Operation "Backstab"

[darrelljs]

Ouch on losing Sistine Chapel, but I defer to sunrise on that one. It'd be nice if someone could come up with a way to keep it though.

Darrell

[sooooo]

Cultural victory is a pipe dream. I'm pretty sure that this game will be won (by either side) by domination or conquest.

[sunrise089]

Ouch on losing Sistine Chapel, but I defer to sunrise on that one. It'd be nice if someone could come up with a way to keep it though.

Darrell

Well we can keep it, 100%, if we want. We take Constantinople before or after killing the Imperio stack, and we attack Chichen Itza with knights and the Oromos on boats removing the threat to Cape Town. However we are now faced with Imperio with one more city drafting/slaving units and teching at the same time. Of course we can leverage our 15 cities and march up to it, but it's a delay of 5-10 turns and gives us a much stronger Imperio to fight. I just don't think a single wonder is worth that.

Other than fight PAL, we can do anything we want in this game in the short-term, and that includes capturing Mutal. The problem is every prolonged military engagement, and every city building military, puts us further behind PAL.

[Dreylin]

Other than fight PAL, we can do anything we want in this game in the short-term, and that includes capturing Mutal. The problem is every prolonged military engagement, and every city building military, puts us further behind PAL.

OK, that's what I wanted to know ... after all I need to learn all I can about the secrets of MP warfare so I can hold my own in the RB Pitboss!

[Sullla]

There's another excellent reason to raze Mutal: it contains Imperio's only iron source... and since they have no copper, their only source of any metals at all. Obviously we would like to keep Mutal. I love Sistine Chapel, it's one of my favorite wonders. But it's more important to kill off the city quickly if at all possible, and we can't possibly keep it if we go the lightning strike route.

If we can successfully pull off all aspects of our backstab plan, we would achieve the following:

- Razing of Imperio's capital and best city
- Capture of Chichen Itza, their #3 city
- Annihilation of their army, over 200k worth of units

That would leave Imperio with Lakamha as their new capital, along with a series of fishing village cities that lack production. Yes, they could whip and draft, but with no metals they couldn't produce much other than muskets. No knights and no cannon, even if PAL gifts them Steel. From that position, our mastery over the continent is assured, and that gets us into an extreme late-game showdown with PAL at the very least.

It all depends on decapitating Imperio's capital at the very outset of the war. That requires speed, and that means razing Mutal. Besides, we'll get to keep Lakamha, and that's an even better city, with the Islamic Shrine and Notre Dame to boot.

[sunrise089]

Post complete. This post covers the proposed attacks on Chichen Itza and Mutal. I will make another post next turn with a plan to hit the main Imperio stack in the south after we have more info about the stack's destination.

Okay, lets talk unit micromanagement.

Right now the earlier we can attack Imperio is turn 166. Let me detail what needs to happen for that to happen.

Boats (2 galleys, 1 trireme)

T163 - Galley 1 is produced out of Cape Town.
T164 - Galley 2 is produced out of Cape Town. Both galleys move 1 tile NW out of Cape Town.
T165 - Galleys sail towards Imperio waters.
T166 - Sail into Imperio waters and land next to Chichen Itza.

Horses (up to 4 knights, 5 horse archers, 1 chariot)

T162 - Healthy mounted units step into Templar land to escort catapults towards the safety of a hill tile.
T162b - Other mounted units cover their stack and move next to Constantinople.
T163 - Horses step back into Jerusalem.
T163b - Horses south of Constantinople move to the stack north of the city.
T164 - Horses move towards Imperio land.
T164b - Horses next to Constantinople retreat into Jericho.
T165 - Horses move towards Imperio land.
T166 - Horses ride 2 tiles along our road and then 2 tiles into Imperio land.
T167 - Horses attack Mutal
PS - I haven't mapped out the route, but Betty Hur should join this party. She won't be able to scout once the war begins, and this will be a good opportunity to ensure she faces a wounded unit.

Workers (2 workers)

T165 - Workers move to their staging tile.
T166 - Workers road Cape Town's rice tile.

Oromo Warriors (11 Oromos)

We have 11 Oromo warriors, assigned to 4 task groups. Group "d," which comprises three Oromos, is part of the Constantinople attack force and is not part of this plan.
T163 - Group "a," with one red dot per Oromo, moves to the T163 tile. Group "b," blue dots, move towards the T164b tile, with the 2 Oromos covering a catapult 1SE of Jericho moving back into the city as the cat is handed off to the "a" stack. "C," the yellow Oromo moves forward as well.
T164 - "A" Oromos move into Cape Town. "B" and "C" Oromos move onto their new staging tiles.
T165 - "A" Oromos move onto the two galleys. "B" Oromos move into Cape Town and (hopefully) fool Imperio into thinking only one unit moved away. They also prevent an Imperio 2-mover sneak attack. "C" moves into Red Herring in case Imperio has units on their galley and plans to sneak attack us.
T166 - "A" Oromos attack Chichen Itza.

[Sullla]

This looks pretty solid to me - assuming that we are in a position to hit the Imperio stack on T166, we would be in tremendous shape.

One minor request: please keep Betty Hur in Imperio land for the time being. One additional chariot won't make much of a difference in the actual attack, whereas the information she brings back each turn on Imperio troop movements and number of defenders in each city is priceless to us. She'll even be teleported back to our land when we declare war, so she'll live to fight another day. At the very least, we have to keep visibility on the uberstack until we confirm where it's heading.

[sunrise089]

...One minor request: please keep Betty Hur in Imperio land for the time being...

I plan to keep her on station until at least T164. The turn before we declare though it will be useful for her to run past Mutal and Chichen Itza and then wind up teleported onto the rice tile, so I'd like to arrange that. If Mutal falls easily Betty will simply run home, but on the off chance one weak unit remains alive she can play a role. It's always nice to have one extra unit if we can supply it without cost (in this case to scouting).

EDIT: I simmed out a battle of a healthy southern RB army versus a healthy Imperio army, including all of Imperio's muskets and longbows, and none of RB's mounted units. In the first round we loose every catapult, but only three other units. Imperio looses every non-cat except for four units. In the second round, versus the AI, Imperio cats us but can only kill a single unit. After we promote our units we have 95%+ on the Imperio cats and wounded units.

Same sim but with 3 RB horse archers and without the Imperio longbows (probably the most likely scenario) sees us loose all but one cat, and 4 regular units, to win every other battle and kill a total of 6 Imperio cats. The second round has every remaining Imperio unit die to no RB losses.

Finally, same sim as above, but with all 5 HAs present for RB sees 9 Imperio cats die in the first round.

[Swiss Pauli]

Hmmmm...I think out element of surprise might be compromised by that pesky lake south of Cape Town. If you look at how the lake on the Imperio border is acting, we're getting visibility of tiles on its far-side. I think we should pull back the Oromos into the forest until the last minute.

Ack, if we DoW Imperio their scouting Galley will surely be teleported to the coastal tile 1N of Cape's cows, so we'd be relying on our trireme winning its battle in order to boat Chichen. It'll have good odds, but we should consider the cost of failure when deciding whether or not to train another trireme (before Optics).

[mostly-harmless]

Ack, if we DoW Imperio their scouting Galley will surely be teleported to the coastal tile 1N of Cape's cows, so we'd be relying on our trireme winning its battle in order to boat Chichen. It'll have good odds, but we should consider the cost of failure when deciding whether or not to train another trireme (before Optics).

Good point. However, if our trireme fails it should leave their galley wounded and easy prey for our galley, which gets a free promotion fro the settled GG.

hm

[Swiss Pauli]

Yeah, but the problem is the battle will cost the galley a movement point, I think, leaving the units onboard unable to attack Chichen.

[mostly-harmless]

Yeah, but the problem is the battle will cost the galley a movement point, I think, leaving the units onboard unable to attack Chichen.

I don't think this is the case. It is a 1move tile (unlike attacking units on a hill or a forest with for example cavalry).

mh

[ruff_hi]

@ruff: you have entirely too much time on your hands.

No I don't ... http://wordsmith.org/anagram/

[T-hawk]

I don't think this is the case. It is a 1move tile (unlike attacking units on a hill or a forest with for example cavalry).

mh

mh is correct. If a ship kills another ship, and there are no more defending ships in the defending tile, the winning attacker will automatically advance into the defender's square.

[sooooo]

I think Swiss is right. The winner will indeed move into the defender's square, but the galley needs to then move another square to be able to attack Chichen. I think it loses that last movement point.

But anyway, we're clutching at straws here. If we are unlucky and our trireme loses we'll have to wait a turn to attack Chichen or risk attacking with just two oromos. Or even unload the two oromos in the first galley and then the following turn attack with them with 2 backup oromos that could attack amphibiously.