SE. However, we should remember that they are in serfdom so need only 1 worker to lay down a normal road and 2 workers to road a desert tile.

[sunrise089]

The last time we saw the tiles 1NE and 1SW of Jericho, they were unroaded. I predict their only road to Jericho is the desert 1SE. However, we should remember that they are in serfdom so need only 1 worker to lay down a normal road and 2 workers to road a desert tile.

Sadly, they still need infinite worker turns to make up for loosing cities due to the inability to slave units.

Serfdom anytime other than the turn of an attack is so silly....