18-11-2004 06:31									#1
	The War: 1265AD Increase the size of your Attachments

Battle Report from DeepO/GS:

quote: Originally posted by DeepO Battle Report Turn 243: 1265 AD - DD attacks 3/5 BB Legopolis. DD sinks. BB 2/5. - DD attacks 4/5 DD At Abilene 4411 (forgot to note the name). Defensive bombardment misses. 2/4 DD. - DD attacks 2/4 DD Myrmidon. DD sinks, Myrmidon 2/4 - 3/4 DD attacks 2/4 DD Myrmidon. DD 3/4. - 3/4 DD stumbles into (reg or 3/4?) sub at Abilene 47. DD 2/4. - 3/4 DD stumbles into sub at Abilene 411111111. DD destroyed. - 4/5 DD attacks sub at Abilene 411111111. DD 1/5. Total: 7 battles, 3 lost. We lost 3 DD, Lego lost 2 DD and 2 Subs. DeepO

	18-11-2004 06:43									#2
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First we can claim success. GS could not use their Marines to take any cities. They are not threatening multiple cities. And they have no terrain bonuses. I would say that we have done great

Now let us see how we do on the GoW Eastern Front.

	18-11-2004 06:54									#3
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I'm somewhat confused about those marines in the north. What's the deal? They can't have any mech infs or tanks in that stack since marines only have 6 defense, IIRC. They might have settlers, but that's not going to get 1-move marines to a city.

Hmm... if they do have at least 1 settler with the stack, perhaps they plan to simply found a city on the coast and re-load them in to transports, with their move intact, should the stack survive. In short, they figure the marines are safer for the turn on land than they are packed in to transports. If this is the case (lots of marines plus some settlers in that stack) then we need to either eliminate this stack or eliminate their transports to be safe from this stack for the turn.

We'll have to see how crackable that southern stack is. Those Mech Infs look fierce.

	18-11-2004 07:12									#4
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I think that is a good assesment concerning the marines. It seems to be the only logical explaination.

	18-11-2004 08:04									#5
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Legopolis the chicken has landed.....

	18-11-2004 14:11									#6
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A few things that crossed my mind after a quick look on the screenshot:

- they probably landed the marines there for IMHO 3 main reasons: 1. They wanted to distract some of our units, keeping them away from the main stack; 2. They didn't want to slow down the main stack with 1 movers; 3. They felt unsafe to leave them on the sea ( a big for our navy)
Of course, 4. is what Kloreep says

- big question: do we want to build a fort city directly East from the GS stack? They woulnd't be able to build their own fort city, but we would have to defend two cities next turn. It is true though that one of them is a metro, and the other one would be on a hill.

- we will have to count the transports and the marines. It could be that they landed some/most of marines to make us feel safe from the sea, but they moved some transports away from the battlefield, trying to sneak in behind our lines. What Kloreep says could also be an idea (and a good one): found a city, load the marines and in the same turn attack from the sea.

- the fact that they didn't attack any city might be a sign that they have no spy with us, and they were afraid to throw all the marines against an elusive target. But it could also mean that they have a spy, investigated the cities and realized that there is no point to attack them.

- the more we make them to maneveur the better for us: we have 60 arties and only 2 more turns until radar towers.

	18-11-2004 15:41									#7
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Anyone else noticed 'last turns massacare'. Funny, what did this war open with? I see some opportunities for propaganda .....

	18-11-2004 16:43									#8
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Well, fortunately it was a massacre, was it not ?
And I wish for many more such massacres to come

	18-11-2004 23:42									#9
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Yeah, I do not particularly mind massacres... I mean, those which we massacre our enemies in...

Anyway - I posted here in the morning, but the post is gone... nothing really important - just that I believe the situation could be worse than this. The uberstack directly threatens only Abilene , Q.M. can be protected simply by cutting roads.

Those marines... hm, no idea what good they are to GS there...

We'll see what GoW comes up with...

	25-11-2004 01:49									#10
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Re: GoW bombing report.

Ouch.

Just ouch.

This is how we lose the war... we're on the defensive in the era of flight.

If we can't at least get things back in to the water where their carriers will be in danger, we're goners. We need to win this upcoming battle so we can get back in to the air and sea.

	25-11-2004 02:54									#11
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Agreed. We are losing it in the air. We really need some fighters. Badly.

	28-11-2004 02:20									#12
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While I agree that we need to do something about this terrible bombardment, it's our artillery, tanks, and infantry that must buy us time to build some fighter defenses...

Thanks to all that extra time (we haven't seen a fresh save in two weeks), various wild ideas have crossed my mind. But this one is good, I believe.

Inspired by Kloreep's remark in the chatroom some time ago, I experimented a bit with the algorithm used to determine the "top defender" in a stack. Results obtained lead me to believe that it's very simple: whichever unit has the best odds to survive the attack, will defend.

Now, this may not sound all that new, but...

a 4/4 tank is a better defender than a 3/4 infantry

Which brings me to my idea... GoW's stack that landed presumably between Jackson and Dye Fields, will have a handful of infantry and than a shitload of tanks.

What about this: we use our artillery to knock at least 1hp off every infantry in that stack - 62 arty pieces should be enough for the job. Then, GoW tanks will become top defenders - and we send our tanks in. A 4/4 tank kills a 4/4 tank in 79.2% cases (and does not allow it to withdraw). That's 4 out of 5. Considering we will have about 35 tanks to attack with, we might be able to destroy around 25-30 GoW tanks, leaving them with only slightly over 20 fresh tanks to threaten our cities with (and we hopefully bomb these down, so that they are not 4/4).

This would significantly reduce our needs for defenders on the East Coast - allowing us to stuff Abilene with a lot of infantries, hopefully fending off GS' assault.

And why attack GoW? Well, several reasons - only infantries to crack through (using our arty)... once an infantry loses an hp, it lets a 4/4 tank defend. Second, their tanks threaten two cities of ours, so by killing one GoW tank, we are actually freeing two infantries of ours for duties elsewhere. Third, they have less tanks than GS, so we should be able to leave them with a severely reduced tank forces...

...plus... they piss me off with that aerial bombardment...

What do you think?

	28-11-2004 03:02									#13
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Sounds good to me.

Also, remember that Tanks have Blitz. So tanks that only suffer 1, or no, HP damage could attack again. Perhaps we could actually wipe out their stack? (Or at least destroy & severely damage the tanks in it.)

	29-11-2004 16:10									#14
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I have re-checked the numbers and here is a quick run-down:

An attacking 4/4 tank has...

...38.5% chances to kill a 4/4 mechanized infantry
...55.2% chances to kill a 3/4 mechanized infantry
...73.9% chances to kill a 2/4 mechanized infantry
...90.7% chances to kill a 1/4 mechanized infantry

...69.6% chances to kill a 4/4 infantry
...81.0% chances to kill a 3/4 infantry
...90.7% chances to kill a 2/4 infantry
...97.2% chances to kill a 1/4 infantry

...79.2% chances to kill a 4/4 tank
...87.8% chances to kill a 3/4 tank
...94.2% chances to kill a 2/4 tank
...98.4% chances to kill a 1/4 tank

Which means that the top defender in a mixed stack should be chosen in the following order:

38.5% -> 4/4 mechanized infantry
55.2% -> 3/4 mechanized infantry
69.6% -> 4/4 infantry
73.9% -> 2/4 mechanized infantry
79.2% -> 4/4 tank
81.0% -> 3/4 infantry
87.8% -> 3/4 tank
90.7% -> 1/4 mechanized infantry or 2/4 infantry
94.2% -> 2/4 tank
97.2% -> 1/4 infantry
98.4% -> 1/4 tank

Cracking through an MI escort means bringing all units down to their last hitpoint. OTOH, cracking through an infantry escort means taking a single hitpoint off of every unit.

I have verified the assumptions for tanks and infantries using a custom-made scenario. If I find some time, I will check the MI bit, too.

	30-11-2004 11:10									#15
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Could not resist at least opening the save, and do the F1 trick.

- Legopolis at 60spt. It would probably be best to shortrush an explorer for 160g and switch to a fighter.

- GoW landed S-SE of Jackson. Their fleets seem to only threaten Jackson and Dye Fields (from what I can tell from the city screens).

More aften coming back home.

	30-11-2004 23:57									#16
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Opening sequence including the F1 trick phase posted in the Chronicle entry. The only thing I did was I rushed a vet fighter in Legopolis (120g), as it seemed to be the only meaningful thing to do.

Here is the Western Theater situation:



The marine stack NW-NW of Quanto Mechanico is just 8 full-health vet (4/4) marines. IMHO, it can be safely ignored, as there is no way it could attack anything valuable next turn.

The stack of doom N-NW of Abilene is the core of GS invasion army:



Someone check it, please, but I have counted the following numbers:

4 workers
1 settler
2 explorers
12 mechanized infantries
22 infantries
57 tanks
8 marines
==================
106 units total

I believe the best we can do is to cut all roads around this stack (to prevent extreme combat settling) and stuff as many defenders into Abilene as possible.

Note, please, that GS did a smart thing - they left most of their marines aboard (must be the fleet led by the carrier, W-W-SW of Abilene), threatening directly or indirectly Q.M., Abilene, and Tipperary. Our healthy ships are too far to attack them (that's why they kept attacking with their DDs until our ships were down to 1/x this turn).

They could use these marines to take e.g. Tipperary and use a transport chain to move some of their landed tanks to somewhere else. We have to keep that in mind - possibly either heavily defending Tipperary or even disbanding it.

There are things to do here, but I believe that we should first take care of the situation in the East (to follow in a separate post).

	01-12-2004 00:16									#17
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The freaking stacks are unbelievable when you scroll through them.

I counted the GoW stack as follows:
- 1 settler
- 42 infantries
- 16 tanks
- 27 artileries
- 34 marines

Interestingly enough, they landed most of their marines, and only a handfull of tanks, which makes me believe that they want to build a city first and then unload everything in it next turn.

We would be able to counter this building a fort-city.

GoW has only a max. nr of 8 marines left on the sea (they have a total nr of 42) so we should be able to defend Jackson and Dye Fields easily, if we manage to kill their landed tanks.

Unless I'm missing something, I find that GoW used a very poor strategy. Hmm, let's think it over again, maybe there is some hidden danger.

Edit: I counted the GS forces as well. The result matches the nr. given by Radek.

Last edited by Tiberius on 01-12-2004 at 00:34

	01-12-2004 00:19									#18
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Here is the Eastern Theater situation:



The stack of doom N-NW of Abilene is the core of GoW invasion army:



I have counted the following numbers (check it, please):

1 settler
42 infantries
27 artillery
16 tanks
34 marines
==================
120 units total

I am totally puzzled by the composition of this landing force. I may be missing some diabolical plan of theirs, but at the moment, I believe GoW made a colossal mistake. They landed all but 9 their marines! Why?! And they only landed 16 tanks!

This sounds like an ideal situation for our counter-fort strategy. 42 infantries we should be able to crack through with our artillery. It's very likely we will use up all of them, but it should be enough. Once their tanks start defending, we send in the steel beasts. The GoW arty will lower the 80% odds of our tanks, but it's still the best we will be able to get. If we (and I believe this should be doable) cripple their tank forces, we simply build a fort SW of the landing beach, preventing them from building their own fort. Their invasion forces will be trapped on land, unable to attack pretty much anything (surviving tanks will most probably be damaged, other units will be out of striking range).

We will only have to make sure to defend our anti-fort heavily, to keep it at all costs. But that should again be doable.

I have to go for about an hour now, but I will post a more detailed plan of our counter-attack then. Well, basically, it's easy... shell all their infantries, expose the tanks, send in our tanks, kill/cripple theirs. Depending on the situation, we might wish to keep attacking even after finishing with their tanks, since our tanks will have very good chances even against the bombed-down infantries... but I will still post a detailed plan first, since we have to think twice about where to attack from...

	01-12-2004 00:41									#19
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57 tanks is bad news for us in Abilene. I agree we can't do much for the moment besides cutting the roads around them. (And we'll have to get down to the bare bones. That's 8 units tied up with pillaging. We at least have some explorers, right?)

The GoW stack should be maintainable so long as we build and stuff a counter-fort. If we can take out those tanks, we can leave Jackson and Dye Fields lightly defended. We'll be without protection of walls or city size inside that fort, though. We'll have to take in to account the bombers and artillery, and after that we'll need to make do with 12.5 strength infantries. Not pretty.

	01-12-2004 00:51									#20
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Another thought: 4 workers is enough to road & rail a tile in one turn. So:

GS moves the worker stack to a tile on their next turn, founds the city, and rushes a harbor/airport to get iron and coal.

Next turn, the workers road & rail, and they break out with combat settlers.

We better end this turn able to take on half the GS stack next turn (either nabbing the workers or taking their city). Otherwise, short-term isolation won't do anything but delay the inevitable.

I really hope we can take out the GoW stack. If not, I don't hold out much hope for turning back this invasion.

	01-12-2004 01:19									#21
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One more thing GS can do next turn: move the stack one tile to the east and threaten 3 cities at once.
They probably don't know right now where Ahhmyfoot is, but they have explorers so they can find out.

What are they doing with those marines there is a total mistery to me. But we have to destroy the transport anyway. Actually we can safely sink 2 transports, and even two more if we risk sending in 3x 2/4 BBs.
This is maybe of less importance, but I think denying GS the capability to transport fresh troops to our continent is vital, if we survive the first assault.

Last edited by Tiberius on 01-12-2004 at 01:27

	01-12-2004 01:27									#22
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Well, if we see them doing this (moving workers), we simply pillage more tiles. It will cost us, but we will still be able to delay them. Fortunately, they can't do it "as a surprise". We will be able to see what they are planning and respond accordingly.

	01-12-2004 01:27									#23
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Dealing with the GoW stack first I'm a little puzzled by their landing strategy, also... but, if they made a mistake, let us capitalize on it as best we can!

As for GS... I think K is right; we need to be able to deal with them immediately next turn. In the meantime, let's get those roads cut however we can...

	01-12-2004 02:31									#24
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OK, unit summaries first:

Our (military) units as of this turn:

2 settlers
17 workers
2 explorers (only )
3 horsemen
12 cavalry
94 infantry (all vets)
38 tanks (36 vets + 2 regs)
62 artillery

6 ironclads
15 transports
1 carrier
8 submarines
8 destroyers
8 battleships
2 fighters
3 bombers

GS (military) units as of this turn:

7 settlers (1 landed)
24 workers (4 landed)
3 explorers (2 landed)
55 marines (8+8 landed, 39 still out at sea)
20 riflemen
25 infantry (22 landed)
68 tanks (57 landed)
34 mechanized infantry (12 landed)
14 artillery
2 galleys
22 transports (21 visible to us)
2 carriers (both visible to us)
7 destroyers (5 visible to us: 1/4, 2/4, 3/4, 2x4/4)
2 fighters

GoW (military) units as of this turn:

5 settlers (1 landed)
22 workers
43 marines (34 landed, 9 still out at sea)
11 cavalry
58 infantry (42 landed)
52 tank (16 landed)
27 artillery (all of them landed)
22 transports (20 visible to us)
4 carriers (3 visible to us, E-E-SE-SE-SE of Jackson)
20 destroyers (14 visible to us)
1 fighter
19 bombers
4 riders

Last edited by vondrack on 01-12-2004 at 02:50

	01-12-2004 03:22									#25
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To find out what we can use for our counterattack, let's start with determining what we will have to defend next turn.

Jackson - exposed to up to 9 marines and whatever is left of the landed GoW tanks. Can be bombed by up to 15 GoW bombers. Estimate: 10 infantries (plus some damaged tanks?).

Dye Fields - same as Jackson, but lower defenses. Estimate: 15 infantries.

Counter-Fort - whatever is left of the GoW SoD. That's going to be a load of (mostly full-health) marines, a lot of damaged infantries (2/4-3/4), and few damaged tanks. The Counter-Fort defenses may be supported by artillery to make it difficult for the GoW units to score kills. OTOH, we need to consider the damage done by GoW bombers (12 of them, it seems - maximum of 15, if the fourth carrier makes an appearance). You basically need 2 marines to have a slightly over 50% chances to kill a fortified 4/4 infantry (considering that our defense bombardment succeeds in 50% cases) . Estimate: 20 infantry plus maybe some tanks and a handful of artillery.

Abilene - exposed to 57 tanks and 12 mechanized infantries. We will be able to make Abilene pretty much unaccesible via water, since we have the new 4/4 DD in Q.M., three 4/4 transports, three 1/x DDs (Castor, Pollux, Romulus), and one 2/4 BB (Panama) within the reach - that's 8 vessels to block two tiles. GS only has one 3/4, one 2/4, and one 1/4 DD to try breaking through - the rest of their vessels are transports and carriers (attack 1).

2 vet tanks have 50%+ chances (71.4% actually) to kill a defending infantry. 2 vet MIs have slightly over 50% chances to kill a defending infantry. So we will need like 2/3 of the attackers to be safe. (57+12)*2/3=46 infantries.

Quanto Mechanico is out of reach of any GS land unit and can be made unaccesible via water by stuffing two or three 4/x BBs of ours just W of the city. Can be left defenseless.

Tipperary - exposed to up to 39 marines. If we add up the infantries needed to safely keep our major cities, it's obvious that we will not be able to properly garrison Tipperary. We can either disband it (after selling all its improvements) or leave it defended with just one token infantry, cutting all roads to it - hoping GS will miss this easy target (if not, they will take it, but will be unable to break out of the city anyway). Not sure which one is better. I would probably go for hoping they will miss it, leaving only very light defenses there and cutting roads.

So... to sum things up: if we put up with leaving Tipperary pretty much up for grab, we should be reasonably fine, as 10+15+20+46=91 infantries (and we have 94 of them).

Means that more or less all our tanks and all our artillery can be used to deal a major blow to the landed GoW units.

And before I proceed to the strike planning, let's make a summary of our pillaging needs:

2+2+2+3=9 pillagers to cut the GS SoD
(2+2+2=6 pillagers to cut Tipperary)

That's 15 pillagers - we have 12 cavalry, 3 horses (can be used to cut the tiles right next to Abilene), and 2 explorers. That's 17, which is enough to cover our needs for this turn.

	01-12-2004 04:12									#26
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I think we'll have to bite the bullet on Tipperary and focus our defenses as you've planned.

	01-12-2004 05:24									#27
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Don't forget that we can also bomb the GoW stack with out battleships from Jackson. That's two more possible extra hits.
Or maybe it'd be better to go out, kill 2 DDs, and go back in Jackson??

Plus, those tanks that attacked once and didn't suffer more than one HP damage, can attack again once that the artillery cover is gone.

I think we have good chances to completely wipe out the GoW tank brigade and maybe even some infantries. Attacking GoW infantries really depends on how many tanks we want to keep undamaged to strenghten our defences (that if our initial attacks go well, that is).

We should also keep some workers on dye tiles, just in case. GoW might consider them worth for bombing.

	01-12-2004 05:49									#28
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I have been thinking. I think, like you said vondrack, that GOW is going to build a city there and then next turn unload all their tanks in the city. I think that they will try to use settlers to get to Legopolis next turn and take it. That is only thing that makes any sense to me. What do you guys think?
Also is there any way to stop them?

	01-12-2004 06:13									#29
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It would take 6 units to isolate Tipperary. I believe we only need 4 to isolate the GS stack if we stick to our guns in Abilene.

We have 17 units that aren't particularly valuable in combat. Some of those are disbands this turn in order to fuel production, I'm sure, but 10 units should be acceptable.

However, will this really save Tipperary? I'm sure they'll see we've cut off the city. I think they'll know what that means even if they don't/can't investigate the city. And any Tanks they can land in the city after taking it can immediately move; if there is no city there, units are confined to the shore for the time being.

I'm leaning toward abandoning Tipperary, since we obviously cannot defend it.

	01-12-2004 06:23									#30
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quote: Originally posted by Jack_www I have been thinking. I think, like you said vondrack, that GOW is going to build a city there and then next turn unload all their tanks in the city. I think that they will try to use settlers to get to Legopolis next turn and take it. That is only thing that makes any sense to me. What do you guys think? Also is there any way to stop them?

Yes, there is. If we can cripple their stack in terms of attacking power (i.e. kill or heavily damage all their tanks - 16 of them), we can build our own temporary counter-fort next to the tile they have landed on - GoW will then be unable to build their coastal fort city (it's not possible to build a city right next to an existing city, no matter whether yours or not).

If we can hold that fort city (a matter of having defenses enough), they will be trapped. At least for one turn (until they reload those marines into the transports again). But even one turn would be golden.