How To: Destroy The Council

[General_W]

How To: Destroy The Council​

Note: I’m not trying to usurp the “preparing for a possible invasion” thread – but we’ve got so many topics going on there, I think we’re losing a little focus.

I raised this issue a couple days ago – and I fear we haven’t fully discussed it. Hopefully this thread will help with that. ​

I’m willing to bet money that both FREE and Saber have a thread in their forums with a title similar to this one.
They are pondering how to take us out, before we can launch a spaceship… and we need to know what they’re planning!

Let’s take a step back from our defensive scramble and try to think strategically about how we might be attacked. Then we much more effectively plan a coordinated defense.


To kick things off, I’d like to present my thoughts on:

The Top 3 ways to Invade the Council

Operation: Direct Assault

• Goal: Quickly control a city on The Council Mainland
• Primary Invasion Point: The Nursery (Saber) or The Bayou (FREE)
• Methodology: Bombers from 11-tile island soften up target city. Destroyers clear pathway to city. SOD of Cruisers, Battleships, & Transports carrying Modern Armor move into range, then proceed to launch a marine led attack. (# of Marines needed determined by spying ahead of time)
• Needed For Defense: SAM batteries in The Nursery & The Bayou. 8 Mobile SAMs, evenly divided between Bayou and Nursery. Large stack of defenders in Bayou and Nursery.

Operation: Island Hop

• Goal: Capture Subcommittee Island, then use that as a staging ground for capturing the Mainland of The Council.
• Primary Invasion Point: Any city (or possibly a mountain peak) on SubCom Island.
• Methodology: Possibly soften up target with Carrier-based Bombers – then marines take city/or/mountain – then unload SOD of Modern Armor.
• Needed For Defense: Ability to airlift a significant number of defenders/counter-attackers. A modest number of units pre-positioned to hold each city and maybe a couple mechs for the Mountain tiles.

Operation: Beachhead Landing

• Goal: Secure a relatively un-opposed landing and hold out against initial counter-attack. Avoid the need for more than a few marines, in favor of many more Modern Armor.
• Primary Invasion Point: Any point along The Council coastline that has 2 (or preferably fewer) units blocking the coast. Bonus points for any hill tile.
• Methodology: Possibly soften up target with a few Carrier-based Bombers. 4-5 marines secure landing zone – then unload uber-SOD of Modern Armor.
• Needed For Defense: Enough Modern Armor to stack 3-4 units on every tile that’s potentially vulnerable to approaching enemy transports. Even more Modern Armor to make sure the enemy does NOT survive to a second turn.

Now – under any of these scenarios – we can expect Chamnix or Kuningas to be smart enough to blaze a trail for their SOD of Transports/Battleships/Cruisers by sending out a sweep of destroyers to look for Subs.
However – I think it’s still worthwhile to have subs around that can get in-range within a turn or two. Since subs can specifically target transports out from under the cover of the protective SOD… and every transport we sink can take up to 6 units to the bottom with it (or at the least, prevent 6 units worth of reinforcements from arriving!)

Also – for all of these scenarios - we’ll need that Jet-based Early-Warning-System, so that we can keep tabs on the invaders, even after they try to take out all our surface ships in-range of their advancing naval SOD.


Bottom Line: I’m suggesting that we try (to the best of our ability) to guard against every specific line of attack that’s likely to occur.
​

I also think it’s vitally important for us to think about other ways/tactics that FREE or Saber might come after us with… so that we can draft defense plans against those also.

Please! Jump in here with how you think it’s most likely we’ll get attacked – and what the best way to defend against that attack would be.

I’m very far from the best C3C tactician, so I’m really looking forward to hearing what my fellow councilors think!

 

[tomasjj]

My gut reaction was something like this:

If FREE was to attack, my thought was that it would be done with a decoy buildup and run near SCI's east coast to draw more of our troops and attention there. Then a turn, probably two later, an attempted landing on the east coast, anywhere from The Shallow to The Ways.

However, such tactics might not be the main thing, as FREE probably have the numbers to go for a direct confrontation in a way. I do however expect a tactical twist of some kind when they attack. We need to stay ahead of their game.

I think the idea of SAMS in the cities they can reach from their islands is sound, but I suspect they know we will be expecting that, and will have carriers out with bombers as that makes them harder to predict.

Was it FREE or SABER who had been using espionage a lot? Can that play a part? There was talk about one of our productions being delayed inexplicably, so it had me wondering if we had been the victim of a sabotage production run, or do such missions empty the production box completely? I seem to remember it did. Was this "loss of shields" explained?

 

[dl123654]

My first thought is that transport in the water of the second screenshot needs an escort.

 

[tomasjj]

Saber seems to have quite a bit of naval presence in the neighboring waters. Can we get a screenie of the Free side of the oceans as well?

 

[donsig]

I think as time goes by, Operation Beachhead Landing becomes less of a threat. If they steal our military plans before invading and see we have enough modern armor to wipe out a landing party they will turn their focus to grabbing a city. (This highlights the importance of building modern armor now.)

Operation Island Hop will be tempting to our rivals especially if cutting off our rubber supply prevents us from starting the casing. If they have spies tracking the progress of our spaceship then this becomes appealing to our rivals.

Our EWS is our best defense against Operation Direct Assault. As long as we get a one turn warning we have a chance. Even if we cannot sink a single transport we will at least be able to see which cities are in danger of being taken. We can then abandon those cities or strengthen their defenses. The jet based EWS is very important here since our rivals may seek to blind us and confuse us by sinking the ships in our EWS, both near the intended point of attack and away from it.

 

[AutomatedTeller]

My thoughts are that defending against a beachhead landing is a bad idea except on mountains and hills. any defenders will get pounded by bombers brought in by carriers, so it's not really all that useful. There are two mountain tiles attackable by sea, and those shoul certainly be defended - we cannot allow a stack of 50 MA to land on mountains that close to our core.

I would probably do the below:

Land units on the hill north of the ways and bomb the 5 tiles circled in red to remove rails and roads. This would cut off the troops I landed from attack and allow me to hit The Ways with a large stack of MA the next turn, perhaps blowing into the interior.

This would require a bunch of transports and 3 or 4 carriers of bombers - you need at least 10 (bombing rails and roads takes two) - battleships can't get close enough without getting bombed and destroyers just aren't reliable in removing improvements. I'd want more than 12, to ensure destruction - plus, I'd probably want a 5th carrier to provide CAP for my stack.

To defeat it, it might be enough to station some workers on a couple of those tiles so we can reroad, then re-rail them, then send MA up to take out the stack.

 

[Yilar]

I considered the option of bombing roads to, but you would need to bomb a lot more roads. We will see the transport stack comming a turn before it lands. That means we can move the MA stack there and wait, so unless you have taken out enough roads for our armors to take 2 turns to get there the plan doesn't work and that requires A LOT of bombers if you are gonna do that in 1 turn. In most cases 20 or so tiles!

 

[General_W]

Good thinking AutoTeller!
That's a good attack plan. [bad attack plan?]

I'm not sure I understand your suggested mitigation strategy though- If we leave workers standing on those tiles, won't the invaders kill them with their bombers? Or do bombers by-pass workers on their bombing runs?

And certainly we'd still want to place at least a few mechs/Modern Armor on that hill tile right? Make them use up their marines to secure the landing site...

 

[dl123654]

Or you can just station units on those squares, bomber will hit them before the railroad. Or even mobile SAM and fighters in the area.

I can still see ways in for your diagram, by my logic you can't stop movement 3 units without destroying at least 6 squares.

I do agree that we need at least 1 unit in the coastal mountains and hills. Good thing we will have 1 turn notice to decide what will be needed.

Lets not forget option 4 . At least we will get a good warning before hand.

 

[donsig]

Bombers don't kill workers, General. Would it do us any good to place some subs near the places AT pointed out?

 

[peter grimes]

Working from AT's plan...

If we were attacking in that way, and saw workers on the tiles were were preparing to bomb, we'd almost certainly sacrifice some MA to ensure that the rails couldn't be reconstructed immediately.

But I think there was a hole in the plan from the start. I think the two tiles S and SS of Chamsuri's cove would also have to be bombed in order to ensure that The Council couldn't bring in an attack stack or reinforcing stack.

 

[AutomatedTeller]

bombers don't hurt workers. But yes, Peter - you are right - those two tiles would have to be bombed, too, which brings the total they would need up to 14, which is at least 4 and probably 5 carriers.

me, I'd rather handle it with workers, if we find an attack coming there.

I'd prefer to keep our subs ready for an attack on The Bayou or another place near our core. To be honest, an attack like that doesn't scare me all that much, cause we get 2 turns to react (one with the transports move into range, one to kill them when they land). I'd much rather kill all the transports threatening the Bayou, which is making > 100 spt and is fundamentally important to our defense.

 

[Hasdrubal Barca]

If the council were to make forests behind those cities an attack would be screwd for sure In that scenario a simple forest in the tile between the hill and the city of The Ways would kill off the invasion.

 

[tomasjj]

I was thinking about those hills when I posted my previous post, but I somehow felt that an invasion force would not be happy to be sitting on those hills for long, as we could bomb them to pieces. Capturing a city would provide a much better springboard as the defenses would be better no?

 

[Hasdrubal Barca]

I was thinking about those hills when I posted my previous post, but I somehow felt that an invasion force would not be happy to be sitting on those hills for long, as we could bomb them to pieces. Capturing a city would provide a much better springboard as the defenses would be better no?

Is they stack 6 Mobile Sams with the SOD on the hill our bombers would get creamed

 

[Paul#42]

Is they stack 6 Mobile Sams with the SOD on the hill our bombers would get creamed

That brings a good reason for building regular (or even conscript ) SAMs (rather than veterans) to my mind:
They show up later on top of an attacked SOD.

 

[RFHolloway]

So what do we need to defend, now we know what we are defending against?

 

[Yilar]

Armors, armors, armors, armors and guess what more armors!

 

[peter grimes]

I'm also concerned about Saber's carriers. How many bombers can they carry?

Also, if Saber and Free have spies on us, then that means that they are tracking our military build up, correct?

I wonder why Saber built 4 mobile sams?

It would be smart of them to land them over a beachhead stack

 

[AutomatedTeller]

carriers can carry 4 bombers each.