Our imperium 1180AD--> 1400AD

[cavebear]

We would, of course, use a Dip to check that before attacking. We are brave, but we are not reckless.

And I am thinking about calculations; walls 300% defensive bonus etc.

[Six Thousand Year Old Man]

Originally posted by shade
I guess 3 or 4 crucs/musket...ie at least 15crucs who should have to arrive and attack the same turn and hope we have at least one left that can take the city that turn.

(btw I would guess there would be 4 or 5 of them in Washington (if not 6), the AI loves a lot of defenders in it's cap)

Shade

I think we would need more units than that (3-4/musket). Musketeers have 2 hp, Crooks have but 1.

3 def, x1.5 for the river, x 3 for the walls...say about 12 defense? plus the extra h.p.

I don't like the odds of our att=5 (or 7, if vet) Crusaders against those. We need to knock down the walls, and it might be a good idea to build an instafort next to Washington with preworked settlers... and then we can park a Musket or 2 in the fort and settle in for a long siege

Without the instant fort, if we attack and fail, all our surviving attackers will be mulched the next turn by the Yanks.

[cavebear]

Yes, and if the Musketeers are vets, it's even worse.

I think we need to establish a city near Washington and pack it with at least 6 Dips (as a capital city, it probably has considerable infrastructure) to assure knocking down the walls. If we just built a fortress, we could lose too many units in one blow. That city should be located so that Diplomats can reach Washington in one turn.

It will be very difficult fielding an army of 12-15 Crusaders and 6 Diplomats, and we could well need that many even with the walls down. Even just fortified, Musketeers on river will be hard to kill.

Can we do this? If we succeed, it would seriously improve our situation, upgrading our own forces and stopping further upgrades for the Americans. Failing, the effort will have cost us so much that we will be in real trouble.

[Six Thousand Year Old Man]

Originally posted by cavebear
Yes, and if the Musketeers are vets, it's even worse.

Agreed.

I think we need to establish a city near Washington and pack it with at least 6 Dips (as a capital city, it probably has considerable infrastructure) to assure knocking down the walls. If we just built a fortress, we could lose too many units in one blow. That city should be located so that Diplomats can reach Washington in one turn.

I'm not sure what you mean - if we build a fortress, we won't lose a lot of units in 1 blow, that's the point of fortresses. A couple of preworked Settlers - or even one preworked Settler - could build a fort in a turn, right next to Washington. Then, we put in a couple of Musketeers for defense, and leisurely fill the fort up with attack units.

The other thing with a fortress right next to Washington is that we can put 1-move units in it (Catapults, Cannon perhaps?) and they won't expend any move points prior to attacking. Vet Cats are a lot more effective than vet Crooks (9 att vs 7 att).

And finally... units stacked in a fortress can't be bribed. I'd be very worried about building a city near Wash. and having it bribed away, filled with units I'm worried about our cities near America being bribed, as it is.

It will be very difficult fielding an army of 12-15 Crusaders and 6 Diplomats, and we could well need that many even with the walls down. Even just fortified, Musketeers on river will be hard to kill.

Yes... the walls will have to come down. But we have to be careful that we don't raze the city with the wonder in it!

Not to be a broken record, but having the fortress right next to the city will allow slightly wounded Crooks to attack twice... so that could be an advantage.

Can we do this? If we succeed, it would seriously improve our situation, upgrading our own forces and stopping further upgrades for the Americans. Failing, the effort will have cost us so much that we will be in real trouble.

Yup... a real Barbarossa (the 1941 one, I mean)

[cavebear]

I've never used fortresses much, so I wasn't sure that units in a stack were safe from one attacker. Good to know.

In that regard, we may be in luck. Here is Washington in 1180 and there are 2 fortresses existing (one of which might well be unoccupied when we arrive):

[Six Thousand Year Old Man]

Originally posted by cavebear
I've never used fortresses much, so I wasn't sure that units in a stack were safe from one attacker. Good to know.

In that regard, we may be in luck. Here is Washington in 1180 and there are 2 fortresses existing (one of which might well be unoccupied when we arrive):

It's amazing the things we all don't know about Civ... I keep finding little surprises like that, too

Those existing forts are a big help - we can make a beeline for the rivered fort, and hold that one until we get some Settlers brought in to build another one adjacent to Wash.

2 units stacked are bribe proof, as well, which is something else a fort protects against

[Six Thousand Year Old Man]

Also - depending what sort of terrain is around Washington, we may want to try a denial-of-shields tactic if they are in a representative government. That might be the easiest way to kill defenders inside the city

Dropping a pikeman or something on the peat would be a good idea, anyway

[atawa]

I was thinking, why dont we build a road west to Americans? Our core city's are in the middle, let them Xin and the other sections deal with the Americans and incoming Greeks.

If we would take that enclave out and build west from there we not only have a shorter road to Americans but we can considder turning left at Zimbabwe for a moment and collecting GW

Its still a long march to Whashington.

[atawa]

Map:

[cavebear]

Originally posted by atawa
I was thinking, why dont we build a road west to Americans? Our core city's are in the middle, let them Xin and the other sections deal with the Americans and incoming Greeks.

That's exactly why I have been strategically viewing the separate parts of our empire as provinces dedicated to the fight against specific civs. Treating each province as a civ of its own yet having the benefits of aid from our core cities allows us to focus each province against one opposing civ and use the resources locally available.

[Ben Kenobi]

Since we have cannons, musketeers escorting cannons would allow us to take Washington much quicker than crusaders. The major problem is that they are much slower than crusaders, and any such army would take much longer to transport to Washington.

Perhaps we should wait for some of the better technologies before we batter such formidable fortifications.

[cavebear]

How can the slower movement of Musketeers and Canons be faster than Crusaders?

[atawa]

We cant take Washington without cannons, the Americans have fortified Musks on a river. Most are upgraded so few vets but still quite shocking odds

Railroad and Explosives would be very welcome now

[Six Thousand Year Old Man]

Originally posted by atawa
We cant take Washington without cannons, the Americans have fortified Musks on a river. Most are upgraded so few vets but still quite shocking odds

Railroad and Explosives would be very welcome now

I like the idea of nabbing some nearby US cities via bribery. If they're in Demo, we could (instead) deprive the units in Washington of support by occupying shield producing tiles.

If we can grab some small cities to act as bases, that's where the Cannons can come from. Cannons vs Muskets - even with walls, we should have a good chance to take the city, much better than with Crusaders.

If the Americans are in Demo, then hopefully we can reduce the number of defenders via shield deprivation - we'd then need fewer units to take the city.

[Six Thousand Year Old Man]

Originally posted by cavebear
How can the slower movement of Musketeers and Canons be faster than Crusaders?

I think he means that with Cannons, we'd probably only need 1-2 of those per defending Musketeer, whereas we'd probably need 4 or 5 Crusaders per Musketeer (at minimum). The Cannon/Musket force could be assembled quicker, and might succeed on the first try. I'm dubious about the Crusaders.

[Sparrowhawk]

Further, the Crusaders would be very vulnerable to attack by the Americans, unless we have them travel with a defensive unit, such as Muskateers. However, having them travel with Muskateers obviously reduces their advantage of having 2 movement points.

Regardless, I don't think we are capable of even planing an attack on the Americans at this point, they are way too far from us, and we need to work out what to do next, but I think building an attack force would be a mistake. Perhaps when we get tactics, we can build Calvary to attack the Americans with?

[atawa]

Cavalry would work against Musks but by that time they would have Riflemen at least.

We can take some small American outposts by bribing but once we anter the riverdelta we'll need units.
Also when Americans are in demo we have to be very carefull about taking city's as they can bribe them back at half cost.

[Ben Kenobi]

I should have used 'easily' rather than 'quickly'. The STYOM got my meaning exactly.

[MrWhereItsAt]

So would someone explain to me how EXACTLY we would set up this fortress next to Washington? Having the exisitng one two tiles away is a great help. I suppose we would stack a defender or two in that fortress (having at least two travel together to get there first up so as to avoid bribery). Then we would get a settler(s) there and more units. Then how would we do this - as soon as we move the settlers next to Washington they are vulnerable to attack, and even more, if we move other units with them we risk losing the whole lot to an attack whilst the fortress is being built.

This seems rather tricky, even putting aside the issue of how many attackers to use. Can anyone explain this?
I have rarely seen the AI put units in those fortresses next to their cities, but what if we find a Musket there?

[Six Thousand Year Old Man]

Originally posted by MrWhereItsAt
So would someone explain to me how EXACTLY we would set up this fortress next to Washington? Having the exisitng one two tiles away is a great help. I suppose we would stack a defender or two in that fortress (having at least two travel together to get there first up so as to avoid bribery). Then we would get a settler(s) there and more units. Then how would we do this - as soon as we move the settlers next to Washington they are vulnerable to attack, and even more, if we move other units with them we risk losing the whole lot to an attack whilst the fortress is being built.

This seems rather tricky, even putting aside the issue of how many attackers to use. Can anyone explain this?
I have rarely seen the AI put units in those fortresses next to their cities, but what if we find a Musket there?

We'd set up the fortress by using preworked Settler(s). Basically, the trick is to start a Settler doing something (like irrigating) and stop him from finishing 1 turn before he's done. The work that he's already completed is stored 'inside' that Settler. If, for example, you moved him to a grassland tile and chose 'irrigate' again, he'd finish in 1 turn, rather than the usual 5. Any other tasks would get a similar head start.

So, we prework a Settler or 2, move them along to Washington, and bang, instant fort in 1 turn (luckily, there's a river there, so we can still choose the build fortification option before running out of movement points).

If we find a Musketeer in one of the forts, I'd suggest putting a Musketeer on good defensive terrain next to him - perhaps the AI defender will attack and die? Otherwise, build our own fort nearby with the preworked Settler, and then 'charge' the Settler again by selecting irrigate or something...

[Zedd]

I think STYOM's idea is a good one and worth including in our plan of attack. Sparrowhawk however is right; attacking at this point will not get us far. We need to first improve our hold on that area with more cities and more improvements for those that are already established. The River delta is mostly deserted in its northern half and even if we have some cross over would make an excellent spot for three or even four cities that would grow quickly. They would not need to support troops, we have other cities to do that, just house them until the apolyton expeditionary force is completely assembled. As far as the worry about our city being bribed with a lot of units inside, we can take care of that by having the units patrol the surrounding area. No use letting them sit idol while there are Americans begging to be killed.

[atawa]

We dont even need the city's for our expedition force.

Just make a string of forts from the edge of the riverdelta to Washington. While in the fort our units are safe from bribing and other American attacks.

The river actualy works in our advantage.

[cavebear]

Is the idea to build a fortress on an adjacent tile to Washington? We might be able to get the city defenders to attack that, in which case, the odds would be in *our* favor. And at least our 1-move units (canons or catapaults) would be attacking at full strenghth.

[Six Thousand Year Old Man]

Originally posted by cavebear
Is the idea to build a fortress on an adjacent tile to Washington? We might be able to get the city defenders to attack that, in which case, the odds would be in *our* favor. And at least our 1-move units (canons or catapaults) would be attacking at full strenghth.

That's the idea. We can fill up the fortress with units, and attack with cannons at full strength. Survivors can even attack on subsequent turns if need be. And if we build a city within 3 squares nearby - even a size 1 in disorder - our units will heal faster in the fortress.

[atawa]

Originally posted by Six Thousand Year Old Man


That's the idea. We can fill up the fortress with units, and attack with cannons at full strength. Survivors can even attack on subsequent turns if need be. And if we build a city within 3 squares nearby - even a size 1 in disorder - our units will heal faster in the fortress.

Why build a city for this? We can just rushbuild a baracks in the first city we take, we wont have any wounded units before that time anyway.

[MrWhereItsAt]

Originally posted by Six Thousand Year Old Man


We'd set up the fortress by using preworked Settler(s). Basically, the trick is to start a Settler doing something (like irrigating) and stop him from finishing 1 turn before he's done. The work that he's already completed is stored 'inside' that Settler. If, for example, you moved him to a grassland tile and chose 'irrigate' again, he'd finish in 1 turn, rather than the usual 5. Any other tasks would get a similar head start.

Incredible! I have seen this before, but thought that it only applied if you used it on the same turn as you activated the settler. Are you saying that if I stopped an irrigating settler, moved it two spaces (non-roaded) and then commenced irrigating again it would finish in one turn?

[atawa]

Yes, one of the bugs in civ, there is also another bug in MP:

On the first round the settler gets 2 charges, when you start him on say irigation and stop him on the same turn you can use 2 charges on the next turn too