The Council of War

[Googlie]

Originally posted by Modo44

Two problems, though.

The biggest problem are the Angels. We have no infiltration, so we hve no good knowledge of their potential. Yes, they have few bases, but may big ones. All we know is that they are growing at the moment, and growing pretty fast.

Here is our infiltration data on the Angels (via their pact with Lal) - # bases and size of each:

[Googlie]

And here's our infiltration on the Gaians (courtesy of their pact with Morgan):

[Modo44]

Googlie, I can see the base sizes. What I need is unit count and % of important structures finished.

[Maniac]

YANG: First, I have to sayI'm very pleased we are now at truce with Yang without having taken casualties. What I can't understand is why we would re-attack him by surprise and why people here think it'd be a cake-walk.

Personally I would prefer a truce with Yang as well, but the problem is any truce with Yang probably can’t last long. Look at what happened this turn. Despite the truce he still continued marching his troops to Minas Tirith, and would surely sneak-attack us if we didn’t beat him to it.

Also personally I don’t think at all it would be cakewalk. However under the scenario that we could achieve peace with the Corporation, it would be better to use our existing forces against the Hive than to use them not at all. While gains would come slow, some would at least come.

I understand that Yang is land-connected with the others and we could use that land to attack, but WE DON'T NEED IT! (see further!). Instead, a strong Hive acts as a buffer zone

Yep I agree. The sea is faster for us for invasions. Also since the Hive continent is central, while we could reach everyone fast, the opposite is true too: we could be infiltrated from all directions… So if we go conquer Hivean bases (because Yang breaks the truce), we should refrain from capturing all bases in sight asap (leave buffers as you say), but only capture them after we can set up a durable defense against the other human factions.

We hear that "when Morgan will ger D:AP, he'll do this and that". First, he's got to get it. Then to prototype it! Then to build an air force, and finally to still have enough minerals to support it!

We can only guess when/if the Corporation will get DAP. We’ve had both a few victories and setbacks these years. On the plus side, Morgan and Gaia are in vendetta with Zak and Lal, Hive research has been delayed a year, and a Gator near a Hive base has been killed. Worse news: Angels don’t reply to our tech offers (among which a DAP trade embargo), Morgan can apparently speak to Yang, truce between Yang and the Weasels.

Should they get DAP, prototyping and building an air force won’t take long though. They can just cash in their crawlers. We already built up our air force very fast while we weren’t even desperate, so the Corporation will certainly be motivated to build one fast.

I have studied the map and it seems Morgan is much more vulnerable that posts in the forum seems to indicate. He's almost on his knees!

Why do you think that?
His economy is still as large or somewhat larger than ours. See the general Covert Ops thread for concrete numbers.

First:

But we don't need to have a formal peace with Morgan do we? As long as we are formally at war, they will be afraid of our attack and continue to build expensive defensive units, slowing down their growth.(Snoddasmannen).

I totally agree! All their bases are stuck building defence perimeters or all kinds of units. Why make peace? If we don't want to launch an attack, we just reposition our forces and they'll never know, still adding units to their burden.

If the Corporation wouldn’t be anywhere in range of DAP, I would indeed agree just continuing to harass while leaving them in the dark is best.
However should we not at least take the possibility in consideration that they could get DAP, and start peace talks? If Morgan doesn’t seem to get DAP, and peace talks don’t go according to wish, we can always invade Vander Eudaimonics after all.

But why make peace? The Angels are growing but don't seem to be a threat right now.

They aren’t a direct threat right now. But as you say they’re growing fast. So if we don’t focus on builder production and grow ourselves, they will become a major threat later.

Then , we send a maximum of planes and next turn: we destroy all his crawlers! Without them, he won't build anything! It's already very difficult for him, it seems! Without crawlers, I can't really see him building and supporting an air force.

I had a look at the previous turn. The Corporate crawlers make up a fifth of their mineral production. However they’re also producing 250 energy. So they won’t be completely crippled simply by destroying their crawlers. (Nevertheless, we should shoot any in sight of course – every bit helps )


Btw, a more general note regarding the possible gains of invading Terrapeso. You say attacking the Hive would give us little gain for much effort. This in fact is even more true for the Corporation. While the Hive has rather large bases, meaning we’d still have decent-sized bases after conquest, the Corporation has size 3 bases at most. There would be little left after we were finished with them. There’s of course the HGP & PEG, but don’t forget we’re dealing with a human player here. If they see we’re overrunning them and getting near their secret projects, they might just obliterate their bases to prevent them falling in our hands.

Just to say that I think we shouldn’t invade Terrapeso with direct profit in mind. It’s only worth it if it would increase our overall position in the game. Would it? As said, our economy would hardly grow because of a full-scale invasion, while the Angel economy would continue growing. And while the Angels are currently nominally neutral, who knows that might change if we actually start conquering Terrapeso. Then we’ll once again be in the situation we were fifteen years ago: facing a faction stronger than us.

11 of our 19 cities are in Stagnant Growth!! We need 2 formers in Arcadia and a small fleet of them in...Laconia (?). And then, begin with infrastructure!

I fully agree! Problem is if you want to invade Terrapeso: This means we can’t expand our military anymore to invade the Corporation. And personally I doubt we have enough forces for the Heavy Option.

Question: why build Rec Commons in Sector Cratersouth? Next growth is in 17 turns and No raw materials!

As you say, we’re not producing minerals there, so it doesn’t matter what production is set to.

Tegea Harbour is in dire hunger but build...a crawler!! When the city is surrounded by forests! It could use a tree farm.

The current hunger will be solved this year. If we want to popboom, a tree farm is indeed best.

Research: how far are we from the Hunter-Seeker Algorythm? It seems it would be the best choice for our next SP. No worry to capture an enemy base, no worry for a moment against the Angels. Less burden on our production capacity.

The HSA would indeed be great. After getting Cyberethics in three years, we’d still need three techs: Adaptive Doctrine, Advanced Military Algorithms and Pre-Sentient Algorithms. No idea when we could get those.

I'd say we let fundamentalism and turn to Simple. Democracy would help popboom but -2 Support would be bad, and it wouldn't help us with Yang.

Fundamentalism makes all our commando units elite. Crucial for that extra movement point. So if we want to invade someone, Fundy is a must at the moment I think. We could of course in the future build our units with the “high morale” special ability. That way we could get elite units without Fundy.

Democratic is a must for popbooming, but as you say the support penalty is very bad for us, so better wait with that switch until we’re completely ready to start popbooming.

[Zeiter]

How much would it cost to upgrade all of our B-4's to B-6's? If we're having trouble dealing with Morgan, that could be something we could do with our money. We would just need to make sure that we protect our investments and try to limit our airforce losses. And perhaps we don't have to upgrade them all. We could just upgrade a few, or use those EC's to rushbuild B-6's instead of conventionally building B-4's.

We could also use those EC's to rush tree farms and children's creches. In fact, this is what I would prefer, now that I think about it. What we should do is start with bases that work a lot of forest tiles (Fort Superiority, for example) and bases that have good drone control already and don't have problems with nutrients. First, we rushbuild a tree farm and a childrens creche in those bases. Then we switch those bases back to military production. As we do that, we can wait until we accumulate another hefty sum of EC's, continuing to build aircraft. When we get another hefty sum, we switch another 5 bases or so over to treefarm and children's creche rushbuild production. We can even cash some crawlers for this. When we have about 10 bases ready for a pop-boom, I say we switch, pop boom with those bases to size 7, and then switch back. We can designate some bases that won't be switched off of military production at all during this time so that Morgan won't be let off the hook one instant. Sure, these bases will be "left behind" somewhat, but if we could get 10 pop-boomed bases, that would be more than the Angels have by far.

[Zeiter]

Btw, a more general note regarding the possible gains of invading Terrapeso. You say attacking the Hive would give us little gain for much effort. This in fact is even more true for the Corporation. While the Hive has rather large bases, meaning we’d still have decent-sized bases after conquest, the Corporation has size 3 bases at most. There would be little left after we were finished with them. There’s of course the HGP & PEG, but don’t forget we’re dealing with a human player here. If they see we’re overrunning them and getting near their secret projects, they might just obliterate their bases to prevent them falling in our hands.

It seems to me that the main rationale for conquering Morgan was to remove the "yellow menace." If it turns out that we can mostly contain the Morganites, then I suppose we can let them fester and duke it out with Yang a bit, and focus on pop-booming ourselves. Of course, we can keep a little bit of military production going, especially F-6's, but we can be fairly confident that Morgan lacks all offensive capabilities whatsoever against us, aside from air attacks, and these can be contained. Thus, perhaps we should begin that popbooming business right away. What will we need? Tree farms, children's creches, and rec commons?

[Kassiopeia]

Let's make some babies

[Zeiter]

Zeiter looks at his voluptuous secretary, unzips his military uniform, and sighs, "It's a thankless job, but somebody's gotta do it..."

[Googlie]

Originally posted by Zeiter
How much would it cost to upgrade all of our B-4's to B-6's? If we're having trouble dealing with Morgan, that could be something we could do with our money. We would just need to make sure that we protect our investments and try to limit our airforce losses. And perhaps we don't have to upgrade them all. We could just upgrade a few, or use those EC's to rushbuild B-6's instead of conventionally building B-4's.

It costs 60 per to upgrade (and as we have 9 B-4's it'd cost 540 for a mass upgrade)

We could also use those EC's to rush tree farms and children's creches. In fact, this is what I would prefer, now that I think about it. What we should do is start with bases that work a lot of forest tiles (Fort Superiority, for example) and bases that have good drone control already and don't have problems with nutrients. First, we rushbuild a tree farm and a childrens creche in those bases. Then we switch those bases back to military production. As we do that, we can wait until we accumulate another hefty sum of EC's, continuing to build aircraft. When we get another hefty sum, we switch another 5 bases or so over to treefarm and children's creche rushbuild production. We can even cash some crawlers for this. When we have about 10 bases ready for a pop-boom, I say we switch, pop boom with those bases to size 7, and then switch back. We can designate some bases that won't be switched off of military production at all during this time so that Morgan won't be let off the hook one instant. Sure, these bases will be "left behind" somewhat, but if we could get 10 pop-boomed bases, that would be more than the Angels have by far.

I think this is a do-able strategy.

Candidate bases would be:

• Arcadia University (currently size 4, has a creche and a holotheater.) Give it a tree farm and a rec commons and it should easily get to size 7 with Dem/Planned
• Fort Superiority (currently 6. Has a Creche, rec commons and a holotheater)
• Gythium Harbour (Currently size 4 - has a rec commons. Also has 4 unworked 2-nut tiles in its base radius)
• Rio Grande (currently 3, has a network node. Also has 2 unworked 2-nut tiles, but as well, 2 rolling/moist but fungussed, and 1 river fungus tile that could be juicy if farmed or forested)
• Santiago Citadel (currently size 4, has a rec commons and 4 juicy 2-nut tiles in its radius)

The others either are still just size 1 or 2, or have not much growth potential due to closeness, or working mines in their radii

[Modo44]

Fort Sup can build a Tree Farm, and I say it should. It is far more efficient not to rush in such mineral-rich bases. Adding two MPs with Non-Lethal Methods would let it grow to what size exactly? Something like 8 clear of any riots and 9 making the last citizen a Talent.

[Googlie]

Well, it can't grow beyond size 7 without having a hab complex

The rec commons tames 2 drones, and the holotheater another 2. Sparta's +1 POLICE means that we can use 2 units for policing, and if they are CDF's, then they control 4 drones.

So with a Hab Complex and 2 CDF's we could get to size 8 before we'd need specialists (or any psych allocation, and of course, a Tree farm increases the value of any Psych allocation by 50%, so we'd prolly get to size 9 at least with a modest 10% Psych allocation in the sliders

[Modo44]

For now, just going to 7 without the need to crawl in food seems worth the investment. We can always see what is possible and needed once the Tree Farm is up. I would still see a Hab complex there in the long run.

[Zeiter]

Hab complexes need to be some of the last things that we build in our bases as far as infrastructure, and then only when the base has the capability of pop-booming to size 10 or so without a hitch. The maintenance and build costs are just too much otherwise. So I'm guessing that it will be a bit before we can build hab complexes and make them truly useful.

[Modo44]

I am talking exclusively about Fort Superiority. It is able to make 8 citizens content already, meaning 9 if the last one becomes a Talent, and 10 with a Research Hospital. With a Tree Farm, it will have enough food to get there rather quickly. If it stays at size 7, we should give it two MPs and sell the Rec. Commons or the Hologram Theatre, as they will be useless!

[Maniac]

Don't forget about crawler-hurrying. With that we can rushbuild our infrastructure without the need for oodles of credits.

Eg there are two crawlers near Fort Soup just harvesting forests (only 2 mins). We could cash those in at FS to get a tree farm by MY 2170 (or MY 2169 if we also throw some cash at it).

Originally posted by Modo44
If it stays at size 7, we should give it two MPs and sell the Rec. Commons or the Hologram Theatre, as they will be useless!

Be careful about scrapping facilities! You never know when they might become useful. Eg Fort Soup had a hab complex, but it was scrapped as it was deemed not to useful (and of course because we urgently needed cash to execute the PTS raid). Now of course we'd have liked there to be a Hab Complex in FS.