Grand Strategy Thread

Are there any unit carrying ships faster than transports (m: 6)?

Can Paratroopers start from ships or carriers and land in towns? What's their range?

Are Helicopters a threat? What's their range?

How can submarines be detected? Only by destroyers or by any ship trying to move on the same tile?
No. No, range is 3 iirc. Helicopters on Carriers could be a problem, but their range is only 4. Destroyers, AEGIS Cruisers and other Submarines can see Submarines.
 
Destroyers, AEGIS Cruisers and other Submarines can see Submarines.
So if a transport enters the same tile as a submarine, they won't meet (just as aircraft and land units sharing a tile)?
Or will the transport stop and the submarine become visible (as in Civ 2)?
 
So if a transport enters the same tile as a submarine, they won't meet (just as aircraft and land units sharing a tile)?
Or will the transport stop and the submarine become visible (as in Civ 2)?

Well, in PTW, if you try to enter a tile with an unseen enemy sub then the (unfortunate unit) attacks the sub. If the same happens and there is no war then you are asked if you really want to declare war on someone - then you know a hidden (neutral) sub is there. C3C probably works the same way.
 
Yeah, what donsig said. Any ship can discover a sub by accidently moving onto it. You get the warning, but you still don't get to see it.
 
These are some thoughts about what we should do:

Threats:

3 of our 4 opponents are threats to win the game - GONG by culture and FREE/SABER by spaceship. FREE and SABER are both threats to defeat us militarily, as well, if they focus on that. I don't think BABE is a threat to win right now - they are behind in tech, which makes it hard for them to invade and they don't have a win condition beyond that. Besides, they aren't really trying.

I assume that no one is trying to win diplomatically.

How to beat GONG:

1) Launch a Spaceship before they hit 100K
2) Invade and take cities, which will destroy cultural buildings, thus dropping their ability to generate culture
3) Bomb cities to destroy cultural buildings

With our tech advantages, we can probably do either 2 or 3 on our own, assuming that we can keep BABE out of the war. I dont' think we could KEEP the GONG cities, but every city we take will slow down there culture. It's probably best to get SABER and FREE involved in that effort, as well.

How to beat FREE and/or FREE

1) Launch spaceship before them
2) Dogpile them and raze several of their important cities.

I don't know that we can project enough power to defeat either of them militarily and keep our homeland secure - multiple attackers could make it happen - but really, the thing we would want to do is to wipe out their ability to research. If we can take/raze their core cities, that ability will go away. For FREE, just razing the city with Hoover's would probably kill their ability to win the game,since it's probably one of their best cities. That's hard to do, of course - maybe a bunch of paratroops, assuming that it's a central city.

More and more, I'm thinking that a strategy of first dog-piling FREE with SABER and BABE/GONG and then launching an assault on SABER with BABE and GONG support may be the way to go.
 
Military action vs. FREE:

FREE has infantry, which have a D of 10, and they have cities, which have a natural defense of 50%. They don't have sanitation so don't have Metros. So their city defense is 17.5 (with fortification).

Marines have an attack of 12, I think, so to take one of their core cities from the sea would require 2 marines per defender (at least) or bombardment or both.

We can't know how many defenders a city has, though my guess is no more than 1 or 2 right now.

My guess is that to take a city far from the core would take 2 marines and a couple of bombers. A 3rd ring city might take 2-3 marines and 4 bombers. A core city would probably take 4-6 marines and 4-8 bombers - holding any city would require a fair number of infantry - probably 6-10.

If we were to just raze the cities and destroy their productive ability, we wouldn't need the infantry until we were to land in force, so we could get by with transports with just marines and a carrier with bombers.

Do we want to raze cities like that? It's kind of a jerky thing to do in a game like this, particularly one that has gone on so long. It would suck if we were to be invaded and get our cities razed.
 
I think razing cities should be completely legal. Winning the game diplomatically can actually be possible because Babe might be willing to vote for Gong. Would that make Gong the winner, if they get 2 out of 5 votes with us all voting for ourselves? Boy wouldn't that really suck.
 
I have no qualms about razing cities. Nor do I feel a single pang of guilt. If they can't defend their cities well enough to prevent a civ from razing their cities; all while running away with a Space Victory, then shame on them!

No, I will gladly cheer if we get to see some of their cities become smoking piles of rubble.
 
Our defense:

Core cities probably need 2 infantry each. In our metros, an infantry is defense 22.5, which should hold off anything until armor pretty easily - certainly will hold off a sipahi attack. Armor will tend to lose to us, but enough armor will take it eventually.

very important cities (capitol, the Treasury) should get 2 or 3 infantry plus a flak and maybe a fighter running CAP.

We should consider coastal fortresses for cities on the water - they are cheap, have no upkeep and take a potshot at ships. We might want to think about walls for smaller cities on the west coast, as well.

In fact, we might want to stop any attempt to block the coast and just focus on city defense.
 
:agree: This is a sound plan, and I support it.

Forget coastal blocking, gentlemen. As Saber has demonstrated, it's now officially irrelevant! Pandora's box is open, even if Saber is the only one in actual possession of the knowledge right now, that can easily change.
 
Yes, I agree with the demise of coastal blocking. We have several horsemen. Should we disband them and build infantry or hang on to them so we can upgrade them to cavalry? With tanks around the corner all that cavalry have to offer is an extra move.

We should decide on the form of our EWS as well. Should it be naval or air based? Since we have few ports that can produce ships fast we should consider using fighters on recon missions as our EWS. We can build them inland and let our good ports work on carriers, destroyers and battleships for action.

The musings of about the UN are intriguing. I'm not sure who can actually be voted for when a UN election is held. Aren't there some restrictions in C3C (unlike in [civ4])? It would be interesting (and quite ironic) to see BABE get the UN. I'm pretty sure the builder of the UN is always eligible for diplomatic victory. Even if GONG had it it would be like insurance. We could threaten to vote for GONG to win if someone attacked us. Of course that would work both ways - SABER and FREE could do the same. That would either result in someone attacking GONG and capturing the UN or the three scientific civs entering a gentleman's agreement to race for space.

As for razing cities, I'd rather not do that if we can avoid it. Do we foresee a pressing need to destroy cities in the future?
 
no, 2 out of 5 won't win. If 5 still live, you need 3 out of 5.

But I don't know that GONG (or BABE) would even be a candidate. I doubt either of them could build the UN and I don't know who are the two biggest civs.
 
The thing about razing cities is that if we do that to a couple of core cities, we pretty much dont' have to worry about that civ building a space ship, even if we can't wipe them out - and I think it's harder to wipe out a civ on a map like this than we may think, unless we can catch someone with a fully railed civ with empty cities that cavs can take over really fast. Even as little as an infantry per city will pretty much guarantee survival long enough to fight back, and core cities will almost certainly flip in a turn or two. Actually, I guess for FREE or SABER (if we attack them), we will have to raze core cities. GONG not as much (since we are just worried about destroying culture), but even so, those we dont' raze will likely flip back the next turn.
 
no, 2 out of 5 won't win. If 5 still live, you need 3 out of 5.

But I don't know that GONG (or BABE) would even be a candidate. I doubt either of them could build the UN and I don't know who are the two biggest civs.

Well, I was thinking that if GONG had the UN they'd have their vote and BABE's vote so any third vote would give them a victory. Either one could build the UN since no one else is going to build it. Trouble is they'd probably have to be gifted up to modern times. Doesn't the builder of the UN get included in the vote even if not one of the two largest? Right now I'd say the two largest are FREE and SABER since they both have two eleven tile islands.
 
Should we sign a pact with the two other civs not to vote for gong. Maybe Babe is trying to get free into their pact.
 
Right they wouldn't get there unless we helped them do it. Not suggesting we should do that but it is interesting to speculate.
 
We have FREE's map. It's old but still useful in finding their core. In looking over their terrain I noticed they have only one source of oil. It is between Tower of Babel and Ishme-Shamash. South of Tower of Babel is the capitol, Freedom Central. It seems a landing in the north, possibly at Ishme-Samash would be best. In this crazy donut world we could also strike their eleven tiler (the one with Sid City) then move on to Numenor (a one tile island) on the way to FREE's north coast. Might be better to by pass those minor targets so as not to lose surprise.
 
From the played turns thread for turn 205:

F11
By doing what we do best - research - we increase our already formidable GNP from 1469 last turn (and 1st) to 2004(!!!) :wow: this turn, still in 1st of course.
Our MFG increased from 687 to 726, still in 3rd.
Our overall Productivity went from 1904 to 2479, from 3rd to 1st! :banana:

I played around a bit, and the second best in productivity is ~2095, the second best GNP is ~1420. To say that we research fast is an understatement. :smug:

It will be interesting to see these numbers once our golden age is over.

If we can research faster than anyone else, the question becomes can we research fast enough to launch a spaceship before SABER or FREE does and before GONG reached 100k in culture points? If the answer is yes then we don't need to get involved in any foreign wars. Nor would we need a tech alliance with anyone else.

We can't forget the related question - can we research faster than SABER and FREE combined? A SABER/FREE tech alliance still seems to be our biggest threat. Is war the only way to prevent that? Is an exclusive tech alliance with one the answer?

I don't have the answers to these questions but I do see an exclusive tech alliance as something that will keep us at tech parity with our partner. Our strategy has always been to gain a tech advantage and go our own way on research at some point. That point has to be in this, the last, era.

For a long time we had counted on FREE being our partner and we successfully starved SABER. We changed course and fed the tiger. It does seem imperative that a war between SABER and FREE come about. Another question (to which I don't have the answer) is which side do we want to be on?

Finally, can anyone give the Council a revised estimate of GONG's projected 100k date?
 
Finally, can anyone give the Council a revised estimate of GONG's projected 100k date?
I'll give a low-budget estimate. GONG's culture seems to be fairly static now, it's unlikely they will grow much further. Currently they have 840 cpt. If they manage to increase that to an average of 900 cpt over the rest of the game, they are still 66 turns from 100k.

It would take more than 66 turns for us to research all the necessary spaceship techs on our own. With our current speed we could do so in less than 60 turns (11 techs at 5 or 6 turns each), but sadly that speed won't last forever. So we do need a tech alliance in order to beat GONG to it (or a war against GONG of course).
 
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