[SPOILERS - PBEM29] spacetyrantxenu - Mao of Babylon

[spacetyrantxenu]

We'll see just how immortal they are

If I pink dot Kuro's horses then he won't have any immortals. And if I pink dot his horses with protective bows, promoted with CG (or if there is a nearby hill location), I don't see how he would take the city to be able to get his horses online to build the immortals. The only out he would have is if he rushes to settle the horses early, but that site is presumably 3rd ring so he'd likely settle the intermediate site first, like we're doing.

Is it still a pink dot if the territory is probably closer to my capital than anyone else's? The only site I had planned to settle that is questionable is the silver site, but even that isn't as necessary now that I know I already have silver in the BFC of the horses city (city 3). I would still like to settle the other silver site on Catwalk's border because that would give us a easily defensible border region with him and/or Sian.

I'm not sure how our settling plan would change if we manage to kill off Kuro. We need to prioritize settling the good land near our capital to keep maintenance down, but I also don't want to see our competitors benefit too much from the land made available by Kuro's elimination. There may be a bit of settler spam and limping to Currency involved, depending on how long this takes. But that's a worry for later. Job #1 for now is to put on a good show.

But diplomacy when I make contact with Kuro will be normal, this is supposed to be a surprise invasion. Well, unless he's reading the power graphs. I think I'll switch all EPs onto him when we make contact just so he can't see my graphs. And when it gets very close for time for the troops to cross into his land I'll work up a short NAP with Sian and Catwalk to cover myself a bit during the hostilities. Surely they won't refuse it, since my war is to their advantage probably more than my own. Again, details to worry about later. For now the immediate plan is to get these next 2 cities settled quickly and have them start building bows immediately.

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

Do you know what techs Kuro has researched? You can best-guess it since you've been tracking score increases and demos. I'd personally prefer not to bash our bowmen against immortals, but if we can get in and take his horses before he settles, this could certainly be a good metagame play (get the turns in on time). In game, probably you're right that it helps Sian/Team Kitty more. They'll have the same access to the land grab without dumping hammers into the war.

[spacetyrantxenu]

If we get a few bows to his horse site while building our invasion force we can prevent him settling the horses to begin with. That will leave him with only the option of settling his copper southwest of his capital. I don't fear axes so much. I think the first few bows we build should immediately occupy his horses.

As for tech we know of BW but no way he can build HAs considering we rushed Archery and he didn't. He went BW off the bat, I think. Not sure what else, though, but militarily not much.

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

Analysis of the current situation:

Sian:

No information, other than in a race with Catwalk for the Oracle. Not relevant at the moment with regards to our plan to annex Kuro/speed up the game.

Catwalk:

Going back to the previous screenshot you received from Catwalk, I would tend to think that he will be settling towards the FP/Bronze area to his NE (and thus away from his horses). He teched BW and will want to take that + FP. Also, we seem to have a good relationship with him and an understanding of where our border sets up. I am not immediately concerned that he will pose a threat if we move against Kuro. Protective Bowmen are, at the very least, a deterrent to aggression, so this frees our hand a bit.

Kuro:

I do not know where Kuro plans to settle. However, we do have the following:

• Intel that he opened worker/worker
  
• Belief that he will attempt to leverage the imperial trait by chopping out a settler.
  

Analysis: Kuro has likely not have teched AH yet, and so no visibility on his horses. Since he started with Agriculture and Hunting, and we know he was at size one for a long time (w/w start), I do not believe Kuro will have visibility on horses, given the amount of time needed to tech mining + BW. Tyrant, let me know when you can crunch the numbers on his techs. I think because Kuro either does not know where his horses are or cannot hook them up w/o AH, he is unlikely to have settled/be settling the tundra this early. If we get our bowmen in ASAP we have an opening.

Continuing analysis (way out on the limb): If Kuro has done any scouting at all he will know of his likely similar FP/Bronze location (assumption again that he researched to BW to chop). This will put his resource farther away from us and he may not have sufficient time to get axes back to his capital, if he even gets them built. Does he even have archery? Hunting start, but you have to tell me from his demos/power. Crunch numbers! An archer or so isn't the worst thing for us.

This could present difficulties if Kuro has built a couple of axes. My rough math puts a fight on even ground at 4.5 vs. 5 for Bowman vs. Axe. More likely there would be some fortification bonus as well. But, at 24 (?) hammers per axe, we are getting a good value per hammer.

bowman - cost 16
axe - cost 24 (vulnerable to our bowmen) [Perhaps see 1-2 at most]
immortal - cost 20 (+50% vs. archers) [Don't think we'll face these]

We need to:

Establish the distance to his capital (hurry up scout!)

From the above Catwalk screenshot it is 9 turns of movement from Kuro's capital to the hill north of the deer, 15 to sheep in C2, 18 total counting both capital tiles. Roads will lessen this travel time a little, by 3-4 turns max.

Determine how many axes, if any, we think we are likely to encounter. What do you think here? I think just a couple are likely if we move soon.

Send enough bowmen to scout in force (2? 3?) and, at the very least, do some economic damage. If we can take out his copper from presumed city #2 (by the time we get there) we can cripple him. On the way we pillage his corn.

We can wrap this into our current build program. After our settler, a worker, then bows. What do you think?

Hands full....

[spacetyrantxenu]

Nice analysis. I'll run numbers later tonight when I get home and load up a save, since we probably won't have a new one to play today (Kuro is past the 48 hours mark! ) I have an after hours job to do so it may be late. If you're really curious you can run the numbers yourself :P All the F9 posts are in our thread. I haven't translated them into a spreadsheet for tracking. It's always on the 'to do list' and never gets done. But from Kuro's score we know he hasn't made a lot of progress. I can go back and figure it from T0 and, since we're fairly sure of his GNP progress throughout we may be able to figure out what techs he has by their beaker cost (ie, what turn did his score increase since we know he has not increased score from higher population, and we can rule out the border pop that everyone got).

I'm not sure now about scouting in force and starting to cause problems before we have the full invasion force ready. That may tip his hand as to what is coming. If he's checking demographics he may see a very high rival best power rating, but he won't know who it is or what its purpose is unless we start mucking about in his territory. That will be a dead giveaway. I think better to let him keep his corn and post those bows on his horse. Immortals available for counterattack would devastate our stack and ruin the invasion. Military goal #1 is to prevent them from ever being built. Maybe we can eliminate the possibility of seeing immortals via C&D fact finding about Kuro's techs, but I'd rather be safe than sorry.

As for the builds, do you think it would delay us too much to get city 3 online before the attack? Once it is settled we can build bows out of all 3 cities to get a stack going faster. Until I run WB sims I have no idea how many bows we'll need. I think for that answer we'll have to wait until Steve Inskeep finds Kuro's city.

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

If you're really curious you can run the numbers yourself :P All the F9 posts are in our thread.

No thanks! Seriously, though, you know how much I love the numbers game. I'm more of a big picture guy. You listed an easy way to figure it up, knock yourself out. :neenernee

I'm not sure now about scouting in force and starting to cause problems before we have the full invasion force ready. That may tip his hand as to what is coming. If he's checking demographics he may see a very high rival best power rating, but he won't know who it is or what its purpose is unless we start mucking about in his territory. That will be a dead giveaway. I think better to let him keep his corn and post those bows on his horse. Immortals available for counterattack would devastate our stack and ruin the invasion. Military goal #1 is to prevent them from ever being built. Maybe we can eliminate the possibility of seeing immortals via C&D fact finding about Kuro's techs, but I'd rather be safe than sorry.

I agree with your reasoning, but you should be able to establish his tech path with some degree of certainty. If we CAN establish he does not have AH, then we can move in quicker to kill his corn. BW=slaving and I'd like to hamper his ability to use this.

PS: A thought just occurred to me. We'll know when he gets settler out for city #2 as you can expect him to revolt to slavery as it moves to its site.

As for the builds, do you think it would delay us too much to get city 3 online before the attack? Once it is settled we can build bows out of all 3 cities to get a stack going faster. Until I run WB sims I have no idea how many bows we'll need. I think for that answer we'll have to wait until Steve Inskeep finds Kuro's city.

Hmm. I'm inclined to strike early, however, this depends on his access to resources, specifically horses. Establish this first. We'll choke the resource location in either case.

I think if we get 2-3 Bowmen we are fine to perma-choke Kuro's horse. We can then perhaps safely get city #3 up for our horses. Once you have established his build queue, though, our 2-3 bowmen may be strong enough to do more than the choke, especially if he has units out scouting.

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

Mechanics: Someone please check my math:

Bowman base strength = 3
+50% vs. Melee Units = 1.5
+25% hills defense = 1.125
+25% (max) fortify bonus = 1.40625 = 7.03125 vs. 5 (Kuro's Axes). This is ignoring first strike.

Is this accurate? Do combat multipliers add or are they calculated independently (such that the +25% hill defense would only be 25% of base 3 (not 3*.50% first = 4.5), so .75 instead of the figure (1.125) arrived at above.

Thanks for any input.

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

Next time you chat up Team Kitty, see if you can get an updated map from them. I'd like to know what kind of terrain Kuro settled on.

[spacetyrantxenu]

I believe combat multipliers are always additive, not multiplicative. So that would be 3 + (50% + 25% + 25%) = 3 + 100% = 6 strength, ignoring first strikes which I have no idea how to calculate.

See here, maybe this will help:

http://www.realmsbeyond.net/forums/showt...php?t=4863

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

Nice tool. It makes my brain hurt. I think I have it figured out though.

Best that I can figure, an unpromoted axe vs. our bowman would give us 77.34% odds of survival on full strength battles, according to the combat calculate. Let's take that hill.