GAUL - The attack on Legoland

[vulture]

I can see two general philosophies for an attack. The first idea is to pick our target city, to be attacked on turn T. On T-1 our fleet arrives 5 tiles away from the target. On turn T, we attack that city. The advantage of this is that Lego only gets a 1 turn warning (probably), so our fleet is quite likely to get across unintercepted.

Plan B is to pick a target danger zone - say one of the blue dot tiles closest to us. Then on turn T-2 we are 5 tiles from that target zone, T-1 we reach the target zone, and turn T we decide which of the three targets to for (with RP doing some investigating for us?) and launch an attack. The advantage of this is that we can plan to threaten the maximum number of cities, meaning that each is defended by fewer infantry. The disadvantage is the danger that we might be spotted one turn earlier, and run a higher risk of losing the whole fleet at sea.

I don't think there is much difference in terms of how soon we are spotted. Look at how close the Lego observation fleet is to our shore. They are going to get 2 turns of warning anyway. The only way to save some misdirection is to whack their entire first rom of ships on T-2, so they don't know which end of Lego we are going for. That may not help much, depending on how big their defensive fleet is, and how many scouts they have throughout that ocean,

[vulture]

Another issue to worry about is coastal defensive artillery. For instance, our 'green zone' NW of Quanto Mechanico can be pounded by any shore-based artillery they have, to soften up the warships so that the Lego fleet can roll in and clear up more easily. IIRC with good bombardment you can get a crack at the transports before sinking the destroyers and BBs: a warship on 1 hp is rated lower than a full-health transport.

The flip side of that is that having their arty on the coastline attacking us is preventing that same arty from defending cities from assault - and is vulnerable itself to marine attack to capture the stack (hence drawing away more infantry to defend the artillery). Whether that is worth the cost of the extra lost ships however...

If we want to avoid coastal batteries, then our attack options are seriously reduced. We have one small area that threatens 3 cities (Forkmouth (size 12), Sandonorio (3), Quanto Mechanico(3)).



For a second landing threat, we can only threaten 2 cities, or threaten three but at the cost of being vulnerable to artillery fire from Tipperary (which takes out the advantage of having the artillery moved outside a city). In the north, Invoice is not a practical target - it is on a botleneck, and hard to break out of, and can be attacked by Lego and Vox directly. That only leaves on city in the north (Sha..something), so a threat against that one would overlap with a threat against Forkmouth - not giving us the maximum leverage out of threatening many cities.

In the south we can threaten two out of Abriene (size 7), Tipperary (7), and Horse..something (6) (I have trouble reading the names of the jpegs I have access to). Abriene and Tipperary are both in hill country - are either of them built on hills? This could slow down a counterattack (although give them better terrain to box us in from) but could also make it much harder to try and donut Lego once we break the first line of defence.

For both the northern and southern zones, we can get into a position of bot only being able to attack, but being able to take the city, move in troops, unload, and use them that same turn to attack elsewhere (i.e. we can move transports into the cities, not merely adjacent to them. Our positions for doing this are shown below.



The red dots are areas safe from coastal bombardment that threaten Forkmouth, Sandonorico and Quanto Mechanico. The purple dots threatens Abriene and Tipperary. The yellow dots threaten Tipperary and Horsewhatsit. From all dots, it is possible to attack, move trannies into a city, unload and fortify / pillage / gut Lego like a fish (as appropriate to circumstances).

If we don't want to be vulnerable to shore artillery, and want to threaten as many cities as possible, then we don't have a huge range of options here.

EDIT: changed second image - I'd missed out some of the purple dots.

[asleepathewheel]

To me, the key of a successful war would be to take one of the northern three cities, Fork through Quanto on turn one. Then we can stab lego through the heart and shoot for their fp, which should be in that uncovered area.

[vulture]

On geographical grounds, I'd guess their FP is somewhere roughly level with QM. QM and Sandy both seem extremely small, given what we can see. This suggests a major city somewhere in the unexplored land between them - just where we'd want it, to be vulnerable to 2-move units rather than cavalry.

Burning down their FP city would be a major coup to start off the war with. It's a shame you don't get told when you take out the FP - we'd have to know in advance (although we might be able to guess from the drop in productivity, but if things go well that should drop noticably anyway, so we might not be able to tell the difference).

Is it worth spending the cash to investigate QM or Sandy (or both) now. Since they're small, they'll be pretty cheap, and let us know what targets are in 2-move striking range.

A quick tile counts suggests that investigating the coastal cities uncovers the following numbers of tiles:

Forkmouth: 8
Sandy: 5
QM: 7
Abriene: 4
Tipperary: 2

QM and Sandt should be the cheapest, being easily the smallest, so QM represents the best value for money in all likelihood, as well as uncovering an area we might well be interested in.

[DeepO]

vulture, nice graphics, keep it up!

I would definately go for a 2 or 3-way approach, just outside off their coast. Further, I'd go in 2 stacks, both ending on points that can reach 2 or 3 cities (can be the same). We have to assume we will be spotted, even once their picket line is gone (by scouting fighters, subs, or spies!), and we will be under bombardment from bombers. If we can threaten enough cities, it's the only chance we've got to don't run into a wall of infs.

BTW: espionage: Is Vox going for that after this tech? Would there be any way to acquire the tech, and insert a spy before declaring war to Legoland? We can be sure they would insert one to us, so we have to be able to detect it before attacking!

DeepO

[Arrian]

On geographical grounds, I'd guess their FP is somewhere roughly level with QM.

My thought as well.

-Arrian

[Arrian]

By the way, isn't QM size 9? I wouldn't say that's very small. Sandonorica is size3, though.

-Arrian

[vulture]

Since I can't look at the save (due to laptop theft - STILL not replaced), all I have to go on are the screenshots above, and it's hard to make out the numbers. I'd guessed at 3 as the most likely, but 8 or 9 were still in the running AFAICS as well.

[Arrian]

I originally thought 3, but changed my mind to 9.

The clincher is the city graphics: it displays as a city on the map, as opposed to a town, like Sandonorica.

-Arrian

[Arrian]

Originally posted by vulture
Since I can't look at the save (due to laptop theft - STILL not replaced), all I have to go on are the screenshots above, and it's hard to make out the numbers. I'd guessed at 3 as the most likely, but 8 or 9 were still in the running AFAICS as well.

I guess your laptop company needs those Nextel walky-talky phones, eh? [/reference to a commercial you may or may not have seen]

-Arrian

[DeepO]

I just realised something. With a few empty transports at well chosen spots, we can threaten a lot more cities, relatively safe. The dots in vulture's plan are meant for non-chaining ships. By using chaining, we can put ships on most of his 2-city dots (out of reach from coastal bombardment), and chain our way when necessary. These ships don't even need to be fully defended: putting 3 empty transports and a destroyer on such a spot is a serious threat, if they are backed with 8 full transports within reach. Lego can't ignore them, making our main force a lot safer. And in case they can't sink them, they have no choice of defending all cities within reach of all the transports.

With 6 extra transports, and 2 more destroyers, we could threaten perhaps 4 or 5 more cities!

DeepO

[DeepO]

Oh, and generals, let me repeat what I posted in the turn thread as well: I need an estimate on how many transports are going to be needed. The rest is not that critical so far, but the number of galleons / transports, and if at all possible the number of destroyers are becoming crucial info in the planning. Please discuss, and decide this quickly, it would make my job a lot easier!

DeepO

[vulture]

Okay, to start gauging how many transports we'll need, I'm putting up a straw-man plan (i.e. something to stimulate discussion, not the final plan). The plan involves two attack groups - one decoy and one primary group. We use a double-bluff to clear the path for the main group - trying to make Lego think that that is the feint.



The primary attack is the red group, threatening the three central cities near (hopefully) the FP. The southern group is the feint. I originally planned it as two southern groups (the group was split in two - the yellow and purple groups) but then figured they could travel together most of the way (blue lines). The blue group splits on turn T-1 to threaten the three southern cities, and allow ship-chaining to get units in transports in purple group to attack the city NE of the yellow staging area (Horse-something).

The idea is to agressively clear out red and blue channels with destroyers. The blue transports are roughly one turn ahead of the red transports, and appear to be trying to slip under the screen to the south. Hopefully Lego sees the blue transports at T-1 and sends any remaining ships south to deal with the threat, allowing the red group to slip in relatively unmolested.

I'm thinking in terms of 10 transports in each group. In red group, they all stay together to the final destination. In blue group, 5 go to purple T, and 5 to yellow T. It's probably worth sticking a few marines in the southern group just in case we do find a lightly defended city down there - but only eight or so. The main job of this group is to provide a credible threat - with ship chaining, any of the three southern cities could be hit by 40 marines as far as Lego knows. This forces them to spread their defenses more or less evenly over 6 cities on our coast.

The northern group has the real force. We need at least 40 marines here. Ideally of course, we'd have more, but I expect that that's not feasible given the time we have to build units. The remaining 40 slots are more controversial. I know the plan discussed before has us taking a beachhead, pillaging to prevent counter-attacking, and then fortifying the hell out of our one town in preperation for another attack. I'm dubious about this plan - we're a biggest threat immediately after we land: Lego defences will be almost exclusively in threatened coastal cities. We will never have the neighbouring interior cities so light defended, and should put in some fast-movers to take advantage of that. With only one or two defenders per city (they'd be crazy to have more) we can gut several big cities in their core in the opening gambit. I'd vote for a mix of 20 infantry, 10 tanks, 10 cavalry in the first wave. If we can't do much damge with 20 attackers immediately, we'd not have significantly greater success with 40.

The idea is for the infantry to defend the beachhead (obviously), while the tanks and cav do what damage they can. In a perfect world, Lego cities will be undefended, and we can take out pretty much all of them at very little cost, and then watch their army collapse under the burden of unit support (although you can only lose i unit per turn, can't you?).

We'll also need a few extra trannies to get the ship chaining up and running. As it stands, with the 20 or so we have planned here, it'll take something like 3 turns to start getting them into position to get the chain running, so every extra 3 transports would give us the capacity to get an extra 8 units across per turn in the first few turns after the landing.

So I'm looking at a minimum of 20 transports (maybe we can get by with fewer if we're prepared to go with a smaller feint), and something like 26 ideally. How many tanks / infantry do we sacrifice to get an extra 6 transports? And should we talk to GoW about getting saltpetre for cavalry as part of the tech deals (or as a bonus free gift)?

[DeepO]

Think something like 2 infs/tanks per transport. with mobilization (which doesn't help naval forces), that should be about right.

Okay, so we're looking at roughly 26 trannies, perhaps a bit less. Currently we have 15 galleons, so another 9 need to be built. The galleys are perhaps best to keep being used as Bob scouts.

Oh, Vulture, kudos on the plan, however I do not agree with the cavs. Too short shelf life (which basically has gone allready), and too costly to build. I would prefer building tanks instead, and racing ahead in tech, to get to MA asap. I prefer thos fast movers over tanks, especially as there is no way that Lego can catch up in tech, and get to MI

DeepO

[vulture]

If we're not going to take any 3 move units, we should take a few some settlers instead to allow tanks to do the same job (assuming we decide on taking the initial-strike force along at all). Would building a few settlers screw up any build plans, or can it be fitted in to one of the smaller cities without too much trouble?