[SPOILERS - PBEM17] Kyan Does Dallas. The Orange Sensation.

[oledavy]

Well, Realms Beyond as a whole is a variant gaming forum, and Halo has its variants... ever tried playing using only plasma pistols with all skulls on?

That just sounds painful Well....actually.....Halo: CE plasma pistols wouldn't be half bad; those suckers packed some punch before getting nerfed in the sequels.

Hey, you killed Admiral Ackbar, surely that counts for something!

Hey, I didn't think even think of that I passed up a perfect "IT'S A TRAP" moment

errr, wait: Darrell orders Admiral Akbar to attack my battleship. Akbar yells: "It's a trap!" Darrell tells him not to be silly and to attack at 90% odds. Joke is on Darrell when my battleship sinks the sub. There we go

Apologies if you already covered this in some way, but depending on how many of them you have left you could try joining the GG to a stack of EIs for super cheap upgrading to transports.

What NH said. Though, slapping on a GG to a group of transports for Nav I or Nav II isn't a half bad idea. Too bad I already played the turn and expended the great general.

How many battleships/destroyers do you have right now overall after the recent fighting, anyway?

As of EOT 175, I possess:

3 Missile Cruisers
22 Battleships
29 Destroyers
11 Transports
1 East Indiamen

The 1st Battle of the Jaffa Sea took a big chunk out of my fleet, but I had enough ships to eat the loss. My navy is still 2.5 times as big as the visible Indian fleet, but Darrell has been closing the gap between the size of our fleets quickly. He is now up to ~40 warships, mostly destroyers. My problem going forward is that I'm losing my main shipyards fast. Acre, Jericho & Jaffa could all 1t battleships. Additionally, I'm having to shift to production of other units in many of my cities, whereas before I was producing exclusively navy. I'm going to have difficulty maintaining a large fleet moving forward, eventually NoSpace and Darrell and going to wrest control of the sea from me, but I need to delay that day as long as possible.

Also, lastly, it's been said already but I really appreciate the extensive updates you've been doing. I know from experience that it's not always easy to do while fighting a lopsided war on your own turf. It makes it all the more interesting that this is the first war in an RB game with both sides using a lot of modern-era units (at least, it's the first such war that has been extensively reported on). I could only dream of an end-game naval war with Dutch dikes in PBEM10, it's cool seeing someone finally pull it off!

heh, you guys are lucky I'm on Winter Break without much to occupy my time.

You only get free upgrades for the one unit that the GG is attached to. You can't attach it to a stack.

NH, your game mechanic reminders are helpful and terse as usual. Thanks!

[oledavy]

[SIZE="4"]The Siege of Acre[/SIZE]



The Egyptians were back, this time attacking the city of Acre. During the night, while the defenders were distracted by the bombardment from the air, the Egyptian navy had sailed right up the inlet and now marines were coming ashore in droves to burn the ancient city.

Meagan Riverra had been running since the wee hours of the morning. As the demolitions expert attached to K company, she had been charged with planning and creating firebreaks in response to the fires started by the bombardment from the air. Now it was morning, she had just a few explosives remaining, but only one mission left, but she had to get to the hill first.

'The hill' was a district of upper-class neighborhoods and old commercial district. Running along the apex of the hill was the Colonel Laird Memorial Aqueduct, named for one of the heroes of the Battle of Nowitzkiville. The plan was to blow the aqueduct and send the water washing down the hill into the face of the oncoming Egyptians. The Dutch forces were pulling back behind the aqueduct in preparation.

Arriving on the hill, she set to work placing explosives at the key joints down a half-mile length of the aqueduct. Meanwhile, the battle raged around her, soldiers streaming to the front were met by civilians and wounded trudging, limping or crawling up the hill, anything to get away from the Egyptian hordes. The battle was not going well, and she doubted this hair-brained plan would affect the outcome. There was probably not enough water in the aqueduct to do more than wash the marine's boots. Nonetheless, they had to try and her commanders were out of ideas.

She placed the last explosive, keyed the detonater, and began climbing down the ladder when her radio barked. She was reaching to answer it when the round hit her. A well-placed round from a sniper hit here in the torso and sent her flying the last few feet onto the ground. She rolled over in agony just in time to her desperate sounding coronel bark over the radio:

"Blow the aqueduct, authorization sierra bravo romeo. Meg, we need to blow that thing now!"

It took all her conscious effort just to reach down and answer the radio:

"Yes sir, will do." she croaked.

She reached for the detonator, and keyed in the activation. The aqueduct reveberated as the explosions hit along the length, and the whole structure came crashing down. A large section of masonary landing right on top of the architect of it's destruction.

Summary

Darrel won a flawless victory first. He hit the city with a half-dozen bombers, jet fighters, then finally lowered the defenses with his destroyers before sending in the marines. My infantry were slaughtered. His only loss was the infantry that won the last battle and he deleted.

I hate air support

Rather ironic considering the role air support played in my last war.

[oledavy]

[SIZE="4"]The Battle of Edessa[/SIZE]



A firefight was raging in the shipyards of Edessa between the Indian and Dutch forces, and Corporal Dick Winters was in the thick of it; firing the 50 cal. atop his tank with ruthless precision. After the customary bombing, the Indian forces had begun landing directly into the legendary shipyards. The Dutch armor had been dispatched to the docks to try and push the invaders back into the sea. So far, it was working. The armored column and supporting infantry had been steadily pushing the marines back to the harbor.

They were nearing the incomplete hull of a Dutch battleship when the tank directly in front of Winters and his crew exploded. Atop the deck of the battleship was a company of Marines sporting RPGs and sniper rifles, firing upon the advancing Dutch. The infantry ducked for cover.

"Get the tanks out!" came the call.

Winters yelled to the commander and the tank began backing up. They had just gone a few feet before another RPG hit the vehicle directly behind them, entrapping them

The situation was desperate. Looking around, Winters noticed the battleships was moored at the end of the slipway with a single chain.

"Will!" yelled Winters.

"What?"

"Hit where the ship is attached to the dock!"

"Where!?"

"You know, the THINGY, where the chain meets to dock!" Winters had always been a bit of a landlubber.

Will popped up, looked, and the light dawned in his eyes. "Right, high explosive round, 20, degrees left....just a tad up....FIRE!"

The tank shook as the main gun spoke, and round impacted near the "thingy," nothing happened.

"Fire!" he called out again. Two more rounds exploded, but still, nothing happened and the chain held. Winters turned his machine gun on the ship, trying to surpress the RPG teams. This was looking bad.

The tank spoke again, exploding near the chain. There was a loud creak, then the chain snapped. A sickening moment of comparative silence followed. Winters' heart was pounding in his ears. Then, a load moaning and screeching began as the battleship began careening down the slipway and into the harbor. The Dutch forces cheered! The battleship shot out into the water, ramming an Indian transport that failed to get out of the way in time - then began to turn turtle.

Winters sighed with relief, but it was short-lived.

Getting calls for fire support, the destroyers of the Indian fleet steamed into harbor and began peppering the docks with five-inch HE rounds. With the world going to hell around the unit, the order came to withdraw into the city proper.

Winters and his buddies had to abandon their trapped tank to get out. Winters, however, refused. "I don't run from nobody!" he insisted, while remounting his machine gun. Nothing Will said could convince him.

"GET OUT!" Winters yelled as he continued to fire his MG like a madman at the encroaching Indian hordes. Tank Commander Will Sherwood retreated halfway down the dock with the other two members of his tank's crew, then stopped to watch. Winters was out of ammo. Drawing his sidearm, he fired in rage at the Indian soldiers. The three men were mesmerized, and likely would have stayed there until they were captured, but a shell landing a few yards away convinced them to leave.

That was the last anyone saw of Corporal Dick Winters, posthumously awarded the Medal of Valor for bravery above and beyond the call of duty at the battle of Edessa.

Summary

So yeah, I lost Edessa. NoSpace attacked, got lucky and only lost a pair of marines in the battle. They they moved all their ships into the city, and unloaded more of their excess troops to cover them. They additionally had enough bombers on hand that did not hit the city to put four in EOT. This means they have at least eight bombers. Why they didn't lower the city defenses with their destroyers and save their bombers for collateral, I do no know. I do know that the bombers had to have been operating out of an Ottoman city to hit me which is rather frustrating to say the least. So, two marines for a tank and two infantry, and now they threaten a slew of new cities from a safe base. They got quite a haul of infrastructure in the city too, taking a granary, lighthouse, forge, factory, market, grocer, bank, and courthouse in addition to the settled GG. This is pretty bad, to say the least.

[oledavy]

[SIZE="4"]Turn 175[/SIZE]

Turn 3 of World War II
Cities: 27/33

In preparing the turn report, I realized I made a serious mistake this turn that is probably going to cost me the majority of my fleet. More on that later in the report

Cue some bangheads:



hmmmm, needs something else. Oh, I know!



Captain Picard facepalm, always a classic.

I have pretty much given up on trying to bring Darrell and NoSpace's fleets to battle, they are just not going to cooperate. Building a huge fleet does not work for defense against Sirian Doctrine fleets, they'll simply cower in the cities they take from you before moving out again right past your fleet.

So, the way I see it, there are only two ways to not lose cities here:

1. Have a shit ton of city defenders and tons of fighters for defense.
2. Attack them first: mutually assured destruction.

Also be sure, this is the last time I NAP someone ahead of me in the turn order, in modern era wars whoever gets that first strike in has a terrific advantage.

Alright, enough meta-game ranting. What I actually did this turn:



Darrell is set to raze Tyre and Antioch to the ground next turn, and again there's not a whole lot I can do. I drafted both cities, moved them to Constantinople, and queued up a 1t defender in both. Both cities will have a pair of units facing off against the yellow hordes next turn. He simply has too many units aboard to defend against. On a random note, guess where my new city is going? That's right, in that gap in the range of Darrell's air support 1 SW of the old Acre location. Besides being out of range of Darrell's aircraft, it's just the best location for a city in the area. It only has a +3 food bonus, but something higher than that is impossible to achieve for this filler without going coastal. The settler completed in Cairo at the end of the turn.

Seeing that he divided his fleet, and had a relatively small escort for his transports over here, I am attempting a plan to get the better of him: Operation TORPEDO.



I realized I could potentially surprise attack Darrell with ships from the south making use of forts. The key thing is where he ends of with his fleet next turn. I my eight workers divide into two groups and sink 4t into a fort on each of the tiles. Next turn, I can fort the third tile to move in all those ships. Actually, I made a bit of a mistake here. I should have moved the battleships into the city with the destroyers to get them closer to the targets. I could have even moved all those units into the lake, but I thought that that might be a little too obvious, and I wanted to preserve some modicum of subtlety. The battleships and missile cruiser have the option of promoting to Nav I to extend their range. If I cannot get those units into the attack, I cannot pull it off - I need their collateral.

My hope here is that Darrell plays the turn in a rush and does not notice the workers. There's a pretty good chance he sniffs this one out, but it's about the best I can do at this point.

In the west, a standoff is developing between Constantinople and Kenya.

Welcome to Fortress Constantinople:



I unloaded the three marines and five infantry from my landing force and moved in a tank and 2 infantry from beruit to reach that number. Many of the infantry are still healing from the battle of Acre. Additionally, Darrell bombed the city last turn and bombed the units I took from Beruit. The battleships and transports will stay there to heal, while the lone destroyer I moved there as an anti-air measure. The three airships are performing recon. I intend to make my stand here on land, and not let this city fall. He can only get 4 bombers in range of this city, and I completed a bunker this turn.

Darrell finally began building more transports and is assembling a second invasion force north of Kenya as you can see in the picture. You may ask why these defenders weren't at Tyre or Antioch? Because most arrived in the city just this turn and many are wounded in the first place. I may however, try to hold Alexandria by peeling off defenders from here, depending on how things develop. The key thing now is to hurry and get fighters into the city to offset the constant bombing that's about to ensue. I'm additionally saving a lot of unit promotions to heal before the hammer falls.

I did this to help with healing in the city every turn:



Say hello to my second supermedic. I healed him up quite a bit too in the process of taking all those promotions.

Here's the situation in the southeast:



NoSpace still had at least seven untis aboard a couple transports in the city, so I had to defend Leningrad and Hattin. Leningrad was defensible from the sea by moving some warships in from the east. As for Hattin, I moved all my spare marines prepping for Operation Going Commando into the city to defend it, drafting as well. Since I moved the twelve destroyers north for Operation TORPEDO, I needed to reinforce the tile leading to Sidon. I was able to get an extra missile cruiser, battleship and the thirteen destroyers from the western fleet in position, opposing NoSpace's twenty warships that could reach the tile. However, here is where I made my mistake.



I missed that NoSpace had four bombers in Aleppo! As you can see I positioned the battleships from the western fleet with the tranports staged to 'threaten' Aleppo, while being in position to 1-move onto the crucial tile defending Sidon next turn. I did this trying to keep my ships out of range of the Indian air support. However, I missed just how much they had. Now, my six battleships, which would have been able to give a stern fight to anything NoSpace sent their way (and leave them with their ships outside the Aleppo should they chose to attack), will simply be crushed if Spaceman so choses. Even worse, my 21-ship fleet can be hit by eight bombers This is not going to be pretty, and Sidon may end up falling too.

Next turn, Spaceman gets to go hog-wild killing ships I can ill afford to lose if he so chooses, thanks to my tactical blundering.



Beruit and Damietta may also end up falling to the fleet based out of Aleppo, I really don't know, they have a lot of options.

Operation Going Commando

This turn, I unloaded my two tanks outside Hattin, and created John-117 and Bruce Willis. I then loaded them aboard the newly launched UNSC Pillar of Autumn and shuffled them up to Stalingrad.



I already joined them with two marines, and the newly christened UNSC In Amber Clad and UNSC Forward Unto Dawn are moving to join the battle group.

Yeah....I'm a bit of a Halo fanboy :rolleyes:

Anyone notice that TORPEDO was the name of a UNSC Military Op from the Haloverse?

No? Well, what about:

Opeation Trebuchet



Next turn, I'm set to hit Farmer's Market if my airship (top left) reveals a that it is sufficiently poorly guarded. If not, I can wait one turn I double the size of my force with another transport of infantry from the south. I doubt NoSpace is running airship recon this far west. I've been covertly shuffling them around at the edge of Darrel's fighter recon range, however, he did spot the transport being produced:



He drafted a mech infantry out of the city. More substantial operations against Darrel will have to await more troops, right now, I shuffled my Eastern fleet to the west along with the marines and transports produced to start preparations for Operation Going Commando. The fleet will be fully assembled very soon. The bombers just make it really difficult. I would ome knocking on the front door with my own Sirian Doctrine fleet and commando tanks aboard, but it would simply die. Being sneaky and going around through Shoot's territory with a small force seems like the best plan.

I positioned an airship to start doing recon sweeps of the Indian core:



Did I mention I'm the pope?



Maybe I can get some defying AP resolution unhappiness going for Darrell

My builds:




My military at EOT 175:



And lastly, the GNP graph, where Shoot has soared into first place. When I start funding him, it will only get worse.



End Turn.

[oledavy]

Oh, today, I surpassed Rego's dead thread in views



Yay for small victories. Let's see if I can beat him in post count before this game is over.

[oledavy]

Losses to date:

Dutch Losses

13 Battleships (156,000)
2 Destroyers (16,000)
10 Transports (60,000)
3 Tanks (75,000)
25 Infantry (400,000)
1 Machine Gun (10,000)
3 Cannon (24,000)

City of Rhodes
City of Aleppo
City of Jericho
City of Jaffa
City of Acre
City of Edessa

Total: 741,000 Soldiers Dead (Not Including Power From Buildings/Pop)

Allied Losses

6 Battleships (72,000)
3 Destroyers (24,000)
1 Attack Submarine (8,000)
4 Transports (24,000)
10 Marines (180,000)
1 Mech Infantry (30,000)
8 infantry (128,000)

Total: 466,000 Soldiers Dead

[oledavy]

[COLOR="DarkOrange"]Hey Shoot,

Things are looking extremely bad in PBEM17. My navy got hammered this last turn and I lost an additional six cities in one go. I'll still be the game for awhile yet, but my chances of doing any damage beyond my all or nothing strike at Capital are fading rapidly.

Your infusion of mech infantry and bombers would be invaluable and do volumes to prop me up. However, at this point, my finances are shattered and I cannot guarantee repayment.

In three turns I've been reduced from 1000 gpt at 100% gold to 250 gpt. Right now, I'm desperately trying to limp to flight to get fighters online, before going to military science to try and ensure the success of Operation Going Commando (as one of my lurkers suggested I call it). Rest assured after these techs I are researched, every penny I earn until I leave the game will go to repaying you for the aid you have given me.

However, if you would consider taking a city(s) in lieu of gold, I would be open to that as well. I'm open to trading you just about any city on Rego's continent other than Moscow. Look around on your turn and tell me if you're interested in anything. I would also happily trade you the city of Alexandria, but it will probably be reduced to dust by my next turn. Plus, trading it away the turn before Darrell razed it would be a bit unsporting anyway.

Let me know what you think.

Cheers!
Dave][/COLOR]

[oledavy]

[oledavy]

I honestly don't feel like writing an update for this last turn. There's a lot to say, but it will be mostly documenting losses on a terrific scale. For my part, I retook Sidon. This allowed me to re-allocate the units from Operation TORPEDO to kill seven Indian ships left out. My ships will all die next turn of course, but it made me feel better to kill something. Operation TREBUCHET called off on account of Farmer's Market being staffed by a machine gun and five marines. I killed all the marines populating my lands, and tried to cover Hattin, and Sidon best I can. Alexandria and probably Sidon will fall next turn.

In hindsight, had I noticed just how many bombers NoSpace had in range of the fleet protecting Sidon, the wisest thing to do would have been move the entire fleet back into the bay near Damascus to keep in intact - either to protect Damascus from the sea or for Operation Going Commando. However, already crossed that bridge unfortunately. My insistence on killing those Indian ships will seriously jeopardize my ability to defend Damascus and possibly my ability to pull off this plan to raze Capital.

If Darrell truly is so close to Stealth Bombers, then there is little I can do. No matter how many units I have, the simple facts are I just can't defend in the face of so much air support. Even when I do get fighters defending Constantinople, Darrell will simply sweep them out with jet fighters then roll over me with stealth bombers. My entire navy has basically died under a hail of bombs, even though I outnumber NoSpace two to one in terms of ships. All rather frustrating to be perfectly honest. Thanks to the air support, I can't fight back, I can't attack, all I can do is die.

Shoot just emailed me back:

That's unfortunate news. I'll keep sending you what units I produce; don't worry about payment (in all honesty I'm not even going to keep the ledger going any longer). I've always felt weird about city gifting in wars, especially wars someone is losing, so although I appreciate the offer I'll pass on it. I've always felt it's a bit outside of fair play, and I also wouldn't want to piss of Darrell or Nospace any more at this point, not with me gifting more or less my entire army to try to prop you up.

Rather noble of him. One bright spot in these dark times

[oledavy]

Okay, back to our regularly scheduled programming.

For my own edification, and for anyone else who is unfamiliar with fighting a modern era war, I'm going to take a moment to type up everything I've learned about fighting a modern war on a water-heavy map during the last few turns. Plus, it will help to clear my head to write all my thoughts out. If you don't like walls of text, or are already an expert on modern warfare, feel free to skip this post.

So, first off, two poorly thought out macro decisions got me into my current position:

1. Decision to research Constitution + Democracy for no real benefit instead of say, Flight & Radio.
2. The timing of my initiation of the NAP cool-downs.

Granted the decision to research Constitution and Democracy came before my re-assessment and decision to go all-out military. Still, the techs did not offer significant benefits to offset the beaker cost. Getting flight or radio earlier would have been huge for this war. Also, I should have gotten my mobilization going before canceling te NAPs. However, I honestly did not expect NoSpace & Darrell to respond the way they did: putting the space race on hold, burying their differences, and allying against me.

Now, onto actual tactical matters.

On Modern Era NAPs

Signing an NAP with someone ahead of you in the turn order is simply a bad idea during the modern era. Due to battleships inflicting collateral, the ascendancy of bombers, and the ability to fork so many cities with transports - whoever gets in a first strike enjoys a massive advantage. So, you either need to sign an NAP that extends to half a turn giving you the first strike option, or, better yet, don't sign an NAP at all The trend on RB lately seems to be CTON, so this may not necessarily be an issue in future games.

Defending Against the Indians

Novice and Spaceman began this war with very limited air support and so had to rely on their ships increased movement from refrigeration + circumnavigation for a tactical advantage. They played their cards very well here, targeting my island cities like Aleppo and Edessa, and using them as bases protect their fleets from my bigger navy while still threatening many of my cities. With nine moves on their missile cruisers and ten moves on their destroyers, they can foray out of their cities, attack, and end the turn in port to stay safe from my navy.

This negated my planned way of defending against their attack. What I had in mind was killing their fleet with my more sizable navy as it was left hanging out after attacking a few of my cities - trading cities for killing their initial stack. However, with their fleet able to outrun mine and safe bases to operate from and hide in, this does not work.

If I had had a transports loaded with marines integrated into my fleet, I could have rendered Aleppo and Edessa unsafe ports and forced them to end their turn in the open ocean for safety. They would still probably remain out of range of my slower ships, but they wouldn't be threatening as many cities.

So, in hindsight, I would have been better served to build about a dozen less ships and a dozen more marines to have for t173. Additionally, it probably would have been wiser to allow them to boat Jaffa and not to have engaged in the First Battle of the Jaffa Sea.

Defending Against the Egyptians

I did not realize until the first battle of Jericho just how screwed I was defending against so many bombers. Without a way to intercept them, it's impossible for both my fleet and army to operate.

The only way to defend against massed air support without any of your own is not to defend at all.

I would have been better served to not defend Jericho at all and parcel off my infantry to defend locations in the south. My fleet would have been more useful somewhere else as well, as it could do nothing where it was.

The decision to defend Jericho was not in and of itself a bad idea, but without fighters, SAM infantry or even a bunker, it was doomed to failure and heavy casualties. Without air cover for my fleet, or a safe base to operate from in the north, this meant my fleet can do nothing against Darrell's, and he can just run wild through my cities.

Which brings us to the next point.

On Air Support

I was sitting with a friend in a coffee shop last week, showing her the t172 save. I like to consider myself an amateur military historian, and she's a history buff too; so when I filled her in on what I was facing, her first comment was: "You don't have any air force? Didn't you learn anything from World War II with Dr. Feske?" She was absolutely right.

Bombers, with their ability to inflict collateral, absolutely dominate the modern battlefield. The -50% against naval units is a little bit misleading, they can still do massive damage to your fleets.

So, defending against enemy bombers in your hard points with units to intercept is obviously the way to go.

There are six units with the ability to intercept aircraft:

Destroyers - 30 str. (30% Chance)
Mech Infantry - 32 str. (20% Chance)
SAM Infantry - 18 str. (40% Chance)
Mobile SAM - 22 str. (50% Chance)
Fighter - 12 str. (100% Chance)
Jet Fighter - 24 str. (100% Chance)

I have only had a chance to play with one so far, destroyers. They do decently intercepting aircraft - in my battles generally intercepting one out of every four bomber attacks, which is what it should be. However, when your opponent has an air force on the scale of Darrell's you need to be able to intercept more attacks in order to not get collateral'd to death. The best unit easily accessible to me that will intercept more than half of the incoming attacks is fighters.

However, the problem here is that as soon as I throw up fighter cover over Constantinople, Darrell is going to sweep them out with Jet Fighters. The only thing I can conclude here is don't fall behind on military tech when it comes to air power. Destroyers and infantry can beat battleships and mech infantry if you have enough of them, but if you have fighters and your opponent has jet fighters, you're just screwed. Battleships are only 33% stronger than destroyers, and mech infantry roughly 30% stronger than infantry when you factor in the +25% against gunpowder units innate attribute of infantry. Jet fighters are twice the strength of fighters (24 vs. 12), and simply murder them in the air. Without fighters to intercept enemy bombers, you're back to relying on inefficient ground troops and destroyers to intercept enemy air attacks. Relying on SAM infantry and destroyers, you'll intercept roughly out of every three attacks, not enough to prevent severe damage from being inflicted. I have yet to test out the effectiveness of bunkers. I expect they mitigate this somewhat and make having only ground units intercepting enemy aircraft better, but you're still going to be taking collateral. They don't need to do that much damage to your units in the first place to give attacking marines good odds, once the ships strip away the cultural defenses.

Things only get worse when stealth bombers come into play. With four more base strength, a range of twelve and a 50% chance at evading intercepting, they simply laugh at attempts to intercept them. Half of stealth bombers committed to an attack will get through if you're defending with fighters or jet fighters. When you have an air force on the scale of Darrell's, that's more than enough to get the job done. Things get much worse if only defending with ground units.

The other way of course to deal with bombers, is to go after their bases.

Darrell's offensive is based on air support from his bombers, and shuffling them around his cities to keep a maximum number in range of the current target. The best option would therefore be to assault or at least threaten these cities. Up until recently, I had a large enough navy to oppose the Egyptian fleet. The problem was that I did not have an amphibious assault force or air cover to make this a reality. However, this ties into the next point:

Going on the Offensive

I've already said it, but it bears repetition, defending is just a losing proposition. It requires a greater hammer investment to defend effectively than to attack effectively. You are just better off being the attacker. In the event war is being forced upon you - scrape together what defenses you can and go on the offensive. The best way to get that enemy stack off your back is to go threaten his cities. Mutually assured destruction via Sirian Doctrine fleets is the only way to go.

In modern era wars, fleets can strike at your cities often directly from the enemy cities, so the only way to win is go smoke them out. Offensives are dependent on bombers operating from safe bases, so you need to assemble your own fleet and go kill them on the ground - deny your enemy his air bases. IIRC, Seven made an analogy once in his PBEM19 thread that fighting a modern war is like grabbing a shield and a machine gun. You try to defend as best you can with the shield (which the enemy bullets will penetrate), but you put your all into beating the other guy down with your gun.

On Airships

I never realized until this game just how stupidly powerful airships are. They have the range of bombers, can see submarines, but most importantly, have no counter when they come online. You mass enough and you can just roll over your opponent's navies and armies. Even with fighters and bombers on the field, they're still really useful for recon.

Key thing when fighting on a water heavy map is keepng tabs on opposing fleets and especially transports, lighting up as much of the map as possible so you cannot be surprised by a nine-move transport loaded with marines moving out of the fog. I was running into the problem that my airships were being killed because their bases were being taken, and I was having problems keeping my recon net up, then I realized I could base them out of Shoot's cities and achieve the same goal Next turn I should have a complete recon net up based out of the Ottoman cities. So, visibility is important, and using neutral cities for recon posts as long as the owner is fine with it is a really great option. Granted it works on this map because of the toroidal wrap.

As an side note to all of this, if it wasn't apparent, most of what I just rambled about is map and game specific. If nukes were allowed, things would obviously be much different. On a land heavy map, artillery, composites, and robotics would be much higher priorities while a navy would be of somewhat marginal importance.

So, the TL:DR version of this rambling post:



Hopefully I get to learn a bit more than that before this war is over

With Flight I'll have paratroopers unlocked, so I may build a few of those to play with and test out. I'd like to see if they're any good on the defense.

If anyone reading has questions, concerns, an observation of their own to contribute, or feels I'm just plain wrong on something, feel free to reply and hit me up.