[SPOILERS] Panzersmackdown with Justinian (Mack/Seven)

[SevenSpirits]

How many cities are you planning to conquer in this attack (best/worst case)?

Right now we're only thinking about the front city. But I guess we hope to conquer approximately all of X-com's empire. They have 6 cities we can see right now, so I guess I'll say 5-6?

Worst case is of course 0, best case is all the cities on the map.

Incidentally I forgot to mention tech. We put a couple turns into Philosophy (target: Nationalism and later Constitution) but last turn decided to take care of some other stuff first. Engineering should be quite strong for castles (espionage), pikes (several people can tech guilds now, and Plako has a million stables because he did that quest), and movement (plus maybe even a trebuchet or two).

Also on the radar is Compass-Optics-Astronomy for the naval strength. Galleon attacks are a terrible threat for us so we at least want to be close behind in the naval arms race.

[SevenSpirits]

As for what could actually affect the number of cities we take:

X-com is mostly producing archers and spears, which will do almost nothing against us. He would need to build a lot of cats and HAs to do real damage. However it's a huge problem for us that he's leaving most of his border cities undefended. Plako has a ton of HAs (at least, he has more power than us right now and the only good unit he can build is HAs) and he could easily move in and capture some X-com cities before us, just because two thirds of the native american military is off in a corner somewhere and most of their cities (including the border city with Plako) are defended by 1-2 ancient era units. So the reason we are in a big hurry is because Plako could attack at any moment (don't know why he hasn't yet, honestly - maybe he wants to go after HAK instead?) and he will just be able to waltz through everything while we actually have to spend a few turns defeating X-com's entire army.

[regoarrarr]

We want to grow the city to size 14 so it can provide $3 trade routes in our mainland cities

Thanks for explaining the rationale behind size 14 - I was wondering why size 14 was so important.

[Ozzee]

...best case is all the cities on the map.

ehm...would you be able to afford the maintenance? ;-)

[Ceiliazul]

ehm...would you be able to afford the maintenance? ;-)

conquering quickly is actually a great cash cow. Conquer gold can go a very very long way:

http://www.dos486.com/civ4/marathon/page1.shtml

[SevenSpirits]

Doesn't look like we'll have enough units to take it in 1t.



If plako wants to and moves now, he can easily take these 3 cities before we can do anything about it. Sigh. Not his fault of course. Not anything we could do about it either - the Mohegan Sun garrison has been there (out of position to defend any other city in the empire) since long before we made a move on it, even though it's obvious plako could attack at any moment and he has pretty much the same size army as us.



Anyway I doubt people will want to play much longer, we just hope we can get our revenge on X-com before it's all over.

[Bigger]

Anyway I doubt people will want to play much longer, .

sad

[SevenSpirits]

Mackoti did the honors. Apparently they attacked out with 2 cats last turn which meant we captured the city with units to spare. Lost 2 knights and 3 cats.



After we played, plako moved in with some knights and HAs. He can capture Cahokia but if he doesn't raze it, and doesn't have more units in the fog, we can attack it the very same turn. (His capturing it will remove the culture on the roads.) If this is all the forces he brings, we have nothing to worry about from him. If he brings more units which I mostly expect, we will have a fight on our hands.



On the other hand I may have helped instigate the game finally being killed, so this may be moot. :/

[darrelljs]

My diplo style, objectionable as it may be

Its pretty entertaining to me, but then I like snark .

Darrell