Game Discussion IV

[Aeson]

My most burning question is what spotted GS' fleet off Legoland?

We knew ND had at least one Jet in Gibraltar, but lost the ability for espionage when Arashi had to be disbanded. We were trying to keep the Jet occupied to the S of Gibraltar, by giving DD targets to be spotted/bombed down there.

We couldn't get any Subs over there quick enough to spot enemy Subs. So no idea if the whole time we were under Sub surveilance or not.

Also the new city posed a big threat because ND ships could be moving up along the coast to it.

Finally, there is a slight chance ND/GoW had enough gold to buy our plans.

Were we seen by Sub, Jet, Spy, or was that new city the culprit?

[Krill]

I reckon it was the new city. But that is just me.

[Master Zen]

Actually we were quite short on gold most of the time.

I sent an e-mail to ND a few turns before warning them of the possibility of GS heading towards Legoland since you were razing every city on our path and it seemed that you were not planning to fight at all (and the more you turtled in your south-east the more damage our nukes could do in such a limited space, hence it would have been a rather stupid tactic to get cornered).

Two possible GS strategies were mentioned:

1) you embarked your troops towards Legoland

2) you embarked your troops for a landing in central-northern Stormia once you saw GoW's stack was too south to be able to swing back north in time.

I also thought about a third: that you embarked your troops and would have re-invaded the moment we captured your southern cities assuming some of the coastal ones would be left relatively undefended.

The reason I told ND was because GoW had no way of sending tactical nukes to Legoland because we had no nuke subs in the west.

As to how ND actually found your fleet, I have no idea. I would assume jet fighters, they also built an airbase north of the Lego gulf, perhaps their planes from there spotted it.

[Aeson]

Two possible GS strategies were mentioned:

1) you embarked your troops towards Legoland

2) you embarked your troops for a landing in central-northern Stormia once you saw GoW's stack was too south to be able to swing back north in time.

Our real preference was:

3) Invading Bob.

We only had 7 Marines though, and had already set up to invade Bob prior to GoW joining in. (10 Marines were set to complete the turn we attacked, with a chain set up to move them along). Upon investigating the possible cities we could hit , ND had too many units for us to possibly get through in each city we could hit, so we started sailing back home. This was the turn that GS and RP landed on Lego and razed a few cities.

After GoW weighed in with Nukes, the plan came back.

We sold everything in our cities except an Airport in EotS, and a couple Markets in the "safe" cities, and tried stealing Space Flight (1615g), which failed. Had up to 8 Tactical Nuke prebuilds ready (depends on how many units we wanted to disband, but 6 we could have done with cash and drafting). We had the Uranium hooked up that turn, an Airport in Orangesoda to connect the Aluminum, and 1 Nuclear Sub to fire from. (I never got around to testing if it would work because the tech steal failed, but I was planning on dropping the Tactical Nukes into Transports (missiles can't "Load" but they can be moved into Transports off the coast), moving them into position that way, then waking them up, loading them one at a time into the Nuclear Sub, and firing as many as we needed to break through that way (missiles can't "Fire" from Transports). If testing had shown that wouldn't have worked, we would have swapped a Tactical Nuke with another Nuclear Sub.)

It wasn't terribly likely to work out even with the Tactical Nukes. We had to be able to get within 5 tiles of a ND city (Flateria or Neu Mavsu depending on what espionage turned up) and not be spotted. We had enough airpower in the area (5 CV's of Jets and Bombers) to possibly get all of ND's Jets set to air superiority by Bombing all over the coast the previous turn(s) so their Jets wouldn't be reconning. Navally we had superiority in the area long enough to make sure ND wasn't likely to send ships out unless they could make it back to their cities by the end of the turn.

If we weren't spotted... well we still would have lost, but could have had a turn of fun on Bob. Not sure how far we could get with 50 Tanks, 50 MI, a few Cruise Missiles and Settlers, and up to 6 Tactical nukes (at least 1 or 2 would have had to be used on (or rather next to) the coastal city to get through)... but it would have been fun.

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After the tech steal failed, since all our units had been heading to Bob, we were a bit slow in being able to go at Lego. Probably could have been on that tile 1 or 2 turns earlier otherwise.

[bongo]

I think GS fleet were spotted by jets, we had plenty and used them exclusively for scouting. Mostly because we we were worried GS would try a naval landing in southern bob. Of the same reason units were spread liberally along the same coast. I also think we stationed our tank force inside coastal cities to strengthen the defence. We had a spy with GS so we knew they didn't have too many marines. A nuke would allowed them to break through though. Impossible to say how much damage they would have done, we had garrisons in more or less all important cities in the case of a naval landing.

[DeepO]

I'm still sorry that steal didn't work out

I'm also still sorry for not being more persistent at the beginning of the Bobian war. If I had taken over the save at a time where nobody wanted it anymore, the chaos that was GS would never have kept us from invading GoW. And we probably would have been able to completely destroy them in a couple of turns. ND would have been harder, but still greatly damaged.

Nye, I told you before that you are wrong in taking the blame for that, you did the best you could, and so have others. It was the break down of communication, and general lack of interest after the tiring Voxian war that did it. And if you do want to put down personal blames, it would be my responsibility more than yours. There never was such a nice plan, as we had against Lego, there never even was a dedicated thread for the calculations involved in building up our WC force, and moving everything up to Estonia.

And many of the stuff was left in the open. The only thing we had, were our galleys on the way, enough gold for a lot of upgrades but not enough yet for an invasion, WCs everywhere and certianly not concentrated in the North, and an ally which was being smashed and we promised to help.

I think most people consider us as cold, while in reality we played a lot of decisions quite emotionally involved. I remember what happened when we figured out that we had Lego by the balls... very strange feeling. From one hand the relieve that a whole year of building up got us more results than hoped for, from the other the shared pain of losing something someone has been building up for 2 years. If that wasn't an emotional moment, I don't know what was.

DeepO

[Master Zen]

The point is that GoW repeatedly saved its ass from invasions which we couldn't have countered

ND could have kicked our ass if we hadn't coerced them into destroying RP instead.

Vox could have kicked our ass if we hadn't coerced them into attacking GS instead.

GS could have kicked our ass if you guys had been a bit more organized.

And in the end we were the only civ never to lose a single city in the entire game.

[bongo]

The jet that spottet GS' fleet was stationed in tek rebellistan, as you can see from the shot there must have been at least 5 jets stationed on lego that turn, 3 in gibraltar alone.


This really show the disadvantage of stacking in the nuclear age.

macht zusammen also 15190 schilde versenkt

For once civ is very true to RL.

[DeepO]

15190 shields in that stack? Wow! that's one nuke worth its shields.

DeepO

[Krill]

When anyone says that Nukes are overated, I know where to send them.

And I'm suprised GS even managed to accumulate that many shields, and when you take into account the lost units, the amount we will have built will be close to 20'000 shields, purely invested in our army, navy and air force.

Quite a feat, that.

[bongo]

Originally posted by DeepO
15190 shields in that stack? Wow! that's one nuke worth its shields.

Oh yeah

But 15190 was only the shields *sunk*. There were some that survived the blast meaning the original stack was even larger. We only had one nuke available there so we couldn't do a follow-up attack.


What happened with the survivors btw? Disbanded?

[Krill]

Ask Aeson, he was the one who played the turn...

[Master Zen]

IIRC nukes at sea kill every unit.

[bongo]

I am pretty sure there were survivors...No pollution though


As I have never seen a nuke being used in civ3 before I opened the save just to have a look, nice animation but it doesn't quite beat the sound effect from the civ2 nuke


EDIT:
According to our turn-thread(too lazy to reload now) at least two wounded battleships and one transport were visible after the blast. Would be interesting to know if any of the passengers survived(GS had 9 mechinfs left.)

[Aeson]

Originally posted by bongo
The jet that spottet GS' fleet was stationed in tek rebellistan, as you can see from the shot there must have been at least 5 jets stationed on lego that turn, 3 in gibraltar alone.

This really show the disadvantage of stacking in the nuclear age.

Thanks for the screenshot.

We had to stack. The only chance was not being spotted, and spreading our Transports around would mean we were more likely to be spotted. (The Southern DD's had been spotted off and on for several turns, so were more Jet decoys than anything.)

If that is the actual screenshot from the turn, we just got unlucky and chose the wrong tile to stack on. Gibraltar 44444, 44441, 44411, or 44111 (or 22221, but we couldn't have reached that until a turn later) would have been able to hide us. I chose the tile I did because I felt ND was more likely to pick the spots S (due to having known DDs were down there, and been bombing them, for several turns), and due W (due to it being the fastest place we could get to from ships rounding the S of Stormia).