Turn 244 : 1270 AD Part II

[DeepO]

I saw his post in the public forum as well.

Oh well... one minute, CH, I'll compile the message with all the changes, and you can send that to him.

DeepO

[Cort Haus]

{edit - cross post}

OK

[DeepO]

MZ,

My apologies for taking a while to respond, we did not have time for all our members to comment on it.

This proposal of yours has made us think... a lot. While the proposal is certainly inventive, we see a couple of big problems with it.

First of all, declaring war on us is far from ideal right now.

- the 3 slaves and 2 marines are not really an issue, we can afford to lose those. We were hoping to use them as distractions for Lego anyway, to lure them out of their cities, or at least let their battered tanks not heal next turn. That's not really the point. More casualaties have fallen, and a lot more will before we are done with Lego.

- however, it is our understanding, that by declaring war we would lose our lux deal. We would also lose the ability to receive rubber from you. You can't offer peace and lux at the same time, without an accepted peace deal, we don't have open trade routes. While the rubber would be bad, the lux is disastrous... you can compensate for this by using the slider, we can not. We would lose many cities to disorder (the un-ww doesn't help enough, we are already getting hit by Lego ww)

- and, we do not like fake wars. We have discussed this in the context of RP as well, and decided against it. We are not going to start RP's GA by sacrificing one of our units. Nor are we going to fake a war to get out of mobilization. So we can't fake war, just because a couple of our slaves are in the way either.

Further, what real benefits would it bring to us? As far as I can tell, not much. Smith is the only thing worth it on Legoland right now. It would be cool to keep Legopolis, just for that one wonder. But it holds a serious risk as well. Legopolis is in disorder, and while I didn't calculate it precisely, it has somewhere in the region of 10-30% chance of flipping next turn (10% when not in disorder when we get it, but it was built before EotS, so there is no way to set entertainers if it is in disorder)

The same happens to all other cities: flipping chance of undefended cities, in disorder, with many resisters present are simply huge. There is no point in keeping these cities, they are best abandoned. The aqua and hospital in them are costing more in upkeep that the corrupted commerce can bring us. Don't forget, Lego still has 14 transports... somewhere. If one wrong harbor flips to them, we enlarge the problem, instead of controlling it.

Do we gain extra protection for our exposed units? Not really. Your cavs are not important at all, if Lego would attack them, they have served their purpose twice. They are not going to do anything more, except perhaps be used in a future settler blitz. Our tanks (and the couple you will have left in the open) are not important either. We have some 25 tanks in the open, Lego is welcome to attack them. They will lose lots of units doing so, and expose all other units which we can easily pick clean.

Besides, the tanks Lego still has (only a good guess, but this will be very close to the truth):
1 2/5
11 2/4
1 1/3
2 1/4

there are only a few tanks that can actually win from a cav, let alone from a full health tank. And they can't build new ones either, unless they already started on this last turn.

So... no gain, a lot of costs, and possibly even the public outcry to deal with over unfair tactics.

Cutting Abilene from the rest is different. Abilene does not hold 2-move attackers (well, a couple of cavs, but who cares), but if we can keep the defenders to reach Jackson or Dye, we would be best off. All this pillaging of roads does not have to be seen from the attackers side, only from the defenders side. 50 infs, plus an inf army should be pinned in Abilene if we can. Where those damaged attackers go is not important right now.

I can understand that from your side, it would pay off to isolate most units, declaring war on us. However for us, there is no gain, only heavy costs. We were primarily concerned with you when we attacked Stanwix (to be correct: we knew it would be very important to our alliance, even if in the end it would gain you 29 arties and a lot more gold than we would gain), so it is our hope you also see our point here. We are not helped by this manoeuvre, on the contrary even, it costs us a lot.

DeepO

[DeepO]

you can send that. I just reread it, and it seems okay to me... no need to get perfect messages to MZ, as long as our intentions are clear.

DeepO

[Cort Haus]

sent (copy in log)

[Arrian]

Good message, guys.

Heh, time to see how well the alliance survives victory.

-Arrian

[DeepO]

Yeah... we will know next turn, if we see if rubber was sent to us or not. Maybe we can spare some gold for trying to spy Vox, but we certainly should start upgrading all infs we can to MI on Stormia. In case we feel safe enough on Legoland, we might even consider starting to use our chain in the other direction, to get Stormia defended asap.

DeepO

[vmxa1]

All those bombers is what worries me, we have no defense for them right now.

At least the upgrades will give them a slight pause. Does PTW have mobile sams, I don't think it does.

Do you get AA form DD in PTW, you can in C3C. I don't ever recall seeing it in PTW.

[DeepO]

in PTW, no mobile sams (AFAIK, I never saw them). And DDs do nothing special either, you need Aegis cruisers to get more protection against air strikes.

We're working on those bomber defenses... but we really need airports if we want our fighters to last. Perhaps not 8 of them, but at least 4 or so, with the cities constantly on fighters and bombers.

DeepO

[vmxa1]

One of the things that occurs in C3C is bombing runs can damage your fighters. I don't think that happens in PTW, but I am not sure.

In that case having the fighters in a city to protect the next city is safer. It is best if the airports are not subject to attacks. We need to have aircraft in airport cities as much as feasible to get them healed faster. They heal witout airports, but at a slower rate IIRC.

[DeepO]

I don't think that bombing damages fighters, but I wouldn't know. Seeing bombers in SP is rare... at least in PTW.
As to healing: with airports, fighters heal full in case they haven't been used that turn (they can be on air superiority, but not been in a fight). In other cities, they heal 2 hp. I've been surprised before that in constant attacks, my fighters did not heal, as I forgot to take them of air superiority.

This has all been many years, though, I can easily be mistaken. Maybe I should replay the alamo scenario again... in the first turn you see some 50 AI stealth bombers....

DeepO

[vmxa1]

I think that is correct for PTW.

I have lost fighters and bombers to bombing attacks in C3C. I had lethal bombardment. So many times I have had atemple or a harbor or an airport in a new city on their land get destroyed.

[Cort Haus]

From MZ, copy in log

Regarding Operation Quarantine, we'll leave it at that I... I guess it was "too GoWish" hehe. Albeline will be isolated according to plan and we'll see what we can come up with for the rest, I'll be kinda busy tomorrow so I'll play at night.

[Cort Haus]

So that's OK then.

[alva]

Don't forget that MZ is doing this alone, guys. Noone "checks" his mesage for tone and conyent before it gets send.
Let's give him a break, or the benefit of the doubt, shall we.

Or at least not be extra paranoid.