Turn 239: 1240 AD

[Aeson]

What are the Lego unit numbers (Cav/Art... other land units)? EDIT: N/M... I'm blind.

[Aeson]

15 Transports is the scariest thing.

85 Inf / 7 means we will face ~12 Inf in each target (likely higher in the two cities GoW will have to hit, as their "guesses" there are most likely to pay off... or so we should hope ). They won't empty their interior, but they will have 3 turns of production dedicated to defenders most likely. Their Inf are backed up by Artillery. Anyone want to crunch the numbers on how many Marines are necessary to take out 12 Inf/12 Artillery?

[DeepO]

15 transports are indeed scary. Luckily, they don't have marines, and will only get tanks in 3 turns... it really is now or never.

without art, it took 4 marines per inf, in a non-hill metropolis to get to 90% success rate. Luckily, they won't have 85 art, 'just' 61 of them. I'm not sure, but my guess is that our bombardment, and their artillery kind of cancel out, maybe with a small advantage to us (art hitting a marine is not so bad as a DD hitting citizens to get a metro to city, or to hit an inf).

We've got a few other problems, though. The spies... Lego has espionage. I see no reason why they wouldn't have planted spies with us, GoW and ND. They will see our marines, and they will see GoW's marines. 40 for GoW, and ~50 for us... they will defend our landing spots better.

They won't leave their interior cities undefended, and on top of that will man (most of) their fortresses which we can spot as well. E.g. the hills near Legopolis are heavily fortified, it makes perfect sense to try to stop a GoW attack on those hills, or at least put lots of cav there (free firing when tanks try to pass). However, they will also put whatever other forces they have in the threatened cities, which add to our problems. Each cav requires at least one marine...

As to what they will build in those 3 turns: I think they will prebuild tanks in many cities, and I hope they won't draft too many defenders. That should mean at most some 20 more defenders, and some 20 tanks we face in the first turn.


BTW, what are the thoughts on e.g. exposing spies? Does anyone know if planting spies when at war is more expensive, or has less chance of succeeding? I thought the 130 gold for a spy ridiculously low, but that might be something related to the difficulty setting (Chieftain). Stealing military plans was, for us at least, not an option, as it costed in excess of 5000 gold.

DeepO

[vmxa1]

Their spies cannot afford to steal plans either, so I am not to sure if it is worth the effort to expose them.

[DeepO]

No, they can only investigate. They're very welcome to steal our plans right now, if they're willing to spend 5k in gold on that

Do you know if any spy action (e.g. planting, investigating) becomes more expensive when at war?

DeepO

[vmxa1]

I can't recall it costing more.

[Aeson]

How much does exposing a spy cost? I think we should do it. Planting a spy doesn't always work right? If they fail, don't they have to wait a couple turns to retry?

When did Lego get Espionage anyways?

[vmxa1]

I am not ure if PTW has the effect of a failed attempt preventing and any successful one for a few turns or not.

I think it did come in with a patch and is in PTW. I would think the cost is in the 300-500 range, but it is just a guess.

What is it that we are concerned about them using a spy to do? It will cost a bunch to steal tech and will have low chances. Even more to steal plans or sabatoge research (not worth it for them).

[vulture]

A spy would tell them how many marines we have though, which might be useful information. Not sure it would be useful enough to spend 300 gold to stop them though (when they can in theory plant another spy next turn anyway).

[DeepO]

I thought 300 or 350... didn't I write this down somewhere? Can't remember

exposing spies: only to avoid them seeing our force, yes.

I'm totally inexperienced when it comes to spies, in SP I never was in such an underdog position I had to use them. The cases where I did, I just checked how much tanks or so the AI could launch at me, and that's it. Sometimes investigating a city, but the AI is so predictable that you don't really need it... so all of this is new to me.

Aeson, I don't know when Lego got espionage, but seeing that Vox had nothing else to research the last 10 turns or so, my guess is even before that time. ND got there on 40-turn research. Vox gave us Communism in 214. Vox might be investigating marines right now, and could have taken one of the techs towards tanks, but that's it... espionage could be theirs for the past 20 turns.

BTW, do we want to plant spies in GoW and ND?

DeepO

[Cort Haus]

CH, I really meant to send GoW Lego's complete forces, so all we got from our spy, not only what we could spot.

doh! Sent.

[vmxa1]

I don't know how it works in MP, but if we try to plant a spy on GoW and they find out, that could be bad.

All it will do for us is let us know how many of what they have. We more or less know that already.

If Lego has a spy now, they know what are troop counts are and it will do us no good to stop that after the fact.

The real value of a spy in my mind, is to locate any nukes so we can destroy them. That is not useful right now. In any event, you can guess where they are for humans. The AI will build them in any city, even if it take 100 turns.

Humans will stay with the most productive cities that can built them in a reasonable time frame.

[Aeson]

The other things that a spy will allow are removing our spy and allowing them to investigate our cities. We want to keep Lego blind in possible. If they are attacking with only the top defender available to guess what is in a city, it is a huge advantage to us.

The other thing we would accomplish is perhas Lego wasting gold on espionage (planting more spies) that they can't use for research to Marines/MI or rushing units. For usthe cash isn't as imperative. We (will) already have Marines/MI. We need cash for upgrading still, but otherwise we have what we need for dealing with Lego already (whether we can deal with Lego or not, we only have so much we can take on out Transports).

[vmxa1]

That is true and I cannot say how thy will handle things. I would submit that with at least two civs attacking, they will be hard pressed to spend on spies.

How many cities would they need to investigte? I can see that it would be nice for them to know what was in what cities, but as soon as we see the fleet coming, we can move units around, so the info will be dated at best and useless at worst.

So if we have money to burn, go for stopping the spies, otherwise......

[vmxa1]

I should add that if I were them, I would not send units way over to GS, when GoW is closer.

If they have spies, they will know that bombers are available to attack them enroute.

I think I would make a serious attempt to get ND to attack GoW and join that attack. This would make it harder for the alliamce to succeed in the attack and I could ofer ND all of the GoW land with maybe just a lux deal for me.

If they could swing that, they would have a chance to stay intack and still win. ND could not over take themwith the GoW land, it would take too long to build up as I would raze all cities I could.