Turn 243: 1265 AD

[Theseus]

In retrospect (I am NOT harping here, I just want us to be learning as we go along), how do we think the sacrifice of the 8 Marines balances with the decision to go south?

There are a number of issues involved: our possible inability to break through a blockade in the north anyway, the distraction that the Marines might represent, the need to place them where Arty from Q can unfortunately hit them, their inability to reach Q next turn, etc.

Did we think through the strategic aspects of that decision other than in the context of supporting the chaining we desired?

Given Lego's success in manouevre (yes, the British spelling ) over the last few turns, and personally still scarred by the Bobian Misadventure, I fear that we are not thinking through every bit of strategy and counter-strategy.

Something to work on.

[DeepO]

Theseus, it remains a trade. If we would have landed on Q77, there was a big chance we would lose our naval, mobile forces completely. At that point, we can only threaten 2 cities. Even if enough transports would have survived, the cities would have been blocked.

What we have created now is a situation were we do threaten 3 cities, and we've got a reasonably sure position to start from for a naval assault. The 8 marines are a sacrifice, but not one without it's benefits: it will draw Lego forces. Otherwise we board them on one of our transports next turn, and use them. And any tank busy with a marine, won't attack a MI / tank in our main force.

I do want to make one thing clear: I very much liked the dialogue the past few pages. I have spent a great amount of time thinking about it. It's just... well, you didn't convince me. Maybe next time

DeepO

[vmxa1]

I just noticed in my game that a galleon covered by 3 DD that I have dropped to 1 HP each, still stayed on top of the stack next turn. I bombed one DD and still the galleon stay out.

Now I am sure that I have seen the same thing for transports, so either I lost my mind or C3C changed things.

[Theseus]

Originally posted by DeepO
Theseus, it remains a trade. If we would have landed on Q77, there was a big chance we would lose our naval, mobile forces completely. At that point, we can only threaten 2 cities. Even if enough transports would have survived, the cities would have been blocked.

What we have created now is a situation were we do threaten 3 cities, and we've got a reasonably sure position to start from for a naval assault. The 8 marines are a sacrifice, but not one without it's benefits: it will draw Lego forces. Otherwise we board them on one of our transports next turn, and use them. And any tank busy with a marine, won't attack a MI / tank in our main force.

I do want to make one thing clear: I very much liked the dialogue the past few pages. I have spent a great amount of time thinking about it. It's just... well, you didn't convince me. Maybe next time

DeepO

Don't get me wrong... I think the dialogue and thinking has been great too!! I just want us to stay on the ball and keep getting better!

[Theseus]

Originally posted by vmxa1
I just noticed in my game that a galleon covered by 3 DD that I have dropped to 1 HP each, still stayed on top of the stack next turn. I bombed one DD and still the galleon stay out.

Now I am sure that I have seen the same thing for transports, so either I lost my mind or C3C changed things.

Defensive strength x remaining hp, modified by transported units... so wouldn;t that mean a 1 hp DD would still cover a Galleon in a direct attack?

For bombardment though, I would have expected the Galleon to take the hit if all other ships were at 1 hp.

[vmxa1]

Transports and galleon both have def of 2 iirc.

[Theseus]

I never remember the a/d values anymore, without checking some kind of reference guide. TR and GA have the same defense... ??? That's stupid. (Amy just said the damn thing about credit cards ).

/me is running out of steam... a long and particularly bad day.

[Aeson]

Did we think through the strategic aspects of that decision other than in the context of supporting the chaining we desired?

I did. Although I thought they might have to just be disbanded outright instead of landing at all. The value of going S over N is greater than the loss of 8 Marines in my estimation.

39 Marines attacking Abilene are effectively facing 1 Infantry more than 47 Marines attacking Quanto. While our 68 Tanks are at 4 Infantry less in Abilene over Quanto. In Tip 39 Marines are effectively facing +3 Infantry more than 47 Marines attacking Sand.

So, if Sand wasn't blockaded, Sand didn't have more defenders than our Marines can get through, none of our Marines were lost in the naval battles, no Tanks were lost that could have been protected by Lego attacking exposed Marines, we didn't have any further use for a fleet, and we end up attacking Sand or Tip, then N is equal to S. If any of those things change, it swings the balance to S IMO.

Given Lego's success in manouevre (yes, the British spelling ) over the last few turns, and personally still scarred by the Bobian Misadventure, I fear that we are not thinking through every bit of strategy and counter-strategy.

It's obviously not going to be possible to think through every possible permutation. Especially given the time constraints. We are going to look at as much as we can.

I disagree that Lego's success is due to manouevre. Simply put, intercontinental invasions against a wary opponent are difficult. Against an opponent with a naval movement advantage and production advantage it's even more difficult.

We had to give Lego 3 turns warning. We had to cross somewhere. We had to rely on the terrible odds afforded by Marines vs Infantry or make a conventional landing (which also required a Marine threat to be possible). We had to go when we did because we only had a small timeframe between when we could start building Marines and when Lego could start building Tanks, and shortly thereafter (maybe very shortly given Vox being Scientific) MI.

We sent our Marines one way, Lego's BBs didn't show up for an extra turn. We sent a diversionary group to the deep S, Lego sunk them with ships that were diverted for that purpose and thus weren't available to sink Transports with units in them. We weren't able to sink a Sub with good odds that may or may not have kept Lego in the dark about our N fleet's position for another turn. Lego had a stable RNG run when attacking our N fleet which helped them to destroy all our DD and blockade Sand. We chose to land at Abilene 87.

Those are the main events so far. In every case it is Lego's response and/or RNG event that is the deciding factor on how things turn out. I think it's important not to look at guesses (which we have to resort to to plan for Lego's response) or RNG events relative to their results in hindsight as nothing good comes of it. We can't see the other sides of the guesses and how they would have come out. It's only worthwhile to look at guesses relative to the probabilities. Attacking something that needs to be killed at 80% odds is a good choice, even if we lose. A well thought out and coherant invasion plan that limits liabilities and forces the opponent to make guesses of their own is a good plan, even if the opponent guesses right, striking at a liability that wasn't possible to completely nullify, or which had to be left open to close another liability.

I think we've done well. There may have been better options to choose in hindsight, but I don't think there were better options to choose given what we knew at the moment. Lego has enough units to cover 7 cities well enough that our Marines can't break through. Even in hindsight I can't see how that could change. We've landed most of our units conventionally and still have a decent Amphibious threat for next turn, and possibly a turn after that. It seems as good a result as any plan we could have come up with would have allowed.

[Aeson]

Transports have 4 defense.

[vmxa1]

Yup the team put up all the ideas that they came up with and we took the best shot as we saw it.

We are in a position to do some damage if we get some breaks. I will be looking forward to the next reports.

[vulture]

As Aeson says, transports have 4 defence, galleons 2 (and DDs 8). A 1 hp DD always defends before a galleon, but not before a 3+ hp transport.

Bombarding is a different issue. In PtW (withouth lethal bombardment), IIRC, units on 1 hp weren't bombarded even if on top of a stack. In C3C we have lethal sea bombardment for bombers (IIRC again) - so 1 hp DDs remain valid targets, and should be picked before a galleon.

[Cort Haus]

That's a great summary, Aeson. It puts the strategic options into the historic, geographic and economical context.

A long time ago, at the low point of demoralisation and defeat on Bob, our initial game plan to expand our territory was in ruins, so we decided to hunker down and try and deal ourselves in against the odds later.

All we could do then was throw up a sea-wall with our remaining units, install a lodger in the corrupt north to get some commercial output, and build like crazy for the science and industrial wonders. We got them, got an unlikely alliance with our nemesis GoW, got a tech lead, and here we are in the slender window of opportunity causing Lego some headaches that the game badly needed them to have if they are to deserve victory. Not many teams could have achieved that.

If Lego succeed, fair play to them and we can hold our heads up for taking the game to them. As far as the game's storyline and history goes, we've given the crowd something to cheer about. If Lego do thwart us, ND might pick up the baton. We might even get the two Superpowers at each other hammer and tongs while we and GoW lick our wounds and rebuild our strength.

If we can damage Lego even a bit - enough to see ND slip ahead of them then it's job done. Once Lego can't outbuild ND they'll be forced to consider more, er, Stormian solutions, and we have the enticing prospect of a five-civ alliance against ND.

As OPD's sig says "Are we having fun yet?"

[vmxa1]

Originally posted by vulture
As Aeson says, transports have 4 defence, galleons 2 (and DDs 8). A 1 hp DD always defends before a galleon, but not before a 3+ hp transport.

Very strange gentlement. I just dropped arties on DD's to 1 hp and a transport was under the three 1 hp DD's.

The transport shows as 2 def and the pedia says they are 2 as well. This is C3C 1.22 where transports were dropped to 6 capacity. I have no mods.

I had to sink the DD's to expose the now naked transport. This is what I have seen many times. My original civIII manual states transports are D of 2. I right clicked the xport and it showed as 1 2 7 as it must have used one movement point.

[Aeson]

Open up the PtW Editor and check. I just go by the online combat calculator at CFC and memory.

I used to always think Transports had a defense of 8 for some reason. I've never actually defended with a Transport until now so it's not one of those thing I ever made note of.

[Jon Shafer]

PTW Transports have a defense of 4...