Spartan Academy: General Discussions

[nbarclay]

I'm skeptical of the chances that a rush could be worthwhile unless (1) we have good reason to believe we can catch a neighbor seriously unprepared militarily, (2) the consequences of not winning an early military victory would be seriously negative (for example, leaving us with too little land if we have to share), or (3) we can form an alliance to force an opponent to fight on multiple fronts. In early one-on-one fighting, it's far too easy for the result of a military struggle to be that both sides end up weaker, thereby giving the other civs that didn't waste resources on early warfare a significant military advantage.

A skirmisher rush could easily hurt a neighbor more than it hurts us. But whether that would be worth the combination of ruinous diplomatic consequences with our neighbor and the diversion of resources from peaceful pursuits would be a much more problematical issue.

[Theseus]

Fair enough... it seems to me, though, that given our starting position, this might be the best "extreme" strategy that we can pursue.

* A lot of food
* A lot of gold
* A veryveryvery high happiness ceiling (something most of us are probably not used to)

Getting a couple of Scouts out there, followed by a slew of Skirmishers interspersed with poprushed Workers... could be vicious. Once that's done, we'd have an awfully powerful capitol to address everything else.

[Arrian]

It seems to me that the Skirmisher is best suited for "choking" rather than "rushing."

I mean, what are the odds when attacking with a Skirm against a fortified archer in a city?

Archer: 3 base str, +25% fortification bonus, +50% (?) city defense bonus = 5.25 str.

Skirmisher = 4 base str.

4 vs 5.25... those odds can't be very good. And that's w/o cultural defense bonus...

However, the same archer trying to dislodge a skirmisher from a resource tile... how much would that suck?

Anyway, let's see what our scouts show us... could be we have lots of room. Could be there are two civs right on top of us... we just don't know yet.

-Arrian

[Master Zen]

Originally posted by Dominae
If we do decide to rush, it will be after a thorough analysis of what we expect to accomplish versus the diplomatic ramifications.

If we have The Horde as neighbors, I guarantee you there will be no diplomatic ramifications whatsoever regarding any and all military actions we decide to undertake against them.

I would like to emphazise the "I guarantee" part

[Arrian]

[Dominae]

This game could be very interesting if we start next to the Horde. A Skirmisher choke would move right up the priority list.

[Ennet]

*knock knock* need to stirr some life to this thread now.. did we figure if vox had a gold hill or something? think there was something about that earlier, if so, they'll have an awfull lot of beakers if they got a cow or something too to make up for the lost food..