{SPOILERS} 2metra, Dreylin & OT4E. This is the beginning of a wonderful friendship.

[Dreylin]

Would there be value in putting out another Spy to find the missing cities (e.g. South of Draco) so we can assess the counter-attack potential?

Orion would be a great city to take, but we'd need to burn Pegasus to make it useful. Is this practical, or should we just burn it and replant? (1NE on the hill?)

Is there any chance of us making an additional strike - or even a distraction - through Wunderbar?

[OT4E]

I doubt keeping any city is reasonable.
About attack from the south we will see. I doubt. We wont have so much to split. The main goal is to raze nearest cities and replant them somewhere behind, the secondary is to try to burn something else and pillage.

[2metraninja]

Looks good. I have a few questions still though.

I was thinking also about a spy, but not to discover cities, but to have rough estimation what army to expect from dtay. Especially in the north coast.

Is the naval group meant to make seaborne attack directly from the ships?

What you think about the very likely reaction from dtay of switching to nationalism and drafting load of rifles when he can to get back at us after we burn few of his precious front cities. I think we need to be prepared for this too.

[OT4E]

Spies will be there for sure though they are almost blind. I also thought to spend a couple of turns on espionage against dtay to see cities when we will be ready to go out.

[OT4E]

About rifles we are ready for everything if dtay decides to give us those cities. You are trying to make overconditional forecasts. We have a plan and it must be adjusted to what dtay does. But I am open to discuss "what if" alternatives.

If dtay focuses on researching this means that he wont be able to upgrade and parry our espionage to hide his cities.

Drafting rifles is also not good in this mod because it takes 2 pop. How much do you expect him to draft? 30? This will be killing for his cities and will take out like 3 pop from each. I dont even count productional loses.

For us I aim to draft muskets to upgrade them into rifleman later. Against his early rifles we make catapults. And finally I think that cuirassiers can be more useful and dangereous for us.

[2metraninja]

What about the north coastal front and our navy? From your pic it looks like our units attack amphibiously. Is it this what you had in mind?

[OT4E]

What about the north coastal front and our navy? From your pic it looks like our units attack amphibiously. Is it this what you had in mind?

Of course. We bring 5 carracks at the end of turn. He will not be able to see it without Optics. We have no chance to land because he will move in enough for sure, but seeing only our char stack he can make wrong decision.

[2metraninja]

I think I dont follow. You mean we bring our carracs at the end of the first turn of the war in range to attack amphibious the next turn?

[OT4E]

Thats why I draw routes to keep all informed and get feedback.

Lets simulate. The first turn of war we move in the forest id it still exists. This turn we dont want to attack yet and we dont show our char stack too. How does he react? "Omg I need help to defend this stack. From this turn he must pull everything to the middle city, leaving the least defences on two other fronts.

Next turn we move to the hill with our main stack, put chariots covered by minimal number of units on the hill in arange of attack, and get carracks in position.

Then everything is up to him. But there is a chance that he leaves the city and may be we need to keep navy in a range of attack all the time and wait for his mistake.

[2metraninja]

Sounds good, but it depends quite a lot of him making the "right mistake". Thinking about the goals of our war (goals of course are the most important thing to have in mind when going to war), which as I see them are to hurt dtay as much as possible and clean as much as possible land for our own settlement, I want to propose an alternative plan for the attack:

Turn 1:

- We go second in the turn order and we move in the forest our main stack.
- Carracks are parked somewhere in Commodore's territorial waters outside of dtay's vision, loaded mostly with knights and 1-2 maces. 10 units in 5 carracks.

Turn 2:

- Dtay sees our main stack and is like "OMG, OMG, it's those nuts again, but I will make whatever it takes me to make it impossible for them to take my beloved splendid city of Orion, which they obviously aim at!" and he starts to move everything he have around. He have 2 turns to gather all defenses he could to be in Orion at t3 of the war to defend the city and 1 turn to possibly muster some catapults to make collateral to our stack in the beginning of t3 of the war. Maybe get some knights/HAs to try for some flanking of our siege. So he brings everything (or most of it) from Aquarious, Draco, Pegasus and cities around, possibly knights from Taurus towards Orion and any slow- movers from Taurus towards the coastal cities to act as military police.
Our part of the turn:
- we move our main stack on one of the hills whichever is easier in case he had put some units there.
- we move our fleet on the tile 8-8-8-7 from Aquarius which allows us to hit amphibiously Aquarius on t3
- we move our chariots on the "Point two" hill to have visibility and to possibly lure some of his units in to killing them, which will not take part in the decisive moves of t3

Turn 3:

- Dtay have few options depending on his units available and his optimism/recklessness level:
a/ give us major battle attacking us on the hill with everything he could and defend Orion with whatever he can get in there
b/ he might decide to just stick the Aquarius slow-movers stack which is in the middle of the road between Aquarius and Orion in Orion and hide behind his walls if he does not have enough catapults to break our army to get odds of attacking us
c/ decides to empty Orion, fall back to his second line of cities to wait for getting army to have chance with our main stack and at least defend from our amphibious attack at Aquarius, moving back his slow movers from the middle of the road back in Aquarius and sticking additional knights/chariots/HAs to make at least 1 more unit that we could have on our carracks and our surviving chariots combined, so we cant take Aquarius on t3 for sure even if due to sheer numbers only

Our part of the turn:
- in case of a/ we go ahead and possibly raze Aquarius with amphibious attack and eventually help from our chariots stack if they are still available. Orion we dont know what we can do - it largely depends of the outcome of the battle.
- in case of b/ we still raze Aquarius amphibiously (with the benefit of the defenders being moved out just the turn before, so they dont have those +25% defensive bonus) and possibly bombard Orion or if we decide we have odds, we attack.
- in case of c/ we raze Orion and sail 1-1-1 to land on the desert hill between Taurus and Drako, forking them. By all chances, he wont be able to defend 2 cities from 8-9 knights on t4

T4 we act according to Dtay's reaction/action. If in the unlikely case we decide we cant take Taurus and/or Drako, we retreat on our ships and still go to the waiting/prowling game on his coast you proposed.

Sorry for lot of text and no pics/drawings. I might do some if needed.