20-05-2003 16:59									#1
	Operation "Iron Or-Else" Version Alpha Avatar Enlargement: We've got the solution

I have a picture here of CDG's land and multiple entry points leading to both their Iron and the roads that connect it.

The Red line is our "6 tile border"

The Blue lines represent ways that lead to CDG's Iron

The Green lines represent ways to the roads that connect CDG's Iron.

There's a few options here on what we want to do. Lines coming from CDG's West assumes that we can go through a land bridge down south somewhere; if not then we can skip those entry routes.

The premise I'm following here is that should CDG aquire Feudalism during the begining's of our war, we don't want them upgrading to Pikes or even being able to upgrade more Warriors on the fly. They will likely be in a state of a GA when we attack or just comming out of one.

I want to send at least 8 if not 12 NM's to sack their Iron on one of these routes. The Blues ones from East and West offer our best shot. The Green ones are dependent upon there being a route there through the water. The Blue ones from the North take longer and gives CDG more time to counter.

The Green lines show a way to go for the connecting points of the roads. If we have the Western route we could cut of the road to Elucidia's Captitol in 3 turns total and the rest of their cities in the next turn if we landed two seperate stacks on NM's

I'd prefer the Blue route from the West since it only takes three moves to get to the Iron and CDG would have to attack our NM's accross a river and in jungle during those turns. That's a defense bonus of 50%. The route from the East takes 4 turns to get to the Iron and offers jungle for one turn (25%) then hills for the rest (50%).

The one North Blue route would likely take us by one of CDG's future cities. We could alter that o the Blue line that elludes it at the expense of losing the defense bonus of the river that they would attack accross from. I picked that start point for the North Blue lines because I believe we have a city planned for that spot. Plus they wouldn't see us amassing troops for our "jump off point", since we are inside of a city even though we are on the border.

Taking out their Iron will be crucial, it may mean the difference in a easy war or a drawn out affair.

This is the "Alpha" version of this plan.

See, MZ, you do not have the Monopoly on "Evil Plans"!

Last edited by BigFree on 20-05-2003 at 17:05

	20-05-2003 18:24									#2
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The light blue route would probably take us around a massive amount of continental mass (50+ travel time) so I suspect it isn't feasible.

The route going through Goldville is actually the one I would choose, because I do not think "getting the iron early" would be feasible. If we take Goldville, we have a strong launching point for future assaults. That iron is NOT going to go easily, if it goes at all. I wouldn't be surprised if there was a fortification built on that iron already. CDG isn't stupid- they know their future lies on that iron. We won't get that unless we nearly break the back of the Elucidian army, in which case the war will be over as we waltz into the capital anyhow. I would expect them to sacrifice cities before they would allow us to take that iron away.

Think about it from their perspective for a moment: How much force would YOU expend to keep your ability to keep producing immortals?

I'd put everything behind it. They have a road from their capital they can move on in 1 turn to reach the iron. We're not going to "Get the iron early".... we're going to win or lose the war on that iron hill.

Edit: In an honest attempt to contribute something useful, I'd reccomend a merc or two coupled with a few catapults if we really want to snap that iron out from under them..... though I don't remember if you can destroy improvements while troops exist on a square.

	20-05-2003 18:56									#3
	Avatar Enlargement: We've got the solution

Considering the central location of the Elucidian iron ("central" with respect to their empire), I agree with F-P, that taking that iron will be xtremely difficult. I would rather see our invasion plans focus on crippling their economy by taking or isolating their cities and pillaging improvements. If they are down to 5 cities, with mostly only the capital being worth mentioning, they can keep their iron - it will not help them much if they are able to build one or two immortals every 5-6 turns...

	20-05-2003 19:16									#4
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Don't get me wrong; I'm not saying we shouldn't go there- I'm saying we shouldn't have any illusions about the ease of what we're doing. I think going straight for their capital and ripping the heart out of Elucidia is a good idea, and I think the fight for iron hill probably SHOULD be the one that decides the war. If we take their capital it will mean the Elucidian war machine is shattered. Harassing the edge-pathetic cities will only waste time and slow us down. We can send later-produced reinforcements to take those.

	20-05-2003 21:21									#5
	Full PM-box? Change here!

Nice plans BigFree! We may have to use them before you expect (I hope not...).

Another possibility: start out at the southernmost land tile along the red line border (adjacent to a Dye), then go S-S-W-W-W. This route has two advantages. First, it avoids having to attack across a River, which is necessary in all your plans other than the dark blue one. Second, it can "trick" CDG with weird pathing. I've found that moving vertically and horizontally instead of diagonally often confuses human players (it still confuses me when the AI does it). By taking a more or less indirect route to the Iron, we could force CDG to guess at what our real objective is, since in the first two turns of our assault we would appear to be beelining for Zarigueya. The jig would be up with the third move, of course. A disadvantage to this plan is that it goes through on Hill tile before reaching the Iron, which will probably be defended and tough to take. The fewer Hill tiles we have to assault, the better.

Catapults would be great here, but will be difficult to use because of all the Jungle. And I agree that the Iron will likely be the best-defended location in their empire, making this plan very difficult to accomplish. It could be used as a counter-attack if CDG does decided to strike us (since all their forces would be towards us), but then I imagine we would want to keep all our Mercs. at home.



Dominae

	21-05-2003 08:07									#6
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IIRC, Catapults can destroy improvements on a tile if all of the units stacked there are down to one HP. However, considering that those units would be able to heal, you'd have to have x +1 catapults (where x is the number of hitpointed units) on the iron tile in order for it to even be technically possible; for it to be feasible and quick enough to matter, you'd probably need 2x. So, if they defend the Iron heavily, I doubt catapults would be worth it except as an aid to actual attacks.

	21-05-2003 08:36									#7
	Full PM-box? Change here!

Catapults are wheeled and can't cross jungle. So unless we decide to build a road to Elucidia's doorstep, we should forget we even have Catapults.

I disagree with this plan. I think a better way to deal with CDG would be to head directly south from where WB is currently placed. This will place us on the road between Elucidia and the iron, where we can threaten both and prevent them from easily moving reinforcements between the two tiles. We decide which tile we think is less heavily defended, and hit either the capital or the iron with all of our units at once. Odds are greatly in our favor that this will cripple them. This plan prevents us having to go through hills (aside from the iron itself) and allows us to threaten two vital targets at once. We split their army, and destroy it piecemeal. If either their capital or the iron falls, then they are crippled. They'll be eliminated as a threat and they lose half of their standing army. Game over.

	21-05-2003 09:43									#8
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Trip, going after their Iron and not taking it out wont be a loss for us in terms of units. The numbers are on our side for this plan. We take some offensive units along with the NM's and use them to counter attack any left over Immortals they try to attack us with.

With a defense bonus of 50% the odds of a Vet Immortal against a Vet NM is 57% in the NM's favor. If we have a few Elite's like we should (and I highly doubt that CDG will have any because they are not smart enough to train them), then our adavntage increases to 70%. So, since we know we will have more units than they will, we would win this war of attrition, especially if we have some unit to counter-attack with on the injured immortals that do eek out a win against our NM's.

Keep in mind that while "Operation Iron Or-Else" seems to be just about the Iron and trying to take it from CDG; it actaully cause them to foucus on our NM's inside their Territory while we bring the crux of our invasion force from the North. The timing would be that our Invasion force crosses the border on the same turn that our NM's and accompanying forces land on the shores of CDG or comes from our Borders. That is, we would have two or three sepreate stacks of units heading for them at different points.

One stack woiuld go where you have already said; in between their Capitol and "GoldVille." The other stack of mostly NM's heads towards their Iron. We can either take the defense bonus of 50% in the hills or the 25% + 25% from the jungle and the river. I wouldn't decide that until we had too; depending on what we see if we launch soley from the North.

	21-05-2003 10:05									#9
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That is a war plan not an Evil Plan.

I still have a monopoly on Evil Plans regarding alliances/backstabbing/etc. despite Vondrack's attempts at ripping me off

As for my coments, I honestly doubt CDG will have that hill out on the open.

Perhaps a more "distraciting" plan would be to give CDG the impression we are preparing an assualt on the hill when we will instead concentrate on pillaging or city-bashing. That might force them to reinforce the hill instead of other parts of their empire which they would leave vulnerable. Ha! You didn't think I hadn't read Sun Tzu now did you!

	21-05-2003 21:10									#10
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BF, the problem with that plan is that it splits our forces. The idea is to get them to split their forces so we will have the numeric advantage, not the other way around. How will sending a seperate stack of units towards their iron from a different direction help us? They will have all of their units on the iron and in their city, and they will simply attack our main stack which will be between the two, and ignore any other stacks. Without full NM support, their Immortals could reach our Swordsmen, jeopardizing the offensive. If we focus our entire army in one stack, they can't take it out without the threat of us taking them out the next turn. As long as we remain on that tile, they have to split their army, and we can pick and choose how to deal with them. Splitting our stack gives them the advantage.

	21-05-2003 22:57									#11
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If the Gold Hill is predicted to become CDG's next city site, why don't we just plant a warrior there to deny them that place to build. Why give them the opportunity to build in a location that will make the city difficult to take?

Or does the settlement agreement prohibit actions such as this?

	22-05-2003 01:03									#12
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The border agreement we are going to agree to, prohibits that action ruby_maser.

Trip, the reason we send more than one stack is to confuse CDG, to divide their forces. If you did not catch it, our NM's will have a number's advantage in terms of strength(defensively) compared to their Immortals. I'd welcome them to come after our NM's with Immortals in this instance, we shall win the area of attrition if they choose to do so. We know we will have more units than them, but if they throw a weaker offense at a stonger defense in terms of one unit against one unit; we will have won the war.

The stack I'd suggest to send towards CDG's iron will be roughly 10-12 NM's with 6 Swords. The second stack would be most offensive units with maybe 6 NM's and 14-16 Swords.

	22-05-2003 04:02									#13
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quote: Originally posted by ruby_maser If the Gold Hill is predicted to become CDG's next city site, why don't we just plant a warrior there to deny them that place to build. Why give them the opportunity to build in a location that will make the city difficult to take? Or does the settlement agreement prohibit actions such as this?

Not such a bad idea...
We move when morris moves.