RB Pitboss #1 [SPOILERS!] - Kublai Khan of Rome

[Munro]

Weeks of careful planning finally culminated in a combined amphibious / commando assault this morning to take out rego's virtually undefended capital (1 longbow) which he had recently moved to Mason, in the north (18 tiles away from the nearest Roman unit).

http://www.realmsbeyond.net/forums/showt...#post76809

Sorry for not posting details here in advance. I held back just to be on the safe side.

Rome's own spaceship should arrive in 6 turns (unless someone finds a way to do the same thing back to me...)

[Swiss Pauli]

Well done, and good luck with the Phantom Capital

[Krill]

keep up the Pwnage :b:

[Ilios]

Bravo!

[MJW (ya that one)]

Hoh-oh, yes! Very inpressive!

[zakalwe]

Impressive.

Have you got any screenshots to outline exactly how you did it? Sounds like you captured a beachhead city, and unloaded the commandos there?

[Munro]

Yes - exactly.

It's not a great screenshot, sorry.. but it shows the main theatre from a couple of turns before I actually made my move, when most of the units were already in place. (I wanted to try to avoid bring attention to any troop movements - especially in the north - in the last few turns before our NAP expired, so I had to put everything in place ahead of time).



The attack plan was then relatively straightforward.

• I had 2 transports 1W of The Bunker, one of them Navigation 1 carrying the marines. The other one was an XP10/2 unpromoted transport which carried the commandos.
  
• I had 2 Missile Cruisers and a Carrier for cover (with missiles), and a navigation 2 submarine was hidden further south inside SilCon's territory fully loaded with tactical nukes and exactly within striking range of Arlington Heights.
  
• For the strike itself, I first hit took out all of Rego's intercept fighters with jets from futher south, then used the carrier jets and those from The Bunker, plus the missile cruisers, missiles and finally a single tactical nuke on the 7 defenders. (The nuke probably was not needed but I had intentionally kept the landing party to the absolute minimum (2 transports for 7 defenders) and couldn't afford a single casualty even at 99% odds, as I needed to have at least one commando left over for the second stage).
  
• The tac nuke actually finished off one of the 7 defenders, and I captured the city on the 6th attack. That gave me 2 commandos left to play with, using the nav2 transport to unload them right from inside the city, allowing them to move the same turn.
  
• Rego's capital was then exactly 10 tiles away via railroads via 2 different routes - allowing some contingency in case passing reinforcements were blocking one of the routes. I also had spies prepositioned on hills to keep watch as well, just in case both were blocked, but in the end they were not necessary.
  
• Finally, with another spy prepositioned in Mason I put the city into revolt (removing the +60% defence) and took the city on the first try with my Combat 4 commando and 99% odds.
  

(The second commando then went on a sight seeing trip to raze a couple more undefended cities for good measure).

The hardest part of this plan was working out how to handle the case were Rego played first and went for a pre-emptive strike. Although this seemed unlikely, since he had the most to lose from a war (i.e. was guaranteed the win without one) it was also the biggest threat to my plan. Even with Nav2 promos, I couldn't reach into any of his coastal cities and then reach his capital the same turn, from one of my own cities. I had to start the turn with at least 1 or more key transports exposed (depending on how many nukes I was relying on).

To counter this, I had a major military build up in the south - with some significant land stacks just begging to be nuked, plus a large flotilla of (empty) transports, missile cruisers, destoyers, carriers etc in the south - spread out to be nukeable together, but not while also hitting the city itself (which is where I had the much smaller but more potent contingency force of a couple more XP10/2 transports with commandos and marines, and a missile cruiser loaded with more nukes).

In the end all these precautions were unnecessary, and things went completely as planned....

[Rowain]

Congrats

[Munro]

Thanks.

Here's a better screenshot (from the beginning of the turn immediately after) showing the route taken and the transport or marines still in place outside the city. (Rego recaptured the city and destroyed the other transport inside the city, during his subsequent turn).



Meanwhile, I've moved my capital inland a bit, to Charitable View, 4 tiles NW of my former capital, NIH. (Below is an older screenshot from a few months ago that shows the location). I've started blocking off the land route with units to protect against any possible commando raid from the west. (There are still more than enough ICBM in the world to take out however many units I put in there, so spreading them out will be more effective).



I decided not to pursue the war any further against Rego, unless he wants to continue fighting, as I don't imagine he is particularly enjoying it at this point. So I offered him a ceasefire instead. (I did capture that island city he had last turn).

4 or 5 turns to victory now. Broker is still about 12 or 13 turns out from what I can tell. (I have visibility into all of his cities due to the massive amount of espionage spending I have, even though most of it has been against Rego, Alex and Sunrise)...

[Munro]

Well here we are. 1 turn to go... our capital looking secure.



Broker is still 6 turns from a cultural victory.



Some closing screenshots of the last 100 turns.





Just goes to show what is possible with a couple of strong allies (thank you Broker especially) and a bit of good luck... The days of 11th place and Byzantian Praetorians seem a long way away.

Shame about all the substitutions we went through, but it's been a fun and memorable game - all the more so as my first experience of modern nuclear warfare.. (Sorry Rego, and thank you for being such a good sport to the end).