The Spartan Academy

[vulture]

Here are some diagrams of the connections between cities for a 2-move invasion:



And for the north:



Red is a port (vulnerable to amphibious assault). Green is an RP port. Blue is an RP town. An arrow indicates an attack in only one direction is possible with 2 move units (due to hills / mountains).

I've left out the diagram for the middle strip of 3 towns (D'ville etc.) since that's too obvious to bother with.

[DeepO]

Originally posted by vulture
I'm not sure fortifying the spines is the best move - all traffic across them pretty much has to go through Arashi or Tempest, and metropolises on hills (which they will be then) with infantry and artillery are going to be as good as forts on mountains.

two remarks here: I was only asking if you saw some points that were bottlenecks. If Arashi and Tempest are those bottlenecks, fine, of course. We might need to put some defender on the mountains next to those cities, but otherwise that's okay.

However the other remark is somewhat less: don't assume metropolis. Our empire has been built with the assumption that cities will stay at city level, and not get hospitals. We might change that policy for certain cities (especially if we want wonder cities), but I think most of our land is already used when all cities go to size 12... the cost of a hospital would be a lot to get only minor gains.

I might be mistaken, but somehow I don't think we'll be building loads of hospitals.

on the diagrams, BTW. Defending Cyclone, Tempest and Arashi should split up our territory as best as we can... that's better then I hoped for.

DeepO

[vulture]

That's only for 2 move units though. Three move, which we may well be facing, and there aren't any nice routes to defend - each town basically has to look to its own defences, and try to make the advance to each town cost more than the attackers can bring with them.

I threw in the metropolis assumption on the grounds that even if we go to size 13 and whack in a specialist for the 13th citizen, it might be worth it to get the extra 50% defence bonus in the event of war, at least under some circumstances.

I'm only really looking at the danger we face from a first turn assault. Obviously there is lots of scope for invaders to take a few towns and key mountains in preperation for a further thrust.

With three move attacks, we need to hold Arashi, Tempest and Bolderberg to defends our eastern core from a western landing, which is do-able if they go that route. A landing in the east would be very hard to contain: they have a wide choice of targets, and can focus their forces where we have to spread them out.

So our hope for defence is being able to hold the bottlenecks vs tanks, while having enough in the other cities to make it too expensive for cavalry to break through. I think we'd do better getting spies everywhere (what do we know about how planting spies works in PBEM?) and keeping an eye on who is building up a sizeable force of marines and transports, and trying to head off problems before we wake up and find ourselves Tiberioused.

[Arrian]

I think it's fairly unlikely we will build hospitals. That said, I know what Vulture is getting at: an enemy that can take a port and unload a bundle of Cavalry in it is an enemy that can gut us in the blink of an eye, unless we defend our interior cities.

edit: I shouldn't make such assumptions. It most likely depends on our cities' shield counts once we've railroaded stuff, built factories, and/or gotten or lost Hoover. At that point, it's all about adjusting our cities for the most efficient shield output for the purpose of building Infantry, Artillery, Tanks, etc. Some cities may be in a situation where keeping some irrigation (for growth past size 12) doesn't drop build times at all, so it may be worthwhile to build a hospital there.

-Arrian

[Cort Haus]

What about Civil Defence and Radar towers from the Radio tech? Wouldn't these improvements be defensivelly valuable?

[vulture]

Yup they would. Thing is, we're unlikely to get both radio and flight before marines become available (and never mind tanks either, for wiping out landing stacks). Well, we might if we get ToE. We'll have to decide which route to go down for a better defence against amphibious invasions. Given GoW's proximity and 1 turn crossing, I suspect radar towers would be the way to go, since air power wouldn't help us in that event.

[vulture]

And now --- the ultimate marines vs infantry lookup table (which I may have got the defense values wrong for).

Table 1:

For 1-9 infantry vs 1-24 marines. Infantry has 85% defense bonus (50% for city (which I may have wrong - is that the metropolis value?) 25% from fortifying, 10% from underlying terrain (plains)). No bonus for amphibious attack (which was the case in PtW wasn't it?) Numbers are % chance of marines winning the battle (+/- 1% roughly)

M \ I       1       2       3       4       5       6       7       8       9
 1       12.79    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00
 2       41.70    1.57    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00
 3       58.88    9.24    0.22    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00
 4       77.60   21.71    1.69    0.03    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00
 5       89.45   36.32    5.64    0.28    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00
 6       95.04   53.55   12.91    1.34    0.05    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00
 7       97.73   68.18   23.06    3.82    0.27    0.01    0.00    0.00    0.00
 8       98.78   79.63   35.62    8.15    0.99    0.06    0.00    0.00    0.00
 9       99.21   87.95   48.93   14.89    2.46    0.22    0.01    0.00    0.00
10       99.28   93.17   61.48   23.62    5.20    0.67    0.05    0.00    0.00
11       99.32   96.21   72.87   34.10    9.70    1.59    0.17    0.01    0.00
12       99.35   97.93   81.43   45.81   16.14    3.49    0.48    0.04    0.01
13       99.35   98.77   87.93   57.15   23.92    6.33    1.10    0.15    0.01
14       99.38   99.29   92.51   67.59   33.33   10.63    2.25    0.38    0.03
15       99.28   99.44   95.50   75.96   42.98   16.38    4.37    0.72    0.10
16       99.37   99.56   97.38   83.16   53.43   23.91    7.28    1.56    0.23
17       99.43   99.58   98.41   88.73   63.13   32.13   11.30    2.92    0.55
18       99.35   99.62   99.06   92.65   71.83   41.21   16.80    4.94    1.03
19       99.33   99.64   99.43   95.35   79.07   50.62   23.60    7.84    1.94
20       99.30   99.65   99.65   97.21   85.18   59.62   31.22   11.94    3.39
21       99.39   99.64   99.74   98.21   89.52   67.57   39.51   16.99    5.65
22       99.37   99.65   99.78   98.95   92.66   75.27   47.95   23.05    8.32
23       99.39   99.61   99.83   99.37   95.36   81.37   56.61   30.32   12.42
24       99.32   99.62   99.82   99.62   96.91   86.41   64.50   38.07   17.17

Table 2:
As table 1 but, with 50% bonus for civil defense and 25% bonus for radar towers thrown in for good measure.

M \ I       1       2       3       4       5       6       7       8       9
 1        5.76    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00
 2       23.41    0.34    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00
 3       35.24    2.37    0.03    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00
 4       53.40    6.79    0.21    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00
 5       70.07   12.95    0.88    0.02    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00
 6       81.71   22.74    2.36    0.10    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00
 7       89.00   34.25    4.94    0.35    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00
 8       93.37   46.49    9.38    0.92    0.04    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00
 9       95.80   58.67   15.42    2.01    0.15    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00
10       96.88   69.11   23.08    3.97    0.38    0.03    0.00    0.00    0.00
11       97.38   77.97   31.98    6.66    0.76    0.05    0.00    0.00    0.00
12       97.69   84.77   41.75   10.86    1.56    0.15    0.01    0.00    0.00
13       97.66   89.72   51.43   15.96    3.00    0.33    0.02    0.00    0.00
14       97.74   93.29   60.99   22.64    4.86    0.66    0.06    0.00    0.00
15       97.70   95.49   69.99   29.87    7.62    1.25    0.14    0.02    0.00
16       97.85   96.92   77.00   38.23   11.46    2.15    0.30    0.03    0.00
17       97.78   97.77   82.95   46.75   15.98    3.47    0.56    0.06    0.01
18       97.86   98.29   87.94   55.26   21.78    5.59    0.95    0.12    0.01
19       97.84   98.70   91.42   62.96   28.06    8.17    1.61    0.25    0.03
20       97.74   98.85   94.10   70.43   35.40   11.67    2.58    0.43    0.04
21       97.86   98.87   96.04   76.90   42.91   15.98    3.93    0.72    0.10
22       97.75   98.88   97.25   82.21   50.44   20.75    5.84    1.21    0.20
23       97.78   98.97   98.23   86.70   57.87   26.81    8.53    1.98    0.37
24       97.79   98.94   98.76   90.22   65.08   33.18   11.74    2.99    0.56

At a quick glance, it appears that the civil defense + radar tower is worth another 2 infantry defenders. 2 extra infantry would cost more shields IIRC, can't remember the upkeep for civil defense, but I'd guess 2. Infantry have more flexibility in terms of moving around to where they are needed and they upgrade to MI. CD can't be killed like infantry and make the MI more effective - being a effectively a free upgrade to 2 or more MI. I'd guess the CDs are worth building (as opposed to using time spent building them to produce more infantry, that is).

Effects of offensive and defensive bombardment are ignored (which isn't to say the aren't significant).

[asleepathewheel]

Originally posted by vulture
I'm wishing we had barricades as an option now - forcing them to end their turn in that square.

I was thinking the same thing.

Good job with the visualizations. We are toast if we allow one city to fall. Thank god we won't be seeing any marine armies, that would be too much, though they aren't as strong as C3C armies...

I'm not sure how this will all work out, but once marines are available, we might consider pillaging some rail tiles that aren't beneficial, ie, we really don't need that extra shield. We keep a group of workers in eye that could re rail the path if they landed units on the coast.

also a fortress or two with defenders on the rails would be advisable.

[Cort Haus]

Excellent work, Vulture.

[vulture]

Forgot to mention, apropos the above, that 2-moce attackers can nicely circumvent any or all bottlenecks by using settlers. E.g. a landing at Bolderberg can reach EotS by using one settler (and abandoning Bolderberg once troops have been unloaded). So a well planned attacking with a decent supply of settlers can get anywhere. Beware of anyone with 20+ marines and several spare settlers...

[Theseus]

The Marine Threat

OK, I thought I'd keep this discussion going... I am just re-entering this weekend, so 1) I know this has been discussed above and in some of the other threads before, but let's use this to re-cap, and 2) I still don't have my head into the game fully enough, so I'll just sort of free-form address issues re amphib threats and then we can wrap those issues back into specific game planning.

As we know, I have a fair to middlin' base of experience with Berserks and Marines, so hopefully I'll at least identify the major issues / risks.

* What to protect: I believe the current consensus is that we can't sufficiently protect every coastal tile, so we should focus on cities and high ground. I concur, but we should think about low ground coastal tile resources, though.

* City defenses: I think we should operate on Catt's original findings that all normal defense modifiers apply... but I also think that the anecdotal evidence of unusual Berserk / Marine combat successes (including my own) is worrisome, so some experiments by someone with time to do so would be worthwhile. This means, among other things, that we want Walls for all coastal cities, which if necessary means building Workers or Settlers, or drafting when we are able, to get certain larger cities below 7 pop for a little while, and also Civil Defense when available. Also, as referenced elsewhere, we have reason to develop a number of monster metros, so dismantling some core cities, getting Sanitation, and building Hospitals has the additional value of increasing certain remaining cities' defense modifiers. Lastly, and not hugely important, we should get Coastal Fortresses built if we have the spare capacity.

* High ground modifiers: Forts. Nobody's really passionate about it in the Strat or AU fora, so it isn't discussed all that much, but I am a Fort-a-phile. They are a bee-yatch to build on mountains, but heck, we are IND after all. For both us and RP, I'd like to see Forts all over the place. There's prolly a psych-ops effect to this too... can you imagine what a porcupine Stormia will look like if we do this properly?

* Low ground coastal resource modifiers: Forts, again, and if we can do so without significantly messing up economic issues, I'd like to plant forest on any low ground coastal resource tiles.

* Chokepoint modifiers: By this I mean critical connection tiles vulnerable to naval bombardment. Treatment would be a repeat of that for coastal resource tiles.

* Preemptive naval defense: As has been discussed, we need a picket warning screen (anything naval, really... heck, I still had Dromons running about until the very end of AU 501), a naval bombard force (inclusive of extra land /air bombarders), and a destruction force (crossover with the naval bombard force, obviously, but let's remember that destroying a Galleon or Transport is the most efficient way to deny the Marine threat)... in other words, and many of us aren't used to this from SP, we need to be a SERIOUS local naval power. Think of the USA in the Atlantic mid-late WWII. As a related point, part of naval defense will obviously include getting RR up to key tiles ASAP for a roving Cannon / Arty squad. Re specific naval units, I'm now attuned to C3C and the AU Mod, so I don't remember if Frigates upgrade to anything in PTW... depending on that, we should mix up our initial forces between them and Ironclads, and be ready to pump out Destroyers, Cruisers, BB, and Subs as the tech becomes available. Off the top of my head, I'd say we want at least 4 stacks of 10 attack units in addition to the picket screen, and perhaps 1-2 cheap attack unit (Subs?) per coastal city in reserve.

* Coastal defenders: Rather than consider each of city, high ground, and low ground resource defense tiles separately, my thinking is that we need to make all of them equally "hard", as any of them can be attacked and serve as that dreaded entry point that vulture rightly points out. So, we build whatever defense infrastructure we can for each, and balance defense units as appropriate to make attacking all equally ugly. [I'm gonna ramble a bit here] In terms of defense against the direct amphib attacks, I'd like to see a mix of defenders, zero-bombards, and bombards. Each defended tile should have at a minimum 3 defenders and 1-2 zero-bombards as a base. In addition, we should have roaming point defense battalions for cities; as per vulture's experiments, we will want the point defense force to be at least 10 strongest defenders (i.e., Rifles / Infantry), backed up by say 4 Guerrillas, and 4 Cannon / Arty. We need to think about how the enemy can approach us, and even given our picket and naval defense how many cities will be vulnerable to a given attack, but my guess is we will prolly need 3 battalions of such extra point defense. Further, in my mind, Nationalism COUNTS... drafting, that is. In an emergency, I can see conscript Rifles and Infantry making a huge difference... especially in conjunction with the idea of getting some of our coastal cities up to huge metros. I pray that doesn't become necessary, but you never know. Rep Parts vastly increases in importance, for Infantry of course, but also for the upgrades of Cannons to Arty and all available units to Guerrillas (both HUGELY important if we don't have rubber!), as well as the increased worker speed for RR. Also, we might want to think through the possibility of mobilization upon researching Rep Parts or Combustion. Lastly, post-Mass Production, I'd like to prioritize Radio and Flight over Motor Trans, and be ready to get Radar Towers, Civil Defense, and Bombers in place ASAP... see the next point.

* Roving counter-attackers: My first instinct, from SP, is that OF COURSE we need 20+ Cavs for this. But on reflection, and considering the single turn dangers pointed out by vulture and recently discussed in Catt's "Utility and Use" thread... let's face it, if a determined amphib attack on a city is successful, and our opponents have the wits to back it up with a mobile land attack force, we are screwed anyway. We MUST NOT allow the amphib capture of a city!! In terms of a successful amphib attack on a non-city tile, say a mountain, I'd rather depend on bombard capabilities to whittle their thus static units down to red, and thus minimize the need for roving counter-attackers. I'd say 10 Cavs would be enough, to be later bolstered by Tanks of course. The one instance that still worries me is a low ground landing with Settlers... I may change my mind and request as many as 30-40 counter-attackers, primarily Tanks, especially if we think there might be a later aggressive use for them post-Computers, in which case we again may want to think about mobilization upon Motor Trans.

* RP: I don;t think they'll have the capabilities to defend in depth as discussed, so we'll need to be able to risk their loss, and defend solely southern Stormia.

* Diplo issues: At some point, we need to communicate with the other teams our stance re incursion into our naval territory. Enter it, and you die... and that doesn't mean cultural boundaries, of course, but any tile that provides one turn access to our shores, regardless of Magellan's. The north, and GoW, are obviously problematic in that regard (see above note re RP, however).

* Worst case contingency planning: If someone would like to set up the scenario, I'd be happy to wargame an attack on GS as the "red team"... Give me say, 40 Marines, 10 Galleons, 15 Ironclads, and 5 each of Cruisers and BB; we can ignore gaming the subsequent land attack if successful, as the point of the exercise is really the approach and amphib attack. Arrian, would you play the "blue team" and defend?

* Reaching out for experience: I'll PM F-P particularly and ask him to comment on this threat and these issues.

I think those are the high notes. As a general thought, I'd say this: Be ready for the Industrial Age to FLY, and for the Marine threat to be upon us very quickly.

Comments?

[vmxa1]

If we do not expect an assault to come before Steam, we should be able to use some pickets to see it coming. A few places where that won't work, so those will have to be defend along the lines you mentioned.

The rest of the land can have units put in defensive positions in a moments notice. Once we see where they are headed, then we will have to try to funnel them.

I forget the status of walls in PTW, were they still working for cities? I know there was a bug at some point, but I forget when.

[asleepathewheel]

largely in line with what has already been said.

If you open up the save, you'll notice quite a few forts on mountains


This is just awesome. I love actually using a navy for a change. Subs come before amphib landing. We could dump a couple subs near the closest gwnd ports and just wait for movement. They would have to sweep a lot of territory and slow down considerably to spot our subs. Oddly ND hasn't built on the east of bob, so unless they hurry up, their navy will have to take the long way around. I don't think we can hold RP though, one turn transit to Santa barbara? ouch. Fort the hellout of elipolis I guess and pray.


What will suck is if ND/GoW take out lego then declare victory, they won't even have to attempt killing us.

[Theseus]

What the heck does everybody mean by ND/GoW jointly declaring victory?

[vmxa1]

If we get some land out of Lego, how do they declare victory?