External Consulate - Redefine the goals of the Dutch war?

[Bertie]

In THIS POLL we decided that in our current war we would not eliminate the Dutch from the map and that we would fight them until we had taken 7 target cities and obtained the Republic in a peace treaty.

These are still our goals.

However, the war has progressed well, and circumstances suggest we may want to take more cities than initially we expected to. We believe now we can take most of the Netherlands' cities, leaving them with one or two (circumstances will dictate what would be appropriate). We would still expect to receive the Republic as part of a peace treaty.

We ask: Should we take more cities than initially we planned, reducing the Dutch to one or two cities at the end of the war?

Discussion on this topic may be found HERE .

The poll will close three days after the poll was opened.
The poll is public and other users can see how you voted.
Select one option only.

 

[greekguy]

Yes. We should leave them with those 2 small cities up North. Take everything else.

 

[Ashburnham]

I hate to sound bellicose, but this is a clear failure of long-term planning. The whole point of having the External Consule propose a course of action before we begin is so we can have a clear plan when that action begins. We had a course of action before the war began, and this poll is either a statement that that plan was incorrect/not thoroughly thought-through, or a testement to the citizen's lack of faith in long-term planning in general.

We've had this problem for the whole time I've been involved with the Demogames: a plan being proposed only to be reversed once other events have transpired. It's very disheartening to watch.

I hate to rant this on Bertie's thread. I think he's done an excellent job as interim External Consule. But, the fact remains that the supposed long-term plan lasted all of one TurnChat before being overturned. We discussed it, debated it, voted on it; and now we're going to have to do it all over again. If this is what passes for long-term planning, I hate to see what the short-term looks like.

 

[Bertie]

Ashburnham,

You raise an excellent point and I actually agree with much of what you’re saying. However, I don't think there was anything wrong with the plan. What happened is when we played the game we didn’t execute the strategy we had planned, so I’m trying to make lemonade here.

Our strategy was to capture 7 cities, Ultrecht being the most important; and to take more cities only if the Dutch wouldn’t give us the Republic. Of those 7 targets we took Rotterdam (the natural avenue to Ultrecht); The Hague (taking this opens up the route to battles up north for units produced in Camelot and Provolutia); and Groningen (one of our 7 target cities, but one I would have thought we would have taken last). We also took Maastricth and Haarlem, two cities not among the 7 targeted (though one could argue Haarlem should have been); and in fact have nearly half our army healing in the environs of these two cities far from our actual targets. We still have not taken Ultrecht, IMO the key target of our war nor do we have troops nearby. And we haven’t begun to think about taking the important targets of Amsterdam and Arnhem.

In other words, we got diverted. The diversion will also delay our taking the Pyramids (well, that and the fact we have yet to produce galleys to transport our troops to Portugal), and in fact we’ve probably delayed the conclusion of the game by several hundred years. I would have preferred that we would have fought yesterday’s battles in accordance with the plan the COA devised and with our eyes firmly fixed on our goals; but we didn’t. I’m trying to adjust to the reality we face.

In order to take all 7 cities we originally targeted it’s now going to take longer than anticipated. The need to take them is no less than it was before yesterday’s battles. Given that, it seems sensible to me to just to go ahead and finish the job of fighting the Netherlands at one whack, sparing only the northernmost Dutch cities of Leiden and Delft.

BTW, stuff happens, I understand that. Overall I think the results of yesterday’s battles are fine although unexpected (we’re not playing a competition here, so we’re not trying to win as quickly as possible). Hence, lemonade. Thus, the poll.

 

[DaveShack]

This hilights some of the problems we have, with terminology and with scope. There is a difference between categorizing things as long-term vs short-term, or as strategy vs tactics. If you look at it from a strategy vs tactics point of view, the line between the two in this plan was fuzzier than appears at first.

The stated plan was to "take a specific set of 7 cities, plus whatever is needed to extort Republic" and we're thinking about changing that plan based on events. This reveals that the specific set of cities part wasn't really a strategy, but tactics. It looks like strategy because we previously defined strategy as being what needs to be accomplished and tactics as being the means and order of reaching that goal.

The true strategy is "weaken the Dutch to the point they will no longer be a threat, and acquire Republic in the process." Assumed as part of that strategy is the need to take several of the specific 7 cities that we started with -- if the Dutch were able to keep Hague, Rotterdam, Amsterdam, Utrect they might still be a threat. Eliminating the iron source before they get their UU is the biggie.

A longer-term strategy is "take all the land west of China", which implies a return engagement with both Netherlands and India. An even longer term strategy is to take the northern lobe and all the spoils.

So, if we're going to restate the strategy, let's restate it in strategic terms and push tactics down to the right level.

 

[Kentharu]

im so confused right now could someone post a map or something or tell me where i can find one before i vote or even comment on the strategy i want to know whats going on

 

[Furiey]

A Map.

The remaining of the 7 original target Dutch cities are named in white.

 

[Provolution]

I say, go on to Holwerd and Leiden.

 

[Bertie]

DaveShack, this is the long-term strategy of the External Consulate:

To use warfare to annex enough of the world’s land so that we have almost enough territory to trigger a domination victory; and seek through warfare, diplomacy, and trade to cripple the ability of all other Civilizations to win the game before we achieve our cultural goal of 130,000 points.

The war on the Netherlands is a means towards achieving that end. Are you defining such means as tactical or strategic?

We didn’t pull that list of 7 cities willy-nilly out of the air. The strategy towards the Netherlands, as developed and discussed in THIS THREAD was to deprive the Dutch of strategic resources (iron, luxuries, horses, trade capability, high-food potential territory), take Republic, and then move on so we could do other things (take the Pyramids). This would stunt their growth and give us room to expand. An additional part of the strategy was the expectation that we’d later go to war with the Netherlands once again and reduce them to one city or eliminate them.

The 7 cities we selected all deprive the Netherlands of either iron, horses, luxuries, trade, or food potential. I named these cities in an effort to define what would constitute realization of our strategy. Is identifying those cities “tactics?” You implied otherwise when in another thread you said that discussion on whether to take specific cities "is more a strategic question than tactical. The tactical aspect is what order to take the cities in, how many troops and what kind, how much to press it before we fall back to heal, how to defend our gains, etc."

Anyway, I’m getting the feeling that I’m starting to sound bellicose, which is not what I intend at all! I’m just trying to stress that I haven’t suddenly changed my mind about the desirability of the original plan we all agreed to two days ago. I like that plan and wish we were sticking to it. It’s just that enthusiastic gameplay has rendered portions of that plan moot, and I’m trying to deal with the consequences of that.

 

[zyxy]

I am amazed to see such a large gap between the strategies developed in the discussion threads and polls, and the way the war was played out. It seems that my earlier praise on the progress (in another thread) was somewhat premature (apologies for that ).

DaveShack, we have been discussing the strategic goals of the Dutch War extensively. For weeks our citizens have talked about the fearsome Dutch UU, and how to avoid it. I can't believe you missed it

If you look at the instructions by the CoAF in the previous turnchat, you will see the strategic objectives listed there. He also provides a battle map with nice arrows indicating our attack paths. There is no arrow pointing to Haarlem...

I also don't want to sound belligerent (but I realise I probably do )

Anyway, I don't see a reason to continue fighting as long as we don't need to send extensive reinforcements (our cities have other stuff to build), so vote = Yes.

 

[Kentharu]

woulodn't it be better to take the capital since that is the highest pop city.... but about changing the goals of the war, i dont think we should, after we can get republic and weaken the dutch severly, and also split their empire so they will be helpless basically, if we take all 3 of the cities highlighted then after a few turns(probably a long time) those cities might just flip in our favor under culture pressure.... so my vote is no to change the goals sorry >.<

 

[DaveShack]

No, you misunderstand my point. I was responding to comments that "the long-term (strategy) plan is only 1 turnchat old and we're changing it". My point is that which cities to take is tactics not strategy -- so we're not changing the strategy at all, just the tactics of how to achieve that strategy.

 

[mad-bax]

You cannot list every "what - if" in a strategy. All you can do is set targets that appear reasonable at the time. I think the Date targets for the wars were reasonable. I thing the targets for the Indian war were reasonable. The Dutch targets too were reasonable, but now that we have almost reached these targets it is reasonable to look at the strategy and make a judgement as to whether we were over-ambitious or selling ourselves short.
If you look at the reasons behing the Dutch war objectives, then we were assuming that more horses would be built and fewer barracks, a wonder, and a harbour. We built a lot more swords than predicted. Therefore we are militarily stronger the the External Consulate predicted, and have a weaker infrastructure. On top of that, the war aims were limited to what we could achieve in 6-10 turns so as not to interfere with a jump to Republic. We have failed to obtain this tech (Not that I am complaining).

Therefore in light of the in-game circumstances it is right to look at the strategy and develop it. All we are doing is saying "We have got where we expected to get" and then asking "what next?"
We did the same after the Indian war and decided to stop. We can stop here too, or continue. I don't see the big deal.

I voted to continue. The port and the extra lux plus the extra territory and tech is all good, and we have the military to do it.

 

[Bertie]

@ DaveShack,

Wow, I really did misunderstand you! Sorry about that.

I'll take the crow fricassee, please.

 

[zyxy]

And so did I.

I'll pass up on the crow though (odd expression, didn't know that one).