The Case for Razing Jerusalem

[sooooo]

Or, another idea is that we comply with Imperio's request to settle 2S, 1W of Jerusalem and plant another city 1N or 1NW of Sullla's Pink Dot. That we we can both claim to Imperio that we agreed with their request but also put some pressure on Constantinople.

The more I think about it, the more I think that Imperio's suggested city site is flat-out better than Sullla's green dot. We lose 6 ocean tiles but gain 6 land tiles and the option to share food with Red or the other city if they don't need them.

[mostly-harmless]

That's how I see the SE developing:

Keep in mind that we can settle Red Dot immediately.
Then we only have capture Jerusalem, which opens up Blue Dot, Greenish Dot and White Dot, as they will be free of Templars culture. Only one siege (battle) and then defense as far as Templars are concerned.

I propose to capture Jerusalem, ask Imperio to move against the remaining three Templar cities, while we settle White Dot, Blue Dot and Greenish Dot.

We can always gift White Dot to Banana or Imperio for some compensation should we feel it necessary.

mh

[Sullla]

Although we CAN settle one east of the stone right now, I'm not sure that's a good idea. That tile is almost completely surrounded by Templar culture, and we'd have a devil of a time defending it with no roads in the area and jungle all over the place. Do we want to tie down a sizable portion of our military in the extreme southern part of the map? Hopefully sunrise can chime in on this with his opinion.

My suggest to put a city on the stone tile was largely due to the fact that it will be vastly easier to defend at the moment. (I'm assuming that we will settle this location prior to capturing/razing Jerusalem.) As you can see in the original post at the top, the stone location controls its entire 9-tile starting radius and can't be double-moved with the forest and jungle in the region.

Another point to consider is that if we go with mostly_harmless' plan for sticking four cities in the region (which is very intriguing!) we cut down on a lot of overlap at green by moving red to the west on the stone. The white dot in the extreme east is probably overly optimistic, but hey, who knows?

[sunrise089]

Although we CAN settle one east of the stone right now, I'm not sure that's a good idea. That tile is almost completely surrounded by Templar culture, and we'd have a devil of a time defending it with no roads in the area and jungle all over the place. Do we want to tie down a sizable portion of our military in the extreme southern part of the map? Hopefully sunrise can chime in on this with his opinion...

If/when we settle the first city east of Something Fishy we obviously need to be able to commit plenty of workers to getting roads online and jungle chopped. One thing Templars have shown a tendency to do is to park units on defensive tiles. I'd probably want to settle the city with the longbow and pikes from Pink Dot and 4-5 workers.

In terms of tying down our army though, I'm under the impression our army will be headed that way anyways as soon as it heals up. If we have peace with Imperio we can send everything that way, but if not we can drop the elephant off at Cape Town, pick up a few cats and the city raider maces, and head south from Jericho. I don't think we do a lot of good sitting our mounted units in our land, and Templars won't be able to send units out from Jerusalem to threaten our new city when we have our own stack right outside.

[mostly-harmless]

I agree with sunrise. I don't think that there is much to defend against (in terms of Templars offensive units) by the time the settler is ready.

mh

[mostly-harmless]

I am slowly coming around to settle red dot on the stone. Mainly because it will allow Greenish Dot more space, but also the mined and railroaded hill 1E of the stone will eventually yield more production than the grassland stone quarry.
The Stone Red Dot gets Rice and Banana for food and two grassland hills for production (borrowing a third from SF).
The Hillside Red Dot will get Banana, Rice & Clams for food (noth the Rice and the Clams are free of Templar culture) and A grassland hill and the stone for production. PLus better defense from the hill.

mh

[darrelljs]

Remember in BTS a railroad also grants a hammer to a quarry.

I still prefer settling on the hill, but it is such a weak opinion don't consider it a vote.

Darrell