Turn 244: 1270 AD

[DeepO]

okay. First of all, I combined two screenshots. If you hide all improvements, you see more beneath the FoW, so I cut that out and pasted it on top of a normal screenshot.

Next, I put an orange line, depicting what territory Lego can use with all the cities we do see.

The Yellow square Y represents the tile we saw last turn, which was not used by Quanto. Y1 - Y4 are the tiles where that city could be.

In Pink, the tile which has a mined hill (you don't go around mining hills without good reason). P1-P6 are possible city locations, of which I think P2, P3 & P4 make most chance. The other 2 tiles within the pink line are not possible, one is a mountain, the other a forest (which would be gone if a city was there)

Blue: another mined hill. B1 - B7 possible cities.
Green: an irrigated desert. Now, I'm not sure on either the green, or the red tile, as one of those could be used to transport water to the other side of the hills. But it is RRed. G1-G3 are possible cities, and seeing that they both are also blue, and next to a river, it makes sense.

Red: an irr, RRed, saltpetered desert. Again not sure on the irr, and for a resource also not sure on the RR. R1 to R3 are possible cities.

Further, in white there are 2 tiles, which haev no improvements. The white lines correspond to that, which seem to indicate that G1=B1 is a city position, and R1 another. But, be warned: one of those white tiles is a desert, which is the last tile to improve... and seeing that there is also still forest present (so not all improvements were done up till now!), it could simply be waiting for workers to finish more important tiles.

My guesses (because they remain guesses):
- B1=G1,
- P4 (P3 a close second)
- Y2 (Y1 a close second)
- the R's, I don't know. R2 perhaps?

Anything I missed, or any comments, please let them be known.

DeepO

[DeepO]

Once we take Quanto, we will know the yellow city. We will need 1 settler to take it. That same settler gives us Sando ( a bit of revenge, I guess, for not letting us take it the first turn )

Depending on terrain, that should give us the green / blue city without further settlers, or with one settler at most.
So at least 2 more remaining.

1 more settler should get us to the red city. That fogged tile 7 of Zargonia is grass, meaning Zargonia should fall as well if it's R1. R2 needs another settler.

At this point, either we still have a settler to spare, able to get to the pink city, one city up North (rubber!), or positioning ourselves for attacks on Logville or one of the other coastal cities, or we don't have a spare.

Also watch out: in case we want to keep Quanto, we will have to rebuild it. Which means another settler to spend there. We could of course also move our forces into another city, which we can keep (Sando, or one of the others).

Now, where is the FP? My guess is as good as yours, but I think G1 makes an excellent spot.

DeepO

[DeepO]

here's something I dug up, a quote from Aeson a couple of months ago:

Looking at the larger map, I think the FP city is probably 77774 of Logville. Logville is on a river (the screenie is grainy, so I'm not sure of this) which extends at least 7777.

That tile, is called B1=G1 in my map. Good... at leasr we both ended up with the same conclusion, B1 is the target for our mission.

The Hill 44 of Crossing wasn't improved when last it was seen (could they have had an IW city here?), neither was the Hill 411 of Crossing.

This is the "white" hill

Yet a Desert in the area was Mined (Crossing 444). No reason to mine a Desert if those Hills are in the same city radius. Given the shape of the improved tiles, this leads me to believe there definitely is a city at 77774 of Logville. It's probably on a river. It's 4 tile spacing from Quanto. Would have an Iron Hill in the radius. Would allow for a city 4-5 tile spacing between Quanto (4 spacing) and Tiberium. It's also the perfect place for their FP.

This puts the FP further from Sand than from Quanto, and there would almost surely be a city inbetween Sand and the FP (by the route we would be going). The second city could be at Sand 666 (within a tile of there in any case),

Interesting. I don't really get the reasoning behind putting a city on Sand 666, or one tile off, but both R2 and R3 are on tile off Sand 666. However, we know there is one more city, the Y one (Y2 makes even more a believable target), pushing the Sand 666 city a bit farther to the East.

We're seeing desert, we see a river. Could there be floodplains near the Y city, making it a worker or settler pump? We know Lego has been building workers, even while at war. Up North there isn't any suitable place, and worker pumps are ideally small cities, close to the palace (or FP in case you're late), crammed in between other cities...

I don't think we really need a map

DeepO

[Cort Haus]

I'm not sure the yellow city is reachable from a settler outside Quanto, as it's culture borders will include the hill.

I think G1 is a likely city and probably FP site - it's right for the undeveloped hill.

[Cort Haus]

Hmmm, if the FP is at G1 then Y2 is the most likely Y-site as it is 3 tiles away. A city at Y2 would allow us to get a tile of culture at Y4 if we built at Quanto6. If there's a worker pump at Y3 or Y4 it will stand in our way and we won't get a direct route to B1/G1.

[Cort Haus]

Originally posted by DeepO
oil: we've got 2 explorers, but they can only pillage one tile per turn, right?

DeepO

Yes, but the other Oil is up by Jackson - if GoW can spare two bombardments - which might be precious.

[DeepO]

I'm thinking on what to take with us, but that's not as easy as it seems. It's a bit of a risk we'd be taking. If we try to defend one of the captured cities, we could have something close to 30 units in there (all units we land without movement at Quanto are stranded there, so those don't count), of which 7 of them are marines. That's not terribly safe from counter attack. However, keep in mind that this time, we can pick the terrain, and we can do some pillaging, making it only possible for Lego to attack with tanks or cavs (cavs they only have 6, tanks 15 (Jackson + Dye) plus whatever they manage to build with their crippled empire). 30 defenders might be enough, and a marine stops a tank as well (getting killed in the mean time, but that's not that important). I think we definately have to put some pressure on Lego next turn.

There is somerthing else to consider. Lego is not able to take New Inchon next turn, we would have to disband units to make it possible for them. So that's safe... 40 marines would make it a safe harbor. We need somehow to put our attackers onto Lego's RR network... we've got plenty of defenders and workers, to go to e.g. NI 9, keep the tile, and RR it next turn.

However, Lego will of course spot this, and will try to pillage surrounding tiles. So, to be any good, we need another tile full of defenders next to NI9... but these can be forted, in a fort we create with the slaves we'll get from razing cities.

One last point we have to think about: Hub 3 will be destroyed next turn, there is no question about that. We might be able to lure Lego into doing something else, but it's only our chain which has given us the edge this turn. In stead of blocking Abilene, they should have destroyed our lone transport (which they spotted, there was a sub next to it!). Without hub 3, we can't send more settlers over. Without settlers, no blitzkrieg. I think this means that we have to think of putting one extra transport out. Create a hub 3 backup... and now that we will destroy 4 BBs, and another sub is gone, we can put a transport out of reach of the Abilene blockers. But it will mean we sacrifice 8 moveable troops into Quanto, so if we want to defend one of our captured cities, that defense just got 8 MIs thinner.

There are a lot of options here. I'm atm inclined to move a transport out, move a defensive force on NI9 or 6 (as Lego has to pillage 5 tiles from NI6 to keep us from the RRs), move whatever we've got left including marines on Quanto 2, fort the tile with slaves, and use all other slaves to create a net of radar towers around the tile. Every radar tower will mean another one of Lego's units losing a mp, and they do not have so many fastmovers left.

DeepO

[DeepO]

Originally posted by Cort Haus
I'm not sure the yellow city is reachable from a settler outside Quanto, as it's culture borders will include the hill.

CH, it will depend on where we'll find the yellow city, but we can always put a settler out to reach it, no? If it's at Y1, Y3 or Y4, put a settler on the Y tile, and go over the desert / fp. If it's at Y2, build a city at Quanto 8.

DeepO

[DeepO]

Originally posted by Cort Haus
Hmmm, if the FP is at G1 then Y2 is the most likely Y-site as it is 3 tiles away. A city at Y2 would allow us to get a tile of culture at Y4 if we built at Quanto6. If there's a worker pump at Y3 or Y4 it will stand in our way and we won't get a direct route to B1/G1.

This I don't get. I'm also thinking of Y2, but why would Y3 or Y4 be a problem? if we take one of those cities, G1 is within direct reach! (well, if the tiles next to G1 are not all hills, in which case we need another settler to get around them)

DeepO

[DeepO]

Originally posted by Cort Haus
Yes, but the other Oil is up by Jackson - if GoW can spare two bombardments - which might be precious.

No bomber-bombardments, all of those should go to Stanwix!

However, there is another option. all those arties in Stanwix are to be captured. And the moment they take Legoplois, they only need 2 arties to reach that oil. So in case they don't mind losing those 2 arties again to Lego, they can bomb it.

DeepO

[Cort Haus]

If they have a city with culture at Y3 or Y4, their culture border will always take precedence over ours. That border will extend onto the hills, so if we build a city at Quanto9 or Quanto6, we will need 2 MP to get onto the adjacant hills.

[Aeson]

Originally posted by Theseus
We need to run some calcs, but I believe that our Destroyers, backed up by empty Transports ON THE ATTACK, can break through at either of Sando or Quanto.

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

Excellent city placement analysis there DeepO.

We can capture Lego's Explorer with one of our N Marines after taking Quanto. Use it to scope out the route to B1.

We know we are taking the 4 Settlers. We know we are taking 1 Marine. We know we want at least some Tanks. So the first Transport would 1M, 4S, 3T. Once we have the map info from Lego's Explorer we can decide on what the other Transports should carry.

[DeepO]

Originally posted by Cort Haus
If they have a city with culture at Y3 or Y4, their culture border will always take precedence over ours. That border will extend onto the hills, so if we build a city at Quanto9 or Quanto6, we will need 2 MP to get onto the adjacant hills.

I still don't see it, CH. If Y3 or Y4 is a city, we can build at Quanto 9. for Y3, that leaves us to move 8(free)63 to take the city, for Y4, that is 9(free)62. They won't take a hill, distance 2 from them, and only one from us...

DeepO

[DeepO]

Originally posted by Aeson
We can capture Lego's Explorer with one of our N Marines after taking Quanto. Use it to scope out the route to B1.

I totally forgot that you capture explorers, instead of destroying them

We know we are taking the 4 Settlers. We know we are taking 1 Marine. We know we want at least some Tanks. So the first Transport would 1M, 4S, 3T. Once we have the map info from Lego's Explorer we can decide on what the other Transports should carry.

Not so fast. Let's say we want to go for defending the forest at Q1 (against pillaging). That means we can use 7 nonmoveable forces to keep it, and the one marine needed to enter Quanto. In which case, we would be wasting one unit we could e.g. put on defense near a rubber city or something similar.

The problem then becomes: what do we want to have as non-moveable defenders? We don't need the MI in NI (infs will fend off those few tanks just as well), but we're not so rich in MI either...

I know this is a bit nit-picking, as after all it is all about 1 unit. But we have just won a war, because of one unit Lego didn't put where it supposed to be, I'm not going to make a similar mistake when I can avoid it.

DeepO

[Aeson]

Without hub 3, we can't send more settlers over. Without settlers, no blitzkrieg.

We can rush Settlers. No "Recycling Blitz", but we can disband units to get enough shields for the Settler instead. Even with resistance the Settler will complete if all the shields required are there. So if we keep a Lego city, it will be worth a Settler a turn if we are willing to disband 2 Marines to get it.