Vox's iron colony

[Arrian]

Oh, and one more thing:

Aeson is right, if we can, we ought to try and drop some pikes and cut their road ASAP. Not just because of Immortals. It's conceivable that Vox could be closing in on Feudalism. Not necessarily likely, but possible. And I don't think anyone here wants to deal with enemy pikemen.

-Arrian

[nbarclay]

As I recall, we have eleven pikes in the western theater. That would let us use six in the landing and leave up to five on Arashi 9, but we'd need to replenish our supply to defend both Arashi 9 and an offensive stack moving on Dissidentville. The east is more of a problem.

Here's what I've been envisioning, counting the upcoming turn as Turn 1:

Turn 1: Switch Whirlwind to a galley in the production phase. New pike in Hurricane. Pike from EotS last turn moves into Hurricane. Take out Vox's immortals, using regulars to the extent necessary to make sure we have three uninjured vets (or elites if a vet can get promoted without taking damage) when we're finished, if possible. Eastern galleys pull back toward Hurricane and western scout pulls back so he won't be spotted.

Turn 2: Rush galley in Whirlwind. New galley in Hurricane and northeastern galleys meet at Hurricane 8-9. Pike completed in EotS on Turn 1 moves into Hurricane. Western landing forces move to Arashi 4. Western galleys except for the southernmost meet at Monsoon 4, with the southernmost at Monsoon 1 (since that's as far as it can go if I'm counting tiles correctly).

Turn 3: New settler in Hurricane, three pikes already in Hurricane, EotS pikemen built Turn 2, and a pikeman from Sandstorm 6 all board eastern galleys, which head north. Two workers from Sandstorm 6 rebuild Hurricane's population. A regular MedInf currently in Sandstorm replaces the pike on Sandstorm 6 temporarily (putting SS6's defense at three pikes, a vet MedInf, a regular MedInf, and a WC). In the west, our troops load on our galleys, which head north staying out to sea and try to end up where they won't be spotted if possible.

Turn 4: Our galleys land.

Yes, this keeps us producing a lot more pikes instead of fast-movers, but our lighthouse-supercharged galleys let our pikes strike deeper faster than "fast-movers" possibly could. It's not so much that we're trading fast-movers for pikes as that we're trading one kind of fast-moving warfare for another.

Regarding cutting the road early, my proposed timing for Inchon is based on the fact that we'll only have one galley available to carry troops until the time we launch Inchon. We couldn't land more than two pikes (which would very likely accomplish nothing but the death of the pikes) early even if we wanted to, and we probably don't want to because we won't have the pikes for that and Inchon both in the time frame we're looking at.

Similarly, we don't have the troops (and, more importantly, ships) for both Inchoff and bottling up the eastern immortals. But those immortals would have to cross two tiles of flatlands to get back into Voxian territory, would take a long time to get there even if we don't stop them, and would be stuck fighting on unfavorable terms once they're there.

[nbarclay]

By the way, the reason for the pure pike force for Inchoff is that the city will be surrounded by mountains and Vox has spearmen in those mountains. That greatly devalues a strategy built around counterattacking.

[Shiber]

Similarly, we don't have the troops (and, more importantly, ships) for both Inchoff and bottling up the eastern immortals.

That's okay, as long as we concentrate enough veteran and elite WCs in the area prior to landing.
On the other hand... Vox will realize that we're following them with WCs (there's no way to do this without them noticing) and might decide to stay on the edge of the mountain chain just to tie us up. Then we won't be able to slowly catapult them, we'd have to either wait for them to come down (which just might never happen, but we'd have to keep a force of WCs (read: potential knights) waiting for them) or give up and just let these 5 easy kills get away.
Or, we could let them stay there and bring a settler to settle next to their position and then fire at them, but then they'd just attack our pikes on flatlands and have relatively good odds at winning.

In either case, we lose the opportunity to kill 5 immortals with almost zero losses on our side and relatively little effort.

[Shiber]

Nathan, please go over your plan again, with the save in front of you. I think that you confused east with west once or twice and that we can pull this off along with boxing the Sandstorm immortals.

[nbarclay]

I checked, and I don't see anything where I mixed up east and west. I originally envisioned the plan with the save in front of me and I've been keeping maps in front of me while writing the plan, so I think I have a good grasp of the situation. Galleys are the big problem in the East, with pikes a very close second.

I've thought of an alternative approach, but I'm not sure how much I like it. If we'd build our Hurricane galley in our upcoming turn, we could immediately shuttle two pikes around behind the Voxians (replacing one with our EotS pike from last turn and one with a regular MedInf) and still get the galley into loading position in time for Inchoff. When we launch Inchoff, unless Vox tries to break out before then (thus very likely shifting our deployments), we'd end up with Hurricane 8 defended by 3 pikes, a vet MedInf, a regular MedInf, and a horse/WC, and SS6 defended by two pikes, two vet MedInfs, a regular MedInf, and a horse/WC.

The catch is that we'd only have two pikes behind the immortals. If Vox would attack them before they fortify, I'm skeptical as to whether the balance of losses would be in our favor because multiple attackers can wear down our pikes. Fortifying our pikes if Vox gives us time would improve our odds a bit, but still probably not leave them all that heavily in our favor. (Although at least only two of Vox's immortals are vets.) If Vulture or Aeson want to come up with more precise probabilities for two vet immortals and three regulars against two vet pikes on mountains, I'd appreciate it.

On the other hand, even if Vox breaks out, we can afford the losses better than they can, and any units they lose mean fewer we have to tie up worrying about what their immortals might do. So it's an option worth considering.

[nbarclay]

One other option: if we're willing to delay Inchoff (and thus probably also Inchon) by a turn, we could plant three pikes and a vet MedInf behind the Voxians and have three pikes, a Vet Medinf, a regular MedInf, and a fast-mover on each of the tiles we're currently defending when our troops leave for Inchoff. In the short run, that would tie up a lot of extra troops, but it would all but guarantee the death of Vox's eastern attack force on terms favorable to us. The question is, is that worth delaying our landings (and follow-up troop deliveries) by a turn?

[Aeson]

Regarding cutting the road early, my proposed timing for Inchon is based on the fact that we'll only have one galley available to carry troops until the time we launch Inchon.

We have 3 Galleys that could be at Monsoon 4 next turn. I'd prefer the northernmost one go scouting though, as both plans are out of the question if all the tiles are blocked off anyways.

The scouting ship would make it so we could only land 4 units on D888 on turn 3, 6 units on D888 by turn 4, 8 units on Inchon by turn 4, or 10 units on Inchon by turn 5. If we don't send it scouting, then D888 doesn't affect Inchon much at all. If D888 is open, the pikes land, cut the road, and then reboard their ships to land on Inchon a couple turns later, but having to face fewer Iron units than otherwise. If D888 is blocked, the 4 or 6 Pikes are still on schedual to drop on Inchon when the Settler makes it up there.

[Shiber]

Chances of a vet pike unfortified on a mountain to successfully defend against a regular immortal: 82%. Against a vet immortal: 71% (IIRC Vox has only one vet).
We'd need Vulture and his magical stack vs. stack calculator to figure this one out.

[Aeson]

The other option I was thinking of is that we could land 6 units on D8 in 2 turns. The 3 galleys move into Monsoon, the units load onto them on turn 2, and then are dropped off the same turn.

I'd think we'd have pretty good odds to take Dissidentville if it was 3 Pikes and 3 Med inf, but we'd also run the risk that we lose units. The 3 Med Inf would also allow us to move up the road North if it was blocked. With Dissidentville razed, we could move up the road freely if they weren't blocking it, and start our fast movers up right now.

If we are lucky, we might be able to salvage the road the road through the Jungle, and Inchon would cut the Iron to the rest of their cities without having to worry about Inchoff.

Given what we've seen of Vox's troops, I think they probably have a unit on Grog Mountain, D888, D88 and both Elipolis hills (along with everywhere we know they are at). They don't seem to want to give us any 'important' landing sites. If that's the case, D8 would allow us to take the road by force, and possibly draw units off their 'landing blocking' duties so that Inchon would be workable.

[Aeson]

With only 2 Pikes, the probabilities are that we'd lose both. We could possibly lose both without killing any Voxian units (~8%). If we kill the first 2 Vets, average 2 hps... then we have ~50/50 chances against the Regs.

With 2 pikes it's mainly just gambling. If we get good rolls we could kill all 5, bad rolls and we don't even hurt them as they can just heal up out of our territory.

We might as well wait to do this until the turn the borders are going to expand, then drop a few extra Pikes.

[Shiber]

Would it really be that bad an idea to delay one of the galleys by a turn so that we'd land at the same turn as planned, but two extra units would arrive one turn later? That way we can have 4 units on that mountain (2 from the galley from Hurricane and 2 from the delayed galley), and we can choose to delay two attackers to one of the sites.

[nbarclay]

Shiber, if we don't land all four units at once, Vox gets a shot to hit while there are only two pikes on the mountain behind them. Still, we could try it and hope Vox doesn't figure out the need to withdraw until we get more troops in.

[Theseus]

In general, I would prefer to wait a turn to accomplish as many objectives as possible concurrently.

[nbarclay]

Originally posted by Aeson
If D888 is open, the pikes land, cut the road, and then reboard their ships to land on Inchon a couple turns later, but having to face fewer Iron units than otherwise.

Our pikes can only reboard the galleys if they're alive, and the pike that actually cuts the road would have to survive on Vox's road for two turns. We'd be practically guaranteed to lose at least one pike, and could easily lose three or four. Losing three or four pikes before we even land would pretty much destroy the Inchon effort, or at least seriously delay it. And without Inchon, Vox could focus all its forces on the Inchoff landing if we would try that anyhow. A bit of repair work by their workers and maybe a replacement colony, and they'd be back in business and could get the upgrade program right back where it would have been if we didn't land at all. And Vox would be more careful against possible naval landings next time.

The Inchon/Inchoff combination is just a little bit slower, but I think it has a much better chance of setting up a situation where Vox can't repair the damage. If we hold Inchoff, Vox doesn't have iron; if we hold Inchon, Vox can't get warriors to Dissidentville for upgrade even if they do get their iron back; and if we hold both, Vox faces both the problem of not having iron and the problem of having its core cut off from its outlying regions and a large percentage of its troops.

My own thinking is that I'd rather not send a scout out ahead of the Inchon landing. If we scout, we give Vox extra reason to protect the areas where we might want to land.

In regard to the idea of trying to take Dissidentville by sending galleys around behind it, if we'd do it at all, I would want to use four pikes and six MedInfs to maximize our chances of success. But remember that Vox has a barracks there, so the healing time advantage would be theirs. And they have quite a few troops that could withdraw back to Dissidentville in two turns or less, as well as being able to bring in their road guards to attack us from behind. Even if we take the city, there is a very real danger that Vox would retake it and inflict acasualty ratio in their favor in the process, and if Vox has a significant reserve of immortals in Dissidentville that they haven't wanted to show us yet, we could lose most or all of our stack without taking the city. (Of course even if we'd just grab Dissidentville long enough to sell its barracks, that woulc eliminate it as an upgrade center.)