War against Digg - Planning

[Shendemiar]

I'm going to be offline soon, for a rather long time. So, keep the wheels turning. Make it official at least to luxor.

[Shendemiar]

shendemiar said:

Yes, that would be good to mention. The announcement needs to be well crafted. Someone should start working it.

Double on that people!

And include seeds to plant discontent amongst their leadership. Make something they disagreed amongst themselves the reason for this war, or at least hint it.

[Sol]

Psych war should probably play a big role here as well.

I don't know what kind of plans we can make for this other than excessive propaganda...I'm sure other people can come up with a more "clever" plan.

Maybe Morkin can go "silent" once this war breaks out.

[Clausewitz]

We cannot pin our hopes to a psych war against DIGG. It has been tried several times before, and always fails. At best, it will induce a dozen runners, none of which are of any noteworthy status.

Providing material support without actually taking an active role in DIGG's defeat would be merely buying us time - as soon as DIGG is done with Pantheon, they will come for us (and any others who supported Pantheon).

If we're going to do this, we have to do it right. Command-and-control is our only hope.

We need to lay HEAVY fire on their leadership. This includes all in-game Admins, as well as Ocean Coordinators. Get them spending so much time in their accounts that they have little time to manage the war from the larger picture.

Bypass IK_Nuke, doku, fhbone, and their other heavy hitters. Those guys don't contribute in a "teamwork" sense, since they're so busy with their accounts.

Focus must be placed on the following:
Meatpopsicle (Pantheon already all over him)
scoots
starrynight
phil299 (I can keep him busy)
bod (he's out of reach of most all of us)
Fetttson (o33, but we're going to have long odds there)

I need Aesir to help complete this list. This is only my best recollection.

Pantheon is making a tactical blunder we cannot emulate.
Each of us must be prepared to scorch our own isles, rather than re-take them.
THIS is our best psychological weapon. Fleetsave, stonerdrop, and dig in our heels to make them pay heavy for each and every isle they manage to get. And once they clear it, we need to scorch it immediately - force them to pay upwards of 500 LWS for a 5-pt island.

It is hard to do to scorch your own isles, but provides immense disincentive to DIGG's list of volunteers to take down islands.

We CANNOT simply trade cleared islands back and forth - we will run dry on coloships before they do. Use our cat arsenals for their true purpose - EVERY isle we lose should be a 5-pt isle.

[inyati]

I'd like to add to Clausewitz scorch tactic the following view as well:
This is a massive war. Its not a "colonial" war in same sense as Operation Elf and Hubris is.
For maximun effect no one is to colonise any island at all!!!
For maximun effect enemy has to be crippled!!!

This will add an extra burden to DIGG, alongsidewith sending fake attacks, filling up event log and mail log, etc..

I recomend all priority targets to be those that would hurt our own production. So we should hit firstly the storehouse, then harbour and barracks. Forget the Main, forget colonising.

The more we keep up with it the more edge we get on them (as long as they dont pay us back in the same way). This should be a war in its primitive sense, of total destruction. Cripple the bastards! In the aftermath of the destruction, we can start thinking of taking islands.

As for psywar, I think all has been thought of and done. I would however recomend there be no talk in the IK forum. We dont gain anything there. The best tool is IGM. Talk to eveyone through IGM, and use that medium for propoganda. I would also inundate the whole of DIGG with messages. I would actualy send normal diplomatic mail to all members of DIGG and not just through their Admins - members get to know all "secretive" mail.

[2kcastle]

Knocking down the main house makes a lot of difference to how long it takes to rebuild an isle so it should be a top priority whether your planning on colonising or not, same applies to the mines.

[inyati]

Good point. My idea is to hit where it hurts the most. As there are so many islands, crippling them is the only way to gain us some more time to boost our production while they spend theirs in buildings.
Storehouse Must be hit first. Anything else is welcome of course.
Colonyships could be used not to attack, but to pin down a player, as he thinks we might want to colonise him.

I think we can easily make up a safe tactic where we can cut down our losses and hit for maximum effect:
1st wave
1 - We attack when they are online (we want them to fleet steal)
2 - We send colononyship as decoy (suicide mission, but will pin down the player as he might not send any attacks while waiting for the fleet colonyship to hit)
3 - Our esscorts of LWS + cats hit just before the colonyship, but targets are storehouse and anything else if we have the fire power (at this stage, hopefully his fleet mght be out, ready to return on time to defend from the false colony hit)
4 - colonyship hits and most probably dies.

I'm sure we could get very good results with the above, as we're not interested in colonising, and if by chance he is online at the time, we just might to get to keep our fleets, men and cats. That means we actualy give him time to play it easy, but in reality it's a trap to knock his production.
True he is left with a fleet, but we have ours as well, and our production is stronger.

[Shendemiar]

In case some building can be knocked down, they all can be with almost the same effort. We should primarily look out for any isles they gain, and right after its gained, we scorch them. That wont cost us too much. I will set up a new tool that scans all isle ownership changes EACH HOUR. That way we can locate all the NEWly taken isles.

[inyati]

Hmm, yes thats actualy a good way to go about as well. As long as we dont tell the previous owner that we're scorching his late islands. Not much, but some gain in using that tactic as well.

[Null]

What is considered a victory in this war? We are strong in old oceans, as is Pantheon. Digg are strong in new oceans. Is the goal here to hold onto the old oceans? It doesn't seem we could make much head way in the new ones based on numbers, so what would a victory for us look like?

[Ruku]

Well thats me flattened

[inyati]

Victory for us is DIGG's fall. I plan on sending all I've got in o1 and o11 to the centre of DIGG's territory.

Its not about numbers or islands, its about DIGG crumpling down, splitting or anyother form of capitualtion, whatever the cost.

It just so happens that DIGG is in the new oceans where we arent that strong. It could have been the other way round, who cares. If we're going to war, we go full blast. We'll be better off with fewer islands anyway. We'll have more time to spend with friends and family. But in the meanwhile we'll be having a ball here.

If you think you're going to loose already, then you've beaten yourself from the start. YOU have brought your downfall before anyone has even started to attack you. Above all else, the Morkin spirit is in the warrior and how he conducts himself in war. Then come all those noble traits, etc.

I ask you all. Are you beaten already? If thats the case might as well give us your islands coords so we can flatten them before the enemy takes them over.

[eproxy]

Since some of us are low on catapults so we might want to have several players with fleets dedicated to flattening cleared isles that can merely be called in. I'd also suggest those in the centre of Digg do the same for the beggining... as those members would be the most opportune to fleet-steal and/or cat bombard isles (and the most overpowered should they hit head on with Digg).

Having said that I'd still be in favour of at least consolidating my new 'takes' before a war with Digg.

Added; if [PAIN] are planning to get involved when we do then why not pre-empt them (someone else suggested it first)? That way we can hope to make them go the same way as MX/Phoenix - either split quickly or ruin their spirit. Besides it'll serve them right for even considering that they could be a match for Morkin

[Clausewitz]

I'm not beaten.

Just as the Samauri in Japan were never defeated. Crazy Horse was never defeated. Rommel's Afrikakorps was never defeated.

Like them, our warrior spirit will live on in high standing. What happens to our material presence is irrelevant. Like them, we embrace a material death, so long as it means we hold true to our Warrior Ethos.

That, my friends, is a path to immortality.

[eproxy]

Well I was hoping not to end up like [Morkin] on the IKUK server