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Are you, in fact, a pregnant lady who lives in the apartment next door to Superdeath's parents? - Commodore |
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Gavagai, the God-Emperor
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Very very cool plan; hope to see it work.
If only you and me and dead people know hex, then only deaf people know hex.
I write RPG adventures, and blog about it, check it out.
Still no open borders from Joey even after I hinted that I want to use his territory to attack Gawdzak. I'm really perplexed: denying OB makes no sense even if he thinks that another war is inevitable. We are just both losing money every turn.
I think I will just keep offering him OB on a daily basis. At some point I will get lucky. I mean, it worked after the last war. Also, I'm beoming more sceptical about Operation Sunrise. Gawdzak has 10 units on this island and at least 5 transports nearby which amounts to 30 units. This is without those he can airlift. I will have to substantially increase the size of the strike force but it will mean reducing my tank count on the mainland. Given Joey's attutude and the possibility of counter-attack from Gawdzak - I'm not sure I can afford that.
While the game is down, I entertained myself doing some rough math in my head. By a pessimistic estimate, I'll be able to launch in 25 turns from now. Most likely, however, it will happen a couple turns later. That gives us launch on T304-306. Nothing to be proud of but techs in Rtr mod are much more expansive. On the other hand, I usually play SP on a difficulty level which is a little bit harder than Monarch...
So... while Xenu is fighting heroically to squash the robot uprising, I've been thinking about myself and Gawdzak. From my perspective the game is now a coinflip between us, so it is very interesting to compare the way we played the game.
Gawdzak's play was admirable. He got a very challenging island start with little land immediately available but which also offered him some excellent opportunities due to lack of neighbors. He played around challenges and expolited opportunities to the fullest extent, building TGL and winning liberalism race. This way he got the tech lead which he never really lost. After that he started to do a very rational warfare. He only attacked people who weren't in position to defend themselves against him (Donovan), or were already crippled (Furungy) or were distracted (dtay). This way he got huge amounts of land at very little cost (I think, he is currently second in land after me, completely overcoming his initial natuaral deficit). He started a big military build up just in the right time, used it to stop the leader (myself) from running away just when he could do it most cost efficiently. After that he was the first to stop building units, "playing ahead of meta" once again. In all aspects his play was almost perfect through the entirety of the game. The only mistake I can think of was ignoring Communism as his economy is hammer-based and his distance maintenance costs should be high. But even that can be justified: his also receives a lot of value from trade routes, may be his analysis showed that boosting them was more important. The way he played this game can be used as a textbook example on "how you should play civ4 correctly". So - if he is so good, how it happened that I'm still in the running? After all, my own game was far from perfect. In my opinion the reason is that I made several deep, non-obvious plays. They were sometimes very risky and sometimes backfired but overall benefited me greatly. Here they are: 1) I ceded to Joey almost all the land between us. 2) After being attacked by HAK, I decided to attack him back instead of playing defensevily and settling the land which I still could settle. 3) Attacking Mackoti in the midst of our war against HAK and crippling him. 4) Starting an elimination war against Donovan when he seemed to be big and powerful. 5) Prioritizing Biology over Industrialization. Well, that was the one which backfired and turned out to be very wrong thing to do. "Deep, non-obvious and risky" doesn't equal "correct". 6) Engaging Gawdzak in the Internet race, despite being seemingly far behind, and winning it. From what I can see, Gawdzak never made decisions of this kind, he was always playing conservatevly. I think, a similar decision for him which he missed was attacking Joey during one of his vulnerability windows and taking his land. That would be a very risky idea - not only because Joey could fight him back but also because it would make me stronger. But sometimes you have to make risky plays to secure winning. Overall, the end of this game appears to be the battle not only between personalities but also between playstyles. It's intersting to see which one will prevail. |
. Good luck!
