Turn 244: 1270 AD

[DeepO]

Originally posted by Aeson
Do we know where RP is?

They are at Blizzard 6. Which means they need 4 turns to get to our marine stack near Quanto (unloading them from the sea, not possible to build a city and give it to them), or 5 turns from basically any other tile within our reach.

DeepO

[Aeson]

I agree with investigating Fort Stanwix.

[vmxa1]

I see no reason to not send info on to GoW. Any help we can give each other, we should.

[DeepO]

okay, investigation of Fort Stanwix on its way... and that will probably be the last thing I'll do on the save tonight.

vmxa, it's not so much as to give GoW info, it's more of a joint decision we shoul take, or at least try to take with the limited information we've got. If GoW would leave, we are going to get the full brunt of Lego's forces. That is not going to be pretty. So unless both our teams see that as the best solution, we'd better find something else (although I've got to say I don't see a lot of other options now)

DeepO

[DeepO]

Investigating Fort Stanwix. Cost: 38g.


troops:
- 4 2/5 T
- 2 3/5 T
- 3 4/5 T
- 1 3/4 T
- 2 1/4 T
- 20 I
- 29 art
- 3 Cav

DeepO

[DeepO]

Some notes:

- It only is apparant to me now, but Lego has put more forest in the way, here at Legopolis 3 and Dye 47. It won't help them if GoW would go for a settlerblitz assault, so maybe we found a little door here.

- there are 12 damaged tanks in the city. I can only guess that this means the other 15 tanks Lego had were too damaged after their first attack to let them blitz again.

- there is, however, also a 3/4 tank present. Leftover from a pillaging job before? Or a reg one, who blitzed? (most likely the second option)

apart from the 15 unaccounted for tanks, there are 21 unaccounted for infs, and 25 arts. Maybe Quanto has a token force, otherwise I'd guess Jackson and Dye both have 7 tanks, 10 infs, 12 arts (+1 to make it even).

Even if Lego seems to be fairly certain about keeping Fort Stanwix, they aren't 100% certain GoW can't break through (why the forests, unless that's a ruse). Maybe all the tanks have been destroyed (or only few remain), but most of the other forces were not. It is impossible to guess precisely how many units they killed, but we could probably put some maximum and minimum numbers on this.

DeepO

[DeepO]

Would it be an idea to mention the settler blitz tactic to GoW? It seems that either Lego knows of its possibility but tries to minimize risks, or is not aware of its power. Of course, as it can only be done once, we would throw away our own advantage. If we somehow can capture and hold Quanto, we can blitz our way to the FP, which will be destroyed, and at once takes at least a third of Lego's production with it. If the palace is destroyed, it is instantly rebuild, and the effect won't be that big.

OTOH, if GoW can take fort Stanwix (will most likely mean at all costs, as the 28 arts will have to be left behind at the same spot), Legopolis is a sure kill. We are still far from the FP.

DeepO

[DeepO]

I don't see any conscript infs in Fort. This doesn't necessarily mean Lego did not draft and moved them, but still... the city would have been perfect for this (as long as you don't have to raze it yourself), it's only citizen is a taxman.

DeepO

[DeepO]

Assuming maximum 20 new tanks were built (the max we saw was 26 units in one turn, and they built 3 workers, 2 explorers, 2 fighters, 3 inf), how many units has Lego killed?

Total: 47 tanks, of which 27 survived.

- we know 12 units blitzed and survived. 24 units killed.
- we know 15 units did not blitz and survived. 15 units killed.
- of the other 20, maximally they could have killed one unit each, after which they died in the second attack.

So, maximum of 59 units killed, while the minimum is 39 units. (maybe less of course, if they use full health tanks as defenders. We know a guaranteed kill of 23, simply counting the elites and damaged units.)

There could have been a couple cav kills as well, but I doubt very much Lego has used any of them in an attack.

GoW had 42 I, 16 T, 34 M, 27 Art in their stack. There is no way all of them are gone, somewhere between 92-59 = 33 and 92-23 = 69 units remain. Most likely somewhere in the middle, being some 40 units, partly damaged, with at least an attack rate of 6 (infs). Lego has 35 units in Fort Stanwix.

With the already damaged units of Lego, GoW's 16 (?) bombers and 27 arts, they probably got a good chance of taking Stanwix. If that's the case, I'd say we explain to them in detail how we wanted to settler blitz, and go for Legopolis. GoW could probably take more cities: Kloreepville seems to be in range of a cav from Legopolis, and Panama with 1 settler and a cav as well.

This is becoming better... GoW can take 3 of Lego's best cities, including Bach's and Smith's (built in Legopolis). That is in my eyes definately worth us giving our (or rather Aeson's, credit where it's due) idea. After that, GoW's present on Legoland will be minimal until they can get some serious reinforcements going, and we're on our own, but if GoW does not do it, we would be on our own too.

DeepO

[DeepO]

I'm starting to like this. But we definately have to run this by GoW before playing our turn. At the very least, they need to get 8 cavs to Legoland pronto, no matter what kind of cost it takes for (short)rushing...

BTW, they do not need that 1 TR+1 DD for chaining, if that is killed, there is another which could take its role. It would require a lot of moving about with the empties they still have, but it is doable. They can't chain 16 units to Legoland, though. that would be too much: give GoW a couple more settlers and more cavs, and they could wipe out the whole of the North

DeepO

[DeepO]

O, a question which I've been forgetting to ask for months now: does anyone know precisely how razing a city with units in it works? Do the units simply stay at its place? In that case, GoW needs 3 settlers to reach Legopolis, a fourth to protect their arts, and a fifth for Panama. They have 5 settlers ready, without the need for chaining, and their 27 arts would be protected with 36 tanks (if these are not used to attack Jackson or Dye, of course)

DeepO

[Cort Haus]

I think I should just send the first report plus annex, and say that more ideas are on the way.

[DeepO]

One moment, CH... I was just editing that

DeepO

[DeepO]

proposed (partial) report to GoW:

GoW,
this is, what we can see now, the situation. First of all some non-Lego problem: we are without rubber. Fixing the game diplomaticaly has cancelled our deal. Please send us rubber next turn, as otherwise we're back to building rifles and knights.

Also, it looks like Lego is counting on us to have some cavs ready... while we don't actually intend to build those, would it be possible to send us Mil Trad and saltpeter? Let's keep the threat alive, and them guessing at what to do

screenshot of our area:


The following has happened:
- Lego has pillaged all roads next to our stack including the settler. This was perfectly as expected. As a result, we can only threaten Abilene over land.
- Lego has razed Tipperary. No more threat there.
- Lego is blocking the naval access to Abilene, and Quanto. Both blockades are not perfect, in that we've got a good chance of breaking through if we chain arts to Legoland, and use our transports to attack 1/4 BBs or 1/4 DDs. It would however destroy most of our transport capability to get through, and there is no certain way of success.
- we still have a spy in Legoland, they did not expose him (whether they tried or not is unknown)

Legoland forces:

- 1 settler (one used for fort Stanwix, next to (former?) GoW stack)
- 17 worker (+3)
- 3 horsemen
- 2 explorer (+2 B)
- 6 Cavalry (-6)
- 94 infantry (+3)
- 62 artillery
- 27 Tanks (+0)
- 6 ironclad
- 15 transport
- 1 carrier
- 8 subs (-2)
- 8 DD (-1)
- 9 BB
- 2 fighter (+2 B)
- 3 bomber
- 1 army (!)


On your side, this is what we can currently see:



Fort Stanwix obviously was put down to protect blitzing tanks. But more on that later.

We investigated Abilene:

Cost of investigating Abilene: 209 gold.



troops:
- 1 army of 3 infs
- 50 infs
- 3 cavs
- 8 art
- 2 bombers.

An army means they did attack you, most likely in force. The number of troops left to Lego also suggests that: if they built another 20-odd tanks, they lost those 20 tanks attacking you. Add this to the surviving tanks, and it would be entirely possible that Lego has at least damaged all your infs, and destroyed (the bigger part of) your tanks present on Legoland.

Fort Stanwix has one major strategic advantage: as long as it exists, you will not be able to build a city in the next tile. Which means that unless it is possible to take the city, your tanks en route can't join the fight this turn.

Further, we can assume Lego or Vox has a spy with you, seeing what units you've got waiting. We don't know the precise information, but unless you already have a stack of marines present somewhere, they will know that Dye fields and Jackson can only be attacked by the units you build right now, and 8 at most as you only have 1 possible chainer.

Now it becomes a bit guessing, but given Lego's subs, it is very possible that they even destroyed your 1 TR + 1 DD, and your 4 DD + 1 TR + 1 CV, making chaining impossible for you. This is one of the points where Lego is very right in not giving 'your' battle report before we have played, as it affects the rest in a great way.

Lego knows how many of your tanks remain on Legoland right now. Add to this the amount of marines you can deliver to Legoland this turn through chaining, or landing (they don't know your fleet has no marines, in case you still have some on Bob as of the end of last turn), and they know very precisely what the maximum force is that can attack Jackson or Dye fields. Marines on Legoland can't join the attack if Fort Stanwix is not destroyed.

In short, if all went perfect for Lego, they can make sure Jackson and Dye fields have a perfect defense (even a horse will eat up a marine attack, so Lego only needs 1 horse more then you can deliver marines to both cities). They can use this info, to make sure Fort Stanwix can't be taken (there are already 27 tanks present, and even if those are all 1/4, you will need at least 27 units to capture and destroy it). With Fort Stanwix, Jackson and Dye fields perfectly safe from you, while Abilene is perfectly safe from us, all their other cities can be empty again.

We are of course not certain about this without the battle report. But it seems Lego has played its turn very well, and our combined invasion has hit a major obstacle.

This is only preliminary, we are still debating what to do
next. Going for Quanto would be nice, with a bit of luck we could take that city. But that's only superficial damage, as it would be extremely hard to keep the city next turn. Going for Abilene is out of the question, we maybe could take the city, but only by losing most of our forces, ending the invasion from our side.

The other option is to retreat from your side, and for us to sit it out while you reinforce your troops, RP gets in landing range, and possibly ND could join us.

So, what do you think?

Oh, and if you could tell us if you had some more marines, we would appreciate it, as it would make the difference here. If Lego's attack was not so successful, this could be a ruse. You could take Fort Stanwix, and with cavs could even take Legopolis if that's not defended properly. Or Fort Stanwix could be nearly empty, while Lego protects the surrounding cities (all of these options would still make it necessary for them to protect Abilene with 50 infs plus an army, as it basically makes sure we are at least 2 turns from taking our first city)

Update (the above was typed before we decided to investigate Fort Stanwix):

Investigating Fort Stanwix. Cost: 38g.


troops:
- 4 2/5 T
- 2 3/5 T
- 3 4/5 T
- 1 3/4 T
- 2 1/4 T
- 20 I
- 29 art
- 3 Cav

- It only is apparant to me now, but Lego has put more forest in the way, here at Legopolis 3 and Dye 47.

- there are 12 damaged tanks in the city. I can only guess that this means the other 15 tanks Lego had were too damaged after their first attack to let them blitz again.

- there is, however, also a 3/4 tank present. Leftover from a pillaging job before? Or a reg one, who blitzed? (most likely the second option)

- Apart from the 15 unaccounted for tanks, there are 21 unaccounted for infs, and 25 arts. Maybe Quanto has a token force, otherwise I'd guess Jackson and Dye both have 7 tanks, 10 infs, 12 arts (+1 to make it even).

- Even if Lego seems to be fairly certain about keeping Fort Stanwix, they aren't 100% certain GoW can't break through (why the forests, unless that's a ruse). Maybe all the tanks have been destroyed (or only few remain), but most of the other forces were not. It is impossible to guess precisely how many units they killed, but we could probably put some maximum and minimum numbers on this.

-----------

Assuming maximum 20 new tanks were built (the max we saw was 26 units in one turn, and they built 3 workers, 2 explorers, 2 fighters, 3 inf), how many units has Lego killed?

Total: 47 tanks, of which 27 survived.

- we know 12 units blitzed and survived. 24 units killed.
- we know 15 units did not blitz and survived. 15 units killed.
- of the other 20, maximally they could have killed one unit each, after which they died in the second attack.

So, maximum of 59 units killed, while the minimum is 39 units. (maybe less of course, if they use full health tanks as defenders. We know a guaranteed kill of 23, simply counting the elites and damaged units.)

There could have been a couple cav kills as well, but I doubt very much Lego has used any of them in an attack.

GoW had 42 I, 16 T, 34 M, 27 Art in their stack. There is no way all of them are gone, somewhere between 92-59 = 33 and 92-23 = 69 units remain. Most likely somewhere in the middle, being some 40 units, partly damaged, with at least an attack rate of 6 (infs). Lego has 35 units in Fort Stanwix.

With the already damaged units of Lego, GoW's 16 (?) bombers and 27 arts, they probably got a good chance of taking Stanwix.

-------------

We currently are discussing options, but there is a good chance that you can do a lot of damage this turn, in case you can take Fort Stanwix. It would mean that you put almost all your remaining troops at risk, including the 27 arts. And it won't change a lot for us: we would feel the full brunt of Lego's attack next turn, without being able to do a lot of damage. Allow us some time to discuss this, and come up with a coherent plan. If your losses are greater than expected, too bad, but otherwise Lego might have given us (well, more precisely you) an opening we've got to exploit. These guys are playing far too well to let any half chances slip.

DeepO

[DeepO]

I think I removed all mentions of settler blitzing. Let's first of all decide if we want to give this tactic to GoW. I'm certainly in favour, this is starting to look promising. If we could e.g. confirm Legopolis, Panama and kloreepville are empty, we could ask GoW to chain 1 more settler, and 7 cavs over. We will need ND in on this to spy on Lego, as we do not have the cash.

BTW, if GoW can take kloreepville, Invoice, sharpehaven and Forkmouth are all accesible with one cav. Boy, I'm getting excited about this, if this would be true, Legoland would be in very serious jeopardy here!

DeepO