 |
| |
|
|
Trip
|
 |
Hunt Valley
Apr 2002
time: 00:34
|
|
Just to see where the Senate stands. 
Latest discussion here: http://www.apolyton.net/forums/show...473#post2746473
Basically, planning in case GWT overruns CGN and we are unable to launch an invasion of our own... how do we plan to defend ourselves?
"Big Army"
We build lots and lots of Cavalry and Cannons. The plan is to prevent GWT from landing on our coast if possible, and if not, to be able to hit them hard with Cav once they do. Naval preparations are minimal, a picket force at best.
"Big Navy"
We keep our army smaller, designed only to block landing sites, and instead focus on a large picket net and other large fleets to try to intercept and sink a GWT force trying to land an army on our coasts.
There is a more mixed plan, but it does not optimize our use of resources (our navy could be sunk by a superior one then an army landed larger than we can handle  ).
As I've stated elsewhere, I'm a proponent of the "Big Navy" plan, and this is why:
- We can see them coming far in advance with a properly set up picket net - that is, much more than the minimum 11 ships I showed in the other thread.
- We are ahead of them in techs, and should remain so. Thusly, our navy should be much more advanced and well-prepared than theirs, should they get frisky.
- We would still have an army of ~30 Cavalry (that's only 18 more fastmovers, which wouldn't be hard at all to produce over the time period we're talking about).
- Once we get RRs those 30 Cav will go a lot further for us. We can instantly block 30 tiles of coast anywhere GWT tries to land. Unless CGN falls like a tower of cards in the next couple turns we should have enough time to get to Steam Power before GWT can prepare a real invasion fleet.
- Less important, but a fleet opens up the possibility of our own invasion, should no GWT one materialize, or if we are able to thwart GWT with minimal losses.
Either way, we should start preparing our picket fleet NOW so that we can be prepared later and focus on building Frigates for our MBFs once we get Magnetism or Cav armies with Military Tradition.
Let the discussion begin, and let the Senate weigh in.
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Master Zen
|
 |
of naughty
Jan 2003
time: 23:34
|
|
I agree with the picket lines, however, I am DREADFULY AGAINST playing our luck with a battle fleet since there is no guarantee that it'll be able to smash a GWT invasion force sufficiently.
Think about it:
1) Frigs vs Caravels/Galleons: 50% success rate. If the RNG is against us, we might need a ton of ships to barely dent their fleet.
2) On the ground, things are different. Cavs vs Muskets are much better odds, especially since they retreat.
3) your argument about big fleet = our own invasion is moot. What type of ships will the pickets be? Galleons. But what ships will the Main Battle Fleet be? Frigates. Frigates do not upgrade to anything and thus cannot transport units. Thus, we'd need to remove the pickets if we wanted to invade GWT, or build more transports.
As it stands, I strongly support the building of pickets right now, but I still see no convincing argument about sacrificing our ground forces in favor of two strong battle fleets. Destroying their invasion at sea is a huge risk, a risk that if it fails, will leave our homeland relatively unprotected because we failed to boost our ground defenses. I would feel much more comfortable with 40 cavs on the ground than these battle fleets.
This said, I believe the most important thing to do now, though, is:
BUILD A TIMELINE!!!!
We need to estimate a timeline in which GWT will get certain key techs as well as when we will get them. We need to use this timeline to see how many turns we have in order to make our little plans a practical reality and thus, know if they will be worth it. We need to see how soon we can get to RRs, and see if GWT can assemble a sizeable force before that etc. We also need to see when we will get our GA and if it will be decisive in this military buildup.
More importantly, we need to know how GWT's offensive against CGN will be, whether it will be a decisive knockout blow or if it will prolong the war enough for our plans to be viable. Until we know, all our planning is a glamble and might not pay off as we would hope for.
-MZ
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Arnelos
|
 |
of the Free World
Sep 2002
time: 00:34
|
|
I'm not entirely convinced of either side, but since Trip has been arguing that we build a fleet AT THE EXPENSE OF BUILDING AN ARMY, I'm offering the countering argument. Personally, I'm of the opinion that we need a MIXED force of one form or another. We simply cannot rely on entirely a navy to stop them. Too many variables.
On top of this, TIMING is an issue Trip is not tackilng here. GWT is currently pre-occupied, so E_T's plan to only build something tiny like 5 ships in the next 25 turns isn't all THAT bad. We can build the IMPROVEMENTS we so desperately need before and after the palace jump in order to build the economic base that will make building and supporting a large fleet and/or army FEASIBLE.
As for the argument I posted in the other thread just to present the opposing view to Trip's all-navy approach:
Added my rebuttal in to conserve space. ~Trip
quote:
quote:
Originally posted by Arnelos
Trip,
Your pickett plan fails to take into account an unorthodox GWT naval strategy... something which is actually quite likely if they're going to put in so many resources as to attempt to invade us.
For instance, all GWT has to do to circumvent your pickett system is build a series of cities along either the East or West coast, all within 1 turn's travel of each other. They can then transfer naval vessels from port of construction to each next city (1 per turn) until it reaches the launching port (which could be a port built in CGN territory). We'd never see a thing.
They then move the bulk of their cavalry/Ansars down there and load onto the ships and launch their fleet. With navigation in hand, they could even sneak the fleet along the base of the map and CFC may or may not catch them by the time they land. Our main intercept fleets will be on the other side of the entire continent and unable to intercept even if CFC catches them before they reach the south coast of CFC.
They then land some obscene number of Ansar/Cavalry on the CFC southern coast or our southern coast and let loose, razing cities as they go. |
Such a scheme would be easily detected - and it's not indefensible. As soon as we see this "city chain" popping up along the coast, we only need 1 more boat for every 2 cities they build to fill in our visibility net. Additionally, we could place boats in locations between the cities, preventing them from funneling ships between them without being detected.
For them to create such a scheme would require a lot of time. It would also require them to have either Navigation or Magnetism. They're a long ways away from that. We can start building our pickets now for the job, and have them ready to sail in 15 turns.
Finally, if we're really concerned about them building up a fleet in the old CGN lands, we can land a contingent down there ourselves. All the land would be good for would be launching a fleet of their own. They would also have to be worrying about an invasion from us. This would mean their two main cores would be much more heavily defended than the CGN south, giving us an opportunity to slip a crack force down there to "cut" their chain.
quote:
That's merely one example. They can use a similar strategy to come at us from nearly any direction without us knowing ahead of time out of which port they will come and what route they may take.
The only solution would be to have picketts off of EVERY GWT port that can launch such a fleet, that we may notice their launch. That's a lot of picketts.
Not to mention, a smart GWT commander would include at least one diversionary force whose purpose is merely to SINK our picket off the port and make us think that their entire fleet headed out to ocean from that port. If hey did this off of, say, 3-4 ports, we would have no good idea which one was the REAL launch site and thus where their main fleet really was at sea.
Our fleet would then have to remain weak and divided continuing to try to guard our entire ENORMOUS coastline while GWT could move their ENTIRE fleet (minus the small diversionary ships whose only purpose was to sink a few of our picketts and make us wonder) to their chosen attack point... at that point, their fleet would be so large in comparison to our defense fleet IN THE AREA that they would overwhelm us and make it to the LZ.
The only thing that would stop them is a unit wall along the coast that would force their main fleet to move along the coast while our main fleet tried to catch up. This is a strategy that might work, but we'd need a whole bunch of land units to be in said unit wall (and within range of ANY point on the continent so that they could be in the unit wall then). |
The picket screen I developed was a very rough and bare minimum outline of what we need. We would also want to increase this as time and our resources allow.
I fully expect GWT to try and sink multiple pickets at a time. To expand our defenses, we could increase the number of pickets in a single tile to 2, then add more picket waves behind them. As soon as a picket disappears, one from the 2nd wave fills it in. We either see 1 wounded Frigate (since they wouldn't be able to effectively take our boats out without them... as you said, Galleys and Caravels are not good for trying to rule the open seas ) or a huge navy heading for us. They could try and repeat this process, but it would cost them more turns and more boats - they can't keep consistantly sinking the different waves of our defenses with only a couple boats designed to take out a single picket.
quote:
Point is, you cannot rely on your fleet INTERCEPT the enemy in time to stop him from making a landing unless you literally have every angle covered and even then GWT can use deception on us by killing pickets from multiple angles and leaving us to wonder about which is the real attack route. This ultimately leaves us with PART of our fleet fighting their WHOLE fleet - not a pretty picture.
Once they land more Ansar/Cavalry than we can easily beat back with our land units: game over.
The point is that this is all about mobility.
A fleet can move 3-5 tiles per turn and must defend us by moving slowly AROUND the continent (or around the continental pieces through the lake). It must, of necessity, be spread out or held in strategic locations that may or may not allow it to intercept the incoming GWT fleet.
An army of knights can move 6 tiles per turn across the INTERIOR of our territory and reach all possible LZ's for an intercept of the incoming GWT forces. Cavalry could do the same, but at 9 tiles per turn across the INTERIOR of our territory.
The bottom line is that we have little guarantee that even if we build a monstrous fleet, that it will actually INTERCEPT the GWT fleet before they can make a landing. An army, on the other hand, can use our road network to intercept a GWT landing made anywhere on the continent.
Under EITHER plan, picketts would be useful. That said, GWT is open to use the same diversionary tactic under both cases as well against our picketts. |
A navy is not all I suggest in this plan. Railroads would be a very important part of it (we should get Steam before GWT can get Magnetism), as well as land-based fastmovers.
Additionally, with a RR net set up (or even without one) we can block their landing sites if we see them coming - giving us time to get our navy in position to sink theirs before they're even capable of landing. This is the biggest boon to the "big fleet" plan over the "big army" one - we pin them off the coast with our fastmovers then hunt them down. They are the ones who have to frantically try and get their operation done instead of us, having to worry about them landing and getting into position to defeat a beachead.
This is why multiple nets of pickets is important. Again, the image I posted is the absolute minimum for our protection. We would want a more elaborate system - whether we go for the big navy or the big army defense plan. |
Last edited by Trip on 23-02-2004 at 06:03
|
|
| |
|
|
|
asleepathewheel
|
|
listening too long to one song
Mar 2002
time: 00:34
|
|
mixed forces.
Trip estimated 11 ships would do it. how about 22 naval units (one to replace a fallen in order to catch feints) and the rest of the units be cavs/cannons(arts)
I'm with MZ, we need a timeline and troop estimates. how many ships for a super navy, how many units for a mixed, how many units for a super army.
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Dominae
|
|
quote:
Originally posted by Trip
This is an unofficial poll, which asks that if we did decide to use our military defensively in the near future, what people would want to do.
If you HAD to pick one option what would it be? |
What do you mean my "near-future"? For a ship-based defense to work, we would need to build up a decent-sized fleet first. That's not exactly going to happen overnight.
But I guess I'm just being difficult. 
If I had to choose, I would definitely go with the land-based defense. The problem with a ship-based one is that if it fails, we're basically screwed because all the Shields we spent on defense become useless instantaneously (ever tried to repel a Cavalry offensive with Galleons?). The risk of a ship-based defense failing is far greater than a land-based one. And even if we do lose a couple of cities because our land defenses are spread too thin, we can always regroup to make a stand. With just ships, we do not have that option. Finally, a land-based defense is useful against possible treachery by CFC, while a ship-based defense is obviously not.
Even if I do endorse the land-based defense, I still think we should be disbanding units at this point. If GWT were strong enough to attack both us and CGN at once, I would expect we would see greater numbers brough to bear against CGN in the initial attack. GWT's is (rightly) focusing everything they've got on CGN. Winning that war is too critical to their success to deal with us at this time.
Dominae
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Dominae
|
|
Post-Railroads? That makes it easier: land units all the way.
|
|
| |
|
|
|
asleepathewheel
|
|
listening too long to one song
Mar 2002
time: 00:34
|
|
quote:
Originally posted by Dominae
Post-Railroads? That makes it easier: land units all the way. |
yeah, that would change my vote to all land units with perhaps 10 ironclads/frigates to protect against bombardment.
|
|
| |
|
|
|
wervdon
|
|
Another thing about Big Army:
Calvary can move 9 squares on roads. A stack of calvary at either choke point with a road network can potentially reach any point in our empire within 2 turns should an emergency arise. Throw in a smaller core stack, and we can cover our entire empire with a mobile 1 turn response force.
With ships:
Yes we can have a bigger navy than any other power, and yes we can picket and watch all the coastal points at once. But I don't think we can guarantee that same sort of local superiority due to the relative lower move points of ships under the base rules.
|
|
| |
All times are GMT. The time now is 05:34.
Apolyton Time is 00:34. |
top of page
|
|
|
Forum Rules:
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts
|
HTML code is ON
vB code is ON
Smilies are ON
[IMG] code is ON
|
|
|
|
|
|
23-02-2004 05:35
|