Turn 106, 450 BC

[Shiber]

To be edited by the leaders of the Scholia.

Status:

- 161 gold, +129gpt

Check this and every turn to see if we lost some war unweariness due to the killing of troops within cultural borders and therefore must readjust the lux slider.

Urgent questions:

Military:
- Our plan was to take A98, but Vox has moved their forces on that tile to A88. What now? Shall we try to storm Monsoon-99, perhaps?

Economy:

Production Phase:

Diplomacy:

- Still working on a possible deal with Lego for Feudalism + gold for Theology (Lego was supposed to respond yesterday).

Thread library:
- Standing orders for workers (Orders last revised April 5.)

[Shiber]

I'll probably be sleeping when Nathan plays this turn, so I've decided to post my general thoughts right now.

Vox was wise enough to pull back their forces on A98, but there is another target in sight: Monsoon-99.
In order to launch a realistic feint on the spinebreakers (something that IMHO we absolutely must do in order to have a successful Inchon), we must attack now. The target is Monsoon-99, and the gameplan is relatively risky, but it's our only choice (unless we decide to disband the idea of pulling a feint).

Monsoon-99 is within striking range of our cats. Last turn, there were 2 regular immortals on that tile, and judging by the screenshots, that hasn't changed - this means that 4 successful cat hits are necessary, which is quite possible with our 7 cats. This will expose our cats to attack by vet and reg immortals on Monsoon-96, but vet fortified pikes will stand a 50% chance of prevailing against a vet immortal, and a 66% chance of prevailing against a reg immortal, assuming that they are not wounded by cats when they attack (~50% chance of that happening) - that is the risky part that I spoke of. However, any immortals that attack and win but get wounded may become easy prey the following turn should Vox not have sufficient healthy forces in the area to cover them up.
Once we've captured Monsoon-99, we will garrison it with pikes. All in all, we'll need pikes to defend the cats in Monsoon-6 and to keep Monsoon-99 (in order to look convincing). This can come at the expense of Arashi and A9, which are not under any immediate threats and can be relieved of most of their defensive forces without putting ourselves under any additional threat.
Should this operation's immediate objective, which is capturing Monsoon-99, succeed, we will have achieved the following:

1. We will kill 2 regular immortals, probably with no losses to ourselves in the early stage.
2. Vox will be alarmed, and by the number of pikes, cats and medinfs in the area, will not expect an Inchon.
3. Vox will be tempted to pull more forces towards the spinebreakers ("Finally, they are coming down from the mountains and outside the walls! We can fight them on conditions relatively good to what we had in the Arashi theatre! CHARGE!"). This will increase the impact of Inchon.
4. Vox will most likely try to retaliate and attack Monsoon-6 (where we shall initially fire from). Should we manage to get 4 hits in the initial stage and still have remaining cats that haven't fired, I recommend that we fire at the immortals on Monsoon-96 to reduce that risk. Voxian forces that will attack Monsoon-6 will first meet cat fire, which will have a ~50% chance of effectively lowering vets to regs and regs to conscripts. Even if none of the cats hit, we should still have less casualties than Vox, statistically speaking.

[Shiber]

Of course, if we need too many forces for Inchon that we can't pull this off, we can just move the pikes on A9 one tile 8, along with the workers (to road for our cats) and some MedInfs (to make the feint look more convincing).

[zeit]

As much as I'd like to pull off this kind of maneuver- I'm afraid we can't spare the forces, and allow ourselves to lose such a hefty amount of Pikes (and Cats?) at this point. I say we keep on roading, making it look like we're preparing for a siege on D'ville. Meanwhile our Cats should go and bombard the Immortals off of SS- The amount of troops we've got tied up there is inconceivable- we have about 3 times the forces Vox has there. We haven't suffered much from that untill now- because we havn't lacked forces on the defense, and we havn't moved to offense yet (where every troops counts, and you know it better that I do- we'll have to storm gates of town with fortified spears/pikes, and we'll need plenty of cannon fodder for that).

That's gonna change soon- we'll have to support our Inchons forces with something- how long are they gonna last without support? maybe 3-4 turns, being optimistic. Those force on the east could be ready by the time the galleys are back, to help out the pinned down pikes at Inchoff- which, if we pull off, could win the war for us by making Vox sue for peace, even if they don't- they have no Iron, right? (hopefully).

I say we move our Cats to the eastern theater this turn.

[nbarclay]

We definitely don't have the troops to go after the iron tile. Keep in mind that we would need not only pikes to cover the cats but also pikes to cover the MedInf units that storm the tile if we want a credible (and defensible) attack. And if Vox would get lucky and take out half the pikes that will be left in the theater after we launch Inchon, they might be able to start threatening our territory again.

Moving units onto Arashi 8-8 would increase the threat to Dissidentville without spreading us as thin, but we need to be careful that we don't leave Vox an opening to take Monsoon in the process. Units on Arashi 8-8 can't deal with Voxians who attack onto Monsoon 9.

I'll be home to start playing the turn in a few minutes.

[nbarclay]

I went ahead and ran through the production phase since I didn't see anything that looked like it needed rushing.

[nbarclay]

Landing at Hurricane 8-8-8 completed. I went ahead and made all the eastern moves since everything went as expected.

[nbarclay]

Economic stuff:

If we do a 4-shield (16-gold) short rush in Tempest, we can get a MedInf instead of a pike next turn. I'm also planning to put Cyclone on workers, and I'd like to build a temple in O.G. (to get to the whale) and start a courthouse in Whirlwind.

[nbarclay]

If there are no objections, I'd like to move a WC from Arashi 9-6-8-2 to do a little scouting now that our road on Arashi 9 gives our WCs a bit of extra mobility.

If we short rush a new MedInf in Tempest as I suggested, we should be able to get away with using all six of our western MedInfs (three vet and three regular) not committed to Inchon for an Arashi 9-8 diversion. In a pinch (if Vox is feeling especially suicidal), the Inchon units can help cover Monsoon next turn instead of loading, and after that, we'll have a MedInf completed in Bolderberg this turn and one completed in Tempest next turn to augment our WC forces (which, by the way, now have the first Typhoon WC added to them). I'm thinking in terms of sending three pikes and two workers along with the offensive units.

[Theseus]

I'm fine with everything but the Arashi98 diversion... let's keep our units on roads

[Aeson]

I like starting the road to Dissidentville. If we put 5 Workers and enough units to defend them, our units will be on roads next turn, right? If we aren't building up Tempest this would be my vote.

Can we get a look with one of the Galleys at D2 and D1 first though to see just how many Immortals Vox could bring to bear on A98? 5 Workers are a lot to risk, but we should be able to make them safe (D3 can be checked out by the first unit onto A98). It also will look like we are headed for Dissidentville ASAP.

[nbarclay]

I just realized that the Arashi 9-8 move could easily backfire. Instead of moving troops forward to protect Dissidentville, Vox might move some backward, and hence closer to our landings. So we might be better off holding our troops back.

With my proposed WC scouting trip, I see no significant risk to moving our troops one tile off the road. The only move Vox could possibly make to take advantage before we could get back on the roads would be an attack on Monsoon, which would (with any kind of decent luck) give us a chance to take out lots of Voxians relatively cheaply and easily.

But I'll leave the call up to Theseus unless others start injecting opinions. If we don't want the units off roads, I'm thinking maybe put two regulars on Arashi 9 where they could help out against the eastern immortals if Vox moves them off the mountain and leave the rest in Arashi so Vox won't know what we have. (Unless, of course, scouting suggests a different deployment.)

Theseus, what do you recommend?

[nbarclay]

D2 and D1 have one regular immortal each. Vox also has a regular galley at D4-7!

[nbarclay]

I went ahead and scouted with a WC. Vox has a regular immortal at D3-3.

[nbarclay]

Galley situation analysis:

If we don't attack Vox's galley, we risk having it attack one of ours on the way to Inchon and we're likely to have to tie up a lot of troops shadowing it down the coast if it doesn't. If we do attack it and succeed with our first attack (odds a bit under 50-50), Inchon can proceed essentially as scheduled using a galley rushed in Monsoon. If we need more than one galley to sink it, Inchon gets delayed. Or we could rush a galley in Monsoon next turn to cover our other galleys, which would deal with the risk of a Voxian attack on our galleys but not with the problem of having to shadow Vox's galley if it heads south.