questions for 239

[AutomatedTeller]

By The Marina:

Saber's battlelog:

4/4 destroyer vs. 4/4 sub -> 4/4 destroyer

West of The Greenhouse:

5/5 destroyer vs. 2/4 cruiser -> 4/5 destroyer

South of The New Yard:

4/4 destroyer misses bombarding the 2/5 cruiser
3/4 destroyer misses bombarding the 2/5 cruiser
4/4 cruiser vs. 2/5 cruiser -> 4/5 Saber cruiser

Northwest of Babe Colony:

2 bombers sink 4/4 sub

Did SABER land? If so, the turn is easy - 1 artillery fires, some 72 MA attack a stack, if anything is left, a bunch of mech go in to cleanup, then we bomber boats.

If not, then it's a little more complex and someone (me, if no one else) should post a pic to talk about options.

 

[donsig]

Well, there are still unknowns, aren't there? SABER has 8 transports somewhere and these may show up in range of one or more of our cities. We'll still have to garrison any threatened cities against any (bomber supported) SABER marines.

I just don't see us repelling this invasion as easily as we did the other one so long ago. Another interesting turn coming, that's for sure.

 

[AutomatedTeller]

Assuming they land, I have some questions about some eventualities that may or will come up:

1) Say we get a leader and can build an army. My thoughts are that we make a MA out of our regular MA - this gives us a super powerful unit that can take down armies, but doesn't give up as many valuable multiple attacks (3 MA can attack 9 times, a MA army can only attack 4 times)

2) Say it comes down near the end and they have just mobile sams left - we have regular MA (3 hp) and several 1 and 2 HP elites left with an attack. Do we fish for a leader with heavily injured units or use the regulars on the attack? My thoughts are the regulars and rest up the elites.

3) Can a Marine army still attack amphibiously? A marine army would attack at 21 (assuming they have the pentagon and mil academy and are sticking 4 marines in it)

 

[Yilar]

1. Sounds good
2. Use regulars, we will hate ourselfs if we do lose an elite MA to an mobile sam
3. Yes, but it only has 2 attacks.

 

[Paul#42]

Discussion derived from the FREE embassy:

FREE is surprised that SABER did not land this turn.
If I were SABER and knew I won't win if I attacked alone, I'd do the first step (they did) and wait for my "Ally" to do the next.
The next step would be any action from FREE.

SABER is obviously waiting for FREE to land or at least move in range.
What will they do if FREE denies to join the party?

Do they expect FREE to build and hold a beachhead?

I think they are encountering some nice faith problems...
Tit for tat is difficult on a turn-by-turn basis...

Imo FREE tries to arrange a cheap trick which might work in both directions. If they can fool us they have a beachhead, SABER will attack and they can chose if they join the attack or not.
If we refuse to swallow their trojan horse, they need to publish big effort to SABER to convince them of their faith...

So: We should make sure, there's only one (a few) transports in range and let them land.
But once landed, we should kill all of them and get some slaves and promotions

edit: I'd bet there's a worker (and a settler) in that landing force to place an airfield instead of the town - maybe they found the town instantly after airlifting quite a force there...
If there is no worker, we could well let them found (and thus dow us) instead of attacking (and thus declaring war to) them.
Trading war happiness for two slaves...

 

[RFHolloway]

"Tit for tat is difficult on a turn-by-turn basis... "


Look up iterated prisoners dilemma - not so difficult, but we can throw lots of spanners into it.

 

[donsig]

If SABER has not landed then our priority is to try to safeguard every threatened city. We must continue to build armor but I think we must also begin to draft mech infantry in earnest.

Not sure what to do about FREE transports that appear in range. If one transport appears it may be best to leave it alone, protect any cities within it's range, and allow them to land. If we declare war on them now we lose the lux deal which should still have a few turns left on it. If FREE lands then by all means we declare on them on turn 240 and kill what ever landed. Though we should consider that on turn 240 both SABER and FREE could potentially unload all their transports on our shores. With that in mind it might be best to sink the FREE transport now if possible.

 

[AutomatedTeller]

SABER hasn't landed - should we try to bomb their stack? This mobile SAM in a transport thing really makes things very tricky.

I'd assume they don't know (why would ANYONE know about this?)

If they do have mobile sams in their invasion force, then if we try to bomb them, they will know and will realize they can pretty much sail wherever they want.

I think we should bomb other ships in range, but not the transport stack, as we will probably just lose our bombers.

 

[peter grimes]

Do we yet know for a fact if they have Mobile SAMs on transports? If this is speculation, then I'm not as worried.

Due to the play order, is it possible for Free to build the city, only to have Saber DOW on FREE, take the city, and thus have a beachhead?

 

[AutomatedTeller]

well, the city will autoraze if captured, so that's not an issue.

But it goes FREE, us, SABER, so no - they couldn't take the city before we got it, anyway.

I assume they have mobile SAMS - trying to bomb them would prove it, of course. I'm ok with trying and seeing. I guess since they haven't landed, they feel pretty safe anyway.

If I do, I'll try it with jets first, since jets will have a better shot against patrolling jets.

 

[Niklas]

No, that's not possible. We play after FREE and before SABER, so we could take that town in between.

I'd really rather see the save before deciding on any action.

I agree that it's likely any invasion stack will contain Mobile SAMs, not because then know that they work on ships but because they want to guard the landed stack from bombing.

 

[tomasjj]

If anyone would know about the Mobile SAM thing....it would be Chamnix right?

Still, it is a stretch.

 

[Yilar]

Well the save is in, and god damn we really should have filled our cities with subs, the Saber transport stack from Turn 238 has moved into range of The Pier, The New Yard and The Bayou (though not enough moves to enter The Bayou).

 

[Yilar]

WTH!

I found this while I was updating the miltary stats thread. Free built 16 settlers, 13 workers, 1 cruiser and 6 marines this turn....

 

[Niklas]

Filling out GONG land with more specialist farms?

 

[Yilar]

There is barely room for 8 cities on the Gong island...

 

[donsig]

SABER still only has 17 transports and 12 marines. FREE now has 7 transports and 15 marines - I didn't notice all those settlers.

I'm not so sure it's even wise to try bombing the transport stack. In addition to the possible mobile SAMs there are a couple carriers that might have jets on air superiority missions. Why not just save the bombers for later? We can use our Well Coiffed arty to shell the stack but it would be left on a grass tile subject to marine attack. (Edit: Maybe we use it on that lone destroyer already in range.)

It will be interesting to see if our EWS turns up any other transports. Any marines in the SABER transport stack could attack The New Yard, The Pier or The Bayou so we should garrison these cities with at least 21 units each IMO. (More if the EWS turns up more transports in range.) There are also two mountain tiles SABER could land on so we ought to garrison these heavily, too. At this point I guess it does not matter if they land on a flat tile. We have 73 armor, 20 mech inf and 4 marines (97 total) on the mainland. With 66 in those three cities we have 31 for the mountains (plus whatever mech inf we draft).

BTW, we should take that 900g FREE sent. Beyond this it's difficult to plan more until we get the results of the EWS recon missions.

 

[Yilar]

21 units?... They only got 12 marines, how are the last units gonna die?

 

[Niklas]

Bombers, or?

 

[Yilar]

Bombers dont kill, only wound (3 dmg max). Mobile Sams count as units to btw.