After action report "The Great Bobian War"

[Aggie]

Well the war is now over so I suggest in the spirit of cooperation and learning(which really is the goal of this game) we exchange reports and questions about the war. In this questions I suggest we reveal info to get info. Of course much is still classified and I don't want anybody to give away info, but much can still be said.

I'll start.
At the begining of the war I feared 1 thing and 1 thing only. A GS invasion of our east. Why no invasion? If there had been an invasion it could have upset our building schedule and could have forced us to commit less troops to the south.

Aggie

[Panzer32]

well they did invade, but not with sufficient troops that we couldn't have handled them

btw, don't think we didn't notice the settler "worker" in the south... actually IIRC I thought that one up

[Arrian]

"Why no invasion?"

Well, a couple of reasons...

1) Our main priority was RP's defense, and our worry was that the forces you and ND brought initially could rip RP's guts out even if we hit you in the north and caused major havoc. This proved largely true, even though we sent our forces to the South as fast as we could. You flanked us at Toledo2 (that still irritates me - I should have seen that!) and got down into RP's largely undefended cities south of Pamplona... and gutted them.

2) In order to be effective, such an invasion needed to be rather large. We didn't have THAT many galleys at the start of the war. We had a bunch at the end, and even then it took a while to get them all together to bring a significant number of troops across. In the South, we just did shuttle runs like mad - we didn't need to deliver 1 large group all at once.

3) As Panzer points out, we did try towards the end. But we found Legoland's forces waiting for us, and were informed in no uncertain terms that they would attack us if we didn't remove our invasion force. No hard feelings, of course. Must look out for our interests, what-what. Surely you understand, old chap?

As we wanted neither a) a massacre of our invasion forces; or b) war with Lego and the possibility of them pulling a Numidian out and hitting a redlined Knight with it to trigger their GA. From our perspective, it appeared that fighting them held little to no benifit for us, and might actually help them.

The invasion force wasn't really large enough to do major damage anyway. It was intended primarly to apply pressure on you and make peace seem a little more attactive. After all, if we had no ability to hurt you, why would you ever negotiate (read: accept less than kicking RP and GS off Bob totally)?

We are well aware that the "worker" was noticed. You mentioned it at the time, IIRC. The person who suggested the renaming of that settler noted in our forum that if GoW or ND took more than a cursory glance at the stack, they would notice. We didn't really expect it to work.

-Arrian

[UnOrthOdOx]

IIRC at the first of the war we had approx 4 riders in the north that could have reached anything in the east.

The GS 'invasion' came far too late and with far too few numbers to have influenced us at all, even diplomatically, and even if Lego had not been there.

I have to admit that Aggie and Ghengis sure made a masterfull use of the Riders in that flanking maneuver that left no roads in it's wake to the south.

However, I never understood why GS didn't take pot shots along the way. A number of times we were left with 1-2 riders in the semi-open and figured them as lost, but they were never attacked. This sure aided things for us in the long run. At the beginning you certainly had a much larger force than our 11 riders, and even reducing that initial assault to where it could have only taken 1-2 cities could have turned the tide in the end.

If those 11 riders had failed...

[Arrian]

We did take a pot shot at your main stack as it passed southwards. We threw 5 knights at it when it was in the flats west of Barcelona. We killed 2 Riders, and lost 3 knights. I distinctly recall those 5 knights being the sum total of offensive troops we could bring to bear at the time. The others were either still in Stormia or had fallen behind your Riders (med infs).

We had trouble mustering knights to hit your Riders. It took time to get our army in place over there, and at the beginning, we had mostly med infs & pikes. We had some WCs & Horsies, but they needed upgrading at huge cost, and our first inclination was to try and defend RP's eastern cities, which led us to bring the pikes first. Med infs were deemed more expendable than those expensive knights (and had served us well in the past), and they were just fine if used as counterattackers in the siege of a city. They couldn't keep up with the Riders, though, especially given the pillaging operations.

We had put our forces in place to try and hold you at Toledo, or failing that, New Madrid. Even once you got past us at T2 and started south, IIRC, we couldn't just race south with you, because you could have doubled back and nailed one of those cities or our following troops (if they weren't adequately protected with pikes). This made counterattack a real *****.

I'm going off memory here, not checking the old threads, but I'm pretty sure that's why your stack made it south relatively intact.

-Arrian

[UnOrthOdOx]

I just remember seeing a Knight defending Toledo and thinking you had a stack in there. But, we weren't really attacked till we had mostly passed by everything.

[Arrian]

We did, at one point, have almost everything we had (on Bob) in Toledo, hoping like hell you would attack it.

But we had only 5 knights on Bob for quite some time. We did use them, but it took us a couple of turns to catch up for some reason. The combat didn't go particularly well, and the survivors were all sorts of beat up, so they were unable to pursue (besides, they needed backup anyway. 2 on 9 is a bad idea).

You guys did a pretty good job of keeping your Riders on good defensive ground. I think the only time you were *not* on hills or mountains was the turn we hit you with our 5 knights. It was our best chance, we just couldn't muster enough hitting power to stop you there.

Later, we mustered larger knight stacks, but by then it was too late. Our med infs never were much use.

-Arrian

[Hot_Enamel]

Originally posted by Arrian

1) Our main priority was RP's defense,.....

This was always going to be your achilles heal.
We did attempt to use this against you.....even predicted some of your moves based on it.

[Arrian]

We knew it was going to be tough. We thought we could do it nonetheless. *shrug*

-Arrian

[Hot_Enamel]

Originally posted by Arrian
We knew it was going to be tough. We thought we could do it nonetheless. *shrug*

-Arrian

Some of GoW thought you would stalemate the war as well.
But when we got our riders through to RP's underbelly, it was always going to be tough.


Would GS/RP have faired better, if they had forgotten about Toledo..disbanded it, and then set up a stronger defense behind it ?


And I agree with my comrades...had you invaded our east early, you could of caused us a heap of trouble.
It was one of the main reasons we wanted GS on our side....so that we could leave our east mostly undefended.

[Rhothaerill]

This is interesting! I'm glad you guys are opening up about what happened in the war. All we ever saw was this or that city changed hands, etc. I'd love to hear more about the war. Screenshots??

[Hot_Enamel]

There is a very nice map done by GF (I think) of his plan to take out RP's south in one foul swoop.

Maybe he will post it....if we can find it.

[Arrian]

Would GS/RP have faired better, if they had forgotten about Toledo..disbanded it, and then set up a stronger defense behind it ?

I have pondered the same thing. The answer, of course, is "maybe." The only reason to do so would be to shorten the front, and I'm not sure toasting Toledo would have done that. It might have bought us a little time, though, if we'd burned it, pillaged, and pulled back. More time = more troops from Stormia.

We could probably dig up screenshots, but I'm not doing it now. I can't do it from work anyway, and my home connection is dialup, and therefore Apolyton is terribly slow from home.

-Arrian

[Darekill]

A plan that went out well for ND was, that GS would not march from the Southeast up northward since almost all of our armys was in the southwest binding and hitting the spanish everytime we possibly could.

The most fearsome time was when we had just one pike in Essigbar plus five beaten up ansars and a pile of GS Knights showed up in striking range! We couldn't have possibly have defendet this strategical town, but I knew that you could not see how many defenders there were.
Good luck for us...
what I did not quite understand was, why you kept your knights that long in the mountains getting shelled by Katapults. there was absolutely no way to attack us succesfully and get away with it. On the other way we would have never attacked a well entrenched force of knights without having our catapults shelling them to pieces first.

[Arrian]

what I did not quite understand was, why you kept your knights that long in the mountains getting shelled by Katapults. there was absolutely no way to attack us succesfully and get away with it. On the other way we would have never attacked a well entrenched force of knights without having our catapults shelling them to pieces first.

I don't really understand that either. The problem was that the Alamo was so strategically crucial, we kinda had to deal with it. But once we got our forces into position, we realized attacking it would be suicide. Maybe we should have just charged and hoped for the best.

In retrospect, we made several mistakes in a row. We should have either a) marched forward on your city south of the Alamo; or b) waited longer for more troops, gotten another settler, and founded the fort town we wanted to found on the hill southeast of Alamo (where GoW and/or ND killed our "worker" settler stack). Instead, we wavered, moving this way and then that, and eventually made our move toward the Alamo, losing our footman stack in the process (since we seperated the knights and footsoldiers).

How about that 20/20 hindsight, eh?

-Arrian

[GhengisFarb™]

Originally posted by Hot_Enamel
There is a very nice map done by GF (I think) of his plan to take out RP's south in one foul swoop.

Maybe he will post it....if we can find it.

I'm at "work" now, will look for it later when I'm in the barracks. The thing that went the best for GoW was that we actually guessed correctly what Roleplay would do.

The original plan was that RP would mass fortify the front line. We planned to utilize that by taking our 3 movement Riders and "Riding" right past you looting, pillaging, and taking out the rear thus eating at RP's ability to rebuild its forces.

Our weakness was if GS entered the war and invaded us. That was a major concern, unfortunately GS did enter the war. Fortunately, they just became a second Roleplay and reinforced the front. I had expected GS to enter the war and invade GoW's mainland where they would do the most damage.

My assessment is that GS was having internal debate on whether it was "honorable" to enter the war against GoW and that led to the more conservative strategy in the south. I am very curious as to why GS didn't initiate a GoW invasion at the start of conflict.

[UnOrthOdOx]

Because they themselves were actually planning an invasion of RP and were all in the south, unlike what we expected, GF.

Think about it, they had to have set sail same turn as we declared war more or less. therefore they were already south, not north like we thought.

[Master Zen]

There were two rather interesting diplomatic incidents during this whole time also, but I'm not sure if everyone is confortable about disclosing those... (I don't mind at all btw)

[GhengisFarb™]

Originally posted by UnOrthOdOx
Because they themselves were actually planning an invasion of RP and were all in the south, unlike what we expected, GF.

Um, can't really go do deep into this specific area with out opening up the whole "who knew that Roleplay was going to be attacked" can of worms.............

[UnOrthOdOx]

I think there were more than just two, MZ. I'm more than happy opening up anything.

And GF, I'm talking about them needing to have been planning it LONG before our little chat with them. In fact, our chat with them just proves it. They wanted a given area of land, and they were already planning on TAKING it before we made any mention of anything. Hell, if they WOULD have just unilaterally taken it instead of protecting RP would we have really cared?

If they had granted RoP at Toledo I know we wouldn't have likely declared war at all. And, knowing the situation as I do, our not declaring war on GS at that point could have certainly strained ND/GoW relations to at least a near breaking at that point.

That's an interesting scenario. Say GS just declared war on RP and took what they wanted instead of protecting RP...

[Master Zen]

Originally posted by UnOrthOdOx
If they had granted RoP at Toledo I know we wouldn't have likely declared war at all. And, knowing the situation as I do, our not declaring war on GS at that point could have certainly strained ND/GoW relations to at least a near breaking at that point.

That's an interesting scenario. Say GS just declared war on RP and took what they wanted instead of protecting RP...

Very true, however, I think that eventually we would have gone to war regardless since anything more than 2-3 GS cities on Bob would have not only been intolerable to ND, but also to us.

[notyoueither]

Believe it or not, many on GS who were active at the time did not relish the thought of jumping in on RP as a part of a dog-pile. Their approach to us for protection was received with some relief, by some.

I was most active in diplomacy for GS at the time, perhaps to our disadvantage. I have no problem with the politics being discussed, MZ.

[GhengisFarb™]

Interesting, I was of the opinion at the time that GS was probably looking for any expansion opportunity off of their home island that presented itself.

[Arrian]

There were certainly some of us who were thinking about hitting RP. Thinking about it, but not necessarily planning on it.

I recall arguing vehemently that we needed the bulk of our forces loaded into our galleys, positioned off our west coast, ready to sail at a moment's notice if/when war broke out on Bob. We knew it would eventually. It was just a question of when, and who vs. who. We didn't quite get that together, so when things got going, we needed a few turns to get into position.

The key part of my request to have our troops on galleys ready to go was that I assumed the war would be GoW+RP vs. ND, with us jumping in and hitting RP from the sea.

One thing was almost certain: we would oppose a 2-civ split of Bob. Analysis by some of our best 'n brighest indicated that we had almost zero chance of winning the game if we stayed on Stormia. So, not only was prevention of 2 supercivs on Bob a priority, we HAD to take a shot at getting more land for ourselves.

The odds were always long. For one thing, just getting the land wasn't really enough. We also needed a leader for a palace move, to make our new land productive. And then we had to hold it. Imagine that RP & GS had fared better. Imagine we had turned the tide. Imagine that Lego wouldn't intervene against us. Nope, that last one stretches imagination too far. Of course they would have, because us (or any team) getting too strong is just not something they could afford to stand by and allow to happen.

The situation we had considered most likely did not come to pass. Instead, it was GoW + ND vs. RP. It doesn't take a genius to know that against two civs with great medieval UUs, RP was gonna go down hard. So when they asked us for assistance (and offered things ND & GoW refused, plus more), we accepted. Of course. And NYE is correct: on a more personal level, it was a bit more fun riding to the rescue (or trying to) than dogpiling on them. But the decision was primarily strategic, not emotional.

-Arrian

[GhengisFarb™]

Originally posted by Arrian
The key part of my request to have our troops on galleys ready to go was that I assumed the war would be GoW+RP vs. ND, with us jumping in and hitting RP from the sea.

Ah, so if we had gone with a fake show as if we were supporting RP we could possibly have gotten GS to dogpile RP. Then we could have taken out the last of RP and gone for a clean up to push GS off Bob.

Now I have a headache. This plot-crossplot political scheming is over my wee little head.

[Arrian]

Whatever, it worked out for you guys just fine. You got what you wanted, with relatively light losses. In fact, I think you would be hard-pressed to come up with a better sequence of events for GoW and ND.

-Arrian

[UnOrthOdOx]

The key part of my request to have our troops on galleys ready to go was that I assumed the war would be GoW+RP vs. ND, with us jumping in and hitting RP from the sea.

Oh, so you would have been against us whoever we chose to ally with. The only chance for GoW to be your ally was to be on the receiving end. :???:

And here I thought we were a bit on the looney side. Still, GS seemed to be 3-5 turns behind where they needed to be the entire time, and in the end that was really the only difference I can see.

[asleepathewheel]

Originally posted by UnOrthOdOx
Oh, so you would have been against us whoever we chose to ally with. The only chance for GoW to be your ally was to be on the receiving end. :???:

we were against the 2 teams no matter the composition. Had ND and RP allied, we would have struck up an alliance with you. So yes, the only way we would have allied with you would be if you were put on the defensive.

[notyoueither]

I think sleepy over-simplified. Many things were imagined as possible. There were certain things that we preferred. In the end, going two on two was preferred by more.

[Aeson]

Oh, so you would have been against us whoever we chose to ally with. The only chance for GoW to be your ally was to be on the receiving end.

If two teams split Bob that left GS with running about 66% of what either of the Bob civs could run, and around 55% of what Lego could come up with. This is production (little less), commerce (little more), and also chances at resources. The tile counts (land+coast) were something like GS 300, ND+GoW 900, Lego 600 (minus whatever they gave to Vox). GS land was the highest coast to land ratio, very few hills for production, least suited for 2 cores, and also the lowest ratio of river tiles.

From an economic standpoint, that basically would have relegated GS to someone's lapdog later in the game. Only being able to perhaps choose who won, without a chance at it ourselves. Anything could have happened diplomatically, but given the diplomatic situation at the time it would have been very foolish for us to think we could win the game with that as our strongpoint. At the time GS had the strongest economy and biggest army (though slow). That relative strength was going to dwindle pretty quickly as Lego got their FP up and GoW and ND ran over RP and ignited their GA's. (No offense meant to RP, I doubt GS or anyone could have held up very long against 2 civs with landroutes and 3 move Knights either)

That said, had RP not given us the option of choosing them, we would have probably invaded RP, and then tried to hold whatever we had claimed against both ND and GoW if it came to that. Having seen RP's defense, and the initial invasion forces for ND and GoW, GS would have almost certainly claimed everything SE of the mountains before GoW or ND could get there, but probably only been able to hold onto a few key Hill cities (of our own making) later if ND and GoW had attacked. That would have put us at around 400 tiles, with 800 tiles for ND and GoW... and with the advent of Musketmen, probably would have stayed that way for at least quite some time.

This (the area just S of New Madrid) was basically what GS asked for in negotiations, because we felt we could take it and hold it anyways. ND adamantly refused to allow GS onto bob, and there wasn't time (or trust enough) for GS to get any alternate concessions from GoW. The joke was made in chat to 'keep what you can take', which would have been more than what we were asking for of course. Perhaps if we had given ND and GoW a better idea of our capabilities we could have gotten an agreement, but doing so would destroy our option to help RP or undermine our efforts to keep anything on Bob forcefully, and because of the attitude of ND was very likely to not change anything at all.