RBE DSG2 - It's a Small World After All

[T-hawk]

Or demanding withdrawal (they've had ships all over our sea area), or intentionally doing "risky" 30g sabotages; there's any number of ways to make them do the declaring.

One hole in my previous plan - we need to go to war a turn BEFORE nuking, since we need to be at war when the MAs land (otherwise they just get evicted), but the nuke wants to hit on the turn they attack. So a nuke sub would have to survive the Iroquois navy for one turn; and the cost of a nuke sub plus a tac nuke isn't far from an ICBM anyway, so just build the ICBM.

It's true the problem may just move to America, but who says we can't just move our MAs to America...

BTW, MPPs won't matter if we go nuclear - and I can't see us pulling off razes without a nuke - since they'll declare on us anyway.

It isn't impossible for us to outrace the Iros from our present position - Sirian said they just got Superconductor now, and two more techs will come fairly slowly in Communism. I would want to see how that'll work out before going ahead with Da Bomb, but that should be clear before the end of my turn.

If we can pull off the razing of both capitals, that would just about clinch the win for us...

 

[Zed-F]

Well, yeah, assuming they don't nuke US back to the stone age...

Seriously, though, if we can get MPPs going and get the Iros into a wartime mode (demanding they leave) that would probably be best as a delaying factor. If we get them into war against the Iros first, and THEN use the nuke, everyone may declare war on us but at least they will also already be at war with the Iros. Additionally, if we have to declare war and land the MAs on one turn and then attack the next turn, then our MAs will have to survive a counterattack, which means we need a stack of mechs there to protect them, and we don't even have 1 transport yet (we do have a galleon tho.) This would take a lot of preparation to ensure that the Iros don't just throw everything they have at our strike team and take them down before we can nuke/raze Salamanca. If we get a global war going against the Iros first we can gauge the effectiveness of that as we build up our strike team.

About drafting mechs to use for shields... it might be better to keep drafting light so that we keep our economy going, at least until we've stolen all the relevant techs. We can judiciously trade in some workers for mechs, though, the ones we won't need for pollution or rail replacement. Also, since we'll need mechs anyway to guard our MAs, we can just use them to replace whatever mechs we need to send to guard our MAs, rather than disbanding for shields. Swapping battleship production over to MAs/transports will probably cover us off there given a bit of time (say a dozen turns or so,) and we already have a half-dozen or so tanks we can upgrade.

Are both Salamanca and Washington on the coast? Guess I can check later.

 

[smegged]

Ok, I'm gonna post an idea I've had. Would the other vets consider it ROP rape if we signed an ROP with the IRO's, moved our Mechs into place and then nuked? To me it is borderline. Is it using human intelligence to pull something off that the AI couldn't do by itself, or is it an exploit. We'd only be after one city, and it would cost us by sending us into a war with the rest of the world, but is it exploitative?

 

[smegged]

This is about the closest game I've ever had...

 

[Architect]

I still haven't started yet... Have a question...

Why does it matter who declares? Risky espionage could lose our spy with no chance of espionage again until peace. Asking him to leave could just result in him leaving.

I pretty sure I'm going to attack him my first turn after getting 2 MPPs signed but before I do someone convince me why this is a bad idea?

 

[T-hawk]

Who declares matters for deal-breaking (doesn't matter here) and war weariness, which will definitely be a concern if we go to war before our economy is done stealing all the techs. (Didn't you declare instead of getting the Iros to declare last time, and wind up with a lot of war weariness?)

Good point about risky espionage losing the spy; I forgot about that.

Also, I just (through sheer coincidence) wound up in a nuclear situation in another game I'm playing. I launched four tactical nukes against another civ, and three other civs who were at war with my nuclear victim (one via alliance, two via MPP) were all Gracious and stayed that way. We might not end up in total world war if we fire a nuke...

Also, if you nuke a city, it wipes out YOUR units NEXT to the city (whooooops! ). So when landing MAs to take a city post-nuke, make sure you land them TWO squares away.

Also again, nukes do a TON of damage to the target city - including halving the population, almost certainly taking it out of the size-13 defense boost category. I'd bet eight MAs would suffice to raze Salamanca immediately post-nuke.

Finally, nukes do not prevent making peace with the target civ later on (unlike in Alpha Centauri.) You can nuke and raze an enemy's capital, and he'll talk peace. If we can make peace soon enough, we might escape getting nuked ourselves.

The only reason I can think of immediate war as a bad idea is that the Iro navy may then make it impossible to get MAs through to raze Salamanca. One plus to immediate war (besides the obvious) is that it starts the clock ticking on when we can make peace -- if we wait until ten turns into the war to nuke Salamanca, we may be able to make peace immediately thereafter before they can launch a nuclear counterstrike.

(BTW, isn't Egypt still at war with the Iros? Only need one MPP then, with America...)

Smegged - I'd consider it an RoP rape exploit. The thing with RoPs is that the turn-based nature of the game prevents the Iros from responding to our unit stack. If we move them into position, and keep the RoP in place for a turn until we nuke, the Iros have no chance to respond between the war declaration and the attacks - completely unlike what a real nation could do in that situation. Besides, I think the Iros are still at "never accept" for a RoP anyway.

Mechs guarding MAs - don't worry about that. MAs with 16 defense can defend themselves quite well.

 

[smegged]

I was looking at it on my turn and it would take several turns for us to hit the Iro capital. 1 to land the units, 1 to move the units onto the mountains (and possibly more depending on where the Iro units are), and 1 turn to capture the nuked city. I think I definately counted 3 turns.

Nukes also wipe out all defenders in a city and all terain improvements around the city (replacing them with poluted land 1 "dryer" (eg. grassland turns into poluted plains)).

The ROP betrayal that I suggested would be the equivalent of the United States parking a heap of military units outside Brisbane, declaring war, dropping a Nuke on Brisbane and then walking in to mop up. That's a pretty dastardly act which would likely trigger a nuclear war of some sort.

However, I'm still unsure that in this game that kind of betrayal isn't fitting. This game has been one of constant backstabbing and ally betrayals from all Civs. To me a betrayal of this type near the very end of the world itself seems fitting. There has been world war after world war. But I'll let Sirian decide if that is merely ROP betrayal or ROP rape. (What's the difference between having a very well co-ordinated multi directional assault in real life (like D-Day), and a coordinated assault like the one I've mentioned. Admittedly mine involves a very dastardly betrayal, but the timing principle is the same. Actually, in history it's most closely parallelled by the bombing of pearl harbour...

Oh, and sometimes "never accept" is wrong. You have to place stuff on the table and they may accept. It's quite common, especially when you don't have mapmaking and they do and want to trade maps.

 

[Sirian]

Fitting or not, all RBCiv exploits are off the table for all DSG's.

 

[smegged]

Thanks for clarifying Sirian. I wasn't sure whether this was considered an exploit. It's obviously more than the AI can or will do... but it is hardly the same as parking units outside every city and taking them all in one turn.

 

[Architect]

In the second war vs. Egypt I had to declare on the Iro so we didn't go into bankruptcy. However, our war weariness was because we lost two cities and tons of units to the egyptian sneak attack. I think as long as we remain defensive and don't lose lots of units we will be fine. I know that aggression impacts war weariness but they don't mind a little conquest as long as it goes well.

I'm going to post and play tonight. I will engage the rest of the world in war as a delaying tactic playing defensive and saving to steal techs.

 

[T-hawk]

BTW, smegged, nukes don't wipe out all units in the target city (they did in Civ 2, I think.) Each unit has a 50% chance of surviving, and if it does, has a chance of taking some damage.

I must confess to not having looked at where Salamanca is, but I did now. The MAs can attack in one turn: land on the square E of Mauch Chunk and there's two tiles of grassland between there and Salamanca. Or we can do it in two turns, keeping them on mountains both times: land on the mountain NE of Oil Springs, then move to the mountain 2 north of Salamanca. Also that way the MAs get two attacks each on the critical turn instead of one. I think that's better, and we probably will want to take a couple mechs as well.

Of course, I wouldn't start nuke maneuvers until the Iros get Nuclear Power, but if they do before we get within two techs I think we have to do so.

Sirian, you've been very quiet on the nuclear front; what do you think?

 

[Zed-F]

Architect, I agree with your approach. Let's get the war started to distract the other civs from the real goal and build up (tanks for upgrading, transports, nukes, etc.) in preparation in case we need to nuke someone and raze their capital, BUT don't commit to doing so yet.

I don't think we need to worry too much about the Iro navy preventing an invasion force from landing. At the end of my turn there wasn't too much left of them and whatever's left will be expended on the American and Egyptian navy. If we use most/all of our navy to escort our transports in a large stack it should be more than enough to discourage them. We can probably afford to leave our coast relatively uncovered on a temporary basis. We should, however, build one carrier and park our bombers and say 3 fighters on it to damage incoming attackers enough that they don't bother our transport stack. We can also put a tac nuke on a carrier IIRC, saving us a few shields on an ICBM. We could even put 2 tac nukes on in case the first one doesn't hurt the defenders as badly as expected. (If we organize by city maybe our spy can tell us, unless we need to steal their plans? Or we can use investigate city if necessary.)

Try asking the Iros to leave a few times after you get the MPPs. What does it hurt? They are furious, we are relatively weak, odds are they will declare. If they leave, THEN consider how else you can get him to declare. We want to be on the defensive side of the war to prevent weariness from becoming a big problem.

Incidentally, when considering where to land our attacking stack, remember that the Iros DO have rails and will reinforce wherever they think we are going to strike. Moving within 2 of Salamanca will clue them in that that is our target. If we stay 3 away they will think we are going somewhere else, especially if there is another potential target nearby. Of course, if we do land 3 away, it means we need a direct path to the city unimpeded by Iro units, and anything in the way will have to be taken out, but with the Iros having rails to move their counterattackers directly in and their spare defenders directly to where they think we will attack that may not be an issue.

Regarding mechs defending MAs, I still would think we would want at least some to help discourage/defend against a counter-attack. The Iros WILL have a few MAs of their own to throw at us, plus some arty. Why get our main attack force damaged unnecessarily? One transport worth should be more than enough, I would even think half a transport worth might do it. If we don't take Salamanca right away, we will probably want to have a plan in place if possible to prevent them from being able to reinforce easily, and our defensive mechs could possibly play a role there as well. (Maybe we should take along some pillaging explorers to chop up the rail net? Well, if we have some spare transport capacity, perhaps...)

 

[T-hawk]

The Iros have NO modern armor currently, and only 3 tanks. I wouldn't be too worried about counterattackers. Mountains are also good deterrents to attackers (an MA defending on a mountain has the advantage over an attacking one, and it's a very good deterrent against attacks by Mechs.). We can bring some of the mechs we already have, but no sense in building more shields into mechs rather than tanks. The northern mountain that I pointed out is actually closer to Oil Springs than Salamanca; don't know if the Iros will reinforce that or both.

We aren't worried about pillaging or doing anything else to the Iros. Just a surgical raze on Salamanca is all we need, and all we probably can, do. With more nukes, we may be able to cripple or raze more cities, but it's unlikely we'll have the production capability to spare on that. The Exterior Casing is gonna be a tough swallow for us, since we can't swap to it for another 13 turns, after Ecology finishes.

Oh, and "what could starting the war now hurt" - well, there's war weariness, and THEY could decide to do the first nuclear strike But I agree we should probably start it now.

 

[Zed-F]

We can bring some of the mechs we already have, but no sense in building more shields into mechs rather than tanks.

Yes, this was the thought I had when you suggested drafting some mechs. The Iros could rush/upgrade a couple MA but they could also in theory attack with huge numbers of mechs (they do have over 100...) We can certainly afford to send over a half-dozen +/- 2 mechs with our MAs and draft homeland defense replacements for at least some of them. We don't want to draft so many mechs that it hurts our economy, though, and we do have some spare workers to top up population if needed.

I don't think we're disagreeing here, I just want to agree more clearly.

The northern mountain that I pointed out is actually closer to Oil Springs than Salamanca; don't know if the Iros will reinforce that or both.

Ok, something to keep in mind. Another thing to remember is that the AI now likes to hold the high ground, so if we go with the move 2 twice route be aware the Iros could park a couple mechs on the mountain just to annoy us. Might not happen if they think we are threatening elsewhere, but you never know.

We aren't worried about pillaging or doing anything else to the Iros. Just a surgical raze on Salamanca is all we need, and all we probably can, do. With more nukes, we may be able to cripple or raze more cities, but it's unlikely we'll have the production capability to spare on that. The Exterior Casing is gonna be a tough swallow for us, since we can't swap to it for another 13 turns, after Ecology finishes.

The only reason for pillaging would be to prevent an Iro counterattack on our assault force if we don't take Salamanca on the first turn. I don't think we have any reason to go after more than Salamanca. This was more of a "think of this when you set up your assault" suggestion than a desire to actually build units for that purpose, though. Certainly our defensive mechs could do some of that if warranted.


Another thought I had was that if we time it right, we could probably mobilize now/soon and plan to come out when we make peace with the Iros so we can start building some more parts. The idea would be to use mobilization to finish off our current batch of parts & build an assault force, then finish Ecology, steal Synth Fibers & whatever else, upgrade to MAs, sail to & raze Salamanca if necessary, make peace, end mobilization, and start on the new batch of parts from Synth Fibers. Timing on this might be tricky, though, so I'll leave it up to you guys to decide whether to pursue it or not. It might introduce needless complications if we can get a sufficient assault force together without it.

 

[T-hawk]

Ooh - mobilization. Good point! However, it may be more useful at the END of the war. Tac nukes and ICBMs count as military units and get the extra shields from mobilization. We can build up a bunch of parts simultaneously with those in mobilization, and then make peace and swap over to spaceship parts. I'll definitely keep it in mind...

FWIW, I'd expect to make peace immediately after razing Salamanca, or as close to it as we can manage without an MPP causing immediate re-declaration.

 

[Zed-F]

Yes, assuming Architect gets the MPPs going immediately on the start of his turn, if you decide the nuclear option is required and bomb the Iros sometime during your turn, you should be able to end the MPPs and go for peace at the end of your turn (or failing that, the start of mine.) Of course the Egyptians and Americans may betray us before then anyway and make peace but that's another story. We may not go to war immediately if Architect has trouble provoking the Iros with demands to leave our territory but that should not present a problem so long as he can get them into wartime mode at some point.

 

[smegged]

Hmmm, I didn't know there was only a CHANCE for units to be destroyed in a nuked city. The last game I had that went into the modern age with nukes and all was the no-ships epic. My capital was nuked and I lost all my units therein.

 

[Architect]

1820AD(0) I sign a MPP with Egypt for 580g. I sign a MPP with America for 655g. This was the right order as America was the happiest with us and more willing to sign on. I ask the Iroquois to leave and... we can't demand a war declaration yet...

1822AD(1) Our SAM battery completes and I start a transport. The American's add SS Cockpit. I contact the iroquois and demand they leave again...and I still can't demand war...

1824AD(2) American's add SS Storage/Supply AND SS Thrusters to their ship. The Iroqouis add SS Exterior Casing to their ship. The iroqouis have left. I won't go more than a couple more turns without outright declaring.

1826AD(3) We complete our SS cockpit. I begin a 10 turn prebuild for palace. We ask the iroqouis to leave and we still can't demand war. I start relocating our navy from the egyptian coast.

1828AD(4) Iroqouis add SS Engine and SS Fuel Cells. Still can't ask to remove with threat of war. The iroqouis have all but one of the parts in progress. I declare next turn with or without the iroqouis participation.

1830AD(5) We caught the Iroqouis trying to expose our agent. I still can't ask him to leave at the threat of war. I hate this. We've got transports exposed so I'm waiting one more turn.

1832AD(6) American's add SS Statis Chamber to their ship. I have to declare now, we'll just have to deal with the weariness. We buy dyes from the egyptians for 390g. I will have enough money next turn to steal safely a tech but it will eat into the principle. We shoot down a bomber we get declarations from Egypt and America.

1834AD(7) Our SS Engine Completes and I start the military academy. Our first tactical nuke completes and I start another. American's add the SS Engine. I'm going to attempt to steal technology and I notice that both egypt and iroqouis are in anarchy. I'm going to try stealing risky...and we succeed. I'm going to try again using most our money.. I predict failure...and we do fail... Oh well, the loss of the spy sucks but it was worth the risk. Still no weariness. We start SS thrusters in Teot. I start ICBM in Tlat and Madrid.

1836AD(8) We complete a carrier and start building one more. No attacks from the iroqouis. Egypt and Iroqouis are both commie again. Lots of mid turn navy and airforce battles between the American's and Iroqouis.

1838AD(9) Very little happens this turn.

1840AD(10) Again, a uneventful turn. Deals can be renogiated with Egyptians and Americans but I leave that to T-hawk. Losing the spy hurts because we can't tell what the iroqouis are doing but I think our course was pretty much set. Most of my builds are prebuilds and can be switched around at will. 3 turns to ecology. We have 3 transports now, 1 carrier and are about to build another which could also be switched too.

1840AD

 

[XSin]

Hope you guys win. Iroquois are bums

 

[Zed-F]

Looks like we have to worry as much about America as we do about the Iros. Both have 6 parts built, we have 3 and almost a 4th. Both also have Synth Fibers and Superconductor, which we lack. Fortunately the spy in Iro lands should be replaceable.

Here's the capital pics:

And here's our lands: