GAUL - The attack on Legoland

[DeepO]

settlers are very possible, they would be perfect to be build in SS. (Cyclone could do it as well, but would need some shortrushing to avoid losses). How many would you think we should take? If I start next turn, I think I can have one every 6 turns, or 4 settlers without rushing.

And we don't need the workers anymore, as our foresting spots are nearly gone (only a couple remain), and most of our cities are already maxed out.

DeepO

[Arrian]

Settlers and maybe some workers too. To rebuild roads/RRs, or build forts.

But aside from 1 settler, I think the 1st wave of the attack should be pure combat units. Then we can send over the workers & other settlers.

-Arrian

[DeepO]

workers are still present in abundance. I can add some 10 workers to cities, and will need at least 15 on Stormia (pollution patrol, and some tweaking), so with SS on workers, and Cyclone continuing to pump, that means some 40 workers for Legoland. If that's not enough I don't know what will be

BTW, before that time, we're going to have radio... workers can turn into outposts or those defense things I forgot the name of. I've never built them in SP, but in this PBEM, they will become useful, I guess.

DeepO

[Krill]

radar?

[DeepO]

radar towers... that was the name

If anyone wants to plan these as well: go right ahead. We've got enough workers to cover all of Stormia, so we'd better do it. All protection is welcome.

DeepO

[vulture]

If we just want to sit tight in our little enclave the first turn, then there is no need for any settlers. If we want to take any opportunity that is there to take out most of Lego's cities, then we'll need a few settlers, although I'd say only 2 or 3 in the first wave. (Two would be needed to link all our cities together for 2 move attackers, for instance - and I expect that we have a tighter build than Lego). 2 settlers and 18 tanks should enable us to wipe out 3 or 4 significant Lego cities the same turn as landing. The optimum mix really depends on what defences Lego puts in interior cities, but that information isn't going to be reliably available until after we've declared war, so barring a succesful spy mission, we can't really plan. 2 settlers and 18 tanks gives us some flexibility - we have enough firepower to take out a few cities with moderate defences, and a few settlers to get us past important bottlenecks (although we will be exploring blindly here).

Can diplomants steal world maps? I can't remember - haven't been able to play civ for over 6 months now....

We won't have enough settlers to give us access to the whole continent in all likelihood - if we did that, we wouldn't have enough tanks in case of defended cities. But I do think that 1 settler is too few. We might just find ourselves only able to take 2 cities on the first turn with tanks due to lack of targets reachable by 2-movers (and if they have left interior cities ungarded, that's going to be incredibly frustrating).

[DeepO]

I'm not sure on the maps, but would you steal a WM right now? I'll check next turn to see how much it would cost us, but in all likelyhood we'd better wait until after we swapped maps with GoW.

We could always investigate cities, and gain map knowledge that way, but that is costly to perform.

Re: attacking interior cities: I'm not sure what you want to accomplish. I mean, it's true that it is extremely frustrating to lose cities which aren't defended, and in that sense very fun to do. However, we wouldn't be able to properly defend all those cities in the first few turns (until most of our forces land), and I wonder if it is worth the trouble then. Granted, 2 or 3 infs can keep a city from falling to cavs (without bomber support), but by giving Lego more targets and spreading our front too fast, we give them opportunities to harm our forces. And pillaging might be an option, but still...

If we could reach the FP in the first turn, it would be something different, as taking that one out would be a serious blow to their economical power. I'm perfectly happy to spend a couple of settlers, and a batalion of tanks on that, it would be a very good investment.

Re: settlers: any estimate on how many we can use in total? I want to avoid to have to build settlers in cities that can build tanks, when right now we've got plenty of time to build them in dedicated cities... will 4 be enough, or do we need more?

DeepO

[vulture]

I'm taking the view that stopping Lego as a threat is the first priority, with actually conquering Lego lands a distant second. I'd be quite happy to land, capture 90% of their cities on the first turn and then raze them before the end of the turn, and then go home again. Being able to expand into Lego territory would be nice, but thoroughly trashing all of Lego's infrastructure is (to me) the most important thing. We don't need to hold those cities (although it would be nice if we could), we just need to deny Lego the production and economic potential of them. Even if Lego rebuilds every city later on, they're not going to be able to grow them fast enough (or develop their improvements) to be any kind of threat before the end of the game. Every major city we can hit and raze on that first turn is a major loss to Lego in terms of the war - we cripple their ability to replace their losses.

IMHO a first strike that doesn't go beyond the beachhead is going to be a losing proposition. We don't want to get bogged down in another RP/GS/GoW/ND style affair if at all possible. And Lego should still put the overwhelming majority of their defenders in coastal towns which can be ignored once we have a beachhead, leavnig us rich pickings in the interior as long as we have good mobility. (Which is why I initially suggested cavalry - not to actually attack and Lego units, but to bridge the gaps that tanks can't cross, capture the cities, and allow the tanks through on the RRs to get to the next target. Settlers do the same job, but at the expense of needing one more unit in the boat (although they are more powerful at the job than cavalry).

[DeepO]

hmmm.... I don't know. If at all possible, I see this as a jump towards dominance. The moment we've got MAs, we take out Lego, and go after Bob. If we can do that before them getting MI (I doubt it, but you never know), we win. I don't want to get into a space race, which we will most likely lose.

settlers do have a serious problem, though: it is not that easy to use them in the first turn. They can't be used next to an existing city, and when taking a beachhead, there is a big chance we only have a cultural influence of 1 tile... so we can only use them in the second turn, at which point their interior cities are going to be defended.

Besides, would they really leave their interior cities undefended when 2 teams declare war on them, and take out their picket line? I doubt it, it would be a very foolish thing to do, and Lego aren't idiots. Don't forget the doughnut attack H_E used on one of their members (forgot which)

DeepO

[Krill]

If we start next turn, how many settlers will we need? And on the cav, we could ask GoW that we want Saltpeter in addition to the 5k gold the are giving us for the techs...

If they have no internal cities heavily defended (more than 3 infs), we should be able to cut off the coastal towns (that should be the main prority) so that the main military might of Lego is stuck moving 1 tile per turn, allowing us the raze/pillage/capture their internal structure.


What is a Dohnut attack, by the way?

[DeepO]

look, I'm not against cavs, but if you need them, you have to warn me now. I'm using the existing knights to rush stuff, and I would hate building knights again!

For me, it's a waste of resources. Let GoW use their riders and cavs, but even 1 forted inf in a metropole could become extremely costly... how many cavs would we need, 10 per defender?

I would agree that they're good pillagers, if we wouldn't have explorers and conquerers....

DeepO

[Krill]

No, I don't mean use them in combat, I mean for moving and pillaging, and on a breakthrough. We would not need more than about 10 or so.

[DeepO]

How does the rest think about this? We still have something like 14 knights left, do we want to upgrade them to cavs, and ship them with the rest of our forces?

indication of cost:
- 14 gpt in upkeep for the next 25 turns = 350
- 280 gold in upkeep
- 238 fewer shields to rush with (3 rifles)
- 2 more transports needed (bulkier forces)

OTOH, it would require us to bring less explorers. The conq's are free, as they're from RP.

I don't know. I'm not convinced, but hey, I'm no general

DeepO

[vulture]

Cavs are only useful if their interior cities are totally undefended (or the ones that the cavs are to attack, anyway). Otherwise, even 1 inf makes them essentially useless. Settlers allow better flexibilty in their is some defense, not to mention they can be used to get further than 1 extra tile in some circumstances.

We can make use of settlers on the first turn even with only a 1 tile radius, as long as we are prepared to abandon the first city we capture (then build a new city adjoining that to give better attack lines, and at the end of the turn, abandon the new city, and rebuild a city on the coast again to re-allow ship chaining). Question: what happens to transports in a coastal city that is disbanded? Do they teleport to nearest friendly port, teleport to nearest valid water tile, get destroyed, or remain curiously land-locked due to oversight on part of programmers? If they teleport to a friendly city, this could also serve to get smoe transports back home to set up the chain between Stormia and Lego more quickly.

Re guarding internal cities - whether it is right to leave them empty or not is an open question at the moment. ISTM that is an attacking force is very likely to take a coastal city regardless, then defend your internal cities. If it's a close call, you probably do better sticking everyone in your coastal cities and stop the landing at all costs.

Consider a (silly) scenario, where you have 2 cities (one coastal, one inland) and 20 infantry. Someone is attacking, with what you suspect to be a mixed force of marines and land units (tanks, for the sake of argument). Is it better to a) put 10 infantry in each city, so all his marines attack 10 men, and then if succesful, his tanks attack the other 10, or b) put all 20 infantry in the coastal city and (hopefully) force him to take on twice as many infantry with his marines and never get his tanks in to the battle at all.

In this silly scenario, I think it makes sense to stack the coastal city. Anyone who can muster enough marines to take out 10 infantry is going to have enough tanks to take out the other 10 infs as well, without too much trouble. Essentially, if they land, you lose both towns. If you pack all infantry into the coastal town, then the same is true - if they land, you lose both towns, but now their chances of succesfully taking the coastal town are much smaller (hopefully - if they have good odds against 20 infantry with marines, you're out of your league in the first place), and their tanks never get in to the battle.

In a more realistic case, where there are plenty of both coastal and interior towns (and coastal towns are similar or greater in number than interior towns) it seems to me that this breaks down, and there is more value in guarding interior towns (to some extent) as well. But I think it is far from clear what the best strategy for a given interior : coastal town ratio is (and it probably depends on the total number of towns as well as the ratio, I suspect, so with 10 coastal towns and 10 inland towns, the silly analysis above doesn't necessarily hold).

[vulture]

To answer cross-posted question: if we do want cavalry, we don't want very many. They are only useful for taking undefended cities that can't be reached by tanks IMO. Then we only need on per city, and there probably aren't gonig to be that many cities that qualify.

To answer Krill: a donut attack is what happens when you stack every single unit in your coastal / border towns, and someone breaks through the line of defense and is free (in a railroad era) to ravage every single undefended interior city - typically razing them to stop them being recaptured. The defender suddenly finds he has a ring of cities surrounding a big hole...

One of the Lego players used it on another one in a private PBEM they were playing.

As I indicated in my previous post, I think the obvious reaction to this (defend interior cities as well in case of breakthrough) may well be wrong, since it makes the initial landing more likely, and allows the attack to bring the non-marine section of his force in to play as well, rather than trying to stop him before any non-marines can get involved.