The RP situation

[asleepathewheel]

A few things I can think of:

1. NAP with ND (for 15-20 turns)

2. Defensive alliance with GoW (har har, worth its weight in crap that would be)

More seriously:

3. Loads of pikes and cats, with pickets on the mountains

(too bad muskets are too far off, RP will be resolved in 7-8 turns, the heavy fighting at least)

What a generic answer eh? Truth be told, we don't know if they will even attack us, what do we have, GoW's word? Whats that worth? And we don't know what cities we would be able to capture to defend. So its hard to say, and it will be difficult holding 2 or 3 cities from an entire army of ansars, but lets hope that RP can take a bite out of them and at least slow them down a bit.

Like I said before, we would be taking land,in my estimation, from GoW, not ND, thus they wouldn't care as much, one would think. We spin it as they asked for help and we were taking the cities as our price of participation and to make up for the luxuries lost when they invaded.

Hitting RP is risky, but its far riskier to sit on the sideline.

[Arrian]

Another option, if we capture Barcelona and via good luck manage to keep the harbor, would be to build a city 7,7 from Barc to protect it. That might be better, actually... capture Barc, rush a settler, build the new city.

We may need some native workers over there to build a road or two, too.

-Arrian

[Harovan]

Originally posted by asleepathewheel
2. Defensive alliance with GoW (har har, worth its weight in crap that would be)

So true, so true.

[Harovan]

Besides... am I the only one who's anxiously awaiting a royal *****fest in the public forum? That'll be funny.

[Arrian]

The wait is killing me, Sir Ralph. I'm with ya!

We must confine our pleasure to this forum, though.

What do you think of my suggested defensive positioning?

Once we have that worked out, we need to think about how we will divide our forces to defend our holdings.

-Arrian

[OPD]

Yeah when does the war get announced, I can't wait for the *****in to start.

I was hoping it would be announced in IRC to get some first hand reaction from RP.

[Harovan]

I'm going to put this in my sig:

I'm glad it's out, I just hope that it's settled. I don't particularly care to read pages and pages of justifications and excuses and complaints and rants about who's guilty of what and who's at fault for what. I don't care. I don't think most of us do. There is no moral highground. This is a game where warfare is a critical and necessary aspect of attaining victory, and a good war will really make this game exciting. - Togas

Should be appropriate, eh?

EDIT: Togas' name is actually a link, that isn't visible in the quote.

[Arrian]

That might be over the top. But if you're gonna do it, I'd wait until Togas starts whining and put add in the whining quote too... for, um, comparison.

-Arrian

[Harovan]

Sure, before Togas starts to whine, it would be pointless.

[Arrian]

Hey, I'm just making sure you're gonna do it right, that's all.

-Arrian

[OPD]

very cool SR

[vulture]

The wait is killing me too.

I doubt that anyone is going to attack Bilbao, and I doubt it is seriously defended either. Assuming GoW is going to attack down the eastern side, it makes sense to go straight for Toledo. If Bilbao is worth having, they can mop it up later when they have troops to spare, rather than waste what might be vital resources somewhere that isn't important. Concentration of force works.

ND might go for Santiago for the spices, or Zaragoza as a big production center, but both of these are with walls behind rivers, which could give ND heavy losses. Or they might bypass those and head for the mountains 33 of Leon, from which they can threaten to attack four towns at once (Zaragoza, Leon, Pamplona and Salamanca), which would put RP in a bad situation.

If I'm RP, I have heavy defenses in Santiago, Pamplona and Toledo, and reserves plus active defense (MI, horses if they have them) in Leon and just outside Pamplona, plus of course small garrisons on coastal towns and good landing sites. I don't think I'd cover flat landing sites due to lack of sufficient troops (or workers - they are way behind on developing tiles). So ND and GoW may have a pretty tough nut to crack if they want to attack front line cities, and whether they do or not they'll probably draw off the active defense pretty quickly. New Madrid probably has a sizeable garrison both to reinforce Toledo and to counter us landing on the Barcelona road, which is very vulnerable for them. If GoW come hard enough, that should draw off their resources there.

The first sign of war we are likely to see (if any) is Toledo or Santiago changing hands. Oddly, we need ND and GoW to do the right thing at the start and concentrate on one town each so we can see evidence that the war is real, and then we have to hope they go after multiple targets to break up their attack so that RP can hold on (just).

[asleepathewheel]

SR: awesome.


re: defense

I know vulture discussed this before in another place, but how much defense do we need on the homefront, which portion can we devote to the war effort?

How do ansars fare against fortified pikes in cities with walls?

I think one of the towns we take is on a hill, Madrid perhaps? And there are rivers involved at some points.

I agree with arrian, put pikes on the mountains and hills and rush barracks and walls.



Not to be a wet blanket, but would our entry in the war cause GoW and ND to ally with RP to drive us out, or would it be too late at that point. I would hate for Togas to be able to weasel out of this, even temporarily.

[Aeson]

We should be able to hold 3-4 cities initially if we place them right. They need to all be within range of a common reinforcement site, and be augmented by forward lookouts. Each city would want Walls, Barracks, and at Temple. The culture would be mostly so we can eventually build roads out to the forward lookouts that only we can use, and can wait till later of course.



Blue: City
Red: Central forces location
Yellow: Outlooks

Given that we should be able to build at least 2 Pikes for every Ansar/Rider we face, I think we can have a garrison large enough that we could withstand their attacks just about indefinitely. Each city is going to be on Hills, with Walls, and can never be assualted without at least a turns notice. That should allow us to keep numbers superiority in any threatened city.

At worst, we should be able to kill 60-70 shields with each Pike, and evacuate our Catapults in any hopeless situation. Our cities there will be corrupt, so if we do happen to lose them, it's not a big loss to us. We just have to make them very expensive to take. If GoW/ND don't attack us, then we can expand S keeping the same spacing/reinforcement principles for new cities.

[asleepathewheel]

So in that case, Aeson, you would have us capture then abandon the spice city? And abandon madrid and move inland a square (I might be wrong on that)


Would it be completely unfeasible (is that a word) to take and hold the spiceland?