Preparing for a possible invasion.

[Paul#42]

10*100s*1/0.95*1/6 = 175 shields per armor repelled
120*1/0.66 = 182 shields per armor repelled

What your numbers do not reflect is the fact that subs are most likely lost after one usage while winning MA will be used again, maybe even on the same turn and in defense.

On the other hand after an initial repell of some armors, another 2/10 of our subs might be moved into range to strike on the second turn of the invasion. This is especially valuable, if we managed to sink several transports on the first strike and many MA wait in the second chain link, maybe they are even moved forth to the relais point at risk of being sunk.

But those numbers are also nice and scalar

 

[Hasdrubal Barca]

I've been taking a look at the map. There are only a limited # of cities that FREE can launch a 2-turn invasion from (either stacks of transports taking 2 turns, or ship chain where they use 2 sets of transports).

These cities are:

Coastal Geek and Lake Port on the south side of FREE homeland
Footloose and Monte Cristo on GONG's former 11 tiler
Freeborn, Sid City and Martin Luther Kind on FREE's 11 tiler
BuyOneGetOneFree on the far west coast of the former GONG land.

There are similar spots for SABER, I am sure.

To me, the most likely jumpoff spot is FREEBORN, with an attack on The Bayou, with bomber support, because they can get as many bombers as they have on the attack.

The Bayou is the ONLY tile we own vulnerable to land-based bomber attack from FREE until stealth bombers. We probably want to add a barracks/civil defense/sam missle battery to it, since they could dump a lot of bombers on it if they attack.

We might want to add a coastal fortress, as well.

The Nursery is similarly vulnerable to an attack from the 11 tiler SABER owns that they took from BABE, if they put an airfield next to Cattauragus.

I am thinking it may make sense to move our EWS out some, to cover where they would have to stage if they were planning a 3 turn invasion, giving us an extra turn, and allowing us to concentrate our defenses around a 2 turn one.

In particular, I might concentrate submarines near the bayou area, to intercept a force at what is probably our most vulnerable spot. It may make sense to move our carrier north, to bomb any carriers they bring. Removing bomber support makes marine attacks much harder.

This is a more sound like defense

I´d add a radar tower on those 2 cities (Bayou & The Nursery), 2 airfields behind them and a couple flaks/mobile sam´s, fortify a guerrila and 1 art in each city at least to provide free shots.

 

[Yilar]

Radar towers will be built if we see an enemy...
I honestly don't think they are gonna be bombing us with 50 bombers, but if they do then we can of course plant an airfield.
Flaks and mobile sams are outdated, jets are better at air defence.
Guerillas are gonna be disbanded, they are costing us cash and it's likely they won't hit anyway. The bombard on guerilla is only 3 (less than a catapult).
We would have to build artis to use them, beside the one we captured from babe. I don't know about you, but choosing between building an arti and a modern armor the choice seems easy to me.

 

[peter grimes]

Again, not to sound contrarian, but why don't you think they'll use 50 bombers? When the attack comes, I fully expect something around that order of magnitude.

 

[Yilar]

50x100 = 5000 shields. Divide that by 120 and you get 41 modern armors.

What would you choose between, if you had to choose between 50 bomber or 36 armors + 6 transports, remember we can simple disband the bayou rendering their bombers useless without expensive carriers. It's the same deal with the mass marines, it's very unlikely because they would be better off building modern armors and landing on mountains/hills.

 

[Hasdrubal Barca]

Against´t a marine the chance of a guerrila defensive hit are still high (41%). Plus you can upgrade it later to TOW which will give you a bombard hit of 6 with a probability of 81%.

1 Mobile Sam as a hit probability of 16% against a bomber, 4 Mobile SAM´s have a hit probability of 50% for every enemy flight over the costal city, join in a SAM battery and you get a 71% kill probability for every enemy flight And if i´m not mistaken they can fire multiple times.

If you wait to build the radar towers till you see an enemy...no coment...

Can´t we buy some workers from BABE, that is if they have any left?

If we are invaded, it will come in big numbers.

 

[Yilar]

Guerillas does have a chance at shooting marines, but we already have huge odds, 3/4 marine vs 4/4 mech is gonna win without taking damage in most cases anyway. Rather not pay upkeep and get a few shields instead.

Do you have the stats on jets to?

Of course an invasion will come in big numbers, but it's the ratio of what units they bring that is interesting. I predict they will bring mass modern armors, not mass marines or mass bombers. At least thats what I would do if I was invading.

 

[Hasdrubal Barca]

Air Superiority: This mission allows fighters and jet fighters to shoot down a plane trying to do a bombing/precision bombing mission, but not a recon or rebase mission. If selected, the fighter will 'patrol' a region around him equal to half his operational range (e.g. A Fighter will have a air superiority range of 3). If an airplane comes by on a bombing mission, there is a certain percentage it will attack it (50% for regular planes, only 5% for stealth planes). If it does attack it, there will be an air battle, in which either one or both planes will be damaged, and one might be shot down (this is where the planes' attack and defense values enter). A plane can only engage another plane once per turn.

Rate of Fire (the maximum number of Hit Points they can take off from a unit) of a Jet Fighter is 1.

How do anti-aircraft units work?

In Conquests, there are 2 different land-based anti-aircraft units: Flak and Mobile SAM (Surface to Air Missiles. You can move them to any tile or city just like any regular unit, however, like some air units, they can attack air units that are bombarding the tile they are on. Unlike airplanes with air superiority, however, the chance to intercept an air unit with stealth and without stealth is the same - but this percentage depends on if there are other anti-aircraft units on the tile, and what type they are, and some other factors. For a more in depth analysis, see this http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=76227.

 

[peter grimes]

I can't imagine that a mass invasion won't have some contingent of bombers. It just seems foolhardy to try to take a city without some bombard first. If we were planning on invading Free, for instance, we wouldn't do a single bombing run??

Honestly I'm not familiar at all with this stage of the game. So really I'm just playing the role of devil's advocate

 

[AutomatedTeller]

I think that our defense will be in 4 parts:

1) Detection of incoming forces and deployment of defense
2) Bombing/submarine/surface ship attacks to destroy transports - doesn't really matter if they are full or not, if we can kill transports.
3) Defense of landing point so they have to attack it with marines
4) Counterattack.

It is interesting, the idea of abandoning cities that might get taken. The big thing for us is that they cannot dock two or three transports of modern armor on turn 1, cause that will cause major problems, and we need to ensure that they don't land workers who can build airfields and dump 50 modern armor on our land.

Of course, we need to beat off 2nd and perhaps 3rd waves

 

[Yilar]

You can't build airfields on enemy land.

As long as they don't dock like FREE did on GONG we should be fine. Our EWS alone should prevent this easily, GONG never had a EWS and ultimately lost because of it.

Which brings up another good point. What exactly happens if FREE or SABER sinks some of our EWS boats? We seem to have our jets bunched up in a few cities.

 

[donsig]

Which brings up another good point. What exactly happens if FREE or SABER sinks some of our EWS boats? We seem to have our jets bunched up in a few cities.

We really do need some redundancy in our EWS. Having an air based EWS running along side our sea based EWS makes sense.

I think the discussion about attacking with or without bombers or marines hasn't taken into account the objective of the attack. If they want to take one of our cities then bringing modern armor doesn't help them at all. To grab a city (from the sea) they need bombers and marines. AT has already pointed out the vulnerability of The Bayou to land based bombing runs. If they're just looking to land (and then take a city on a later turn) then dumping modern armor makes sense.

The biggest problem is we can't seem to get inside either FREE's or SABER's heads to figure out what they think they need to do to win. We just have to stay the course, I guess. Keep beefing up and keep on the look-out.

 

[Yilar]

Once we get the spy we will know for sure

I did some counting btw and to have a fully covered airbased ews on our mainland we would need approx 20 jets and to cover the island 30 jets total, though this number counts 7 tiles out, meaning the transport would not be able to dock, only attack with marines and land units.

 

[General_W]

You can't build airfields on enemy land.

Can you clarify this? (I have no experience with this, I'm afraid)

Do you mean that you can only build airfields in territory your control?
Is it possible to build airfields in "neutral" territory?
I assume that this is what you mean... and that's good news! But we'll need to make sure we do NOT allow Saber/FREE to ever get a foothold this way.

If they take one of our coastal cities - will the rest of our culture be sufficient to ensure that they don't also get a few surrounding tiles? [again - I think I might be getting confused between Civ3 and Civ4]
I seem to recall that in Civ3 you always get a 1 tile radius around any city you capture.
Doesn't that mean that if Saber/FREE are allowed to capture even 1 coastal town, we're potentially looking at them taking the town, building an airfield right next door, and then dropping in a zillion units all on the same turn?

 

[Hasdrubal Barca]

If they take control of one of our coastal cities the gazillion Modern Armor will simply overrun half of our continent and game over, no need for airfields after.

We need to build an SAM Battery in Bayou and in The Nursery and get at least 4 mobile sam fortified in these 2 cities with radar support, walls and maye a civil defense to start, i still feel a forest wall is essential.

Also, don´t forget that jets have an operational range of 9 but the air superiority mission only convers 50% of its opert. range, thus 9/2=4.5=4 tiles of air defense..

 

[AutomatedTeller]

You can build an airfield in your or in neutral territory. You cannot build an airfield in an another civ's cultural boundary. I think you can't do it if you have ROP, either.

 

[Yilar]

If they take control of one of our coastal cities the gazillion Modern Armor will simply overrun half of our continent and game over, no need for airfields after.

We need to build an SAM Battery in Bayou and in The Nursery and get at least 4 mobile sam fortified in these 2 cities with radar support, walls and maye a civil defense to start, i still feel a forest wall is essential.

Also, don´t forget that jets have an operational range of 9 but the air superiority mission only convers 50% of its opert. range, thus 9/2=4.5=4 tiles of air defense..

I was under the impression that air superiority covered 2 squares out in each direction from the unit (24 tiles).

Also SAM Battery(80 shields)+4 mobile sams(400 shields)+radar tower(i suppose)+civil defence(120)+barracks(40) is rather expensive(1280) for cities we don't even know if are gonna be attacked, we could build 10 modern armors for the price of all those improvements.

 

[AutomatedTeller]

We really need a spy. I mean, if FREE has 10 carriers to throw at us, all analysis about one city being vulnerable to lots of bombers goes out the window.

Anyone think SABER has a spy with FREE?

 

[Yilar]

Considering they both have had espionage longer than us, I fully expect them to have spies on everyone, including us.

 

[peter grimes]

I would expect an invasion to last 1 turn: Take a coastal city, unload as many armor as possible, and ravage the interior. They may not be able to take every city, but it will hardly matter at that point.

Here's a link to the last turn of the first civ3 MTDG, for those who weren't there. It was a 1 turn bulldozing to the domination limit. When the turn starts, MIA hasn't taken any towns. By the end of the turn, TNT are down to just a handful of cities.

And the money quote:

Spoiler post #23 :

One thing I have learned from this game: When playing against Chamnix, always leave at least one unit in every city. [/quote]