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(August 8th, 2023, 09:06)Tarkeel Wrote: If I'm allowed to channel my inner Commodore and postulate some warfare theory, in order to successfully attack you need to consider how to best defend against what you're attacking with. The Defenders Advantage has three main components:
1: Cultural Defence Modifiers
These is the most visible bonus defenders get, but you can't rely on it alone. While longbows behind walls and castles on a hilltop are tough to crack even for cuirassiers (and not even hammer-efficiently for cavalry), they will be worn down. What they do give you is time to react.
2: Battlefield Vision
Barring city vision from espionage, the defender will have a better immediate knowledge of where forces are than the attacker.
3: Movement
With a properly planned road network, defending units will usually move at least at the speed of the fastest attackers; add Engineering and they are faster. The defender will also have a shorter supply line than the attacker, which can make up for the initial force un-balance.
A competent defender will use strategically placed garrisons in fortified border cities to tie up your forces. Using his knowledge of where your units are, they can then re-route reinforcements to where they are most needed, or even threaten a counter-attack. The power of your knights (or their substitutes) is mainly bound up in the area they can threaten to attack, and if they are stuck in place either due to healing or besieging, you invite the option of an alpha-strike.
If the enemy's forces are unable to concentrate on hitting one place, you might get good results by splitting up and threatening more locations. This option usually disappears after the few turns as the size of the battlefield shrinks.
(I hope that made some sense and wasn't just pure rambling)
It does make sense.
Here's a look at the border on the current turn:
I am guessing that Xist has a major city SE of Arpinium, in the river valley with the sheep + pigs. I believe I saw him settle another city somewhere south of the iron much earlier in the game. So we would probably be looking at two cities backing up the front after capturing Arpinium and Mediolanum. Alternatively, we could ignore Mediolanum and blitz forward into that core and let Aetryn pick it off.
Unfortunately, the hills prevent any easy forking of his cities from what I can see here. So I think the best way would be to concentrate our forces in one strong push.
Currently Aetryn has the highest power in the game. However, this power is tied in either one movers or chariots, because he has been lacking HBR for a long time. If we can count on his involvement, then I believe we can count on him tying down a significant amount of forces not on this border. I will need to send him a gold for gold signal.
The good news is that Xist's backwardness means he is a long way from Longbows. We will have a better ratio on taking out his Praetorians because we can take shock easily and he can't take formation out of the gate.
(I also worry about all the stuff Bing has been whipping, but I can't for the life of me tell what it is. I have not been seeing any spikes on the bar graph. No espionage from courthouses, no huge GNP leaps, no military climbing. What gives?)
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An annoying thing about low player count games is that you can never really count on your competition to build something just to deny it to the top dog.
I delayed sailing for the longest time, and my production heavy cities on the coast were working on Mids or settlers, so I did not have a good chance to snag GLH. So naturally Bing gets it while Aetryn and Xist dawdle around with some big ancient era fight. GG?
Well, we do have one trick we can use to slow him down: burning down his source of foreign TRs. 
Xist keeping a significant Praet force around in the backlines. His road network in the south is surprisingly poor.
Popped our golden age a turn after Aetryn. Our empire enjoys a brief period in Rep + Serfdom on the way to Guilds. Wish I could have grown Moai city more - I'll return the pigs to Metamorphosis once I have grown on all the water tiles.
Soon, the ᗺyzantine hordes shall arrive...
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If our war goes well, an important point will be getting the next golden age soonish to get out of police state. If the endgame isn't just turning the Phract horde towards Bing and burning down every inch of his coast. Dune and Huckleberry Finn are on specialist duty in the GA instead of working tiles - they are mainly just giving up mines which isn't too bad.
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(August 8th, 2023, 22:40)greenline Wrote: If our war goes well, an important point will be getting the next golden age soonish to get out of police state. If the endgame isn't just turning the Phract horde towards Bing and burning down every inch of his coast. Dune and Huckleberry Finn are on specialist duty in the GA instead of working tiles - they are mainly just giving up mines which isn't too bad.
An important part of that is dedicating two cities to making GPP during the GA, preferably in clean (or at least not overlapping) pools.
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Unfortunately, I wasn't able to avoid some scientist overlap without free caste artists to spam. Not the worst thing in the world if we do pop double scientists - could use them for bulbing at least.
Not sure if it is worth starving either city right now to squeeze the most points.
Canceled the Crab/Crab with Xist. I'll start a gold countdown with Aetryn next turn. My savings were a bit too low for the amount of turns involved.
Although I am tempted to just take my phracts, put them on a fleet, and hopefully raze Bing's capital instead...
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Starving is probably worth it.
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Adjusted those cities to max specialists.
3 turns now to Guilds. We're at the home stretch. I think I will sandbag Guilds at 1t to completion and grab some side techs while we are still in the GA. CoL and Construction can both be one turned. Or we could just grab Civil Service straight up. Just look at this GNP spike
Even with the nerfs, PRO >>> FIN. This is not even the power of the Pyramids, I'm not running a ton of specialists.
Further scouting of Xist's land. Don't ask me to explain what's up with that orphaned pig...
It looks like his core territory is more to the East than the South. I think it would be best to push for capturing Neapolis and Mediolanum. Those control 2 sources of iron. I would have to double check, but I don't think he has a third. Without Iron he can only build spears or maybe LBs to stop us.
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Don't underestimate LBs in hill cities, they are nasty to crack. Also, someone might intervene and gift iron.
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Facing LBs on hills is where I hope having Cataphracts on hand will give us the edge. If we just had regular knights I wouldn't think that this attack would work well, and I'd just use the GA to get Bureau instead. I am hoping that the extra 2 strength will be enough to blitz - Xist doesn't have protective and doesn't seem to have built many walls yet. Not sure when he will get to Vassalage either. His tech has been slow and he hasn't popped a GA yet. But you're probably right that Bing will give him iron.
I sent a 10 turn gold trade signal to Aetryn. Let's see how he responds.
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Side note: I think one of the reasons PRO has been such a powerhouse this game is because there are no islands for ICTRs. Any city I plonk down instantly gets two 2c routes, but other players only get those from foreign routes or from their one really big capital city. Something to keep in mind with map settings, I guess.
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