What happens after the war?

[Blake]

We will need a 5th "real" military unit for barb duty at EotS, possibly even a 6th. Lots of fog out there. Given that this is Prince difficulty a skirmisher will probably do the trick.

I do like in general the idea of a second worker since those floodplains are slow to improve, if we want to have a road to wine... we need that second worker. I don't think he's worth whipping. With such a production-strong site I only like whipping things which increase growth (for example a worker to connect a food resource would count). In any case the worker will only take 5 turns without the whip, we could shave off 1 turn by chopping a forest. But given that we will be running 12hpt I don't think chops are really needed. May as well save them for after maths (when ironically we'll be more production starved, due to many floodplain cottages).

In terms of research I support this research order:
Pottery.
Monarchy.
Construction.

Instead of monarchy (~500b total) we could get Montheism (~300b total) - I prefer Monarchy because it is reliable and can be delayed until after pottery - it's cheaper really because we'll be researching with cottages. Regardless I feel we do need at least +2 more happy to make use of floodplains (also post-vox war our units will be mostly only good for military police).

We could try for Iron Working... but I don't like the idea of no guaranteed benefit - no jungles to clear. Also with Jumbos on radar Construction is all the more attractive.

[Velociryx]

Sounds like our positions are reasonably close then.

As you've undoubtedly guessed, I'm 10,000% for that second worker, just as fast as we can get him, and since we're dealing with a Noble game setting, and have our near rival bottled up, I don't see a downside to putting said worker in the queue right after the settler, given half a dozen combat units already in play.

My biggest question/concern is Construction and its implications. If we're planning to kill them without catapults, then IMO, construction isn't really a pivotal tech. If we're waiting for catapults to finish the job, then why do we want to saddle ourselves with a dozen+ Axes, which will KILL our ability to research (gold spent on upkeep for all those axes = gold NOT spent on research).

In my mind, that's the single biggest issue before us, overshadowing such tactical considerations as what order to build the settler/worker in.

Until we get THAT piece firmly decided upon, the rest doesn't really amount to much.

We can do it either way, and we can WIN either way (with no long term ill effects). The main problem lies in picking one and running with it, cos we WILL hurt ourselves if we're on the fence about it.

-=Vel=-

EDIT: Re - Popping the 2nd worker - here, I'm thinking in terms of tiles worked. We don't have enough worker turns to make cottages in a timely fashion, which means our city pop point working an unimproved FP. Sacrifice that guy (that pop point), and we lose a few turns of growth, sure, but we get the worker faster, meaning that the remaining pop points work better (improved) tiles.

[Arrian]

If we ditch everything else and just beeline for construction, how long are we talkin' ?

I think I prefer waiting for cats, unless there is some overiding reason why just bumrushing with axes is better. We will take horrific casualties if we have no cats.

As for the 2nd worker... love to have him. Settler is priority, then we re-assess. Depending on the military situation, we could punch out a worker right after the settler.

-Arrian

[Velociryx]

Not sure of the timeframe, but one thing is for sure...if we're waiting that long, then we DON'T need a dozen axemen weighing us down until we get catapults. The maintenance between now and then will KILL us, and we'll never make it up. Far better to let them (Vox)develop some (make a temporary peace) and hit them again later (sometime after the second city is up and running).

They'll suspect something, and prolly remain on a war footing for the short term--this is consistent with the extreme cautiousness we've seen from them--which means that they'll delay building a worker, in favor of some more Archers for defense in the near term. If we build ours early and they keep on with the military units, they'll further degrade their position, relative to us (and we can always declare again once the 2nd city is up and running to keep them reeling).

However, I believe that Catapults are unnecessary in this case, and there are multiple ways of doing it.

* Max growth leading to max hammers = more than 2x the total production of Vox's only city = doom, even with unpromoted axes.

* Barracks first to offset the lack of Catapults...free promotion offsets the fortification bonus and partially undoes their defensive advantage. That, combined with the 2x production = doom without cats.

* No matter which way we choose to go, we could "pop till it hurts" at the tail end to get 4 additional axes out the gate, and then rebuild our population while they're on their way...providing a substantial buffer in case the RNG gets strange.

The main advantage is speed.

Faster conquest = faster gold mine = faster second capital (or nearly so). And we preserve the forests around the Voice (so we can use them later).

I'll happily go with the notion of waiting for Cats, but then we need to stop building military at ~6 units and either make peace or play cat and mouse, so maintenance costs don't ream us (growing the military as the free cap expands).

-=Vel=-

EDIT: And "ditching everything" should still mean a drive toward pottery, since the boost in coin that will give us will more than offset the delay in getting those two techs (and we'll need the granary for the Wine site whip machine in any case).

[Krill]

If we wait for cats, then all those axes are moot, with one exception: we will need to keep Vox bottled up. We can't just ask them to not build any settlers or improvements, we will have to keep them shut in; we will need a few axes, and a few skirms in their land.

[Velociryx]

Sure, sure, but we could seriously hamper their efforts with four Axes (or Axes/Skirms) in their territory--and this number could be gradually increased as our cottages come online, but that's got to be something we factor into our thinking immediately. We can't build tons of axes and then say, "oops....we really ought to wait for catapults."

It's too late, at that point, and the only way to reverse it is to just disband a bunch of units to recoup some research capacity and start over, and if we do THAT (for lack of planning and foresight), then we may as well just empty out our city and invite them to take it over without a fight.

-=Vel=-

[Arrian]

Clearly if we wait for cats we don't need a huge force of axes. We would need just enough to choke Vox and protect ourselves.

Barracks first to offset the lack of Catapults...free promotion offsets the fortification bonus and partially undoes their defensive advantage. That, combined with the 2x production = doom without cats.

I would want a barracks anyway before building our strikeforce (as opposed to skirms for choking purposes), cats or no cats.

-Arrian

[Velociryx]

*shrug* No skin off my nose either way...I'll get behind whatever plan prevails, but neither plan carries any significant risk.

The Axe rush is popular because it works. The defense bonus looks scary on paper, but in reality, it comes undone rather quickly once the troops behind the walls start getting hurt (which don't take long with Axes).

Whatever hammers we lose on the attack will be more than made up with via having, for all intents and purposes, a second palace at our disposal (Financial Trait + Gold Mine = the per turn output of a Palace). That's the kind of research that sets us up until well into the middle ages, and is certainly worth losing a few hammers (3 Axemen ~= the price of the settler to build a city, and for a *capital* site, we could certainly afford to lose a couple more than this....but we could lose three and still not really be at a "loss"...just to put it in perspective...we wouldn't actually start "losing" hammers till the 4th axe fell).

EDIT: The reason I bring this up specifically is because it's in the same ballpark, power-wise (research), as executing a CS Slingshot for the Beaureaucracy switch....instead of being concentrated in one city tho, the research is spread out, and we're not spending nearly as many hammers as we would be building the Oracle...especially if you don't start counting till the loss of the fourth Axe(the first three being countered by the settler we don't have to build).....(and like that play, we can enhance it further still by building an Academy, although admittedly, because of the spread out nature of the gain, the benefits of the academy are diluted....still, it's worth at least 2/3rds the price of the Oracle)

There are a number of directions we can go here, and in my mind, the three most likely are these:

1) Make peace. If we're not attacking till catapults, why not? Keep pressing them till we get the second city up and then let them go. At that point, we're rediculously far ahead of them....may as well let them develop what will soon be our land, right? And it'll keep us from getting mired in a war that spans tens of centuries. This carries a (very slight) risk that Vox could find some angle out there in the fog to use against us later and make it harder for us to defeat them. Unlikely, but within the realm of possibility (certainly a manageable risk).

2) Guerilla tactics. Wait for Catapults and keep choking them. This magnifies what is already a sufficient lead to doom them and degrades our research abilities. True, we can offset the research hit by working cottages, but we don't need to continue to choke them for the win, so it hurts our position of waiting in the long run, since we're denying them the opportunity to develop our lands for us. Nonetheless, for the extremely conservative players, this may be an attractive option.

3) End them now with massed Axes, eat the hammer loss and take the gold.

One thing we absolutely can't do if we're in this game for the long haul is have a muddled strategy that somehow seeks to do all three.

I'll get behind whatever plan is decided upon, but once we decide, we need to stick with it and play it out.

-=Vel=-

[Velociryx]

It should also be noted that NONE of these three choices carry any significant risk. We can run exhaustive simulations, such that we will not attack until we're certain of the win, so effectively, there is no risk in any of the three choices (well, not quite true...with option 1 we run the slight risk of us or Vox encountering something we can't control--another Civ--and changing the equation...but that could happen even if we stay at war (someone could find US), so that particular risk isn't anything we can exert much control over in any case.

Also, someone earlier (might have been the other thread), asked the question whether we should switch to slavery, and that, in turn, prompted the question of whether or not Vox could "tell" if we have Bronze.

I think we have to assume that the answer to that question is YES (since we're basically breaking down the f9 screen and able to discern what everyone else is doing...if we can do it, they can do it too...there's nothing magical about the analysis)....and in that case, there's no real advantage to NOT switching.

$0.02

-=Vel=-

[DeepO]

Sorry, if I repeat stuff, but so much has posted in the past few hours that I'd like to start on the beginning.

Originally posted by Velociryx
Guys, we've got a sufficient number of forests that the health cap isn't gonna be an issue. I'm not advocating clear-cutting, cos I am mindful of the need to keep a balance between those flood plains and our health cap, but let's face it....we're gonna hit the happy cap before we hit health, and with a granary in our future, we'll be setting ourselves up for additional health benefits in any case.

In the long run, you might be right. Right now, they're equally important, IIRC. Both are at the limit in only a couple of turns of full growth.

THE way to put this war to bed quickly is speed

The more I think on it, the more I think you hit the nail here. I need to rethink some of my options to better fit this priority... The question isn't so much if granary + pop is the better option, but we might even be better of without extra workers or even protection against barbs.

DeepO

[DeepO]

Originally posted by Blake
Cottages will soon DOUBLE our research rate, a tech like Monarchy combined with Wines city will immediately increase our happy cap by +2, which will do amazing things for EotS and make whipping very powerful (the more floodplains being worked, the more food surplus there is). But that only works with health from the forests - without those forests we are basically stuck at size 5 (in terms of production), since I presume we'll connect the deer for the first 2 forests, then the sheep for the next 2. That great city, stuck at size 5? And almost as many worker turns spent reclaiming health as was spent chopping? Those workers will be barely pulling in 3hpt.

Mhh. Indeed.

You give all the more reasons to consider putting Monarchy as an aim over Alphabet. However, you're going to do a little bit more of your excellent testing before you convince me that going for cottages first, monarchy later is going to beat going straight for monarchy without detour, and trying to sneak in Judaism while we're at it.

Nobody is arguing about the long term, though. We need commerce, and lots of it.

If we REALLY want to kill Vox quickly, then it can't be with a second city. We need to spend the hammers for the settler on units, and chop the forests for more units. Because any plan involving a settler just isn't going to have Vox destroyed within 30 turns - that's when the forest chop becomes a net negative.

I'm not following here, could you explain?

What I see is this: a settler will delay us with 9 turns when the mine completes (right?), during which time we could gain some 80h in units. A second city has to produce the same amount to catch up, and give us an exponential advantage. 7 turns to size 2 - 5 turns to size 3 - whip - 5 turns to size 3 - whip; should give us about the same amount of hammers. 17 turns after founding we break even, or 28 turns after our settler (27 with a piece of road in place). After that: pure profit.

The question becomes: are we going to pull it off in just 30 turns? Otherwise, even on production alone a second city is worth it.

30 turns before they fall includes 10 turns of transport, which basically says in 20 turns we need to have build all the units to beat the units Vox has built in 30 turns.

20 turns of production... that's what, +5 skirms, or +2 skirms + 2 axes? Against 7+ archers? Even if we pull back our warriors and upgrade them, it's not going to happen. Even if we build warriors now, stop research, and upgrade all we got to axes the moment we can, it's not going to happen

(although... hold on... that might be a valid strategy for speed here! Massive upgrades might win us the speed we're looking for, and might in the middle long term be even economically more sound than spending all those coins on upkeep)

Think about this. Wines site is BETTER than The Voice, at least in our hands

Don't be so sure. Capital sites have strategics nearby, and we can only see one of the 3 early ones.

I aree over the gold, though. I'll take a fp over a gold hill any day.

Vox have shown every indication of being a bunch of pussies, or at very least they approach us with immense caution.

They know their history... Last time, we looked to them like being in an absolute losing position.

I wouldn't think they're going to keep sitting by, and watching. They're definately going to try something... And they'll sell their souls to whoever comes along for an alliance.

The problem is: the end of the war is at least several months away. Either they grow bored and leave, or they have plenty of time to think, and rethink. We might see some 'impulsiveness'.

DeepO

[Velociryx]

Well, anything we do (or do not do) is going to come with a tradeoff attached, so yes...speed is a vital consideration, but how much are we willing to give up in the name of speed?

We could do it faster if we scrap the second city idea, but is that wise? Is that something we should seriously consider giving up?

Likewise, we could do it without the benefit of a barracks. This would be several turns faster, for sure, but again...a wise course?

Too much focus on speed and it'll have the opposite effect....that is to say, we'll reach a point where we cut too many corners in the name of speed, and wind up shooting ourselves in the foot.

Some things, sure, can be done away with in the name of speed, but if we wait till catapults, then speed is totally out the window anyway. Why rush? Cats are centuries off....

So that's the first question that needs answering.

Are we interested in speed? (do we want Vox's city sooner, rather than later)? If so, HOW interested are we? What corners are we willing to cut to get it fast?

-=Vel=-

[Blake]

But again i want to stress the point that if Vox really hole up, we can't dig them out with axes.

I also wish to point out that while the goldmine is attractive, it's NOT better than our settling options.
For example a city with 2 floodplains quickly brings in 8 commerce from cottage - and that's with a 4f surplus for growth. The Voice, whipped into submission by Vox, will bring in the 8c from the goldmine, but working the floodplains + cows + goldmine, will only have +2f surplus.

Floodplains are the most overpowered terrain type in CIV.

The Voice is a much more massive investment than creating a settler and garrison. We can't expect Vox to fold like an AI, at very least we should expect them to whip away all their population into archers at the last minute. This raises the hammer cost of taking the city by at least 200h (6 axemen to kill 4 archers) and means we only get a size 1 city for our efforts.

That's why I really don't mind taking our time destroying Vox, we only really need to destroy them once we've run out of good sites to settle, I think we could easily justify 3 cities (using the floodplains) and maybe 4. Of course destroying Vox also has the value of destroying Vox. But all signs are that the choke will go well and Vox wont be able to grow significantly, in fact they'll probably become stagment. Sooner or later crushing them will be a trival investment.

I also want to point out that by choking them at all we are comitting to Vox building up their military, if we really wanted a quick kill we should be letting them build up a false sense of security.

So at the moment I favor peaceful expansion, basically keeping enough units on hand to keep Vox in check. We don't need to suffer high upkeep costs, we get a free ride with 4 units in hostile territory, 4 units should be enough to keep The Voice under control.


On whipping of Workers:
Floodplains are a special case for whipping. The larger you are, the more food surplus you have. When you have something like Grassland Pigs and grassland cottages, then whipping is fine - the smaller you are, the faster you grow. But with floodplains, the larger you are, the faster you grow.
Ixnay on the Ipwhay.

[DeepO]

Originally posted by Blake
SO far as builds go, we can time growing to size 5 and compleiting the skirmisher - we do it like this:
Grow to size 5.
At size 5, maximize hammers.
The skirmisher completes in 1 turn.

Excellent. HM, are you taking notes?

At that point we have 4 skirmisher.

We should then train a settler, at 12hpt this will take 9 turns, with a chop it'll take 7 turns (if we chop+mine GL hill, then it should complete in 7 turns despite being at 11hpt for some of the build).

The settler should scurry over to the Wines site.

EotS can start producing axes at 1 every 3 turns.

Does anybody have a real test result of axes favoring skirms, BTW? skirms are only 25h IIRC, which is a very good bang for the buck ratio. And our axes aren't going to be promoted to CR I or II.

What about including some warriors, and speeding those that we've got back home to get an upgrade? The least they can do is provide minimal cover for EotS (which can produce units quicker than barbs can reach it)

So back to our military. 4 Skirmishers.
I say we use 2 skirmishers to choke, and 2 skirmishers to protect Wines, Vox MIGHT try bumrushing it with every unit they can spare, it'd be a daring move and one they might be willing to try. But I'm pretty sure 2 skirmishers will prove to be too formidable a garrison (Vox don't have their worker yet).

It will be too formidable for sure. I say we rush forward with skirms, and close the gate. That way, only 1 skirm will suffice. Heck, with all the axes/skirms passing by, it might even be unprotected, or with a warrior... at size 3, it can already start whipping. (I know 4 is better, and granary is superb, but size 3 without granary will be best in the short term)

Once the Axe stream arrives at the front (and I think we want to train at least a couple of axes) then Wines will be safe.

if we've got 4 skirms, we should move 4 skirms into their territory. It won't be so hard to position them, that we both threaten the Voice, as any escaping war party. Which means they aren't going to risk it: with 4 skirms next to your city, you're not going to want to leave with less than 3 defenders in place. Hence, no war party over the size of 1-2...
Oh, and axes reaching wines is enough, it doesn't have to go the whole way towards the front.

DeepO

[DeepO]

Originally posted by Velociryx
My biggest question/concern is Construction and its implications.

...

In my mind, that's the single biggest issue before us,

[edit: death to Vox] asap. That's easy, the longer we wait, the less we're in good shape afterwards. Don't forget the commerce/happy we're getting with Hinduism.

DeepO