Gavagai, the God-Emperor

[Gavagai]

But let's get back to our story. One very bad thing which happened is that Joey burnt Bakka just when it was working on my fourth GP. In retrospect, it was a really stupid thing not to defend it at the expense of Amarah, given that I needed an engineer from this city. But... Barring that engineer, Bakka was a pretty useless NE-city, optimized for producing GPs whom I don't need anymore. On the other hand, Amarah is important in its own right. I didn't expect Joey to attack soon as he was clearly unprepared and, to be frank, assigned a very low probability to any kind of war between us. I mean, in most any circumstances this is suicidal for both, isn't it? Why would any of us do something that stupid? Oh, well...

So, what I did during my turn. I killed everything I could reach (which included his main fleet, 82 battleships and destroyers, and also all transports). I burnt his HE city with 4 settled Great Generals as a retribution for sabotaging my GA. Also, I moved about a hundred units towards Maracana to give Joey an additional incentive to take peace, like I did during the previous war. What I forgot to do is to promote my tanks many of which could take ambush. Ouch. I had an idea in mind that this turn should be played in two installments, and, I think, that's what I should have done. It took me more than 2 hours late at night and by the end I was completely exhausted and sleepy. As expected, Joey took advantage of it and killed something like 20 tanks (of 54). Well, at least I'll be able to promo-heal next turn.

[Gavagai]

Another thing which Joey did is that he rejected my offer. He offered back peace for 500 gpt from me which isn't acceptable: I can just as well concede. Really, I hate when shit like that starts: Joey's position is much worse than when he offered 4000 for peace and yet he is much less inclined to stop the war. I find this particular feature of MP to be most annoying: pay-off matrix for people becomes completely broken when they feel they can't win and they start to do crazy things. And Joey, of course, was a lunatic in first place. Anyway, I offered back white peace. If Joey doesn't accept, that will be game for me. Next turn I will be totally crushed with war weariness. Of course, I will stabilize in a few turns with Police State and then Rushmore but by that point I will be out of the space race. And Joey will most likely not accept: he didn't log in after my last log out, so it doesn't really look like he was waiting for a counter-offer.

[Qgqqqqq]

So, plans if he doesn't take peace?

[Gavagai]

As the game is practically over (for me; Gawdzak and Plako are both still in the running), it seems fitting to put in some conclusive thoughts. Well, I had a very sad feeling about this game. It really looks like that I need to take a break from civ. I completely botchered my endgame here, losing from a very favorable position due to mistakes many of which could be easily avoided. Also, there is PB25 which is my worst game by far - and this includes PB20. I hope, one day I will make a spoiler thread in a respective sub-forum to explain what happened there.

Of course, Joey is truly a lunatic; he had one neighbor who ceded a huge tract of land to him and never attacked him, even when he was engaged at war on multiple fronts. He has chosen to attack this neighbor twice, both times not expecting for himself to gain something but to make sure that this neighbor loses. This is lunacy. But Gawdzak never had this problems which implies that Joey can be dealt with. This is, actually, the weakest aspect of my civ play: people consistently act in odds with my expectations. I just can't read them.

Of course, there is still some obvious stuff I can understand at least in the retrospect. Earlier I mentioned Russian situation in 1941 and, I think, it has many parallels with what happened in the game. For those unfamiliar I will make a short historic update: in 1939 Stalin and Hitler made an alliance and struck a deal dividing Europe. After that Hitler got tied up in war with Great Britain and France and Stalin started to do shit like occupying Bessarabia (which put him in a direct proximity to Hitler's oil sources), demanding new and additional concessions in the Eastern Europe (Bulgaria was mentioned in this regard) and deploying a fuckload of troops near the borders while Hitler had next to nothing. Stalin expected Hitler to suck it all up because he wouldn't want to fight on two fronts. But people who think this way don't become hitlers; this guy was no pussy, he tended to resolve just about any problem by attacking a new country. So, in 1941 he attacked Soviet Union and then a truly hilarious (well, if you forget that we are talking about a real-life war) thing happened: it turned out that Stalin, a brutal dictator who for ten years did nothing expect preparing for war, was completely unprepared. But hey, it's pretty normal for dictators.

In this last aspect I did better than Stalin, so I may not be completely hopeless. But nevertheless, this situation is remarkably similar to what happened in our game: two brain-dead jerks screwed over their countries big way and killed millions of people for nothing. That's the essence of both stories.

[Gavagai]

So, plans if he doesn't take peace?

Concede; keep fighting the war if Plako thinks he still has a chance.

[Commodore]

More awesome "Gavagai explains world history" analogy reports!

[Old Harry]

two brain-dead jerks screwed over their countries big way and killed millions of people for nothing.

QOTM

(And I'd be interested to know what happened in '25 - mapmakers worry you know...)

[AdrienIer]

Also, there is PB25 which is my worst game by far - and this includes PB20. I hope, one day I will make a spoiler thread in a respective sub-forum to explain what happened there.

(And I'd be interested to know what happened in '25)

(eventually)

Concerning this game, do you expect to lose some cities to Joey ? Or to take more from him ?

[Gavagai]

Joey is finished. I've already killed something like 80% of his fleet and next turn I will kill about a half of his land army and "liberate" your former northern colonies. I was serious when I said that I will soon be ready to obliterate him completely: all of this is only a shadow of what I would be able to do in about five turns (and I was STILL inclined not to do it - that's how much I didn't want this war). I think, I can straight up conquer him if I try really hard and keep building units. Of course, it would still require effort: Joey has his industrial assets intact, he can build ICBMs which is a pretty big deal. I will try to reevaluate after I revolt from representation: may be it would make sense to make a final attempt to go for space anyway. Possibly, with FR instead of Theo - second promo isn't that important for me now.

[von Adlercreutz]

More awesome "Gavagai explains world history" analogy reports!

Seconded!

A bit off topic, but since we're already to WWII: what do you Russians or you as Russian think about your NW front and the wars with Finland? As a Finn I'm interested to hear the other sides point of view. Or is this part of the war just ignored and mentioned only in sidenotes?

Also how common actually is glorifying Stalin and Soviet era in Russia? The western media might exaggerate this.