I don't get it, I sent 4,600,000 total attack points if u include bonuses against 3,800,000 defense points and lost...that includes weapons tech bonuses, all military and everything. Doesn't planned attack take all military points*weapons tech*planned attack bonus of 50%?

defender was dict and you weren't? had weapons tech? allies?

Ahhh allies...totally overlooked that.

that's 1 of most done mistakes, if spy op shows ally cost and country isn't in gdi then it most likely has def allies.

so what then? send 2x his defence pts (me personally I calculate everything in terms of 'turrets') to be sure? risk it with less? spy on alliances?

That is a risk vs reward question. You either risk bouncing by estimating allied defenses, or spend the turns and spy. Totally up to you.

if you have jets and oil to spend (and money) then go ahead.

The cost of bouncing is huge. Your men are greatly demoralized, you have huge losses and don't get anything in return. You now have to spend a bunch of time building CS or running spy ops in order to recover instead of building on land.

What is your approach for grabbing blind, i.e. without a spy report?

I don't attack blindly since that increases bouncing risk.

As mentioned earlier, you should plan your risk vs rewards.

1. Don't spy, pure estimate based on countries near target's NW.
2. Spy target, then guess allied defenses. (Or send double to avoid failure)
3. Spy target, do an ally spy to determine who are the allies, and estimate their defenses based on the allies NW.
4. Spy target, do ally spy, and then spy those allies for exact break. For countries in GDI, you have to guesstimate based on NW, or past saved ops.

For techers, saving turns might be a risk worth taking, since spying means turns spent not teching for income. For non-techers it is less worth it because the benefit is either +1 CS or 20% cash income (not great for non-cashers), but you of course risk losing spies and lower your SPAL.

how bout training?

what training?

Depends what you are running,

Bottom Feeder or Land Trader, both's finishes is directly affected by how many of the spy turns you can save not using.

Sometimes, blind sending isn't exactly the worst thing in the world, sure you sent an extra 200k jets and spent extra barrels of oil.

But those costs are balanced versus saving those precious turns on things such as building CS, or grabbing some other guy.