1270 AD Orders - Will our stack survive?

[Aggie]

In my eyes the answer is the following. If waiting will gain us an advantage, then by all means wait. If not attack and do as much damage as we can and hope to win on attrition in the long term. Ie if we can replace loses faster then exchanging loses works to our advantage. If not we MUST win my manuever and look for a decisive single battle.

Aggie

[Hot_Enamel]

Originally posted by zerialienguru
Second note:
Darekill is no longer member of ND (his own decision), so please contact me next time for any diplo-things.
I hope their will be another member how can play this part, i'm not a man of nice words...

Any reason for this ?

Darekill was one of the few ND members who was completely on our side for the Glory of ND pact ?

I smell trouble

[Master Zen]

They signed it, they BETTER live up to it.

[Aggie]

Well if they don't live up to it we better arm our intercontinental balistic adjectives because thats all we'll have left. Just stating the obvious.
Maybe some cool calculating !$# decided why invade GS when GOW is so much easier.
Aggie

[Master Zen]

Damn you guys are paranoid, Zeri knows quite well what we signed, they're the ones who've been insisting that we get back at GS.

Regardless of this, it looks like the odds of taking Stanwix are pretty high as long as the attack is done in a very coordinated manner to have them lose their defensive artillery and taking advantage of every unit we have. We will then chain 8 cavs/riders and take as many remaining cities as we can. It is quite possible that Lego will only have Dye Fields, Jackson and Albeline remaining when this turn is over.

[Master Zen]

Btw, damn GS got to Legopolis before we did

Still they gifted us various cities so we can fan into Legoland so Legopolis will be black this turn

(we'll have to raze it anyway but it'll look cool as an avatar)

This from GS:

The screenshots to accompany that (these will end up in public, but won't be
released until after VoX played its turn. Not that we think Vox is going to
harm us, but they point out to ND that with only rushing 1 transport, they
can take 8 cities (as they are undefended). We'd rather not have ND claiming
all that gold, there should be something like 1000 g in those 8 cities.

http://apolyton.net/upload/view.php?...tocaptured.jpg

http://apolyton.net/upload/view.php?...ntscreenie.jpg

http://apolyton.net/upload/view.php?...s<br /> 8.jpg

http://apolyton.net/upload/view.php?...terbattles.jpg

In short, this is what happened:
We didn't trust the Fort Stanwix situation, and feared the GoW stack was too
badly damaged to take the city. Without that, both our teams would have a
bit of a problem. So, we decided to steal Lego's map (you will of course get
that once you receive the save, and we would appreciate some compensation
for it too. A free donation, if you wish ). It became clear that we could
move through Lego's territory, and capture Legopolis. From there, we could
attack Stanwix from behind, thus making it easier for GoW to break through.

Everything we could transport was moved, and just as well too. If we hadn't
done that, you wouldn't have a chance of destroying Stanwix, meaning the
invasion would have been over for GoW, and you would be forced to retreat,
and regroup. Even now, it will be close, but we think we (well, Aeson to be
precise) have come up with a relatively bad-RNG-proof recipe, which should
make sure you take the city. It is going to cost you everything you've got
at Stanwix 9, but the gains will be enormous.

From Lego's battle report, we can see that you will have a possibility to
chain 8 cavs to Lego. Great! together with the 5 settlers and a couple of
tanks, this means you are able to capture every city on Legoland, without
fights, and not including Abilene (obviously), Jackson, Dye fields, and
possibly Castlea. All the rest is open, and we count on you to take these
cities, and either abandon them after selling everything, or razing them for
slaves. (warning: not all cities can be razed, some you have to capture or
you can't reach the next one)

Further, I can imagine you would be more interested in attacking Dye fields,
but Jackson is more important to us. In case you decide to attack a defended
city, please attack Jackson. It would also create a passage to Castlea, but
most importantly, it contains Magellan's. Lego is at this moment in reach of
our chaining fleet, but if Magellan would be destroyed, we would be safe.
Dye fields can come later, next turn or the one after that this war should
end anyway.

If you don't want to attack any city, so be it. You will capture 29
artillery in Stanwix (if you take it, of course), and I can imagine that you
want to protect those first. You could of course put them on a transport, to
be unloaded again next turn, but protecting them at Stanwix 9 also makes
sense... whatever you think's best.

In order for all this to succeed, we've given you 5 cities. These include
Legopolis, and the 4 cities we built to let our tanks reach Stanwix. Keep
them while you can use them, but one thing is immensely important: abandon
them once you used them! We can't risk Lego (re)capturing any of these
cities, especially Legopolis would be a great loss. Too bad for the 2
wonders that are about to be destroyed, but nothing to be done about that.
We just can't risk it, Lego is playing far too well, and I'm sure they would
like Legopolis more than Abilene... with the proper motivation, they will
recapture it. So abandon it, but only after your troops have moved trhough,
of course.

The rest of the cities were already abandoned, to avoid any complaints about
teleportation (Legopolis is going to teleport 1 tank to EotS, nothing that
can stop that).

In case, due to a string of bad luck, you can't take Stanwix, just reinforce
your position with whatever troops you can miss (if you wait with chaining
to the last minute, you could e.g. bring some fresh infs instead of cavs),
and we'll do our best to help you next turn to be sure you too can settle a
city on Legoland. Lego has got a major problem with the damage we did
already, it would be nice that you could finish the job, and reduce them to
a 2-city empire (Dye fields and Abilen), or a 4-city empire (Abilene, Dye,
Jackson, Castlea), but otherwise, they are destroyed as well. With the
doughnut, we can make sure we pick the best targets next turn, and each take
a couple of cities. All of them are accessible, they can't defend
everything.

We have left all our slaves, explorers, and tanks in the open (tanks we
couldn't help), to try to draw Lego forces out of their fortress. Whether
you do that with your slaves or not is up to you. Part of the reason for us
was that it was impossible to bring them to safety anyway.

Finally, some diplomacy things:
we lost our rubber resource. And instead of risking Lego taking theirs back
(all it required was a recaptured slave), we pillaged the source. Please
send us rubber!

Also, this war has gone a lot faster than expected, and the damage done this
turn is something we could only have dreamt of. We're seriously lacking in
communication of what is going to happen next. Of course, we need some way
of dividing the gains here... We hope that once your turn is done (and hopef
ully equally destructive as ours has been), we can make some time, and
discuss... it was never clear if this thing even was going to succeed, so
not much has been said about the aftermath of the war. This has changed
dramatically over a couple of days. We need to catch up. Any ideas and
thoughts: please let them be heared!

-------

What is following are some posts from Aeson, who has tested the best way to
deal with the stack. Just using the first unit is not going to work, you
will probably lose. These rules should create the advantage for you. It is
all very close, if we had one ship less to transport tanks to Stanwix, you
would not have broken through for sure!

We're assuming that defensive auto-bombard can only occur once per game
round. As GS is Player 1 the bombards already taken from Lego's Arts should
not be available to auto-bombard against a second civ before Lego's turn. It
could be that you will encounter 29 defensive bombardments, instead of 13,
which will lower the odds considerably. We do not know how this happens in
MP.

If any of this is not clear (it was cut out of a discussion of a couple of
pages, so it might be out of context), please do not hesitate to ask us.
This is too important for the both of us, we can't have something silly like
miscommunication mess things up now.

Originally posted by Aeson
Defensive bombardment can be somewhat nullified by attacking with units
which have less attack power. Losing an Infantry HP is going to hurt much
less than losing a Tank HP. Also defensive bombardment can't do anything
against a 1 HP unit. GoW should try to take all defensive bombardments
possible with their Infantry I think.

As DeepO says, best targets for the Infantry are the Elites. I'd include
all Tanks too. A 2 HP Infantry should lose to the Tank, but Lego doesn't
get a promotion generally unless the next unit that attacks the Tank loses
too. So a 2 HP Infantry can almost be viewed as bombardment if the damaged
units are finished off with Marines or Tanks.

Tanks have Blitz, so they should be saved for 1 and 2 HP Infantry, which
they can often kill 2 of even at low HPs themselves.

I think using some basic rules for when to attack with what, GoW can still
have better than even odds to take the city. I just ran through a scenario
twice with preserve random seed off. Once with 26 Artillery, once with 17.
As I'm using C3C the Artillery target the units first.

The scenario is using very close to the same number of units (no 1/4 units,
just Conscripts instead of 2/X or 1/X HP units, Regulars instead of 3/X HP
units, Veterans instead of 4/5 HP units. Lego benefits from this because
they get better promotion odds, which then count towards later battles,
while GoW's promotions don't help at all except with the Tanks.

The first time I got through with 12 Marines, 9 Infantry, and 1 Tank left
available to attack. Second time I got through with 8 Marines, 1 Infantry
left available to attack.

I'll run it some more with 17 bombardments.

Originally posted by Aeson
I tried again, using the Marines at the end. 4 Marines left with movement.

I think the optimal approach is to bombard the 4/4 Infantry away. Attack
the 4/5 Infantry with 2/4 Infantry to soak up defensive bombardments. Then
attack the 4/4 Tanks once each with a 2/4 Infantry, then bombard them if
they didn't get hit. This is to avoid a promotion. Stay with the same
strategy on the 3/4 Infantry. If at any point an Elite Tank is showing,
attack it with 2/4 Infantry.

Stop using 2/4 Infantry once the defensive bombardment has been gotten
through. I'm using 11, so lets hope that's how it works. Start using the
4/4 Marines. This should get through most of the rest of the units. Use
the Tanks to clean up low HP Inf and Tanks. Use what's left of the 2/4
Infantry to deal with the Cavalry.

So far in 4 runs I've gotten through each time even with Lego getting 5-10
HPs from promotions they won't get. I'm thinking the odds on this are
pretty good given the number of attackers remaining even with Lego's extra
HPs.

---------------------


Good luck,
DeepO

[Master Zen]

WE TOOK STANWIX!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!



It was SOOO close, it came down to the last 3 tanks, our casualties were heavy: practically all infs were lost, most of the marines survived as did 4 out of 5 tanks. No leaders but we got a few promotions (not many unfortunately). We destroyed 15 Lego Infantry, 12 Tanks, 3 Cavs, and captured 29 Artilleries. Lego got a Great Leader during the battle and he was subsequently killed.

I will see if I can continue playing (12:45am here) if perchance I get too sleepy I'll leave the PC on during the night for more feedback.

Here's the battle report with the reasoning behind each attack (following Aeson's suggestions for the most part, but we'll have to make it public anyway).

Battle of Fort Stanwix (Part III)

The following report will be given in stages since the order in which

our units attacked was extremely important so as to give us any decent

chance of succeeding. Therefore each part is written with the logic

behind every set of bombardments and attacks.

Part I

Fighter lure (and Jackson isolation) - Done by bombers which could not

have reached Stanwix to lure a Lego figher (unknown position) which

might later interfere with the bombing of Stanwix (secondary objective

to begin isolating Jackson in case Stanwix attack fails).

- Bomber bombs Jackson 9, improvement destroyed
- Bomber bombs Jackson 9, improvement destroyed
- Bomber bombs Jackson 8, failed
- Bomber bombs Jackson 8, improvement destroyed

Part II

Bombarment of Ft. Stanwix by Artillery and then Bombers. Will be done until all 4/4 Infs are damaged and first 4/5 Inf appears.

- Artillery bombs 4/4 Inf, Inf down to 2/4
- Artillery bombs 4/4 Inf, fails
- Artillery bombs 4/4 Inf, fails
- Artillery bombs 4/4 Inf, Inf down to 3/4
- Artillery bombs 4/4 Inf, fails
- Artillery bombs 4/4 Inf, fails
- Artillery bombs 4/4 Inf, fails
- Artillery bombs 4/4 Inf, fails
- Artillery bombs 4/4 Inf, fails
- Artillery bombs 4/4 Inf, fails
- Artillery bombs 4/4 Inf, fails
- Artillery bombs 4/4 Inf, fails
- Artillery bombs 4/4 Inf, Inf down to 3/4
- Artillery bombs 4/4 Inf, fails
- Artillery bombs 4/4 Inf, Inf down to 2/4
- Artillery bombs 4/4 Inf, Inf down to 3/4
- Artillery bombs 4/4 Inf, fails
- Artillery bombs 4/4 Inf, fails
- Artillery bombs 4/4 Inf, fails
- Artillery bombs 4/4 Inf, fails
- Artillery bombs 4/4 Inf, fails
- Artillery bombs 4/4 Inf, fails
- Artillery bombs 4/4 Inf, fails
- Artillery bombs 4/4 Inf, fails
- Artillery bombs 4/4 Inf, Inf down to 2/4
- Artillery bombs 4/4 Inf, fails
- Artillery bombs 4/4 Inf, fails
- Bomber bombs 4/4 Inf, shot down Fighter 2/3 (so much for luring...)
- Bomber bombs 4/4 Inf, fails
- Bomber bombs 4/4 Inf, fails
- Bomber bombs 4/4 Inf, fails
- Bomber bombs 4/4 Inf, Inf down to 3/4

Part III

First 4/5 Infantry appears, attacks by GoW 2/4 Infantry begin to

soak up artillery bombardment and prevent promotion.

- 2/4 Infantry attacks 4/5 Inf, preliminary bombardment fails, defender wins with 2/5

Part IV

First 3/4 Infantry appears, artillery bombardment continues.

- Bomber bombs 4/4 Inf, fails
- Bomber bombs 4/4 Inf, Inf down to 2/4
- Bomber bombs 4/4 Inf, fails
- Bomber bombs 4/4 Inf, Inf down to 2/4
- Bomber bombs 4/4 Inf, fails
- Bomber bombs 4/4 Inf, fails
- Bomber bombs 4/4 Inf, fails
- Bomber bombs 4/4 Inf, fails
- Bomber bombs 4/4 Inf, fails
- Bomber bombs 4/4 Inf, Inf down to 2/4
- Fighter bombs 4/4 Inf, fails


Part V

Artillery and bombers run out. Attacks continue with 2/4 Infantries to soak up Lego bombardments.

- 2/4 Infantry attacks 3/4 Inf, preliminary bombard knocks 1 HP, defender wins with 3/4
- 2/4 Infantry attacks 3/4 Inf, preliminary bombard knocks 1 HP, defender wins with 3/5
- 2/4 Infantry attacks 3/5 Inf, preliminary bombard knocks 1 HP, defender wins with 1/5
- 2/4 Infantry attacks 4/5 Tank, preliminary bombard knocks 1 HP, defender wins with 3/5
- 2/4 Infantry attacks 4/5 Tank, preliminary bombard fails, defender wins with 3/5
- 2/4 Infantry attacks 4/5 Tank, preliminary bombard fails, defender wins with 2/5
- 2/4 Infantry attacks 2/4 Inf, preliminary bombard knocks 1 HP, defender wins with 3/5
- 2/4 Infantry attacks 2/4 Inf, preliminary bombard knocks 1 HP, defender wins with 3/5
- 2/4 Infantry attacks 2/4 Inf, preliminary bombard knocks 1 HP, attacker wins with 1/4 (-1 Inf)
- 2/4 Infantry attacks 2/4 Inf, preliminary bombard knocks 1 HP, defender wins with 1/4
- 2/4 Infantry attacks 2/4 Inf, preliminary bombard knocks 1 HP, defender wins with 2/4
- 2/4 Infantry attacks 2/4 Inf, preliminary bombard knocks 1 HP, defender wins with 3/5

Part VI

All Lego bombardments are soaked up, attack begins with 4/4 Marines

- 4/4 Marine attacks 3/5 Inf, attacker wins with 2/4 (-2 Inf)
- 4/4 Marine attacks 2/4 Inf, defender wins with 2/4
- 4/4 Marine attacks 2/4 Inf, defender wins with 1/4
- 4/4 Marine attacks 2/4 Inf, attacker wins with 2/4 (-3 Inf)
- 4/4 Marine attacks 2/4 Inf, attacker wins with 2/4 (-4 Inf)
- 4/4 Marine attacks 2/4 Inf, attacker wins with 2/4 (-5 Inf)
- 4/4 Marine attacks 2/4 Inf, attacker wins with 3/4 (-6 Inf)
- 4/4 Marine attacks 2/4 Inf, attacker wins with 1/4 (-7 Inf)
- 4/4 Marine attacks 2/4 Inf, attacker wins with 4/4 (-8 Inf)
- 4/4 Marine attacks 2/5 Inf, attacker wins with 2/4 (-9 Inf)
- 4/4 Marine attacks 2/5 Inf, attacker wins with 4/4 (-10 Inf)
- 4/4 Marine attacks 3/4 Tank, defender wins with 3/5
- 4/4 Marine attacks 3/5 Tank, defender wins with 2/5
- 4/4 Marine attacks 3/5 Tank, attacker wins with 2/4 (-1 Tank)
- 4/4 Marine attacks 3/5 Tank, attacker wins with 3/5 (-2 Tank)
- 4/4 Marine attacks 3/5 Tank, defender wins with 1/5
- 4/4 Marine attacks 2/4 Tank, attacker wins with 2/4 (-3 Tank)
- 4/4 Marine attacks 2/5 Tank, defender wins with 2/5
- 4/4 Marine attacks 2/4 Tank, attacker wins with 3/4 (-4 Tank)
- 4/4 Marine attacks 2/5 Tank, attacker wins with 4/5 (-5 Tank)
- 4/4 Marine attacks 2/5 Tank, attacker wins with 2/4 (-6 Tank)
- 4/4 Marine attacks 2/5 Tank, attacker wins with 2/4 (-7 Tank)
- 4/4 Marine attacks 2/5 Tank, attacker wins with 3/5 (-8 Tank)
- 4/4 Marine attacks 2/5 Tank, attacker wins with 2/4 (-9 Tank)

Part VII

First 3/3 Cavalry appears, attack begins with remaining 2/4 Infs

- 2/4 Infantry attacks 4/4 Cavalry, attacker wins with 2/5 (-1 Cav)
- 2/4 Infantry attacks 4/4 Cavalry, attacker wins with 1/4 (-2 Cav)
- 2/4 Infantry attacks 4/4 Cavalry, attacker wins with 1/4 (-3 Cav)

Part VIII

First 1/4 Inf appears, attack resumes with 4HP Marines first, then 3HP Marines, and finally with Tanks (most HP first)

- 4/4 Marine attacks 1/4 Inf, attacker wins with 1/4 (-11 Inf)
- 4/4 Marine attacks 1/4 Inf, attacker wins with 4/4 (-12 Inf)
- 3/3 Marine attacks 1/4 Inf, attacker wins with 2/3 (-13 Inf)
- 3/3 Marine attacks 1/4 Inf, attacker wins with 3/4 (-14 Inf)
- 3/5 Marine attacks 1/4 Tank, attacker wins with 2/5 (-10 Tank)
- 3/4 Tank attacks 1/4 Tank, attacker wins with 1/4 (-11 Tank)
- 2/4 Tank attacks 1/5 Tank, defender wins with 1/5
- 1/4 Tank attacks 1/5 Tank, attacker wins with 2/5 (-12 Tank)

14 Infantry, 12 Tanks, 3 Cavs destroyed, 29 Artilleries captured, 1 Great Leader hung by the balls and shot. Ft. Stanwix destroyed.

[Hot_Enamel]

[Master Zen]

Ok first the good news: we went on a RAMPAGE through Lego by chaining 7 Cavs and Riders. We took all their remaining cities except Jackson, Dye Fields, Abeline and Invoice (this one being undefended and likely to be razed/gifted to Vox).

Given that Lego still has over 70 infantry and 15 tanks I came up with a plan isolate their three cities so as to avoide Lego turtling in just one of them.


This is the plan, Operation Quarantine

(written for a PM to DeepO)

-------------------------------------


I have the save open and I've been thinking on ways to isolate all 3 remaining Lego cities and I've reached the conclusion that it's possible but there's a small catch.

The first part would be to isolate Albeline as those 50 Inf are by far the most crucial and they must not escape. So, first we send a tank to kill the horse at Abilene 9-6, it wins and we pillage that square (will still need another). We move our 29 artys to Ahhmyfoot and bomb Abeline 9-9, 9-6 and 6-6. That's 5 bombardments needed.

Then we move the remaining artys to Horsefish and bomb Horsefish 4-4, 4-7 and 4-8. We send 2 tanks to Horsefish 4-1 and 7-8 to pillage those squares. 6 bombardments needed and Abeline has now been isolated.

Next step: isolating Jackson. We only need to isolate it towards Legoland and Port Sacrifice (Stanwix 9). The first step is to build a city at Legopolis 7-7, this will effectively isolate Panama and Legopolis from any tank. From there, Destroyers will bomb Jackson 3 and artillery will bomb Jackson 2, 1 and 1-1 (6 bombardments needed). Jackson is now effectively isolated since their tanks are trapped due to the wall of hills to the west and the destroyed tiles south.

Finally: isolating Dye Fields. We estimate that we won't have artillery left by this time given that 1/2-2/3 of attacks generally fail against improvements. All remaining destroyers (we estimate about 8-9) will hit Dye Fields 8, 7 and 1. Now comes the wierd part...

...we need to declare war on you.

Yep, those workers are getting in the way and we need to remove them. We'd need to do the following: capture the workers at Dye Fields 7-7, 4-4-7 and 4-4-1. Then we build the first city at Legopolis 2-3. Now we need to kill your Marine at Dye Fields 4-7 and pillage that tile, Then we raze the city, build another city at Red Bricks6 8. On that spot we build the second city to pillage the tile at DF 1-4 (again, have to kill a Marine first). At this point only 3 tiles remain to isolate Dye Fields: 7-7, 1-1, 1-2 all of which can be pillaged by tanks (we have 2 1-HP tanks which we can sacrifice, which means we'd only end up sacrificing 4 healthy tanks).

Once this is done we send you peace accepted and all the other goodies (170g as half price for the map), rubber, and whatever cities you guys need.

The good thing about this is that it allows us to keep many of the big cities since we would not need to garrisson them strong. Panama would need 1 tank (plus the rider in place) in case a Cav was built in Castlea (Jackson from the ND pic is building a tank), Legopolis would need no defense and we have over 35 units in Port Sacrifice, more than enough to withstand attack from their remaining tanks (most of which are quite battered).

Abeline could be held by only 4 tanks as they have 3 cavs there which could attack it. That leaves most of our follow up tank stack out of danger and ready to strike Jackson next turn.

What would Lego do? They'll likely barrage around Port Sacrifice to leave it isolated and thus prevent our artillery from outside to hit Jackson next turn. This can be avoided if GS builds a city where your Stanwix attack stack is located and then gifting it to us so that we could attack with the Arty at Port Sacrifice and from this city the remianing arty.

Tell me what you think, I'm a bit afraid you guys would consider a "temp war" a cheesy tactic but IIRC it's within the game rules (like artillery exchanges) as long as it doesn't actually abuse a mechanic, in which case we really aren't abusing anything just getting rid of units in the way

-MZ

FINAL REMARK: With your extra captured workers we can forest Ahmyfoot 2 (since we can capture 3 lego workers on the adjacent tile) which would leave it impervious to a Cav attack.


--------------------------

I also closed the save since Civ is eating up my PC's memory, I'll wait till I get a response and feedback before I play again.

-MZ

[UnOrthOdOx]

"chaining 7 Cavs and Riders"

I don't suppose I'm still around anywhere?


Can I get the name of 8 fallen cities for the poem please?

[Master Zen]

Originally posted by UnOrthOdOx
"chaining 7 Cavs and Riders"

I don't suppose I'm still around anywhere?


Can I get the name of 8 fallen cities for the poem please?

You bet you are

The cities were:

Panama
Fort Hammer
Sharehaven
Kloreepville
Zargonia
Ahhmyfoot
Crossing
Camp David
Horsefish

The cities actually taken by Riders were Panama, Fort Hammer, Sharpehaven and Kloreepville. Since I still have to replay what's left of the turn, you get to choose which of those cities you want to capture.

[UnOrthOdOx]

Fort Hammer, please.

I'm even still a rider.

[Master Zen]

Typo: it's PORT Hammer, not Fort...

[UnOrthOdOx]

Still works for the rhyme I'm planning.

[Hot_Enamel]

Just woke up ....

MZ, post your deleted article here.
Even if Lego dosnt see the humour, I am sure I will.