Nominations for Defence Minister

[gbno1fan]

Great question, Peter.

At first glance, I would attempt to defend the cities by placing them close to one another (ICS, as I'm sure we had planned on anyway), and having roads in between. This would allow our Knights to easily move between the cities.

From there, we could place a small party of Knights in one of the cities. This group would be available for defending the city they occupy or retaking any cities that are unexpectedly captured.

I would also support keeping the cities on BattleIsle at lower populations to encourage them to be sacked instead of captured. It would be better for us to lose a city at the start of a war than to have to have the liability of needing to retake it during the war. In other words, I think it would be better to lose a city, fight a war to victory, and then replace the city, than to lose a city, and have to fight to regain it.

Those are just my thoughts on the question. In reality, I would encourage the team to discuss and debate how to defend the cities, and we could go from there.

 

[classical_hero]

Here is a shortened version of my platform as I do not have much time to really devlop it further until the weekend, since there is a Big game on tommorrow and Friday is always a bad day for me to be posting here.

Eliminate Doughnut is my platform. Why? So that we can make it two horse race between us and KISS because if we do not attack someone then we will be doomed to defeat, so this is really the only course of action.

 

[fe3333au]

So your platform is basically MIA vs. the rest of the world which are alligned against us?

If this is a correct interpretation, I must say I will vote against it! ... sorry.

I at least would like the support of Defence to at least try to allign with Nuts and get the benefits of ensuring a tech lead ... and having KISS attacked on two fronts ... or at the very least having only one opponent to worry about if Nuts choose to sit out the war.

 

[classical_hero]

My platform is basically about bringing balance to this game and I see the best way for this to happen is for us to attack the nutters and remove them, because we know that TNT will be removed by a KISS Nut alliance so this is really the best opportunity for us to remove Nuts and bring back balance to this game. The thing is that if we are going to attack someone it is alway better to go for the weaker link, which is DNuts. Fe, if we do not act quickly enough it will be the Rest of the World verses us so we better get onto it quickly to give ourselves a chance of winning this game. Considering that there are still 30 turns to go with that horendous deal with KISS, we really have only one option. Also this way we can see if KISS are honourable like we have been this deal. If people are really willing to wait then we could also delay this until the deal with KISS is over and attack them instead

What we need is for us to go straight for Military Tradition so that we can have Cavs for our attacks. Right now we have an advantage over the other teams since we are the only nation with Chivalry and we should hopefully be able to Cavs before everyone esle, which seems to be the path of the other two teams. Either way action must be taken and we must be prepared for war otherwise war will come upon us and we will not be ready and by then it will be too late.

 

[gbno1fan]

I disagree. The best way for us to win this game is to build up a strong defense as a deterrant to KISS or Dnuts attacking us. From there, we can use our civ traits to propel ourselves to victory.

I do not believe it will be KISS and Dnuts against us. If we look at it from the prospective of:

KISS... They will eliminate TNT, and are obviously going for a domination victory. In order for them to get enough of the land, they will need to go against either us or Dnuts. If our defense is strong enough, it would be too difficult for them to easily defeat us, so it would be wise for them to attack Dnuts next.

Dnuts... They are seeing KISS going after a domination victory and will undoubtedly see that they are weaker than us, and thus are the likely target for further KISS aggression. In the future they will be very likely to want to align with us.

In the end, we will need to find a way to prevent KISS from defeating Dnuts and getting their domination victory before we win the space race. Therefore, I think our best defensive strategy at the moment is to make peace with the Dnuts, build our diplomatic relationship with them, and help them grow strong enough to prevent KISS from a quick and decisive victory.

 

[classical_hero]

Great to see a real race here (that I'm not part of!)

Question for the Candidates
As the current Defense Minister, I have been perplexed recently with the problem of how to divide our forces between BattleIsle and The Core. If we are not to engage in war on BattleIsle, we will settle a couple towns there. But these need defense. How much? Of what units? If we don't settle over there, that almost certainly means that we are planning on attacking DNUTs. So again - how much do we attack with, and of what unit proportions?

I'm just glad I dont' have to answer this one. I was dreading being asked this, but luckily I wasn't nominated

BTW - I would be more than happy to serve as a deputy to whoever is elected, if they want me. At the same time, I won't mind at all taking a break from this. I think this term could be among the busier ones yet

My preferred unit would be the Calvary because the extra movement that they have is a killer and every other team knows this and this is why they are going that path. IF we are not quick enough in doing this we will have to wait until we get Infantry before we do any attacking and by this time it will give the other teams time to build up there defences. We will need defensive unit to shore up our gains so we will need to get some of our best defensive units to do the Job. Basically our overall ration should be about 60/40 to 70/30 of the units there/here, would be a good estimate. If we are to be attacking DNuts, then we need to make sure that we have enough units protecting our north and we will need to have ships on scouting duty so that we are not caught off unawares from any naval attacks.

Offically it sucks being the only warmonger in this team.

 

[fe3333au]

I don't think the issue is war mongering ... just your strategy.

Blind Freddy can see that KISS is the target ... and two against one are certainly better odds than wasting our resources in sencelessly wiping out Nuts without even giving them the option of joining us in eliminating the KISS threat.

At the moment we have a very good chance of achieving this ... and Nuts are even starting to gain footholds in TNT territory that will at least restrict KISS and hamper unopposed expansion.

I guess regarding the extended peace with KISS, I think it has been a boon for us ... so we agree to disagree onthat one

Don't worry it will be war ... but better a war with the real enemy.

 

[classical_hero]

It appears that my intepretation of the facts is different from everyone esle. I see that there are two alliances right now and our alliance is the one that is taking a beating. KISS/Nut allaince is destroying TNT and we are doing absolutely nothing about it. TNT are our partners and whether we like it or not we must do something about it or cancel this alliance that we have, because we (our allaince that is,) are taking a beating. My feeling is that we will soon be attacked by both KISS and Doughnuts, so this is why I am campaining on this platform. It seems that everyone esle is thinking that Dnuts will help us in our battle with KISS, but I am not so sure. In any case we really should be preparing for war and with the possiblity of fighting two sides at once. Things so far have not gone as everyone esle has predicted, but things have gone to they way I thought would happen, so lets hope I am wrong on this. Considering that it looks like that my platform has no chance of winning, I am withdrawing my candidacy.

 

[Chamnix]

TNT are our partners and whether we like it or not we must do something about it or cancel this alliance that we have

Realistically, we are cancelling our alliance. We are pursuing an alliance with Dnuts, and we haven't given TNT anything that costs us anything for quite a while.

It seems that everyone esle is thinking that Dnuts will help us in our battle with KISS, but I am not so sure.

Not at all. We hope Dnuts will help us, but it is certainly not taken for granted. The problem is that attacking Dnuts guarantees they will not help us.

I'm disappointed that you want to withdraw. Having more than one candidate airing different views can only help the team.

 

[fe3333au]

I agree with Chmnix that having alternative voices is one of the things that make us strong

In regards to alliances, nothing is in concrete. If TNT manage to hold KISS off things may very well change. For us I see great benefits in having the added research power of Nuts behind us ... but if they refuse our generous offer, well things can always go as you forsee. The point is we need to dance around and weigh our options at this point in the game.

 

[gbno1fan]

I ask that my opponent stay in the race.

Even if it seems that your platform has no chance, it would be helpful to have an idea of how many people on the team agree with each side of the issue. That way, whoever wins can attempt to use the information gained through the vote to follow the will of the team and appease both sides as much as possible.

 

[classical_hero]

One thing is certian, we must get to Military Tradition before everyone else. We also need to get to at least Astronomy before others because it means that we will have a great advantage over every other nation. We do have an advantage over every other nation right now with Knights, but we somehow chose not to use them and only until the previous few turns we built our first knight when we could have had heaps by now and gone on the war path with them, but we chose to waste that advantage. Lets hope things will be better in the next lot of turns for our military.

 

[classical_hero]

I'll renominate myself for this position. One thing is certian with this game is expect the unexpected. I'm sure everyone is planning that we will be attacking KISS right after our agreeement expires, so we must get inventive with any attacks that we make. I know that there is little agreement with attacking Dnuts, but we mustn't rule it out completly especially if a 2 on 1 eventuates and we are at the end of the 1 bit. We need to have ships ready so that we can have an early warning of an assault by either nation. If I am elected to this position I will make sure that no stone is left uncovered in our pursuit of our goals, and that is to win this game. We must be prepared because we have teams here that are not going to go down without a fight. The good thing so far is that we have had a peaceful journey so far and we easily have a tech lead in this game and thus we can use it to the fullest. We will be the first nation out this era so that gives us a great advantage to get some really powerful techs along the way. I think we first need to get Militarty Tradition first and then we make our way out this era and hopefully we get Steam Engine as our free tech and we can then quickly railroad iour territory so that we can have a more flexible defense and thus we hopefully will need less units. I think the goal tec of Industrial era wil have to be Replaceable parts since we will get an awesome defender and a brilliant bombarding weapon. So this is obviously talking about a long term Defense strategy, but we must be look way forward in a way for us to win this game. If we can have Infantries with our Calvaries before anyone else even gets to Nationalism, then we are set for an easier ride to victory. Sorry about repeating myself but it is important to get a right strategy for this game so that we can win it.

 

[Chamnix]

ybbor ?

 

[classical_hero]

ybbor ?

I misinterpreted you. Whoops. I'll send him an PM about this.

 

[ybbor]

Term 9.

Nominate!

 

[fe3333au]

I nominate Peter Grimes

 

[classical_hero]

I nominate myself and accept.

 

[fe3333au]

OK another election (if Peter or another accepts that is)

Can I have the candidates views on unit builds ... are you happy with our current accumulation of knights and trebs which will be upgraded to Cavalry and Cannon ???

What about our own navy ???
... we have been informed that KISS have a quite extensive navy which will not be sitting idle.

Also what are the priorities for the rail network ... of course linking the frontier, but what about quick response to massive sneak naval landing?

 

[gbno1fan]

I nominate myself and accept.

I am happy with the current path of unit builds. The upgrades will allow us to immediately strengthen our army, and perhaps add to our small (do we even have one at this point? I suspect KISS is already preparing for our attack) element of surprise.

I do not support the building of a navy to compete with KISS. Let them have the seas. The more units they have on water is the less they have on land. Cities do not exist in the water. Cities and resources exist on land. Let's forego a navy and build more knights-cavalry and trebs-cannons.

The rail network will be critical to our defense - especially if we can expect attacks to come from the sea as well (because we will lack a navy). In theory for defensive rails all we would need is a circle connecting our border/coastal towns with a spoke that goes through main barracks locations. Then new units could be sent to any threatened location immediately. Once that is built, we could begin building more spokes to bring more towns into the network, and finally rail the rest of the tiles for the rail bonuses.