GAUL - The attack on Legoland

[asleepathewheel]

I'm glad Aeson came home

[DeepO]

Originally posted by Aeson
This is the main reason I think we need to strike for the jugular the first turn. The other is GoW.

We might be able to recover and even win this war if GoW doesn't end up helping out, as long as we hurt Lego enough to draw about even with them. Without their FP we can compete, at least for a while.

True... so far, we've been assuming GoW will help out, and in that case it more becomes a problem of making them a juicier target for the counterattack then us: leave them open, and we just take a city the first turn, and Lego would be foolish to not concentrate on them. However, if GoW would not be invading, we've got to do something...

I can tell one thing, though: I'm not saying GoW will be invading Lego, but you can be very sure they will invade someone. They haven't had a decent war (The Bobian affair was frustrating to them), and have itchy trigger fingers. They are gearing towards war: if they don't attack Lego, we can be reasonably sure they invade us (or ND, before they have tanks)

I would recommend the Hill 2 of Quanto, or 21 of Sandorico (2 Settlers needed to build there).

Quanto 2 would be our harbor city, Quanto 7 would be the harbor for RP, and Quanto 6 the inland camp.

Or, Sand 21 would be our harbor city, Sand 8 would be the harbor for RP, and Sand 6 would be our inland camp.

I have to look at the maps at home, on a calm moment to comment on this. It's extremely good you're looking into this, Aeson, we missed this kind of large-scale planning.

Every Settler can give us a target with Tanks at 3+ movement. Poor man's version of Panzers... though in some cases we could stretch that movement out quite a ways. We need the initial Settlers (6 is looking good), and then a steady flow of new ones. Also, if we're razing, we'll eventually want a flood of Settlers to claim land once it can be held. Can't let GoW/ND claim the whole island after we do the work.

In that case, I'm definately switching to more settlers, as you are right. The problem with SS is that it makes a poor settler pump (5-turn), which will be too low for resettling, and having more combat settlers at the ready. We better have 10 settlers ready to ship, 5 of them on the first boat, and a new one every 2 turns or so then to run out of settlers half way through our attack.

I might prefer our ships to be hit by Artillery than to face the same Artillery in a city when attacking with Marines. The number would be the clincher, if it's enough to allow Lego to sink us, then we definitely don't want to be in range, but if it's only enough to hurt our ships a bit, it works out better for us.

That's the problem. We're not sure, but it is possible Lego has bombers by that time, and we can also assume they have over 20 arts (seeing as we build 6 of them in one turn, 20 arts is low for their empire). A convoy of our ships are likely only going to be 20 ships (10 transports, 10 support vessels), possibly lower. So if they focus their bombardment on one group (assuming we've got 2, and GoW either has 1 or 2), they can at least hurt our support vessels enough, so transports are defending... every destroyer, battleship, or even ironclad closeby will take out 8 invasion units. That's a big risk...

Are we building the intelligence agency? I would prefer it to Battlefield Medicine as we can use Settlers for that (in almost all cases it will be better to heal in a city so that our force numbers are hidden).

Well, I would prefer it to... the only problem is that we don't have espionage, so not much chance of building the CIA. ND was going for that, maybe I should ask them when it would be ready, and if they would be willing to trade it to us.

Sand 441 would be a good spot if we are going to hit Sand. I'd say we need 3-4 extra Settlers to go that way though. Probably be worth it in any case as Quanto will eat up more Marines than the extra Settlers will eat up slots in Transports.

Later...

Our diversionary force could get close to the shore and draw Artillery fire, getting them out of the cities. Quanto 114 (with the main fleet at Sand 441) would allow us to do some ship chaining into Quanto if necessary, and could draw out Lego's land based Artillery to the SW of Quanto.

drawing out art from their cities is too me the biggest reason to sail close to shore. However, as said above, it comes at a big risk. With diversionary force, you mean half our navy, threatening other cities, right? Or do you mean empty transports? We do not have that many to spare...

If we are sure GoW (and ND) will be doing their part, this would be the best approach. In that case attrition is on our side.

If this is GoW thinking "Lego is a problem, let GS hamstring them while we drop another '2 Horsemen' to help out", then we'll be in for a dogfight with just Lego. We won't beat them if they aren't seriously injured in the first turns of the war.

You can't ever be sure of GoW, of course. But as said, I'm pretty sure they will attack someone, and Lego's wings need to be clipped, they know that as well. In our communications, we've been careful to stress that alone, we would not be able to do anything to Lego, and we need their help. I hope this was enough: while I too believe we can at least dent their economy when going alone given our tech advantage, we should never tell so to GoW: let them feel needed, so they know they have to participate in force, or nothing happens. Their goal is not to hamper us, their goal is to hamper Lego, using us.

ND: well, they are going to protect their own shores first, and only send any extras to Lego. By that time, the fight is over. Don't expect anything from them, except logistic support in the form of gold and lux for tech.

If it's a complete backstab... well 2 (or 3) v 1 no one is going to survive at this point. Even if we stayed all at home we couldn't fend off GoW and Lego.

Agreed. No use in planning for that, as we'd be dead meat anyway.

The units left open would be:

Marine who takes the harbor city.
Tanks who attack the FP city but retreat or don't get the final kill.*
Tank who takes the FP city.
Tanks who attack any other city, retreat, or don't get the final kill.*
Tank(s) who take the other city(s).

I think at most we leave exposed 10 Tanks. I can't see them having more than a handful of Inf in the FP city, as piling there would be suicide for the rest of their empire. Probably enough inland Infantry to deal with Cavalry, but they can't have enough to deal with Tanks+Settlers so even if they think of that they still have to put the (non-Cav required) Infantry in the Coastal cities where they will be most effective.

*Because we would be razing the cities, we could cover these Tanks with a city so that only Cav could reach them. An Infantry or two would make them pretty safe.

If we can get there in time, think MI, not inf. Maybe not for all of our forces, but through chaining at least for part of our defenders. The problem is we don't know if Lego is going to have tanks or not: it will be very close, and depending if they go for flight or not.

The 10 exposed tanks are not that bad, and marines don't serve much purpose after the first attack (well, they make nice policemen). It's just the principle of taking a large area in the first turn, when most of their forces are still fresh that bothers me. But I agree, the prize of destroying their FP would be more then worth it.

Drafting, then adding back the population in Workers, lets you keep productive up to your happiness limit while getting the units still.

But isn't happiness going to be their main problem? They will only have 1 lux (2 in case ND doesn't stop their trade). If GoW could concentrate fire on Bach or Sistine, they would run into serious happiness problems, even with the positive WW they'll receive...

Ok. I fell under the impression we could do it without much cost. (Thought I read somewhere we already had SP being given us)

Sounds like you are using them as would be most effective.

I try to... if we would have SP and Mil Trad, the picture would be different, though.

-----------------------

Looking at the larger map, I think the FP city is probably 77774 of Logville. Logville is on a river (the screenie is grainy, so I'm not sure of this) which extends at least 7777.

The Hill 44 of Crossing wasn't improved when last it was seen (could they have had an IW city here?), neither was the Hill 411 of Crossing. Yet a Desert in the area was Mined (Crossing 444). No reason to mine a Desert if those Hills are in the same city radius. Given the shape of the improved tiles, this leads me to believe there definitely is a city at 77774 of Logville. It's probably on a river. It's 4 tile spacing from Quanto. Would have an Iron Hill in the radius. Would allow for a city 4-5 tile spacing between Quanto (4 spacing) and Tiberium. It's also the perfect place for their FP.

This puts the FP further from Sand than from Quanto, and there would almost surely be a city inbetween Sand and the FP (by the route we would be going). The second city could be at Sand 666 (within a tile of there in any case), with the spacing which Tanks could reach it without Settler help. Then from there we could reach 77774 without Settler help either!

The second city would be most likely to be lightly defended. It adds a few Tanks we would be leaving in the open, but lets us raze another city, which probably is worth the cost. (We could build a city on the Tanks and cover with an Infantry... would eat up a lot of Cavs even if they did attack).

I think Sand should be the city we hit, and Quanto the city we should try to make them think we are hitting. Our diversionary force coming up from the S to Quanto 4111 the turn our landing force gets to Sand 4411 (moving 69966, 66666, 66622 from Hurricane) would look like we are converging both forces on Quanto after a feint to the N and S a bit. Quanto would be the only target that could be hit by both forces, and so would require the most defenders.

Then the Conqs should try to cut off Quanto completely. 14 Conqs could do it, giving us and extra 2 turn respite from dealing with the Infantry Lego puts there, and probably send Q into starvation and severely damage their production (minus the FP bonus too hopefully).

To make Q1 less likely to be covered, that should put our diversionary force at Q4111... so that Q1 wouldn't be covered with Artillery (and their escorts). Conqs would be able to get to Sand 22 on Rails (we need to make sure RP understands they need to get all the way into the port city, and then likely back out if they don't want to lose their transports), then it's only 3 moves at most to get to all 7 tiles surrounding Q. If there are any Lego units on coastal tiles, Marines from the diversionary force would need to take them out.

This will have to wait... but I've got to say, it looks more as a plan then what we had so far

First a few comments on this, then I'll try to check how it fits in our build plans for forces, so we adjust our army layout for this. It looks at first sight that we've got plenty of infs, don't need many arts, and want as much tanks as we can build, complemented with settlers for movement. Sounds good to me... now if only I would get an idea on the number of bombers and fighters we want to take with us (assuming 40 marines for our beachhead), and the number of destroyers, we're game

DeepO

[DeepO]

This took close to 4 hours to post... grrrhh.. 'poly has her periods again

DeepO

[Arrian]

Welcome back, Aeson. It's good to see the active members of the team getting some more input/support (especially from someone who clearly knows what they're doing). I'm a little out of my depth here, and besides that have been really busy. But I've been observing, and will try to chime in if I feel I have something useful to say.

-Arrian

[Aeson]

I'm not really sure we should take any Bombers and Fighters along. More Tanks/Destroyers and a couple Battleships would be nice as their 2 range bombard can come in handy.

At most we would be looking at 6 Bombers and 2 Fighters initially? With 2 Carriers. I forget the shield counts for those... 160 for the Carriers, 120 for the Bombers, and 80 for the Fighters? In any case it's a lot of shields for 6 bombardments 3 of which can be expected to be hits on units? We're talking about 10 Tanks (more if we want Vet Bombers from Airports), which can be expected to do much more damage.

Once we have a beachhead, Bombers come into their own. Deep bombardment. We don't need to ship them across as we can just re-base. Fighters... I just don't know. They get shot down when intercepting Bombers quite a bit. Recon is nice, but an Explorer can do pretty much the same thing.

[DeepO]

so far, the plan calls for 2 carriers (oh, and they are already build too), not necessarily loaded with bombers, but with fighters, for air superiority and recon. The only bombers on the carriers we could need could be used to harrass any incoming invasion fleet from Lego, as I'm half expecting them to launch a counter offensive if they spot we've got lots of troops on their continent.

DeepO

[DeepO]

Oh, Bombers are 100, fighters are 80 IIRC. BS are 200, Carriers are 180.

But I'm not sure on those numbers for the planes... I've gotten them wrong before

DeepO

[Aeson]

Originally posted by DeepO
In that case, I'm definately switching to more settlers, as you are right. The problem with SS is that it makes a poor settler pump (5-turn), which will be too low for resettling, and having more combat settlers at the ready. We better have 10 settlers ready to ship, 5 of them on the first boat, and a new one every 2 turns or so then to run out of settlers half way through our attack.

I would recommend SS on Workers, add 2 to a highish (15 or 30) production city after every Settler. Should be able to have 1 or 2 turn Settlers.

Well, I would prefer it to... the only problem is that we don't have espionage, so not much chance of building the CIA. ND was going for that, maybe I should ask them when it would be ready, and if they would be willing to trade it to us.

We have to have it sooner or later. And being able to investigate cities will help tremendously. I would want to investigate Sand and Quanto just before the landing, which only we can do. Any info from ND would be from before Lego's turn. I would want to investigate the (potential) FP city when an Explorer uncovers it (if we don't just steal the entire map) too. Using the spy to see troops overall is too risky and expensive IMO. Let ND/GoW handle that if someone is going to.

Later on, playing the Modern Era without spies is like playing the Middle Ages without maps. BM will make a good prebuild if we end up going Spaceship, and I think we can cover all our injured units with Settlers. I'd rather not build it at this point.

drawing out art from their cities is too me the biggest reason to sail close to shore. However, as said above, it comes at a big risk. With diversionary force, you mean half our navy, threatening other cities, right? Or do you mean empty transports? We do not have that many to spare...

I thought the plan was to have ~6 Transports (mostly empty) with escort start S to distract? It's not terribly important, as any extra losses we take from Artillery in a city would be offset by the capture of that Artillery.

We'd probably do better to go all in with one stack. 5 extra Destroyers instead of 6 empty transports will help a lot. They can bombard the city with 8 attack, which will eat up several rolls that would hurt our Marines (and does the damage if not).

If we can get there in time, think MI, not inf. Maybe not for all of our forces, but through chaining at least for part of our defenders. The problem is we don't know if Lego is going to have tanks or not: it will be very close, and depending if they go for flight or not.

Having at least 1 or 2 MI on each stack will work wonders. This is very good news. We could even bring along Artillery (after the initial landing, 1 for every MI we can spare) in this case.

Lego will have to build Tanks from scratch, and MI kill tanks very nicely anyways. As long as we have Tanks/MI, and Lego has Tanks/Inf, we should do well.

But isn't happiness going to be their main problem? They will only have 1 lux (2 in case ND doesn't stop their trade). If GoW could concentrate fire on Bach or Sistine, they would run into serious happiness problems, even with the positive WW they'll receive...

If they lose Bach and/or Sistene they will. Otherwise I think the positive WW will keep them happy enough for at least some drafting. If they feel desperate (or have cities that have lost production capacity, like in the S without an FP), they can draft and use entertainers too.

Drafting isn't a big deal though. Tanks deal with Conscript Infantry well enough.

[DeepO]

Originally posted by Aeson
I would recommend SS on Workers, add 2 to a highish (15 or 30) production city after every Settler. Should be able to have 1 or 2 turn Settlers.

Either I don't grasp what you want, or my way is more efficient: Cyclone can get to 3-turn settlers on its own. In that same period, it could also build 3 workers. Any 30 spt city could build a settler in 1 turn, and get 2 workers instantly added to make up the loss, which is in terms of shield use slightly less efficient then just building them in Cyclone.

However, there is the problem of the mobilization bug: I haven't figured it out yet, but it seems that once you go to a non-bonus unit, the city won't receive the bonus. So, by going to a settler in a tank producing city, would seriously harm our potential to build tanks later on...

It all comes down to how many workers you want for radio towers: we've got 35 of them, and if we want 10 settlers before invading, we can maximally get that to 37 or so. I'd like to have at least 10 workers ready for pollution and tile tweaking, but those 25 others can be divided between RT and Lego instantly...

We have to have it sooner or later. And being able to investigate cities will help tremendously. I would want to investigate Sand and Quanto just before the landing, which only we can do. Any info from ND would be from before Lego's turn. I would want to investigate the (potential) FP city when an Explorer uncovers it (if we don't just steal the entire map) too. Using the spy to see troops overall is too risky and expensive IMO. Let ND/GoW handle that if someone is going to.

Sorry, misunderstanding. Of course we want to build the CIA, and to do so, GoW has asked ND to research it. I just asked them if they would be willing to share... which they can't really refuse, seeing as they're relying on us for all the rest of their research.

BM: well... you should have said that before. It is scheduled to complete next turn. In case we get word that espionage is about to be given to us, we can delay it by switching to a palace build during production... but the CIA would take us 8 turns in SA, so effectively BM costs us 4 tanks. In case we delay for a few more turns, building both wonders pays off, except of course we loose the ability to use it as a prebuild for a SS part.

I fuylly agree on investigating, and this has been discussed before: GoW proposed to let ND do any investigation, and to share the results (they seemed to be willing to do so, for free even, as their logistic support to the invasion of Lego), but we have explained to MZ that that didn't help us one bit. I'm not sure if it stuck, though, maybe best to repaet it sometime soon.

Later on, playing the Modern Era without spies is like playing the Middle Ages without maps. BM will make a good prebuild if we end up going Spaceship, and I think we can cover all our injured units with Settlers. I'd rather not build it at this point.

See above... it is scheduled to complete next turn. I fully agree with you, but haven't thought about it before. Maybe we can compensate by switching to a palace, let's see what ND says first.

Oh, a palace is possible under mob, right? Otherwise we're going to have to take citizens off tiles if we want to delay its completion.

I thought the plan was to have ~6 Transports (mostly empty) with escort start S to distract? It's not terribly important, as any extra losses we take from Artillery in a city would be offset by the capture of that Artillery.

Sowehere the past few months, vulture (IIRC) calculated that in order to have some diversion, some chaining possibilities, and the capacity to more or less unload all our offensive troops in the first few turns, we needed 23 transports. Currently, we've got 10 transports, 12 galleons (all to be upgraded), and two scouting galleys near GoW and ND. With this force, you're free to play at will

We've got 9 destroyers, and are building more. I think we more or less settled for 20 destroyers at least, in a first guess.

Further, part of the infs we've got now, would ship to Lego (risky perhaps). we were planning for 40 marines, to have 90% certainty to beat 10 infs in a hilled city (or a plains metro), before bombardment. Add some 5-10 settlers, 10 explorers, 10 (up to 14) arts, and somewhere between 60 and 80 tanks. Every extra marine costs a tank, every bomber or fighter costs a tank. And invasion date is set to turn 240, as it will be around the time Lego can have tanks in case it goes straight towards it (if Vox helps, they can win 4 turns), and the earliest we are ready, and GoW would be able to join us. (GoW is still weak to us, and they're far behind)

We'd probably do better to go all in with one stack. 5 extra Destroyers instead of 6 empty transports will help a lot. They can bombard the city with 8 attack, which will eat up several rolls that would hurt our Marines (and does the damage if not).

Problem with only one stack is the number of defenders Lego can stack into the cities: they are still average to us, and we've got ~80 infs. If we don't, together with GoW, threaten at least 8 cities, we have more then 10 defenders in the targetted city... that's a lot of needed marines!

Having at least 1 or 2 MI on each stack will work wonders. This is very good news. We could even bring along Artillery (after the initial landing, 1 for every MI we can spare) in this case.

I hoped you'd like it MI will be close, though: we can get there in time, but we need the cash to upgrade from somewhere else. Every inf upgraded would mean 20 gold, and currently, without selling techs to ND, we are about broke after we upgrade our galleons. 1 or 2 turns further, this situation can be resolved, but it's precisely those few turns that are critical.

Lego will have to build Tanks from scratch, and MI kill tanks very nicely anyways. As long as we have Tanks/MI, and Lego has Tanks/Inf, we should do well.

Well... more or less. Lego can build tanks the moment they discover MT, by prebuilding and switching during production. in the first turn, this can give them 20 tanks, in 4 turns, that can give them over 50 tanks. However, I doubt they will cut it this close, they have been building infrastructure for the past 10 turns as well, when obviously they are under threat. I'm not sure they understand how big this threat is becoming.

If they lose Bach and/or Sistene they will. Otherwise I think the positive WW will keep them happy enough for at least some drafting. If they feel desperate (or have cities that have lost production capacity, like in the S without an FP), they can draft and use entertainers too.

Bach is the preferred target of GoW, but they anticipate it to be heavily defended, as Lego knows it's vulnerable. We wouldn't leave Hurricane ill-defended, knowing it's both the best accessible city, and the ones with the most important wonders either.

DeepO

[DeepO]

I've been thinking on our invasion position. Let me collect a few comments first.

maps of vulture on possible pre-invasion points, to threaten cities safely

Latest Lego Map (1090 AD) (500K)

Harbor after razing beachhead

Originally posted by Aeson
I would recommend the Hill 2 of Quanto, or 21 of Sandorico (2 Settlers needed to build there).

Quanto 2 would be our harbor city, Quanto 7 would be the harbor for RP, and Quanto 6 the inland camp.

Or, Sand 21 would be our harbor city, Sand 8 would be the harbor for RP, and Sand 6 would be our inland camp.

Sand 441 would be a good spot if we are going to hit Sand. I'd say we need 3-4 extra Settlers to go that way though. Probably be worth it in any case as Quanto will eat up more Marines than the extra Settlers will eat up slots in Transports.

Looking at the larger map, I think the FP city is probably 77774 of Logville. Logville is on a river (the screenie is grainy, so I'm not sure of this) which extends at least 7777.
(...snip...)

I think Sand should be the city we hit, and Quanto the city we should try to make them think we are hitting. Our diversionary force coming up from the S to Quanto 4111 the turn our landing force gets to Sand 4411 (moving 69966, 66666, 66622 from Hurricane) would look like we are converging both forces on Quanto after a feint to the N and S a bit. Quanto would be the only target that could be hit by both forces, and so would require the most defenders.

I've been looking at the map, and I have to agree, this sounds like a good plan. I'd like to make a few comments, though:

- if at all possible, I'd rather not have any of our ships close enough to shore to be bombarded by arts

- Let's assume we can spy on their cities before invading, let's keep the possibility open that we would go for Quanto, even if Sand would be our primary choice

- we can more or less solve the problem of transports running out of moving points in a harbor-to-be-disbanded. We loose one transport at most, which is the one entering the beach head, with the settlers we need on the first turn. If those a settler builds a new harbor, our transports can safely end their tunr there (in fact, it would be better, as that way we don't need to protect them with DDs). Sand21 would seem like a perfect spot for that, as it is easily reachable by many ships.

- RP's ships need to be precisely positioned, in order to not give anything away. We have to assume that Lego will either have fighters on scouting, or ships, and spots both us and RP. We don't want RP giving away our plans

- a harbor on Sand21 has a further advantage: it let's us attack quanto without spending a settler. With enough tanks in our transports near Sand, we can take this city (we could even take art and bombard it from within the city walls) over land, which will be a lot easier then over sea. Once we've got quanto, we can unload all our forces in either quanto itself, or in Q2. In fact, it may be best to take out Q with half a chance, as S21 is also in direct reach of Lego

- if we want to risk it, a few transports on Q111111 would be nice: they can threaten Q, Abilene and Tipperary with marines, but can only enter Abilene or Q2 to unload. But, we need ships on Q11114 to be believable that we are going for Q.

- It's a shame Lego laid out their cities like they did, as it only differs one tile from being a perfect ruse, threatening 5 cities instead of 4. Maybe we can think of something (e.g. empty transports for chaining) to make the threat even harder to them. We want their defenses split

- Oh, and we absolutely need GoW to threaten Lego at the same moment as we are doing it. With all their defenses concentrated into those 4 cities, we can't break through. And the whole plan leans on one thing: we can get a beachhead... after that, there is little they can do.

- if we go in two groups, is it worth the risk to put all our marines into one group? We can assume Lego will have build the CIA on invasion time, and let's assume they have stolen our mil. plans the turn before invasion (can we prevent that, BTW?) Can we risk it to have all our marines in one group, and the other complete with tanks?

- diversion force: empty transports are maybe a lovely way of taunting Lego. Let's assume we've got 6 empties, and we name them empty_1 etc. By positioning them just off their coast, e.g. 3 on Q4411, 3 on Tiperrary 447, we more or less force Lego to attack these. If they don't, they give us the possibility to use them for chaining, combining both forces, or threatening another city. If they don't attack, we use them, otherwise they are of no loss as they will draw fire from any possible defending DDs or BSs. And quite possibly draw these ships into the open as well, where our fleet can engage them, denying them their movement advantage.

DeepO

[DeepO]

Something else... are we going to meet our goal of turn 240? It seems to me that we can have our support units ready, we can have our marines ready, but we'll only have something like 60 tanks... every turn extra giving us ~8 tanks more.

I still think turn 240 is about the time when the first Lego tanks will arrive, but wouldn't we be better off if we wait just a tiny bit longer, and have more tanks, and more MIs to bring to the fight? Also, where's GoW in all of this? We need them to invade in the same turn as we will, not a few turns later... but they are still weak to us, and are lagging seriously behind, it seems... don't we have to postpone the invasion for a couple of turns, to make sure we're both ready?

DeepO

[vmxa1]

A few extra uits are of no use if Lego is making as many as us or more. The real deal is having GoW at least show up on time.

If that is not going to happen, we have to wait a bit. If they cannot be ready in a very few more turns, then we need a new plan, if Lego goes into full production of tanks/MI.

I can see a best case where Lego see us getting stronger, but attributes it to our being worried about an invasion, but soon after they will have to go on a build plan to be safe, regardless of what they conclude.

[DeepO]

before we lose this information: in one of the turn threads, there is a discussion going on on troop composition

[DeepO]

Okay, here's a pic. More explanation follows, I need this posted first to post the turn thread.

[DeepO]

What's visible in the above post is a rough plan for our ship movements on the first turn, and possible ways to end our ships right before D-day. It's important that this map is updated next turn, as Lego's movements will interfere with our plan.

The 12 numbers are those of our picket ships. I'm expecting the 2 most Northern scouts to stay put (they didn't receive a number, one isn't even on the screenie), the rest intercepts what it can get. We should be able to destroy most of Lego's screen, with the most notable exception their stack of 6 BS. First turn movements are thus aimed at keeping clear from their bombardment range.

We should be able to destroy all of our targets, but we can be sure to miss at least one (DD against ironclad has a large chance of succeeding, but you never know). Sometimes this can be remedied, sometimes it can't. It matters for one thing only: chaining ships. But more on that later.

In Hurricane (or directly next to it) there currently are 8 fresh DDs. These will be our main protection for the Northern fleet, supplemented with whatever remains from the initial clash, at most 5 more DDs. There are 13 transports present, but at least 1, and perhaps 3 are needed for chaining. Count 10 transports for cargo purposes, 9 if we want to take an empty. At last, there is one carrier

In Sufa, there are currently 6 DDs, building to 9 DD with the initial ships. There are 10 transports for cargo (no chaining). one carrier. The Southern armada is, for as far as we can tell, reasonably safe from attacking ships. The BS stack can only reach it at T-1, beforehand it's safe. And in order to do so, it has to pass the Northern force within striking distance of our DDs.

The different ellipses are places where we can land... by starting one turn from Hurricane, we can end a bit farther on the Northern route. Further, we've got options on where to land in between too. The largest ellips is the one I like most, mainly because it leaves room to attack (or bombard) ships with the escorts. We will need that in case we encounter the BS stack.

Last thing to decide, and it's an important decision, is when to start. It is currently turn 238, 1230 AD. Somehow, GoW's plans call for loading next turn Which is too early for any of my plans, as I always started from loading on turn 240. Economically, it would be perfect to load on turn 241, with 1 ship of MI following in turn 242. But 239 is not possible, we would only have 36 marines. So I suggest we communicate this to GoW, that they wait for at least one turn.

With chaining, I can get 53 marines if we start in turn 240, with 1 transport staying behind. If we can risk the transports, I can even send 8 MI once upgraded, with 1 more transport (so 2 empties), or an additional 16 MI and 8 marines with 3 more transports (so in total 4 empties). But those transports will be left behind in the open, without protection, and should be considered lost.

The way I see it, is that we ask for one turn delay from GoW. This will mean we land in the same turn Lego discovers tanks, and so we can face some 10 tanks as a rough guess. Otherwise, we have to wait for 2 turns, in which case we will bring MI, but face 15 more tanks. Lego isn't able to build 1-turn tanks, but in case it is attacked by two nations, you can be sure they'll mobilize.

Oh, some more decisions we need to make:
- Where is RP in all of this?
- Where do we want them to be, do they need to be present the first turn?
- How are we going to give oil to them? We can do it ourselves, in which case we'll need to pillage our only source right after they upgrade their transports.
- Are we going to sell radio to GoW? I'm not done thinking about this, but I wouldn't mind selling it to them right now. It will at least look good. Otherwise, we wait until we're sure they're also invading Lego, instead of invading us
- what are we going to do with research in the couple of turns before we embark, and invade?
- what are we gong to do afterwards? I would go for the Internet, as it will time perfectly with the end of this war (perhaps after it), and will give us offshore platforms for our coastal cities.

DeepO