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What are Military Orders?
I find it helpful to define what I plan to do in a military compaign by trying to define a simple set of instructions and/or objectives for each group of units. In a strictly military sense, these military orders include defining an objective and setting control limits and areas of operation that will prioritize the movements of the units during the game turns that make up the campaign. It is also a good idea to define how the units will be expected to behave in terms of how focused they might be on major military objectives such as capturing or destroying cities or on the attrition objectives like resource denial or engaging and destroying enemy military units.

Campaign Objectives
Because we classified Kyoto as a major productivity and resource center as well as being Japan's capital, the first objective of the campaign was to capture and hold Kyoto. Beyond this objective, we could choose to contune the war and destroy Japan or sue for peace and consolidate our gains. A secondary objective of the campaign would be to generate enough combat events to produce at least two great leaders. The first leader would be used to produce an army that could be used in limited combat to generate an early victory and build the Heroic epic. The second great leader would be used to rush the Forbidden palace in Kyoto or one of the nearby core cities that seemed to provide the most central ocation for turning the Japanese continent into our second core area (but probably most productive area of all).

Routes of Advance
Based on the analysis of the estimated terrain map I felt that a landing on the west coast of Japan and then advancing due east to Kyoto might be risky due to the chance of encountering mountainous terrain that would be impassable for the main bulk of our forces made up of war chariots. It is also very difficult to support any type of amphibious or beach-head typ operation whn galleys are the primary water transport due to their limited movement and transport capacity of only two units. In general, it feel better to build up a massed force of land units in a city that you control on the enemies border and then launch an assault from that location.

Although an amphibious assault for the main attack did not seem to be the best choice, from the moment that I saw Kyoto was near to but not right directly on the coast, I had wanted to place an expeditionary force on that far coast to either confirm where the limits of the continent might actually be or to disrupt resource connections and access to any harbors that might exist. I was reasonably certain that the land mass on that side of Japan did not go on forever, otherwise Japan should have gained contact with some other civilization. Also, the fact that Japan had grown out to meet me on the western edge of their continent gave me further support for the guess that kyoto was over on the eastern edge of their landmass.

So, based on my first whim about Kyoto, I decided to send two galleys with an initial load of four military units on a sort of "coastal end around" maneuver to land on the coast behind Kyoto. I included two war chariots, one spearman, and one swordsman in this force in the hope that they could land somewhere and either fortify on an important square or capture a minor harbor town and just hold out until reinforcements arrived. The galleys would slide back up the northern coast and pick up one round of reinforcements by water while a small land force would strike through and link up with amphibious force if necessary.

Planned Routes of Advance into Japan in 190AD

The main axis of attack would be on a line from the Egyptian town of Port-o-Japan directly toward Kyoto. This route of advance is shown as the western most dotted arrow in the map above and would take us through the young Japanese town of Toyama and hopefully through a Japanese city that was halfway betweemn Toyama and Kyoto. This unknown Japanese City would have been one of the first 3 or 4 cities founded by the Japanese and we were hoping it it would have a barracks that could be captured to support healing our military units and rushing more units if necessary.

If you would like to play along with this scenario, you may click here to download a Civ3 V1.21 save file that will position you right at the end of the year 170AD. When you proceed to the next turn for 190AD you should be able to move units into the positions shown in these 190AD map images. Remember: Your replay results will vary slightly from the original game because the impact of the Random Number Generator will alter the play sequence a little bit more for each movement sequence that progresses.

Because our analysis of the map indicated that the central mass of forests might block our main advance or slow our ability to reinforce the minor water born attack force, I included a slightly smaller secondary axis of attack that would first capture/destroy the Japanese town of Fukushima on the northern coast and then turn inland on a direct line toward the north edge of Kyoto. The first objective of this advance would be to shorten the reinforcement route to the water born attack force by about 40%. The route inland toward Kyoto would be a backup plan to the main assault, just in case we encountered a terrain blockage. This second axis of land advance would also form either an eastern wing for a pincer movement or would allow us to push further eastward and link up with the water born force for a northern assault on Kyoto.

Control of The Inland Sea
A big part of the plan to deal with Japan would depend on control of the shallow body of water between Egypt and Japan. Our galleys had unrestricted access to this "Inland Sea" because we had successfully constructed the Great Lighthouse. Japan, on the otherhand, was restricted to only 3 moves per turn and had to hug the coasts.

The Inland Sea Compared 190AD to 210AD

Because of the width of the inland sea, one galley could not cross the open space and deliver unit to the other side in a single turn. However, two galleys could accomplish the task anywhere along the sea by having two galley meet in the middle of the sea and allowing the units to cross from one galley to the next while the galleys were lashed to gether with planks providing an easy walk across path. The key point here is that the inland sea was essentially the same width all along its length from north to south, because the crossing required the same number of turns and/or the same number of galley transfers.

If we could transfer units across the inland sea by using pairs of ports that were further to the south, then we could save land movement turns for the units and potentially get them into combat even earlier.

This set of observations about the inland sea, added a secondary objective for the main advancing thrust of the army. In addition to striking directly toward Kyoto, the units in this military force would exploit any opportunity to capture Japanese port cities along the coast of the inland sea. The first of these cities that we could identify was Nagoya where we had first contacted the Japanese and we could see that a harbor was in place in that city. Capturing these ports would reduce the length of our supply and reinforcement lines and would reduce the chance that an evil Japanese galley might pop out and disrupt the ferrying process that wopuld be bringing over additional forces on almost every turn.

With three pairs of galleys operating as ferrying teams in the inland sea, we could deliver six new units across the inland sea in every two turns of the passage of time. (one to deliver and then one to return and reload the next manifest).