16-09-2004 11:50									#1
	Military Planning & Discussion Support Apolyton, buy Galactic Civilizations: Deluxe Edition

With our invasion of CDG coming in roughly 20 turns, I think that it's about time that we begin discussing how we should go about it, what sort of military composition we will need, and how we want to handle PAL.

First, some general thoughts on the attack:

I do not think we will need much to overpower CDG. Frankly, we don't need PAL at all in this war. We can handle them alone. However, we have PAL already locked in and sending in likely more horsemen than we care to ever see this close to our core. How should we handle it?

My feeling is that we should send in two Stacks of Doom, both with enough punch to easily take out 1 city. The main one marches on Minnesota while the other takes out the southern two cities.

The main one, once Minnesota is down, will hold position and serve to defend our eastern flank, while workers quickly get roads in place to connect it to our core. The second marches on through the weak southern cities and cleans up shop.

PAL takes out the northern cities and the capital. Once they have it, our eastern army will be between them and us. We may want to send some units from the main stack back home and then send units from the second stack to Minn once their mission is over.

We definately will need Hoplites at home and sentries in the north. PAL could stab us when the war is over, but the best possible plan (if I were them) would be to stab the moment after we engaged CDG, but were too many turns away from home to turn back. Having a good number of Hoplites in the rear and warrior sentries in position to see an advancing horseman army is critical. PAL will have a range of 6 from Pumpkinland on that road. They can hit Olympus in 2 turns.

--Togas

	16-09-2004 11:52									#3
	Enter the AD-FREE zone

In the above picture, the white boxes are additional sentry positions we need.

The red and blue lines represent our two stacks.
The yellow line represents PAL's attack.

The brown line is the road they are building.

--Togas

	16-09-2004 19:10									#4
	Support Apolyton, buy Alpha Centauri

Good plan Togas.

I like the additional sentinels to the north.

And Id like to add one line from the conversation I had with F-P last night:

quote: PTAGuildmaster: I think there's talk of setting a second city into settler mode too, since we're ahead of horsemen production predictions

Making sure we cover our back in this war IS important.

As well as Hoplite production which at this point in time is definately our best defense against an army composed of horses.

	16-09-2004 19:36									#5
	Support Apolyton, buy Civilization 2

I would hope as well as this war progresses in our favor that we have a plan to rapidly pump out some settlers and get this continent settled.

The idea of PAL with Pyramids is NOT making me sleep any better at night.

	16-09-2004 21:45									#6
	Enter the AD-FREE zone

I am losing no sleep at all about CDG. Beating them is a foregone conclusion. What I worry about is PAL because they have the power and maneuverability to take us out we need to prepare for the possibility not only to save ourselves from it, but to discourage PAL from considering it.

With them building that road now, straight to Olympus, and then complaining about us posting a sentry by it... it all just worries me a bit too much.

When this war starts, we need to station a Hoplite ON that road. That will make a sneak attack a lot harder and ensure our GA a turn before they'd like it.

I think we need to have a conversation with PAL where we don't just agree with them and joke around. We need to seriously tell them that we're placing sentries "just in case", that we need to firmly settle the continent split at the narrow and easily defensible area that we're requesting. Fast growth does not mean you HAVE TO build cities. They should be adding pop to cities that don't grow as fast and building temples and markets and libraries in those cities. Building more cities just results in more corruption. They're not a commercial civ. They have no Forbidden Palace (yet). They have plenty of land right now.

They need to take out the 3 CDG cities I noted above. They would then pull back and gift us what remains of those cities. We need to then ask them if they are OK with this arrangement. Make sure they understand that they're not getting to keep those cities. If they want something in return, we need to talk about that now. If they're not comfortable with this, perhaps we should call the whole thing off.

--Togas

	17-09-2004 10:51									#7
	Support Apolyton, pre-order Civilization IV

I am prescribing to the "trust no one, especially PAL" doctrine. I am very afraid that PAL will turn on us after the war.

I'm sorry I've been absent as of late, but school has been crazy this year. I'll get around to my opinions / suggestestions later this weekend.

	17-09-2004 23:42									#8
	Support Apolyton, buy Civilization: The Boardgame

Alright, here's some more insight into my PALanoia. I've been saying it all along, but no one seems to listen / care.

1. I do not see PAL leaving paceably after the war againt CDG ends
Come on, we don't need this many forces to utterly decimate CDG. As Togas has said, we could easily do it ourselves at this point. What essentially has happened is nothing short of an arms race between us and PAL, to see who has the most weapons to use to slaughter our "common enemy". Once CDG is wiped out, which quite possibly could only take 5 turns in game, we're basically going to be sitting within 4 tiles of eachother, with giant armies that no longer have a use. Do you really think PAL is going to calmly walk back to their lands and disband their armies, as they will be completely useless, and cost needless upkeep if they plan to play nice with us? Why would they keep it around if we were allies until the end of the game? Aee WE going to disband our armies? I don't see this happening at all, and if they even wait for the end of the CDG war (which I wouldn't, if I were them), we're still in a worse off position.

2. The border situation is disgusting
PAL built "Pumpkin Land" well after we had discussed interest in making the border much further north. They blatently disregarded basically everything we had said to them in chat, and built anyway. Thats exactly where they said they wanted the border, as well, which is a slap in our face. In the even that we can even come to an equitable agreement with PAL about the border, do you really think they will gift us all the cities on our side, Pumpkin Land included? I don't. Call me a pessimist, but I just don't see it happening.

3. Peace on this continent prolongs the game
Let's face it. A war with PAL right now would be well fought on both sides, but they have the upper hand. We could drag it out, fight them tooth and nail, but they would inevitably be victorious over us. Our armies are slow, and nowhere near their land. Their armies are mobile, and on our doorstep. They're bigger than us. They grow faster than us. Their production is better than ours. Blah blah blah. If I were on PAL's team right now, I'd be planning the attack on Apolyton. Why bother to play this game for many mroe months, if they can end it now and secure victory? Why wait until one of the people on the other continent kills the other one, or even worse, until we have the technology to cross over to the other continent and fight a war against them?

I believe we should plan for a war with PAL, if only for an exercise in strategic planning.

I've looked over the save quite a bit today, and I agree with Togas' marching orders, and 2 addition sentries. Those sentry positions will more than cover every possible movement into our land from PAL's. If possible, I'd like to see some galleys on the Western coast as well, for quick transport (if we need it) as well as getting some eyes in the sea.

Last edited by Inverse Icarus on 18-09-2004 at 00:09

	18-09-2004 03:11									#9
	Support Apolyton

The only reason I would think that would keep PAL from coming after us is to make sure they have an early ally in game #2.

I also don't thik they have a problem playing this game for a while; I don't think they see it as "draging it out".

There is another purpose for our troops; both PAL's and ours. If the other two teams don't eliminate one another we will have to do it together.

	18-09-2004 04:08									#10
	Avatar Enlargement: We've got the solution

I definately think we should not leave ourselves underdefended.

I concur with Togas' plan. What are the troops we'll have available in 20 turns? We should allocate who goes where so we'll be ready when the time comes.

Has it been decided when we're going to Republic?

	08-10-2004 20:03									#11
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From the plan as it stands, we need stacks both at Naked Aphrodite and in Hypnos (for the moment). Thus Hoplites can assemble at either of these points, and when we have upgraded to Swords, they can meet at either of these two point as well. So, I guess we should have no issue with sending our troops to these two cities, rather than keeping them all in the same place (Hypnos).

This is the logic I'm currently going by with keeping a Hoplite at Naked Aphro.

	08-10-2004 22:26									#12
	Suffering from ads?

We need to build a road to the new city site and then a road onto the sugar, then use that path to invade Minnesota. Can we get this done within 8 turns? Our invasion was timed for aproximately turn 90.

We have the southern invasion road in place. Just need to build the Minnesota invasion road. Killing CDG is going to be cake, we'll be on their doorstop, on a hilltop, in less than 1 turn!

We will have the power to attack in 8 turns (thanks to our iron upgrade), but I'd like to know that the roads will be in place by then. Can any of our domestic experts comment on that?

--Togas

	08-10-2004 22:33									#13
	Support Apolyton, buy Call to Power 2

It depends on what you did with the 2 workers. If both are free to move on to the forest 4 of the new city site, then we can have the road done with time to spare. One worker is only going to get the forest tile roaded, and CDG will see our invasion stack 2 turns before it can hit Minesota.


Or we could be sneaky and use our forces as bait, and let PAL bulldoze there way through CDG (and taking the brunt of the casualties). Hopefully they will kill CDG, but lose enough units to make any attack on us a waste of resources. The only problem if we do that is that we will have our GA (in despotism).

	09-10-2004 05:46									#14
	Increase Your PM Length

One worker will be available to move next turn. However, it will take him two turns to reach the forest, as there is no road fully in place to it yet. The other worker will have one turn to go next turn we get, but I think in MP that means the road he is completing will be done next turn, and he is frozen until the turn after.

However I don't think we should build a road on the forest. A forest road will take 6 turns to build, and will take both workers two turns to get there. If instead we build a road 7 of the forest. As we are going to build the next city on the tile 9 of the forest, this road would connect to the new city.

Now I have a difficulty with timing these roads, as when I just tested out how long it took to build a road as a non-Industrious nation in a Hotseat and PBEM game, although it would take 3 turns from the start, at the start of turn 3 the road was done and the worker could move! Can someone help me understand why this is, and help me know whether or not this applies to our game as well?

	09-10-2004 14:43									#15
	Inflate your Upload Space

Sorry I thought the tile 998 of NA was a forest. My bad...

	09-10-2004 22:41									#16
	Avatar Enlargement: We've got the solution

We won't have to road any forests, we just need to road two plains tiles, one 4 of the city site, the other 6 of the city site. We can devote two workers to the tasks, although one worker will start a turn sooner than the other.

If I'm right, it's 3 turns for one worker to road a plain. With 2, it'll be 2 turns. Then move. Then move again. Then 2 turns. @6 turns to get our roads in place. The settler should be there some time after the first road is done to establish the city.

--Togas