After action report "The Great Bobian War"

[GhengisFarbâ„¢]

Originally posted by Hot_Enamel
There is a very nice map done by GF (I think) of his plan to take out RP's south in one foul swoop.

Maybe he will post it....if we can find it.

I'm at "work" now, will look for it later when I'm in the barracks. The thing that went the best for GoW was that we actually guessed correctly what Roleplay would do.

The original plan was that RP would mass fortify the front line. We planned to utilize that by taking our 3 movement Riders and "Riding" right past you looting, pillaging, and taking out the rear thus eating at RP's ability to rebuild its forces.

Our weakness was if GS entered the war and invaded us. That was a major concern, unfortunately GS did enter the war. Fortunately, they just became a second Roleplay and reinforced the front. I had expected GS to enter the war and invade GoW's mainland where they would do the most damage.

My assessment is that GS was having internal debate on whether it was "honorable" to enter the war against GoW and that led to the more conservative strategy in the south. I am very curious as to why GS didn't initiate a GoW invasion at the start of conflict.

[UnOrthOdOx]

Because they themselves were actually planning an invasion of RP and were all in the south, unlike what we expected, GF.

Think about it, they had to have set sail same turn as we declared war more or less. therefore they were already south, not north like we thought.

[Master Zen]

There were two rather interesting diplomatic incidents during this whole time also, but I'm not sure if everyone is confortable about disclosing those... (I don't mind at all btw)

[GhengisFarbâ„¢]

Originally posted by UnOrthOdOx
Because they themselves were actually planning an invasion of RP and were all in the south, unlike what we expected, GF.

Um, can't really go do deep into this specific area with out opening up the whole "who knew that Roleplay was going to be attacked" can of worms.............

[UnOrthOdOx]

I think there were more than just two, MZ. I'm more than happy opening up anything.

And GF, I'm talking about them needing to have been planning it LONG before our little chat with them. In fact, our chat with them just proves it. They wanted a given area of land, and they were already planning on TAKING it before we made any mention of anything. Hell, if they WOULD have just unilaterally taken it instead of protecting RP would we have really cared?

If they had granted RoP at Toledo I know we wouldn't have likely declared war at all. And, knowing the situation as I do, our not declaring war on GS at that point could have certainly strained ND/GoW relations to at least a near breaking at that point.

That's an interesting scenario. Say GS just declared war on RP and took what they wanted instead of protecting RP...

[Master Zen]

Originally posted by UnOrthOdOx
If they had granted RoP at Toledo I know we wouldn't have likely declared war at all. And, knowing the situation as I do, our not declaring war on GS at that point could have certainly strained ND/GoW relations to at least a near breaking at that point.

That's an interesting scenario. Say GS just declared war on RP and took what they wanted instead of protecting RP...

Very true, however, I think that eventually we would have gone to war regardless since anything more than 2-3 GS cities on Bob would have not only been intolerable to ND, but also to us.

[notyoueither]

Believe it or not, many on GS who were active at the time did not relish the thought of jumping in on RP as a part of a dog-pile. Their approach to us for protection was received with some relief, by some.

I was most active in diplomacy for GS at the time, perhaps to our disadvantage. I have no problem with the politics being discussed, MZ.

[GhengisFarbâ„¢]

Interesting, I was of the opinion at the time that GS was probably looking for any expansion opportunity off of their home island that presented itself.

[Arrian]

There were certainly some of us who were thinking about hitting RP. Thinking about it, but not necessarily planning on it.

I recall arguing vehemently that we needed the bulk of our forces loaded into our galleys, positioned off our west coast, ready to sail at a moment's notice if/when war broke out on Bob. We knew it would eventually. It was just a question of when, and who vs. who. We didn't quite get that together, so when things got going, we needed a few turns to get into position.

The key part of my request to have our troops on galleys ready to go was that I assumed the war would be GoW+RP vs. ND, with us jumping in and hitting RP from the sea.

One thing was almost certain: we would oppose a 2-civ split of Bob. Analysis by some of our best 'n brighest indicated that we had almost zero chance of winning the game if we stayed on Stormia. So, not only was prevention of 2 supercivs on Bob a priority, we HAD to take a shot at getting more land for ourselves.

The odds were always long. For one thing, just getting the land wasn't really enough. We also needed a leader for a palace move, to make our new land productive. And then we had to hold it. Imagine that RP & GS had fared better. Imagine we had turned the tide. Imagine that Lego wouldn't intervene against us. Nope, that last one stretches imagination too far. Of course they would have, because us (or any team) getting too strong is just not something they could afford to stand by and allow to happen.

The situation we had considered most likely did not come to pass. Instead, it was GoW + ND vs. RP. It doesn't take a genius to know that against two civs with great medieval UUs, RP was gonna go down hard. So when they asked us for assistance (and offered things ND & GoW refused, plus more), we accepted. Of course. And NYE is correct: on a more personal level, it was a bit more fun riding to the rescue (or trying to) than dogpiling on them. But the decision was primarily strategic, not emotional.

-Arrian

[GhengisFarbâ„¢]

Originally posted by Arrian
The key part of my request to have our troops on galleys ready to go was that I assumed the war would be GoW+RP vs. ND, with us jumping in and hitting RP from the sea.

Ah, so if we had gone with a fake show as if we were supporting RP we could possibly have gotten GS to dogpile RP. Then we could have taken out the last of RP and gone for a clean up to push GS off Bob.

Now I have a headache. This plot-crossplot political scheming is over my wee little head.

[Arrian]

Whatever, it worked out for you guys just fine. You got what you wanted, with relatively light losses. In fact, I think you would be hard-pressed to come up with a better sequence of events for GoW and ND.

-Arrian

[UnOrthOdOx]

The key part of my request to have our troops on galleys ready to go was that I assumed the war would be GoW+RP vs. ND, with us jumping in and hitting RP from the sea.

Oh, so you would have been against us whoever we chose to ally with. The only chance for GoW to be your ally was to be on the receiving end. :???:

And here I thought we were a bit on the looney side. Still, GS seemed to be 3-5 turns behind where they needed to be the entire time, and in the end that was really the only difference I can see.

[asleepathewheel]

Originally posted by UnOrthOdOx
Oh, so you would have been against us whoever we chose to ally with. The only chance for GoW to be your ally was to be on the receiving end. :???:

we were against the 2 teams no matter the composition. Had ND and RP allied, we would have struck up an alliance with you. So yes, the only way we would have allied with you would be if you were put on the defensive.

[notyoueither]

I think sleepy over-simplified. Many things were imagined as possible. There were certain things that we preferred. In the end, going two on two was preferred by more.

[Aeson]

Oh, so you would have been against us whoever we chose to ally with. The only chance for GoW to be your ally was to be on the receiving end.

If two teams split Bob that left GS with running about 66% of what either of the Bob civs could run, and around 55% of what Lego could come up with. This is production (little less), commerce (little more), and also chances at resources. The tile counts (land+coast) were something like GS 300, ND+GoW 900, Lego 600 (minus whatever they gave to Vox). GS land was the highest coast to land ratio, very few hills for production, least suited for 2 cores, and also the lowest ratio of river tiles.

From an economic standpoint, that basically would have relegated GS to someone's lapdog later in the game. Only being able to perhaps choose who won, without a chance at it ourselves. Anything could have happened diplomatically, but given the diplomatic situation at the time it would have been very foolish for us to think we could win the game with that as our strongpoint. At the time GS had the strongest economy and biggest army (though slow). That relative strength was going to dwindle pretty quickly as Lego got their FP up and GoW and ND ran over RP and ignited their GA's. (No offense meant to RP, I doubt GS or anyone could have held up very long against 2 civs with landroutes and 3 move Knights either)

That said, had RP not given us the option of choosing them, we would have probably invaded RP, and then tried to hold whatever we had claimed against both ND and GoW if it came to that. Having seen RP's defense, and the initial invasion forces for ND and GoW, GS would have almost certainly claimed everything SE of the mountains before GoW or ND could get there, but probably only been able to hold onto a few key Hill cities (of our own making) later if ND and GoW had attacked. That would have put us at around 400 tiles, with 800 tiles for ND and GoW... and with the advent of Musketmen, probably would have stayed that way for at least quite some time.

This (the area just S of New Madrid) was basically what GS asked for in negotiations, because we felt we could take it and hold it anyways. ND adamantly refused to allow GS onto bob, and there wasn't time (or trust enough) for GS to get any alternate concessions from GoW. The joke was made in chat to 'keep what you can take', which would have been more than what we were asking for of course. Perhaps if we had given ND and GoW a better idea of our capabilities we could have gotten an agreement, but doing so would destroy our option to help RP or undermine our efforts to keep anything on Bob forcefully, and because of the attitude of ND was very likely to not change anything at all.