The Spartan Academy

[Cort Haus]

There are 6 WC and 3 Warriors. 3 WC are elite. I doubt the Elites are worth keeping unless we are expecting any undefended redlined Cavalry around.

Other units are 8 Spears, 14MI, 27 Pike, 24 Knight, 8 cat, 5 galleys, 19 workers

[Theseus]

Ummm, great work vulture, but either I'm an idiot or just very confused.

Where are we supposed to get Cavs from?

Shouldn't the test be Infantry (btw, preferably on high ground) against either Arty/Guerillas or KNIGHTS?

And also, to DeepO's point, Arty have the added bonus of aiding in naval defense (and of course, land defense).

Also: Disband the friggin' WCs.

[Cort Haus]

Theseus, the discussion about Cavs stems from a discussion about Mil Trad and its value.

In a hypothetical offensive alliance with GoW, they would supply SP for free - but the value of Mil Trad would depend on the value of the Cavalry we could make with it.

[vulture]

Originally posted by Theseus
Ummm, great work vulture, but either I'm an idiot or just very confused.

Why can't you be both?

Shouldn't the test be Infantry (btw, preferably on high ground) against either Arty/Guerillas or KNIGHTS?

The units involved in the test don't make much difference - at least not at the level of testingbeing done here. The broad principles remain: if you value only 'efficiency' (getting the best possible loss ratio in your favour) then you want to build almost nothing but artillery; if you value only the number of enemy dead, no matter the cost in your own losses, build absolutely no artillery (and no fast movers either). With almost any kind of balance between the two, there is a range where artillery is useful, depending on force compostion, defence modifiers, force sizes, production capacity, reinforcement delivery rate, risk to production centers, etc. There are too many variables, in all likelihood, to be able to get useful answers out without dealing with very specific situation.

Another problem: we know we want some kind of balance between killing the enemy, and conserving our own force. One issue is deciding just what that balance should be, which is going to be very situation dependent. To pick two examples from the Vox war: In the seige of Arashi, force conservation was our strength. We just sat around and bombarded the immortals into small, ugly pieces because they couldn't hurt us, weren't about to be reinforced, and so we had no reason to risk anything is destroying them. And artillery was very useful. Meanwhile, at the end of the war, the capture of Elipolis was the other extreme. It was a gamble without a huge chance of success, landing a small force to try and capture Elipolis while it was still almost undefended. In that case, the invading force was almost entirely expendable - we wanted to capture the city at any cost to those units, and replacing one of them with a catapult to lower their losses would have been deeply stupid - our chances of taking Elipolis would have dropped drastically.

The second half of this problem is, even if we could get some kind of definite agreement on just how much emphasis to put (in game) on conservation vs killing, how does that translate into the model I've used here (or any other model). I've weighted conservation and killing 'equally' - multiplying the two together. Does anyone have the slightest idea what that means in game terms? I don't. It may turn out to be an extreme emphasis on killing everything that moves. It may equally well be an extremely cautious approach. We have absolutely no idea what a sensible value would be, or what these values mean in-game.

Which is why the whole exercise can only be used to draw very vague conclusions.

And also, to DeepO's point, Arty have the added bonus of aiding in naval defense (and of course, land defense).

Also: Disband the friggin' WCs.

Agree on WCs. The cost of keeping them isn't worth it anymore; we could use the extra gpt.

How much can arty help vs shipping in practice? Vs the AI, sure, but against human players I'd expect very few opportunities where the ships are left that close to shore. Now bombers are another matter entirely, when it comes to dealing with boats. Entirely agree with Theseus that a heavy naval and air presence is vital to our defence.

I'd actually suggest setting up an 'understanding' with everyone that any transport that we see on our turn that is potentially able to drop off troops or launch an amphibious attack the following turn will be considered an act of war, and will be attacked. Prior arrangements to have single transports moving allowed. Anything not capable of carrying ground troops (e.g. destroyers) not included in the prohibition. Other nations can defend their waters in a similar fashion.

This would give us at least one turn to try and hit an invasion in the water, except for GoW invading from Port Isolation obviously. But it could save us vs Lego and ND. (With ND, it would set up almost the entire 'gulf' region as a place where warships can happily co-exist, but transports are not allowed except by prior agreement, once they've settled to the coast.

[Cort Haus]

If we design a military to defend Stormia we may find that what is needed is one to assault Lego, and vice-versa. Either we build something that has to do for both, or we try and read the geo-political tea-leaves, which is hardly an exact science.

ND have seemingly turning their back on current GS-GoW initiatives to weaken Lego - perhaps even helping Lego to the Wonders that GS is busting a gut to build. However, they must have a plan to hit Lego at some stage unless they fancy their own chances of a SS - but for that you'd have to favour Lego with their massive infrastructural lead and Ind' workers.

Or, ND might want to eat GoW, then GS, then nibble a bit of Lego for Domination. You'd expect Lego to intervene against that, though.

GoW will be chatting with ND soon - tonight perhaps. They are better placed than GS to understand ND, and to get commitments from them.

I think the bottom line is that if ND want to hit Lego in the late-industrial, Stormia is not going to be under threat when Marines come online. On the contrary, we will be invited to join the assault on Lego.

If ND continue to persue short-term interests by working with Lego, they become a potential threat rather than a potential ally. The GAUL principle offers security for Stormia, but if ND don't play, that leaves Lego so strong that for GoW as well as us things start looking hopeless. With no reasonable hope of victory by rational play, they might as well go out with a bang and have a war or two - just for fun - while Lego surge for the line. RP would be easy meat, and GS the obvious follow-up target. So with no GAUL, GoW become a possible threat too.

Conclusion : we will have more reason to require a heavy defensive military without GAUL than with it.

[asleepathewheel]

Does ND have Mil trad yet?

Don't be suprised if this isn't the turn that ND attacks GoW or the turn before they attack. WE've seen teams hold the save before for a while in such a situation.

[DeepO]

arts for naval bombardment: you're half right... art have a range of 2, which means we can set up traps where their ships have to end the turn within 2 tiles of the coast. I proposed something similar as a protection of RP against GoW, to funnel enemy ships between our ships and the coast, where they can be hit by cats and finished by our ships. The same applies to arts, of course.

Bombers will always be better for naval bombardment, with the only problem that they need to be rebased to reach something, while artillery on RR gets everywhere. And we need flight, of course.

ND: I'm not sure they are planning something evil. They simply have a lot of land to fill. I still don't get how GoW would give them so much. If there will be a cav war, it will very likely be between GoW and ND... and as they both have little reason to betray the other, I don't see it happening.

As to attacking us before attacking GoW: again, I'm not sure. naval invasions are difficult, and we are in the advantage here as we are small... Lego has a tougher time defending (although they have about the same coastal tiles). Currently, our army still is stronger then GoW's, this might also become a factor later on. And perhaps they think now that we're still the team to watch out for, while for us its obvious that both ND and Lego are in a far better position.

DeepO

[Theseus]

Arty are for weakening naval attackers as well.

[Arrian]

I've been thinking...

Most of our worrying re: invasion has been directed at our old enemies on Bob.

But I'm thinking that the most likely attacker is actually Legoland.

If you're Lego, you know you have ND in your pocket, you know GoW can't really hurt you without ND, and you're at least reasonably certain you can outbuild ND. Who is the thorn in your side? Who might have just beaten you to ToE and Hoover, despite your GA?

The Gathering Storm. How hard would it really be to squash them like a bug?

Lego's military power has been increasing. GoW recently admitted in chat that they are weak to Lego. We know Vondrack & Co. are playing to win, and the "builder" thing is... more of a guideline.

I think they will come for us.

-Arrian

[vulture]

To which the only reasonable defences that I can see at the moment are:

Get ND and GoW into a position to be able to gut Lego like a fish. If Lego need their troops to defend their homeland, they aren't going to be able to mount a serious expedition against us. Lego wipes us out, ND guts Lego and goes on to win the game.

Or, get to marines ahead of Lego and arrange a pre-emptive ass-kicking.

All of which boils down to: we need ND in particular to be a genuine threat to take out Lego with a marine invasion to 'ensure' our safety. And Lego likewise, so that neither ND nor Lego can make a move against us without exposing themselves too much to their main rival. Meanwhile GoW and us play along, keeping out of trouble and going for the diplo win, or praying that Lego don't have Uranium... (heh, heh!)

[vmxa1]

If I am in Legos spot, I would think it is too risky to come for us.
You have to spent resources to gear up, you have to worry that someone will take that time to hit you.

Would it not be easy to annex Vox to get the little extra? If we have RP's land would we be better off?

[Arrian]

I'm not talking about Lego taking us over to have our land and try for domination (though that's one possibility), but rather to destroy us.

We are still, at this point, their main "builder" competition.

-Arrian

[Theseus]

Where is the latest version of the attack plan? Does it incorporate coordination with the other teams?

While we can and should have separate attack and defense threads, I'd like to keep a running tally of consolidated unit requirements and timing here in the Spartan Academy.

[DeepO]

T,
we never got farther than this: http://apolyton.com/forums/showthrea...hreadid=111217
and some random discussions here and there. Main problem is that coordination with other teams: we need a good plan to coordinate with them, and haven't so far. And in my view we should get started on this, even if GoW more or less knows what is going to happen, and is helping us in tech.

DeepO

[Theseus]

I'm on it. I'll PM Arrian too, and see if he likes my Blue Team - Red Team idea, also.

And, , I might PM some of our other illustrious teammates too.

"We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in Legoland, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender."