Inchon landing ~600BC.

[DeepO]

I wouldn't be so sure. Having a city there, with a road connection to D-ville makes it a lot easier to get to that city, instead of going over the spines ourselves. But yes, there are some better ways(albeit a bit more predictable) to cut their iron.

Anyway, when are we going to strike back? If their invasion force gets dealt with in the next 2-3 turns, we would be good to strike back swiftly, instead of giving them the opportunity to build up more defenders.

DeepO

[Arrian]

Well, it all depends on how things go in the next turn or two (how many casualties they take, versus how many we take).

Once we break their invasion stack, we need to try to cut their iron and/or set up the "Inchon" operation. Some of that also depends on how our galleys do. If we gain naval superiority, it makes landings a lot less risky.

Meanwhile, we can decide if we want to try and march a footslogger stack up the Spinebreakers toward Diss, send fastmovers up the desert, or both.

-Arrian

[Velociryx]

Whenever we strike back, we need to have highly crystalized objectives, and design a sufficient force for the task.

Offhand, I would put our short-term offensive objectives at (in no particular order)

1) Elimination of all Voxians inside our cultural borders

2) Proper garrisoning of all cities (especially coastal cities, in the event of shenanigans by GoW, and not purely defensive garrisons, either. If they land, we should have forces at the ready to deal with them immediately)

3) Cutting the Iron Suppy/gaining control of the Iron Colony

4) Capture of Dville

5) Securing/controlling the choke point (Inchon landing)

After that....we build up enough heavy hitters to take every city they've got....

-=Vel=-

[Arrian]

Heh, crosspost with Vel.

Regarding marching on Dissidentville, I just had a look at the most recent screenshot (turn thread, page 3) and it seems to me that the safest route would be to march up the mountains (2, 2 and 2 of Dissidentville) with a stack of pikes/med inf/workers, roading as they go. Then bring up WCs via the road and lay the smack down.

At the same time, I'd like to be making the Inchon landing, or at least do something on the east coast, as Aeson has suggested.

-Arrian

[Arrian]

RE: coastal garrisons... We should probably post 2-4 WCs near the west coast to deal with any potential landings, but once we have more galleys out roaming the seas (keep in mind, only we can do that), we have a much better warning system.

-Arrian

[Velociryx]

Sounds like a plan....now, let's just give them a pasting they won't soon forget at Arashi and get this show on the road!

-=Vel=-

[notyoueither]

I'd like to see a Pike in every other Coastal city. That way they can scramble and protect all threatened cities in the event a landing is spotted approaching. It's not yet time to assign them there though.

Eventually, we want them all covered.

[Arrian]

I concur with that, NYE. Posting them inbetween the cities would allow them to cover multiple cities, while also cutting down on landing sites.

AFAIK, you cannot land troops in an undefended city via ship (unless they are berserks/marines), so if you have pikes on the coastal tiles next to our cities (defensive bonus tiles should have priority, to deny them as landing spots), we limit where an enemy can land. We can then position our reaction forces (WCs) appropriately, so that they can respond immediately.

That's something that can be done bit by bit going forward, but I think we all agree that the majority of our pikes are going to be needed to invade Vox.

-Arrian

[Velociryx]

Very true, and we can no doubt delay any serious reinforcement of west-coast cities, but as we are able, it's something we should not neglect.

With our production advantages, we should be in decent shape to pay at least a token nod to defense while prepping to bust Vox's chops....cheap insurance against cheap shots by unnamed Bobians who would love to join the party.

-=Vel=-

[DeepO]

Getting back to the initial idea, what if we landed a settler and some pikes next to their colony, and settled there? It would mean the iron falls into our hands without us having to fight for it. It's basically the same as pillaging their road, with the exception that we would have a city where we later want one, and I don't think they will protect the grass on that side of the mountain to stop us from landing. I can certainly see them blocking (with warriors even) the road, so that we can't land directly on that, and need to fight before we have a road we can pillage. In that case, it would save us a turn.

We will need enough pikes to keep that city, as it is in a terrible position when facing immortals (surrounded on land by mountains), but it should be a fun maneuver to perform

DeepO

[Arrian]

DeepO,

Holding that city would be much more difficult than holding a city on a hill, with flat land and 1 hill next to it (my proposed city site). And it offers much less than a city near Eliopolis does in terms of setting up our invasion of Estonia.

-Arrian

[notyoueither]

If what I expect to happen if and when we gain the upper hand happens... that is that the Vox Immortals park in the mountains and dare us to dig them out... then Inchon would be the most cost effective means of convincing them to move. That is still a long way away, and cutting their Iron off would be one of the things we need to do to gain the upper hand.

Operation Iron Denial sooner, then Inchon later.

That is my thinking.

[Arrian]

I'm fine with that approach, NYE.

-Arrian

[Velociryx]

Ahhhh, but you guys musta forgotten that we got Romulan technology 12 turns ago, and have those 156 cloaked Medievals sitting not far from Hurricane.....

-=Vel=-

[Arrian]

You know what sucks most about PBEM? You don't get to see the battles if you're the defender.

Sure, you can deduce what happened, but you don't get the play-by-play.

In the one PBEM game I actually played long enough to fight a war, that really irritated me (partial remedy was found by calling my "enemy" on my cell phone and hearing his dismay as he lost half his army).

I'm DYING for news from the front!

-Arrian