The Council of War

[Snoddasmannen]

Originally posted by Zeiter
I guess what we need to consider is how easily we would be able to mop up the Morganites with our second invasion proper after the raid, and how much of a boon that would be for us.

With the PTS (and HGP, possibly) obliterated, the Morganites will be faced with massive drone problems, forcing them to:
1. Switch workers to doctors
2. Spend their time building drone facilities
3. Possibly starve some of their citizens in the process of switching workers to doctors (especially if we can manage to take out the HGP too.)

Thus, they will easily lose at least 5 turns of turn advantage, and they will still be in a much weakened state afterwards. I have no doubt that a second invasion proper would prevail.

Yep it sounds great
Let's hope it all goes according to plan.

Now, what would we gain from the second invasion? True, we wouldn't get the PTS or the HGP. However, we would obtain some nice cities (although they might resort to a scorched-earth policy, in which case we could only be sure of capturing any cities on the first turn of invasion), and some fertile real-estate. In short, we'd be the masters of the northern hemisphere.

I think most important of all: We will have eliminated the yellow menace from the game. The faction that looked so ominously winning only 10 turns ago. Now they're in serious jeopardy.

I think we should also begin thinking about plans regarding an assault on Yangland.

Interesting numbers, sounds almost affordable But is Yang really the best target after the Morgans? Why not go after the other humans immediately? The game could won easier that way. We could take a stab at the Gaians. Our elite troops would be well suited to take on the mindworms.

[Zeiter]

But is Yang really the best target after the Morgans? Why not go after the other humans immediately? The game could won easier that way. We could take a stab at the Gaians. Our elite troops would be well suited to take on the mindworms.

Interesting thinking. I still don't think I've gotten into the mindset that we can transport troops 8 tiles/turn. The Gaian continent seems like it's far away, but I guess it's not really. How long of a voyage would it be, 4 or 5 turns, maybe? About as long as the voyage to Morgania, oddly enough. Their powergraph seems to indicate that they are rather weak. Yang's still battling them quite fiercely, is he not? Now that I consider it, I think the Gaians would easily crumble under such a two-front attack, although it would make me feel more comfortable with such a plan if we could manage to infiltrate them first.

On the other hand, can we agree that, if Yang manages to build the HSA, then the Yang invasion receives priority? That would also seal up the game, I would think. In one fell swoop you remove one of the largest obstacles to any invasion.

[Modo44]

One target at a time, alright? Now is Morgan time.

[Googlie]

Originally posted by Snoddasmannen
My thinking is that we send our raid troops to Morgania, and see if we can still succeed in the raid, and if so do it. If not, send the boys home to Arcadia and wait for the build-up and invasion proper.

My thoughts exactly.

Right up until the time that the Castor Horsemen roll off Mercury to take out the defenders at Morgan Mussels we'll know how strong they are and how likely a PTS raid (with an HGP add-on) will be to succeed.

If the odds turn against us we can always just return to Climatic Research and await a grander military build-up

[Maniac]

Originally posted by Zeiter
Now, what would we gain from the second invasion? True, we wouldn't get the PTS or the HGP. However, we would obtain some nice cities

Not at all I fear. I did some further "research":

Morgan currently has 18 bases.
Two of those would be destroyed because of the PTS Raid, reducing the total to 16.
Destroying the PTS would give an extra drone to all Morganite bases.
That would probably cause drone riots in about three quarters of their bases, certainly all their size 3 bases.
Workers would have to be switched to doctors.
That would cause nutrient shortages in many bases.
Since the nutrient tanks of many bases, especially the most recently founded, are nearly empty, this could cause mass starvation.
To be more precise in some six bases I estimate.
Problem is in most cases two population is lost when taking over control of a base: one by destroying the last defender, and one by the action of capturing the base. (Though a pop doesn't seem to be lost if the defender is a probe unit - should confirm it, then we could get some more bases)
This means a base needs to be size 3 in order to survive and be size 1 after the conquest.
Taking all the above into account, we'd probably only be able to capture some four size 1 bases: Morgan Vulcanology, Red Fungus Resort, City of ZTT, Impaler Polymers (but apparently some would like to obliterate that one as well).
So come to think of it, there probably wouldn't be that much of a difference in what we'd gain between a Morganite war of conquest, or a war of destruction.

Originally posted by Snoddasmannen
If their economy is twice our size, could we mount raids to eliminate half of it, enabling us to compete? And wouldn't the other teams have a good chance to play catch-up?

That's indeed a fear of me. The Angels now have Ethical Calculus and perhaps the Gaians now too. So who knows they'll start popbooming while we're eliminating the Morganites, having us face a new superpower just after we've finished with the old one.

However as Googlie says, the Morganites would be severely weakened if the PTS Raid succeeds, and I now think the costs of building a military force sufficient to take out the Morganites wouldn't have to be that high.

[Kassiopeia]

Good lord, I hadn't even considered the fact that the PTS raid would starve them to the point of extinction. It would certainly be a genocide of massive proportions, one we'd better get done with ASAP before our little shreds of goodwill turn into cries bloody murder from the other two humans.

[Googlie]

Hmm - the presence of their armored crawler suggests that we may have to limit our expectations just to the PTS and the destruction of their HQ

We'll waste movement points killing off that crawler, and likely will just have enough oomph to get to MI, kill the probe defenders and occupy the base (selling the NN), then obliterating it.

And lets hope that their about-to-be commissioned Laser Foil at Morgan Mussels doesn't meet our trannie and escort en route and ruin the surprise

[Snoddasmannen]

Originally posted by Googlie
Hmm - the presence of their armored crawler suggests that we may have to limit our expectations just to the PTS and the destruction of their HQ

We'll waste movement points killing off that crawler, and likely will just have enough oomph to get to MI, kill the probe defenders and occupy the base (selling the NN), then obliterating it.

That is just assuming that they don't build more defenses. (and - granted - that they don't move their crawler).

And lets hope that their about-to-be commissioned Laser Foil at Morgan Mussels doesn't meet our trannie and escort en route and ruin the surprise

Nasty thought: The square right next to Mussels is Morgan territorial waters right? They could park their foil there, preventing us from reaching the shore, forcing us to take a detour, and no drone issues. That would effectively halt the attack. We would need an impact cruiser to tag along in order to thwart this defense, since the defense bonus for hanging around in fungus is pretty big - right?

[Maniac]

Originally posted by Snoddasmannen
We would need an impact cruiser to tag along in order to thwart this defense, since the defense bonus for hanging around in fungus is pretty big - right?

If we catch the Morganite foil in fungus, we can use long-range fire. Weapon-against-weapon, ignoring fungal defence.

[Googlie]

Or probe steal it if we had a probe on board. If we limited our objective to just the PTS at MI, then 3 Impact Rovers plus a probe might do the trick

[Kassiopeia]

A little brainstorming.

First off, I'm going to try to drag the Morganite negotiations a bit by pilfering the Gaians' excuse (?) from them.

Secondly, this lead me to consider the reverse: maybe the Gaians are also trying to delay the negotiations between us as a ruse to avoid them from agreeing to anything to keep us unprepared in an attempt to lull us into a false sense of security, so that they can join the Morganites in an alliance against us. (The Angels would probably follow suit shortly thereafter.) And that would possibly be the end of that, as they say.

While the Gaians and the Morganites allying seems remote at best, and I am going to hint at Illuminatus when I reply to him how way more dangerous a victorious Morgan would be to their Angel/Gaian axis over a victorious but exhausted Sparta, it would make the Morganite bid for war somewhat more feasible. They attempt to make us overconfident so that we'll throw our might at them to destroy them, all the while we are backstabbed by the other two. And now the Morganites are desperately using the foil to contact one of the other two to bring the other human factions into alignment with them to make the plan work - but they had to commit to a vendetta with us in order to get the foil in the first place. The plan is workable, although risky, but not something I'd but beyond a conniving group of human players such as ourselves.

Am I "painting devils on the walls" as the phrase here goes, or is this a real threat?

[Googlie]

Well, of all the factions the Gaians seem to be role-playing the most "honestly" - and as such shouldn't be allying themselves with anyone running free market, such as Morgan

Of course, that's not to say that they wouldn't just ignore that for the right price!!

[sentry33]

hello everyone

being fairly new to SMAX, i've been mostly reading and catching up/learning

just a question however:

what stops morgan from diverting energy to psych to get drones controlled? (how much costs to control drone?)

[Snoddasmannen]

Originally posted by sentry33
hello everyone

being fairly new to SMAX, i've been mostly reading and catching up/learning

just a question however:

what stops morgan from diverting energy to psych to get drones controlled? (how much costs to control drone?)

Welcome to the team Sentry33!

My spontaneous response would be that drone controlling these bases with luxuries would be very expensive. I did some research and luckily there is a thread about this here:

http://www.apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=127762

It appears that things are very complicated, and that psych is a rather inefficient way of reducing drones. With only 3 workers in every base, let's say that they generate a total of 8 energy, to quell a drone you need (ignoring all the stuff about hard and soft drong control) 2 energy, which means they'd need to set psych to 30%, not withstanding inefficiency.

Even with this extremely optimistic calculation, they have just lost 30% of their economy to psych, and that alone makes the raid profitable imo.

I await the butchering of my analysis by competent SMAXers

[DeathByTheSword]

well i am far from compentent but these are correct numbers i believe...ok going back to lurking now...