From: kpearce@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu (BULLDAWG)
Subject: Best Start for Tech & A Small War Lesson.
Organization: The Ohio State University
Date: Fri, 17 Apr 1992 16:25:29 GMT

	Last night I fought a pitched battle.  Probally my first in which
I truely tried to save my ass and keep going.  It was a blitz game, 4 minutes
per update.

I am posting her for general interest and because the battle and my early moves
raise a few interesting questions.

First:  What is the best intial set of moves for immediate early tech?

My first moves where as follows, explore 1 civ out everywhere (grabbed 25
sectors [perfect res BTW])

mov 100 civ g, y, and u from 0,0 

des as follows....

             l   j   a
               m   m
                 w            with everything else +  

The two m's are the initial c locations.

I set the del so that the mine delivered what it could to the j and so that
the j delivered to the l.

The aggie delivered it's food to the m and the m pushed the food off.  That 
arraignment was possible because food was 1/10th normal {nobody starved in
my country}.

Dist paths where set as usual over roads.

It was the forth update before there was any education produced.

0,0 m quickly almost back logged in iron on the fifth update an was
des'd a j to make more l.

Basically at this point I was falling behind on tech and thinking that there
has to be a better way.

In the end, I had the following going to get 18 tech per update:


                g   l   j   a
                  +   m   j  
                t   +   w   k
                  +   +   h
                t   g   +   o
                  g   +   o   
                g   g   g   g

remember, all the sectors were perfect res (100 100 100 100).

Point is, it was the 10th or so update before it started to _stabilize_
i.e. run itself.

The Battle

Not long after the country stabilized and I had found an island that on 
which the owner was still in sanctuary, I was invaded by Eurasia.

For the entire battle, the attacks from Eurasia concentrated on the NW part
of my main island.  A quick note that I had a full island to the east and was
busily populating it with an ocean liner across 1 sea hex.

Apparently Eurasia had a far better tech machine as he  had airplanes and I was 
several updates away.  

The whole point of this discussion is the defence against this techno superior
force.

He parachuted in on undefended sectors (they where all undefended).  I had 
the usual 110 mil resrerves and after enlisting them around the NW corner that
had been taken, I was faced with 300+ mils.  I realized that unless I did 
something soon, he would march over me.

I enlisted 1 mil in every sector so that there would be _some_ resistance.

I then (because I had a lot of cash from bars) des'd all of the main island
sectors "e's"  Starvation would not be a problem due to screwed up dist
lines since each sector had a minimum of 5 updates food.

Two updates later, his atack ground to a halt as each of the sectors he had not 
taken had 70+ mil in each one.  I then started retaking retaking the island.
The other island was put into massive bar production to finance all these mils.
With 70+ mil in each sector I re-des'd the island "f's"  Hah!  He would have to
take each fort out!

In a few updates, I had kicked him off the island (from well over half) all in
the meantime suffering numerous air-attacks.

Eventually I started to put the pieces back to gether again and that is when 
he hit me with what I presume where B-52's, followed by para drops.

I would have held out, but my temporary cap was taken (stupidity = on coast)
on my secondary island and left with -32 BTU's from an attack just before the
cap was taken, I could not redes a new cap (I had a spare) and was thus out
of the game.

All in all I hung in there for 3 hours.

Sheer speculation on my part suggest that I could have lasted to the end if 
Eurasia had invaded 10 or updates later than he did.

So what is the best start for tech production in a perfect world?


Ken Pearce  (aka LSF)