You guys are correct: the German team does not have vision on the tile southwest of the gems. I thought that they did from the hill two tiles to the north, heading southeast and then southwest across flat ground. However, vision doesn't work that way, and their vision is indeed blocked by the jungle hill tile that sits in the way. Checked it in Worldbuilder and DaveV is correct. Thanks!
This actually makes things much simpler:
There's our staging tile, southwest of the gems. There's no need to fool with Cutting Edge now. We'll stage the units a little further back, probably the tile southeast of the rice just to stay away from the border, then move onto the red X tile on T149. On Turn 150, war chariots can immediately reach Wasserburg and hopefully take it on the first turn of the war. If there's one axe inside, as little as two chariots will be able to capture the city. The rest of our slow movers can move north of the gems tile, and then northwest to Worms from there. We'll put a Sentry unit with the rest of the stack, and thus will be able to see into Worms immediately. Then on the capital from there.
Kjn, I don't see any need to road over by Fields of Color (the WPC city to our northeast). We won't be moving any units over there, and neither will their team. All their units are going to be up on the WPC/German border.
Merovech, I see the German capital as by far the most important city to take in this region. It's their oldest and best city, the starts were all mirrored so it has excellent terrain, it's on a hill with 60% cultural defenses so the borders extend out for 4 tiles in all directions, etc. If we can hit the capital and take it out quickly, everything else is going to fall apart for the German team from there. The western German cities will be completely isolated from the rest of their civ without the capital, easy to take down at our leisure. Obviously it all depends on how they choose to move their units, but the capital feels like the top strategic objective to me.
Shoot the Moon, I saw the potential triple fork as well, but I'm guessing we won't have enough knights to do too much with it. Maybe though, we'll certainly keep it in mind.
This actually makes things much simpler:
There's our staging tile, southwest of the gems. There's no need to fool with Cutting Edge now. We'll stage the units a little further back, probably the tile southeast of the rice just to stay away from the border, then move onto the red X tile on T149. On Turn 150, war chariots can immediately reach Wasserburg and hopefully take it on the first turn of the war. If there's one axe inside, as little as two chariots will be able to capture the city. The rest of our slow movers can move north of the gems tile, and then northwest to Worms from there. We'll put a Sentry unit with the rest of the stack, and thus will be able to see into Worms immediately. Then on the capital from there.
Kjn, I don't see any need to road over by Fields of Color (the WPC city to our northeast). We won't be moving any units over there, and neither will their team. All their units are going to be up on the WPC/German border.
Merovech, I see the German capital as by far the most important city to take in this region. It's their oldest and best city, the starts were all mirrored so it has excellent terrain, it's on a hill with 60% cultural defenses so the borders extend out for 4 tiles in all directions, etc. If we can hit the capital and take it out quickly, everything else is going to fall apart for the German team from there. The western German cities will be completely isolated from the rest of their civ without the capital, easy to take down at our leisure. Obviously it all depends on how they choose to move their units, but the capital feels like the top strategic objective to me.
Shoot the Moon, I saw the potential triple fork as well, but I'm guessing we won't have enough knights to do too much with it. Maybe though, we'll certainly keep it in mind.
Even with just 5-6 WCs though (and especially if we can add even just 1-2 knights to that) it is still useful as it could force the Germans to whip spears instead of axes, which obviously then makes it a lot easier for our maces. Might be easier to do after capturing Worms, but if we wind up pausing for a turn 1S of Worms to bombard down culture moving the 2-movers NW-N might be a pretty decent idea actually (although this will obviously depend on what units the Germans have and all).