What to post publicly about the war

[DeepO]

Originally posted by asleepathewheel
Maybe a "house rule" not to allow civilians on the battlefield is in order in PtWDG1.2?

no workers to lay roads... no settlers to block others...

Nah. The trick is that you've got to see cities as just another element in your strategy game. If you don't like where they are, move them. If you can't keep them, abandon them. We discussed before that if they would abandon Tiperrary (which we knew was going to happen), and they would choose between Quanto and Abilene, defending one, disbanding the other, there couldn't be a problem for them, but there would be a major problem for us.

Their response nearly worked perfectly.

DeepO

[DeepO]

Originally posted by asleepathewheel
whoops! I completely forgot about those rules. That was the time where we also were outvoted on the battle records

Yep. In hindsight, these have actually helped us... it let's you decide what to build, before seeing the save. A bit ironic that we opposed them, Lego voted in favour, and in the end we get more out of these than Lego (as vox could spy for them, we could not let anyone spy for us)

DeepO

[Dominae]

Originally posted by DeepO
Nah. The trick is that you've got to see cities as just another element in your strategy game. If you don't like where they are, move them. If you can't keep them, abandon them.

Well, the trick that I learned is that you cannot expect your rail network to do all your defense for you. It is, in fact, a double-edged sword. Had Lego put, say, one defender in each of their cities (and two in their capital), this may have looked very different. Makes me think the Draft ability is not so bad at all...

[asleepathewheel]

nearly

must let go of that attachment to 2000 year old cities.

I was impressed by their moves all around. For once we got lucky and our trannies broke through. Glad the RNG swung back our way, it was about time.

[asleepathewheel]

Originally posted by DeepO

Yep. In hindsight, these have actually helped us... it let's you decide what to build, before seeing the save. A bit ironic that we opposed them, Lego voted in favour, and in the end we get more out of these than Lego (as vox could spy for them, we could not let anyone spy for us)

DeepO

It also helped us on the PR front, because we didn't really need to post anything regarding the fall of legopolis etc, we just posted what was required in few words and let that carry the day. No ambiguously sorry/gloating/whatever posts to announce. Just the cold hard facts.

[DeepO]

Originally posted by Dominae
Well, the trick that I learned is that you cannot expect your rail network to do all your defense for you. It is, in fact, a double-edged sword. Had Lego put, say, one defender in each of their cities (and two in their capital), this may have looked very different. Makes me think the Draft ability is not so bad at all...

Indeed. And in certain circumstances, you can use this: lay RRs where they can't be used by the opponent to aid in yuor defense, and leave tiles unroaded where they are a threat. Our spinebreaker mountains are perfect for this.

We could only land 31 units, 26 of which were tanks. 2 inf per city, while costly, would have made sure we couldn't have reached Legopolis (although the damage would still have been big), let alone Stanwix. But it would have meant they couldn't have held onto Jackson, Dye fields, and Abilene. One of those would have to be abandonded.

But all this remains talk afterwards. It might be important to analyze what happened so we can learn from it, but it's not the intention to overanalyze, and just point at mistakes. These are no mistakes, but rather choices.

DeepO

[DeepO]

Originally posted by asleepathewheel
It also helped us on the PR front, because we didn't really need to post anything regarding the fall of legopolis etc, we just posted what was required in few words and let that carry the day. No ambiguously sorry/gloating/whatever posts to announce. Just the cold hard facts.

Yeah. And we should keep this up. I'm perfectly willing to discuss tactics, also what we intended, and how the naval maneuvers worked out (I would certainly be interested in hearing Lego's story)... but it's too early for this.

DeepO

[Aeson]

Don't let anything slip about the chain. Lego doesn't seem to realize we brought those 8 Artillery over that way, so our chain's survival may very well depend on them not realizing that.

(Yes, they saw at least hub 3 last turn... but they may just think that is a Transport heading back to our mainland.)

EDIT: I see this has been mentioned in the other thread.

[DeepO]

Yeah, a cross-thread, cross post

Just to make sure everyone sees it where it belongs, I am sorry for not expressing myself more clearly. I didn't want to sound like I did... it has been mentioned here numerous times (including by myself), that caution and precise wording is necessary to avoid flame wars, and it looks like I still gave them reason to start one. I sure am not going to continue, or at least try to be even more cautious.

Oh, and that chain comment: no worries, Lego is not going to get any info out of me before the turn has actually be played, and Lego can't help their war effort anymore.

DeepO

[vmxa1]

Yeah I noticed that too or they were playing posum by pretending they they we had the arts on the ships already.

Our problem is that the more we post in public, the more we are likely to let something slip or annoy someone.

[DeepO]

I don't think they tried to get any more information out of us. Nor are they covering up for their 'mistake'. And in a way they are right: in case we would have had artillery, we would have landed it to aid in the defense. It's so logical to do that, that we wouldn't have done otherwise.

Only... there also is a good reason not to do it: hiding your strengths. Plus... if our 11 transports would have been destroyed (we didn't think it was possible, 10 at most with everything they had, and in hindsight that seemed to be the exact number in case either their transport or sub could have reached us), we couldn't have fetched those arties.

It does teach us a couple of things, which I don't think we have spend enough thoughts on.
- Lego has been analyzing our forces very well. They knew we had 14 artilleries, and deduced that the only place where they could have been, was on Stormia (as otherwise they would have defended, instead of being shipped around). They probably have an idea of all our troops, including settlers, tanks and the like. We shook that belief last turn.

We kind of have done the same with them (e.g. in predicting where all the surviving ships could have gone to in the first 2 turns of the war), but they might be better in this.

- it also teaches us something about assuming 'logical' things, and doing something unpredictable. They were right, if we had arties in our fleet, they would have been landed. Would they have made a huge difference? No... they might have saved us 1 or 2 units in case Lego had attacked us. That is nothing opposed to the gain of the element of surprise... sometimes, we have to think more of this. Doing unpredictable things can surprise any opponent, no matter how well he thinks things out. We're so used to play the AI, that we anticipate a certain kind of behaviour from them.

Let me give another example. In all the simulations we made regarding ship movements, we did take the whole area which a ship could have traveled to into account. However, if you want to go from point A to point B, nearly everyone will move all their mp on the fleet. Nobody is going to move 4 tiles, when the fleet can do 5. That makes it predictable: in case you are searching for a sub, look for it at precisely 3 tiles from its last position. Not 2, but 3. If you don't think it will move, look closer, as most likely it has forted.

In case you anticipate the most logical movement, and it doesn't fit, start to worry. If a sub does not move 3 tiles along the direction it was supposed to travel, it has gone elsewhere... it won't move at random with a good player, on the contrary. Anything odd, is immediately highly suspicious.

Look at the blockades around Abilene. We can expect more transports are in the neighbourhood. We also know, more ships could have reached Abilene (not all of them had to rest in Quanto, some could have gotten to Abilene 2 (or 1, the closest tile anyway). Why did this not happen? In hindsight, and given vondrack's comments, I think they lured us there... they knew that (without chaining), it was impossible to take Abilene. So, fake a blockade, make sure it is possible but costly to get through, and let 56 marines hit a wall of inf. If we didn't have spies which could investigate for us, we might have gone for it too. Now, the moment we got our thoughts on Quanto, the whole Abilene thing was dismissed as too costly, not worth the trouble (it would have given us settler blitzing as well, even if Lego also planted forest near ahhmyfoot), without spending much thought.

Was it a ruse? I don't know... I am not going to calculate everything to make sure. But it very well could have been, yes. So... check everything is the message. If Lego didn't have made a mistake of forgetting chaining, they very well could have ambushed us. I'm not sure we would have spotted it, in case we didn't had a spy and a better option to try.

DeepO

[Cort Haus]

Zargon X is moaning constantly on the public forum.

According to him we are all taking every opportunity to rub it in their faces. Untrue of course, compared to what we got from GoWND, but we must not argue back.

Maybe we should post any successful future battle reports in background ink? We can explain that as we don't wish to offend everyone the report is censored.

[DeepO]

He has a point, I didn't like what MZ posted either. And if it wasn't for the wrong credit, I wouldn't have corrected him (or Arrian).

Look at what I just posted, and tell me if that is close to what we want to say. I also don't want to keep on comforting them, we're not a nanny who needs to comfort a crying child either. That would imply we feel better than them.

DeepO

[DeepO]

besides, I tried to actively stear us away from this war, by talking about the Bobian one. I'm not sure if that worked.

DeepO

[Arrian]

I think we should just shut up for a bit. Even if we think Zargon is overreacting, it's understandable that he and other Legos are upset.

Re: credit. My apologies to vulture. And obviously it was a team victory, DeepO, I didn't mean to imply otherwise.

-Arrian