Does the road to Legopolis go through Neu Theben?

[vmxa1]

That is about what we figured to do, just wipe Lego or nearly so and go on to ND.

At some point during the war, the others will be looking to see when and who to hit. The real question could be how to avoid getting stabbed during the early part of the war. If the war does go well, I doubt the others would be i position to deal with us.

GoW may try to stick with us and take most of Bob as their best bet to win. That path at least puts them in second with a shot at first. At this point they have no shot with the status quo.

[Arrian]

Our hope in that scenario would be to generate a leader during the Lego campaign - and hide it if possible - and repopulate Legoland with our cities while assisting GoW with a takeover on Bob. Then, when the time is right, we rush a palace on Legoland, backstab GoW, and go for broke.

-Arrian

[DeepO]

Chances are high that a leader comes from the war, especially if we take it slowly at first, conserving forces. However, I'm sceptical on its use: we can rush a palace on Legoland, but do we have time to build our cities? Every city we hold needs protection... it is entirely possible that the costs will be too high, and that we better disband our new cities, have some mobile force defending the empty land, and use all our troops in a new invasion.

My point is that things will have to go fast. There will be no time for factories, barracks, courthouses, markets and stuff like that. Without those, new cities don't gain us anything... only defensive headaches. So I'd rather see us going full out on production on Stormia, give Legoland to RP if they want, and use what ever forces we can scrape together to go after ND (or GoW). That means we can keep on defending our home ground.

DeepO

[Arrian]

If things go down the way you guys are saying (no SS), then we must expand to win (domination). If GoW and ND fight, with us on GoW's side, we might have the ability to build up Legoland. Yes, that area will be weak at first. But I don't see much choice, if we're playing to win.

-Arrian

[DeepO]

domination... perhaps. I hope it will be possible, but it could very well be that we declare a winner once we have damaged enough teams.

I didn't want to sound like we can't try to hold onto Legoland, but rebuilding our palace there seems a bit much to me. I consider it more of a territorial thing, where only the ground counts, and not the production it can provide... first signs of trouble, the whole of our cities there can be disbanded, as we will not have any forces to spend on defense without either damaging our offensive power, or risking invasion of Stormia. And that last things is my biggest fear: whatever happens, we can't let anyone put a foot on Stormia.

DeepO

[Arrian]

All I'm saying is that moving our palace over there would cost us almost nothing.

If we were unable to hold it, I suspect our palace would jump back to EotS, no harm done, really.

The potential upside, however...

-Arrian

[DeepO]

You're right about no harm being done... the FP in Arashi will for nearly all our cities be good enough corruption wise. If we have 10 cities on Legoland, the commerce gain will almost certainly be bigger.

Also, once we are invading Lego, not a lot of attention will go to research, so we can let Hurricane drop in efficiency.

As to jumping back: we will have to pump our pop up in EotS to get that effect, but there is no reason why we can't foresee that.

DeepO

[vmxa1]

We do not have to make that choice right away. We can wait a bit to see how things develop.

If we (all parties) bust Lego way down or even out, then holding some land will not be real hard.

[DeepO]

The more I think about it, the more I see one problem in all of this. Tech.

Let's assume we bind ourselves to GoW (which are the likeliest candidates), and attack Lego first. If we ally with GoW, we can make sure we reach tanks and marines at least 15, probably even 20 turns before Lego can get there. That leaves a window of 10 turns in which we can build tanks, and start our invasion. Lego will have lots of defenders, but no offensive capabilities, and normally will lose taht war. Fine.

Now, we look at ND, and want to invade them as well. But, if part of our alliance was that we also brought ND up to speed in research, they will have tanks and marines, and the risk augmented seriously... not so good. In an ideal world, we should not give the final techs to ND.

I've been thinking on this, and it seems to me we have a joker here. We have the 2 most expensive techs of the industrial age advantage over anyone, and that will remain so for at least another 20 years if we don't give away prereqs. Even if we trade SM, we still hold 15 turns advantage... I think the major accomplishment will be if we can convince GoW to ally with us, without sharing techs until at the very last moment. If we on top of that convince ND that they will get the techs in due time, but never get them delivered. And if Lego is not hard pressed to catch on our advantage, starting to work towards Electronics instead of towards refining.

Now, how can we do such a thing? We hire GoW. Not for Lego, as that is something they want theirselves, but for ND. We hire them now, for when we return from Lego (either succesful or not). The price we pay is 2-fold: on one hand the spoils of war when succesful. On the other we pay them the two priciest techs.

Further, we explain to ND that we do not want to devaluate the techs for Lego, and that hence we're not sharing them until at the very last moment. We make some vague insinuations to spoils of war, and that we would prefer logistic support instead of full military one (for instance in allowing them to buy cities off us, cities we first conquer from Lego). Whatever happens, we do not bring them to tanks, and always postpone. The moment we would give them all the techs, they don't receive techs, but tanks.

Lego is the more trickier one. If they ally with ND, and both of hem takes one part of the tech tree, they have a chance of catching us. But, we can avoid that by selling techs to ND, all techs, except SM, AT, and Electronics. ND will have no reason to go to Lego, so Lego is isolated. They can try on their own to catch us, but won't succeed.

Major problem here is that we need to disclose this to GoW, and they are perfectly able to backstab us, and take what they like best of this plan to ND. However, they must realize that we're not going to give the 2 most expensive techs away for free, and they do not have 4000 gold laying around to buy them of us, while doing normal research.

DeepO