Military Department Discussion: The Persian Expeditionary Force

GenMarshall · Feb 16, 2003

Since we are at war with the Persians, I was thinking about sending down a medium force to help out with the Greeks. Since the war with the babs is over, it would be wise th help our allies the Greeks (And preserve our rep). here is the checklist that is needed before we get started:

A RoP in America and England (or France)
Assemble a medium expeditonary force by the Fanatikan Magenot line

Note: this is the first time I have ever used the

tags, and I am not sure If I did it right.

Chieftess · Feb 16, 2003

I think we might have an ROP with France, and I have a few cavalry in that region (eastern border).

Goonie · Feb 16, 2003

I say a large force. Do we really want to be like the Americans in WWI and send a SMALL force and not send a battle ready force until the war is almost over? We have about 48 Cavlary, so I advocate sending 30 Cav., 15 Rifle, any cannons that are lying around.

Stuck_as_a_Mac · Feb 16, 2003

We cant send too many, because we need to make sure that we can retaliate any oddities that come across us due to the Greek MPP. A small force would be good.

philippe · Feb 16, 2003

Send a small experienced force.

roadcage · Feb 16, 2003

What is the purpose of this effort? By that I mean how will we judge success or failure. We need goals, objectives, and then we can evaluate and develop a force structure.

And we must be prepared to accept the eventual loss of most of the force committed, especially if it enguages Persians on Persian territory. Cavalry don't defend well. Another plan would be to snipe Persian units from either France or English lands. The english infrastructure is poor so it would probably be better staging in France. A few rifles to secure strong points for our Cavalry to attack out of and retreat back to. Rotate the Cav back and forth to the homelands for repair. So I am thinking we could send a 4 rifles, a 8 cavalry, and 2 workers to make the strongpoint. Looking at the map, the best strongpoint location I see is the undeveloped hill 2 tiles due south of Grenoble. We may even want to capture Isandhlwanda as a base, thus eliminating the long trek home for repairs.

FortyJ · Feb 16, 2003

I would like to add that in addition to coming to the aid of our Greek pact-brothers, one of our primary goals should be to produce Great Leaders. It would be nice to ensure production of Theory of Evolution and Hoover Dam.

Stuck_as_a_Mac · Feb 16, 2003

some GLs would be great, and the best part is there would be minimal discusson on what to use them for, due to the no brainer aspect of the choice

Fier Canadien · Feb 16, 2003

Originally posted by roadcage
We may even want to capture Isandhlwanda as a base, thus eliminating the long trek home for repairs.

Nice idea. Capture Isandhlwanda and wall it. With a barrack, it would be a very good HQ/Hospital for our Cavs.

Feodor Ardent · Feb 17, 2003

I say a large force. Do we really want to be like the Americans in WWI and send a SMALL force and not send a battle ready force until the war is almost over?

Pushing my history button again! You are reversing cause and effect. WWI ended when it did BECAUSE the Americans had put a battleready force into France. They had 2,000,000 men on hand in November 1918, Ludendorff realized that Germany could not match American manpower, and called upon the Kaiser to negotiate.

Would that the Civ III powers behaved so sensibly. Wars start and go on forever. It would be nice to be able to have a little shoot-out and call it off after a few turns.

We have about 48 Cavlary, so I advocate sending 30 Cav., 15 Rifle, any cannons that are lying around.

A good notion, but a little more cav and rifle then we have free, and I don't think we have any cannon to spare. We need them for coast defense work.

If a a half-dozen Persian frigates appear off our coast and start blowing up mines and irrigation, the same governers who thought building cannon was too wimpy a project will be screaming bloody murder for protection.

Feodor Ardent · Feb 17, 2003

May the Gawds of War wash you in cleansing rain, Roadcage. I've been trying to nag people into sending out balanced armies for several centuries.

If we want to get REALLY fancy, we can extend our rail axis through Leningrado and into English territory. That way we could use our own barracks for rest and reinforcement.

Cheetah · Feb 17, 2003

If we had some boat I would suggest an invasion in the Persian homeland. Strike swift and deadly, where it hurts. Of course that would mean that we would need to send backup or eventually loose our units there...

I think the idea to set up a stronghold and organizeing attacks from there is a great idea. Isandhlwanda sounds good too.

GenMarshall · Feb 17, 2003

Hmm, though my conserns is that the Persians might have an Ironclad partoll near there borders

eyrei · Feb 17, 2003

I suggest sending only a couple rifles. We will need them to defend our cities. Send most of our cavalry however, as they will be obsolete very soon, for anything but picking off damaged units. Simply use a horde of cavalry to come down through Greece and raze a couple Persian cities.

If we are actually going to make use of RoPs, I will make some effort to sign them.

Cheetah · Feb 17, 2003

I agree Eyrei. Lets send most of our Cavalry down to Persia.

donsig · Feb 17, 2003

I don't think we should send any forces into far off Persia. The only thing valuable we could get is a leader and he would be far from Fanatika when we got him. We'd be better off patrolling our borders for now to ensure our neighbors don't get uppity again. Sending all our cavalry would leave us open to attacks like those committed by India and Babylon. Remember the bulk of our defense forces are pikemen.

GenMarshall · Feb 17, 2003

Though my main consern is a Rep hit if we dont help the Greeks. I do not want to see anymore Rep hits on Fanatika.

Feodor Ardent · Feb 17, 2003

If we had some boat I would suggest an invasion in the Persian homeland. Strike swift and deadly, where it hurts. Of course that would mean that we would need to send backup or eventually loose our units there...

Unfortunately, now that the Persians have cavalry and rails, any force we could send down by ship would be wiped out pretty much the day after they landed. And that's assuming they don't get sunk on the way down. This is not a high-percentage endeavor.

I suggest sending only a couple rifles. We will need them to defend our cities.

More like four, at minimum, to create at least one strong field force as a base for our cavalry. I would tend to think we could spare as much as a dozen. The immediate threat to our heartland is receding rapidly.

Send most of our cavalry however, as they will be obsolete very soon, for anything but picking off damaged units. Simply use a horde of cavalry to come down through Greece and raze a couple Persian cities.

What would "very soon" mean in this circumstance? Cavalry, because of their mobility, will be an important part of our offence right up until we get Panzers, which is still several 10s of turns away. Even if we didn't have a need for them, they are far too expensive to be thrown away on near-useless raiding.

If we are actually going to make use of RoPs, I will make some effort to sign them.

Definitely. This strategy will be kind of useless without ROPs with both England and France.

I don't think we should send any forces into far off Persia. The only thing valuable we could get is a leader and he would be far from Fanatika when we got him.

A GL produced on the Anglo-Persian frontier would only be two turns away from Leningrado.

roadcage · Feb 17, 2003

May the Gawds of War wash you in cleansing rain, Roadcage. I've been trying to nag people into sending out balanced armies for several centuries.

If we want to get REALLY fancy, we can extend our rail axis through Leningrado and into English territory. That way we could use our own barracks for rest and reinforcement.

Actually, that is close to what I would do in my own game. As mentioned in the previous post, the English infrastructure is really poor and there would be too much pre-road development to make it worthwhile. Also as mentioned in the previous post the best strong point location is in France anyway. But in my game there would not be the current GROSS shortage of workers. Hence I could not suggest it here. There is a downside to railroading across a rop partner. The innept AI keeps getting in the way blocking your rail grid. Hence you need to maintain a tile holding unit on each and every stitch of the grid past your wall.

And also there would be a huge cannon brigade. Which reminds me. You should be cranking out 40 shield cannon destined to become 80 shield Arty. A modest size Cav brigade backed up by reasonable Rifle/Inf and Lots of cannon/Arty in a fortified strongpoint with elevated terrain, is extremely powerful.

And almost immovable pre-tank.

Octavian X · Feb 17, 2003

Roadcage, in his mentioning of his own game, brings up a good point. We don't have extra workers to build railroads through England. If our current worker situation instigated investigatios, I shudder to think of what would happen if we sent workers to Lizzy...

I would approve of a expeditionary force, a large one at that, so long as it was entirely, or a majority, made up of veteran and elite cavalry, with weight given to the latter. A dual goal of this force would be to create Great Leaders, and to keep our already sorry repuation up.

I would also send a minimum of 5 rifles in the event we capture something worth holding. My guess is former Roman cities now in Persian hands we will be attacking will have little strategic value. They will be too far from Bavaria to be of much use, and will likely flip. I haven't seen a map recently, but there probably are some good luxuries we should go for...

Military Department Discussion: The Persian Expeditionary Force

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