I don't think the war will be decided by how many shells we can fling? The death toll and the destruction? Absolutely. The key beneficiaries of artillery are the fortresses designed to keep the fighting away from our highly urban interior. The more fortresses that fall, and the less toll they exact on NOD- the more fighting we have to do in regions we don't want to fight in. And if the last 3 wars we've fought are any indication, we'll have to endure a global offensive before we can counterattack.
Note:
Nod has reliable precison strike capabilities, both battlefield and strategic.
We were reminded of this at St Petersburg where Krukov cruise missiled the city thoroughly with theater missiles using forward spotters. Its more expensive hardware wise than using lowtier units, but Nod is teching up. See the Underminer.
They can reduce those defensive nodes just fine.
see plans who saw the same thing I read, and think 'half our free dice on Philly'- nevermind the fact that if I were to bet, I'm pretty positive we just saw a test run for a nuclear or LT strike. So much is at stake here that I'm immensely worried at a trend to look at statistical optimization here as the end all be all. And that's what Philadelphia is about from both an IC and OOC perspective.
Nod has always had the capability to semi-reliably get WMDs into GDI BZs.
If they can get in several Shadow Team members into any BZ, each individual massing hundred kilos or more with their equipment? They can move in an eighty kilogram, 150-450kt warhead. Or several cannisters of hyper-smallpox. Or use a longrange torpedo to explode a hundred megaton cobalt-60 nuke off the coast.
It just requires a major warlord's agreement and resources. And the willingness to risk GDI scorching the earth in retaliation.
Manchester otoh was an attempt to test a proof of concept for striking GDI infrastructure on the cheap with conventional weapons. IMO.
Small submarines(specifically called out, so cheaper to make and crew), cheap cruise missile loadout(short range), shitty submarine sensors(they didnt detect the cruisers being that close before launching missiles, else they would have waited or moved their launchpoint, or tried to sink the cruisers first), conventional warheads.
Those are sort of resources available to second tier warlords, or which a first tier warlord can spam without drawing WMD retaliation from GDI or potentially lethal questions from Kane or their underlings.
We were unlucky in that both cruisers in the encounter got sunk.
We were however lucky that the cheapass missiles suffered quality control issues at the factory or while loading them, so their accuracy was shit. Seriously, 1980s Scud missiles have two orders of magnitude better accuracy than a ten kilometer CEP.
I don't necessarily agree with this, but I would appreciate responses. If the logic is sound- and I think parts of it are true- then Nod has every incentive to launch an offensive as soon as possible.
If they wait for us to complete all of our current projects and then turn our improved industrial potential towards the military, Nod will be in a very bad place. I can see the logic behind beginning Tiberium War Four now, rather than waiting as GDI's strategic position grows stronger.
Its worth remembering that there are two different imperatives in play: the interests of Nod as an institution, and the interests of its individual warlords. They do not necessarily align.
The major warlords are political rivals, and sometime military ones.
The ex-Noddie Qatarites we recruited were followers of a major warlord who got setup and shivved by another major warlord.
Getting three or more major warlords to cooperate in non-critical situations is decidedly nontrivial.
The only person alive capable of herding that entire clowder of cats is Kane.
Anyone else would probably instigate a schism.
The Red Zones are retreating, which is a good thing. It also means that Nod is under slightly less pressure, because the growth of Red Zones isn't driving Nod civil war as heavily armed refugees try to claim territory in shrinking Yellow Zones.
Major Nod warlords can look at the situation and see that GDI is stronger this year than we were last year. Our strategic position has improved incalculably since the start of the quest, and we've started actively winning hearts and minds in the Yellow Zones that Nod relies on for recruits. I am terrible at mechanics, and I don't really understand the workings of the various plans, but I do see the logic behind Nod starting the war as soon as possible. If they wait for us to finish the Philadelphia and build a decent stockpile of shells and add some Fortress Cities, they'll be in a much worse position to fight a major war.
GDI has always been stronger than Nod in the interregnum between wars. We know it, they know it.
Furthermore, you'll notice that even when we were weak, and they snatched the Tacitus, we remained strong enough that our retaliation shattered the Marked of Kane faction, murked most of the Far Eastern warlords and threw Nod China into chaos for almost a decade. There's a certain justifiable caution about being the first in line and making oneself the target.
Its also worth noting that Nod itself has not stood still technologically, from the reintroduction of the Banshee-bis/Barghest and combat cyborgs, to the slow proliferation of ion disruptors, and the theft of Peak Fusion tech from GDI.
We are stronger. So are they.
There's also the economic angle.
Up to a few turns ago, they were having to relocate significant chunks of industry regularly to keep ahead of encroaching Red Zones. That only just stopped recently. That amount of disruption takes time to settle
Also Kane remains a wildcard.
He's been squatting on both the Tacitus and the last Scrin Threshold Tower for most of a decade.
With the only true AI on the planet in his exclusive service.
We have shaken loose multiple paradigm-changing techs from the Scrin pinata with battlefield salvage; you have to wonder what he has.
Huh so Plan Derpy is in the lead right now, but that is in part because a lot of the voters have not seen the newer plans and
@uju32 has not been agitating for a plan this time.
I voted for Chimeraguard, but I dont really feel strongly opposed to the Derpy or Philly plans.
Details I'd change, and I'd prefer Derpy of the two, but nothing I cant live with.
...Not that an overfocus on offensive operations might not cut a gordian knot for nod, but rather, that doing the opposite preserves the status quo. It doesn't. For all that Krukov didn't get his stretch goal of killing a BZ arcology, he does consider his offensive a success, and we can see why: Other warlords are consolidating with him voluntarily, even before Kane comes into the picture.
This jockeying isn't just about sucking up to the bald man, it's about convincing the others to choose them as a leader, and right now Krukov is in the lead, and snowballing. That means to preserve the status quo, we specifically have to take him down several pegs.
That's what I feel. More later, maybe.
My perspective is that there's a balance to be made between retaliation, deterrence, and proactive.
If we spend much of our plan focuses responding to Nod provocations, we'll end up being led around by the nose and not actually addressing the root reasons why they are capable of offering those provocations.
It hasnt missed my attention, or yours, that every major Nod operation in the last year or two, from Gideon to Bintang to Krukov,has relied on critical support at a key juncture from India-sourced cyborgs. Or that even Nod are beginning to have issues with throwing Militant light infantry agaist GDI heavy metal.
Right now, my mediumterm focus is to get us to do Karachi. Securing the logistics pipeline there will do several things
- It reduces our military commitments used to guard the current two logistics routes to one, which allows us to redirect the excess troops to offensive action or a strategic reserve
- It allows us to funnel military resources in so the Himalyas can act as a jumpoff point into Krukov's Central Asian soft belly.
- It also allows the Himalayas to pressure India, meaning the Indians have to spend more effort on local defenses and fewer on helping other warlords.
Interdicting the flow of cyborgs from India would have a material effect on at least half the major Nod factions.
That matters.
Smacking Krukov now would feel nice, but we cant really follow up on it, yet.
So we wait. Just like we've waited everytime Mehretu has pulled one of his assassination ploys.
Delayed gratification might be a dirty phrase, but it applies here.
Right, but we also aren't building a lot of the tools the military would need to target warlords. We've emphasized development and defense, rather than a strong offensive military. Which is not to say that we made the wrong call. But our lack of force projection is a gap that will need to be addressed at some point.
Eventually.
But this has been a long war, and will be a long one yet. And GDI lost significant chunks of Industry to Nod attacks and the Scrin burning multiple BZ cities off the face of the earth. There wasnt a real alternative to prioritizing development.
Going econoboom builds up the muscle to decisively prosecute this war, to throw the punches and follow them up.
Never do an enemy a small injury if you can help it.
I actually think that the GDI is projecting quite a lot of force, just on a different way than usual. For the last few Tiberium Wars, the GDI has been using military force to suppress and defeat NOD. Probably unintentionally, the voters of this quest have shifted how the GDI projects force. Instead of fighting NOD in one of their strong suits, we have been fighting them in thier weakest area; economics.
This. In total war, economic superiority is as important as technological superiority.
Draining the population pool that Nod can draw on is a less kinetic form of warfare, but its warfare all the same. As is introducing developments that obsolete entire modalities of combat, forcing your opponent to scramble to keep up.
It would help to have navalized Super Orcas, but our main problem is that we don't have the hulls to counter a concerted campaign of submarine warfare, and we don't have the logistics buffer to absorb the resulting malus.
Karachi 4 gives us +12 Logistics in a Turn. Karachi 5 would give us +20 Logistics in two Turns.
We'll be able to tank a -20 Logistic malus from Bintang in eighteen months/six turns.
We just need to last that long.
