Turnplayer Thread No. 6

[sunrise089]

I think considering what krill said we are ok to unpause the game.

[Sullla]

Right, well if no one else wanted to be "that guy" and unpause the game, I'm willing to take any arguments that arise from Imperio/PAL. Game is unpaused, next turn is underway - since Krill assented to the game restarting. Imperio, if you don't login at any point in a 54 hour period, and don't post anything in the general forum, you can't complain about this, IMO.

Anyway, our units at Mutal have all survived as a result. Here is a new picture with thoughts on moving on Oxhuitza; we can add in Ruby the horse archer and our new cuirassier from Cape Town, for a nice striking force of 1c + 5ha:



The injured cuirassiers should go to Chichen Itza to heal, I think. Can't see a better spot for them, as it gives us some counter-attacking power there.

I set Airstrip One to Oxford (11t, with chop coming) and Cape Town to another cuirassier. Every other city got set to build Culture, so make sure to adjust those build queues! Should be pretty obvious.

[sunrise089]

Sorry Sullla, didn't try to make you the bad guy, but I got sucked into the RB pitboss game and diplomacy.

Any reason not to send all of the mounted units at the Imperio city? I don't see a down side since we're pulling back against strong enemy defenses anyways.

[Zeviz]

The reason not to send in wounded Curassiers is that they are currently as weak as HAs, and would be better off healing instead. Should we send centry HA south to scout for the main army?

Also, I assume we are going to kill the stack that used to defend Acre. Are we also going to hit maces and cats on that hill, or wait for them to move?

[sunrise089]

Ok...

I think we should send all of the mounted units towards the northern Imperio city. I can't think of a good reason why we'd ever want to have fewer troops. The sentry is the most compelling unit to send south, but I'd rather have one more HA in the north - I think that is the area where one unit makes the most difference.

I think it may be worthwhile to hit the maces on the hill just to not worry about the stack and allow us to send everything up. However if we want to be more cautious we can always wait until a couple of Cuirassiers make it down there - they will have odds on the maces on the hill.

[Sullla]

Yeah, but those maces on the hill won't be there next turn, presumably. I would also like to hit them now, if possible. The only question is whether the unit tradeoff is worth it. Hmmm.

I will try to run a quick sim on this tomorrow. May not have time, however. The other main question is whether we want to ignore those units and start moving directly on Calakmul this turn (which may be an even better idea) with our siege units, letting the other half finish healing and catch up one turn later. Will have to think some on this!

I am perfectly OK with sending the full house of Mounted units north (well, to the staging tile this turn!) Just don't want us to throw away injured cuirassiers lightly!

[sunrise089]

I agree Sullla - this turn is compelling. Their units can't ever escape, but they can threaten Acre and tie units down. I think we burn the one unit and kill the stack.

[sooooo]

Just caught up on some interesting days of play here. Keep up the good work! My internet connection is not yet back but hopefully it will be soon.

I logged in quickly and was pleased to see Oxford has been started . I couldn't resist setting SF and Saxon to missionaries while they grow.

Not sure about the builds in Damascus and Constantinople. Remember that with Jerusalem getting the FP then their distance maintenances will be low, so a courthouse looks better now that it actually will be. I'd rather get granaries and our 25-hammer theatres going first in any case.

Also at Pink Dot, if we need more military then cuirassier/cat, if not then a bank looks decent.

Remember the plan at Red Herring and Mellow Yellow is to get them to size 6, draft them and then double-whip a worker. I see RH will finish its forge and reach size 6 next turn - perfect timing.

[Dreylin]

Not sure about the builds in Damascus and Constantinople. Remember that with Jerusalem getting the FP then their distance maintenances will be low, so a courthouse looks better now that it actually will be.

I'd still like us to revist the FP in Jerusalem. I think that Damascus makes more sense for FP given the shape of our continent, and would like to see some discussion of this before we go ahead with the build in Jer.

[Sullla]

Domestic Stuff
- My suggested build for Pink is actually a Theatre; we're already at the happy cap there, and war weariness is only going to get worse. Theatre is dirt cheap and gives us another happy face, until we can secure gold and/or Notre Dame happiness (+2 each).
- Missionary is definitely a good call for Something Fishy and Saxon. But we will probably want the next whip in these cities to be banks, when they've regrown a bit from their university whippings in ~10 turns.
- Another catapult at Jericho seems like a no-brainer.
- Jerusalem is definitely the right spot for the Forbidden Palace. Yes, Damascus may be geographically better, but it will take enormously longer to build it there, since that city is on the front lines and lacks basic infrastructure. We can whip it out in about 10t in Jerusalem... Although the FP won't make a huge difference, we can use the savings. This is one case where speed is more important than a perfect placement, IMO.
- I concur that courthouse first is a bad build in newly captured cities. That's why Constantinople is working on a granary! On that note, sooooo what's the math look like on building the granary at Constantinople naturally versus whipping it? Since Constantinople has a lot of shields and not much food, it may be better just to build it normally, then whip something else afterwards (?)

Military Stuff
- How many Oromos are we planning to send up to the northern front? I think 4-5 will be plenty, along with our flying column of Mounted units and more cuirassiers coming out of Cape Town. The rest of the units can keep pushing into the south, where our big "hammer" stacks are located. We're mostly just defending in the north.
- All our Mounted units are going to move to the staging tile 1S of Chichen Itza this turn, right?



- In the south, whatever unit captures Acre won't be able to do anything else this turn; I suggest we use whatever unit(s) we are planning to gift to Banana for this operation. Because the first strikes on Oromos are pretty useless when attacking at low odds - like off of a ship - I'd suggest using a City Raider mace for this. Maybe promote Akara to CR2, capture Acre, gift the city to Banana, then gift Akara to Banana as well? It's a thought.
- Our workers definitely want to road the tile SE of Damascus. That allows is to hit the stack on the hill tile, plus move deeper into Imperio territory.
- For that stack on the hill, I'd probably say to suicide one catapult, because that should allow us to kill everything else at no losses. Give up the one catapult (damaging the top mace and doing some minor collateral damage), then Adria the C1Shock Mace kills the second, mostly-healthy mace and we should romp from there.
- Because Imperio has virtually nothing behind those units, I would also start moving on Calakmul this turn, with siege and healed units this turn, the rest of the stack (and the units we used to kill the Imperio hill stack) joining them one turn later. See picture above. We can bombard the defenses at Calakmul on T173, hopefully capture it on T174.

In unrelated news, Imperio still hasn't logged into the game yet, 14 hours after I unpaused the game. I think that was the correct action.

EDIT: To have everything in one place, here were my suggested worker actions for the turn. Now that sooooo's back, we'll be noticeably better at this!

- New Worker (and we need a new name here!) probably just heads south six tiles towards our developing cities. We would like to get a road tile on the desert tile 4E of Cape Town, to allow our units to sally forth onto the Imperio road network, but it can wait until later.
- Winston/Dave move 5 tiles south and finish up the "2t mine" grassland hill mine. This is just busy work getting them into position for the following turn, when they can start doing some real good.
- Steve is kind of interesting. Since Bluebell and Red Herring are good on tile improvements for the moment, I would move Steve to the tile 1NW of Upper Burgundy and farm this tile. It gets Steve moving in the right direction towards the south, and we genuinely do need a farm on that tile (to bring irrigation towards UB's rice).
- Bernard/Helmholtz move 1S and build a farm on the same tile as Steve.
- Syme should probably go 5 tiles east and work on the sugar plantation at Sweet Tooth. This will do more good than improving Pink or Something Fishy, which both have improved tiles.
- John/Parsons/Max all go east onto the banana tile and work on the plantation there. We don't have this resource connected to our trade network yet, so we must build first the plantation and then a road. Thus it's not wasting moves to have them all work on it together. (Obviously, some or all of them will then finish the quarry on the stone next!)
- Bob/Erik/Nok Tok obviously build a pasture on the horses tile. And the two units on the front lines (O'Brien/Mustapha) are naturally free for combat engineer duty as sunrise sees fit.

[sunrise089]

Great overview Sullla!

As for the units heading north, yes, I planned to keep about 4 Oromos up there. Normally I'd like a cat as well, but I really doubt Imperio will advance on us. One thought though - if Cape Town starts making cats we can send 6 or so Ormomo's forward with accuracy cats and bombard city defenses down. I don't think it is really necessary or even advisable to split our army (probably better to build Cuirassiers and send them down to meet the main stack), but it is an option.

We also may find ourselves short on cats. I know we're building some and have some in transit, but each Templar city cost 3-4 cats and Imperio is going to have better units.

[mostly-harmless]

Plans sound good. Except I would prefer some two-movers in the south earlier. Naldo forecast that we will have all Imperio in 5 turns. That's just not true. it will take forever with our main army to move to cities like Lakamha, Mayapan and Uxmal. At the moment Lakamha will have very low defenses, an opportunity strike there with 2movers will be better than throwing all at Oxhuitza, a rather useless city. Just a thought.

Also I would like to suggest to Banana, that if the Warning raid is cancelled due to good defenses or very successful (ie. plenty of Banana survivors) he actually declares war on Imperio and boats Mayapan.

mh

[Swiss Pauli]

We also may find ourselves short on cats. I know we're building some and have some in transit, but each Templar city cost 3-4 cats and Imperio is going to have better units.

Seeing as we smashed so many Imperio's units (and are about to kill some more), I think we'll be using less suicide cats per city than in the Templar campaign because we're likely to be facing fewer (but stronger) defenders, making cat-collateral less attractive.

[Kodii]

Aren't there Imperio units NE of Acre?

[Swiss Pauli]

Yes, an LB and a Pike, methinks.