Turn 243: 1265 AD

[Theseus]

Definitely wait... among others, Arrian has a habit of checking in at 'poly when he gets to work on Monday morning.

[Theseus]

Originally posted by Aeson
I don't see why doing this up N is any better than doing it down S. It brings the BB into play when they don't need to be, and puts our Marines in range of shore bombardment.

If Lego does what they should, we lose all our Marines and most of our Settlers.

I don't understand the downside as you portray it... even if Lego uses 60 Arty to bombard the fleet to redline, there are over 20 ships to absorb attacks before the transported Marines are at risk.

Am I wrong about this?

[Theseus]

Originally posted by DeepO
Theseus, I have to agree with Aeson here. The odds seem better in the South to me. I'm not saying the North isn't possible, but it's a bit more dangerous and doesn't bring much new.

DeepO

In my mind, the Southern plan means continuing to wander around, while the Northern plan means consolidating our forces and STRIKING... I can't stress enough how important I believe it to be to pose a threat that includes all of our land and Marine forces, and what that will require on Lego's part, and then what opportunities will thusly be afforded to us.

Don't get me wrong though... I am OK with the planned southern approach, but I think we can do better.

[Theseus]

Originally posted by Aeson
I don't see why doing this up N is any better than doing it down S...

Also, the North Plan works much better for chaining and reinforcement from the homeland.

[Theseus]

I have PMed a number of our other stalwarts and strays; hopefully we can gain further comments, and DeepO can play the turn without too much delay... although I doubt any of the teams would begrudge us a day.

[DeepO]

I don't mind at all to wait for other opinions, on the contrary.

Some other random decision to be made: Do we expose Lego's spy? I would do it, if only to get even Cost is 310 gold, if I'm not mistaken, so it would cost us nearly 7 inf to MI upgrades.

DeepO

[Theseus]

I must not be expressing myself well... to me the North Plan is compelling.

Bedtime... well, not totally true, as I am and have been obsessed with this Ancient Civs scenario I've been setting up... I need to run another debug playtest of the AI civs tonight.

I'll be around as of 8am EST tomorrow.

[Aeson]

Can someone check for certain whether you can bombard empty transports to expose full ones to sink?

This is all-important to answer. If the units sink in the Transports, we can't go N. Our Marines would be guaranteed to be sunk. If the units transfer to other Transports, I'd be willing to do it, but don't think it's better than S still.

[Aeson]

I don't see a point in exposing their spy now. They won't get any new information from it this turn. The upgrades or other commerce concerns (do we run with a 1000g for +50gpt interest?) are more important.

[vulture]

If you can get to a fully loaded transport by bombarding a DD escort to 1 or 2 hp (which does work), then it seems very likely that it would work the same way for empty and loaded transports in the same stack.

As for whethe the units transfer to another transport; the closest I've come to testing this was with suicide galleys - send out five at the same time with a unit in one of them, and see if the unit transfers to a non-sinking ship. It doesn't. It sank on the 2nd turn, while there were still two empty galleys around. I can't imagine that combat would be any different (although you never know...)

In which case, they count the number of units on land to figure out how many empty transports there are, bombard with artillery until DDs and that many transports are injured, and then send in the fleet against fully loaded, full health transports. Granted, they'll be attacking with injured units against full health ones, with defensive bombard from stacked DDs, but with the odds already heavily in favour of attacking ships vs transports, we'd figure to lose the majority of forces still at sea.

(Yes, I know this is what Aeson just said, but I'm clarifying it in case it wasn't clear to everyone).

[Cort Haus]

Bold thinking from T, but surely, it is being argued, Lego will prioritise the destruction of a stack of Marined-up Trannies.

Question is, how many arty would they need, how many trannies could they sink, and what alternative targets would there be for their artillery? So much depends on GoW's landing. Lego may well be more protective of their northern Wonder-land than the south once they know that GoW is coming too. GoW might land easily and provide some compelling arty-targets up north.

ND can spy for GoW, but if we knew what was defending GoW's target cities now, we could maybe predict GoW's move and what Lego will face to their east on their turn. Could we afford to spy for them and get the cash next turn?

[DeepO]

moving units in sinking transports: there might be a way around this, but I haven't tried it. If you've got 5 galleys, and wake the unit on one of them, doesn't it then jump to the other ships? I would believe it does, as it technically is not on a ship at the end of the turn.

I'm not certain on the rest of the characteristics.

Spying: we got lucky this turn. Immediately after being exposed, we could plant another spy... next time we might not get so lucky. If we expose their spy, we will have 70% chance that we start next turn with a spy present. If we don't, we risk Lego exposing us again next turn, after which we've got only 30% to plant a spy. And without a spy, no investigation of cities.

I'm not sure, but I think we don't have Wall Street. We only have a couple of banks, no stock exchanges... all went to unit building.

DeepO

[DeepO]

Oh, and new info from a spy: we built 2 new settlers. That makes it a very deliberate tactic. Also the reach of 7 settlers is a lot different from the reach of 5. That in itself is reason enough for me to try to hide our troop strength.

DeepO

[Arrian]

Wow. Lots of action over the weekend, eh?

I have not even come close to digesting it all. I'll try and figure out exactly what's going on and then post my thoughts.

-Arrian

[Arrian]

So we're looking at a conventional landing on Abilene 78?

Smart play from Lego so far, and good luck with the naval battles (though, as DeepO mentioned, they did have the advantage). So we're in a pickle.

My first thought is that we could really use some more ships.

My second is that I hate landing on flat ground, but it doesn't look like that can be helped.

My third is that I think we should hit the Lego destroyers.

-Arrian