Operation "Backstab"

[sooooo]

This thread is for the discussion of all things related to Constantinople and the delaration of war against Imperio and subsequent invasion of Maya.

Screenshots to appear later, but I'd be interested in Sunrise's thoughts on possible strikes against Chichen Itza and Mutal.

[sunrise089]

First, a forum question:

When I visit the main apoloyton forum site I scroll down to the demogame link, I see the title from the most recent thread. Can I only see the names of threads that I have permission to view? If not, then we should rename this one

As for the strike on Imperio, we're sort of working towards cross purposes right now.

No matter what we do we need/want to kill the Imperio stack, either by letting them capture Constantinople with it and then hitting them, or by capturing Constantinople ourselves and then getting them to walk their stack up to the city.

I believe my marked tiles are still valid, and we can still conduct a 2-mover attack versus Mutal and an amphibious attack versus Chichen Itza. How we combine these attacks with taking Constantinople and attacking the Imperio mega-stack isn't clear, and it depends on what we prioritize. Options:

1) Peaceful option - as long as we have city spots to settle and our power is growing faster than Imperio's then we simply capture Constantinople, settle 2 more cities, and declare later when Imperio's can't counter our attack even if they see it coming.

2) Total surprise option - we gamble that Imperio will use their mega-stack to capture Constantinople. We keep workers on hand but make no move to capture the city. As soon as Imperio captures the city we declare, hit their mega-stack with all of our one movers minus 4 Oromos, and simultaneously move in our knight+ha stack and boats in the north. The dangers here are that Imperio may not move everything against Constantinople, and that once the city falls and its culture goes away they could hit our stack the same way we could hit theirs.

3) Cake and eat it too option - Capture Constantinople, use diplomacy to somehow coax the Imperio stack towards the city, and then initiate the 3-pronged attack. The main difference between this and option 2 is that we capture the city ourselves, controlling the time frame better.

4) Compromise option - Capture Constantinople, then attack Mutal and Chichen, and not worry about the Imperio mega-stack. Once our army heals we can hopefully prevent the Imperio stack from moving against us, and Imperio will be down two cities.

Right now we seem to be heading towards options 3 or 4 (based on the votes for attacking Constantinople). The biggest danger I can see with this plan is that we may not be strong enough to detach our 2-movers, capture Constantinople, and then attack the Imperio stack in short order. Furthermore we risk tipping off Imperio and having them place more units in Mutal and Chichen. Of course we have to weight against that the defensive power of controlling Constantinople.

[sooooo]

I like option 2 - total surprise option.

The votes to attack constantinople were based on the thought that Imperio were going after Damascus. If they head to Constantinople, then we could still capture the city just not from the Templars, from Imperio

And:

When I visit the main apoloyton forum site I scroll down to the demogame link, I see the title from the most recent thread. Can I only see the names of threads that I have permission to view? If not, then we should rename this one

Yes, you can only see the thread names you have permission to view. Otherwise we'd be seeing the other teams' thread names.

[darrelljs]

Yeah, this thread needs to be renamed for the reason sunrise stated and also because it isn't a backstab since they didn't give us Gunpowder for Nationalism as agreed .

Darrell

[Swiss Pauli]

As you all know, I'm vacillating between surprise and obvious confrontation, and it's all Imperio's fault for not playing their turns!

All things being equal, we'd be much better off catching Imperio unawares, but if they don't play their turns then we lose valuable time in our quest to control our continent.

I suggest Option 2.5: let's move to threaten Constantinople next turn, and if Imperio moves their stack towards Constantinople on the same turn we pull back towards Jericho. If they don't then we can choose to take it ourselves.

One point we shouldn't forget is that if Imperio attacks Constantinople, they will have units (possibly the majority, and certainly lots of cats) on the far side of the city on the turn they capture it (on the Copper tile, I assume). Therefore we need to have 1 move units 2 tiles from Constantinople, so that we can also attack out from the city after capturing it.

PS: I had The Fear about thread names a while back, so I logged out of Poly, and verified that you can only see allowed threads.

[regoarrarr]

I like swiss's suggestion of operation 2.5

[sunrise089]

...

One point we shouldn't forget is that if Imperio attacks Constantinople, they will have units (possibly the majority, and certainly lots of cats) on the far side of the city on the turn they capture it (on the Copper tile, I assume). Therefore we need to have 1 move units 2 tiles from Constantinople, so that we can also attack out from the city after capturing it.

Right, I've thought about this as well, and fortunately things work ok for this. We can always keep our units 2 tiles from the city under the pretense of merging our stacks together as they leave Jerusalem - not having a completed road actually helps us here, in case there are any Imperio spies. We will just need to have lots of workers in position...I'll detail the tiles we need to have workers on when I make my little turn report tonight.

In other next Imperio is sitting their galley in Cape Town, so they will have warning if we build 2 galleys there.

[mostly-harmless]

We could hold back on Const for now and wait for the forced peace to end and go for Chichen & Mutal first. We will see if Imperio even declares on Templars before T165(?) and then re-assess the Const issue.
That way we will ensure surprise and low defense in Chichen & Mutal. And every turn we wait, our military grows bigger than theirs.

mh

[ruff_hi]

If we don't like Op Backstab, then how about ...

'Operation Bravo Cats By Tick'

which is an anagram of 'Operation Backstab Victory'

[Zeviz]

How close is Imperio to attacking Constantinopole? If they can get there before our troops heal after capturing the city, they can hit our stack the way we intend to hit theirs. So if we can be ready for them by the time they get there, I vote for Option 4. Otherwise, option 2.

If we don't like Op Backstab, then how about ...

'Operation Bravo Cats By Tick'

which is an anagram of 'Operation Backstab Victory'

I like this name.

[Sullla]

sunrise, I concur with most of the others here in saying that it all depends on what Imperio does with their uber-stack. If they move aggressively on Constantinople, we pull back and let them capture the city, then hit them with the total blindside attack (option 2). If they continue to run around in circles, we capture the city ourselves and present them with a fait accompli in the south (option 1 or 4).

Regardless, we want to move towards Constantinople on the upcoming turn (T162). Depending on what Imperio does, we can decide whether to build another cat in Cape Town, or swap over to galleys. My own opinion is that if Imperio goes for Templars, we make the change and prepare for the total backstab.

[Dreylin]

Question:

Much of the discussion has been about a lightening strike in to capture and probably raze Mutal. I realise that would be particularly demoralising for Imperio, but do we really want to raze Mutal? It contains the Sistine Chapel, which we'd really like to have if we do go for a Cultural victory at the end of this game....

I know that much of our planning will be determined by how effectively we can get Imperio to walk their stack into ours, but should we be looking for a plan of attack for Mutal that doesn't likely result in it turning into a pile of rubble?

[MyOtherCar]

I think it is preferable if we let Imperio and Templars slug it out and let them loose some units to each other. On the other hand, we shouldn't wait indefinitely for Imperio to act (stop listening to Aidun, hombres!)

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

[sunrise089]

Question:

Much of the discussion has been about a lightening strike in to capture and probably raze Mutal. I realise that would be particularly demoralising for Imperio, but do we really want to raze Mutal? It contains the Sistine Chapel, which we'd really like to have if we do go for a Cultural victory at the end of this game....

I know that much of our planning will be determined by how effectively we can get Imperio to walk their stack into ours, but should we be looking for a plan of attack for Mutal that doesn't likely result in it turning into a pile of rubble?

I think we want to raze any cities we can, 100%. Think of how long it took us to take the offensive during our 2-front war, even though we were winning it in terms of unit production and kills. And even with all of our advantages, each successive Templar battle (Jericho, their army in our land, Jerusalem, and now Constantinople) has been against more and stronger units.

Knocking out Imperio's stack in the south and capturing Constantinople will clearly win our continent for us in the long term, but it will also consume a lot of RB units. If we can knock out 2 developed Imperio cities for the cost of around 10 units at the same time...well that should let us more or less steamroll them.

[sooooo]

Agree about taking the chance to raze Mutal if we can. It kills their teching and hence we kill off PAL's only remaining trade partner.

Need to move the mounted troops from jerusalem north and Sarah methinks.