10-07-2003 00:00									#1
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I figured this deserves a thread.

quote: Originally posted by Arrian I would start with med infs + pikes and a settler. We have three basic options for an invasion: 1) Inchon-style landing inside RPs territory. 2) Inchon-style landing outside RPs territory (SE coast). 3) Leave out the settler, and rely on capturing a coastal city. I need to look at a recent map before I decide which I want, but it's definitely between #1 and #2. It just depends on which one provides us with the best protection for our forces and the best opportunity to deal damage to RP (read: capture/destroy their core). Actually, time required to reinforce is another key factor. Landing in the SE, outside their territory, means our galleys will take longer to shuttle over more troops. So I suspect #1 is the most viable approach. Pikes, Med Inf, settler. Then go back for cats & knights. How many galleys do we have available for this? -Arrian

Our forces as of 90 BC:
10 Galleys.
19 Medieval Infantries.
24 Pikemen.
14 Catapults.
8 Horsemen.
13 War Chariots.

	10-07-2003 00:04									#2
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We'll have Chivalry, yes?

Why not start with 21 Knights and 9 Cats?

	10-07-2003 00:06									#3
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We may want to take some precautions... who knows, RP might spot us with a scouting galley and attack our ships, and might sink one galley with two units on it (imagine if its the one carrying the settler, OUCH). Therefore I suggest that we leave one of the galleys in the invasion stack empty; that way, it'll be attacked first, and we won't have any chances of losing units on sea unless RP attacks and wins with two galleys, which is much less likely.

So we have 9 galleys that can carry troops. Assuming that we're going to take a settler, that leaves us with room for 17 combat units. We'll need pikemen for sure, and medieval infantry to fight back against our attackers and to capture our first Spanish town if we're going to land right next to an RP town, but I suppose that there's also room for a few cats. They'll certainly come in handy against the fortified pikes that we're likely to meet inside our first target city, they'll be very useful if RP sets up walls and we'll have to take them down, and they can fight back against the RP units that are likely to attack our Inchon site, saving us some pike casualties. All in all, cats will serve as all-purpose units in the early stages of this invasion, useful for both attack and defense.

	10-07-2003 00:16									#4
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We already have Chivalry, but I wouldn't take so many knights, certainly not when we start off.
True, knights have both the advantages of pikes and medinfs and move twice as fast, but they're also expensive. If we lose a pike while defending, or lose a medinf while attacking, we lose a costlier unit. Besides, there's not much need for manueverability when we start, which (according to my vision) will look basically like this: land next to an RP town, establish Inchon, attack the nearby town and only then call the knights ("Here comes the cavalry! Tam-tadam-tadam-Tadam-tadam-tadam-Tadam-tadam-tadam-Tadam-tadam-tadam-Tadaaaam).

	10-07-2003 00:19									#5
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OK, some empty Galleys.

But why anything but Knights (A4D3) and Cats (and maybe a Settler) in the first wave?

	10-07-2003 00:21									#6
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No or not so many knights! At least not in the 1st wave. The first landing will have to secure a foothold and maybe take ~2 coastal cities as base. It should consist of 1/2 pikes, 1/4 cheap attackers (medinfs) and 1/4 cats. Knights are way too costly and we don't need the mobility yet. They also provide only 4 attack. The retreat bonus doesn't yet count, because we haven't yet a place to heal, and to ship them back lasts too long. The 2nd wave should contain 1/3 pikes, 1/3 knights and 1/3 cats. The 3rd wave should contain knights only, or maybe a few of the other unit types, after seeing what we lost.

	10-07-2003 00:44									#7
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10 galleys. So 20 units. Though I thought 1 galley was otherwise occupied.

So let's say 18 units in the first wave.

1 settler
7 pikemen (definitely including our elite)
6 med infs
4 catapults

Second wave:

5 pikes
8 med inf
5 cats

Third wave:

5 cats
13 mounted units (knights and elite WCs)

Fourth wave:

as needed.

Theseus,

The reason is that Knights are expensive units. If we can avoid it, I'd rather not have them defend. Ever. Pikes are 30 shields and defend just as well. Med Infs are 40 shields and attack nearly as well (just can't retreat). Knights are 70 shields (or rather WC+100 gold or Horseman+80 gold) and have a mobility advantage, true. But much of that is negated by what looks like rough terrain in Espana.

In short, the slowmovers are far more expendable. Better to secure a safe haven with them and then bring in the knights, than to subject our knights to possible heavy casualities in the initial assault/counterattack.

-Arrian

	10-07-2003 01:08									#8
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God, where is my head today.

Aaaand I was thinking caravels.

Doh.

	10-07-2003 01:11									#9
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Oh, I wish! Caravels would make this much easier.

We are supposed to work out an Astronomy for Banking tech deal with Lego, but I'd imagine that the war would be underway by the time the techs are actually swapped.

-Arrian

	10-07-2003 01:34									#10
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One of our Galleys is heading around to RP's Iron with 2 Pikes right now. We need to establish an Embassy with RP too. Now would be best, as they will probably be suspicious when we do establish it, and we'd rather give them some time to forget about it before the actual attack comes. A few investigations of cities will pay off more than upgrading a similar number of Knights. We may even want to pay another civ to do wartime investigations (using Banking as bait?). We also will want to keep our units out of cities (especially Olibanum Gale and Whirlwind), in case they investigate us.

Definitely we need 2 Galleys up north to watch the crossing. Think of them as Grog Galleys. We probably want 4-5 more Galleys if we're going to do this. If we are going to devote a lot of our troops to Spain, we need all the warning time we can get. Our worst case should be that we see a landing party coming, and have time to block all possible landing sites within range of the ships with WC's/Horsemen/Workers every turn.

We have 3 good targets for a landing (other than the Iron of course). Barcelona, New Madrid, and Valencia. I think Barcelona is a good 'safe' bet, as it would give us a Harbor (if they don't sell it off), access to silks, and cut off spices to RP. It's also a size 6 city with no culture (or less than 10 at this point) and not built on Hills. It's one we have to investigate before the war starts. New Madrid too. That's going to cost us about 160g or so?

If RP shows only a couple units in each city, we definitely want to take New Madrid the turn after landing though. Pikes from Pamplona, Barcelona, and Toledo would be too late to reinforce. New Madrid is going to be their Arashi... All their other important cities are on flatlands, with good defensive terrain around the city. If we can hit them quickly enough, they won't have time to fortify it like we did Arashi. Otherwise... our offensive will have to avoid the city just like Vox's did.

Then we take the coastal cities Barcelona and Valencia. We'd have cut off a Silk, and their Spices, perhaps gaining access to them with Barcelona's Harbor. It will be a good barometer for us if RP sells the Harbor, as that would seem to be a 'we are losing the city' type of play... cutting off Iron and Horses to the city. We should offer restitution to any civs who's trade is cut off because of this, but unless Lego has Astronomy by then, I can't see any civ having their trades cut off directly because of it. Spices everyone on Bob has natively, and Silks would probably just cut off RP's supply. The dangers is, if they are at war with ND and us, it will break any trade routes they have to RP when they lose their Harbor.

The exact ratio of units we use should probably wait for the investigations of the city to finalize. I'd think we'd want something like 5 Pikes, 10 Med Inf, and 5 Cats for the initial landing... more if we have the galleys of course. We need the Cats to at least take down walls if they get them up in New Madrid. Otherwise even 2 Pikes are going to be costly to kill.

I don't think we need an empty Galley along unless RP keeps their Galley on this side (and within range). From WW 14 we can make the crossing and land all our units at New Madrid 3 or 6, and RP couldn't even attack us at WW 14 from across the channel. RP would have to suicide a Galley just to see us there.

New Madrid is the keystone here. We'd need to take it, and fast.

	10-07-2003 01:44									#11
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4-5 more galleys? Ouch.

Can we get away with 1 galley watching the north?

Then we build 2 more, and we have 10 available for the actual invasion (1 empty, 9 full).

OR, we could try and wait for astronomy. This makes our ships much less vulnerable to attack and allows us to bring more troops along. 9 caravels = 27 units. Settler, 8 pikes, 8 cats, 10 med inf. mmmm....

Problem is that in order to do it, we'd have to RACE for banking/astronomy (lego and us) and then probably shut off science and go max tax to pay for upgrades to our ships and then our mounted forces.

-Arrian

	10-07-2003 02:07									#12
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We could probably get away with no galley's up north, but... scouting is king. If we see what's coming before it gets to us, we can deal with any possible invasion force until marines. To be safe, we should have a galley N of Port Isolation, and S. Otherwise we run the risk that GoW or RP has a few galleys S, and we never see them until they land their troops. While we could deal with such a landing, it would likely be costly.. much more so than 30 shields and 1gpt for the extra Galley.

4-5 More galleys shouldn't be too hard to get together in the next 10 turns. Tornado and Bolderberg can each build one after their Aquaduct, and we could build another 2 in Sufu and Typhoon before their Aquaducts. I think it pays off more than the Aquaducts 5 turns sooner (basically a pop point between them). We really can't think about invading before 10 turns anyways, most of our units are tied up up N. We also need to wait until the war actually breaks out before joining.

Astronomy is going to be 5 or so turns too late most likely (ETA was 15-20 turns or so right?), and I'd rather spend cash upgrading Knights and investigating cities than upgrading the Galleys. RP has no chance of sinking any of our ships if we position them right, and 10-12 galley's should be enough to get all the units over we want pretty quickly (probably faster than we can upgrade to Knights).

20 units at a time should be enough to take the landing site we choose, otherwise we definitely shouldn't be fighting this war!

	10-07-2003 04:04									#13
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Definate yes to scouting! Scouting is a lot better then having to defend loads of coast blind. Also, I wouldn't be surprised if either RP or ND has a few galleys loaded up, just in case they would be attacked by either us or GoW.

As to 4-5 more galleys: another definate yes. We can build those fastly, and why risk going in with only some 15 units, when you could also bring 25 at once.

I'm not sure, but that would take let's say 10 turns to set up decently, which leaves us about 5 turns before Astronomy. Before astro, we're realtively safe, after it we need to make sure we have cleared the sea between Stormia and Big Stormia () This should be possible to arrange with Legoland, without rising too much suspicion.

However, somewhere along the line, we need to research banking as well, does this still leaves us enough gold left for necessary upgrades, and possible rushes? Currently we're making about 150 gpt, which should rise to over 200 gpt in 10 turns... banking is some 1200 beakers, right? Taking us 6-7 turns at full speed? I'm not sure that leaves enough for 21 knight upgrades alone, but it should be close. But I'd rather have some intelligence going instead of knights anyway

Although I favored EotS as a settler pump, maybe we shouldn't overdo it, and start building some knights there before it goes back to size 6. That would let us keep Hurricane for a wonder prebuild, still having enough knights around to safely do this.

As to landing spaces: If at all possible, New Madrid would be superb... but we need to be able to defend it immediately, we should expect a counter attack there in 2-3 turns with 15-20 swords, and be able to withstand it easily. Anything less has a large chance of failing our invasion.

DeepO

	10-07-2003 06:20									#14
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The "10 turns to set up decently" seem to match with the NAP RP wants. This would be a nice deception.

	10-07-2003 14:14									#15
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I like the look of an Inchon between New Madrid and Barcelona. We have updated maps from RP now right? So their road network to Barcelona and Valencia goes through New Madrid, and it'll take them several turns to get units over the hills in the absence of roads. Depending on how optimistic we feel, we can hit either NM or Ba - Valencia probably won't be well defended, and gain a few of their reasonable towns quite quickly.

	10-07-2003 14:39									#16
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quote: Originally posted by Arrian 1 settler 7 pikemen (definitely including our elite) 6 med infs 4 catapults

A settler? So are we planning to land in their territory, raze a city and then rebuild it to avoid the unhappy citizens?

Sorry if that's an obvious question, I'm just trying to get it clear in my head what is being proposed here.

	10-07-2003 15:32									#17
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At our current pace (before Hurricane gets a library and before Arashi's FP), we can research Banking in 10 turns at roughly break-even. Regarding wonder building, we're in a good position to start Tempest on a wonder prebuild now (and to add another two or three workers to it to get its production capacity up).

Speaking of wonders, is it my imagination, or does it look like GoW is doing something weird to prevent the Great Library from ever finishing (e.g. switching builds to the Oracle to drain off extra shields every now and then)? It's hard to see how Imperial City could go quite this long working on a 400-shield wonder and not finish it, unless I'm misremembering how long it's been.

	10-07-2003 15:44									#18
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I vote for building Smith's in either Hurricane or Tempest. We should be able to guarantee we get it by timing the prebuild and tech rate properly. Copernicus in Hurricane would be great, but 5-6 Knights might be more valuable if we are going to war. Smith's is worth more than 8-9 Knights IMO.

I have no idea when GoW started their build. Must have been about 30 turns ago at least, right? Maybe they just haven't mined any hills they are using yet?
With Wine Hills and Game, they should have been able to finish it by now and still kept growing faster than they have been. Not sure what they are doing there...

	10-07-2003 17:46									#19
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The settler can be used for a new Inchon- and one on the hills east of Barcelona looks quite good.

Other than that, a settler would be really valuable if RP chooses the scorched earth defense strategy- we would need a city there, and we would need it fast.

Our first objective will be to secure a beachead, and it should not be taken lightly- this may seem like not so big deal, considering the size of RP's territory, but our target of choice seems like the likely one, and RP probably has troops stationed there already. As for when attacking- I see two options:
1) We start the whole thing. Enjoying the element of suprise, as well the fact that RP has a decent corps guarding their northern border, and not their eastern one gives us the head start we need to establish a beachead and push into the RP'ish heartland.
2) GoW and RP attack ND, or any other combination that puts RP against ND. We'll have to recieve some intel on this before it happens, as well as witness that RP does send forces against ND. If they do not, this is a big problem- I suspect RP would just leave ND and GoW alone, and concentrate their forces to defend against us- this would make an invasion far more risky and problematic.

Therefor I suggest we do not wait until GoW and ND are at war, unless we have a very good reason to believe RP would actively participate in such war. I suggest we take the initiative- and enjoy the element of suprise.

Why suprise? becasue everyone believes we will "intervene"- but actively pursuing war- I don't think this is how they see us acting anytime soon.

	10-07-2003 18:42									#20
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I like the idea of us starting this. It offers us the initiative.

This requires, minimum, a NAP with GoW. At best, a formal alliance and agreement to divide the continent.

The other option, as NYE has explained, is to create the settings for war (NAP with GoW, assure them we'll provide iron, make nice noises about partnership) and hope GoW attacks ND. Then we hit RP. That's ok too, and if we have caravels by then, fantastic.

Nathan is correct, by the way, we do want a couple of knights in the first wave, so that we can destroy a stack and pull back (on open ground, anyway) rather than leaving a unit exposed. It also sounds like we're willing to build 4 more galleys. That gives us 14, but 3 will be otherwise engaged and 1 will be empty to cover the full ones, leaving 10. So:

1 settler
7 pikemen
5 catapults
5 med inf
2 knights

Looks good to me.

-Arrian

	10-07-2003 18:48									#21
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EDIT: nm

	10-07-2003 19:07									#22
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I would lean towards a couple more Knights. I accept the argument re their cost, but with, say, 5 Pikes (supported by Cats), there's a lot of defense before the Knights are at risk.

	10-07-2003 19:15									#23
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I too would prefer the mix of Pikes:Knights to be 6:3 or 5:4 rather than 7:2.

	10-07-2003 20:11									#24
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I'm not sure if a NAP would relax RP. Sure, they'd be relaxed while the NAP is in effect but they'll know that we may attack immediately when it ends, and if they don't engage in war by then they might have half their army at the banks of Bob.

	10-07-2003 20:16									#25
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So more like this?

1 settler
5 pikemen
5 catapults
5 med inf
4 knights

Bear in mind, the earlier we use knights, the earlier we have to come up with upgrade cash. It's 80 bucks per for horsemen->knights, and 100 per for WCs. 4x80=240gold. That is not a trivial amount, and must be planned for.

-Arrian

	10-07-2003 20:38									#26
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That's basically two turns added to our ETA on banking, and doesn't leave us much room to upgrade replacements to cover our losses.

Will try and investigate the optimum pike : catapult ratio for defence and attackers : catapult ratio for attack, to see which gives us the best bang per galley space. We have to assume RP's defences will be primarily pikes, with some sword/MI and horse contributions.

	10-07-2003 20:55									#27
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quote: Originally posted by nbarclay Speaking of wonders, is it my imagination, or does it look like GoW is doing something weird to prevent the Great Library from ever finishing (e.g. switching builds to the Oracle to drain off extra shields every now and then)? It's hard to see how Imperial City could go quite this long working on a 400-shield wonder and not finish it, unless I'm misremembering how long it's been.

They missed out on Sun's and are stuck while waiting for Leo's? One would think they would cut their losses like we did with the Lighthouse. Having their capitol tied up for millenia surely would hinder their war preparations, wouldn't it?

We could just ask them whats going on.

If they are in a holding pattern, how can we exploit this or get leos before them?

	10-07-2003 21:12									#28
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Could they be faking everyone out with that? Set the capital to build the GL, as a prebuild for something mundane (a library, or unit), and then switch back to finish the build, and reset to GL, so everyone thinks their capital has been tied up on the GL for millenia.

Problems with this theory: they have to hope that no-one checks the f7 screen every turn, or else they'll notice that every now and again they aren't building the GL that turn. Correct me if I'm wrong, but since the capitol is the first city dealt with (unless they've moved their palace during the game) then they can't change the build when the first city to complete something pops up, so they can't make the switch, complete the build and go back to the GL in the same turn without anyone noticing).

	10-07-2003 21:58									#29
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Nice theory, Vulture! I don't know if it's the right one, but nice one nevertheless. I agree, we could just ask them, if done friendly...

As to the upgrade money: 240 gold won't be that much of a problem, our eta should be between 13 and 18 turns, which leaves us a bit of cash left. However, we can't upgrade 20 knights, and we'll need more of them in our second and third waves...

DeepO

	10-07-2003 22:21									#30
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13 to 18 turns? If it's that, why not push ahead with the Banking/Astronomy deal and invade using Caravels?

Thing is, I think we need to get moving earlier than that. Like in 5-10 turns. We can upgrade our fastmovers piecemeal as the invasion proceeds.

-Arrian