DIPLO: Glory of War contact LOG

[Cort Haus]

CACTUS T243 report sent to MZ

[Cort Haus]

from MZ

Bleh, bad news, in any case we'll be holding on until we get picks of Jackson and Dye Fields. I am so glad now we have 40+ Infantry for this...

There's also the possibility that Lego has not spotted our fleet since it's outside their view and we see no naval units anywhere near. We're crossing our fingers

-MZ

[Cort Haus]

to MZ

Are you sure they're not tailing you with subs or fighters? Their naval luck allowing them to reduce the split allowed a similar number of defenders on your side.

Do you want to finalise the deal for Computers after your turn, so we can sent it to you next turn?


PS ... if ND send you screenies and WM, could we have copies please? Cheers

[Cort Haus]

from MZ

I'm about to play the save. I've been thinking though about Lego's possible response next turn.

We'll be able to land 42 Inf, 34 Marines, 27 Artys and 44 Tanks. we can suppose that Lego will have something in the vicinity of 40 tanks, 45 max perhaps.

Lego might decide on a "throw everything against one stack" strategy and that stack will likely be ours since we are closer to their core. They will have 62 artillery to strike and damage our 42 Inf and 20 Tanks. After that (assuming worst case odds that all units receive at least 1 HP of dame) they will have 24 tanks to hit most of which will be destroyed/damaged by their tank assault. The remaining 34 Marines will be hit by the next 20 tanks. This will leave 14 marines intact + 42 damaged infs + 20 damaged tanks for a total of 78 damaged units which of course they will not be able to finish off by themselves. However, with only 16 follow-up tanks, there's no way we're going to be able to do anything half-decently worthwhile the next turn.

On the other hand, we can hoard some of those tanks in reserve and land them once our city is built. For example if we only land 20 tanks and keep 24 on ship Lego will use their 45 tanks to kill off the 34 marines and 10 of the other units leaving 52 damaged units left. If they are desperate (and depending on their damage level) they can use their east-coast infantry to try and finish them off, maybe even with Vox's help. We'd have 40 tanks in reserve though, as long as 1 unit remains our settlers are saved and we can attack with those 40 intact tanks.

The other option is to land 28 tanks which would leave 60 units after the initial tank assault. Slightly better odds but we'd have only 32 tanks for counterattack.

On the one hand I don't want to land the entire force and risk it get so damaged that it won't do much next turn, on the other hand I don't want to reduce it so much that Lego might think it has a chance of wiping out the entire stack. That said, either way it would basically render Lego entirely unable to stop your attack.

I currently have the save open but I haven't moved yet, I'm going to have dinner and do some stuff before I play it so if you can get back to me i'd be quite happy.

[Cort Haus]

to MZ (copy by email, his PM box was full)

It sounds like a good idea to preserve your tanks and let the Marines take
the tank assault, - if the stack can survive, but does that take into
account blitz attack? It's worth seeing the odds on undamaged or promoted
tanks taking another pop. Also, that's assuming you don't have strike
options with marines as good as with tanks.

I don't know what Vox's capability is offhand, and we don't have a spy in
there.

Meanwhile I'll keep watching our forum ...

[Cort Haus]

from MZ (by email)

I was kinda hoping the "worst case scenario" compensated for the Blitz ability. That said another possiblity is to pillage the area surrounding our stack's landing with bombers and ships. That way they could only attack the stack with tanks ONCE and no infantry would be able to attack it. Our tanks would still be able to hit Dye Fields or Jackson and we'd leave enough transports besides the landing zone so as to be able to move the stack into one of the two captured cities if necessary since we could not use roads.

I'm thinking this because Lego is likely to pillage the area around our stack precisely to deny Blitz capability to our tanks. So we'd just be pre-empting that to our benefit

In this case we could in fact not land the tanks at all since 20 of them could still be hit by artillery. Since the stack has no chance of being wiped out the Inf/Marines would be more than enough.

-MZ

[Cort Haus]

from MZ (by email)

EDIT - last paras added (missed on the cut & paste)

First of all many thanks to Aeson, saved me an hour of calculations

Unfortunately we can't land on a hill since the only hill in the vicinity is only in range of Dye Fields and is in a very restricted area so it's flat terrain for us unfortunately. Also we lost not one but TWO crucial transport builds because of pollution (and in one of the least polluted cities to top it off, that's just plain bad bad luck) which would have allowed us to chain more troops this turn (our first two transport chains can only arrive next turn... they'll be all tanks, after that we'll have pretty much instant chaining via ND which is less than 2 transport-moves away).

I closed the save a few hours ago. Right now I'm leaning towards dropping either 12 or 20 tanks with the stack though the "bomb the surrounding terrain" option seems quite appealing since I have a gut feeling that Lego will pillage it themselves though lacking crappy units to do so would imply that they'd need to use vital units for that... so it's not entirely certain, they'd probably do it if they figure they couldn't destroy the stack at all. Another thing which Aeson did not factor in and which works in our favor is that the first 27 tank attacks will be met by our Artillery causing damage to some of them.

Still, the the prospect of attacking with 60 frensh tanks is just quite appealing.I think I'll sleep on it and decide tomorrow after my french class in the morning.

Again, thanks to all.

-MZ

[Cort Haus]

I sent copies of the posts discussing GoW's options on the GoW Comments thread to MZ. He replied ...

Wow, your forum is like a gazillion times more active than mine!

Thanks to everyone who chipped in, i'll play the save early afternoon.

-MZ

[Cort Haus]

from MZ

That's the latest. Decided to land 16 tanks and keep 36 in reserve. 8 more will be chained making for a grand total of 60 available tanks next turn. Thinking things over, I'm starting to suspect Lego will use their tanks in defense but who knows. Btw, our bombing of Legoland and Castlea showed that both cities are undefended proving that Lego has all it can to defend with at the front. I only landed one settler because of that, maybe they think we don't have any extra ones... though so far Vondrack has been one step ahead of us. As someone who has known him since the early days of the ISDG and with other GoWers having played him in PBEMs, trust me, he knows his stuff and has every angle covered which is why we have to pull this off as flawlessly as possible.

Two other things:

1) The diplo screen showed that we are still sending you rubber so you should have no problems with that.

2) We agree to computers and will send you a 500g down payment next turn, however we still don't want the tech until possibly the next-next turn (1275 AD) in any case, don't send the text next turn, i'll PM you when we want it.


Once again thanks to your team for the info yesterday, I'm trying to revive my team a bit, seems everyone is a bit lost from Poly these days... but Aggie's back (let's see if he'll stick around).

-MZ

[Cort Haus]

to MZ

Hi MZ,

Thanks for the report , and for the entertainment on the public forum

For next turn, as soon as Lego publishes its battle report, we can exchange ideas on how to proceed. So the GS turn will be based on a co-ordinated approach with GoW. We'll send you a draft plan to consider based on what we see in the save, and you can send us yours based first on Lego's battle reports, and then on any additional intel we can provide from the save.

Regards,

-Cort

[Cort Haus]

T242 pre-move turn report from DeepO sent.

Reply from MZ ...

Well, as expected, Lego is playing flawlessly this will be quite the challange. Depending on the number of our tanks that Lego destroyed we can know if taking Ft. Stanwick is viable or not, we will have available - barring significant naval losses which is unlikely - 20 bombers and 27 artilleries which could hit the city, and then barrage it with whatever units we still have standing.

Taking Stanwix would basically open the door for our remaining 40+ tanks and we could with settlers perhaps reach Legopolis. But 20 Infs are 20 Infs and it's likely that Dye Fields and Jackson house the remaining Infs making it pretty pointless to attack them.

Lego's attack likely left the Marines untouched. That's 34 units which are pretty much expendable at this point and could sufficiently damage the defenders. The infantry are likely damaged from artillery and tank attack. If our 16 tanks end up undamaged then I'd say there's a chance to take the city after a 47-unit bombardment. I'll do some calculations in a while.

As a very very very backup plan, we'll likely resort to building more carriers and bombers and just bomb them back into the stone age, that should at least screw their chances of winning the game.

I'll see what else comes to my mind in the next couple of hours and I'll PM you guys later.

-MZ

[Cort Haus]

to MZ

Do you have any Cavalry on Bob? We're thinking if you have enough tanks left from your landing, you might be able to take Fort Stanwix after bomber and artillery barrage. Then you could build your gateway city and using Settler-hopping and 8 Cav might be able to take 8 empty cities including Legopolis - basically all the north except Jackson and Dye Fields.

Also, do you have any Marines on Bob?

[Cort Haus]

to MZ:

We chained 8 arty over, pounded the 3 BBs outside the otherwise-naked Quanto and slammed 9 transports (and a destroyer) against them. We broke through! I'm not sure yet what we do from here but DeepO reckons we might get a shot at taking out the FP.

and his reply ...

Wow that's great news!

I'm all the more convinced now that GoW has to take a shot at taking Fort whatever-the-name-is if enough troops are still there. I don't think Lego could have built more than 15 tanks to be honest as they also built additional infantry and didn't rush all the Cavs. Hopefully our tanks are still standing and if they are, I think we do have a shot.

[Cort Haus]

Second T144 Report / Plan emailed to MZ.

[Cort Haus]

from MZ (copy in T144 thread) :

Yes, spy on us ASAP and we can coordinate from there, off my head I don't remember our unit strength last turn but I'll load up the save in a while and e-mail you back.

-MZ