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Master Zen
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of naughty
Jan 2003
time: 23:29
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yeah, I like navies and bombers, and tanks, and....
I would like to emphaze the importants of navies to all you landlubbers out there. Navies give the land forces an amazing new strategic dimention, as you always get the initiative in terms of where you want to to fight. If your enemy also has their resources close to the coast then this gives added advantage of a crippling early strike.
Discussing this in the chat, we feel that a stonghold on another continent is vital in the long run, esperically since RR's will pretty much make any invasion of an other continent a complete suicide against a human opponent.
Therefore, I think that eventually once we have contact with the other continent's civs, that we eventually have to get involved in a conflict, in a way which will enable us to grab on to a piece of land and then hold on to it. Considering that until Motorized Transport, the defense get's constantly better, we could presumably be in a position to defend such space.
Now the second route is to simply own our continent and act as the balance of power between the other, that is prevent one civ from becoming overly dominant (we would be playing Britain in history). Should, however, the other 4 civs decide to gang up on us then...
NAVAL POWER
For defensive purposes, naval power is a must. Remember that from 1776 to 1941 the United States based its own security on the sea while having negligable land forces in times of peace. Britain did a similar feat from the time of the defeat of the Spanish Armada in the 16th Century up until WW2 also, using its small but effective army for striking the enemy's weak points or supporting a larger continental power against a rampagaing hegemon, be it Louis XIV, Napoleon, the Kaiser and Hitler.
Unless we become incredibly powerful, we will not be able to maintain supremacy as both a land power and a naval power, we cannot be both. I suggest we be the naval power.
I leave with a quote:
From time immemorial, the purpose of a navy has been to influence, and sometimes decide, issues on land. This was so with the Greeks of antiquity; the Romans, who created a navy to defeat Carthage; the Spanish, whose armada tried and failed to conquer England; and, most eminently, in the Atlantic and Pacific during two world wars. The sea has always given man inexpensive transport and ease of communication over long distances. It has also provided concealment, because being over the horizon meant being out of sight and effectively beyond reach. The sea has supplied mobility, capability, and support throughout Western history and those failing in the sea-power test - notably Alexander, Napoleon and Hitler - also failed the longevity one.
Edward L. Beach, in Keepers of the Sea
* Master Zen puts on his Admiral cap and heads of to sea in our mighty galley looking for adventures abroad...
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Fried-Psitalon
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Not just another pretty face.
Dec 2002
time: 00:29
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2050? Screw that, we can cheese-rush the Spaceship before that.
If we HAVE to take the risk of going for it: You have the appropriate number of cities begin work on an ICBM, and then finish the Apollo Project as the cities near completion of ICBMs, switch all your cities over to the SS components, and dodge nukes until the bloody thing finishes a few turns later.
Ideally, you have the hardest components being built in your best cities and the easier components in the weaker ones, so that the entire thing will finish almost simultaneously- this is no small feat, but our number crunching is certainly up to the task. If done right, you could set this up such that no one else would be able to catch you. I've done a sloppier version of this in "Future Start" MP games and it works very, very well.
It IS still a bit risky, though, since flying nukes or productive neighbors can give you a run for it.
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Dominae
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Artillery (with Infantry defense, of course).
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Dominae
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quote:
Originally posted by Theseus
Trench warfare? Dom, you really think so? Dear God, the massive number of units...
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As we know from SP, bombardment is, ah, really powerful. Either ripping up an enemy's tile improvements or flattening their cities, the ability to do damage without getting hit back breaks the game (as it was meant to be played).
I'll go into the details as the Industrial Age looms closer (or before, if we want to upgrade Cannon, although that's really expensive). For now, let me say two things about this plan:
1. If we implement this and another team does not (i.e. we end up with many many more pieces of Artillery than our enemy), it's game over for that team, barring any diplomatic interference.
2. Yes, it requires a lot of units, and the war will be bloody, and yet it is much more likely to lead us to victory than Tanks. Can you imagine the crazy defenses that will be set up by the time Tanks roll around (consider that Tanks cannot be upgraded to)? Tanks simply do not cut through smart human opponents like they do the silly AI. If we want to win by military conquest, our chances are either in the Medieval Age, or in the Industrial Age with Artillery. Mind you, I have no experience with the Modern Age.
3. This is all assuming that we need to go to war in order to win. I think this is a fair assumption, however; we will not cleanse our continent (heh-heh) before the Industrial. If our "production advantage" is still around at the end of the Medieval Ages, I can definitely see Artillery and Railroads securing our continent. After that, who knows?
Ok, sorry, that's three things. 
Dominae
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Dominae
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quote:
Originally posted by Theseus
Should we play an AU (or private) game centered on massive, I mean MASSIVE inter-continental invasions?
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Yes! How about : a Large Archipelago game (everything else standard) where you can only attack the most powerful AI civ you have contact with. The map would be set up in such a way as expansion to other islands would be necessary, forcing the human player into massive inter-continential invasions. Sound about right?
quote:
Or even multiple tests, via PBEM scenarios (i.e., human opponents)?
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I'm not sure how to set this up...Just give both sides (or all players) a bunch of units?
quote:
Knights, Cavs, Infantry / Arty?
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Oh my!
Dominae
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Nuclear Winter
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I´d sugest making PBm tests, one side is defending his island, he has units covering every shore, and maybe give the defender massive amount s of artilery, and the attacker the greater navy and marines and tanks, then invert the units to teh attacker/defender, to test multiple hypothesis...
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Master Zen
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of naughty
Jan 2003
time: 23:29
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Before you guys start getting too excited about massive trench warfare, just one little teeny weeny detail:
If they have railroads, we will be VERY hard pressed. Even with less arty, they can sneak in 2-tiles away and batter our stack. Since they have RRs and we move 1 tile, they can move back, attack again, slowly withering away a stack no matter how huge it is with less troops. If we don't have Battlefield Medicine.... forgeeeeddddaboudit!!!
Here's how i'd do it if I were them:
1) Poly lands a huge massive stack of inf/arty/cavs
2) I assemble a not-so-huge stack of inf/arty with some backup cavs.
3) Poly stack moves 1 space.
4) Our stack takes position 2 tiles away and lets loose a barrage of arty. Infantry is fortified in case enemy Cav attacks. As we know, arty against inf in open terrain is deadly effective
5) Poly has 2 options, retreat, advance or stay. Since they're in our borders, whatever they do, they'll still be in range of our artillery. If they move adjacent to our stack, we simply move back on a same road/RR and let loose a barrage again next turn and re-fortify the infs.
6) Poly's stack slowly withers. Once their infs are at 1 hp left, we bring in the cav and take out their stack. Wow!! look at all those free artilleries!!! 
Attacking a human opponent with any decent industrial capacity, with artillery, is suicide and I strongly recommend against it. A human is not the AI who never uses artilllery in support of offensives. We would be in a nasty surprise to expect the human opponent to do the same.
If we get a foothole in the other continent we must do it BEFORE RR, or hopefully in a spot which is yet uncolonized by then. Once they get RRs our chance of getting at them is out.
However, the other big point is that if we can control our own continent before RR and they still haven't manged to leave 1 dominant civ, it is very likely that we can win by peaceful means as neither will be able to take each other out, nor us for that matter... and again, that when
NAVIES!!!!
come to play. With a mighty navy by the time RR rolls around, controling our continent, and with the other 4 civs still alive in the other, victory is ours.
Last edited by Master Zen on 23-06-2003 at 11:39
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Dominae
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Master Zen, I think you've misunderstood what's been going on in this thread.
I proposed that Artillery would be the key to securing our continent. I'm still convinced of this. This leaves the question of "how do we win?" after the continent is secure. Theseus proposed that intercontinental invasions might work. Obviously Artillery would not be as strong with this as it was previously (although I'm not as pessimistic as you are: think about unloading, bombarding the hell out of your surroundings, then getting back onto ships to start the whole thing over again somewhere else). In any case, the problem is not bombardment per se, but the difficulty of intercontinental invasions in general. The idea of using Artillery "for the win" includes my assumption that once we clear our continent, we're in the clear (pun!) for the win.
It is very difficult to defend against bombardment without bombardment units of your own, and therefore it all comes down to either: 1) a production advantage for one side, or 2) using Artillery as a central strategy while the opponent discounts its potential. Hopefully both will be at work in our game.
Dominae
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Dominae
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quote:
Originally posted by Master Zen
Attacking a human opponent with any decent industrial capacity, with artillery, is suicide and I strongly recommend against it.
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I strongly believe this is false. To be true, the above statement needs to be qualifed with: "Performing an intercontinental invasion against a human opponent...". It's a whole different story if we're fighting along a border within our home continent. Of course, this is the same point I've stated above, but I thought I would make it again for fun. 
Consider:
A stack of Artillery blasts every tile improvement within a radius of two tiles. How does the enemy counter? Only Cavalry can penetrate the Road-less and Railroad-less perimiter; enemy Artillery can no longer get close enough, and Infantry would have to step out into the open. But Cavalry would be running into Infantry defenders if they were to try and make a go for the Artillery stack.
XAXXE
X - Bombarded tiles
A - Apolyton Artillery
E - Enemy Artillery
E cannot reach A.
Now, what to do next? Well, Workers come in and establish a Railroad line to get those Artillery out of there. The turn after that, Infantry move forward one tile, preferably along the compass directions, and the stack of Workers follow. The enemy counter-attacks, and hopefully the Infantry do not get overwhelmed. Then the Workers connect the tile with Railraod, the Artillery move in and we continue the tile destruction game.
Now this is a worst-case scenario, the idea being that, even with its faults, it basically works. Once you start tearing up improvements, the enemy has a tough time of fighting back. The best-case scenario is that we can leap-frog our Artillery between enemy cities, and that we've got about twice as many pieces as they do. As I said, if they're not expecting it, they will be hard-pressed to find an efficient answer.
Anyway, there's more to say on this, but you get the basic idea. The "Railroad empires are impregnable" argument is invalid, IMO: all Railroads do is make the game even more about attrition. If we can get the upper hand in that war, our enemies will fall.
Dominae
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Master Zen
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of naughty
Jan 2003
time: 23:29
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quote:
Originally posted by Dominae
Master Zen, I think you've misunderstood what's been going on in this thread.
I proposed that Artillery would be the key to securing our continent. I'm still convinced of this.
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So am I. RRs and arty and no one will dare invade us. But that same advantage for us, is an advantage to them if we ever plan an intercontinental invasion.
quote:
This leaves the question of "how do we win?" after the continent is secure. Theseus proposed that intercontinental invasions might work. Obviously Artillery would not be as strong with this as it was previously (although I'm not as pessimistic as you are: think about unloading, bombarding the hell out of your surroundings, then getting back onto ships to start the whole thing over again somewhere else).
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Each unload turn would leave the stack totally vulnerable to an enemy arty attack with RRs. I see how this might work once but not repeatedly considering that no matter where we land, their RRs will make it very easy for them to move the bulk of their army against our stacks.
quote:
In any case, the problem is not bombardment per se, but the difficulty of intercontinental invasions in general. The idea of using Artillery "for the win" includes my assumption that once we clear our continent, we're in the clear (pun!) for the win.
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Assuming also that there is a rough balance of power in the other continent with at least 3 civs remaining, then I totally agree that there's pretty much no way they can ever out-do us (or invade us if we have a good navy)
quote:
It is very difficult to defend against bombardment without bombardment units of your own, and therefore it all comes down to either: 1) a production advantage for one side, or 2) using Artillery as a central strategy while the opponent discounts its potential. Hopefully both will be at work in our game.
Dominae |
1) yes, but we'd need a huge manufacturing capacity to do this. They could probably do a successful defense even with 1/2 - 2/3 of our stack's strength. If you also consider that they other continental civs wil likely ally with them to take us out that mean's we will be facing an alliance which is likely to out-do us. 1-1 odds, hell even 1.5 - 1 are not good on attack in Civ3 in the pre-tank industrial age, much less in MP.
2) i'd think it rather naive to assume the other civs will discount artillery's use in this type of warfare especially considering two of those teams have very likely the best players of their respective countries and another team happens to be the designers of the game which know the game mechanics more than we do.
My point, in summary, is that I think if we have a foothold on another contient it should be done BEFORE RRs or perhaps against a pathetically weak civ (which will of course beg the question why one its neighbors didn't take it out first). Honestly, I'd be confident that should the 4 (or even 3) civs of the other contient survive by the time we take out ours, victory is ours just by using our armies (and navies) for defense.
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Dominae
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Sorry, you've missed it again, Master Zen! I'm not making any claims about intercontinental invasions; I flat-out assume that against human opponents, they're next to impossible!
I am claiming quite a lot concerning our own continent, however. With a minor production advantage and a focus on Artillery, we can start a war of attrition that will surely see us the victors in the end.
By the way, bringing in other factors, like the possibility that other teams will gang up on us, or that we'll need a production advantage, is irrelevant to this discussion. These things are true right now, so why will they make the Artillery idea unfeasible in the Industrial Age? Just because we have crafty opponents in this game does not mean we should stay home and twiddle our thumbs.
Dominae
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Dominae
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After re-reading your post, it seems like we're not disagreeing as much as I thought we were.
You're planning for after we secure our continent, I'm planning for how we're to go about doing that in the first place.
One point we might disagree on: you believe our resources are much better spent on a strong navy, while I believe we should go for Artillery instead. If you're talking about a "huge manufacturing capacity", surely it's building boats pre-Industrialization rather than Artillery once our Factories are in place. The fact of the matter is, unless we clear our continent, I see no point in having a strong presence in the waters. Although I would very much like to control the seas, it seems to me like the kind of thing that does not really put you in the lead, but solidifies one. Therefore, unless our continent is ours, I recommend against building building up a huge navy.
Dominae
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Master Zen
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of naughty
Jan 2003
time: 23:29
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EDIT: having not seen your last two posts, perhaps you might want to skip this one and read the next one
quote:
Originally posted by Dominae
I strongly believe this is false. To be true, the above statement needs to be qualifed with: "Performing an intercontinental invasion against a human opponent...". It's a whole different story if we're fighting along a border within our home continent. Of course, this is the same point I've stated above, but I thought I would make it again for fun.
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I was actually refering to that , should've made it more explicit...
quote:
Consider:
A stack of Artillery blasts every tile improvement within a radius of two tiles. How does the enemy counter? Only Cavalry can penetrate the Road-less and Railroad-less perimiter; enemy Artillery can no longer get close enough, and Infantry would have to step out into the open. But Cavalry would be running into Infantry defenders if they were to try and make a go for the Artillery stack.
XAXXE
X - Bombarded tiles
A - Apolyton Artillery
E - Enemy Artillery
E cannot reach A.
Now, what to do next? Well, Workers come in and establish a Railroad line to get those Artillery out of there. The turn after that, Infantry move forward one tile, preferably along the compass directions, and the stack of Workers follow. The enemy counter-attacks, and hopefully the Infantry do not get overwhelmed. Then the Workers connect the tile with Railraod, the Artillery move in and we continue the tile destruction game.
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I still think there are major flaws in this approach (mind you, it might well be the best arty strategy possible but still not good enough). First of all, if you are moving inside enemy territory, making the railroad with your workers is totally worthless as even with the railroad you'll only move 1 turn and the arty will not be able to fire on the move turn. It is precisely on those move turns that the whole stack is totally vulnerable to the enemy counterattack in a RR-dominated territory. Also, considering that with railroads, the enemy will also have at least 2, very likely three axis of attacks (with the 4th axis lost to the coast), as the stack advances, depending on geography it will vulnerable not only in the front but on 2 sides. Thus, splitting the stack (or rather, splitting the all-too-vital infantry) creates even more difficulties if you're going to move some first to cover the workers and leave others behind to cover the arty.
quote:
Now this is a worst-case scenario, the idea being that, even with its faults, it basically works. Once you start tearing up improvements, the enemy has a tough time of fighting back. The best-case scenario is that we can leap-frog our Artillery between enemy cities, and that we've got about twice as many pieces as they do. As I said, if they're not expecting it, they will be hard-pressed to find an efficient answer.
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It works assuming we are twice as powerful vis-a-vis our invasion force and their counterattack force (which with RR they can risk very considerable part of their total army whereas we can't actually send our entire army overseas without an overly-dominant navy *tsk* *tsk* ). In case we're lucky and we do plan on banging a weak civ (Firaxis anyone?) do you think the other civs won't gang up on us to prevent us from having a foothold? 3 RoP and we've got 3 more enemy stacks heading our way...
ouch.
quote:
Anyway, there's more to say on this, but you get the basic idea. The "Railroad empires are impregnable" argument is invalid, IMO: all Railroads do is make the game even more about attrition. If we can get the upper hand in that war, our enemies will fall.
Dominae |
I'm not sayin they're impregnable. But the advantages we'd need to crack such a nut are most likely more than we'll get. RR wars in MP aren't just a little more difficult than in SP, they are exponentially difficult and I find the argument that they will not think up of something to counter it equally invalid IMO. Yes, we might beat one, but if they end up with some kind of continental alliance against us, there's pretty much no way we can pull it off.
Also consider the economics of this. For this to work we'd need to do it against a weaker civ (you yourself said half as strong). If we are facing a weaker civ that means that there are more civs on that contient which can gang up against us. If that is such, it is fair to assume that there were no major, decisive wars between them meaning they had a building advantage while we went ramaging to conquer our continent. So, despite us being the dominant power by then, it will be very very difficult for us to be equally as powerful as the other continent put together.
I'm still rooting for a pre-RR invasion if at all...
-MZ
Last edited by Master Zen on 23-06-2003 at 13:57
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Master Zen
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of naughty
Jan 2003
time: 23:29
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quote:
Originally posted by Dominae
After re-reading your post, it seems like we're not disagreeing as much as I thought we were.
You're planning for after we secure our continent, I'm planning for how we're to go about doing that in the first place.
One point we might disagree on: you believe our resources are much better spent on a strong navy, while I believe we should go for Artillery instead. If you're talking about a "huge manufacturing capacity", surely it's building boats pre-Industrialization rather than Artillery once our Factories are in place. The fact of the matter is, unless we clear our continent, I see no point in having a strong presence in the waters. Although I would very much like to control the seas, it seems to me like the kind of thing that does not really put you in the lead, but solidifies one. Therefore, unless our continent is ours, I recommend against building building up a huge navy.
Dominae |
AACK! I think we're posting too fast 
If you're planning on an arty war in our continent, sure, I think it'll work  tought but feasable. However, don't you think we will be able to do it before? Like CDG after republic, perhaps GCA with med infs/knights.... then CFC with chivalry...
then we consolidate and defend (with arty of course )
Also, I agree with you too with regards to the navy. I was thinking of using it to consolidate our conquered continent, not a moment before. My point was that being so difficult to launch intercontinental invasions, we might as well win the building war against the other civs from the safety of our huge land, and in case they ever think of ganging up on us from over there, our navy will blast their invasion fleet to bits.
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MrWhereItsAt
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New Year's Resolution: 2005 is the year of Where It's At - come get some.
Nov 2001
time: 17:29
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* MrWhereItsAt puts on tenor voice
Deeeeeeee PEEEEEEEEEEEEE
Last edited by MrWhereItsAt on 23-06-2003 at 19:01
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20-06-2003 08:49
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