Arminius
Morkin Admin
Ich bin Bl?cher
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Post by Arminius on Jan 16, 2007 22:28:45 GMT
As the war draws to an end (knock on wood here), I think it's important that we draw some conclusions from the way things worked out, where we did well and where we didn't. Our first wave was well-executed, despite lack of planning due to the short time-span. We could successfully get other alliances once they saw that we were putting out money where our mouth was. We had very good intelligence of all his isles. We kept -S- out of the game. We established links with other alliances, some of which will probably be long-term relationships, and others which I'd rather hope would end soonish Where it all fell down was after more and more alliances approached us asking for targets. I think we all lost track of what was happening, apart from Robert (Shendemiar) perhaps. That was because we didn't have a plan due to time constraints, and there were too many people involved, most of whom were from other alliances, and there were no clear points of contact. There's probably more, but as I said, I also lost track due to real life constraints. And here are a few suggestions: - We need a proper command structure. With three alliances there are too many people for everybody to talks about everything to everybody, and to coordinate, plan, issue orders, make sure they're executed, etc. Instead we should have (geographical) groups, size debatable, so that the people planning only need to talk to a handful of Admirals telling them what needs to be hit at what time. The Admirals then organise the low-level stuff and contact their group members about when to launch and make sure things happen.
- We need dedicated contact people for allied alliances. These can be Diplomats, but sometimes you've got a personal contact, or they want to have an admin to talk to. Who it is doesn't matter, as long as we have one point of contact when we need to exchange messages with alliance X.
- We need to have a party for having done really well. From a daunting starting position we have managed to practically take out the top ranking player who alone had 25% of the points Morkin had. (subject to confirmation that Tyrant did indeed delete his account).
This was new territory for us. On the UK server we were less than 30, and we all knew each other. Given that we are now so many, and we couldn't be sure how people would react, I think we have done really well. It could have been a lot, lot worse.
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Ringthane
Public Area Guest
Ardet nec Consumitur
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Post by Ringthane on Jan 16, 2007 22:30:57 GMT
Elaborated like a pro ;D Are you trying to skirt around the wine buying? ;D ;D ;D
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SkulkrinBait
Morkin Admin
Haxx0rs == Suxx0rs! v4
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Post by SkulkrinBait on Jan 16, 2007 22:31:55 GMT
Hey, you stole my thread title! I've also got a load of ideas written down, but I can't get hold of the document now, so will post tomorrow. Overall I think we did well and I would like to thank Shendemiar for his sterling work and Arminius, Natmus and Ashimar for all their efforts too. I also want to thank everyone in Morkin/FoM and Corleth for a great effort, hopefully this is now over but don't get too complacent just yet!
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Shendemiar
Morkin Admin
Mmmm, free goo!
Posts: 6,751
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Post by Shendemiar on Jan 16, 2007 22:42:30 GMT
Lesson over or not, we do need to think about all this.
As stated, we dont have a proper chain of command. For wars that can be planned before the event, we are superb, but surprisewar like this, or for prolonged conflicts, we are not so well equipped for. I wont go into details just now, but there are lots of things in my mind.
Few quick points thou...
Diplomacy worked like a charm Spying towards the end started to act wery well Too many Fottuto! threads to follow, too many forums
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eproxy
Luxor Admin
Oceans old & new
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Post by eproxy on Jan 16, 2007 23:20:09 GMT
I second that last point, too many things to keep a track of, although having said that there are many posters here.
Having read the initial post I feel it wise to add two more points which are more tactical based. We need more catapults and coloships on standby (those are seperate points hehe). I fear we lost more ships than necassary just stupidly bouncing off stonewalls. Admittedly this is due to the relatively high cost of catapults at this stage of the game but it still needs to be addressed. The other point is coloships, whilst it is tempting to use any we have it is clearly ineffective having to rely on colonisers from further afield.
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Arminius
Morkin Admin
Ich bin Bl?cher
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Post by Arminius on Jan 16, 2007 23:44:13 GMT
Cats and col-ships were lacking because there was no time to prepare.
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Natmus
Morkin Admin
Fight the power!
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Post by Natmus on Jan 16, 2007 23:57:45 GMT
I agree, this must have been the worst war we ever fought Obviously we had a lot of factors against us, most of which has been mentioned, and I as well as many others hadn't the time to fully dedicate me to it. I agree with all points above, lack of cats, too many forums, and too many allies. Next time we plan ahead, keep it to ourselves, and get a battle plan like the one Sarah (POSE) suggested, and we had to disregard due to lack of time and forces.
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Arminius
Morkin Admin
Ich bin Bl?cher
Posts: 4,148
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Post by Arminius on Jan 17, 2007 0:08:50 GMT
And concentrate on a few targets, rather than take on too many, which then get muddled up with allies.
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Shendemiar
Morkin Admin
Mmmm, free goo!
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Post by Shendemiar on Jan 17, 2007 0:13:48 GMT
And peacefull ones should donate for navies of those capable working constanly and with skill.
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Arminius
Morkin Admin
Ich bin Bl?cher
Posts: 4,148
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Post by Arminius on Jan 17, 2007 0:16:25 GMT
A war tax...
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Shendemiar
Morkin Admin
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Post by Shendemiar on Jan 17, 2007 0:20:48 GMT
And peacefull ones should donate for navies of those capable working constanly and with skill. We have thousands of warships, but most of them are in small useless fleets, and most of the acounts only drop in every now and then.
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Post by Dalfiatach on Jan 17, 2007 0:29:45 GMT
How about some of us concentrate on cat production for a few weeks? It's clear that attacking a defended isle with less than 25 cats is pointless and just gets the cats killed to no real gain. I should have shipped my initial 16 cats to people like Marc and eproxy instead of suiciding them on a 40LW fleet. We wasted a lot of cats in attacks like that.
My main is fairly well-defended now (850 spears) so I can just build cats for a while. A strategic reserve of 30 or so. 2 or three others should do the same. Then when a war kicks off we have 100+ cats in reserve, to be shipped to a couple of players with large fleets who will do most of the bombing runs.
Cat production reserve islands should have ludicrous amounts of spears (aim for 2000+ ASAP) to discourage attacks.
Tyrant was also very good (impossibly good) at getting his fleets out in time, then bringing them back to stop colo attempts. I suggest in future the bombing pattern should be wall->watchtower->storehouse. Moving fleets around the way Tyrant did would be very difficult if your tower has been nuked...
Thirdly, the defender has an advantage in this version compared to co.uk. Aggressive wars in future really do need to be carried out extremely swiftly and with massive, overwhelming force.
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Shendemiar
Morkin Admin
Mmmm, free goo!
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Post by Shendemiar on Jan 17, 2007 0:44:01 GMT
Indeed, war needs to be won before the first attacks are sent.
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Pose
Luxor Member
Posts: 324
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Post by Pose on Jan 17, 2007 10:21:06 GMT
Well personally I think that this opperation has gone better than I expected SO FAR (slipping in that I have been spied by a member of [mx] in last 4 hrs..)
Although I had doubts about the level of planning we had in place and the time we had to prepare I must say that I was holding out to see the legendary planning skills of you guys and thoe of [morkin] in particular, and that you did not fail me...
Pleasently supprised goes no way to expressing how pleased I am to have been part of this and how much faith I now have in the leadership team of my alliance and those alliances closet to us ...
My greatest gripe is the level of reading I had to do to find me somthing to attack (in the end I had to ask directly on the alli board).. this is not anybodys fault as much as mine in that I dont have proper i net access during out of office hours and the forum is especially hard to read (and expensive) using my mobile..
I echo the need for more clear division (i always like geographical) giving us all one admiral as a point of contact.
I also think that dedicated points of contact with our allies is a good thing, and to that end I sent a PM to each of our allies introducing myself and basically saying 'i have an open door policy' last week before we actually launched..(i got mixed replies)
Building up defences and catas I think is a must in the coming weeks...on ik.uk I (when admiral/admin) enforced a dedicated week or two to a specific bulds with a ban on new isle aquisitions.. this had two benefits, it kept us behind on points(off the readar) but well ahead on forces, a good position to go to war in for any alliance.
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Arminius
Morkin Admin
Ich bin Bl?cher
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Post by Arminius on Jan 17, 2007 10:40:29 GMT
OK, so let's get started: who would like to determine the groups? I suggest we mix Morkin and FoM members, but leave out Corleth; that should ensure that groups are close together and exchange messages regularly. How many do we need? If we're roughly 50 people, should we go for ten groups of 5, or 5 groups of ten, or 6 groups of 8 with a few independents?
Then each 'squadron' has a thread in the command board, where the admiral posts what needs to be done. The admiral is then responsible for getting targets from the Planning Council and to pass them on to members.
In case of war there'd be a Planning Council, whose composition is independent of posts. E.g. I'm an admin, but I'm probably better at negotiating than at planning hostilities, whereas Robert and Pose have shown good skills in the latter. Does that sound alright?
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