02-07-2003 19:00									#1
	Arrian's 1st rule of warfare... Put an end to popups!

Doesn't matter who starts it. Make sure you finish it.

Ok, thus far our little world has seen only 2 localized conflicts. The first was little more than a skirmish, and the second, while far more involved, was still confined to a medium sized island, with only two active participants (GoWs 2 horsies don't count).

The one that's coming is gonna make GS-Vox look like a brawl between baseball players (in other words, a joke).

So, how do we position ourselves to take advantage of it, with our powerful (and expensive) military?

Our galleys are in roughly the right position, toward the south of our continent. But I'm not so sure about our pikes, med infs and cats. Are most of them up north? I haven't seen a save in a while now, so I honestly don't know.

What I would really like to see is nearly all of our galleys (all but 1, maybe 2) loaded to the brim with invasion forces. This means pikes and med infs, not WC's/horsemen, or even knights (knights are so valueable, I'd only want to bring them over once we have a secure beach head). Those loaded galleys should hang out by our southwestern coast. ESPECIALLY if we go for the proposed limited NAP with GoW.

I realize this causes problems for our possible blocking of RPs galley. Small price to pay, IMO. What I'd like to do there is shadow it with cats (3-4 of them) and keep a galley (unloaded) nearby. If it will take us a few turns to get the cats in position, we hold the blocking galleys there until we're set, and then move them around to be loaded. If hostilities break out, we bombard RPs galley and sink it with our 1 empty galley.

The rest of our cats should hang out in the SW, such that they can be brought over in the second wave. The placement of our fastmovers, with their 6 tiles/turn movement on roads, is of much less concern to me.

We will also want a settler or two for an invasion, but that's fine, since we produce them in the south anyway. I would propose an operation similar to Inchon (land a settler with tons of pikes and a few med infs to create a safe landing zone, and then flood it with the rest of our forces).

Obviously, I'm asking us to position our forces for an attack on RP. I'm not suggesting that we start a war of aggression. But I do view RP as the most likely vacation spot for our troops. If it turns out to be ND, well, it's not that much further from our SW coast. GoW would be the one that would catch our troops out of position for a few turns. But it seems we are snuggling up to GoW, so I'm not overly concerned by that.

What do my fellow Stormians think?

-Arrian

	02-07-2003 20:21									#2
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IF war breaks out, I would like to get a piece of RP... I'm not so sure we'd need to park our forces off their coast right now, though, I'd rather have a few scouts out, to see if there are no easy islands to settle. We still have the lighthouse advantage, so no reason not to exploit that.

DeepO

	02-07-2003 20:58									#3
	Re: Arrian's 1st rule of warfare... Browse Apolyton AD-FREE

quote: Originally posted by Arrian What I would really like to see is nearly all of our galleys (all but 1, maybe 2) loaded to the brim with invasion forces. This means pikes and med infs, not WC's/horsemen, or even knights (knights are so valueable, I'd only want to bring them over once we have a secure beach head). Those loaded galleys should hang out by our southwestern coast. ESPECIALLY if we go for the proposed limited NAP with GoW.

One thing though - we have to keep the galleys spread, not stacked, as if we're scouting ahead for any approaching ships, not planning an invasion.

quote: I realize this causes problems for our possible blocking of RPs galley. Small price to pay, IMO. What I'd like to do there is shadow it with cats (3-4 of them) and keep a galley (unloaded) nearby. If it will take us a few turns to get the cats in position, we hold the blocking galleys there until we're set, and then move them around to be loaded. If hostilities break out, we bombard RPs galley and sink it with our 1 empty galley.

What if RP's galley has troops inside?

quote: We will also want a settler or two for an invasion, but that's fine, since we produce them in the south anyway. I would propose an operation similar to Inchon (land a settler with tons of pikes and a few med infs to create a safe landing zone, and then flood it with the rest of our forces).

We need to balance between pikes and medinfs. We'd want to take advantage of the element of surprise and attack during the first turn after we've invaded, not just take loads of pikes and a settler with us to New Inchon (how is this for a name?) and wait for the next wave of bombardment units and medinfs to arrive.
If we're attacking on the first turn after we land, we may also want to take bombardment units with us, to shell the city that we want to land next to (how about Barcelona? It's remote and controls silk) before we let the medinfs do the fighting. In other words, let's build 2 more galleys.

	02-07-2003 22:11									#4
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Shiber,

We should keep one of the loaded galleys north of the main group such that we will see any incoming galleys that would discover our main galley stack in advance, and be able to move them out of sight (into one of our ports, perhaps). RP's galley is hugging our coast and will therefore remain in sight, so we'll know where they are.

As for units on RPs galley, our fastmovers can cover that. Since I plan them to be the last units sent overseas, they will be free to shadow RPs galley until it's dead or we're allied with them (a possibility, however remote).

I don't know how many galleys we have off the top of my head. Let's say we can load 6. That's 12 units. 11 combat units + 1 settler. 7 pikes + 4 med inf sounds about right. Definitely the elite pike, btw.

-Arrian

	03-07-2003 09:14									#5
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It seems to me that if war breaks out, we're a lot better off not trying to get in on it ourselves right away. Give our rivals some time to wear each other down and/or draw each other's forces out of position to defend against us, and then strike. So as long as we're able to concentrate most of our galleys in a reasonable amount of time, I don't see a compelling need to have forces already on them and ready to go, and I do see advantages to positioning our forces in positions oriented toward defense in case someone tries something against us for the time being.

	03-07-2003 09:50									#6
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I agree with nbarclay. It's best to strike when our enemies are away. You know, the thief in the night.

	03-07-2003 14:20									#7
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I agree, with one exception: it would be nice to have some galleys 'exploring' with units on them. A few pikes on the West of Bob could be invaluable later on, if they remain unspotted. But that's an old idea, Aeson has been asking for the RP iron pillaging force for a while now.

DeepO

	03-07-2003 18:13									#8
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All I'm saying is that I want us to be ready to intervene immediately IF WE WANT TO. There is no harm, so far as I can see, in being all loaded up & ready to go. If we want to wait a few turns for the other civs to fully engage each other before hitting somebody from behind, fine, we can still do that. But if for whatever reason we see an advantage in jumping in quickly (hey, you never know), then we'll be ready.

-Arrian