Turn 245: 1275 AD

[vmxa1]

Could we not msg Vox to ask if they have any Lego units within their borders? Remind them that Lego is no longer able to aid them and we could.

I know they do not have to reply or be truthful, but they may. Do we have any fighter that could recon some of Vox? Does Lego have an RoP with VoX? I know Vox can let them in, but Lego could not get the free movement on their rails without one and hence could not travel very far.

[DeepO]

Hmmm... looking at the documentation, the situation doesn't worsen once we would have taken Abilene. It is bearable now, so mobilization becomes the main issue. So... in case Lego wants to harass us with floating settlers near the poles, we fake war with RP or GoW (GoW needs to end its mob as well), publicly cry Lego are sore losers, and let them float as long as they want.

Re: the tanks: 6 tanks, 2 settlers, at least 10 inf, and at least 2 arties (but more likely 10) on ships or inside Vox. That's a total of at least 20, more likely 28 units on ships or in Vox. On top of that we can see 4 tanks and 10 I... leaving a maximum of 54 I, 1 T, 1 settler in Abilene.

Those sound like better odds, we should be able to take that, right? We might even take the city ourselves, without help from GoW.

If Lego knows this, could this be the reason they disbanded or shipped their artillery, instead of using them against us? And if so, could it be that more units were shipped? It doesn't make sense to build a 3rd settler in Abilene, unless they were certain they could move it out of the city. So if a settler could leave, perhaps some infs joined it? (at least 7, to fill a transport).

could those 7 transports all be filled with 8 units? 56 places... Abilene might be nearly empty for all we know. If they only kept their army there, they could have moved everything else out, or nearly that much. Move all the unreachable troops into Vox, fill 7 ships, and try to land that force on either Stormia or Bob. They might even have some kind of deal with ND, to land in their territory, and use it to attack GoW.

The more this line of thinking continues, the more I'm in favour of investigating Abilene. We can miss the 124 gold, and if it is nearly deserted, we would be best to attack it immediately.

DeepO

[DeepO]

Originally posted by vmxa1
Could we not msg Vox to ask if they have any Lego units within their borders? Remind them that Lego is no longer able to aid them and we could.

We could yes... although it's nearly certain Lego went that way. They destroyed the blocking GoW unit, so either this is a diversion (they are fully capable of that), or they passed that tile.

BTW... if the transports are not in the South, but in the North, Lego could have moved through Vox to jump on board near the North pole.

I know they do not have to reply or be truthful, but they may. Do we have any fighter that could recon some of Vox? Does Lego have an RoP with VoX? I know Vox can let them in, but Lego could not get the free movement on their rails without one and hence could not travel very far.

I don't know. I know we don't have a RoP with GoW, but I thought I offered one last turn (I am not sure anymore) There are a couple of tiles in the Deep South we can't spot because of this, without using movement. There, Lego can also 'hide' even if they would only hide from us, not from GoW.

Without RoP, we would have spotted the Lego units.

DeepO

[DeepO]

In rereading the WW doc carefully, we can't suffer from ww. At least not like that. We captured 10 cities last turn, which alone would mean over 320 wwp, making our people 100% unhappy. That did not happen, we're still running at 0% lux. So the Sufa effect must have been a ghost on my mind, and all the rest was the result of a lost lux.

Lego can stay at war, as long as we are allowed to end our mob.

DeepO

[asleepathewheel]

I think we should investigate the city, if we haven't already. Give us an idea of what we need and what if anything is....elsewhere.

[Aeson]

I agree on investigating the city. 54 Inf we wouldn't likely get through, but GoW should be able to finish it off.

Capturing Artillery to use it 2 times is out right? What if we only used it 1 time though? That way we could bombard with the Artillery and let GoW recapture it, but not use it, afterwards. It would get around the turn order difficulty of not being able to benefit from GoW's Artillery. The difficult part would be getting it so we could capture GoW's Artillery without exposing it to Lego.

[Cort Haus]

We could pick up the Artillery with a Marine if the Art was behind a wall of units. Fiddly, though.

[asleepathewheel]

what about some barb farming for a tank or two? This is our only shot at getting a leader, I think....an extra elite tank or two would help out

[Cort Haus]

- and Yes, I agree we should investigate Abilene.

[Aeson]

If we hit Abilene with 39 Marines and then 63 Tanks we would have about 0.3% to take the city. Lego could expect to have 11-12 Infantry left with an average of 1 HP each.

[Cort Haus]

Barbs - If they generate at the turn start, as Player 1 persumably we get first dabs on the 25g and the promo chance.

[Aeson]

Yah, we should try to keep as much territory "in the dark" as possible the next few turns.

[DeepO]

Taking Abilene means we've got to protect the ishtmus. Or let GoW protect it... unless we somehow would find out where the transports are, of course.

What do we miss of boats other then the transports, and where can these be?
- 4 BBs. we see 2. HBS are BBs, right? How come Lego has 5 winning HBS attacks, and only 4 BBs? Anyway, we spot 2 BBs, and at least one of the others has to be on GoW's side as well. The other is either just out of sight on the South West of Abilene (only 1 mp remaining while in our sight), or is one GoW's side. It could be that Lego used the one near us(1/4 HBS Panama) to scrap in Abilene, it would explain only 4 of them remaining.

- 6 DD. 2 we spot. 3 others were near Abilene last turn, leaving 1 unaccounted for.

- 5 subs... of which 1 attacked the Nina somewhere near our coast. The others are total mysteries, but we can suspect that at least 1 or 2 are near GoW. They haven't sunk many subs, and undoubtedly had hidden scouts as well...
Which reminds me I need to post a PM to Togas to ask for the precise location of the Nina, so we can go after its attacker.

- 6 IR. 2 of those we spot. 1 other was, at the start of this war 5 turns ago, right off the coast of Vox, it was one of the few pickets we knew the location of but couldn't sink. Leaving 3 unaccounted for... My guess is that at least a couple of those are now in the South. It looks like Lego is moving its ironclads towards us (logical, GoW has nearly its complete navy left, we are badly damaged), as this might be going on for a couple of turns without us noticing. We might check with MZ if he saw IRs last turn near there, so we could cross reference if we see the same ships.

- we spot the CV. If Abilene was written off as a loss, it will have a bomber on board.

so in total, we don't know the location of 1 DD, 4 subs, 3 IR, and 7 TR. If the settler of Abilene was loaded on transport, it is a very normal assumption that the 3 DDs near Abilene last turn will be covering it, possibly with the 1/4 BB.
Also, if all those roads were pillaged by GoW last turn, we can get a good estimate of where that transport (or transports) are right now, we knew they weren't in Abilene last turn, nor near it.

DeepO

[DeepO]

I don't like the idea of exchanging arties... we didn't like it on Bob either. If we do it, we should make sure that only one team uses it, and the other does not move it... that's what happened on Bob. ND took a shot at us, and GoW moved them out of the way so we couldn't recapture.

Investigating Abilene: I would do it now, but I don't have the save open. Give me a moment, I've got a couple of things to do first, but should get there in less than half an hour. My guess is there are a lot fewer then 54 inf in that city... if the settler left with 7 escorting inf, that would only leave 47 inf. And where there is 1 transport, there tend to be more...

DeepO

[DeepO]

oh, barbs are generated after everyone else's turn, so after Lego, and right before us.

DeepO