Vox's point of view

[nbarclay]

DeepO, I think you've pretty much hit the nail on the head there as far as determining Vox's optimal strategy is concerned, at least if they have enough room. Porcupine up behind the chokepoint and massacre any attack on its way in.

Still, the strategy is not without problems.

(1) If spearmen accompany the attacking WCs, archers will win less than half their battles with them. Some of the losing spearmen will be wounded badly enough to make WCs higher-priority defenders, but some won't.

(2) Immortals could take out spearmen much more reliably, but at a production cost difference of one and a half to one. At equal production, for every two immortals, one WC is left untargeted.

(3) Once the attackers do dig past spearmen into WCs, only about half the WCs who lose to archers or immortals will actually die instead of retreating. Only horsemen could prevent the WCs from retreating, but horseman also have a cost disadvantage of one and a half to one (thus leaving a third of the WCs unopposed at equal production).

(4) Spearmen will be needed to cover forces injured in the preemptive strike on the GS units. But each spearman allocated for that purpose is one less archer or two thirds of a horseman or immortal less left available for use in the preemptive strike, and that leaves more WCs that will survive the preemptive strike intact.

(5) Victorious voxian slow-movers will be left unfortified, outside the protection of a city, and possibly wounded. Further, if the attack comes before the chokepoint city's radius expands, WCs can attack all but the last one and still be able to retreat beyond the reach of another round of Voxian attack. [Edit: roading to exactly the right place could likely prevent that, unless GS destroys the roads.]

Still, at equal production, Vox should have a significant advantage if they use that strategy. They're only in serious trouble if GS gets a major production advantage.

[Harovan]

A GS attack should go along with sending a fleet of empty galleys along the coast, to distract units from the chokepoint. GS needs these galleys anyway to explore, so the production is not lost. This demands GS to have Map Making, but it probably will be already researched (perhaps even traded for, if the ominous "other" civ visits us with galleys) at the time GS builds a sufficient force to attack.

[nbarclay]

Originally posted by Sir Ralph
A GS attack should go along with sending a fleet of empty galleys along the coast, to distract units from the chokepoint. GS needs these galleys anyway to explore, so the production is not lost. This demands GS to have Map Making, but it probably will be already researched (perhaps even traded for, if the ominous "other" civ visits us with galleys) at the time GS builds a sufficient force to attack.

[GS Member mode]I'd thought about the "empty galleys" tactic myself, but where in our research plans do we fit in Map Making if a trade doesn't come to us? By the time we do that, we may as well abandon the idea of attacking Vox relatively early altogether in favor of a plan based on outgrowing them and using that to catch up on our missed research. (Actually, I'm starting to think the "focus on our economy and get map making so we can catch up on trades" strategy may be the better way to go anyhow.)

Nathan

[alva]

[GS]
I do think that would be the best thing to ..
When/if we go to war with VOX, we should be ready to take their land aswell, if not we are just helping other civs, if there are any on the continent.[/gs]

[alva]

Finally, I start some diversion to completely provoke them. I'll post a thread on the strategy forum which many of them consider home turf. I'll ask, somewhat clumsy again, how immortals versus - oh, let's say - War Chariots fight.

Why did he in fact do this?? Eli is a regular poster at CFC, so he could have posted over there too. (Even using a DL)
But no, he didn't, he posted it right here under our noises, surely he must have known, we can put 1 + 1 together...


ot:

Yep, I did manually

Wrong smiley here, I didn't REALLY count them by hand of course

edit: code+typo

[DeepO]

[GS]So... maybe I have convinced a few of you that indeed there may be more to it than their played ignorance. First of all: I consider the posting of the strat. thread a nice diversion, although I'm not sure it was meant to provoke us. We should keep a very keen eye on the power graph and to the military advisor, as it may also be possible that Vox used it as a ruse to make us believe they will be very militaristic, when they aren't. I can perfectly imagine they keep a bunch of gold for possible upgrades aside, and other then that only build the occasional warrior and some spears, keeping their military investments to a minimum but with a reserve that if we would attack they can react very fast.

Nathan, I agree with your points, but there are some counterpoints, and one thing you might have overlooked: Catapults. Lots of them. They can easily eat through our first defenders, leaving the WCs on top. After that, they can attack with archers, horsies or immortals (who will obviously be the best units, but trigger the GA), leaving the defenders under the safe protection of some fortified spears for as long as there are multiple units in our invasion force. Only the last unit they use is lost, but they aren't even forced to use it.

Doing so doesn't expose them to counter attacks, or even to stepped attacks (lure the enemy out with a few cheap units, then hit them with full force in a second wave they were unaware of). Also, archers will most likely be mere cannon fodder and also used like that, but both immortals and horsies will survive longer then normal if our forces are concentrated. Hence elites and leaders. Hence defender armies.

So, what can we (GS I mean) do to counter this?
- If we wait until galleys, Vox loses a lot of their advantages. First of all because we can contact others, and have a trading partner, which will mean we won't need to rely on the spoils of war. Secondly for possible diversions like Sir Ralph posted. Thirdly, the best strategic point the Voxians have is that 1 tile forest, whith loads of defenders, and a fort at first possibility (possible a walled city). Galleys can go around the isthmus, at the expense of lost defense of course.

- Other then that, we could try to provoke them ourselves. Indeed, one of the possible courses of actions would be to lure them outside their fortified forest tile (I'm guessing that only that one tile will proof nearly impossible to capture, they'll try it with their cities too, but we'll never get that far). But, I think they will be to smart to fall for that.

- What is good for Vox, is good for ourselves too. Catapults. Lots of them. If they will dig in, and let us attack, we can be sure to have the best production (hell, we already have, and we're just starting to expand). Part of this production should be directed to supporting units. Workers will be needed, but we'll probably will have enough of them by that time, but catapults are very worthy units to research and to build. I know, nobody uses them in SP, and they stink when in small groups, but we don't need small groups, we need masses of them. I wouldn't mind if we have 40 catapults to take a shot at 10 defenders, at least we then know we can damage a few of them, killing them without losing too much forces ourselves. Catapults are one of the possible mechanisms we have to get at least a few of those immortals who would attack us. And, those catapults aren't lost, although they do get more or less obsolete once pikes come around, and have to be saved to be upgraded to cannons (who absolutely rock in those kind of stand-offs).

Basically, what I'm saying is that either we go for it very fast, to get a very early despotic GA from Vox (which will probably fail, as archers and spears can be quite annoying at this stage, they don't really need immortals now), or we wait until we either get galleys, or catapults (or both).

DeepO

[/GS]

[alva]

[gs]IIRC, catapults can cross mountains and jungle either...[/gs]

[DeepO]

Alva... I said all supporting units. What do you think we need those workers for, for building mines?

DeepO

[alva]

Just mentioned in case you forgot , anyway it's gonna be awhile before they would start to appear...

[DeepO]

Sorry... didn't want to be rude, but I'm in a bit of a time need

DeepO

[Arrian]

Wow, I just found that thread Eli posted on the Strat forum... I thought you were just making that up, DeepO.

How annoying. I would love to just post a in that thread, or alternatively, respond as I normally would to such a thread, and indicate that I felt that Immortals would have no chance in an invasion of a human opponent against War Chariots.

Actually, the real answer is that, all things being equal, it would probably be a bloodbath. Which is why we're all starting to agree that the best approach is to try to keep the peace and get mapmaking to go around Vox.

-Arrian

[DeepO]

Arrian, you thought I made it up? Thanks, but my creativity has its boundaries... this is the real world

I agree on the bloodbath, but let me ask you, if you read the thread, do you think Eli already knew this, or not? Or at least does he knew more about it than how he is wording it in that thread?

I'm sure of it... it was in some way a provocation to us. Either they were planning on a super invasion, and wanted to let us believe they are clumsy, provoking some easy to handle attacks which they could exploit to counterattack us at a bad timing, or they already knew they would be best on their own territory, but stand no chance on the offence, again provoking us to attack them.

I don't see another possibility here, but maybe I can find another role before this issue is settled. For the moment my conclusion is simple: we cannot be provoked, which of course doesn't mean we don't need adequate defense.

DeepO

[alva]

I have searched ELI's posts/threads on CFC and nothing even remotly similar is posted.

Still think it's strange..

[Randolph]

I thought you made that up at first also . I don't see any reason why we shouldn't post something in reply that will throw the psychological ball back at them.

[alva]

IMHO public can't be used for this games purpose, but that's just me.

Some smiley could be ok, but inventing a false strategy is , other people read them too.