Radical Idea: Operation Blown GA

[nbarclay]

I don't know whether this is a good idea or not, but it seems worth bringing up for discussion.

What would happen if we would get Iron Working, do some upgrades from veteran warriors to swordsmen, and invade Vox? (Call it a "reconnaissance in force" exercising our right to explore that Vox claimed to honor and then, assuming their policy doesn't change, stole away from us.)

Unless we get extremely lucky and catch them without iron, there's no way we'd score a significant military victory. But Vox would be practically forced to use its immortals against the invaders if they want them out, and that would trigger their GA very early in the game. (Once the GA is triggered, our surviving swordsmen would withdraw and either hole up on a mountain or help defend our cities.)

Vox might very well use their GA to build up an invasion force and invade us back. But we would have lots of extra time to build WCs to defend against the expected counterattack, and by the time they would hit us, we would have enough more and bigger cities that our GA would be worth significantly more than theirs is.

I definitely don't like what this plan would do to our competitiveness with teams other than Vox. But on the other hand, fighting with Vox on more even terms would likely hurt us even worse.

Nathan

[DeepO]

Good idea to throw in the ring, but I don't like it. I'd prefer a tense peace, as trying to trigger their GA will almost certainly lead to an ongoing war... if we strike, it should be swift, so that no counterattack is possible anymore.

DeepO

[Randolph]

As much as I'd like to teach them a lesson (I absolutely love the "reconnaissance by force" term ), I think DeepO is right, we should strike to Kill. There would never be peace after such an attack.

OTOH I could see this as a good opening for a larger attack.

[Arrian]

It's risky as hell, but I like it. It's still a ways off from happening, as we need to research 2 techs first, build some barracks and vet warriors, and accumulate some cash first.

The pros:

1) Initiative. As in we would sieze it. That's big.
2) The odd chance that we catch them off-guard and/or without iron
3) Blowing their GA early, and at a time of our choosing could really hurt them, provided we survive the ensuing war.

The Cons:

1) We could create a monster (stacks of immortals so big we can't stop them).
2) Even if we don't create a monster, we may have to fall back on WCs to defend ourselves and that blows our GA too.
3) We would be attacking blind.
4) Too few swordsmen and the objective might fail, or the entire force could be wiped out, and defending ourselves could be iffy. Too many swordsmen and we could cripple our own development for questionable gain.

-Arrian

[nbarclay]

Too many swordsmen and we might end up doing a lot more damage than just triggering their GA prematurely. Although my inclination would be to go in earlier with a smaller force to try to hit them while they're smaller. (And since the true objective is blowing their GA, as long as we can fight past the spearmen on the chokepoint, the only way they can realistically avoid blowing their GA is to let us explore.)

I do see a high probability of blowing our GA too, but we'd do it later and get more out of it. If that happens, I can even see a real possibility for a three-stage conflict where

(1) We trigger their GA.

(2) They counterattack with immortals and get slaughtered by WCs.

(3) We use our GA to build up a heavy force of swordsmen (with a few spearmen for cover) and WCs, use the swordsmen to guard a work crew roading through the jungle, and then hit them with the forces built during our GA after their GA is long gone. "Bye bye Vox" could be a strong possibility in that scenario, especially if the killed/lost ratio favors us heavily enough when they attack us.

This strategy would work best if we can out-REX them by a significant margin so that even during their GA, our production is still competitive with theirs. That plus the extra time we'd have should be enough to build up enough of a defense for me not to mind at all if they throw away their troops coming after us. But without a significant REX advantage, it would probably be too much of a gamble.

Nathan

[Arrian]

Let's proceed normally, and see how things develop.
The beauty of a warrior -> sword upgrade is that it can come together very quickly.

-Arrian

[nbarclay]

The earlier we get to Iron Working, the better this plan works, both in terms of keeping the value of Vox's GA to a minimum and in terms of possibly getting very lucky and catching them without iron hooked up. (We might even consider offering them a trade of The Wheel for Bronze Working to speed up that process, somethingg I wouldn't normally be inclined to favor.) Remember, we have to both get Iron Working and hook up a source of iron before we can do the upgrade. Also, we may need to make barracks a little bit higher priority than we would otherwise.

Nathan

[nbarclay]

Originally posted by DeepO
Good idea to throw in the ring, but I don't like it. I'd prefer a tense peace, as trying to trigger their GA will almost certainly lead to an ongoing war... if we strike, it should be swift, so that no counterattack is possible anymore.

As long as Vox has a trading partner and we don't, a "tense peace" favors them enormously. Leave them intact long enough and we set them up to exploit any of the windows of opportunity from the "Vox's perspective" thread that they choose.

Nathan

[Arrian]

Good points there, Nathan. They have the advantage (unless our terrain is significantly better than theirs, but we don't know that because they're blocking us. Bastards) while they can keep us bottled up.

-Arrian

[Randolph]

Originally posted by nbarclay


As long as Vox has a trading partner and we don't, a "tense peace" favors them enormously. Leave them intact long enough and we set them up to exploit any of the windows of opportunity from the "Vox's perspective" thread that they choose.

Nathan

Good point, but they'll have this advantage even if we trigger they're GA.

Let's not unrealistic here, Vox has show that they at least have some basics down; they're not going to be easy meat for a hand full of warriors. I agree we can trigger their GA, but I doubt we'll do much more. In all likelihood they will have IW before us (start with BW + trade + obvious desire for IW due to immortals) and at least a few Immortals by the time we can get to The Neck. In addition to this it will take a considerable amount of time for our force to get to them, and there's a possibly Willy or Tim will see them coming. Our swords and spears will die not long after we pass the Neck.

One qualification for any attack should be to discover who is north of them.
[edit] or in what ever direction the other civ they've contacted is.

[nbarclay]

All I'm really expecting out of the operation is to blow their GA. Anything else is just a nice bonus.

Yes, they will still have a major advantage from the trade situation even if they blow their GA. But when war comes, as long as one of our WCs can win a victory, we'll be in a position where we have a GA to boost our war production and they don't for theirs. And all the trade advantage in the world doesn't do them much good if they're dead by the end of the ancient era.

Nathan

[Randolph]

Ok, so you do see this as the first stage of a larger conquest? I think I'm starting to get on the same page . In that case I can see the value of this attack (under certain circumstances).
If we do this we should time it such that we will be ready for 1) their counter attack (a strong counter attack; one that will need a decisive defensive strategy), and 2) ready to attack them soon after their GA is blown (with our GA + advanced gov.).
Basically I can see the value of this as a mid-late ancient age strategy, but not as something to race for IW over. We want to have a strong economy and be near monarchy (or the republic, we are religious ).

[nbarclay]

The part where we blow their GA has to come as early as possible in the ancient era to maximize its effect. If they counterattack in more strength than a handful of additional warrior-upgraded swordsmen can handle, we blow our GA earlier than we'd really prefer, but we also get the opportunity to conquer Vox and make contact with whoever they've met earlier. If they decide the time isn't right for an attack and make peace, we wait for Monarchy to launch our main offensive and get an even bigger relative advantage from our later GA.

Nathan

[nbarclay]

By the way, by the time we march all the way up to Vox, attack, and have them march any significant counterattack back down to us, we shouldn't be all that far from Monarchy in any case - especially at GA research rates. (Although granted, gold for research would compete with gold for upgrading additional warriors to swords to help deal with a counterattack.)

Nathan