What happens after the war?

[Blake]

And why only 4 cats? would not waiting for a few more cats mean that we need fewer axes for the final invasion? Would waiting just a few more turns for a few extra cats to stop any freak RNG results not be prudent?

I don't think we really need more than 4 - like just 4 is enough to reduce all Vox archers to health levels where a Skirmisher has better than even odds - and probably much better. Once Vox archers are bruised and battered, 2 skirmishers gets the job done better than 1 catapult and have twice the military police value. Archers are just really, really, really easy to soften up with cats, the fact that cats have *higher* strength means those poor archers take a hammering, it's not like cats vs longbows.

We only really need to worry about RNG streaks when we are facing low odds - like 10-20%, when our odds are in the 60%+ level that mean that most of our units WILL survive and get to fight the next turn too.

Skirmisher vs 1.5/3 archer, is 96% odds (for that matter so is 1.6/3). We don't have to worry about the RNG there.


Okay lets work this out...

We only need enough cats to badly batter every archer - since each catapult deals collatoral to 5 units, and each archer requires about 2 applications of collatoral to turn it into a weakling, to get absolutely awesome odds we need about 40% as many catapults as Vox has archers (ie 4 catapults give 20 applications of collatoral, hammering 10 archers into the dirt).
With 1.5 applications per archer, we get 1/3rd of the archers surviving with ~60% odds for Axemen.
With only 1 application per archer, we'll be somewhat at the mercy of the RNG.

40% catapults = sure win.
30% catapults = lossy win.
20% catapults = might win.


In 55 turns Vox can train at most 15 more archers. If they do manage to do this (it'll be hard if we choke the floodplains and all the forests) then we'll want to bring about 6 catapults. I suspect however we'll see at most about 10-12 archers.
However we don't need to make this decision in advance, we can use our chokers to assess the needed number of catapults - basically 40% (archer count + every pop in the voice), maybe another pult for luck. However once every archer has been reduced to 1.6/3 then additional pults are not more useful than skirmishers.

Barracks:
I suppose it wouldn't hurt. I mean it's not needed. How much better do we need the odds to be than 95%? . Does future proofing matter? Maybe we want at least one barracks just to guarantee us a core of lvl3 units. The catapults don't need to be veteran, so the barracks should either go in EotS or Furs, I suspect that Furs will spend most of it's life on infinite build of units (making barracks a wise choice), but it could also be devoted to workers rather than military.

It is largely a question of future proofing. For now it seems that Vox will be our only military campaign until Astronomy. Units will be only needed for token garrison / h.rule happiness. It may well be that our security concerns will be primarly naval rather than army.

I'm pretty neutral towards getting a couple of barracks (120h) in a way I'd rather +5 h.rule happiness from 5 more skirmishers.

Thoughts?

[Blake]

Oh in case this interests anyone I did a bit of testing on upkeep costs. i had thought that upkeeps might limit the number of archers that Vox can muster, but I was wrong.

Thanks to Prince being so wussy when it comes to upkeep, between frees units and the handicap discount The Voice, at size 1, can support a total of:
25 Archers!

For us and our chokers and military supply:
Up to 5 units are free.
6-7 units costs 1gpt.
8-9 units costs 2gpt.
10-11 units costs 3gpt.

So the formula is Truncate((ChokerCount - 4) * 0.5)

With a core of:
4 cities; size 6, 3, 3, 1

We have 13 free units. Assume 8 units, 4 garrisons, 4 workers, 5 chokers.

Units past the 13th cost 1 unit upkeep upkeep, but this is reduced by 50% and rounded down thanks to handicap discount.

So nominally, we can afford 5 chokers at no upkeep cost to us.

Every additional choker will cost us 1gpt (same for units in neutral territory).
Every additional unit on defensive duty or "waiting to invade" will cost us 0.5gpt.

[Metaliturtle]

have we even taken into account that Donegeal is a builder and may waste hammers on a barracks or something else instead of units?

[Arrian]

I dunno if barracks would be a waste for them. They could then put city garrison promos on their archers, which would make things uglier for us... probably uglier than 2 more archers.

-Arrian

[Cort Haus]

Originally posted by DeepO
Which brings us back to the original question: what happens after the war?

Optics 'via' Civil Service? ($0.0000000000000000002)

[Arrian]

What happens after the war?

MISSION ACCOMPLISHED!

[Cort Haus]

If we want to expand like mad, currency would allow us to build cash if needed, and scientists can help drive research and produce some GS's - after an earlyish Prophet of course.

I suppose there's a case for Org Rel, although we could skip Masonry and use a prophet for CS. That would mean two prophets, though, unless we want to delay our shrine for ages - and I doubt Music (for cathedrals and multi-priests) will be a priority. With a second religion we could run two priests, but we probably can't bank on that.

[DeepO]

CS would obviously be nice, but currency has lesser appeal: there are no open border agreements, or even other teams in sight. The tech that should be high on our list, though, is CoL...

DeepO

[DeepO]

Originally posted by Blake
Oh in case this interests anyone I did a bit of testing on upkeep costs. i had thought that upkeeps might limit the number of archers that Vox can muster, but I was wrong.

I'm definitely interested...

So nominally, we can afford 5 chokers at no upkeep cost to us.

Every additional choker will cost us 1gpt (same for units in neutral territory).
Every additional unit on defensive duty or "waiting to invade" will cost us 0.5gpt.

This basically says we need to get to 5 chokers asap, adding more if Vox is threatening to leave The Voice.

DeepO

[DeepO]

Originally posted by Blake
I'm pretty neutral towards getting a couple of barracks (120h) in a way I'd rather +5 h.rule happiness from 5 more skirmishers.

Thoughts?

Any unit we intend to upgrade through its life would be better coming from a barracks... however like you said, we're probably going to build new units at the first chance of trouble. I don't think we'll have to wait to Astronomy for that, though, there will be a passage that doesn't completely isolate us from the rest of the world.

The best promotions against other teams are city garrison on skirms, collateral damage on cats, or pinch / cover on axes. These are the promotions we're going to need whan defending against an attack. These don't combine well with our offensive approach right now.

So while it can't hurt, a barracks won't help a lot either. I'd rather put those 120 hammers into something else.

DeepO

[DeepO]

Originally posted by Metaliturtle
have we even taken into account that Donegeal is a builder and may waste hammers on a barracks or something else instead of units?

barracks aren't a waste for Vox, but I doubt it will save them. Not against cats anyway, all we need to offset that advantage is 1 extra cat...

DeepO

[Metaliturtle]

he also likes building temples etc.

[Blake]

If he builds a Temple we axerush him.
In fact maybe we should send a list of approved structures to build, like granary, things we can possibly capture. Anything with culture just isn't useful to us.

[Arrian]

Except in the "they wasted hammers on this" sorta way.

-Arrian

[Arrian]

In light of there being a 3rd civ on the continent, we may want to re-think the no-barracks plan.

I mean, we think we can beat Vox with or without a barracks, but even after we beat Vox we will not be alone. Therefore, the barracks is more valueable as a long-term investment as the units that survive the war will be more experienced.

-Arrian