900 BC The First Step To Enlightenment

[PJayTycy]

Here is the screenshot to go with that plan : I numbered the roads where our forces have to wait for next turn.

What do you think the bananas could do in 27 turns for defense ? Probably a lot, so I think we should immediately follow up with building a second wave (1 chuk from our 3 cities) and moving it to the split point. By the time the second wave arrives there, it should be obvious which banana city is in need of most help.


Also note, I didn't include any chop or whip in that plan, nor any military build up in Being. Being can continue the wonders, the settler, the galley and a scout to go hut-popping in the peninsulas. After that, they might join the war production, if needed.

[Impaler[WrG]]

I favor a lighter force attacking earlier and then racing south to attack Storm. The Bananas will have been delt a severe enough blow with the loss of their southern city (ware stone and horses are located) that they will be off balance long enough for us to focus attention on Strom. The Bananas will expect an imminent attack on their Capitol and will seak to garrison it as strongly as possible but will not be able to build any unit that can stand up to our Chucks. Once we start the war with Bananas we would then tell Strom that we claim all their lands and are massing up a SOD just outside Bananas borders, we should try to see too it that Bananas briefly see this force lurking in just the area we say it is. Should storm talk to the Bananas and confirm what we have said they will be re-assured that our hands are full and the navel landing on their coast will come as a complete shock as they will think our forces are deployed in the north.


Here is a time line of troop movements I've produced for my war plan which I'm going to call the Hybrid plan (attack both teams) to distinguish it from the Banana Peel (full out attack vs Banana only) that BT proposes. Both plans involve rapid road construction towards the Banana south so we should be able to get such a road building plan that works for both plans and can be set in motion soon. My invasion plan calls for the first wave to consist of 4-5 units 2 of which are chucks and 2-3 supporting units which would include one Ax, one spear and one other unit. The second wave would consist of 2 chucks which merge with the first wave to become a grand fleet headed southward to unload on the southernmost beach and destroy the northern Storm city and then proceeding to pillage the country side with the assistance of Vox. The first and second wave build deadlines are approximately 4 turns apart a good gap to allow for successive whip building. The third wave would be built at our leashure and might involve Catapults if were looking close to that, 3 chucks and 3 swordsman would certainly be sufficient to eliminate the remaining Banana cities. Our wonder building in the capitol might be a bit delayed as we need to build 3 Galleys quite rapidly, their is some risk of losing the Great Lighthouse if we don't immediately begin it in Beijing but I feel this is an acceptable risk to take in knocking out two team and achieving continental Hegemony.

D-2: First wave training deadline for Xian and Beijing
D-1:
D: First wave departs Tassagrad along Banana Road, First wave training deadline Tassagrad
D+1:
D+2:
D+3: Second Wave training deadline for Xian and Beijing, Galleys for First Wave pickup depart Beijing, Galley build deadline for First wave
D+4: Second wave transports depart Beijing, Galley build deadline for Second wave
D+5: Second Wave trraining dealine for Tassagrad, First wave reaches point B (Banana Border)
D+6: Declaration of War on Bananas, move into Banana territory, City defenders visable
D+7: First wave assaults and takes Southern Banana City, Second Wave reaches west bank of the river west of point A (Barbarian CrossRoads), possible 3rd wave from Beijing if passageway is avalable and has 8 turn total transit time
D+8: Second Wave Troops load to Transports
D+9:
D+10:
D+11: First Wave troops board Galleys at point C (Equator Bay)
D+12:
D+13:
D+14:
D+15: Fleet reaches Point E unloading zone
D+16: Fleet reaches Point F unloading zone
D+17: Fleet reaches Point G unloading zone
D+18: Earliest assault on Storms Northern City from G (Sword Beach)

The amount of preperations that need to occure before the plan begins still needs to be worked out. We need to look at unit production times and see how they dove tail with this proposal, I think 6-8 turn after first wave unit creation begins we would be ready for D day, the critical start turn on which the whole campaign is balanced

[N35t0r]

As soon as GS sees a unit of ours next to them, they'll pump the nanas like there's no tomorrow. Consider how much damage vox has inflicted on GS's growth (all those military units). Are you really willing to risk going to war with an enemy which will be at least on equal grounds with us while still having a thorn at our side?

Besides, if somehow the timing means they finish off Vox around the time our units are arriving there, further peace with them will be impossible to hold.

Personally, I'd be much more comfortable taking out nanas before taking the next step, and leavign the option of a long term alliance with GS open, especially since we don't know what might happen on the other continent. If the horde finishes off the mercs and allies with sarantium, they might outtech /outbuild us+vox, since vox's growth has been severly hampered.

Also, killing GS because they have great territory and then giving it to Vox doesn't put us in a much better situation, as we will still have to trust them to be our vassals (and between trusting GS to be our allies or Vox to be our vassals, I'd put my money on the former...)

[binTravkin]

Some points:

1.Roading and then walking by road to second city is too long and through Banana territory, we need surprise, hence galleys.

2.If we dispatch more reinforcements to south after the first wave while capital and the unknown 3rd city are not taken, we risk being counterattacked or at least Banana cap becoming an impenetrable fortress with some 10 archers and walls. We cannot win war on two fronts, not in any realistic timescale.
Here I must add, that attacking in 28 turns when we can do in 21 is like halving our chances for victory.

3.If the first wave is going south by sea, it should not step out our borders other than loaded into galleys. That leaves a bunch of worker turns to use on chopping and fastens up the troop production.

4.If one force is going by sea and other by land (road), second arrival can be within 10 turns, which is still a lot of alert time for Bananas, but the least we can get.

5.Splitting forces for a two pronged assault aint doing us any good. If we ever conquer a city, it will be much later and much more effort needed. Remember that each turn we delay attack on a city because of insufficient forces, we're alerting the enemy and thus our forces get even more inappropriate.

My invasion plan calls for the first wave to consist of 4-5 units 2 of which are chucks and 2-3 supporting units which would include one Ax, one spear and one other unit.

Ideally for first wave we shouldn't produce any other unit than chuko and use our 2 old axes, because chopping chukos is the most economic use of chops.

Besides, if somehow the timing means they finish off Vox around the time our units are arriving there, further peace with them will be impossible to hold.

If the horde finishes off the mercs and allies with sarantium, they might outtech /outbuild us+vox, since vox's growth has been severly hampered.

Mercs aren't being finished off right now, the weak one is Horde atm with tiny 180 or so score and 2 cities.

The amount of preperations that need to occure before the plan begins still needs to be worked out. We need to look at unit production times and see how they dove tail with this proposal, I think 6-8 turn after first wave unit creation begins we would be ready for D day, the critical start turn on which the whole campaign is balanced

We can do one chop in 4 turns (chopping the forest near Tassagrad) and another in 7 turns.
After that we can do chops more often as our currently busy workers free up. That means Tassagrad will need 7 turns for the first chuko out and Xian 8.
We could also build a scout in Tassagrad first to go and see what's going on in Banana lands.

The first and second wave build deadlines are approximately 4 turns apart a good gap to allow for successive whip building.

Whipping is only useful in Beijing, other cities lose more than gain.

3 chucks and 3 swordsman would certainly be sufficient to eliminate the remaining Banana cities

If Bananas have 20 or more turns before first warning and our assault on them, they can have as much as 10 archers in their capital. 3 swordsman and 3 chukos aint gonna do it, 6 chukos might, but unlikely too.

[PJayTycy]

Originally posted by Impaler[WrG]
I favor a lighter force attacking earlier and then racing south to attack Storm.

Your point D, where the troops gather in Tassagrad is my turn 21. From there the timing for an attack on banana south is identical. So, the difference will be in the build-up fase. Your units (4 chuks + 3 galleys + 3 other units) cost +/- 500 hammers. For my 9 chuks, we need 540 hammers. However, 150 of your hammers are for 3 galleys, which can only be built in Being (hammer output = 13 hammers max). This will take 12 turns, to be started after we research sailing, and build the pyramids and a settler, which will be an other 4 turns. So, the galleys might be ready in 16 turns, which is your D+4. So, your "D-turn" is atleast 12 turns away from now.
So, in your plan, we attack banana-south in 15 turns and storm-north in 28 turns.

In the plan above, we attack banana-capital and banana-south in 28 turns, with more units.

However, I think bt has a vallid point when he says don't split our forces, and do a quick, strong attack on one of bananas cities. 28 turns is a long time.

[PJayTycy]

Originally posted by binTravkin
Some points:

1.Roading and then walking by road to second city is too long and through Banana territory, we need surprise, hence galleys.

Time for 2 galleys in being = +/- 12 turns (included : 4 turns research of sailing, + 8 turns building).
Time for 4 chuks + 1 scout in tassagrad is +/- 12 turns too (included : 1 scout in tass, 2 chucks in tass and xian, moving from xian to tass)

Moving the galleys to the loading spot is an other 4 turns. So, in 16 turns 2 galleys can start moving south, with 4 chuks on them. Then, the galleys need 4 turns to go to the unload spot and our chuks 3 more turns before the real attack starts. Together this is 23 turns before an attack on banana south is possible with 4 chuks.

However, if we do the same with a road, the timing is like this:
In 12 turns, our 4 chuks are in tassagrad and can start moving over the road. 4 turns later, they'll be at road tile 7b. Road tile 8b will be finished the turn after that (if we don't build the a-route to the capital), so our troops can walk to tile 9b. Then we have 2 turns of walking through unroaded forest before we can attack. Together this is 20 turns before an attack on banana sout is possible with 4 chuks.

So, the land-route is faster.

Originally posted by binTravkin
5.Splitting forces for a two pronged assault aint doing us any good. If we ever conquer a city, it will be much later and much more effort needed. Remember that each turn we delay attack on a city because of insufficient forces, we're alerting the enemy and thus our forces get even more inappropriate.

I agree, but I think banana's capital and second city are equally strong. I don't know which one we should attack first. However, if we do this, the other city will be alarmed enough to provide good defenses (see your own point 2 above)

Originally posted by binTravkin
We can do one chop in 4 turns (chopping the forest near Tassagrad) and another in 7 turns.
After that we can do chops more often as our currently busy workers free up. That means Tassagrad will need 7 turns for the first chuko out and Xian 8.

Tassagrad (after its mine completes) and Xian are able to turn out chuks normally each 4 turns (15 hammers/turn, for 60 hammers total needed). We could chop an extra one in a single turn after making 2 in a normal way though, which would make our attack force 2 chuks stronger.



I don't really fancy taking on GS and bananas at once. I think, if we attack banana capital first and then move our forces to banana-south, they might arrive there at the same time as in my plan to attack both cities at once. The only difference will be the surprise effect.

[PJayTycy]

here's a chat in #ac of yesterday evening between lacero, safan and myself :

[00:02:29] *** Lacero has joined #ac.
[00:12:17] AC-PJay: hello
[00:12:44] Lacero: hiya
[00:13:57] Lacero: turn seems stalled
[00:14:03] AC-PJay: yes
[00:14:12] AC-PJay: for 3 days ...
[00:14:25] AC-PJay: although it doesn't help Vox never posts about turn sent
[00:17:09] AC-PJay: how is your analysis of GS' lands going ?
[00:17:34] Lacero: I only just got back from work :(  bad day today
[00:17:56] Lacero: I can see they worked flood plains at first, until just after their second pop
           point I think
[00:20:29] AC-PJay: Well, keep up the good work :)
[00:20:34] Lacero: 5 turns into your plan our power jumps by 10K soldiers, as we finish two chuks.
           and a 4K soldier boost when the barracks is done.  so I think banana can get 23 turns
           warning if they're paranoid.
[00:20:51] Lacero: hehe, I'm very new to this.  I think I can get it if I keep trying and have your
           analysis to compare with
[00:21:05] AC-PJay: our (and their) score has jumped bigger due to techs
[00:21:10] AC-PJay: power I mean
[00:21:47] Lacero: I suppose someone might htink we got horseback riding if they weren't watching
           the score closely
[00:22:11] AC-PJay: right
[00:22:32] |SafaN|: they can see wich techs we have anyways
[00:23:02] AC-PJay: even if they know we are building chuks, it's pretty logical we want to defend
           our wonders right ?
[00:23:22] AC-PJay: I think our army is the smallest of our continent currently
[00:24:39] Lacero: yes.  but then that's best, less obsolete units in the war.  we're fighting with
           the best units available
[00:25:03] Lacero: and yeah, like you say it makes sense we need to arm ourselves now we've got our
           wonders
[00:27:47] AC-PJay: I think Impaler can look for the diplamcy just fine, and we can try at the end
           to finish the last 2 chuks in each city in consecutive turns
[00:29:37] AC-PJay: Initially I made a plan without such longs roads. The attack was sooner (in 21
           turns instead of 28 ) , but was only 3 chuks for capital and 2 chuks for south city
[00:29:51] AC-PJay: I don't think that would have been enough
[00:29:57] Lacero: too much chance to be unlucky iwth 3
[00:30:12] |SafaN|: uhu, better safe then sorry
[00:30:49] |SafaN|: see how much bad luck gs had with attacking vox
[00:31:27] Lacero: gs have had a lot of bad luck for how well they're doing
[00:31:33] Lacero: losing the relgiion race by 1 turn
[00:31:50] AC-PJay: yes, imagine where they'd be if they had luck like us
[00:32:02] Lacero: lauching a space ship? :)
[00:33:24] AC-PJay: we're still very much reaping the benefits of safan's metal casting
[00:33:31] |SafaN|: :p
[00:34:18] |SafaN|: well u changed the name of rgn-temple, so i don't expect to have us much luck
           anymore ;)
[00:34:31] AC-PJay: I didn't change it
[00:34:36] AC-PJay: Maniac did
[00:48:35] Lacero: the mfg goods graph would be kinda scary if we weren't orange
[00:48:56] AC-PJay: yes :)
[00:49:17] AC-PJay: they'll be lucky to see we "wasted" it all on wonders
[00:50:26] Lacero: I was going to ask, if we get pyramids which goverment are we picking?
[00:51:08] AC-PJay: good question
[00:51:40] Lacero: I know we want the engineer points, but it can do other things too :)
[00:53:26] AC-PJay: I don't know if the engineers are still so important now...  We didn't assign an
           engineer 30+ turns to get a great engineer, to build the pyramids, so we could assign
           more engineers, did we ?
[00:57:57] Lacero: I guess we'll end up researching castles etc. before we can pop it
[00:59:12] Lacero: and...  it's worse for us to use engineers for building wonders as we can build
           them faster normally.  so yeah I see what you mean
[01:04:03] AC-PJay: hereditary rule : +1 hapiness / mil. unit in a city
           representation : +3 labs / specialist and +2 happiness in our top-5 cities
           police state : +25% military unit production, -50 % war unhappiness
           universal suffrage : +1 gold / town, goldrushing enabled
           
           *) universal suffrage is definately not usefull, we have no towns and we'll need our
           small amount of cash for our deficit
           *) police state, would add 3 hammers in xian and tass (raw input =12, with forges=15,
           with police state=18 ) this might shave off 1 turn on 5 chuks
           *) representation is better than hereditary rule in almost all cases, except when you've
           got a big army with nothing to do. We could use the +2 hapiness in our cities to work
           more tiles (or to do more whipping)
[01:06:45] Lacero: police state doesn't sound that useful, and it gives a big warning.  the +2
           happiness will sort our war weariness anyway
[01:07:23] AC-PJay: so, I'd go for representation and keeping our engineer in being for the +3 labs,
           we might get even with GS again for techrate
[01:11:24] Lacero: gs's capital is built on flood plains isn't it?
[01:11:42] Lacero: I'm sure it is, but the image is really low quality and it doesn't make much
           sense
[01:12:21] AC-PJay: which image? The combined one, or the one we got from GS ?
[01:12:40] Lacero: the one from gs
[01:13:46] Lacero: they have 1 hammer, 10 gnp and 5 crop at the start.  1 hammer from city, 9 gnp
           from city, 3 crop from a floodpain city.  Leaving 2 crop and 1 gnp from their worked
           tile.
[01:14:10] Lacero: I know they have 5 crop because they have the same as us on the graph, and we're
           on a plains hill and worked a flood plain.
[01:21:00] AC-PJay: yes, you're right, the image is not clear, but I don't see any reason why the
           tile would not be a floodplain
[01:22:19] Lacero: yeah.  I've got most of the numbers written down from the graphs, at least up
           until they get bronze working.  
[01:22:26] Lacero: I'll have to try and make sense of them tomorrow
[01:23:05] AC-PJay: ok, I'll go to bed now
[01:23:09] AC-PJay: good night
[01:23:09] Lacero: pop growth should settle it for sure.  anyway, good night
[01:23:50] |SafaN|: nn

[binTravkin]

Time for 2 galleys in being = +/- 12 turns (included : 4 turns research of sailing, + 8 turns building).
Time for 4 chuks + 1 scout in tassagrad is +/- 12 turns too (included : 1 scout in tass, 2 chucks in tass and xian, moving from xian to tass)

Moving the galleys to the loading spot is an other 4 turns. So, in 16 turns 2 galleys can start moving south, with 4 chuks on them. Then, the galleys need 4 turns to go to the unload spot and our chuks 3 more turns before the real attack starts. Together this is 23 turns before an attack on banana south is possible with 4 chuks.

However, if we do the same with a road, the timing is like this:
In 12 turns, our 4 chuks are in tassagrad and can start moving over the road. 4 turns later, they'll be at road tile 7b. Road tile 8b will be finished the turn after that (if we don't build the a-route to the capital), so our troops can walk to tile 9b. Then we have 2 turns of walking through unroaded forest before we can attack. Together this is 20 turns before an attack on banana sout is possible with 4 chuks.

So, the land-route is faster.

Then go for Banana cap. We cannot afford running around their borders with a stack of super advanced units and expect them to sit and merrily stare at the event.

I agree, but I think banana's capital and second city are equally strong. I don't know which one we should attack first. However, if we do this, the other city will be alarmed enough to provide good defenses (see your own point 2 above)

Your point about land route being faster convinces me. Let's attack capital - that will be less time between them seeing us jump in power score and us actually attacking, besides taking capital will basically decide their fate.
We can, however continue on the road south, so second wave, if not needed at capital, can run straight south, or to the third city wherever it is.

Tassagrad (after its mine completes) and Xian are able to turn out chuks normally each 4 turns (15 hammers/turn, for 60 hammers total needed). We could chop an extra one in a single turn after making 2 in a normal way though, which would make our attack force 2 chuks stronger.

Single turn?
The chop for us is 30h now, add to that 25% from forge, which is either 35 or 37 depending on which value is used as base (maybe you know, PJay?), not enough to finish a chuko.

I don't really fancy taking on GS and bananas at once. I think, if we attack banana capital first and then move our forces to banana-south, they might arrive there at the same time as in my plan to attack both cities at once. The only difference will be the surprise effect.

Yes, let's strike at the cap.

[PJayTycy]

Originally posted by binTravkin
Single turn?
The chop for us is 30h now, add to that 25% from forge, which is either 35 or 37 depending on which value is used as base (maybe you know, PJay?), not enough to finish a chuko.

Right, it'll be 2 turns when chopped (37 hammers from chop + 2*15 hammers from normal production turns)