09-04-2003 20:30									#31
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Something else to keep in mind in planning our war economy: When we get Feudalism, we get/have to build medieval infantry instead of swordsmen. That raises interesting questions about whether we want to push ahead with Feudalism ASAP or build up some cash while building swordsmen and then upgrade to medieval infantry to whatever extent we can without compromising our front lines. Enough gold would also let us rush Tempest's aqueduct even after building a barracks, but we could likely get that more easily after multiple Feudalism sales than by waiting.

	09-04-2003 20:33									#32
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RP is out of this War with us at least. They don't have a coastal city yet! ND has one on the other side of BOB from us... best they could do is a Galley or two, no problem. At most we have to face GoW and Vox... GoW with no Iron... I don't think so. I can't see it as a conspiracy... unless the conspiracy is just to try and get Vox to be a speedbump for us.

	09-04-2003 20:33									#33
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I've already upgraded all three vet warriors and one regular. I'm inclined to think we should upgrade the others too: warriors can stop a landing, but they can't do much about immortals landing farther away and marching down the mountains.

	09-04-2003 20:40									#34
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quote: For now let's just hold back, and force everything off the mountains coming towards Arashi (Spears or Swords fortified on a mountain are 4.5 defense). Switch Bolderberg or Tornado to a Spear. Then use WC's to clean up anything that drops down into the flat. All our WC's should be in Arashi for now.

I agree.

quote: I've already upgraded all three vet warriors and one regular. I'm inclined to think we should upgrade the others too: warriors can stop a landing, but they can't do much about immortals landing farther away

I agree. Vox has galleys, and if they had the brains, could be offloading Immortals down by our core. A warrior can block off a mountain, but cannot be expected to attack and kill an immortal out in the open that threatens a city. WCs will do that pretty well, but at 2 v. 2.2, they will lose/retreat fairly often too. I want the swords as finishers.

-Arrian

	09-04-2003 21:07									#35
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I think we need more WCs more than we need spears. Swordsmen can be used in much the same way as spearmen (albeit a bit more expensively) to block off paths of approach, but with Vox having galleys, we need mobile units that can go to wherever a galley tries to land and deal with the invasion force.

	09-04-2003 21:09									#36
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In truth, we need both. Right now we have 2 cities that can build vet troops, yes? Can we split them between spears & WCs, and then as more cities come online (barracks), assign the new ones to WC (or horsemen if we muster 30 shields) production?

-Arrian

	09-04-2003 21:23									#37
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quote: Originally posted by Aeson RP is out of this War with us at least. They don't have a coastal city yet! ND has one on the other side of BOB from us... best they could do is a Galley or two, no problem. At most we have to face GoW and Vox... GoW with no Iron... I don't think so. I can't see it as a conspiracy... unless the conspiracy is just to try and get Vox to be a speedbump for us.

RP: Barcelona, which is a little south of Madrid, is a coastal city. However, no harbor there, so they probably haven't built more than two galleys. In fact, it's very possible that they haven't even built a single galley.
Btw, they have surprisingly few cities and land improvements! They must have been building up an army.

GoW: they do have iron. They only contacted us with the question of iron trade because their iron source is close to ND's territory and could be easily compromised, so they want a backup source.
Btw, Hot_Enamel said that he's been pushing to a deal where GoW would fund some of our harbor and give us wine, and our part of the deal would be to provide them with iron if their own source falls to ND's hands. I can see that, or something similar, happening - once we've connected a second source and secured both of our sources, of course.

	09-04-2003 21:25									#38
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How much use can we really get out of spears? If we plant our spears on the mountains by Arashi, Vox has to come out and play to attack us anywhere. (Hurricane can build additional defenders long before any immortals past the first one or two could reach it on foot.) And if Vox tries to go around the spearmen to hit Arashi, the spearmen can back up into the city while our other forces attack. We'd have to write off Monsoon as expendable if Vox attacks with more units than we can take out on the way there, but it has no real military value at present anyhow and we don't have enough forces to defend it and Arashi both against a concerted Voxian effort.

	09-04-2003 21:28									#39
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Nathan,

We have 2 spears, yes? They can cover the mountains for now, but what if Vox does what they should do when presented by a single line of spears on mountains (which is suck it up and attack, accepting the 4:4.5 odds) and win, either by luck or force of numbers?

In short, I want more than just one thin line up on those mountains. Plus, longer-term, they upgrade to pikes.

I agree that WCs will be the way we win: by hitting their immortals out in the open. That's great. But I want to be damn sure we CAN force them into the open. So I want 4 spears, not 2.

-Arrian

	09-04-2003 21:32									#40
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Looking at the map, the iron GoW spoke of earlier seems to be within ND's borders now, although GoW could get it from them by building a city the right place if they want to. That would satisfy their upgrade needs if they have the cash on hand when they build the city, but whether the city would survive for any length of time is another question entirely. I checked GoW's cities and am not finding iron under any of them.

Nathan

	09-04-2003 21:41									#41
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We have three spears: one in Monsoon, one in Sandstorm, and one just west of EotS. I suppose building another one wouldn't compromise our ability to have an adequate WC force too badly.

I think massing our spears on the single tile by Arashi is the way to go, though. With a stack of four, Vox would need five immortals before they would get a chance to attack a wounded survivor from a battle we won (assuming we win some battles). If we split them up, even when we win, we leave vulnerable spearmen that are easy pickings for the next immortal who attacks. Plus, that's the only place we can plant spears where Vox can't go around them and still stay on mountains (unless we'd deploy a lot of spears as singletons, which would be suicide for them).

Nathan

	09-04-2003 21:50									#42
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In the absence of last-minute objections, I'll do the WC attack in a few minutes.

	09-04-2003 22:07									#43
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I attacked the immortal, and it was a disaster: the WC was killed with no damage at all to the immortal! If Vox can continue with that kind of luck, they may actually win this thing. (On the other hand, the lack of damage means they won't know we attacked.)

At this point, Ouch is probably best off staying fortified (1) to give him a better chance of survival than he'd have running and (2) in the hope that Vox will attack with the veteran immortal on the mountain rather than the regular we just attacked (which I think would get an automatic promotion). Or we could take a really long long shot and have Ouch attack one of the immortals himself.

Last edited by nbarclay on 09-04-2003 at 22:15

	09-04-2003 22:15									#44
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Disband Ouch. He's dead, and we don't want to give Vox another chance at an upgrade.

Poor nameless WC...

	09-04-2003 22:19									#45
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Damn RNG. That really sucks.

Disbanding him is probably the way to go. He has almost no hope of victory, and can only serve to promote their regular immortal (or die to their vet).

Damnit! Given this, we need a replacement for that WC. I guess we make due with the 3 spears for now, and build WCs only.

-Arrian

	09-04-2003 22:20									#46
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instead of disbanding, I would attack the reg immortal. It's a 1 in 10 chance (roughly) that Ouch wins, but if he doesn't, it's only a 1 in 24 chance that imortal gets promoted.

Further: indeed, RP most likely has no galleys, or 2 at most. This map is now 7 turns old, at which time they had no scouting done on their coast, and I doubt that they were going to leave their galleys in port. In those 7 turns, they might have build 2 galleys, but I doubt it.

DeepO

	09-04-2003 22:23									#47
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It's 100% that it gets promoted if it wins. 2 victories in one turn is an automatic upgrade.

	09-04-2003 22:26									#48
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We already attacked the regular immortal once and lost (not just retreated), so he's guaranteed promotion if we attack him and fail. That's a one in ten chance of killing three hit points' worth of immortal, and a nine in ten chance of giving Vox an extra hit point's worth of immortal if your odds are correct. 0.9 x 1 = 0.9, while 0.1 x 3 is 0.3. So the expected value is for Vox to gain 0.6 hit points' worth of immortal if we attack (although they might have to rest and recover from the damage). That's not a move I like.

Nathan

	09-04-2003 22:38									#49
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Oh, of course. My apologies... disband him.

DeepO

	09-04-2003 22:45									#50
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The Warrior by Dissidentville could move 9, to get a better view of everything. If he see's more Immortals it could really change where we want to move other forces, or how many upgrades to make.

	09-04-2003 22:53									#51
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Forces moving down their road wouldn't be visible yet, so the only way he'd see anything is if Vox ferried some troops around Grog's vantage point by galley prior to their attack. I don't view that as likely, although it's not impossible. I'd rather pull Hack back for upgrade.

	09-04-2003 23:01									#52
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I've got to go for a while. I'll probably be back, at least for a while, a little before 8:00 P.M. Apolyton time.

	09-04-2003 23:01									#53
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Believe it or not but I just had an interesting conversation with Eli, over the phone.
We've met in IRC and I decided to give him my home # and cellphone #. We talked for some 20 minutes.

Eli turned out to have a somewhat weak character. It was much like talking to someone over the Internet who seems very confident and appears to have a dominant personality, only to find out later that he's really a... well, nerd.
I abused that and dominanted throughout the entire conversation, while not giving out anything of value (AFAIK). We had a nice talk about all kinds of other things, such as world issues, so by the time we got to the game I could verify that he's honest and managed to somewhat submit him... not sure I'm using the right terms here. Anyway, here's what I found out, which IMHO is reliable:

1. Vox are attacking us because they believe that they have no other choice. They don't see themselves as being able to do more than liberate West Wittlich. They believe that in order to expand, they have to do this over us. I got the impression that they greatly underestimate our strength.
2. Vox are dividing their forces to deal both with Bob and ourselves. Eli says that they have several immortals on Bob. I've made sure not to mention to him that GoW (and possibly ND too) don't intend to go to our continent (Hot_Enamel even said that their horsemen would be massacred; surely ND too understands what could happen to their swordsmen as soon as they land).
3. As I said, Vox tend to believe that they have no other choice. I got the impression that they're heading down the path of "dying in a blaze of glory".
4. Thought this was interesting enough to mention: during the Vox-Lux crisis, when Vox took out Portia, there was a lot of tension within Vox and Beta decided that "they've had it" and pulled the plug at Lux, only to find out later that a Lego galley was merely two turns away from Vox, ready to make contact, and give Lego contact with Lux so that Lego could give them a city on their continent.

	09-04-2003 23:02									#54
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Makes sense... he would reach Arashi before any immortal could threaten a city. However, he is regular, we would have no scouting at all up there, and Arashi needs to rush its barracks before it can upgrade.

Come to think of it: do we have enough cash / desire to rush the barracks in Arashi, at least partly?

DeepO

	09-04-2003 23:09									#55
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Another question: can workers reasonably rush a fortress on the tile 9 from Arashi? A road would be nice as well, but a fortress seems to be a reasonable demand in our situation. If Vox marches down the spines with 8-12 immortals, we're going to have a fun time defending.

DeepO

	09-04-2003 23:12									#56
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Correction: Eli contacted me, and said that he was wrong about the Vox-Lux affair. It seems that Lego was 2 turns away from reaching an agreement with Lux, and 10 turns away from reaching them.

	09-04-2003 23:17									#57
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I'd love to get some workers working on a fort + road to help our spears block their immortals. The question is whether or not we can feasibly defend them while they're doing it.

-Arrian

	09-04-2003 23:17									#58
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If we leave Monsoon completely unguarded they are likely to see that next turn with their Spear...

Possible scenario:

Perhaps we should set a trap? Their Immortals by road (if they are sending them) will take 3 turns to get to the Mountains NE of Monsoon. We can have 6 WC's and 2-3 Swords in Arashi by then, keeping enough Swords in Hurricane to defend it (and the WC's can respond within 2 turns if necessary... we need 2 turns warning on the E coast.)

We see 2 Immortals, we gave them enough gold to upgrade 2-3 more depending on how much they had, and 6 is probably a good estimate for how many they had previously. So 9 Immortals. It looks like they are drawing their Warriors back to upgrade as well, so 11 Immortals within 4 turns. 2 of them accounted for at least temporarily.

The 2 out in the Desert are a bit of a concern, but are out of the picture as far as being threatening for the next 2 turns. They could load on the Galley, the Galley moves, then drops them off on the Mountains next turn. If we send our Spear in Sandstorm 88 of Tempest we can beat them there to force them off the Mountains. We can also put 2 units on the other Mountains to deny landing (Warriors/Swords). The 3rd Mountain has a Worker on it already to deny landing.

That would put Vox at 3 turns before they could threaten Hurricane, and keep them from coming on the Mountains. If their Galley turns back, we will know it this way.. and it simplifies things greatly.

The WC's all at Arashi, with Spears ready to move 9 onto the Mountain if needed, or into Monsoon. Next turn our upgraded Swords can move to Sandstorm if the Galley has moved back (our Spear will be in position to know if we move it first). From their they can either attack the E Desert Immortals (if our WC's haven't cleaned them up yet), or move into Arashi. We want everything in Arashi (other than Hurricane's defense) in 3 turns. Rushing the Barracks there (and then building a city wall) might be a good idea too.

If Vox see's an undefended Monsoon will they go for it? Maybe... if they do we can hit them with 8-9 units, and the WC's with enough movement left over to move into Monsoon or back to Arashi depending on how things go. The Spears can move into Monsoon if we can hold it after the battle, or can fortify on our Swords if not.

If they don't go for it, we are still in the best position our troops can be in.

	09-04-2003 23:20									#59
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I like it, Aeson.

-Arrian

	09-04-2003 23:24									#60
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I'd rather have our Workers build up EotS into a 30 shield per turn city for our GA.. and if we can spare the cash, Tempest's Aquaduct is going to pay off very quickly. The Northermost worker can move to 9 of Arashi to build a road there, being joined by the worker 7 of Arashi the turn after. That will give us 3 turns to get a road there, which will be in time to use before Vox can get Immortals there.

Ctrl-Shift-M verifies that Vox doesn't have any Horses right?