Scotland cooperative game thread

[Velociryx]

First screen shot of the Irish coast.....ships are heading to port for supplies before rounding the souther end of the isle....

-=Vel=-

[Velociryx]

Leinster is empty and we actually have a bigger navy than somebody! WhoooHooo! I dunno....whatcha think, Rav? We could offload 5k troops in Connaught to gain the defensive bonus of the marshlands?

-=Vel=-

[Velociryx]

Stopped in December 1st, 1421, with our "fleet" back in the port of Lancashire.....we can do this....the question is....should we?

We have 72d after the TC promotions, so again, it'd be a war with scant reinforcements....we'd have to make best possible use of the troops available.....but given that everything Irish but the capitol is unfortified, we'd have an easy enough time with capturing provinces, and the whole of the Irish army is in the capitol....if we landed Douglas first, in Connaught, he could no doubt fend off a slightly larger, leaderless force with a terrain advantage....the fleet could make for Lancashire, pick up another load of troops (5k), dropping them in Leinster, leave a covering force of 2k to prevent recruitment, send 2k to Munster for the same purpose, and reinforce Connaught....a third trip to land troops either in Connaught direct or in Ulster if the Irish are attacking Connaught, and we lock the whole of their kingdom down. Then it's a matter of one siege and extortion?

What goals should we set for such an invasion then? Should we aim to grow again at the expense of the Irish, or get the 100% war score and vassalize?

-=Vel=-

EDIT: And of course, if we do this thing, we'll NOT be calling our allies....don't want anybody gaining Irish territory but us!

[Velociryx]

Other pertinent details of the last session:

Gunther's Band has been rolled into our "Yorkshire Regiment" and stands as the single largest force we have under arms. The shattered RSA and Army of the Highlands have retired to Northumberland, where they together, amount to ~50% of the Yorkshire Regiment's force.

Our solid performance against the English has earned us favor with France (relations increased from zero to +102, and a RM arranged with them saw a further increase to +117....so we can rely on France in any future engagement with England, it seems.

Other than that, and the aforementioned of TC's in our new holdings, not much has changed, and I'll stop playing now till we can come to some reckoning over what to do with the Irish situation....an attack would be risky, given our scant navy....on the other hand, an attack would be profitable for us....we'd lose troops, which would be a non-disbanding method for us to get under the max supportable size (and pretty much anything is better than disbanding!), we'd gain pillage income, potentially gain territory and/or a vassal (further income)....and whatever we could extort from the Irish and their landlocked allies.

As of the war's end, we have a total of 11,257 Infantry and 5652 Cavalry under arms....max supportable army size of 10k....

-=Vel=-

[Velociryx]

Consolidated thoughts so far re: an Invasion of Eire:

Purpose
IF we do this, then the overriding reason behind it will be to gain pillage, war tax, and extortion income from the Irish in order to pay our loans which are due in two years' time.

Further, this war MUST BE concluded, and the bulk of our army back home before our truce expires with England.....we lack the naval presence to even HOPE to stand up to England's fleet (as our one, very brief naval encounter so resoundingly informed us), and we do not want the bulk of our forces on Ireland when the English attack.

A secondary purpose to the war will be to either gain territory at Irish expense OR to gain Ireland as a vassal for income that way (note - if we do this, then we had best be ready to spend some coin in a diplomatic push to boost relations with Ireland after the fact).

Assets:
5 Warships, ~11k Infantry, and ~5k Cavalry

With a landing capacity of 5k, our first landing is crucial, and we will need every advantage we can gain....thus, I propose we land with Douglas, and a force of 3k Infantry, 2k Cavalry in Connaught. This will give us a leader and a terrain advantage, which should serve to offset the Irish numerical advantage if they attack our force there when we land (and they undoubtedly will)

Once the Army of Douglas makes landfall, the fleet could retire to Lancashire to resupply, take on 5,000 Infantry. These forces could be dropped off in Leinster and split 3-ways....2k to remain in Leinster to cover and prevent recruitment (and to do battle with any troops currently under recruitment), with 2k dispatched to Munster for that purpose as well, and the additional 1k moving to reinforce the Army of Douglas in Connaught.

IF Douglas succeeds in driving back the Irish in Connaught, he could leave 1k (infantry) behind to cover the province (expecting an additional 1k reinforcements from Leinster, and advance on Ulster with the rest of his force....we could then transport the rest of our army to Ulster direct to assist with the siege, and upon completion, we'd have a 100% warscore against Ireland, and would be free to demand whatever terms we desired.

-=Vel=-

[ravagon]

Decisions, decisions, eh?

Ummm ...

Several points.

(1) Its a bit more risky without a starting province to retreat to now but if you have "spare" armed forces its probably still worth a shot (assuming your current WE has evaporated?)

(2) Do you always get the vassalisation option if you have a 100% warscore?

(3) If you do vassalize, does this count as a declared peace between alliances as far as the rest of the Irish alleys are concerned? Wouldn't want to be racking up WE for the next few years ...


Alternative (Very) rough Battleplan for your perusal -

With only 5 warships you'll have to land in 2 (or 3 if you're going to throw your whole force in) phases. Connaught is vital for the first landing as this is the only province with access to everything - land 5k there and send your ships home for reinforcements immediately.
Break your force into 3 and send 1000 men apiece to the other 2 unfortified provinces to
(a) loot.
(b) occupy and prevent levy of additional Irish reinforcements. If they do start building straight away it should give you a big advantage to inflict immediate losses with the new recruits morale being so low.
(c) serve as a fallback position if the 7k Irish army comes at your remaining 3k force in Connaught immediately.

Land the next wave at Connaught again if the Irish main army hasn't moved, but wait until you have the third wave landed as well before moving on the capital so that you can leave a covering force behind to hold the staging province against a routed Irish army. Lose Connaught and your siege army would be out of supply.


Howzat for starters?

[Velociryx]

Screenies to be posted shortly as "Plan Ravagon" gets put into action!

-=Vel=-

[ravagon]

Originally posted by Velociryx
Screenies to be posted shortly as "Plan Ravagon" gets put into action!

With a name like that I can hear the bell tolling already.

[Velociryx]

General Ravagon....we have achieved a war score of 100% over Eire in the year of our Lord 1424, on June the 2nd....whilst I am posting screenies of the battles that occured to get us to that position, the land is at your disposal....what say you, insofar as terms of surrender for our inept Irish opponents?

Oh, and by the way....both loans, paid in full!

-=Vel=-

[Velociryx]

The opening of the war begins pretty much as we expected, with Douglas landing in Connaught....in light of a total absense of an Irish response, Douglas orders a one thousand cavalry detachment to ride south, and claim the southern provinces for us, pillaging as they go....the second "wave" also lands in Connaught, but we are stymied by the lone Irish warship, which makes landing the third wave of our force in Connaught impossible, so we opt for a Leinster landing instead....with those forces in position (and the 1k cav detachment back in Douglas' fold), we march!

[Velociryx]

On March the 20th, battle is joined! Sadly, this is a fight we will not win, as the Irish stubbornly defend Ulster, driving Douglas back to Connaught is disgrace and disgust. Douglas begins this attack with 7901/2000 (9901 total) and retreats with 5929/1606 (total of 2366, 1972 infantry and 394 cavalry) (we lost 99 men to attrition in getting wave 2 to connaught...all infantry)

[Velociryx]

By June, the Army of Douglas has recovered, and makes a second attempt, again leaving the reserve force in Connaught to recieve Irish survivors, and this time, we meet with success! By January 1424, we have utterly destroyed the Army of Ireland (had to chase them to Leinster to finish them off), and are verging on total victory....

[Velociryx]

screenie for the above....

[Velociryx]

Sadly, the walls are quite stubborn toward the end, and it is many months before we see closure on the siege....nonetheless, the outcome is inevitable....

[Velociryx]

Regardless of what we do insofar as peace is concerned, I would like to delay the peace offer till August 1st, raising war taxes then, so we can gain another healthy boost to our treasury, so we can appoint tax collectors if we opt to claim territory, etc, and to give us a boost in general....

-=Vel=-

EDIT: When the war with Eire began, we had 11,257/5652 men under the banner of Scotland.

At the war's close, we find ourselves with 8487/5112

Total losses in this war: 3310 (2770/540)

Total Irish losses: 7000

-V.

[ravagon]

A plan in which I had input actually worked??!!
The martians will be invading anytime now then...

Originally posted by Velociryx
Oh, and by the way....both loans, paid in full!

Now that is impressive.
Either you've minted an appalling amount of coin or those looters of yours have left Ireland without any kitchen sinks.

Re: Vassalisation - How soon will Ireland have the option to try and break it?
I guess it wouldn't do you much good if they broke away within 6 months.
Additionally, England will still have a CB and probably wouldn't hesitate to jump in where you've left off ... hmmmm ....

Maybe it is worth keeping territory then ... ??

[Velociryx]

Yep....it was BEAUTIFUL!!! Going into 1424 (January), we had 401d, had to repay the first loan in January, and I just kept right on minting coins to keep raising money, so that when we hit april, we had ~212 or so....paid the second loan and we're good....debt-free.

I ran the game up to August 2nd, raised War Taxes, and then saved her off....we've got 43d with a net gain of just over 9d per month as things stand right now. Inflation is 5.6%, which is the only part of the picture I don't like.

I plan to keep minting coin for us till the end of the year, get that money plus the census taxes and see where we stand.

With regards to Eire....I'm kinna leaning that way myself (keeping territory)....if we were the head of an alliance, we could vassalize and then invite the Irish into our fold, but as we're a junior partner, vassalizing Eire would leave them incapable of making any allies (not that their former ones helped them any), which would leave them extremely vulnerable.

Add to that the fact that the provinces all come bearing our CB shields (no nationalism) and share our culture....I'm mightily tempted to make the landgrab....

-=Vel=-

[Velociryx]

I went ahead and took the land grab after talking with you and considering the matter further...snagging all the Irish provinces, 'cept their capitol, and 50d.

Was in the midst of consolidating our troops to ask opinions about what kind of garrison force we should leave in Ireland (IMO, we should bring Douglas back to Northumberland or Lancashire....won't be long before the English come calling again), but I do think we should leave something in Ireland....just not sure what!

Anyway, was in the midst of that, when we got our first event, "The Ransoming of the King, and the Purge of the High Chiefs"

It seems that King James has been kidnapped, and that the kidnapping was arranged by, and approved by the Clan Chiefs themselves!

200d to get him back.

Our choices are:
Forget the king (nothing happens)

Ransom the king (-200d) and punish the chiefs (+1 tax val in Lothian and Grampion) (+2 Centralization, -2 Aristocracy, -2 Stability, 13 years of +3 revolt risk)

or

Ransom the king (-200d) but forgive the Chiefs (+1 Tax val in Lothian) (+1 Centralization, -1 Aristocracy)

Good choices, those last two. As of September, when the event fired, we have 105d, so we'll need to float another loan if we ransom, but on the other hand, we'd see some strong gains in productivity with either ransom choice.....the +3 rr for 13 years is....harsh, but on the other hand, that's a total of 40-years worth of slider moves!

Opinions?

[Velociryx]

Also, there is a pressing question of what to do regarding standardizing taxation in our three new provinces....It'll wind up costing us 53d per TC, with three to appoint (159d to get all three), with the benefit of pulling 100% of the available annual census taxes from our Irish holdings...I *think* we can get all three appointments starting this year (and certainly two...we've got the money for that right now). The question is....should we, or should we wait? If we appoint now, then we squeeze the budget pretty tight, at a time when we KNOW England is going to come knocking soon....however, given that we have just--starting with our 4 provinces--come off of a period where we floated and paid for two loans, we could easily do it again, now that our kingdom has more than doubled in size in ~5 years time....still, the flexibility of cash now, or shall we aim for long term growth?

And by the way....the acquisition of the three Irish provinces brings us to a total of nine provs under the Scottish banner, up from the four we began with....not bad....not bad at all! It remains to be seen though, if we can keep them from English fury....

-=Vel=-

[ravagon]

Re: The ransom, much as I'd love to take the revenge option (Very few other chances to increase base tax values) it doesn't look so good with the duration of that revolt risk. That could last through the next couple of wars with England and into a third.

Then again though, with the new rules re: RR (ie: thats 3% per year IIRC?) it isn't the same as in 1.06. The +2 Centralization ( ) makes up somewhat in efficiency for the revenue losses. Increased cost of cavalry though might not be quite so good this early.
Is this a 3% base RR (which can't be neutralised/reduced by your religious tolerance settings/stability modifier, etc) or does it just add 3% (which would probably still come out below 0 if it can)?

*ravagon fine tunes the art of fence-sitting to unheard-of levels*

Re: A garrison in Ireland - If you don't have any nationalism/RR you could probably get away with no garrison (or maybe just 1000 Infantry in either Connaught or Munster. If England comes calling they'll like as not send a much larger siege force than they need and your small force may be able to keep them busy "playing tag" for quite some time ...

[PS: Love the idea for this thread btw. It lets me play vicariously through you while at work. Erm, ... working. ]

[Velociryx]

Glad you like the idea....I'm enjoying putting it together and seeing how it plays out....VERY happy with the results so far, I must say!

With regards to the RR....yep, it's just whatever the normal rr is, plus 3, so if we keep our stability up, we won't even know it's there for the most part (which, however, means limiting our use of WT for the next 13 years, or running the increased risk of rebellion)....not that we can't manage that, we just can't use WT at EVERY opportunity like I've been doing. And you're right, with RR calculated annually now, rather than monthly, this penalty isn't nearly as bad as it could be (or as it used to be, for that matter).

:: pondering::

I dunno....the economic gain prolly nearly offsets the increase in cav cost, and given that, plus the revision in the way ww is calculated....let's do it!

-=Vel=-

[Velociryx]

So....we boldly go where the Scots went before, historically....and here's a snapshot of our growing Kingdom, just after accepting the event. Note the increase in supportable troops and the corresponding decrease in maintenance! We're finally under the limit!

[Velociryx]

The situation of January, 1425.....one more load of troops to bring home and we're as ready as we can be.....stopped minting coin, with inflation holding steady at 6%. Current treasury = 109d (half the loan repayment), with a loss of 2.9 per month.

We're solid!

-=Vel=-

[Velociryx]

The Current Situation:

Two (2) points of War Exhaustion (will be gone by the mid-point of this year, or sooner).

Currently plying all our efforts into increasing national stability....we should be at +2 by the time our truce with England expires, meaning that we'd be in a position to make use of War Taxes if needs be.

Current treasury = 109d, will drop to 74d by year's end, and we shall see from there how much we get in January, to see if we'll need some coin minting to get enough coin to pay the loan we took to ransom our King.

I will get us some economic data up by this evening....I know that our national productivity began at a dismal 11%, growing to 13% after our first nudge toward centralization....dunno exactly what it's at now (17% after the +2 centralization, but I don't recall exactly what the productivity impact is for -2 Aristocracy).

Will also post our new troop costs and detailed troop placements as soon as I get the last of our army from our Irish posessions back to Scotland.

One thing I definitely think we should do is to prepare a 1000-odd cavalry force in advance, to be specifically used for pillaging. Given how powerful that strategy was for us--allowing us to pay off two loans we otherwise would not have had a prayer at--I think we should do it with a vengeance against the English should they declare against us.

The other big thing to discuss is defensive plans against England.

Northumberland is easy to hold...good terrain, and we'd have all the advantages....Lancashire is wide open spaces tho, and will be more difficult if the English hit us with all the force they could. Not sure exactly WHAT to do there....

The good news is that for now, the English forces arrayed before us are in numbers we can cope with, being:

A 200-odd man garrison in Wales

2300 men in Yorkshire

5000 men in Midlands

And that's it....or at least, that's what we can see.

Another good thing is our size, relative to England...at game start, England had 17 provinces to our 4.....we have closed that gap to England 13, Scotland 9....not that the raw number of provinces tells the full story, but it's a good broad-based indicator in this case....and we're much more able to stand up to them by virtue of our expanded base of resources!

-=Vel=-

[Velociryx]

In terms of beating England if they declare against us--and we have to believe that the odds of that happening are extremely high, given that we humiliated them and killed one of their famed generals in our last engagement--the key, I think, is to defeat the forces separately, before they can unite.

The Wales garrison is of scant concern....too small to truly be a factor even IF they combine....but we'll need to pounce on that 2k force in York and nail them before they can link up with the 5k in Midlands. To that end, I propose that we give Douglas all the cav we can spare (pure cav force) and if war comes, have him drive HARD toward York and smash that force....odds are good that the 5k in Midlands will move to hit Lancashire, and with Douglas' movement bonus, he can get to York, give battle and arrive back at Lancashire in time for defense....After that, we unleash the pillage force and split the army if needs be to pursue both beaten English forces, focusing on keeping the enemy armies off balance before worrying overmuch about sieges.

Thoughts?

-=Vel=-

[Nikolai]

I was thinking that since the English mainland is the most dangerous part of their realm, maybe it would be smart to let just 1 or 2k troops be left in Eire, to make sure Meath won't make troops(or rather, make sure all of them is engaged and loose as soon as they is built) by letting those 1k troops be there? You'll get looting money too. Then the rest 4k can be shipped over to Scotland!

[Velociryx]

Excellent call, man, and I've got the naval squadron steaming that direction now to pick up another load of troops....IIRC, we'll have something like 1235 Infantry posted to Eire after this last load gets picked up....would you recommend leaving an additional thousand on the Emerald Isle, or is your sense of it that that's sufficient?

-=Vel=-

[Velociryx]

Speaking of preparations for the possible (likely) upcoming war with England, I think that given the scant use of our fleet in that battle, the more use we can get out of it before the fact, the better!

To that end, I propose two "scouting missions" 'round England's coast....the first will see the fleet sailing from it's current position in the port of Lancashire to the Channel to get the scoop on recruitment and troop strengths in those provinces....then back to Lancashire for re-supply and provisioning, re-porting to Northumberland, and then a little jaunt off the coast of Anglia. That will tell us if the troops posted to the border are all we can expect, or if there are reinforcements aplenty waiting in the wings....and it'd be far, far better to find that out before the war begins, than have our troops find out the hard way....

-=Vel=-

[Nikolai]

Originally posted by Velociryx
IIRC, we'll have something like 1235 Infantry posted to Eire after this last load gets picked up....would you recommend leaving an additional thousand on the Emerald Isle, or is your sense of it that that's sufficient?

Hmmmm... That's difficult... You don't need any more in Meath, but the question is: Are you able to prevent qith some certainity the invasion of English troops by sea? I think it'll be possible, but you're the one with the save game!

Another question, that I don't remember right now: When you have your troops stationed in Meath, you will 100% surely win against the recruits that England might build, but will you annhilate them completely? If so(I think it's so), no problem, but if not you'll need a unit more to teke care of them!

[Velociryx]

That's an excellent point....cos with our scant navy, we really can't prevent the English from landing there....so perhaps we'll keep just over 2k in Ireland, splitting them into two groups....one whose mission it is to lock down Meath to prevent recruitment, and the other to prevent any recruits who escape from pillaging US (we don't want them turning the tables!)

-=Vel=-

PS: The only time you get assured destruction in that case is if you outnumber the recruits by 10:1 (?)....so with 1-2k, the recruits will just bolt....