RP, Our Vassals

[Aeson]

We aren't going to suprise ND from the E. GoW will see us... GoW will tell on us. ND will know exactly what they need to prepare for.. and have roughly 10 GA turns to do so. We will be instigating a Voxian tactic... lose your stack on the way to nowhere.

[Aeson]

Going through RP has advantages. We kill ND's offensive capability in an environment where we recieve the movement and intelligence advantage. Our Pikes/Med Inf are 3 movement with a ROP. Our Knights are 6. RP can feed us screenshots of where ND is, and with what. We also can plan around the terrain... ND has to come to us, or stop invading altogether. We can also save RP from being razed, so we have an ally.

From the E, like my post above. ND has the movement advantage in all cases. ND has the intelligence advantage in all cases. ND has the terrain advantage in all cases. RP is basically dead by the time we get to anything of not in ND... we have no ally.

At worst, coming through RP we have to face ND's troops which they pull back into their territory (which is the best we can hope for going from the E). At best, they walk their stack around RP's territory and we get to take the initiative when and where it suits us (play the odds).

[Arrian]

The discussion really gets going when Thesues posts some PMs we had been exchanging:

[Quote]Arrian's first reply via PM:

Ok, things have really changed with respect to our potential involvement on Bob.

The ND/GoW chat did not go well, and so now people seem receptive to RP's offer of vassalage in exchange for assistance (NYE!).

The plan being bandied about involved them gifting us Bilbao (size 1, coastal, ENE of Toledo) and then us pouring our army in there, blocking GoW and attacking ND.

The way I see it, and I think Nathan agrees, if we do this I want to land further north, on good defensive terrain and closer to ND's core. Therefore, I want to land at Elipolis 4,4,4,4,4,4,4,4 (hill, next to a gem mountain, due East of ND's core).

I have reservations about this whole thing. First off, I don't like or trust RP. However, I now don't trust GoW (the MPP thing, their obvious use of loopholes/technicalities to get around agreements) either. ND will probably fight us to the death if we do this. We will be facing at least 1 civ with a medieval UU in their GA. GoW may very well break our NAP (in which case we're up against 2 civs in GAs with nasty UUs) or at least use troops to block us/help ND. RP may be hurt too badly to do much to help and/or willing to string us along, allowing us to take the beating while they sit back.

It's dangerous as hell. But hitting ND does make a certain amount of sense. They're strong. They're smart. They are allied with another civ attacking a 3rd... so our move would balance that, and RP is offering to be our vassal state, which is nothing to sneeze at if you believe them.

Arrian's second reply via PM:

We have a bunch of troops.

Off the top of my head:

~24 pikes
~15 med infs (3-4 of which are regulars)
3 knights
5 horsemen
3 elite war chariots
1 elite* war chariot
10 vet war chariots
10 galleys

Nathan layed it all out on the forum, but of course with 'poly acting the way it is...

My proposed landing force was:

1 settler
8 pikes
4 knights
5 med infs

That was for hitting RP, but I think I'd use a similar force composition for a landing vs. ND.

The reason I wanna land on the hill is I want to build a city there so we can offload our troops directly into a city, which can be given walls and be defended by pikes/cats.

THESEUS:
I think we can accomplish three things at once:

1) A forward city at Mavdad998.

2) Landing our attack stack at Mavdad999.

3) Defending Bilbao and Toledo. Bilbao, btw, is in short of a crap position... we would probably want to get defenders up onto the hills and mountains.

Asleep:
some of the galleys are offline, for the first couple turns at least
-one at the far north of stormia
-one between Stormia and legoland

I don't think we really have the forces to win the war anytime soon, but we can get the warmachine going again after a slight layoff.

Arrian:

I don't have access to maps here, Theseus (work), with 'poly down. So, I don't really have a good idea of where Mavdad is.

I don't like the idea of dividing our forces.

The reason I want to land up north and then march west straight at ND's core is that we can (hopefully) do a ****load of damage right away, before ND wheels their army around. I could care less about Bilbao, or how much damage is done to RP - my goal is killing ND, because if we do this, ND will fight us to the end. Therefore, the most important thing is ripping their heart out, ASAP.

-Arrian

MSS:

I think that he whole idea breaking the NAP with GoW is that if we do accept RPs offer of vassalage, then all we can do is engage ND. We can not engage GoW because the NAP and it's non-disclosure clause. How canm we help RP without attacking GoW and telling RP why we wont attack.

In light of the attitude of GoW and ND.... "help us with our war, but you are not welcome to any spoils (territory)" many in GS are outraged by the idea. The next question is..."How do we get out of this restrictive NAP?" that is where biblos comes in. If we were to accept a ew RP cities, we gain a foothold, are welcomed by a Bobian Civ onto Bob and GoW will have to break the NAP (not us) in order to do something about it. I believe the NAP was set up for 30 turn duration, and I know we have at least 25 turns left of it.

that is why we want to goad GoW into breaking the NAP.

In the mean time we can look at invading ND. RP beleves that GoW will backstab ND at the soonest opportunity and that their cores are lightly defended. Mistakes that we should not also make.

I also take the info that ND and GoW cores are not heavily defended with a grain of salt. A big grain.

mss

--MAP POSTED--

Arrian:

Thanks for the map, Theseus.

I could see hitting Mavdad on the way to the core, but it isn't really all that important. I might favor sticking to the mountains and marching right past it. With enough pikes to eat up cat shots and unit attacks, our attack units could get to their core cities unharmed. Then the fun begins.

MSS - the NAP is a huge problem, yeah. It went into effect in 50bc, by the way. But you know what? I don't see why we have to goad GoW into breaking it. We can just inform RP that we are willing to intervene on their side of things by invading ND, but we are not interested in fighting GoW. If GoW attacks us, that's another matter, but our goal is ND.

Beggars can't be choosers. Who's the beggar here? Yeah, RP is.

-Arrian

MSS:

Arrian:
Thats fine. I understand that we do not need to goad them into breaking the NAP, but considering the attitude of GoW and ND regarding our presence on BOB, it would seem like GoW would wind up attacking us. Granted they could just ignor us and leave it to ND. That is what we perfer.

So how do we put it.... "Right now we have a good relationship with GoW, so we are willing to help by assisting in the elimination of ND, but unless GoW attacks us, we will not engage them."

That would work for me. We still need some ports on Bob and that is where Biblos comes in. With a ROP with RP, we could acces more ND front with Biblos than without.

NYE has been (in last nights chat) preparing RP for their re-situation where we would get much eastern coast and they would relocate to the north and west....

Mss

Theseus:

Now that I understand the ostensible logic of defending Bilbao and Toledo, I don;t disagree with Arrian about letting them go...

If GoW is occupied there against RP, fine (among other things it means we can focus on ND unhindered). If GoW backstabs ND, then everybody's happy (except ND, and possibly us to an extent if they blatantly violate an agreement). And if GoW comes after us, well, RP is fine, and we are in the mountains at least.

Re Mavdad, I have no interest in it, other than as initially a dilution of ND's defense, and then to raze it and eat away at ND's territory for the purposes of healing on the way into their heart. The decision will be made at the time, including, in a big way, if GoW does do the backstab dance... the units threatening RP in the east pull a u-turn, and then like that...*poof*... Mavdad is gone.

Arrian:

Ok, we're not that far apart on this, MSS. I like your wording regarding the GoW issue (good relations).

My problem with Bilbao is that if we accept it, we have to defend it, and that means committing troops down there. I don't want our troops there, and I don't want them divided. I want them up north, near Mavdad, and I want to build our own city on the coast up there (on a hill, add walls, mmm). That way, our troops have a shorter path to ND's core, and the offloading point (the new city) is safer (well, if Bilbao's on a hill, maybe that's not strictly true). The main issue, however, is proximity to ND's vital cities. Bilbao isn't really a very good staging area.

-Arrian

Say we do things my way (for the sake of argument):

We land on the hill "7" from the gem mountain on the east coast. We may or may not be sighted by ND/GoW. Assume we will be, but we could get lucky.

Our troops can then either move 4, 7, 4 (hill, desert, mountain) or 4, 1, 4, 8 (hill, mountain, mountain, mountain) to get next to Stonedina. If we catch them by surprise, then I'd go with 4, 7, 4, because that gives them less time to block the mountain, and we may be able to bull right through. If we take the longer route, they could probably throw enough troops up on the highground to force us to either a) take horrible losses taking the mountain; or b) go around - giving them more time. It's a similar situation to the one Vox faced. Vox's mistake was dilly-dallying. I don't intend to.

EDIT: hell, we could land 1 unit on the hill w/the settler to scope the scene, and depending on what we see, we *could* dump our attack stack on the desert "7" from the hill, which would then be only 2 tiles from the mountain next to Stonedina...

-Arrian

MSS:

I think that biblos is currently being threatened, that is why thre is urgencey for unloading it on us....

Also... comments on teh map...

ND looks like hellatious terrain... easily defendable. ot an easy fight.
Also if things go well for us, we could find ourselves in the middle of RP and GoW. Not a position I want to be in.
Lastly we will have to engage and GoW take their land sooner or latter to ensure our security and RPs vassaldom.Ideally GoW would break the NAP in 20 turns or so.

Also we will need secure sources of luxes as our WW will be an issue.

Mss

Arrian:

If/when we take Stonedina, we're in position to cut 1 of ND's iron supplies. This will deprive them of iron, unless they cut their export deal with GoW. Either way, it helps us & RP.

Then we decide whether to continue advancing on the core, or to detour north to cut the other iron supply. That may not be worth the trouble, because if memory serves, Ansars do NOT require iron. Am I right? Or is it Keshiks that don't require iron?

-Arrian

Theseus:

I'm not saying dilly dally, but I'd rather:

1) Feint with a Pikeman out of nowehere at Mavdad663.
2) Land offensive forces at the mountain 2 of the hill and the settler and defensive forces on the hill.
3) Build the town.
4) Head west across the mountains, in such a way that we threaten Mavdad. Stay on the mountains all the way to Stonedina... this is safer, threatens two other cities, and only takes two turns longer than your fastest route.

The trick will be to time it so that ND's fastmovers are in jungle when we appear... easily coordinated with RP.

Arrian:

MSS,

Oh, yeah, I know we'll have to throw down with GoW at some point. And yes, ND will be a nasty fight. No doubt.

Re: luxuries... well, a side benifit of building a city next to the gems is that we could hook those up. We would need a harbor, it's true, and that will cost us.

-Arrian

MSS:

BTW I like the tactical approach you outlined, Arrian. I recognize that Bilbao is really a field of dry dung. By accepting it, we are opening up a fire hydrent on it, making a soupy, wet muck field.... with us in teh middle. Getting it next turn, I feel is too soon. I would rather have two or three turns to get a galley or two over there with defenders.

But from what I can tell (Based on the chat), we can expect it to be a southern border city with RP.

mss

Arrian:

Theseus,

QUOTE
4) Head west across the mountains, in such a way that we threaten Mavdad. Stay on the mountains all the way to Stonedina... this is safer, threatens two other cities, and only takes two turns longer than your fastest route.

Only two turns? Think back to our war with Vox. Think about how much 2 turns can mean (and remember that the enemy has engineering, so rivers will not slow down their reinforcements). Also consider that those lovely mountains can be blocked by pikemen. The longer we take to reach our objective, the more time they have to get pikemen in position (and fortify them).

-Arrian

QUOTE (ManicStarSeed @ Jul 18 2003, 06:11 PM)
BTW I like the tactical approach you outlined, Arrian. I recognize that Bilbao is really a field of dry dung. By accepting it, we are opening up a fire hydrent on it, making a soupy, wet muck field.... with us in teh middle. Getting it next turn, I feel is too soon. I would rather have two or three turns to get a galley or two over there with defenders.

But from what I can tell (Based on the chat), we can expect it to be a southern border city with RP.

mss


Well, Bilbao probably won't survive for more than a few more turns.

And I do not want to accept it until our troops are ready to land (well, I don't want to accept it at all, but if we must...). Since it will take us several turns to get our **** together, I suspect Bilbao will be a heap of rubble.

-Arrian

Asleep:

Yeah, I am coming around. Wait for a turn or two and see how the war is going then land an army.

don't show our hand right now when we can't do anything.

Arrian:

Oh, definitely. No way do we want to let our plans slip.

Let's keep them all guessing.

By the way, I had another thought earlier that I forgot about until now:

RP wants us to land in the south so we can help fight off their attackers. I think that would be silly of us to do, HOWEVER, I wouldn't mind getting a RoP with them and landing our elite war chariots in their territory. With skillful use of intelligence from them and their road network, we could take potshots at ND's units (preferably beat up units). This would help RP a bit, and give us chances at GLs.

Where is our galley with the 2 pikes on it, right now? Perhaps we could make use of it to assist RP a bit in the west. The 2 pikes would probably have to be written off, but we could plunk them down on a strategic mountain and help funnel ND onto more favorable terrain, whilst getting a good view of the action.

-Arrian

Theseus:

Good thinking, Arrian.

What's our gold situation? We have an awful lot of upgrading to do with Chivalry, and using the elite WCs this way is very smart.

When we place the GS Peacekeepers (i.e., Pikes), we should keep lines of sight in mind.

Arrian:

If memory serves, we had 556 gold, and then Nathan upgraded 3 horsemen to knights (the idea was we upgrade the horsies first, as they are cheaper and we can use the vet WCs to help block off landing sites in northern Stormia while awaiting cash to upgrade them... and we may need cash for rushbuilds over on Bob more than we need more knights). So that's 240 gold... so we had 316 gold left over. I don't know what our cashflow is right now, but I think it's ~100 gpt. So we should have approximately 400 next turn. We could upgrade all of the remaining horsemen (5) or we could upgrade just 1 or 2 and save some gold for other things.

Oh, FYI - 'poly is back up.

-Arrian

Theseus:

Arrian,

Yeah, I'm on 'poly... slightly painful though.

I'm still missing a 'big picture' view though... most importantly, assuming we want to more or less follow your plan (with my tweaks), how do all of the working parts mesh?

Meaning:
* Upgrades and transport
* ND's Ansars stuck in jungle
* Landing / building the hill town
* Landing and maneuvering the attack force

On top of that, dealing with:
* RP not getting decimated
* The GoW threat
* Appropriate homeland defense

And settling North Stormia, and research, and Lego , and continuing our PR efforts in the public forum, and (keeping up in General and Strategy, trying to rejuvenate Civ3 at 'poly, fulfilling my role / commitments in ISDG and PTWDG2, and actually playing Civ3 every once in a while, and, oh yeah, RL)...

Here endeth the ramble.

Arrian:

think we need to copy and paste our discussion here over to our forum on 'poly, first off all, so others know what the hell we're talking about.

Second, appropriate homeland defense has been addressed by Aeson (I think). He agreed that the vet WCs and regular med infs should be used, and he provided a screenshot with their stations marked. That works for me.

Third, I say we keep upgrading a knight per turn, while moving our galleys & the troops we want to bring along into position to make the crossing to our planned landing point as fast as possible.

The more I think about it, we might want to bring 7 pikes instead of 8, and add another med inf or knight (bringing us up to 6 med infs or 5 knights).

If we DO land on the desert tile undetected, our knights can move onto the mountain next to that city (name now escaping me) the very next turn. They will be subject to counterattack, but will have a defense of 6, and Ansars, if used, won't be able to retreat. That way, we might be lucky enough to claim that mountain before they can get pikes up there, and our slowmovers can then move up the next turn, and attack the turn after that.

I have to go... my friend's dog is whining for me to play with him.

-Arrian


HERE ENDETH THE TOME...

[asleepathewheel]

What about engineering.

I propose we exchange engineering for the third lux this turn, as a demonstration of our friendship and to allay any fears that we won't help.

[notyoueither]

I will be seeking out GoW and RP members to maintain contact in a few hours. Actually, I don't think I'll need to seek them out. As soon as I go into the ISDG chat room, I can expect several private channels to open up.

I do not think we should rule anything out yet, that includes Bilbao. We need time to consider this. Aeson, Nathan, Arrian, Theseus, and everyone else seem to be talking in different directions at the moment. Worst case? We tell RP to offer Bilbao accepted, and we decline it. It keeps the option open for the longest period of discussion and planning.

[Arrian]

Take that, Aeson!

What you're saying makes sense, I'll grant you.

I just want to make sure we are examining all options properly. If we decide my plan is too risky, fine. I am kinda "shooting for the moon" hoping to deal a ton of damage to ND before they can properly organize their defenses/counterattack. If that fails, my plan could result in a worse situation for us than yours.

Basically (very), I see your approach as the more cautious, but if mine works, it really speeds up victory and ends up saving us casualties.

-Arrian

[Arrian]

NYE: yeah, we do appear to be discussing very different plans at this point. I do think we've basically got 2 plans to choose from right now. So we need to pick one.

It might take a while, considering our approach to decision-making So I agree we should not really commit to anything just yet, and keep our options open. Meanwhile, however, we should upgrade some more knights, and work on getting our units in position such that they are located in the best place from which we can move on either plan. Easier said than done, I know.

-Arrian

[Arrian]

Asleep:

Good point re: engineering... except have we DEFINITELY decided not to attack RP? Because if we haven't, we ought not to offer substantive support to them yet (nor should we demand screenshots, etc).

-Arrian

[Aeson]

I just want to point out one thing more thing about an attack from the E on ND. What happens if GoW puts units on a couple tiles of our Mountain road to ND, and doesn't break the NAP?

[notyoueither]

Reading the MZO chat, but in the meantime...

Accepting Bilbao does not commit us to defending it with massive forces. It gives us another port, it denies the city to GoW, and together with Toledo encourages GoW to attack ND as the only option left open to them if they do not want a fight with us.

In short, we lose nothing. Do we?

[Arrian]

We're in deep ****. That is certainly a risk. But it's also a risk if we're coming up from the south. ND & GoW could coordinate the defense of ND's lands - GoW blocking, ND defending & hitting, and when the time is just right GoW could break the NAP and crush our attack force.

It cuts both ways, IMO.

-Arrian

[Arrian]

NYE,

The potential losses, so far as I can see, are these:

1) Our lightly defended Bilbao could be taken rather easily by GoW. If this occurs, we do lose some cash (not much).
2) RP is down a city (granted, a small one).

Not big risks, you're right.

How many turns until our 2xpikeman galley could row itself back around to Bilbao? That would be a good token holding force.

-Arrian

[Aeson]

But then we have RP to help kill GoW. From the E, RP is dead, almost guaranteed.

[Dominae]

What about production? Are we going to seriously gear up for war again? Any military plan we put into action will probably require more units than we currently have (especially if we want high probabilities of success). For instance, if we defend RP, we can expect to be outmatched pretty soon by the ND and GoW unless reinforcements arrive.

Just a thought for when we play our turn.


Dominae

[Arrian]

Yeah, if we do this (as opposed to grabbing 2-3 cities on RP's coast and trying to work something out with GoW & ND), we will need to switch back to primarily war production.

Which, of course, leaves Lego to sit back and build. If things go well, however, that might not matter much.

-Arrian