Operation "Backstab"

[Sullla]

And those workers have plenty of roads to builds around Constantinople/Jerusalem in the meantime anyway.

[Compromise]

Out of curiosity, is there any way that gifting Constantinople to Imperio after capturing it can help?

I believe that when you gift a city that's in revolt, the revolt stays. So Imperio couldn't whip/draft troops out of it until the revolt ends. Our own forces could stay inside to prevent Templar from retaking it.

Imperio might also feel compelled to split their forces a bit to defend it. Only units inside with a city defense bonus would get any kind of boost when Op Backstab begins (ie, no hill bonus, no fortification bonus). It might also make the trade for Mil Trad more compelling.

The biggest downside is probably line-of-sight to our own stacks, though I think that until the city comes out of revolt, it only sees what a unit sitting on that tile would see. And, of course, the delay in bringing Constantinople into the empire.

Since you guys are doing such a thorough job here, it seems that the only hope of being helpful is to try to think--at the risk of just being a distraction--waaay outside the box.

Please let me know if there are other areas that you think a newcomer could help with.

[timmy827]

Since you guys are doing such a thorough job here, it seems that the only hope of being helpful is to try to think--at the risk of just being a distraction--waaay outside the box.

Heh, that was my thought a few months ago.

The downsides to gifting to Imperio don't sound that steep with your description, so we should keep that in mind if Imperio wants a handover before doing the tech trade. But I don't think initiating a handover would help; they are unlikely to move more units to defend (and thus be a target for sneak attack).

I do kind of wonder what they think of our drafting binge - they really should realize that we have more than enough to take out Templar, don't yet have the navy to take on PAL, and yet have been amassing conscripts...I fear that letting them see the full size of the stack might finally trigger that alarm.
Currently they will be able to see units in Constantinople but not any we leave 1S or 1W of the city.

[sooooo]

Currently they will be able to see units in Constantinople but not any we leave 1S or 1W of the city.

This is a good point, probably we shouldn't send the whole stack into Constantinople after we take the city. Our units can heal in the open, it's quicker that way regardless since they can start healing the turn after they have attacked.

[sunrise089]

This is a good point, probably we shouldn't send the whole stack into Constantinople after we take the city. Our units can heal in the open, it's quicker that way regardless since they can start healing the turn after they have attacked.

A few points:

1) It's only quicker to heal in the open if all of the units that attack come from one of our two stacks, right?. That seems tough to pull off.

2) We in principle want to keep most of our units out of Constantinople in order to prevent visibility and to guard against an Imperio backstab. However the counter-concern is that we may need the units in the city for road movement purposes - we need to make sure we can get within three tiles of anywhere Imperio moves their stack. Anyways, I'm not sure this is an issue, but I'll take a look at the movement possibilities more on my next login.
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3) @Timmy - Our stack doesn't look as fearful as it might, since we have 11 units currently outside the stack preparing for the backstab. The units we have on hand now are only a marginally more powerful collection than the Imperio stack.

4) I think gifting over Constantinople would be a big mistake. We need something that gets Imperio's stack off their road network intact, and gifting the city will only get them to put a handful of defensive units inside. We can take the city back, but that doesn't get us anywhere closer than we are now.

[sooooo]

1) It's only quicker to heal in the open if all of the units that attack come from one of our two stacks, right?. That seems tough to pull off.

No, I don't think that's correct. If you put Lady Godiva onto one of the tiles between the two stacks she can do her thing. My point was that it's better to spend the extra turn healing by not moving than to get the slight increase in healing rate from being in a city in revolt. It's not as much of a bonus as being in a city you control that isn't in revolt.

2) We in principle want to keep most of our units out of Constantinople in order to prevent visibility and to guard against an Imperio backstab. However the counter-concern is that we may need the units in the city for road movement purposes - we need to make sure we can get within three tiles of anywhere Imperio moves their stack. Anyways, I'm not sure this is an issue, but I'll take a look at the movement possibilities more on my next login.

I think it's more important to heal our wounded units quickly than for them to be in a position to hit imperio before they are nursed to full health.

[Sullla]

sooooo is right; better to put our Great General healing chariot in the city itself post-capture, and leave all of the one-move units in place so that they don't have to waste a turn moving into the city (and not healing on that turn where they're moving). The only reason not to do this is if the city itself is threatened in some way. One advantage of two-movers is that they can attack and then use their second movement point to get into a city after it's been captured, thus allowing them to heal faster. For one movers - especially with a Medic III Great General - better to leave them in place, since they'll be healing a minimum of 25% health per turn.

On another note, we've got about 4 hours left on the timer now, less if PAL logs in and ends their turn. sunrise, any thoughts on setting a time to play the turn at an early evening America/late night Europe time frame? Or wait until sometime tomorrow? I'm sure that our usual gang will be interested in jumping into the chat room for another city attack plan.

[sunrise089]

I'd like to attack tonight - attacks are always fun, so why wait. It's isn't like we'll suffer a 1/100,000 dice roll or anything, right?

6:00pm works fine for me. Would anyone prefer later? I know later makes it a bit easier on the US crew, but it starts to get awfully late for the European bunch.

Also, @Ruff - What chat room do we use for tonight's attack?

[Kodii]

6:00EST would work for me.

We also have the option of doing it earlier, the next turn has begun!

[ruff_hi]

@Ruff - What chat room do we use for tonight's attack?

I've forgotten the The Big Blah chat room admin password and so I cannot clear the content. I've created another one ...

The Little Blah
The password is VariantScum. The admin password adds a '1' to that.

It is easy to create a new room if we want to chat to Banana.

Use 'little blah' - going to have to let 'big blah' die as I cannot clear it.

[MyOtherCar]

I'll try and be there too. I missed the last couple of chats/battle. 6 EST is 12 o'clock over here, right (here= +1 GMT)

[sooooo]

6pm EST is indeed midnight in the Netherlands, but I'm pretty sure you're at GMT+2. I'm at GMT+1 (British summer time) and you are 1 hour ahead of us.

[MyOtherCar]

6pm EST is indeed midnight in the Netherlands, but I'm pretty sure you're at GMT+2. I'm at GMT+1 (British summer time) and you are 1 hour ahead of us.

I'm afraid you're quite right there, old chap. Count me out in that case.

[sunrise089]

I'm afraid you're quite right there, old chap. Count me out in that case.

Not sure while you're counted out though...isn't Soooo saying the time isn't any later than you think it is?

[darrelljs]

No, unfortunately it is not. However, I think you can just get a different seed if you attack with, say, the barrage catapult instead of one of the city raider ones. Shouldn't affect the result too much but the important battles will be different. You can attack with the barrage cat in any of 7 positions in the cat order, giving 7 different battles.

Too late I guess, but you can just add 10 units off in the hinterlands. First sim through, set one to auto explor. Second sim through, set two to auto explore, etc. Blake once suggested autoexplore is the best way to increment the random number generator for these kinds of things.

Darrell