Operation "Sweetheart"

[Dreylin]

Dreylin - the graphic display for the Incan terrace is showing up on that tile. There's no plantation on that tile. Templars don't even have Calendar! Yeah...

They don't...

But...

Oh my.

[sunrise089]

I suspect Templar sacrificed worker production early to build Quechuas (remember they had like 7 earlu) and then later to build units. What they don't understand is that chopping forests with workers and improving tiles means more hammers than building only units. But I see now need to enlighten them

[sooooo]

Picture of Jerusalem defenders:

[sooooo]

Right team, we really need to do some good brainstorming with what to do with Jerusalem and Imperio.

The facts:

It is turn 158.
We can capture Jerusalem on T160.
Enforced peace ends on turn 165 I believe (anyone confirm this?).
We have one settler on the roaded jungle tile 1NW of the stone at the south coast.
Red Herring can switch to a settler next turn (159) and switch tiles to get 10 hammers. Then we can triple-whip it on T160. Settler will take around 3 turns travel+settling time depending on where he goes.

Supporting Information:

I think we could persuade them that we won't give them Jerusalem until they can defend it. We could say "We don't want to use our troops to defend again templars capturing your city, please send a defence force over and then we'll hand it over"
Imperio's road network means they are likely to attack Damascus, not Constantinople

The questions:

What to do after capturing Jerusalem? Do we want to hand it over and then recapture it or just keep it?
What to do about Constantinople?
How to surprise Imperio?
Where do we want to put our two settlers? Currently the one we have built is headed for the jungle hill on the south coast.
Can anyone calculate Jerusalem's revolt time? I ask because Imperio have the option of switching to no-state-religion and that will pump 10 culture per turn at the city when out of revolt.
EDIT: Can you trade a city that is in revolt? Can you trade a city to a civ that doesn't have any cultural influence on it?
Can we raze mutal and/or Chichen Itza?

Answering my last question: Probably yes we can. I think we should withdraw most if not all of our mounted units back to Jericho. We can organise 3 [edit:2] combat engineers to road the desert [edit:rice] tile at the CT/Mutal border and "Send in the clowns". They can strike Mutal the turn after they invade. Last turn Mutal had 1 LB and 1 musket. We could have 4 knights and 5 horse archers available.

For Chichen Itza we don't need much time, just send some of the oromos there.

[regoarrarr]

One thing I'd be worried about is if we keep Jerusalem that we may tip off Imperio that "something is up" and leave them to garrison their cities a bit more. So if we could do it, do we have the ability to start our attack on them within a turn or 2 after capture of Jerusalem?

[sooooo]

We can't do that because we have enforced peace until T165. I doubt Imperio would want to accept Jerusalem without a defence force in place. Templars could just recapture the city.

Need to questions about whether you can trade a city that is in revolt and how long the revolt will last.

[mostly-harmless]

It says peace can be cancelled in 6 turns. So I assume Turn X is T164.

We have a good reason to keep Jerusalem and even capture and "temporarily" hold Const. Reason being, we have to ensure a veto block for the AP votes. We already suffered from defying unhappiness, and we cannot allow that to happen again, should Jerusalem fall in Templars hands again.

2nd reason to take Const now: Secure our flank before attacking Jerusalem.

Cape Town's border pops in 4 turns, too late to give us The Tile back for Turn X. Therefore I suggest we amphibious assault Chichen Itza with two galley's, two Oromos each. With a single unpromoted and unsuspecting Longbow two Oromos should be enough, but lets make sure and send in 4. That will delete Chichen Itza's cultural borders and only leave Mutal's. See picture. I believe that this will allow our two movers (sationed on our CT cows) to use the road network and end Turn X on the hills tile 2SE of Chichen Itza ("XYZ"), ready to raze Mutal the next turn.
This way we don't raise suspicion with roading a useless tile towards Imperio.
Non of the garrison troops of their other cities can reach Mutal in time and we only saw a couple of HA's no Knights in theri main stack, which will be healing in Damaskus. With Mutal gone, the two northern cities, lay open to conquest.
However, we need to make sure our Knights survive the Templar war, as we cannot build new ones in time for the 2nd Imperio war and they are crucial for our surprise attack.

Chichen Itza should be kept, as it fits nicely with our dotmap. Mutal must be razed, to break Imperio's spirit (no "Reconquista" possible).

mh

[sooooo]

I think we have enough reasons to keep hold of Jerusalem, but there's no way Imperio will not get susupicious if we attack Constantinople. However, they can't see the tile we'd attack from. Ideally we'd coordinate things to capture Constantinople and attack imperio on the same turn, preferably the turn after they declare on Templars.

We may wish to raze Constantinople, it might be too difficult to defend.

Your boat plan is interesting m-h since The Tile isn't going to flip back any time soon. But again it's hard to disguise because we'd have 2 galleys right near to CI the turn before. The alternative is just to slog over 2 plains tiles and have Imperio whip Chichen a couple of times. That would give 3 longbows and its 40% defence, so we'd need around 5-6 oromos and maybe some cats. Saves the hammers on the galleys though. It's not a problem to road the rice tile since we could just do it on the same turn that we go in with the troops. We wouldn't tip Imperio off that way. But maybe the boat plan is better since we need less units and CI will have a higher population.

Things will depend on what Imperio do this turn (where their stack moves). But we need to decide what to do with our 2-movers. With the garrison of Jerusalem being so late, maybe we want to retreat them back to the plains hill next turn. I don't think we want to risk them during the assault.

[timmy827]

The peace will actually expire on T165 as sooooo said. It was made on T154, but there's a fencepost issue and you still can't declare 10 turns later.

You can gift a city in revolt to a 3rd party (and it stays in revolt for that long). I don't know the formula for revolt length, can't offer anything more specific than the general correlation of longer revolt times with bigger/older/more cultured cities.

Re M-H's plan: am worried that we might get screwed by the cultural adjustment bug (where the borders take a couple of turns to properly adjust after a capture). Also, the 2 movers would have to start the turn 1N of the cow (since the plains between CI and the XYZ will still be Imperio's) and thus within sight of Imperio.

[Swiss Pauli]

If Imperio takes Damascus first, as looks likely, there won't be any problems with the AP, so that 'justification' doesn't really work.

The Constaninople garrison is going to cause too many casualties to us for taking it to be worthwhile, given we need to strike rapidly after this move. I still think the best option is to wait until Imperio has taken Constantinople, then to combat-engineer the road link from Jericho, and smash Imperio with all we've got. Then up to Lamakha, and hold it.

If we want to raze/capture Mutal, we might be better off feinting at Chichen with a few Knights. Imperio will whip some Pikes in response (maybe a 4-pop one at Chichen). We try to take CI and hold it, drawing Imperio onto us. Then we send in the main northern army towards Mutal via the rice tile. If they're not in Nationalism they'll struggle to hold us off as they won't have enough pop to whip defenders/counter-attackers.

[mostly-harmless]

I don't see a problem with positioning out troops visible to Imperio on TX-1 as they cannot move units from anywhere to CI and can only whip once in CI.
One trick that might work is to tell Imperio we are moving a stack to harass PAL and sent both our galleys and our two movers into Imperios territory by on tile on TX -1. Then on TX we declare war, our units get teleported back but can still move. That way, it does not appear so threatening. We would have to road the grassland tile SE of the cows to ensure road network connection.

@timmy: 1N of the cows is water?

mh

[mostly-harmless]

If Imperio takes Damascus first, as looks likely, there won't be any problems with the AP, so that 'justification' doesn't really work.

Sure, but we are a bit dumb anyway, aren't we? Honoring the peace deal despite no getting Gunpowder?
And noone knows how the AP works anyway.

mh

[timmy827]

@MH...whoops, I confused the cows with the horses. So Imperio will still be able to see the 2movers one turn before. If they remember to log into the game....

[sooooo]

The knights-to-Mutal plan will have to be scrapped because Imperio have a defensive stack of over 6 longbows 3 tiles away from the city.

[Swiss Pauli]

I think that stack is meant to garrison their ex-Templar cities, so I wouldn't bet against it moving south next turn.