Turnplayer Thread No. 5

[sunrise089]

Turn 164

One turn until the fall of Constantinople.

Two turns from the fall of Chichen Itza.

Three turns from the fall of Mutal!

City Report:
*Airstrip 1 - University due in 9. Market on hold.
*Pink Dot - Courthouse due in 1.
*China Beach - Worker due in 1. Defensive Oromo due in 2.
*Cape Town - Galley complete. Another galley due in 1.
*Something Fishy - Catapult complete. University due in 15.
*Green Acres - Islamic Missionary complete. Islamic Missionary due in 7.
*Mellow Yellow - Settle complete via triple-whip.
*Saxon the Beach - Courthouse due in 1.
*Bluebell Fields - University due in 22. Bank on hold.
*Red Herring - Forge due in 14.
*Upper Burgundy - Library due in 3.
*Frozen Clams - Library due in 37.
*Jericho - Cat due in 6.
*Jerusalem - Theater due in 51.
*Jungle Fever - Granary due in 50.
*Sweet Tooth - Granary due in 59.

Worker Report:
*Humorously Nok Tok completed Templars' road for them on their plains hill tile. Erik and Dave completed 1-turn worker actions and will move to their staging tile next turn.
*Parsons and John started the Sullla farm project at Jungle Fever.
*O'Brien, Mustapha, and Winston completed a grassland mine at Sweet Tooth and will connect Jericho and Constantinople next turn.

Domestic Military Composition Report:
*Cape Town garrison - 1 axe, 3 archers.
*Jericho garrison - 1 longbow, 1 archer.
*Jerusalem garrison - 1 pike.
*The attack force poised to take Constantinople:

Spoiler:

*6 Oromos, 5 elephants, 8 maces, 1 horse archer, 4 pikes, 1 longbow, and 13 cats.

Enemy Military Composition Report:
*Constantinople garrison: 6 macemen, 3 horse archers, 1 crossbow, 6 longbows.
*Imperio mega-stack: 1 knight, 2 muskets, 3 elephants, 7 macemen, 2 horse archers, 3 pikes, 5 longbows, 11 cats.

Military Action Report:
*Perfect - defenses of Constantinople stand at 0% with no cats to spare. With no suicide cats, our Oromos have 41% of the city and knights would have 66%.
*Imperio has sailed their galley back into their own territory. Though they could sail back south and spot of galleys, they could not spot our Oromo marines.
*The current unit balance at Constantinople is 25 RB non-cat units and 14 Templar units. We may need to use more than the usual number of suicide cats to ensure we have easy kills, since we want to preserve most of our stack.
*There is one clever thing Templars could do - send everything they have against Jerusalem. Preventing this however is their own road network - the moment Constantinople falls next turn we can use their own roads and hit any units threatening Jerusalem.

Spy Report:
*Templar units are all dead. Imperio have moved lots of their units south, which is pretty great for us.

Spoiler:

Questions and notes:[/B]
*Our new Islamic Missionary is on its way to Jerusalem.
*Our southern work boat will finally get put to use next turn.
*We will almost certainly fall behind PAL in power by T167. We anticipate loosing up to six suicide cats at Constantinople, several more units on bad dice rolls there, several 2-movers at Mutal, and 2-3 Oromo Warriors at Chichen. Of course in exchange we will take three cities, so it works out, but we will want to begin a second round of drafting sooner rather than later.

[Sullla]

Thanks for the turn update, sunrise. Here are some random thoughts and comments on looking at the save - and one really big point for us to discuss at the end.

- PAL built University of Sankore this turn, in the one and only city where we lack line of sight! (Thebes) I must admit I was pretty shocked when I saw the announcement, since I had been tracking all the builds, yet sure enough, it was in the one city we can't see. Heh. They also got a Great Artist in the same city this turn; good chance that PAL fires off a Mausoleum-enhanced Golden Age shortly. At least now all the whipping of Confucian temples/monasteries makes sense!

- Pink finishes its courthouse next turn. I'm guessing this is one of our planned university cities, right? The only other possible build there would be military. And I guess universities at Mellow and Saxon next turn too, even though they will take ages to finish. Nothing else worth building there, except for banks.

- Is there any chance that we could cancel the horses trade with Banana, and tell them that we'll resupply them with horses as soon as we get the second source hooked up at Constantinople? It would be REALLY nice to crank some knights out of Cape Town right now. We have plenty of Oromos, after all!

- Frozen Clams is going to need a military police defender shortly, especially because we'll be drafting it as soon as it hits size 6. Maybe we can move one of those obsolete archers in Cape Town over there; I don't think we'll need them at the Cape much longer.

- sooooo, what's the plan for the worker next turn out of China Beach? I assume that you have one already. Possibly chop and cottage the last riverside grassland tile at Airstrip One, to help with the university build there.

- This is really getting into the micro here, but we should hold off on the theatre whip at Jerusalem for one turn if possible, both to avoid the no-shield whip pentalty and because 1t extra will allow the Islamic missionary to get there and reap the bonus from Organized Religion.

- sunrise, one possible good thing to come out of leaving that one horse archer behind: if the Templars forget to move that worker in the SE, we can grab it with the leftover HA next turn. We're going to want to fortify or pillage that tile anyway with units, as it appears to be the only road connection between Constantinople and Damascus:



I drew in the cultural borders as they'll look once we capture Constantinople next turn, RB in red because the green didn't show up. There may be another road connection in the extreme north as well, but this being the Templars, probably not.

OK, most importantly. sunrise posted this:

Two turns from the fall of Chichen Itza.

Three turns from the fall of Mutal!

However, I would like to make a slight objection here. There is no reason why we need to attack Imperio in 2t. Certainly we want to be prepared to do so, but we should NOT consider it a certainty. Remember, aside from capturing their cities of Chichen Itza and Mutal, our big goal was eliminating that uberstack of Imperio's. We will not be in a position to do that in two turns!

As I see it, we should wait a couple of turns and let Imperio bloody their stack against the Templars at Damascus. This is the best possible situation for us, the #2 and #3 powers on our continent wasting their power against one another in a pointless war of revenge. We capture Constantinople, yes, then heal up, wait for Imperio to weaken themselves against the remaining Templar cities, and only then plunge the knife into their back. If we attack too early, we'll be facing not only Imperio's current forces and whatever they can whip/draft out of their cities, but also whatever remnants are left from the Templars. Why not let them batter each around around for a couple more turns yet?

I don't see any need to hurry in our sneak attack; time is definitely on our side. We can start a second draft round at no penalty in 3t. Every turn that passes gets Jerusalem (and soon to be Constantinople) out of resistance and producing RB culture, giving us more control over the disputed zone in the south. We have lots of young cities that are just getting started, and slowly contributing on the military/industrial front. And if we cancel our horses deal with Banana, we could even crank out a couple more knights at Cape Town. The key thing is just to be ready to attack Imperio at any point in time; we simply need to have the Mounted stack and the galley pair ready to move out whenever the moment seems right. Ideally, we capture Constantinople, spend a turn or two healing the forces there, start moving them east, and then hit Imperio at Damascus right after they capture the city from Templars. So this would be our same plan as before, only taking place outside Damascus rather than outside Constantinople, as we originally envisioned. For whatever reason, Imperio is NOT pressuring us to sign over Templar cities to them. Let's take advantage of this! There's no need to rush into another war until we can deliver the complete crushing blow, and we need Imperio's army to be vulnerable for that to happen.

This a critical decision, and we need to start planning for it immediately, so let's get some feedback here. I know that sunrise wants to move Lady Godiva up by Mutal, but I'm going to plead again here to keep it in the Calakmul/Damascus area, so that we can watch what's going on with the Templar/Imperio fighting. Sorry about that!

[timmy827]

Agreed with Sullla on waiting a bit before the backstab. Indeed, since we will probably want a turn or two to heal after Constantinople so it makes sense to delay until that stack is ready again.

If no knights, I would request CT stays on cats. 15 cats is a lot but as sunrise said we may use 6 at Constantinople, and could easily use the rest on Imperio's megastack when that battle comes. Certainly hand-building Oromos seems strange when we have so many conscripts.

[Swiss Pauli]

I've copied Sullla's Backstab-relevant comments in to the Backstab thread, so please discuss this in that thread rather than this one. Thanks.

[Compromise]

I think it's taken about six hours, but I've finally reached the end of this and the other turnplayer and state-of-the-empire threads. Still a few more threads to catch up on.

Fantastic coordination between the team members...bravo!

I don't think I'm in a position to offer too much helpful advice at the moment, so for now, I look forward to reading of the successful completion of Operation Mehmed II....

[sooooo]

Agree with Timmy - think catapults at Cape Town.

As for banana, we should wait and see if they'll help us out by lightbulbing the techs we desperately need (namely Printing Press) before cancelling horses. It's a good bargaining tool.

sooooo, what's the plan for the worker next turn out of China Beach? I assume that you have one already. Possibly chop and cottage the last riverside grassland tile at Airstrip One, to help with the university build there.

EDIT: Works out better to have new worker chop forest at CB and helmholtz chop the northern forest at A1 instead. Doesn't matter, since the riverside forest will need to be chopped too for oxford and we can't use another cottage yet anyway.

Universities numbers 4 and 5 can start next turn at Saxon and Pink Dot. I think number 6 is best started at China Beach next turn, since the city is at size 6 and can whip 3 population. It's base production of 10 hpt is better than the other options too.

[sooooo]

Some numbers on the university plan:

I think we can start Oxford on T171, thanks to some rather convenient numbers. We can finish all six universities on the same turn .

To get the six universities on T171, we need to do the following actions:

At A1 we chop one forest (Helmholtz can do this).
At China Beach we need to both whip 3 population and chop a forest (New worker from the city can do this).
At Bluebell Woods we chop a forest (in progress) and whip 2 population.
At Saxon we whip 3 population.
At Pink Dot we chop 2 forests (1 in progress, the other can be done by the same worker).
At Something Fishy we whip 2 population.

[Zeviz]

Should be build a few Trebuchets for city bombardment? Cats might be better for collateral, but aren't Trebuchets more cost-effective for lowering city defenses? (Since we'll never suicide all our cats, the couple units we keep around might as well be trebs.)

[sunrise089]

Should be build a few Trebuchets for city bombardment? Cats might be better for collateral, but aren't Trebuchets more cost-effective for lowering city defenses? (Since we'll never suicide all our cats, the couple units we keep around might as well be trebs.)

I don't think they're worthwhile even in that scenario. Yes, they bombard better, but we generally take a few turns to bombard down anyways, so trebs would only really help if they allowed us to bombard and take a city in 1 turn. Balanced against that, they cost a lot more and they are worse attacking stacks in the open. The most important battle of the game will be the fight against the Imperio stack, and I'd much rather have the 3 cats and an Oromo that the hammers to produce 3 trebs could give me.

[sooooo]

(any possibility of moving those posts to the backstab thread Swiss?)

I set research to 60% since it's likely we'll plunder some gold next turn.

We start universities next turn at Saxon, China Beach and Pink Dot. Think we may as well start a bank at Mellow Yellow next turn. It's a very long build but we have to build something while we grow back to size 6.

CT is still on an oromo - sunrise are you sure you still want this build?

Not much to say about workers except that the new one we produce from China Beach should go into the city's plains forest to chop it.

[sunrise089]

No, we can switch CT to a cat if we want.

The reasoning for an Oromo at Cape Town was in case Imperio has anything to throw at the city when we declare on them. But Sullla seems pretty sure from his intelligence gathering that they don't. Lets consider though that anything we build at Cape Town now may just be completed in time to be involved in the attack on Imperio's mega stack. In that case we probably do want a cat since we expect to loose lots of cats in the battle. However another option is a pair of Oromos and another galley, which will take four turns IIRC. That gives us six units to attack Chichen Itza without diverting anything already built. That's pointless if we're going to backstab in the next few turns, but if we want to capture Constantinople, heal, and then seek out the Imperio stack we will need at least 4 more turns anyways.

[Sullla]

I don't see any Imperio forces in the western half of their territory, and the C&D builds aren't suggesting anything over there either. I'll run the numbers for the current turn tonight, but my best recommendation is that there really isn't anything over by Cape Town. We will of course run our chariot through this area on the final turn before attacking, just to make absolutely sure.

Since another drafting run begins in 3t, I would also support swapping Cape Town to more cats. They're definitely "easy come, easy go" right now.

[sooooo]

One more thing: Agree with Sullla that we need to get a military police into Frozen clams. Also, General Godiva (our medic III) seems to be heading to the knight-attack stack. I'd prefer her to go to Constantinople and heal our troops. Can't risk losing her.

[sunrise089]

One more thing: Agree with Sullla that we need to get a military police into Frozen clams. Also, General Godiva (our medic III) seems to be heading to the knight-attack stack. I'd prefer her to go to Constantinople and heal our troops. Can't risk losing her.

No, she just moved so she can get inside Constantinople next turn after we road to the city. She could have approached from the south, but if I was Templars I have have killed her had she done so.

[MyOtherCar]

It seems obvious to me to keep our super medic with our greatest stack where she can do the most benefit.
And seeing the number of cats we'll probably need at Constantinople, it's maybe best to have CT produce some more.
About the value of Trebs:I tend to use a couple of them to get rid of the top defender(s) (mostly fortified longbows) and experience a fair amount of retreats.