Proposals and Odd Ideas re: our war...

[Velociryx]

I think it's something we oughta do....slept on it, and it just has the right feel to it.

I assume that our cities ON Bob are doing what they can to churn out pikes or something...albiet slowly, and this will help at least a little (1-2 units in the interim). As to the next 7 turns....if needs be (if things get desperate while we're building up), we can help hold the line by pulling a few guys from our northern defense force on Stormia (don't know what it is, exactly, but something), relying on our navy to spot and intercept any would-be attack force.

Disagree though, that we need to do all the upgrading in one shot. True, this is a very gold-intensive venture, and during those five turns, we ought to save as much coin as we can, but not lose much sleep over it if we can't do it all in one shot. We can do significant portions in one shot, which will give us a huge boost of troops on Bob, just when we're needing them most, and catch the rest as we're able to, in subsequent turns (the gold upkeep on the remainder won't be that bad, and we can consider them "extra ammo" for our looming battles.

-=Vel=-

[DeepO]

The gold part of it is rather straigth forward, if you think about it. Upgrading costs 2 gold per shield. Rushing costs 4 gold per shield. Assuming we have a bunch of gold laying around we want to put into this war, the best we can do is to upgrade, and not rush.... it will give us double the amount of shields, and hence double the amount of extra units.

Upkeep is a small part of the equation, but it does negate the effect a little, yes. But see it as a long term investment

DeepO

[Theseus]

A quote for thought... relates to something I also quoted a few weeks ago from 'The Economist' about the development of US military phiosophy over the last twenty years.

This is from Clancy's "The Bear and the Dragon" toward the end (China attacks Russia, the US jumps in), and is by Robby Jackson, the US VP):
______________________

"The idea in a major operation is always to play with the other guy's head. To lead him down a path you want him to go, or to get inside his decision cycle, just to prevent him from analyzing the data and making a decision...

"The common factor of every successful military plan in history is this: You show the guy what he expects and hopes to see, and then when he thinks he's got the world by the ass, you cut his legs off in one swipe... The smart move is to let them keep going for a few more days, make it just seem easier and easier for the while we build up our capabilities, and then we hit them, we land on them like the San Francisco earthquake - no warning at all, just the end of the f*ckin' world hits'em."
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Man, I friggin' love that.

The way I see it applied here? We stick with our combined RP / GS beach head (and yes, poor RP, that is what he have), lashing out where we can safely. That prolly does mean including the re-capture of Salamanca, but not until we have more trooops to man the defensive high points.

And we wait.

Let them think the continued holding of the south is a good thing... b*ll****, it just uses up their maneuverability.

GS is friggin' America in WW2... late to the party, but maaaaan can we build stuff fast. We just need to keep it hidden... welcome to my home, said the spider to the fly.

When ready, don;t laugh, I would like us to unleash hell on ND and GoW... THREE prongs, across former RP lands to the west, onto the eastern hills and mountains of ND, and from Port Isolation to GoW's desolation.

Vox and Lego are sideshows in this, although any assistance would be welcome.

Dominae, are you around? Take of your economist hat... it was you who got me obsessed with IC attacks months ago, so come to the Dark Side and help us plan the ND / GoW takedown.

[I've had no time, but the little I have had has been devoted to AU 208... what I wouldn't give for Berserks here and now]

[Velociryx]

Theseus....I was thinking something quite similar earlier, 'cept the execution in my mind would go a little differently.

There was some talk about cutting our iron and building hordes of cheapies/mass-upgrading to get us a big force, quickly.

To that end, I saw two immediate objectives that we could accomplish:

1) Create an initial strike force to push south and recapture V. This draws attention to the south lands, and would prompt ND/GoW to focus their efforts on keeping us from reclaiming the rest of the southlands

Meanwhile....back at the ranch.....

1a) We ready our "first wave" of cheap troops-upgraded to-bada$$, and ship them to the beach head. At this point, we increase the pressure on ND/GoW, because now we've got a wampum lotta troops, and can start trading blows with them in the south, forcing still more of their efforts there to hold the line.

And meanwhile....

2) We're readying a second big wave of guys (maybe cut the iron again to speed this along). I envision an initial force of 30 units (just to put a number out there)....say 10 pike, 10 MI, and 10 knights

Land them where port isolation is/was (destroyed?), and march overland to surprise GoW, who has, by this time, been frantically shipping guys to Southern Spain and would be TOTALLY unprepared for such a big force arriving on their doorstep.

Thoughts?

-=Vel=-

[Velociryx]

For that plan to work, however, speed is of the essence....we sure couldn't d*ck around about it....so I was thinking....in order to speed the process up, what assets do we have guarding northern Stormia? We could maybe use them as the "seed force" to jumpstart our GoW attack group, and then replace them with all speed?

-=Vel=-

[notyoueither]

That could work. Especially if they leave Pamplona alone.

[asleepathewheel]

since the south has fallen, ND might maneuver ships past the horn and over to us to attack. can we have two galleys posted down there just in case? perhaps with 4 units ready for when we make our move.

[DeepO]

sleepy, last I heard we were moving an invasion force down there, including one empty galley for scouting / attacking. Once we have Valencia back, we should create coastal fortress, with 3-4 cats on roads and a couple of galleys to finish them off. Indeed, invasion of South Stormia is a quite a problem should it occur, although I doubt it would be massive (but, never underestimate the enemy)

As to invading GoW: 30 units won't be enough, you better think 50 units if we want to really impress them. From the moment we took those first RP cities, Gow started defending their homeland. We haven't seen any reinforcements of their troops South yet, and they have been building troops for ~50 BC onwards, which is about 11 turns. If we want to do it, we want to do it fast, but most importantly, I think the only real way of doing it is to cut our iron in order to get those extra units we need.

As a fast plan for an invasion:

turn -1: load units on 8 galleys, position them at PI 9. Keep enough forces, and 4 more galleys in Wittlich

turn 0: unload units at PI 8 or 7 (assuming the hills will be blocked). Move empty galleys back to W7. Use the 4 galleys as chainers, which fill those 8 galleys back with troops. Move galleys back to PI 9, and unload again.

turn 1: provided we take PI, and GoW doesn't raze it, the same trick can be applied to get another wave onto Bob, this time with movement remaining.

The surprise lays herein that using a couple of extra galleys, we can extend the galley reach to 5 tiles/turn. I don't think GoW will anticipate that. They will anticipate an invasion (maybe even closer to their core), and will have troops in those cities, or blocking important accesspoints. This approach gives away the intial surprise, meaning that GoW can focus their troops better on us (and we will have to land on plains), but the real surprise is that we can land 32 units in one turn, using 8 visible galleys. It doesn't matter much how they prepared for that, as long as we have somewhere to land, they can't beat that. And every turn after that, we can have over 16 reinforcements in waves, including what we now use to block the coast.

The more I think about it, the more I believe we should pillage our iron, for at least 7-8 turns. Before doing so, we can still upgrade some WCs we have up North, and we can let some cities finish their irony builds (leaving us with a bit of reinforcement of South Bob possible), but it seems more and more clear we need a lot of units fast if we want to leave any kind of impression on this game. Would it be possible to have some kind of plan to pillage our irons this turn, or next turn at the latest? At least move a unit towards Inchoff and closer to D-ville if we want to pillage; for the moment we're even not able to do it.

DeepO

[Velociryx]

Total agreement DeepO....the 30 units I mentioned was not meant to be the totality of the attack force, merely the first wave.

If that plan is approved, then we also need 3-4 workers heading out with them, so we can build a road TO the front, which will allow our reinforcements (and I really like your reinforcement plan!), to catch up to the leading element quickly.

The 30 units real goal isn't to take GoW....that will, no doubt, be accomplished by our reinforcements, arriving at the front as quickly as we can get them there.

Their job is to oversee the highway construction project, bust into one city and survive the inevitable counter-attack.

-=Vel=-

[Velociryx]

Consolidation of ideas

Since we're getting a TON of ideas out there floating about, I thought it'd be a good time to begin consolidating them, so we can see exactly what we've got. As I understand the flow and pulse of the conversations thus far, we have the following:

1) Begin massing troops NE of Valencia (in the hills), with an eye toward threatening, or outright taking that city back. (5 Pike and 5 MI to begin with....see what effect their placement on the ridgeline has on our opponents).

2) Check on that "cut the iron and reconnect in the same turn" trick to see if it works...if so....tops for us!

3) If #2 does not pan out, then I think cutting our iron and bulking up on cheapies is THE A#1 fastest way to seriously put us into this fight.

4) While we're building cheapies, continue ferrying assets over to Bob (1-2 settlers and ~6 workers?)

5) Upgrade and ship the "first wave" of newly upgraded troops to the beach head to bulk up our presence there to provide against immediate threats and possibly further threaten our enemies in the south

6) prepare or round up 3-4 additional workers, and begin marching them to former Voxian lands.

7) Begin preparing a "second" (very large) wave of troops to land in northern Bob, with the workers, to begin construction of a road network TO our GoW enemies

8) Slowly advance that initial invasion force with our workers, adding to it via newly upgraded troops sent by galley, and marching down the new road to speed their way to the main body of our invasion force.

9) We should plan simultaneous strikes against the GoW core and a serious push into Southern Spain. That will send them reeling!

10) Continue the backchannel initiative (if/when we get a response from Lego/Vox), and see where it leads

Did I miss anything?

-=Vel=-

[zeit]

The part about Valencia: those 10 units, will get there by boat- faster, stealthier, and less prone to harrasment from vicious
3-movers.

Other than that, I think we should also seek to secure S, besides
V, before we make another big push- east towards ND or some mop up towards the SE of former RP. This gives us a nice coverage of the RP core, as well as a bit more territory for RP (which I think we can all agree is an important aspect all around).

[Velociryx]

I don't necessarily see it as a bad thing if our units are harrassed en route (cos it means we prolly take a couple of them with us), but if boat is preferred, I think it'll work out fine either way.

The stealth part is a good point, but IMO, we WANT them to know we're massing south...we want to draw their attention there....

-=Vel=-

[Velociryx]

PS: BigFree is a member of RP, yes?

[zeit]

Yes he is.

And boat it shall be: we've already parked the units and the boats close to Sirocco, and they will land in 2 turns. meaning V is ours is 3 turns...

[Theseus]

Let's make sure to have the defensive cover of one or two empty galleys... I've been doing such to great effect in my replay of AU 208.