Strategy

[GeneralTacticus]

Wouldn't that only leave 1 other team out?

[jdjdjd]

What I proposed and GK described better than I did, and I think we all are agreeing now, is we need to think outside the box, as it were. People have a perception of us, and we need play in away they can;t predict. I like the build of defensive units, Ninot said, but also offensive units and be prepared for some human player to try and knock us backwards. They build up will hopefully keep them at bay.

Ninot, my point was not to offend you by calling you a builder, but I'm talking of perception and right now perception from C3DG is you are not a warmonger. I understand why you do what you do in C3DG, but others may not realize it.

I think we all agree we need to build forces early to protect ourselves from Human or AI aggressiveness.

[Ninot]

Jdjdjd... i completely agree with your sentiments, and im pleased you didnt try to offend me. Honestly, i didnt think that was your intent, but I wanted to make it amazingly clear that im not a one-game guy

And while thinking out of the box is good, we gotta look at all the possibilties of whats on the other side of the box.


But i COMPLETELY agree on what you say for military units.

Build a large offensive and defensive force. prepare for the initial defense, by attacking those units first.


basically.. yeah, i agree.

But I still think we should wait to be attack, or for someone else to be attack... not for us to attack first, unless something strange happens and the world goes without a human V human war for too long.

[DAVOUT]

I am on the same line of thinking that jdjdjd and Ninot.

[astrologix]

Originally posted by DAVOUT
I am on the same line of thinking that jdjdjd and Ninot.

And I fully agree

[GeneralTacticus]

And so do I.

[ruby_maser]

Originally posted by GeneralTacticus
Regarding first strikes... are we talking about doing this to humans or AIs? If we do it to the AIs before we encounter any humans, we can just say they sneak attacked us and we're retaliating, even if we started it.

I'm not sure it would be wise to lie about anything that another team may be able to glean the truth from anyway. I believe the foreign advisor hints at who the aggressor was in war, saying stuff like..." the carthaginians have attacked our friends the (blank), I don't know if we should trust them"

edit: or correct me if that is only for actions that result in a rep hit. We had best be sure if we want to maintain this machiavellian approach.

[F-PRO]

Originally posted by ruby_maser
machiavellian

Forgive me for being so uneducated - I'm still a simple tribesman - but what characterizes a Macchiavellian approach?

[Ninot]

Well untill someone establishes an embassy with us, we can have the guilty pleasure of lieing about who started a war.

Of course, we cant lie about attacking a human unless we can eliminate him. But if we attack an AI before an embassy is established, we can always claimed they attacked first, and no one could be the wiser.


Now that brings me to a thought... We should establish embassies ASAP, to know exactly who is making what kinds of deals, and who is attacking who first.

[jdjdjd]

What the builder, I mean Ninot said, makes sense, I can agree we don;t attack first. I nice attack force waiting for someone else to make the first move, and then attck would be pretty cool.

Of course, until we start the game, all this could be a waste of time, maybe we'll be on an island all alone. So lonely we all would be. Sniff.

[ThePlagueRat]

Unorthodox moves by other generals has proven effective in combat, aggressiveness counts twice...

What about all of us voting for the strategies in the different situations as they occur?
- being adaptive and democratic too.

Should we perhaps discuss it (as we do now)
and make procedure-polls for every different type of situation that we might encounter?

Then execute those procedures when neccessary?

Or adapt to the situation then?

[Arnelos]

Well, I must agree with the strong consensus of this thread:

1. We should prepare a strong OFFENSIVE as well as DEFENSIVE military force. We should keep such a force strong even in peacetime, that it may be used as quickly as possible in war time.

2. That we should develop what deployment methods are needed to deploy such a strong offensive force in the most efficient and expedient manner. Road networks linking our cities (and to the potential enemy) and enough galleys (and later caravels, etc.) to transport such a force to another island (if necessary) should also be kept.

3. We should NOT, however, use this force in a first strike against a HUMAN Civ. Using it against an AI civ is perfectly acceptable, but using it against a Human Civ should be avoided unless that Human Civ either:
a. Attacks another Civ first
b. While it didn't attack another Civ first, is in the process of conquering another Civ - a conquest which would make them too powerful for us to accept.
(we can always demand that they end the war or we'll enter it on the side of the losing civ... we only enter if they continue the war - we could additionally demand that they return certain conquered cities as well, but we'd have to see...)

[F-PRO]

So this means we will be a military nation, though not necessarily an aggressive one. A large force would be logical in a competative environment such as this DG; however, if we find ourselves in a location where there are almost no enemies, we should take this opportunity and focus more on research and building, so that we can build more advanced units earlier than our opponents. That would be far better than having a large but undeveloped army which won't be used much in the beginning. We should never forget the importance of research and development, that's what I'm saying.

[ruby_maser]

military tactics

while we are on the subject of the military, I think it will also be important to use our military for effect.

Only humans will find this disconcerting, but I think amassing troops on their borders and calling it an exercise will be fairly effective at playing mind games with them. Naturally, we mean no harm and will withdraw to a more respectful distance and stand down to a less aggressive posture. In other words show the visible cues of an attack by letting them see our forces but not follow through.

I think feints, flanking, two- and three-pronged attacks will all need to be employed. Barring preemptive attacks early on, once an enemy has a standing army as we do (which I think we should assume they probably will), a stacked archer rush will be juvenile in comparison to an archer rush combined with a mock sea invasion where galleys pull up to there coast. They don't know the galleys are empty

[Crousto]

Originally posted by F-PRO
if we find ourselves in a location where there are almost no enemies, we should take this opportunity and focus more on research and building, so that we can build more advanced units earlier than our opponents

I agree to this for offensive units, but not for defensive ones. IIRC, the military advisor only needs an embassy to tell you if an opponent's military forces are weaker or stronger than yours. If a warmongering civ meets us and sees that our military forces are weak, they'll attack within a few turns, and it may be too late for us to build an effective defense, even if we're technologically advanced. We should not take such risk.