Operation "Backstab"

[Broker33]

sunrise has already played

Well since it is hindsight it should be worth more than 2 cents.

[sunrise089]

Ok, ships and units moved as per the Sullla plan.

Idea, ex post - We should have brought a SETTLER with our stack. Having one would have at least given us plausible deniability for having our workers and army on the 3W of Acre tile.

Spoiler:

[ruff_hi]

This is exciting.....cry havoc let loose the hounds

Actually, that isn't the best quote to use ... Anthony used it after killing Ceaser; he started to regret the course he had taken ...

The 'cry havoc, and let slip the dogs of war' form of the phrase is from his (Shakespeare) Julius Caesar, 1601. After Caesar's murder Anthony regrets the course he has taken and predicts that war is sure to follow.

ANTONY:
Blood and destruction shall be so in use
And dreadful objects so familiar
That mothers shall but smile when they behold
Their infants quarter'd with the hands of war;
All pity choked with custom of fell deeds:
And Caesar's spirit, ranging for revenge,
With Ate by his side come hot from hell,
Shall in these confines with a monarch's voice
Cry 'Havoc,' and let slip the dogs of war;
That this foul deed shall smell above the earth
With carrion men, groaning for burial.

[Sullla]

Well, if we're going to quote Shakespeare...

HAMLET
How all occasions do inform against me,
And spur my dull revenge! What is a man,
If his chief good and market of his time
Be but to sleep and feed? a beast, no more.
Sure, he that made us with such large discourse,
Looking before and after, gave us not
That capability and god-like reason
To fust in us unused. Now, whether it be
Bestial oblivion, or some craven scruple
Of thinking too precisely on the event,
A thought which, quarter'd, hath but one part wisdom
And ever three parts coward, I do not know
Why yet I live to say 'This thing's to do;'
Sith I have cause and will and strength and means
To do't. Examples gross as earth exhort me:
Witness this army of such mass and charge
Led by a delicate and tender prince,
Whose spirit with divine ambition puff'd
Makes mouths at the invisible event,
Exposing what is mortal and unsure
To all that fortune, death and danger dare,
Even for an egg-shell. Rightly to be great
Is not to stir without great argument,
But greatly to find quarrel in a straw
When honour's at the stake. How stand I then,
That have a father kill'd, a mother stain'd,
Excitements of my reason and my blood,
And let all sleep? while, to my shame, I see
The imminent death of twenty thousand men,
That, for a fantasy and trick of fame,
Go to their graves like beds, fight for a plot
Whereon the numbers cannot try the cause,
Which is not tomb enough and continent
To hide the slain? O, from this time forth,
My thoughts be bloody, or be nothing worth!

My favorite speech from Hamlet (Act IV, Scene IV). I'll admit that this game is very exciting at the moment, almost too much so. I'm checking the forums every 2 hours, and not getting a whole lot of work done on my lectures...

[Broker33]

Hey I was quoting from the original Klingon

And random quotes are always better out of context

My favorite quote

And he opened the fourth seal and behold a pale horse and its riders name was Death and Hell rode behind him. They were given dominion over 1/4 of the earth.....

But I am a preachers kid

[darrelljs]

I had a teacher who made us memorize and recite that Antony speech, so naturally I hate it .

Darrell

[sunrise089]

I prefer the Johny Cash version of that verse Broker

And I heard a voice in the midst of the four beasts, and I looked and behold: a pale horse. And his name, that sat on him, was Death. And Hell followed with him.

[sooooo]

I predict Imperio will take Acre then pillage the road on the wheat and the tile 2S of damascus.

[Sullla]

Here are some thoughts on how to go about making the "shock and awe" strike next turn:



As I see it, the best tile for our Mounted stack to occupy is the iron hill SW-SW of Mutal. From here, we have visibility into the city (thanks to our Sentry horse archer) and can see a good distance in every direction. We'll be able to tell what Imperio's doing and can react accordingly. Even better, being on the iron tile, we have the option to pillage it if something goes disastrously wrong. But the main reason is that it leaves us an option to move elsewhere if the attack on Mutal looks like it won't succeed.

With the white arrows, I drew possible Imperio troop movements. The logical response would be to move anything and everything available towards their capital city in the hopes of saving it. In the worst case scenario, we may not be able to attack Mutal; however, we can respond by doing this:



We move SE-SE to threaten Lakamha. Most importantly, any units in Mutal cannot reach Lakamha in time to reinforce, nor can any units in Mutal even reach our stack to attack it! (Single-movers; obviously double-movers still can, but then they don't get defensive bonuses either.) Since Lakamha has only a holkan inside as its default defender, we could potentially catch Imperio with their pants down at their second city and have a shot to grab it. We definitely would prefer not to do this - we would have to attack across a river at Lakamha, and the city is also on a hill for further defensive bonus - but it's at least a possibility. Worst case from this position, we see that Lakamha also has too many defenders, and retreat back into our own territory. Obviously this plan assumes that we wipe out essentially all of the Imperio main army in the south, which can otherwise reinforce Lakamha without much trouble!

One interesting thing to come out of this planning is that we should move the Mounted stack FIRST on T169, to get instant visibility into Mutal. Based on what we see there, we can then decide whether or not to keep Chichen Itza in the naval attack. If it doesn't look like we'll be able to take Mutal, we need to raze Chichen Itza rather than capturing it.

sunrise, do you see an alternate or better way to move these units?

[sunrise089]

Good plan Sullla. If the main Imperio stack had been further north I'd propose the floodplain 2E of Mutal, but we know where pretty much all of their units are. The only disadvantage I can think of at the moment is that if Imperio has a defender in the fog that cannot reach Mutal but can reach the tile 1SW of the city they can station their unit there and force us to attack it. 2W or 2W1S lets us hit Mutal from two different tiles. I believe this situation is unlikely though.

[Swiss Pauli]

Why don't we first move the sentry HA to the Iron stack, and then decide where to move the rest of the units, based on her findings?

[mostly-harmless]

I thought that with the sentry HA we don't even need to be on a hill to see into Mutal? We get 2tile visibility on flat lands.

If Imperio moves a unit out of Mutal to block our way, we should have better odds on it.

mh

[Zeviz]

Why do we have to raze Chichen Itza? (The city is right next to our border, so if we can't hold it we can't hold CT either.)

[Swiss Pauli]

The sentry is not a key combat unit, and with it we see the Lamakha area in case we need to abort the razing of Mutal.

Sunrise raised the possibility of Imperio stationing a unit (probably the Cuirassier they just trained in Mutal) between the Iron and Mutal, potentially scuppering our attack if we move all units to the Iron tile. If the sentry tells us we can raze Mutal, then we can move our Cuirassiers to the FP 1N of the Iron, so that such a block is impossible.

If Mutal is still standing, Chichen becomes too hard to defend because of Mutal's culture, so we'd have to raze & re-settle. Cape doesn't suffer the same problem with Mutal's culture.

[mostly-harmless]

Imperio has finished off Templars and has scattered their main stack!

Here is the situation.
I hope the force composition is clear.
We additional Forces in Const and beyond.
The single Musketman is probably going for Jerusalem garrison duty.
Jerusalem, undefended currently, will get a border pop next turn.
That Musketman is good news, as it is not defending Mutal.

Ok, sunrise, start thinking. What do we do. The moment PAL finishes the turn we are up!!!

No changes on the northern sector btw.
mh

EDIT: better picture quality