Should we "aquire" a Holy City?

[Nugog]

Simple enough question really.

If you vote yes, then please state which one, and your reasons as to why.

[couerdelion]

Simple answer Yes

Reason: We are spending too much money on our empire and need some cash source to free up commerce for research

Target: Bombay

Reason: It is the only city with a shrine

[Nugog]

So - we do get the cash benefit from a captured shrine?

And while we are the Dehli looks like a nice city.............

[fed1943]

Yes. Bombay, is the only one with an Holy Shrine (for hapiness,

inteligence and gold).

Best regards,

[Smellycowsquid]

[Metaliturtle]

Look at the indian shrine here! http://thatvideosite.com/view/802.html

we really need to get those priests dancing for the banana!

[Paddy]

yes we should.

[FeMme]

As our nation is in rather serious financial straits I think the liberation of Bombay is a very good idea. Not only will it give us the Holy City that we have been striving for but is will also bring lots of extra gold to our coffers. However, once we take it we will have to defend it heavily or it will be lost.

[Nugog]

Originally posted by FeMme
As our nation is in rather serious financial straits I think the liberation of Bombay is a very good idea. Not only will it give us the Holy City that we have been striving for but is will also bring lots of extra gold to our coffers. However, once we take it we will have to defend it heavily or it will be lost.

Or we push on, till the Indian opposition is quelled.

Or we are realistic, and face our strongest foe, on our terms, not his.

[couerdelion]

These comments are getting mixed around several threads so perhaps better to keep them here rather than clutter MoS, MoD and other threads with the same conversation.

With regards to the financial benefit from Bombay, there is already some small benefit from the existing profusion of Confucian cities but it will obviously be more if we spread it to Concordian cities. Of course we won’t be able to take advantage of any religious civics but since the only one we have is Monotheism, we aren’t losing a lot because I production is so high that we are now building wealth again.

On the military aspects, if the issue is one of defending our lands (and all other civs are four or five techs from Astronomy) then perhaps we should use the spare production capacity in Apolyton and Lake to build a few more Crossbows and War Elephants – the former is stronger than any melee unit while the latter takes on any mounted unit up to and including Knights.

Rob has mentioned the cultural threat which really means that we cannot look at Bombay in isolation. We would have to capture and/or destroy other Indian cities to give Bombay space to build. Although we can engage in an isolated cultural war there, we’d almost certainly lose this so we should go in there expecting to take more than one city. So a military build up would be required and I also believe Rob is correct in suggesting that we first acquire Macemen (though I think Knights would be a bonus).

There is one other aspect of a war with India and this is the near certainty that one of his neighbours will want to join in the fun. You can be sure that they will also have Delhi and Bombay as targets but might also have other objectives which we could work out. The upside of this is that it is likely that the cultural cleansing will be done for us. The downside is that any invasion needs to take into account the risk that one of our “allies” gets the prizes that we want.

I looked at this earlier and thought that Delhi would be the easier target due to its location. However, Bombay is probably the most exposed city so this is perhaps the one we should target first. To assure that capture of Delhi we would probably want a second landing party.

All of this is to be expected since launching attacks from continent to continent are major ventures. Fortunately this continent is quite close so reinforcements can arrive quickly. However, we will need more than 2 galleons to get the troops across to take on India.

By contrast, Frances poses a much tougher nut to crack and if we go this way, we would be better to do this from an existing base on the continent. I’ve no doubt that France has a sizeable force even if they are just axemen. I’ve had small stacks of grenadiers (city defenders), longbows, choks and cavalry taken apart by large numbers of weaker troops. Also with Napoleon, we might find ourselves the subject of a retaliatory strike if the Aztecs or Greeks decide to pile in to support France. I don’t like the prospect of holding onto a city in revolt only to find a 20-unit Aztec stack of doom arrive. I still have nightmares about that.

[zeace]

Since we don't really have much ship producing capabilities, we should probably start building Galleons sooner than later. Like coeur says, we probably want 3 or 4, and the Valley is going to take a long time to spit them out. Even if we don't end up going to war, a few galleons will be useful, and if we do decide to start a war we'll be able to build troops a lot faster than the boats to carry them.

[fed1943]

Everybody wants a Holy Shrine (me,too) and only military can get it.

So, ground troops and naval transport are in order.

To build ground troops in good quantity and fast is no problem;

The quality of ground troops (just crosbow, swordmen and elephants

or macemen and knights) depends on research, that is, the decisions

in the Departments - State, Finances, Interior and Defence - must fit

among themselves;

To build the navy is a headache; Valley shall take 12 turns to build a

single galleon and Casa del Nimitz just can help much later.

Best regards,

[MMC]

We should aquire a holy city to prove that the Banana is true. A shrine cannot be holy if the deity allows it to be captured, but as long as the heathens believe otherwise, we may as well collect their 'tithes'.

[Nikolai]

I think that our glorious country after all these costly wars more than anything needs time to build and recover. Ironically, the best way to do that with our current disastrous financial situation is by war. I'm all for getting the city, but I'm against taking anything more than that. The maintenance will kill us if we did I'm sure.

[UnOrthOdOx]

Originally posted by Nikolai
I think that our glorious country after all these costly wars more than anything needs time to build and recover. Ironically, the best way to do that with our current disastrous financial situation is by war. I'm all for getting the city, but I'm against taking anything more than that. The maintenance will kill us if we did I'm sure.

Right. We only need to take the one city.














Raze the rest.