Granted that not pulling the armies was a mistake, but I don't think it was a huge one. They were cav armies and obsolete. We can build more. The truth is, I had no idea that they would attract so much bombing. I didn't realize they were such magnetic targets. I thought they could hang out on the island and take care of the odd invaders that Alex would send. Chalk it up to inexperience and it's a lesson learned.
Cav become obsolete, Cav
Armies never so; tanks won't attack them, and - with 4 movement points - they are the best pillagers in the game.
Even allowing that you didn't know that they would attract the attention of Bombers, keeping them there was an error of judgement; why would we want to try and keep the island at all, much less at the expense of tying down such useful units. Still, as you say, put it down to inexperience.
My real concern was with switching Osaka from Army production, for Hoover's; that is wrong on so many levels, that I can't begin to understand your thinking.
Assuming for a moment that Hoover's has value to us (something I contest; it's only value would be to save upkeep on 10 or so CP's), why build it at the expense of
three Armies, when we have other cities in which it could be built.
And I'm totally bemused by your assertion that "we have enough Armies for now"; Greece is nearly in the MA, and we have one Infantry Army.
Given that we can only build one every 7 turns, how can that be enough?
Also we don't yet even have AT; assuming that we get it at the next peace deal, it will be another period of war before we can get Electronics, and the Palace pre-build will complete in 10 turns.
We are in danger of moving Palace at a cost of 3 Armies.
I never really expected a huge invasion of Greece. IN the event that we are denied a resource it will be necessary however (at least enough of an invasion to take the resource).
Not so; all it will be necessary to do is to sit on whichever resource that we don't lack.
Remember, to build a SS part, we only need the resource for a split second, not throughout it's completion, so a temporary peace with Greece (in the manner of our recent deals) in which the resource forms part of the deal, is all we need.
Cities had been building infantry and I switched them to arty for a round as I sent so many to Willie's island. I still think it is a good idea to have arty around the homeland to harass the Greek Navy when it comes in range. Those bombing runs will impact our income quite a bit if we just let the boats sit off-shore.
I don't doubt the need for a round of Arty builds, to deal with infantry landings; the Bombers are coming from Carriers, and they are positioned off shore where our Arty won't touch them.
The only answer to Bombers is Flak, once we have Flight.
As for governments, do you think we'll really need to change? If we let 20 turns go by while we send units over we'll start from 0 WW.
I'm certain of it; we will have continuous war for the rest of the game, once we begin resource denial - we cannot let up for even one turn.
If we can get air defense in cities, we should be able to minimize the bombing WW. For that matter, setting up a city on stolen resources would take away the "enemy territory" factor. Of course, it would also make the armies attackable. If we do change, I would guess that Monarch or Commie are our only real options. I don't really know Commie at all so I can't make a judgment between the two.
Cities would be a magnet for tanks; fighting would be intense and constant, increasing WW even more quickly.
Neither do I think that we could hold a city - Greece can afford to support many hundreds of units.
Monarchy is the only real option; we would lose our commerce bonus (as we would with Commie) but retain our core production.
