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Dominae
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quote:
Originally posted by DeepO
Nah. The trick is that you've got to see cities as just another element in your strategy game. If you don't like where they are, move them. If you can't keep them, abandon them.
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Well, the trick that I learned is that you cannot expect your rail network to do all your defense for you. It is, in fact, a double-edged sword. Had Lego put, say, one defender in each of their cities (and two in their capital), this may have looked very different. Makes me think the Draft ability is not so bad at all...
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asleepathewheel
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listening too long to one song
Mar 2002
time: 00:21
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quote:
Originally posted by DeepO
Yep. In hindsight, these have actually helped us... it let's you decide what to build, before seeing the save. A bit ironic that we opposed them, Lego voted in favour, and in the end we get more out of these than Lego (as vox could spy for them, we could not let anyone spy for us)
DeepO |
It also helped us on the PR front, because we didn't really need to post anything regarding the fall of legopolis etc, we just posted what was required in few words and let that carry the day. No ambiguously sorry/gloating/whatever posts to announce. Just the cold hard facts.
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DeepO
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supporting Candle'Bre
Jan 2002
time: 06:21
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quote:
Originally posted by Dominae
Well, the trick that I learned is that you cannot expect your rail network to do all your defense for you. It is, in fact, a double-edged sword. Had Lego put, say, one defender in each of their cities (and two in their capital), this may have looked very different. Makes me think the Draft ability is not so bad at all... |
Indeed. And in certain circumstances, you can use this: lay RRs where they can't be used by the opponent to aid in yuor defense, and leave tiles unroaded where they are a threat. Our spinebreaker mountains are perfect for this.
We could only land 31 units, 26 of which were tanks. 2 inf per city, while costly, would have made sure we couldn't have reached Legopolis (although the damage would still have been big), let alone Stanwix. But it would have meant they couldn't have held onto Jackson, Dye fields, and Abilene. One of those would have to be abandonded.
But all this remains talk afterwards. It might be important to analyze what happened so we can learn from it, but it's not the intention to overanalyze, and just point at mistakes. These are no mistakes, but rather choices.
DeepO
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DeepO
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supporting Candle'Bre
Jan 2002
time: 06:21
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I don't think they tried to get any more information out of us. Nor are they covering up for their 'mistake'. And in a way they are right: in case we would have had artillery, we would have landed it to aid in the defense. It's so logical to do that, that we wouldn't have done otherwise.
Only... there also is a good reason not to do it: hiding your strengths. Plus... if our 11 transports would have been destroyed (we didn't think it was possible, 10 at most with everything they had, and in hindsight that seemed to be the exact number in case either their transport or sub could have reached us), we couldn't have fetched those arties.
It does teach us a couple of things, which I don't think we have spend enough thoughts on.
- Lego has been analyzing our forces very well. They knew we had 14 artilleries, and deduced that the only place where they could have been, was on Stormia (as otherwise they would have defended, instead of being shipped around). They probably have an idea of all our troops, including settlers, tanks and the like. We shook that belief last turn.
We kind of have done the same with them (e.g. in predicting where all the surviving ships could have gone to in the first 2 turns of the war), but they might be better in this.
- it also teaches us something about assuming 'logical' things, and doing something unpredictable. They were right, if we had arties in our fleet, they would have been landed. Would they have made a huge difference? No... they might have saved us 1 or 2 units in case Lego had attacked us. That is nothing opposed to the gain of the element of surprise... sometimes, we have to think more of this. Doing unpredictable things can surprise any opponent, no matter how well he thinks things out. We're so used to play the AI, that we anticipate a certain kind of behaviour from them.
Let me give another example. In all the simulations we made regarding ship movements, we did take the whole area which a ship could have traveled to into account. However, if you want to go from point A to point B, nearly everyone will move all their mp on the fleet. Nobody is going to move 4 tiles, when the fleet can do 5. That makes it predictable: in case you are searching for a sub, look for it at precisely 3 tiles from its last position. Not 2, but 3. If you don't think it will move, look closer, as most likely it has forted.
In case you anticipate the most logical movement, and it doesn't fit, start to worry. If a sub does not move 3 tiles along the direction it was supposed to travel, it has gone elsewhere... it won't move at random with a good player, on the contrary. Anything odd, is immediately highly suspicious.
Look at the blockades around Abilene. We can expect more transports are in the neighbourhood. We also know, more ships could have reached Abilene (not all of them had to rest in Quanto, some could have gotten to Abilene 2 (or 1, the closest tile anyway). Why did this not happen? In hindsight, and given vondrack's comments, I think they lured us there... they knew that (without chaining), it was impossible to take Abilene. So, fake a blockade, make sure it is possible but costly to get through, and let 56 marines hit a wall of inf. If we didn't have spies which could investigate for us, we might have gone for it too. Now, the moment we got our thoughts on Quanto, the whole Abilene thing was dismissed as too costly, not worth the trouble (it would have given us settler blitzing as well, even if Lego also planted forest near ahhmyfoot), without spending much thought.
Was it a ruse? I don't know... I am not going to calculate everything to make sure. But it very well could have been, yes. So... check everything is the message. If Lego didn't have made a mistake of forgetting chaining, they very well could have ambushed us. I'm not sure we would have spotted it, in case we didn't had a spy and a better option to try.
DeepO
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DeepO
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supporting Candle'Bre
Jan 2002
time: 06:21
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vulture, that may be true, and in this instance I agree completely. It was not the idea of the century (nor was the 8-art chaining idea of Aeson, btw. Give the team an hour more, and someone else would have thought about it for sure). But if someone has to be mentioned as being the first, I would appreciate it that the first gets mentioned, and not the second.
I'm very thoroughly convinced of the team efforts here, but of course, in case a certain idea is mentioned first by me, I wouldn't like someone else to take the credit for it. However, in many cases, there have been simultanuous ideas. Look at Inchon/off: Inchon was Arian's, I think, Inchoff was mine. Before it was executed, those 2 ideas were forgotten at least 2 times, re-invented, adapted, and combined. Who is the inventor of the Inchon/off approach? I don't know... I keep the official credit as "GS".
Besides, I've seen in many instances the last couple of days, that in that respect the turn player is by far in the disadvantage. I may post as much posts as the rest of the team combined, but many of these are about practical things, not radical new ideas. The reason for this is quite simple: While I post a screenshot, and start chaining units, or counting units, or whatever, the rest of the team has nothing else to do but to keep on thinking on strategies. I've seen it happen a couple of times: I spend half an hour of placing text on screenshots, indicating troop strengths, veryfying that information, and posting it eventually, only to find that someone has taken that time to actually think on what could be done with those troops. A bit frustrating, you know.
I'm not bitter on this, but I wouldn't mind losing the controls, and do some more innovative thinking... which is why I'm so focused on this being a team effort, and not a personal glorification thing. This game holds a bit from all of us, so let's be proud as a team, instead of thinking on who did what.
DeepO
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Arrian
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Kneel before Grog!
Jul 2001
time: 00:21
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Heh, well I thought the transport & artillery things were brilliant. Granted, I was looking at it more as an observer than an active participant in the planning.
I for one have *never* used transports on the attack, and I have only once, as far as I remember, used any sort of ship chain - and that was yesterday afternoon, and it was with 3 units. It's something that I don't even consider normally. I didn't plan the chain in advance - but I saw the possibility and used it that once.
So I guess to me the ideas of chaining across arty, bombarding the BBs and then attacking with transports were pretty impressive 
...
Inchon was originally a very basic idea which was fleshed out via long discussion and the addition of the Inchoff landing. Like you say, by the time we executed the landings, they were had long since been team ideas, rather than individual ones. That's the whole purpose of a demogame. But people tend to like to identify certain moments or ideas that lead to greater things.
Wasn't it vulture who suggested the additional strike north of Inchon that finally broke Vox? I remember that vividly. It started as a "hey, let's try this" suggestion, and ended up being a stroke of brilliance (IMO).
-Arrian
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DeepO
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supporting Candle'Bre
Jan 2002
time: 06:21
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Chaining...well... I tend to do that a lot. I hate the waits involved in shipping units, plus in SP games it really is too powerful. the AI will never see you coming, or try to do anything against it. So you don't need protection, and by putting a well placed net around a civ, you can chain into all coastal cities with marines as long as you've got enough transports in your starting harbor. Chaining the arties was a good idea, but it came as a kind of solution to "hey... only 3 ships blocking... 12 ships to attack with... what can we use to get our chances up". A good idea without any doubt, but like I said, an idea that surfaced in the first hour after getting the save. Give it a day more, and others could have thought about it too. Aeson has done many more (minor perhaps) things which freaked me out as I never thought about them. I didn't think of this as his best idea, even if it may have had the largest impact.
I'm not sure on the Inchon one, if it wasn't you, it could very well have been vulture, Nathan, or Aeson. I'm positive on Inchoff, and also on the combination approach, in both cases it was my first mentioning. Inchoff came before Inchon, btw, but that I only found out months later... I mentioned it about a month before we were able to launch the Inchon attack, and that idea surfaced. It was also more like a "hey, look at that spot, if we settle a city there Vox is ironless". And I totally forgot about it (thought Nathan was the first), until someone linked to a post in that specific thread a couple of posts above mine.
Very strange sensation, to discover an idea was first mentioned by yourself. And I don't care whether Nathan used it (subconsciously perhaps) as basis for his idea, or if he had never seen my post and reinvented it. I do not intend to ask for any credit for it, that is not my intention in mentioning this, it's just that even if the Inchon/off strategy was brilliant, it was remodeled so many times over the weeks, that no single person should say "hey, that was me. Look what I've done!". I know one thing: in the Inchon/off case, I think Nathan should be remembered as the one who was responsible for the attack... even if the idea might not have been his, he calculated the thing perfectly (granted, Vox was some other opponent than Lego, there you could actually plan something weeks in front, and don't change your plans at all).
So you see, I consider all of this too subjective. We can agree on certain things: Inchon/off was to our knowledge never been done before, and was the perfect strategy for the situation.
Fort Stanwix, seeing that we as a team had not considered it at all, was equally brilliant. GoW could never have broken through, it basically broke their whole invasion, taking half their troops with them. Knowing that this had been planned weeks in advance (perhaps not the exact spot, but any forking spot would have been ideal) is really awesome... which makes it double sad that we were able to attack Lego from behind. Nobody is going to remember Stanwix as the same kind of brilliance as Inchon/off, as it didn't work.
These things should be, to all involved, be remembered as classic Civ tactics. And at that moment, it would be very wrong to hang one name on them... or it has to be the name of the team.
DeepO
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DeepO
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supporting Candle'Bre
Jan 2002
time: 06:21
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Let's not remind him. He has no idea, and let's keep it like that. Nobody deserves the kind of abuse we felt.
He's disappointed, but he has been on the tip of his chair since this war started. For him, I think it actually is good that the war ended so suddenly. Imagine 2 or 3 months of this, and still have Lego lose the war. Every turn, 50 bombers hitting targets in Legoland, buildings that couldn't be rebuild, citizens becoming unhappy... that kind of war brings true exhaustion. This might not be the best way, but at least it's a short pain without any suffering.
Only... in the long run, Lego would be in the advantage, of course. even if GoW can easily outproduce them.
DeepO
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12-12-2004 07:33
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