Operation NTSC

[MyOtherCar]

With Operation Backstab succesfully initiated, it's time to pay attention to PAL.

Let's keep the naval invasion idea on hold for the moment. I have a plan for Banana, but the moment's not ripe just yet. We have to capture Acre first, possibly gift it to Banana, and then lead a strike from there directly on The Warning. In essence, two galleons can move from the tile 1E of Acre up next to the PAL capital. I would expect it to be lightly defended for an easy raze, and that would really tilt the balance of power...

But like I said, we have to kill the Imperio units in that area first. We can get REALLY creative here (Banana moves two galleons into Acre, gifts them to us, we fill them with 6 units, gift the city to Banana, gift the galleons + units BACK to Banana, who then move on The Warning) but the city has to fall first.

[MyOtherCar]

Something more moved from the turnplayer thread:

I have a plan for Banana, but the moment's not ripe just yet.

[Kylearan]

Hi,

do we trust Donovan enough to tell him about our idea? There's no real plan yet, and maybe the operation won't even be done at all depending on the next turns, but it might help keep up his spirits.

-Kylearan

[Sullla]

OK, let's start doing the work to put this plan into practice. First for reference, here's Banana's last message to our team:

Greeting Realms Team!

Well, it looks like the fun is about to begin. As you will soon see, we have declared on PAL this turn and have already razed the city of Giza. I am not sure if we will be able to take any other cities in the meantime, unless we can compensate for our disadvantage with a killer game of Civ-chess. We will likely bunker in for now unless an opportunity arises.

Congratulations on your taking of two (!) Imperio cities! That certainly was a surprise, and also made it look like we orchestrated the whole thing. Let 'em wonder. In the meantime, I trust you are preparing documentation for the Disputes thread re: Naldo's accusation. Should be an interesting spectacle.

I talked with Dreylin in-game and we agreed to trade world maps. I hope this was okay with the entire team, as Dreylin seemed to think it would be no problem. It looks like you will have Constantinople out of revolt next turn -- does that mean I can get Horses back? I hate to ask, but it seems that mobilty is the only thing that's going to get me back out of the bunker.

Also, regarding your conquest of Damascus --- where will you head next? I have 2 Galleon I may be able to gift if you are able to take Calakmul. That would put you right across from the Warning, after which we could divide and conquer.

Sounds like another chat may be in order. Drop me a line when you get a chance.

Regards,
Donovan

Dreylin and Swiss also had a series of in-game chats with Donovan; the conversations are posted in the Banana thread. Now there's plenty of interesting info in there, however the critical tidbit is that PAL currently has nothing more than a mace and a spear in The Warning (!) The PAL capital is one of the strategic keys to this map, as it's geared towards science and has library, university, three monasteries, Oxford, and benefits from PAL running Bureaucracy. Burn that location down, and PAL's teching rate is drastically curtailed, maybe by as much as 50%. Remove The Warning, and our odds of winning this game go from "possible" to "likely".

Meanwhile, Banana has also told us that they have a pair of galleons free for naval duty. This makes all the difference in the world, and we have to get Banana to use those galleons against PAL before they finish researching Astronomy (4t) and get their own navy into the water. Once frigates appear in the Channel, it will rule out a decapitation strike against the PAL capital. The time to act is right now!!!

But we ourselves don't really want to jump into a war with PAL, as that will get them seriously pissed at us and we're going to be overflowing with war weariness from Imperio. Far better to let Donovan take the WW hit and the brunt of PAL's anger - and don't you think Donovan would like to be the one burning down PAL's capital? I think he'd be more than willing to go for that! So here's the steps I want us to take:

- Gift Acre to Banana.
- Get Donovan to bring his pair of galleons to the tile one east of Acre.
- Make sure those galleons are full with the maximum six units. If there aren't enough Banana units to spare, we temporarily loan some RB units to Banana to fill those ships.
- Banana moves four tiles northeast, does a naval assault on The Warning, and burns it to the ground.
- Galleons sail back to Acre and return surviving units back to RB control.

Now we *WILL* capture Acre next turn. The city is empty (Imperio cleared out the defenders), and it's in revolt so it cannot whip out another unit. The rationale for gifting Acre to Banana is pretty simple: we're badly overexpanded at the moment and can't afford another unnecessary city, the location is culture-crushed by Banana anyway, and it would be useful for Donovan to have a city on our continent (which we can always take back quickly if Banana turns on us). Seems like a no-brainer to me, and it generates a LOT of goodwill for us with Donovan. I can't imagine that he would say no, since Banana seems desperate for more cities.

Assuming that our team concurs on the idea of gifting Acre to Banana, the next thing to do is get across the details of the naval attack to Banana, and convince them of going along with it. (This will require some close communication, and probably some chat sessions. But we can do it because Banana will have visibility on PAL's cities at all times, and that makes a huge difference!) Gifting away (and very likely losing in combat) a couple of units also is a major step to take. Still, it would be more than worth it to burn down PAL's capital, even if Donovan never returned the units to us.

OK, time to get down to composing an official email. Here's my initial draft to send off to Donovan on this subject:

Greetings to our Banana breathren!

Quite a few interesting turns we've had of late. Congratulations again on your victory at Giza, which sets up the possibility of a much bigger strike against The Warning. We'd like to work together with you to pull off another "Mutal" move against PAL's capital. Here's what our team is thinking:

We are going to capture Acre next turn (T171). Imperio has run all of their defenders out of the city because they know they can't hold it, leaving it completely defenseless. Because of the Banana culture surrounding Acre, we would like to gift this city to you, providing another military and naval base in the fight against PAL. We trust that you won't object to this city gift!



From the tile east of Acre, galleons can reach The Warning in one turn along the arrowed path. (See our attached screenshot.) We would like to propose that you move your two galleons to that tile east of Acre, and carry out a surprise attack that razes The Warning to the ground. And since you have visibility into the city, we can both make sure that there are enough units on those ships to guarantee that the city burns. (We would be willing to "loan" you a unit or two for the attack by gifting them, so long as you returned them to us afterwards.) Best of all, because you destroyed Giza, PAL does not have visibility on that staging tile, and won't even be able to see the attack coming!

How does this plan sound to you? Where are your galleons right now, and how close are they to Acre? How many units can you spare to put on the ships for a naval attack like this? There *IS* a need for haste, because PAL is researching Astronomy as we speak, and will have it in 4 turns. We can probably hammer out some of these ideas in a chat session, just to make sure the attack goes off like a well-oiled machine. We're excited about this idea, and hope you'll join us in torching our enemy's capital!

Realms Beyond

Screenshot above to be included in the message, naturally. As always, comments and suggestions are welcome. We definitely want to make sure that we're all on the same page with this, but it seems to me that a chance to raze The Warning is one that we have to take. And I think we've got good odds to pull this off so long as we can coordinate our actions with Donovan.

[Compromise]

This plan could be quite cool.

We'll have to put our units on his galleons while they're in his territory (eg, 1 tile south of the staging area) in order to gift them to him, right?

What is the turn order in the Banana-PAL war? Might be important for moving our troops onto his boats, gifting them, and then having him move to the staging tile to end his turn.

There's probably no value in putting one of our spies on the boats, is there? Seems that units would be better....

[shadyforce]

I have a few thoughts on the plan:

I understand the war weariness and Imperio campaign reasons for not razing The Warning ourselves. However I don't see why making PAL angry is a factor in this at all. This game is a 2 horse race and anything that is bad for PAL is good for us and vice versa. We are already number one enemy, we can't be any more of a threat to them then we already are. Are we worried that we'll annoy them into playing better?

Secondly, I'd question whether we should ask Banana to divert 4-6 units towards this attack and away from the defence of their cities. Surely we can afford to spare 6 of our own units which is a tiny price to pay for such a MASSIVE victory. And the tougher the defence Banana puts up, the worse for PAL and better for us. I'd say that if we had 6 free units to place on the board, putting them towards the defence of Banana does more for our long term chance of winning the game than contributing towards the Imperio campaign where we already have a nice army and superior production.

Thirdly, make sure Imperio does not have visibility to the staging tile either. I guess that means occupying the hill tile 2 north of Acre?

[Zeviz]

I also think that 6 of our units would do more good razing PAL cities than contributing to Imperio campaign. Maybe we can take 3 Banana units and 3 ours if you think 6 units is too high a percentage of our army. However, I wouldn't ask Banana for more than 3 units, because they have much harder time producing new units.

In fact, with 6 Oromos/CR Maces we might be able to raze 2 PAL cities, completely crippling their research.

[sunrise089]

I certainly hope this plan will work, though I won't be Surprised if pal has a spy or a scouting boat or something else that gives them Warning. However maybe they have been careless And didn't notice banana got astro.

@shadyforce - One advantage to banana using their units is that they can put three cuisarriers on the ships. They May want to start saving cash now for upgrades. 3 cuirassuers, 2 oromos, and a third Oromo or a treb would be a nice little force.

[timmy827]

I agree with the general outline of the plan. Too bad Warning doesn't have the Great Lighthouse too, but agreed that this is a risk definitely worth taking.

Compromise - spies can't help as they can't land and incite a revolt on the same turn, and we of course need to move the ships up and attack the same turn.

Shadyforce - it may be good to have some "plausible deniability". PAL will have the naval edge on us for a while with Frigates; they know we are in a zero-sum game but I bet they will refrain from open attacks until Banana has been eliminated or reduced to non-threat status. Also while we don't have Astro, I think we will lose trade routes to Rabbits if at war with PAL.

[mostly-harmless]

We cannot put our own units (spies) on other civs ships. We would have to gift them first, I believe.

I also thought previously that one could attack with catapults from a ship. However, that does not seem to be the case (any longer?).

I am happy to gift Acre to Banana mainly because it has little food for us, but plenty for Banana.

mh

[T-hawk]

I am concerned that PAL may sniff it out. When Acre goes to Banana control, PAL may anticipate the possibility of a capital strike and defend their capital. IMO, we should keep Acre ourselves to avoid that.

I would love to do it like this: get us and Banana in the game at the same time and do it all in one shot. We gift Acre and the units, Banana loads them onto their galleons and gifts Acre back to us. We can let Banana keep Acre permanently after the fact. The trick is to make anything funny with Acre invisible to PAL.

I'm very much in favor of Banana doing the dirty work, but if we think that we have to do it ourselves to maintain surprise, that's okay too.

Cloak & Dagger may help by watching for a turn when The Warning did not build any new unit.

I also thought previously that one could attack with catapults from a ship. However, that does not seem to be the case (any longer?).

Yeah, this was changed in some patch.

[Kodii]

We gift Acre and the units, Banana loads them onto their galleons and gifts Acre back to us.

Wouldn't the city trade be reflected on CivStats?

[mostly-harmless]

Wouldn't the city trade be reflected on CivStats?

Yes.

mh

[Swiss Pauli]

I think that we need to keep Acre to maintain cover. We can always gift it to Banana after the attack. We should also supply as many units as we can afford, seeing as we're the ones who would get the most long term benefit. PAL loses science capability, not unit production, so Banana's swift demise may not be averted.

Another problem we have is that Imperio has sight of the staging tile. Naldo himself may not care, but we need to assume that PAL has told him to inform them if he sees any Galleons in The Channel. So our best chance of making this work is to push on and raze Calakmul ASAP.

If we want to carry this off, then we need to get some info to Banana ASAP, and we would also need them to hold Omni Point, lest PAL raze it and station a sentry on the coast.

[mostly-harmless]

Well, if we are to provide units, then we need to gift Acre to Banana. No other way to get our troops on board their galleons, unless he gifts the galleons to us, in which case we have to declare on PAL.

mh