Military Architect Thread

[Tiberius]

I resign from the position of Military Architect.

[Sharpe]

Military Architect suggestions (1025 bc onwards for the next few turns) - still subject to revision ...

- Use Alexander to destroy the barb camp W of Jackson, but then move him south to Karina to assist with containing the south barb uprising

- Move Angus into Panama in 1025 bc then upgrade him the next turn to swordman, then send either him or Howard south to Forkmouth to act as its garrison.

- Once Angus or Howard arrive at Forkmouth, send Forkman to Panama to upgrade him to a Swordman

- Keep the new Panama horseman in the north until the 3rd horse is built (or a merc) then move him south to the Karina area. Unless Forkman becomes a swordman first then move the horse south.

- I suggest either building a 3rd horse or a merc in Panama once the 2nd horse is complete

- I suggest sending the "unnamed" merc currently moving into the jungle east of the RedBrick workers south.

Not sure what to suggest for this merc - Farmerville should finally have a merc garrison, but I am not sure that we should have Conan or Gaul to act as a garrison for Logville for very long due to the barb problem and we should upgrade Conan too.

I am not sure what we should do with the next Legopolis merc - perhaps the best use would be as ano escort for the next Farmerville settler.

Once sufficient forces are in the south and we have enough protection for the southern cities and workers, we should then move Conan north to be upgraded to a Swordman type. Not sure if we should bother upgrading Gaul or not.

This should leave us with at least the following - 2 swords in the north (Angus and Forkman), a sword in the central region (Howard) and a 2 horsemen (Alexander and #2) in the south in 10-15 turns. I think we need more additions to be added to the central region force, but I would be reaching into the time of Zargon's MA mandate to make suggestions.

Any comments or suggestions? (Especially Zargon as part of this plan may creep into your time as MA and of course Vondrack - though everyone's opinion is valued)

[Kloreep]

Looks good.

Originally posted by Sharpe
Military Architect suggestions (1025 bc onwards for the next few turns) - still subject to revision ...

- Move Angus into Panama in 1025 bc then upgrade him the next turn to swordman, then send either him or Howard south to Forkmouth to act as its garrison.

This should be delayed a number of turns so we can pay Voxes the 100g. But he should be upgraded once we have the money.

- I suggest either building a 3rd horse or a merc in Panama once the 2nd horse is complete

Panama will have to have a specialist for one or two turns, but the lux coming on-line will make the citizen happy again, and we can follow that 3rd unit with a settler. Agreed. (So if Panama's gonna produce a settler, I guess that 3rd unit should be a Merc?)

[Tiberius]

Oops, we have a weak military compared to the RP!

(avarage for the rest of Bob, and strong compared to the Estonians)

I wonder if the RP military is being build for purely defensive purposes or ...

[ZargonX]

Well, if they are viewing an impending GoW-ND war, they could well be arming up defensively incase any problems spill over, or they could be biding time to strike at either side, depending on what looks best for them.

[Sharpe]

So with the current build order - within the next 20 turns we should have a military consisting at least of:

- 3 horsemen (Alexander, Troy, Silver)
- 2 swordmen (Angus, Howard)
- 4 warriors (Conan, Gaul, Forkman & "Dieter?")
- 1 galley (Galleyleo)
- mercs: 8 built, 4 to be built within 20 turns
1 garrisoned in Legopolis
2 garrisoned in Jackson
1 garrisoned in RedBricks
1 garrisoned in Karina
1 garrisoned in Zargonia
1 garrisoned in DyeFields (Dyetrich)
1 blocking the Legos Minor peninsula

2 to be built in Panama (Panama garrison & Forkmouth garrison)
1 to be built in Legopolis (Farmerville garrison)
1 to be built in Jackson (Sharpehaven garrison)
- actual garrison assignments to be determined at the time of construction

Total upkeep cost in republic: 22 gold / turn

We will also have 3 new settlers during the next 20 turns - hopefully we can use Forkman as escort/garrison for one, or one of the horses, but we will probably need to use Gaul and Forkman as garrisons for the new cities - perhaps Gaul should be "exposed" to a barb horse on decent defensive ground on the hope that he will be promoted if that isn't too much of a risk.

Upgrading:

Total cost of upgrading warriors (all but Gaul) to swords:
3*40 = 120 gold

Total cost of upgrading horsemen to knights:
80*3 = 240 gold

Total cost of upgrades = 360 gold

Timing for upgrades:
- "Dieter" should be upgraded soon after he is built by sending him to Panama and moving one of the Panama swords to Legopolis as a MP.

- I would also like to upgrade Conan as soon as we can relieve him from his duties in the south as he would become our only veteran swordsman. We should probably send one of the two Panama swords or the RedBricks merc down to replace him as the Logville garrison - as soon as the Panama merc garrison is in place. If we use the RedBricks merc to replace Conan as the Logville garrison, we can move one of the Panama swords there instead to be its garrison (at least it will still be close to the northern cities).

Future Situations:
- However the Forkmouth build discussion turns out, we should probably build a 2nd galley as a backup, to speed the exploration around our landmass and to possibly intercept any invading force. Timing is flexible however.

- We should upgrade Forkman to sword as well, but with escort and garrison he might be unavailable for a while. If we do choose the Suez/Benelux canal site for one of the next few cities, it would reduce the number of units needed for garrisons for future cities.

- If Panama should happen to fall to an invading civ, we would lose both our iron and our horse source - however, the iron hill should be available in Karina but we don't have a backup horse source. Perhaps that should increase the likelihood of settling the Quanto site despite its irrigation problem.

[Sharpe]

Upon Tiberius's suggestion I am posting my request to move either one of the horses or Archibald to the Forkmouth region to act as a backup for Forkman and to later on seek out and destroy the probable barb camp nearby Sharpehaven.

If we move Archibald to the area, use one of the horses as a garrison in Farmerville.

[vondrack]

Originally posted by Sharpe
Upon Tiberius's suggestion I am posting my request to move either one of the horses or Archibald to the Forkmouth region to act as a backup for Forkman and to later on seek out and destroy the probable barb camp nearby Sharpehaven.

If we move Archibald to the area, use one of the horses as a garrison in Farmerville.

I take this as a conditional order - if Forkman gets damaged while killing the barb on the mountain, move a horse there. Is that right? Since if Forkman stays healthy, it can be him to seek out the camp and destroy it.

[Sharpe]

Probably. If Forkman survives undamaged, he should be able to go after the barb camp while staying relatively close to Sharpehaven.

However, if he gets 2 points of damage, he will be vulnerable even as a garrison. With even 1 point of damage, I would hope that he recovers quickly.

[ZargonX]

MA Orders 630:

-Mercus S-S-S
-Merc Twin S-SE-S
-Troy S-E, to check to southern jungle
-Silver fortify
-Alexander S-S, no more hiding our bold horses!
-New Dye Fields warrior (Dyeguard?) NW, to Jackson to upgrade
-New Jackson galley E-N-NW
-GG S-S-E

[Sharpe]

I think that we need to consider building more mercs and Med Infs after we get Chivalry from GoW.

Our current land military consists of:

1 warrior
1 archer
3 swordsmen
3 Med Inf
6 Horsemen
13 Mercs

+ 3 potential horsemen

27/30 total units for 13 cities

I think that our current ratio of 1 merc / city is a bit low and we are slightly overemphasing the horsemen. Don't forget that we need to upgrade these horsemen to knights at 80 gold each - I am aware that knights are more valuable than Med Inf right now, but in the long-run Med Infs are just as valuable due to their upgrading into Guerillas vs Cavalry.

Our total upgrade costs are:

Warrior - 1 * 60 gold = 60 gold
Swords - 3 * 20(?) gold = 60 gold
Horses - 9 * 80 gold = 720 gold

Total potential upgrade costs = 840 gold

[vondrack]

One of the reasons to build so many horses now is that even at 80 gold an upgrade, it is still much cheaper to make knights by upgrading 30S horsemen than to build 70S knights from scratch (you need 30S=120g + 80g = 200g using the upgrade path, but 70S=280g using the "build from scratch" path). Once we have Chivalry, the upgrade path will be gone.

Another reason to build mobile units is that mercs can only hold positions - they are utterly unable to counterattack. Even a medium-sized invasion stack could do serious harm to our terrain improvements (and consequently, to our production potential) if we had nothing to counterattack with.

That said, the current build plans do include a fair number of new mercs over the next 10-15 turns (about twice as many of them planned as horses, to be exact).

[lmtoops]

From my point of view, we are on schedule to build our WC forces. In 10-15 turns (probably 8-13 now), we will have 2-4 catapults, 4 new horses, and 8 new mercs. Of course some of the mercs. are for new cities, but most are for the WC forces.

As far as clearing the jungle, I see 3-4 works available for clearing (Ken, Jimbo, Jason, Jr. and Frank Jr.?). I need some one to help me in calculating the number of turns need to clear the jungle and road (my editor isn't working...I probably deleted a required file, while getting rid of the old PTW version )

In any case, 3 workers are enough to get us started. We could just road the required tiles first and then go about clearing the jungle. That sounds like the best bet, but I'm open to other suggestions.

Near Tarzania, I noticed some Fog of War right off our coast. We need to improve our visability in that area. We need to move the MP (Mercus) NE onto the coastal hill.

I also am concerned about all the coastal hills outside of Tarzania. They provide a good defense for an invasion force. We must develop a plan to cover that scenerio. The WC could be deployed to these hills once a hostile ship is spotted. Any suggestions?

Finally, is the best place to post? I think the "Next turn plans" thread is cluttered enough. But I have no preference.

Leo

[vondrack]

Alright, I've been promising this for quite some time. Here goes a pic of what I would like our naval screens to look like:



As you can see, the Western Naval Screen (WNS) is a bit "thicker" than necessary - that's to allow for a quick and flexible recovery if we lose one of the sentry boats. No vessel of movement 4 or less (GS ships currently have the movement of 4) can pass through the screen without us spotting it). As soon as we are able to, I would like to enhance the screen by another line closer to the coast, so that once our advance posts get nailed, we would still be able to see what's coming at us. We have all the vessels needed to set the Western Naval Screen as shown in the picture - they are currently either "anchored" at their ultimate destinations or en route to them.

The Eastern Naval Screen (ENS) is easier to set up, as the waters are much more narrow there and the screen directly expands our territorial waters. After finishing the new caravel in Crossing this turn (T176), we will still need one more one to finish the southernmost part of the ENS.

I believe that caravels are all we need for the screens. They are cheap to build, as expensive as and see as far as any other boat. I would not bother upgrading them, unless we really do not know what do build/upgrade.

[ZargonX]

Frigated!

Ok, building off the naval observation screen, I think the next natural extension is to add some naval firepower to deal with incoming ships. i.e., let's get some frigates as soon as they become available. Below I've included a map with my suggestions for placing some frigate anchor points on the Western coast. The most important are the NW areas, as any GoW invasion would most likely come from there. Seeing enemy ships coming is good; sinking enemy ships before they get here is better We should start with at least 1 frigate at each point, but at minimum, I think we should have 2 per "berth" in the W, possibly more in the NW if building plans permit. Let's talk about this