Operation "Sweetheart"

[sunrise089]

Ok guys, we have two known and one unknown variables. Known variables are when we can take Jerusalem (any time starting next turn) and when we can take Chichen and Mutal (2 turns after we decide to so long as we've built 2 galleys).

The unknown variable is when Imperio moves their army in position for us to attack it. Therefore the diplo corp's analysis on what sort of behavior will reassure Imperio that it's safe to move their stack to a tile accessible to our stack is of critical importance.

That said, here's the plan to move in against Imperio on turn 165:

Spoiler:

T161 - Cape Town completes a catapult and starts a galley.

T162 - First galley completes and moves to northern spot 1. Cape Town starts a second galley.

T163 - Second galley completes, and ships move to northern spot 2.

T164 - Ships move to northern spot 3 and are visible, but their contents are not. Mounted units move to southern spot 3 and are not visible. Three workers arrive on southern spot 3.

T165 - Declare war. Naval units enter Imperio's territory and attack Chichen Itza on northern spot 4. Workers road our rice tile and mounted units move to southern spot 4.

T-166 - Mounted units attack Mutal at southern spot "5."

[timmy827]

Apologies if I've missed this being posted somewhere, but is it certain we go back to the old turn order (RB -> Templars -> Imperio) when we attack Imperio?
Alternately, would that be restored when Imperio DOW's templars?

I guess we don't have to go first in the turn as long as we are allowed to declare during "our" portion of the turn and move before Imperio can react.

[sunrise089]

@Timmy - For the purposes of just a short war, we'd prefer to move after Imperio. But in general it's nice to have initiative, so I'd prefer to keep it.

[mostly-harmless]

@ sunrise:
I would move southern tile #4 2S onto the iron. It is the same in terms of attacking Mutal, but should block their Iron, to prevent them from emergency building Pikes.

mh

[sunrise089]

@M_H: But standing on a resource only blocks the tile from being worked by the city, not the resource itself, right?

[mostly-harmless]

@M_H: But standing on a resource only blocks the tile from being worked by the city, not the resource itself, right?

Don't know? Is that so?

mh

[MyOtherCar]

AFAIK, it only blocks working the tile.

[T-hawk]

AFAIK, it only blocks working the tile.

Correct. To cut off use of the resource, need to pillage the improvement or road.

[Sullla]

That's certainly the way to do the attack. The only issue is that (as sunrise said in the initial post) we can't make a move until we have Imperio's uberstack in plain sight, ready to be hit by our own stack. That could be any time in the near future, so instead of thinking "we should do ___ on T164", we should probably be thinking in terms of "one turn before the attack starts", whenever that happens to be! Imperio will probably attack Damascus first, and only then attack Constantinople. That's not really a bad thing for us, as it gives us a little more time to get prepared for the attack, and wastes more Imperio units as they attack Templar cities. Then we simply take the former Templar cities away from them.

Remember, we don't have to attack the exact turn that our enforced peace treaty wears off. Just be prepared to go whenever it's most advantageous for us to do so.

Finally, we also have to keep an eye on this stack:



If that defensive stack stays in the Mutal area, any Mounted strike at the capital is out. We need to keep visibility not only on the uberstack, but also on this group of units. If we're lucky, Imperio will combine them both together into one even bigger stack, and leave nothing left to guard the home cities. If they don't, we'll have to try a more conservative plan of attack for Mutal.

[sooooo]

So with no crossbows in the Imperio stack I assume the plan is to sac about 3 city raider cats and then just send in macemen? No knights methinks, they are too valuable.

[sunrise089]

I assume you mean the Templar stack, right Soooo? Or are you talking about in the future when our stack fights the Imperio stack? If the latter, we're sending in everything.

[sooooo]

I meant the templar stack next turn. We can't get the Imperio stack unless an AI takes over

[sunrise089]

Then you are correct Soooo....we'll sacrifice our nearly obsolete macemen and try to save our mounted units. I do plan to send in more than 3 cats though, but I'll check the odds to see what makes sense.

[sooooo]

I think we should save cats, I thought 3 maximum, maybe only 2. They only have 4 good defenders (3 mace, 1lbm) and not all of them have fortification. If we bombard down to 0% then CR macemen should easily have >50% odds after two cat attacks. The first mace is CR2.

[MyOtherCar]

Don't we wanna save CR macemen to upgrade later on? Yummy CR3 riflemen!