” ..’ve got a fire in the cockpit…. a bad fire… get out…”

The last 17 seconds of voice recordings of the astronauts in the Apollo 1 Fire, January 27, 1967

Sun Tzu says attack from a direction that is least expected. The corollary is that one must be vigilant in defense of areas where attack is unexpected to prevent or blunt such attack. Disaster does not always occur where risk is highest. And do not mistake known risk for all risk.

Turn 1

Strategy

Strategy is in many ways driven by backward inducting from where you want to be in 7 turns. The most forces are sent along paths that are rich in targets. These paths can be summarized (the question marks signifying that these cities might be taken a turn early if there is a unit adjacent) as Hamburg, Arhus, Stettin/Oslo, Stockholm, Thorn; Frankfurt, .., Antwerp, London/Bruge, Nottingham, Caernarvon/York, Dublin/Edinburgh; Staufen, Metz/Bern, Rheim/(Dijon exc. for French attack)/Paris?, Paris/Angers?, Angers/Caen, Rennes/Burgundy; Frankfurt, .., Madgeburg, .., Stettin, .., Thorn/Stockholm; Nuremburg, .., Prague, Breslau, .., Thorn/Krakow, .., Riga/Halych; Vienna, .., Budapest, .., .., Bran, Bucharest, Iasi/Sophia; Innsbruck, .., Venice, .., Ragusa, Durazzo, .., Corinth/Thessalonica; Innsbruck, .., Milan, Genoa, Marseille/Ajaccio, .., Toulouse/Cagliari, Tunis/Palermo, Burgundy; Innsbruck, .., .. Venice .., Rome, Naples, Palermo/Cagliari, Corinth/Tunis; Bologna, Venice, Ragusa, Durazzo, .., Corinth/Thessalonica; Bologna, Venice, Rome, Naples, Palermo/Cagliari, Corinth/Tunis; Bologna, Milan, Genoa, Marseille/Ajaccio, .., Toulouse/Cagliari, Tunis/Palermo, Burgundy; and Bologna, Florence, Rome, Naples, .., Corinth/Palermo/Cagliari.

The most fruitful paths are to Edinburgh, Tunis and Rennes. Edinburgh we can’t really stuff extra units too easily because of the distances involved (two extra long horse runs on the first move). Fortunately, there isn’t enough money to spend if we could.

Money needs to be tightly husbanded in the Early game.

Army movement

• Army near Hamburg: four ground units should be plenty to take Hamburg with ladders. The horsemen are a problem. They’re expensive, they can’t get anywhere to disband, and they don’t speed up capture of anything but Stettin which is mostly a dead end. I send one southeast to Madgeburg and the other west to join the attack on Bruge in three turns. Sending both southeast is reasonable, but a smaller force from Frankfurt will more likely revolt. Also, you will likely be forced to combine the units when losses exceed 50% of cavalry. It’s a tossup to send one to Hamburg to catch the runaways before they get back to the square or to send it west to Bruge or north to Arhus. Build ladders.
• Army in Frankfurt: the general Dietrich von Saxony if traveling alone can just make Antwerp in two turns and will find two crossbow mercenary units to hire there. This will be a tough battle, but it will open up the way to Bruge, England, trade with Scotland and if you execute well, Scotland and Ireland. The other portion of the army should hoof it for Madgeburg. I sent only archers and had them rebel. Two archers and one infantry did not rebel the few times I tried that. They will meet the cavalry coming from near Hamburg next turn. Liquidate the rest of the units except for one or two. The peasants stay because they are cheap. If you look at the city revenue, it is higher with two garrison troops than with one. I’m not sure I get the whole ‘free unit’ thing. It might make sense to leave all three of the remaining units garrisoned as an option for later if they really are free. Or is ‘free unit’ just an adjective for free-unit recruitment slot, but you still have to pay. Anyway, I just left the peasants in charge in Frankfurt and let two of the spear-men militia go. The case to liquidate is fairly straightforward. At Au125/season, the spear men have to be needed in three turns to be cost effective not to recruit later at 310. And that’s with no capital constraints or investment return rate. Money will be tight next turn. Auf Wiedersehen.
• Spy: it’s worth trying to get the gates open to Madgeburg as this will save a turn getting to Stettin, Stockholm and Thorn, but the chance of success is so low, that it’s worth sending your spy on a suicide mission to Prague to save the Au100/turn. If you open the gates to Prague, it’s kind of pointless since they are going to attack you on their turn anyway. Trying to get the spy to save a turn in Bran, Nottingham or Angers/Caen seems like a poor investment.
• Army in Nuremburg: send the archers and one unit of spear men toward Prague. The General (Maximillian Mandorf) you’ll need to put northeast of Prague next turn to support the attack, but have enough movement to take Breslau in turn three so you might separate the forces now as a reminder.
• Your princess will probably not make it to any faction before it finds one of your generals or before you declare war on it. It’s probably best to marry her off. For this reason, move your capitol to the front.
• Your cardinal probably won’t have to face any heretics. Look around for less Christian areas of your realm to send him to. I just send him toward Vienna because the mine makes it a good spot to have a good economy with a happy populace.
• Staufen: Here are some options for Prince Henry. Bern and Metz can both be attacked on this turn and Rheims and Dijon can be attacked on the next except that the French will attack Dijon so you can pass on that until they get pulled away (or they retreat to attack you!) Metz is a palisade village so you will need four units to build a ram. If you are very careful with the movement, you can send Prince Henry to attack one of Bern or Metz and a mercenary to lead the attack on the other both on the same turn. The tactics for that pair of fights might be pretty challenging. Bern is armed to the teeth with two cavalry, but you may be able to pull off a victory with Prince Henry, some crossbowmen, spear mercenaries and potentially support from the rear next turn. I prefer saving the money for the mercenaries for better choices and using Prince Henry as the spearhead of the siege of Metz. I send two spear-men units and one archer. The other archer I send ahead to the bridge to help take Rheims turn two. I build an archer unit in Staufen and a mustering hall. This is an extravagant purchase, but avoids using cavalry for garrison duty until they are needed and affordable. Bern and Dijon I bypass until later because they are dead ends. Build a ram.
• Vienna: Send your troops on the northern, clockwise route to Budapest. Send General Lazlo ahead so that he can support the attack on Budapest from the Southeast corner. If you leave Lazlo on the border, you can bring mercenaries out of the Vienna region. This will give you an extra mercenary melee unit against Bran when the time comes. Since it’s the difference between 7 units and 8, I just buy a cheaper unit next turn in the Budapest region.
• Innsbruck: I head the foot soldiers South toward Vienna to take Ragusa. The general I place one square ahead of them which is a balance between forward movement to get to Rome and blocking and luring the diplomats to try to bribe him instead of a city or another army.
• Bologna: Emperor Heinrich the Chivalrous has even more choices than Prince Henry in Staufen. He can attack Venice, Milan or Florence, or two of them, or even all three! I prefer this, but it takes expert tactics in defending against the Venice sally and win-at-all-cost tactics against the Milan sally. I send five units to Venice: one archer (best for captain), one spear-men, one crossbowmen-mercenary, one spear-men-mercenary, and one peasant. Take care to get war started and initiate the sieges and spend the building money so that Emperor Heinrich becomes more likely to win a mercenary captain. Florence: I send another crossbowman-mercenary unit to besiege Florence and another archer unit. Finally, I send two spear-man militia units with the Emperor to besiege Milan. The Milan force is closest to a fair fight and can kill both cavalry, the archers and sometimes the ground troops before running to take the square. Another choice would be to have the spear men units in a separate group. This risks their bribery. But it makes them a good, attractive, nuisance to use as a diversion while the Emperor takes the central square. This latter tactic worked better in 1.1. Don’t forget to build ladders everywhere except Metz where you need a ram. One variant in Vienna is to not besiege Venice, but put the troops on the bridge hemming them into Venice. This will elicit an interesting battle where you can defend the bridge against two different armies crossing the river to fight you first on one side, then the other.

Production

• All regions will produce roads except for Frankfurt and Staufen.
• Frankfurt already has a road and you can consider a brothel, land clearance or nothing. I usually choose land clearance. By turn 3, the front is pretty far away so a spy won’t have much hope of affecting play and will cost Au1500 by the time he gets to the front and 400 can go a long way in other uses on turns 1-3.
• Staufen will not produce a road because it is already on the edge of the region and the road will not make travel shorter and there is a better build. Staufen will produce an archer. Another choice is to produce cavalry in Staufen and destroy the bowyer. I think bows are the best unit for the money so I don’t. It will be useful into the late game due to the bypassing of Bern and Dijon.
• Bologna will build one town militia and one ship.
• If you have the money, Innsbruck can produce a peasant on the first turn. Destroy the bowyer in Innsbruck–it’s irrelevant to the rest of the campaign. Consider destroying the mustering hall in Innsbruck, perhaps after producing a peasant (which stays in the queue if the mustering hall is destroyed, but can’t be recruited afterwards).
• It doesn’t make sense to produce an extra unit in Vienna. These troops won’t get to the front after taking Budapest until turn 6, 7 or 8. Considering that, it’s worth liquidating some or most of them in Budapest.
• In Frankfurt, we’re liquidating units.
• That leaves Nuremburg which like Vienna, won’t see its troops on the front line for three turns after taking Prague. Just leave a spear-men unit there.

Tactics

No battles–yet.

Turn 1.5

Tactics

• Venice: you face two experience-one archer units, Doge Domenico’s 41-soldier (on huge unit setting) experience-one heavy horse, and four experience-one spear militia. I had recommended you face them with one spear and one crossbow mercenary, peasants, archer- and spear militia. You might prefer six or even seven units until you get the hang of this battle. I split my troops in half sending two or three units left and two or three units right. Best results have come from having the peasant head for the wall third from the right and one archer and the spear militia to the other two. The crossbowman- and spear-mercenaries, I send left. I keep the spearmen on the inside, but they can cross over each other early or late in the run without losing the battle. I got the Venetians confused so that everyone made it to the wall. With a slightly different layout, you may have to sacrifice one or two of the melee units. Consider the retreat flag. This can be recovered from. If your troops get captured, you will still get to keep them if you do not get routed by the sallying troops. If necessary, I send the archers or the crossbowmen to open the gate around the corner for retreating melee troops. More usually, the Venetians retreat all except their archers to the street from the west gate to the square. Sometimes they put two, three or even four units there. This is an opportunity for a turkey shoot. You will need wholesale slaughter with easy shots for your archers and crossbowmen to kill enough of the enemy for your melee troops to win in the square. A high value target is the enemy general. This will make it very hard for the enemy troops to have enough morale to attack you on the wall. After about 50% casualties in one of the spear militia units, the Venetians will retreat their horse and spear to the central square. Don’t rush the archers with your spear troops. They crack. Use your archers. Once the Venetians see this, they will retreat for the central square and they can be routed along the way by all your troops. There are a few places to set up kill zones. They correspond to the streets and avenues approaching the west, north and south gates. Once the enemy has stopped rushing you with its spear men (Ok if a few archers are), get into close range with your archers and crossbowmen. I like to put a unit of spear men next to a unit of crossbowmen. I put the archers behind that. Even if you can’t kill all of the enemy, if you get close, they will still cede you the city. I am not sure, but perhaps it’s half a unit.
• Milan: Here you face a general, two spear militia, crossbow militia and another unit of heavy horse. I had recommended you face them with two spear militia units and your emperor. Initial dispositions are quite bad for Milan. The heavy horse unit rushes out and can be surrounded by your spear men and Imperial guard and routed. Next comes the enemy general’s heavy horse which will face some attrition from your spear men. At this point, the rest of Milan’s troops arrive. I can’t quite figure out a way to complete an orderly withdrawal and reorganization of the spear men. I tend to sacrifice one unit at this point. I keep the emperor’s troops fresh. I withdraw to the steep hillside and await the enemy. The enemy general tends to make a head-on attack up hill and gets nearly destroyed. If I make straight for the enemy square (the gates being inexplicably left open), I can capture it and prevent the enemy general’s horse from retaking the square. The enemy melee troops sometimes can’t get back to the square in time, but sometimes are stopped just outside the square for just long enough.
• Florence: You face three rebel melee units and one archer unit. If you walk uphill remaining in range of emerging units, then stand your ground at first with the crossbowmen and archers I recommend, you can kill half or more of the enemy archers before you are rushed. If your two units are separated by arrow distance, you can steadily kill the enemy with your missiles while retreating around the town. Eventually, you will face either only one unit. At that point, standing your ground might be sufficient to rout the enemy troops. The archer unit can increase this by firing fire arrows. Once the single enemy routs, they can be run down by your troops and captured. At this point, you may have the enemy spaced out enough to shoot them down unit by unit as they try to climb the hill to the northern gate of Florence. If not, retreat and repeat. They don’t know when to quit their unsuccessful sally and will keep throwing themselves against you until they let you kill them all or capture their town. They should not have sallied against you in the first place given your faster troops. It’s really tough to use four spear units to create a cordon between the map edge and an archer unit to box them in and have enough troops left fresh enough to attack without breaking.
• Prince Henry can win in Metz alone via the same run away, kill the fast unit, capture the square tactic, except I can’t get Metz to routinely sally and unlike Venice or Milan, I can’t then climb the walls because I won’t have a ram. If they do sally, don’t waste Prince Henry against spear men or archers.

Strategy

It makes sense to pillage Venice, Milan and Florence. I could never get them to sally from Hamburg. Metz might be worth leaving intact as this will be a decent source of troops. They don’t typically sally out of Metz though.

Turn 2

Now it’s time to mop up the craven troops in Hamburg and Metz that did not sally and head forward to lay siege to Rheims, Genoa, Budapest, Madgeburg, Antwerp and Prague while making preparations by positioning troops to take Breslau, Bran, Arhus, Rome, and Ragusa, and building troops to take Caen/Angers and troops and ships to take Durazzo or Corinth. Tactics will be fairly standard.

Strategy

The strategy theme is similar to turn one where we are building mercenary forces in a careful packing problem, expanding in almost all directions, and carefully preserving the movement points of the vanguard. We are building very little in the way of infrastructure. We continue to liquidate troops in part of the empire, while recruiting them heavily in the south and west.

Unless the adoptee for the emperor is really, really bad, I take him. We sure could use the help on the roads to Tunis and Toulouse. If you find a prince, take him too unless he is terrible. Good choices for capitol last turn were Staufen and Bologna. This turn, Florence, Metz and Hamburg are good choices if the princess is still unmarried. Otherwise, move the capitol back to the center of your empire.

I tend to agree if the French or Danish decide to offer trade rights. So what if I am going to attack? At least there is a little trade. This might be bad for future diplomacy.

Sack Hamburg (and Milan and Venice if necessary), but probably not Metz.

Army Movement

• Venice: Take Venice if you didn’t already. Send the ship to pick up the four best units to get them on the road to Rome.
• Milan: Take Milan if you didn’t already. Consider using one unit from the Innsbruck force. Send the rest to besiege Genoa.
• Dietrich von Saxony, east of Antwerp: Besiege Antwerp and recruit two crossbow mercenary units. If you chose to send a horseman from Hamburg, position it to invest Bruge next turn. Build ladders.
• Hamburg: After you capture Hamburg, move your melee units and a supporting reinforced archer unit toward Arhus.
• Staufen/Metz/Rheims: This is tricky. Send Prince Henry to Rheims before taking Metz. Send your new archer build to storm the palisade at Metz. Invest Rheims with Prince Henry, your prepositioned archer and the crossbow- and spear-mercenary units you buy in Rheims. Build a ram at Rheims. Move the troops that took Metz (except for the archer from Staufen) forward to support the attack on Rheims next turn or Dijon or something.
• Nuremburg/Prague: Time to put Maximillian Mandorf northeast of Prague without participating in the siege, but supporting it. The general will be positioned to take Breslau next turn. The rest of the foot troops will lay siege to Prague. Build ladders.
• Frankfurt/Madgeburg: Invest Madgeburg with four units or more. Build ladders.
• Innsbruck/Venice: move one unit if you haven’t already to Milan. The other 3 move toward Venice. They will sail for Ragusa next turn. Otto von Kassel should also hoof it to Rome. He actually loses movement points if you send him via ship with Venice’s fleet in the way.
• Vienna/Budapest: This is tricky. Have Lazlo buy a melee mercenary (if already in Budapest territory) or consider a spear-man unit if still in Vienna. Send the mercenary to lay siege and have it joined by the militia and regular troops coming from Vienna. Send Lazlo southeast of the city so that only two long rides will be necessary to take Bran.

Production

• Build roads in Florence and Hamburg.
• Build a wooden castle in Staufen if you have the cash (more horses, roads a turn sooner than converting to a village and building a palisade).
• Build land clearance if you like, but it’s a bit of a tossup. There are only 6 turns left. A brothel in Milan is pretty much useless because it will only be useful in Bern where the units needed are probably a bigger problem than producing siege equipment.
• Build a ship in Venice. Depending on the kind of unit you left behind and how poorly reinforced it is, consider retraining it.
• Build town guard and ships in Bologna and send the prior round Bologna build to Florence so the Florence town guard can head for Rome.
• Build troops in Staufen. I prefer archers and peasants, but some like cavalry.
• Consider building mines in Vienna. They pay Au660 per turn, but cost Au2000 to build. It barely pays off. Probably best not to, but I did.

Tactics

• Hamburg: The AI gets confused if you move your ladder men back and forth before going to the wall. Also, if you look like you are going to get met at the top of the wall, retreat and wait for another unit to attack an open wall. The AI will guard walls with ladders even if there are no troops to climb them. This is a fairly standard siege attack.
• Metz: Don’t try to take the ram to the gate, but choose the southern wall near the east corner. The AI behaves differently when you are attacking with the ram or not so consider dropping the ram to change the AI behavior. The enemy cavalry is the only threat. Keep peppering them with your archers and keeping at least one spear unit close to the archers between the archers and the cavalry. Keep your troops out of range of the enemy archers until your archers have nearly run out of ammunition. Fire into units that overlap other units. Don’t use fire arrows until you are nearly out of arrows. Shoot the fire arrows in preparation for attack. Use your archers primarily to support your infantry after they have run out of arrows. Don’t put them in the front line until all your other troops have routed. If possible, have your infantry attack together.

Turn 2.5

Here are some tactical challenges that will solidify your finances and industrial base.

Tactics

• Genoa: Retreat everyone up hill. Your two generals should be able to defend as the enemy cavalry makes an uphill attack. Kill the enemy archers for the experience, then take the central square like Milan. Bye bye Milanese. As a bonus, rout the rest of the enemy troops. Pay attention to where your two generals are in relation to the rest of your units. Ideally you want one to take Marseille and Toulouse, the other Adjaccio, Cagliari and Tunis.
• Budapest: Sometimes Hungary will attack in force, other times simply sally. A sally is a race to get your archers to the walls and use your infantry to stop the enemy general while Lazlo rushes to the rescue. You should be able to win a heroic victory by putting your archers where they can fire into the square while still on the walls. If Hungary attacks in force, Lazlo will have some difficulty routing the enemy ranged cavalry. Since you didn’t buy the archer mercenary unit, they will probably only sally.
• Prague: This is a real turkey shoot because Prague doesn’t have any cavalry. Retreat your foot units until Maximillian can take down the enemy archers. After that, it’s a straightforward matter to rout the enemy units as they engage your foot units by attacking them from the flank or behind with Maximillian’s cavalry.
• Antwerp: This is a tough one, but after a couple of tries, pretty routinely winnable. Use your crossbowmen to fire at the enemy cavalry. Intercept the enemy cavalry with your cavalry before they mow down your crossbowmen. Retreat your armies to the hill keeping one crossbowmen apart from the other so they can cover each other. You should be able to rout the cavalry, cut down the crossbowmen with your general and steadily cut down the melee troops with your crossbowmen. It’s a big blow if you lose your general, so I usually replay it if I do.

Strategy

Accept the trade offer from Denmark unless you are feeling particularly honorable. Accept the trade offer from Poland. Trade with the Pope? Up to you. Sack Budapest. Sack Antwerp. Sack Prague. Sack Genoa. If you are given the opportunity to ambush the French, refuse.

Turn 3

The mid-game is here. Now it’s time to capture Breslau and Madgeburg, lay siege to London, Marseille, Paris, Rome, and Arhus and position troops to attack Stettin, Bran, Thorn or Krakow, Cagliari, Ragusa or Durazzo, Naples, Nottingham, Bruge, Angers or Caen,

Strategy

Builds are less of a packing problem than a linear optimization problem. You can afford plenty of troops. The question is whether they are worth the money or not. Continue to liquidate troops in less useful places. Start to take fewer risks by building some forts. Consider switching the focus of your production centers from financial to military or growth.
Don’t sack Madgeburg or Breslau, and it’s a toss up whether to sack Rheims. Save the attack until you see how much money you have/need. Mercenary ships are 1000 each.

Army Movement

• Arhus/Hamburg: Invest Arhus.
• Madgeburg: Take Madgeburg, then advance on Stettin. Consider building a fort this turn or next if you have a general nearby (would have come from Frankfurt in turn 2 or be a man of the hour).
• Prague/Breslau: Move Maximillian Mandorf to the border of Breslau and Prague. Buy crossbow mercenary. Move in to lay siege on Breslau. Buy one more mercenary unit. I like another crossbow unit. Take Breslau. Move the general out of town along with the crossbow unit with movement points.
• Venice: Move the four units southeast in the boats toward Ragusa. If you are attacked, you might be able to take Durazzo or invest Corinth.
• Florence/Rome: Invest Rome. This may be tricky. If the main army is west of the Tiber River, consider building a fort next to the bridge over the Tiber and manning it. If the main army is in the way, save movement points by attacking the army from the hills off the road by a detached force with the main force on the road to Rome in support. This battle will get you excommunicated and your generals will lose loyalty, but disloyal generals still need to be bribed or get uppity to leave. Rome has lots of money so if you face and best the main force (see tactics) you will have to kill the prisoners to have a chance of capturing Rome next turn.
• Genoa: Take Genoa if you have not already done so. Buy a mercenary ship and take the Emperor to hire mercenary troop outside Marseille and invest Marseille. The rest of the troops should get ready for another ship to be built to take Adjaccio. The Marseille troops will be able to move on to take Toulouse (and Burgundy) or Adjaccio and Tunis.
• Antwerp/Bruge/London: There are no more mercenaries in the low countries. Time to cross the channel. Take Dietrich von Saxony across the channel. I like London Bridge, but you might do slightly better with the general northeast of London if roads have not been built yet. If you are out of money, you can take Bruge by stratagem with your general, heavy cavalry and one crossbow unit. You can also take Bruge with mercenary units from London. I ran out of money because the army southwest of Prague defected so invested and took Bruge by strategem. To win in 7 turns, you probably have to take London this turn. Experiment with where your troops, your ship and how many spear units you buy in order to make investing Nottingham on Turn 4 feasible. If you invest London, you will have to take Bruge from Paris cavalry and Antwerp crossbowmen and possibly town militia later.
• Rheims/Paris: After you take Rheims, if there is a unit outside of Paris, try to take Paris by destroying the support units coming from Paris. If they “melt away”, you can march into Paris unopposed. Remember only the support units need to be utterly obliterated. The main enemy can just be beaten. Then move Prince Henry forward. If you attacked the enemy outside the gate with Prince Henry only in support, you will get a new general unit. These units can take an empty Paris even if they don’t have sufficient movement points to move to any non-road square.
• Budapest: Move troops toward Bran. Have Lazlo build a fort for them. Move Lazlo to near the Southeast border of Budapest and Bran.
• Staufen/Metz: Move troops forward. Consider setting up a fort on the road to Rheims.
• Milan/Venice/Bologna/Florence: Build another ship and raise another army of melee units comprising town guard and spear militia. This will take Ragusa if your previous ship is attacked or possibly Durazzo if not.

Production

• Build roads in Staufen, Rheims, Madgeburg, Prague and Genoa.
• Build a port in Antwerp.
• Build a tanner in Paris if all goes well.
• Build land clearance in Budapest, Florence and Hamburg if desired.
• Build a grain exchange in Frankfurt if desired.
• Build troops in Staufen, Metz, Milan, Venice, Florence and Bologna. Build a ship in Genoa and Venice.

Tactics

• Breslau: I recommended two crossbow units and a spearman if the Prague army defected and two crossbow units and the general if not. This is fairly easy with two crossbowmen and a general. For a challenge try to use one crossbow unit and a spear man unit in addition to your general. Tactics are the same. Position crossbow for a direct shot (west side of village), then retreat them out of range if archers move up. Rout whatever units approach your strong units unsupported by attacking them from two sides or more with all of your units.
• Madgeburg: I recommended heavy horse, spear militia and two archer units. This is a tough battle with a ram, but straightforward with ladders. Do not use you cavalry as shock troops. I tend to put ladder units on three sides. I tend to finally open the fourth gate and let in the cavalry. The cavalry usually massacres the archers. Next, I go the long way around to open the other gate. With the archers on the walls, I can usually make a number of kills before the enemy retreats to the square. At that point, I use what’s left of the infantry to screen the archers from direct attack. Then when the enemy routs, I use the cavalry to capture as many as I can before they get back to the square.
• Rheims: After moving up the rump of the army from Metz, this battle is lopsided. Ram to the west of the south gate to the west of the tower on the high side of the small ramp just inside the palisade. Use archers to kill the troops waiting inside the wall. Once the wall has been rammed (I choose one of the spear militia veteran rump units), position crossbow to fire directly at troops. Do not use all of your arrows and bolts. Save arrows for morale attacks later. Save bolts for better shots. Once enemy troops strengths are down in the forward units, shoot fire arrows at them and rush them with Prince Henry, the mercenary spear men and the militia spear men. Once they have routed, set up a perimeter with the mercenary spear men protecting the rear and the militia spear men on the hill to the north of the alley and the other militia spear men in the corner at the turn of the palisade from east to north. Then position crossbowmen on the hill and open up. You should be rushed. Use Prince Henry and fire arrows to rout these troops. I then go after the troops in the central square. This involves firing the rest of the bolts. The last battle is grinding, but you should be able to win a heroic victory easily and take many of the light losses on the militia units whose movement points are exhausted.

Turn 3.5

Strategy

Turn 4

Strategy

Turn 4.5

Strategy

Turn 5

Strategy

Turn 5.5

Strategy

Turn 6

Strategy

Turn 6.5

Strategy

Turn 7

Strategy

Turn 7.5

Strategy

Turn 8

Strategy

Coming soon: Turns 3-8. Then, surviving as a single region to colonize the new world.

The AI and game rules still need some major improvement to be a challenge to the expert strategist and tactician even at the highest difficulty levels. I was able to satisfy the victory conditions for the ‘long’ campaign playing the Holy Roman Empire on turn 8. What follows is strategy, tactics and a recount of how to do it. I’ll point the way for how to do it by turn 7.

Strategy Highlights

• Mercenaries provide an instant, powerful army in the early game and allow your generals to be in two (or three! places at once)
• Buy mercenaries either next turn (if short on cash and not in danger of crushing attack and can’t attack your target this turn), immediately (if not available on the other side of the border), later (to preserve movement points and avoid zones of control) or multiple times (to increase the chance of winning a mercenary captain)
• Pillaging cities which loses key population and income potential in a long game provides a very high amount of initial capital in a short game
• Bypass some close targets to arrive at the furthest targets in time to win and send reinforcements from the rear (or the front!) to take the bypassed targets
• Buying ships to move along the coast will sometimes save a turn versus moving them there overland
• Disembark ships with units with most movement points first
• Bring generals around to the far side of cities to position them to attack the next city and to allow junior troops to form new generals
• Break sieging troops into groups so that some of them won’t be near the wall when others are attacked by a sally when facing cavalry troops
• AI opponents will not buy up mercenaries to starve your advancing generals of new units
• If your general’s unit or horsemen move to attack a city and moves independently from the rest of the force, it can be joined later by the rest of the army exhausting their movement points to build siege equipment to take the city or to attack the city if the siege equipment is already built or is part of the army
• The same attack/join strategy can be used to add units with movement exhausted to an attack on a village without walls by ‘laying siege’ to the village rather than immediately attacking it
• Units part of a sieging army can break off to save movement points to attack the next city or be pre-positioned as a non-sieging supporting army
• Not much point in building a lot of economy if the payoff has to be in 7 turns or less
• It’s often cheaper and faster to liquidate units in one location and build them in another rather than move them
• If you attack a unit next to a city, the city army sallies to support it. If the enemy army is sufficiently depopulated before being routed, the city will be empty and may be captured in one turn without a spy and potentially recruit several units that turn
• Spies did not appear to be a good investment in such a short game. Even the opening spy is probably best killed off
• Often the AI will attack you to sally on its turn especially when faced with an equal or inferior force in its (flawed) opinion
• If an army without a general breaks into several regiments, only some of them will turn rebel; if each subgroup can’t defend itself, it’s easy to create a man of the hour from the remaining units by attacking the rebel (that also doesn’t move)
• If you are at war with lots of factions, your generals seem more likely to win a mercenary captain so consider attacking factions for the first time before buying mercenaries
• Liquidating military installations within castles is a great source of capital for that last unit or two
• A single cavalry unit can lay siege to a city that a very large army of foot soldiers cannot break
• A single fast foot unit (archers or sometimes peasants) can lay siege to a city that a very large army of foot soldiers cannot break
• If you give enemy diplomats tempting targets they can’t bribe, they will often prefer them to other targets that are easier to bribe
• It’s often possible to retrain units in a newly conquered city even if no new recruits are available
• Recruiting cheap units can allow garrisoning expensive units to head to the front (or be liquidated–but that’s a three or four turn payoff) making mustering halls one of the few useful builds
• Carefully combining veteran units with casualties can create more experienced units, move experience to multiple units where it can be retrained, move experience to smaller units where they can be retrained to create a unit with more net experience, or moved to a larger unit to better leverage the value of the experience, but this risks losing movement points or postponing the turn the unit can be retrained
• If two cities are a couple squares less than a single march apart, rear garrison troops can come to the front to join an attack, then a unit from the victorious sieging army can return to the rear to garrison the rear city
• Armor is not a good investment in such a short game
• Move your capitol to the front to allow princesses’ husbands to appear at the front if your finances aren’t too severely affected in case your princess finds someone suitable
• Setting city management to ‘financial’ and leaving extra garrison troops in cities to boost morale maximizes revenue minus cost
• Pay attention to a city’s ‘free’ units
• A mine in Vienna can pay for itself in 5 turns which is probably a bad investment, but all other mines take 12 or more turns to pay for themselves and are terrible investments
• If a ship is attacked, it can often reach its destination (or a better one!) sooner
• AI will not refuse a battle against comparable faster dominating troops (e.g., archers accept battle with horse, melee troops accept battle with archers); the rules should probably prevent such refusals because horse should be able to force engagement with slower troops in short pursuits, but the AI doesn’t take advantage of the fact that the rules don’t
• An effective one-two punch is to lay siege to a city with part of your force, whittle down the external defenders, remove the siege and attack the defenders now outside the city and blast the city’s defenders when they sally to the aid of the routed defenders; night attacks can also be used to prevent enemy support
• The first (and sometimes only) build should be a road or a port
• Land clearance, grain exchange and town hall might pay for themselves in 7 turns, but all three-turn builds seem obviously quite bad on this time scale
• Units disembarking ships can break through enemy zones of control
• The Pope and other powers do not react or react too slowly to your instant unipolar power grab; the Pope often only excommunicates you after you attack him and the next power in your path is more likely to propose a trade agreement and give you map information than to declare war on you before you attack
• There were no counterattacks in such a short game
• Basic strategy seems to continue to be effective from 1.0 and 1.1
• It still remains easier to attack a target with tall walls than a palisade–the rules should allow ladders to be used against palisades; I want some pole vaulters too
• Leave a city empty with a pending unit build (or even without one if there are no enemy nearby; even a very hostile city usually takes a couple turns to successfully revolt)
• Block a hostile mobile army from breaking your siege by detaching a force to a bridge or defile that can be supported by the sieging troops or building it a fort in the way
• Break through a hostile screening or blocking force by bring the bulk of units to meet it on the path to the target, then detaching one unit to initiate the attack which preserves movement points for the main force while often creating a man of the hour
• In the early game, fire forces that are too far from the front, force them into action that will reduce the number of soldiers to pay, or substitute them into armies instead of foot soldiers and fire the foot soldiers (especially the two initial units of heavy cavalry)
• Archers, peasants and rump depleted veteran units are cheaper to garrison than full units of soldiers or cavalry
• Archers and crossbowmen are the best value for the money if cavalry can be kept off of them because they are cheap, they retain their experience well, they lose few forces in an engagement, they have great special attacks (super range for crossbowmen and fire for archers), they can capture some enemy routing troops, stay out of range of foot soldiers, engage foot soldiers so they can be decisively flak attacked by cavalry and they can be used as skirmishers and support troops to mop up after killing the bulk of the enemy
• Destroying a faction caused all of its ships to sink
• Siege factories take too long to build in such a short game
• You can sometimes move ahead behind enemy lines to buy mercenaries then come back to the front (or bypass) in the same turn
• Build a fort or a chain of forts between cities (most useful between cities east of Hamburg and Prague and in France)
• Count backwards from when you want to win and what you can get to the front in time; this avoids wasteful building and unit builds
• Move some or nearly all of besieging troops forward to the next target before the attack if the new target is not in the same direction as the attack if you have sufficient reinforcements to bring forward to take over the siege

Tactics Highlights

• Dropping ladders and picking them up with a unit with 9-35 soldiers breaks the ladder group into two or more groups allowing for example four different units to have a single ladder
• AI sallies units out en masse and does not adjust to a barrage of arrows or bolts; this can smash the sallying force’s best unit or two such as cavalry or a ranged attacker when the enemy has no cavalry
• The AI will now go to loose formation better in city and village defenses which suggests alternating ranged/melee tactics
• The last unit out of a city still leaves the door open
• The AI still sallies with its entire force even when facing cavalry when it has no cavalry allowing the simple tactic of running to the corner of the map, then capturing the square
• Cavalry defending cities still does weird stuff like going outside when all units are inside or sallying to attack alone against a group of attackers
• A strong general can hold the central square and fight off entry into the square from one direction for thirty to ninety seconds
• The AI will enter and will not break off an uphill battle until it gets routed
• Archers on the city walls cannot be attacked by horse and with a sufficient morale advantage cannot by assaulted by melee troops either
• Note well where enemy reinforcements will enter the field from the strategy map (center on defender in meeting engagements, the city in city attack/sally engagements) so that this group can be cut down immediately in detail by well positioned archers and medium to long range and flanking melee and cavalry troops
• The AI gets confused by a group of melee troops splitting into two directions to scale the walls
• The AI will not use sally tactics when it is defending an attack so archers are usually safe outside the walls in siege attacks
• Archers and crossbows in a high altitude defense can use a combination of obstructions, screening melee troops, fire arrows and flank and rear attacks by cavalry to rout close attackers and steadily kill the rest through superior range
• Certain maps have walls that allow ranged attacks on units defending central squares which allows ranged troops to best cavalry if they make it to the city wall because the cavalry won’t stay out of range
• It’s possible to position troops down alleys with melee troops defending a slope or outside the castle on the Palermo and Ragusa maps to attack the central square
• With the exception of putting your crossbowmen at point blank range in front of a breached wooden wall, almost all basic tactics from 1.0 and 1.1 seem to work
• Defenders still can’t tip over ladders even if there are no troops on them
• Pay attention to where your general is in your general’s unit and face him away from the battle (typically, unless you want to kill him off)
• The AI still gets confused by assaulting troops with ladders and will eventually leave an open wall to scale if you move the troops around outside
• Your cavalry and melee troops can’t attack units that are routing in front of doors, units that are routing off of walls or units that have not yet entered the map by right clicking them all the time, but you can position your troops to fight and kill them or shoot some of them with range attack troops
• If you can afford the damage, you can poke lots of holes in a palisade with a ram to allow your cavalry to enter the city without a frontal assault
• Mutually supporting separated range troops with overlapping fields of fire are a very good unit placement and works almost as well as it did against the Spartans in the Peloponnesian War

Coming soon, play by play.

If this seems like a big jump from the last you heard, it is. The 2004 estimate of China per capita gdp was only $5600 vs. the 2006 estimate of $7500.

I also want to applaud Al Gore and Richard Branson for taking the lead on getting this problem solved for the whole world, not just the space and airline industries.

The gas coming out of a coal furnace is mostly carbon dioxide. Sequestration schemes need not look to capture and concentrate carbon dioxide from the atmosphere until power plant exhaust sources are exhausted. One way to sequester the CO₂ is to send it into the ground via the same kind of pipeline and into the same kind of well they find methane in. Al, Richard, buy defibrillators with the $25 million if you end up awarding your greenhouse prize for this idea.

The problem of 143 tons of kerosene is no big deal. Following a carbon neutral strategy would add about $2,000 to the price of an orbital ticket that is priced in the millions at today’s European carbon abatement price per ton.

Carbon is an opportunity, not a material liability. It is time for the suborbital and orbital space companies to declare that they will be carbon neutral and buy carbon offsets for their customers. Join Space Shot and Virgin and help eclipse Earthbound dangers as we develop space.

In his recent article about the reasons for lunar exploration, Paul Spudis asserts that “…some complain that the reason for going to the Moon is still unclear.” (See “A Moon full of opportunity”, The Space Review, January 22, 2007) That is, unfortunately, an incorrect understanding of why there are objections to returning to the Moon with an emphasis on human settlement and exploration. To characterize as “whiners” those who have expressed concerns that NASA is pursuing the wrong goal does a great disservice to legitimate debate. These concerns are well founded based on disagreements about the benefit and attainability of the goal. Proposing a grand “Vision” to explore our solar system has value; however, what the pace and emphasis should be needs to be continually debated based on evolving national needs and the ability to find required resources. We can “…do everything else that we want to do in space” without detouring to the Moon. All indications are that such a detour will inhibit everything else we “should” do in space with the limited resources available. To provide a detailed analysis of why there are disagreements would require a lengthy response; the following discussion briefly presents the key points.

The Moon is closer than Mars. Flybys are already being offered as tour destinations. It is not a detour any more than the colonization of Ireland was a detour for the English prior to the colonization of North America. Colonization is not a zero sum game. Having cities on the Moon will light up the New Moon so everyone can see diretly with their own eyes the success of settlement.

The six themes that are the foundation underlying the rationale to return humans and robots to the Moon: human settlement, preparation for Mars missions, science, economic expansion, international cooperation, and public engagement, were predicated on many false assumptions. The fact that NASA’s Lunar Architecture Team worked for many months considering recommendations from multiple sources is interesting but not necessarily significant. Using a relevant quote: “If a committee is allowed to discuss a bad idea long enough, it will eventually adopt it because of all the work they put into it.” (K. Kruikshank)

One still needs to refute the output of the committee.

There is no question that it would be possible to build human settlements on the Moon. Such a program was proposed in the late 1960s when all of the infrastructure was in place and paid for, but it was denied by Congress and the Nixon administration. A Space Exploration Initiative that included returning to the Moon, similar to the program currently underway, was unveiled by President George H.W. Bush in 1989. It was also denied by Congress. There were no compelling reasons then, and there are none now, to spend a major fraction of the nation’s space budget to return humans or robots to the Moon. Some claim that the theme of human settlement will be important as it supports the goals of all the other themes. That may be true, but its importance is doubtful because it places a high value on very questionable objectives as discussed below.

Stating there are no reasons is false on its face. One must refute all reasons to win this point. The Moon has real estate. The Moon has materials that can be used to support orbital commerce. The Moon has value as a collectible. The Moon is a national pride object. Colonizing the Moon is a grand challenge to the Nation, the Earth and Humanity.

Human missions to Mars, if and when they might occur, are so far in the future that lessons learned on the Moon will have little relevance.

Not if Elon Musk has his way. Space is now. Don’t wait for NASA. “Don’t go at all because we’re too slow,” says Beattie. I refuse to accept that.

If humans eventually travel to Mars, technology that would be used will be far advanced over that which NASA would employ on the Moon in the next twenty years.

Much of the advance would come from direct colonization experience. The advance would not be as great if there is no Lunar push.

The first humans who might travel to Mars will probably not have the immediate objective of establishing a settlement. Rather, they will go as explorers and spend only that amount of time required to meet initial objectives, with their staytime defined by orbital mechanics.

That depends if it is privately funded by the likes of Musk, Diamandis and myself or publicly funded like Antarctica exploration.

Determining how to utilize lunar resources to supply a lunar base will not have applicability to a Mars base as the technology and processes needed to use Mars raw materials will be unique to Mars resources.

Mars has low gravity, no breathable atmosphere, a day/night cycle, a communications lag and a re-supply delay. The Moon also has variants of these problems. Stating something is unique requires demonstrating why each similarity is irrelevant to win the point.

Other surface conditions on Mars that human explorers will have to cope with will also be much different than those found on the Moon and will require specific technology to ensure safe operations. Costly and risky human exploration of Mars may never be needed. As robots become more capable, the major scientific and philosophical question that drives Mars exploration—does life exist or has it ever existed on Mars—may well be answered by robotic missions. The need to establish human settlements on Mars in the future is problematic.

If we keep doubling our energy usage every 30 years which we will if we continue to get richer and have kids, humanity will output as much heat as Earth’s share of sunshine in 400 years (1/10,000 now). We will colonize space by that time. Either that or we will be taken over by Cylons and the robots will colonize Mars for us. Or is Beattie’s plan for humanity to stop economic growth and population growth?

Scientific investigations, discussed in the recent National Research Council (NRC) report “The Scientific Context for Exploration of the Moon” define an extensive exploration program. If pursued, the program would add additional information to our present knowledge of the Moon’s early history and current state. However, we already have an excellent understanding of the Moon’s history and composition compiled from data returned from Surveyor, Lunar Orbiter, and Apollo missions. The more recent Clementine and Lunar Prospector missions also contributed to our understanding. Added detail is only of interest to those who have spent most or all of their professional lives studying the Moon. It is unlikely that any new information collected during detailed lunar exploration will resolve fundamental questions being asked regarding the origin and evolution of the solar system. Making this theme even more suspect in terms of its importance, a successful implementation of NRC program would require numerous robotic missions complimented by many human missions. The robotic missions would have to be more capable than the present Mars rover missions for, in addition to making detailed chemical and mineralogical measurements, many would require deep drilling and sample return from both the Moon’s near and far sides. To date, there have been no estimates of how much such an ambitious campaign would cost. NASA has dodged the question of cost for both robotic and human missions, including establishing human settlements, by hiding behind the slogan that returning to the Moon is based on an “open architecture.” Or in other words, to defuse the critics, it is whatever you want it to be. Not a very strong position on which to ask the Congress to commit to spending huge sums.

We are a rich nation. The Moon is worth it. To say that the support has been inadequate in the past does not mean the request is unjustified.

There are no lunar resources that, when processed, would have any economic value if utilized on the Moon or returned to Earth.

Photons. TV. Collectibles. Tourists.

Lunar in situ resource utilization has been shown by several analyses to not have a positive cost benefit.

On what time scale? Do we want to truck in water or hydrogen for the showers?

Enthusiasts who have made claims to the contrary have done so by using questionable and very optimistic projections of what would be required.

We had better put in place basic in situ resource utilization (e.g., hoisting and lowering a bag of rocks as energy storage, in situ solar energy, Lunar oxygen) if we want colonization to be feasible let alone economical.

They would be well advised to reopen their chemistry and physics textbooks and spend some time with real-world mining and drilling operations.

How to get real-space drilling experience on Earth? Perhaps we could drill for gas on the Moon. There are “rock bursts” on Earth in deep mines. Drilling on the Moon might provide the cheapest method of oxygen extraction.

A case in point is the assumption that water ice will be found at the lunar poles and could be mined to supply a base and other activities. (See “Ice on the Moon”, The Space Review, November 6, 2006) Based on measurements of the Moon’s polar regions made during the Lunar Prospector mission, some believe that large quantities of water ice will be found in permanently shadowed lunar craters. It should be remembered that Lunar Prospector did not record the presence of water ice, only an indication of “excess” hydrogen that some infer means water ice. If water ice exists, large amounts of lunar soil would have to be processed in the shadow of rock-strewn crater walls in order to recover sufficient quantities of oxygen and hydrogen to be used for either fuel or life support. Recent studies (Campbell et al., Nature, October 19. 2006) using the Arecibo radar to examine the Moon’s south polar region at much higher resolution than Lunar Prospector (20 meters per pixel vs. 40 kilometers), cast doubt on the probability that large amounts of water ice exist in such craters. Also, analyses have been made of what would happen if a comet, traveling at high speed, hit the Moon. They indicate that it is unlikely that much, if any, water released by the impact of a comet at low lunar latitudes would be transported and trapped in polar locations; it would instead evaporate into space. Only impacts of water-rich comets at high lunar latitudes would provide a chance to deposit water ice in the lunar regolith of permanently shadowed polar craters. In view of the above, the presence of water ice and the amount that might be found as a percentage of the lunar soil in permanently shadowed craters remains highly speculative. To base a program to build a settlement at the Moon’s south pole on such scanty evidence, and the requirement to employ highly questionable resource recovery, should not be considered.

It behooves a colonizer to verify the evidence and explore further. It “should not be considered” to abandon such a valuable potential resource either.

Recent press releases seem to indicate that international interest in cooperating with NASA on returning humans to the Moon does not exist. Some, such as the British, have clearly indicated they have other plans. Based on statements made by NASA it would appear that in order for the initiative to return to the Moon to be successful, international cooperation will be required. A meeting has been announced in the spring to explore the interests of the international space community in joining the Vision. How many nations may sign up is problematic, with good reason, considering how the ISS international partners have been treated in the past. Meanwhile, some are leapfrogging ahead to send missions to Mars, the indisputable scientific prize. ESA’s ExoMars rover will be able to drill two meters into the Martian soil to look for signs of life and Russia is planning sample return from the moons of Mars. Some nations will undoubtedly send robotic missions to the Moon in the future. That will allow them to catch up, technologically, with the programs we successfully ran some forty years ago. However, it will be surprising if such missions will add significantly toward understanding our closest planetary neighbor.

Our knowledge is spoiling like bad cabbage. We need to freshen it up or we will lose a march to the Chinese and the Indians. Our knowledge is useless without action. Do we cede the heavens to the New Asia and become Old America?

Depending on the poll, and how the poll was conducted, support for NASA’s programs is usually high. However, most polls indicate that the “general public” knows few details about NASA’s programs and the size of its budgets that use their tax dollars. Interest among the young in our space program, in general, appears to be especially low, and when questioned about returning to the Moon show little enthusiasm about the program.

We need to get to work. Public enthusiasm needs to see progress. Let’s settle this frontier!

NASA’s 2005 authorization indicated that a majority in the 109th Congress supported the Vision. But the full impact on other NASA programs of that support had not been (and still has not been) fully defined and seems to be a moving target as NASA scrambles to fund contracted commitments. The 110th Congress will confront many problems, old and new, and has indicated that science programs will have to compete with other high-priority programs in future budgets. It will require many congresses and administrations to agree to fulfill the goals of the Vision. Further complicating this issue, Congress must decide how to prioritize all of the programs contained in NASA budgets to assure future benefits for the country from NASA research. Should a large percentage of NASA’s budget be spent on a single objective—returning to the Moon—that has little scientific value and no real economic benefits other than job creation?

I want to see the Moon colonized. A new continent is worth the coin we are spending on Iraq. A new continent is worth the sum total of all US national park real estate. A new continent is worth more than Las Vegas and Macao combined. What is the real economic benefit of staying in the cradle?

The fear among critics is that the current goal to return to the Moon is not sustainable under projected budgets. In the meantime, to support this goal, traditional NASA programs are being canceled or severely cut back. A recent example, among many, is the reduction in funding for Earth observation programs. Grandiose promises, with little substance to back them up, must be carefully examined. The Vision that NASA is following has not undergone such a careful examination.

Beattie is attempting to cast a little doubt on each of Spudis’s claims in conjunction with making broad unsubstantiated attacks. If Spudis’s 100 arguments are all 99% correct, we have an excellent foundation to explore and colonize.

Do we analyze our military spending carefully? Do we analyze our social spending carefully? It is a fallacy that Lunar colonization funds will crowd out Mars colonization funds. Both cases can be made together and support each other. Beattie needs to make a stronger case to prove his points. They are unproven and the case to colonize the Moon is as strong as ever.

]]> http://www.decisivewin.com/?feed=rss2&p=110 http://www.decisivewin.com/?p=109 http://www.decisivewin.com/?p=109#comments Tue, 13 Feb 2007 14:40:11 +0000 Sam Dinkin Uncategorized http://www.decisivewin.com/?p=109 FT reports that Uranium is trading for $75/pound. That’s almost four times the price two years ago. No worries. On an energy-adjusted basis, that’s still 10,000,000 times cheaper than oil and 500,000 times cheaper than coal.

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