The RP situation

[asleepathewheel]

GoW has been sitting on the save for nearly 24 hrs now. You don't suppose they are thinking about a double cross of ND or RP has gotten wind of the plans and trying to buy them off?

[Aeson]

I'm still intrigued by an attack on ND, though... we have such an overpowering economy, what if we used the terrain to OUR advantage, loading up our attacking stacks with scads of defenders, and just wading our way in?

What if GoW decides to use a unit or two to block our path along the Mountains? Worse yet, what if they use a couple more to hem our stack 'in' (forcing us to move onto flats to be able to move) until our NAP expires...

[notyoueither]

I think Aeson has it. Grab what we can when the moment is right and trust that our diplomacy can improve dramatically.

Part of that diplomacy would be to make sure that Lego is aware of what is at stake with this war. After it, either they or we will be targetted. We would be on Bob and more vulnerable in the field perhaps, but Lego would still be the civ with the big land and time to develop it peacefully. Neither ND nor GoW will ignore that.

If ND and GoW cannot live with us on Bob, then we team with Lego, and go 2 v 2 to practically decide the game. If GoW and ND accept us, then perhaps we can look forward beyond RP to Lego.

However, what about after RP and Lego? Then it is 3. 3 is a much more dangerous situation than 4. Yes?

I say we take what can be taken from RP, then ride the waves of the 4 power system to see where it can lead us.

[asleepathewheel]

I agree with hitting RP now.

The problem is we have to get ready quite quickly.

We need, IMHO, to take New Madrid the turn Toledo turns to mud and ride the fault line south taking Barcelona, Barcelona, to spiceworld. Net gain early in the war: 3 medium coastal (or nearby) cities with 2 distinct luxuries.

Looking at the map, I would say that, since the war begins next turn, the gow horde is currrently at the shield square 63 of Mavdad. (based on GoW stating the attacks would begin on war turn two) Or they could be further if RP has pickets outside of their territory (one would hope so) but from this point the riders would be unseen from spies on the RP mountains and able to strike Bilbao (note: bilbao is on a hill) in 2 turns and Toledo in 3 turns. (or 4 turns if the mountain is occupied)

After toledo falls, GoW can hit New madrid in one or two turns, depending on if they want to strike across the river.

An estimated minimum of: 4 turns for GoW to take New madrid

So we would have (though my estimates haven't been that accurate in the past ) about three turns (including this one) to ready the forces and land them before GoW could take them at the earliest. The fourth turn would be the attack.

3 turns is plenty of time to ship units across. How many for the first wave? 14 units? 7 galleys now on that coast.

About the RP galley-do we waste 2 galleys to sink it immediately, or do we let it do its thing. If its the latter, I would feel better if we planted someone on Grogs mountain just in case they want to drop off a pair of swords or something.

Note: the RP galley is named "Santa Maria" I would expect there to be two more ships lurking, the Nina and the Pinta somewhere between us.



Of course the major problem with this is the doublecross. Unfortunately when we receive real confirmation of the war, ie. toledo falling, it will be too late to take new madrid, unles gow needs to time to heal. Of course even then it could be a ruse, trading cities and what not. we can tell probably through the verbiage inthe main forum. These turns are crawling now, increases the likelihood of a leak and RP trying to change the equation.

[vulture]

I'm moving in favour of attacking RP as being the least problematic of our options. If need be we can work with ND and GoW on a "we're keeping the cities for now, but we can try and work something out once the war is done" line, which they'll probably go for (they can't expect us to get involved without being able to establish a base on Bob can they). And we can try and arrange a deal with GoW where we split the continent at ND's expense once the war is done.

I don't think we should hit the RP galley yet - once RP are attacked it'll probably be moving away fast, and we can keep GoW informed about where it is (if we know), while saying that we don't want to attack it yet because we give up our advantage of surprise (and if RP think they can get us on their side, that's something else for them to discuss which might distract them from war planning to some degree - even with 20 people working on a situation for 24 hours, it is still possible to miss things).

[notyoueither]

We leave the galley alone. Why would we want to divert RP attention away from the decisive areas of action? Which are far from our LZs btw.

[Harovan]

Of course we leave it alone, no hostilities yet.

It's time to ship the first wave, this turn or next. Perhaps it's wise to land a turn or 2 after the war begun. This way we'll probably face less defenders, as they'll be on their way to the north.

[DeepO]

Originally posted by Theseus
DeepO, I'm not quite sure what you meant by the last paragraph...

Well.. there was talk that we might anger Lego by attacking RP, and there was talk that Lego is the closest partner RP has. If that's true, it wouldn't be so much a 3-1 war, but more a 3-1.5 war, where Lego helps RP with money, as they don't have troops they want to commit, but have a good economy they can use to destabilize the world (or at least Bob).

If they do, I would welcome it in full: it means RP grows stronger, but will go down anyway, only damaging the attackers more. But, we need to make absolutely sure that we don't get damaged by that extra punch RP gets from Lego, so where ND and GoW can slug it out in the jungle, we should have a surprise, decisive strike. I know that that means less chance for leader farming, but so be it. The longer we wait, the more Lego's money becomes important.

There are other consequences: we want Lego to invest gold into the lost cause of RP, which they will only do for as long as they don't see RP as a lost cause. Which, in time means we can't even hint at attacking RP, on the contrary, we could, once the war breaks out between the Bobians, hint at coming to RP's help. They might try to bribe us into helping RP (the Legos certainly are manipulators), or give RP the money to bribe us. As long as Lego loses gold, and RP can damage ND and GoW (but not us), all's well.

DeepO

[notyoueither]

We sit the fence quite cutely, I would say.

We are fans of none of it, to anyone. We wink at GoW and ND, but to RP and Lego we are aghast.

We move when the situation dictates that we must to preserve a balance of power. I would say that our troops and galleys are in position to invade, but we wait for Zaragosa to fall, then we move. We can then tell Lego that we could wait no longer lest ND gain the strategic sites we need to prevent them from locking us off Bob. It is the truth. They will believe it.

[DeepO]

Landing 2 or 3 turns after the war started seems ideal, yes. Later and we risk that RP is gone already (not much risk though, neither of their jungle fortresses will fall in 1 turn only, they're too heavily defended). Sooner, and we attrackt too much attention.

One of RP's galleys will be scouting the Lego passage, the other one is very likely on their North West as well. That is, if they have 3, it could very well be a ruse.

DeepO

[DeepO]

We have to prevent ND from breaking through the jungle, and starting to claim 'our' Bob territory. So we can't wait too long... but that should show once Bilbao(? the most Northern RP city) falls

DeepO

[Arrian]

DEATH TO ESPANA!

Let's get this show on the road!

-Arrian

[nbarclay]

Has anyone worked out a plan for how we would defend holdings on South Bob against a ND attack? Defenders have to worry about everywhere attackers might attack, while attackers can focus their forces much more heavily on one particular point. Using cats in our defense would be extremely dangerous because while they can help us hold, they fall into enemy hands if a tile they are on is captured. Further, unless we can hold every tile of high ground within Ansar range of our new cities (which, I'll remind everyone, will be the smaller 9-tile size for quite some time), the rugged terrain could actually work in an attacker's favor by making it impossible to do preemptive strikes on favorable terms.

Saying that the terrain is defensible is easy enough, but until I see a solid plan for how we could defend the land using the forces we can expect to have available (and still keep reasonable forces at home in case of a GoW backstab), I'm not going to believe it.

Nathan (also known as Doubting Thomas )

[Arrian]

I'll start working on one, Nathan.

You just get those troops on the galleys, ok?

-Arrian

[Arrian]

Part of this depends on exactly what our target list looks like, and what we think we can take. Here is my initial take, for people to discuss/tear apart:

Obviously, we want Barcelona. I would, however, move it 1 tile west (4) soon after capture.

The area around New Madrid is pretty important. I would want a city 1 tile NW (7) of NM, plus a city 1,2 of NM to help protect Barcelona.

The tricky one is the city south of Barcelona. I'd like it, b/c of the luxury supply, but it isn't very defensible, and at that point we're talking about 4 cities.

I think we could defend 3. They will all be on hills. With pikes, cats and knights/med inf for preemptive/counterattack, we should be ok.

This is going to be pretty fluid, I think. Things could move really fast here. ND & GoW have 3-move attackers.

IMO, we need to get over there and get started ASAP! I'm talking about moving 2 cities and building a 3rd, so we need settlers... though I would think we could rushbuild at least one from a captured town. Those towns probably need walls, at least one should have a barracks, and one needs a harbor.

-Arrian