[SPOILERS] Donovan Zoi Arrives Too Late to Save the Family in RoboTRon 2.0.8.5

[Gavagai]

Donovan, if you are reading it at all, I want to say that I believe that was possibly your best game here, as crazy as it sounds. Your start was abysmal and you did pretty much the only thing which made sense to do in your situation. You were really wrecked by meta which required beelining Astronomy super-early. If we played the new version of the mod, with early Privateers, your strategy could actually have been viable.

[Donovan Zoi]

Donovan, if you are reading it at all, I want to say that I believe that was possibly your best game here, as crazy as it sounds. Your start was abysmal and you did pretty much the only thing which made sense to do in your situation. You were really wrecked by meta which required beelining Astronomy super-early. If we played the new version of the mod, with early Privateers, your strategy could actually have been viable.

Thanks, Gavagai.  I had stopped visiting this thread for awhile, but good to hear from you.

Yeah looking at the other openings, I do see what you mean.  Still, there was no excuse for me not building more cities to exploit the FIN Colossus a bit better.  And if I would have made it to BGN's island a bit sooner, I would have put up a better challenge to you at Kyros as that island is where my Horses and Iron were.

Speaking of that, your move there psyched me out more than you may know.  I ended up expending more naval resources here than necessary, waiting for you to plant a canal city in that useless path of land north of Kyros. It was a lot of fun sparring with you though!

[Gavagai]

Yeah, the back and forth near Kyros was fun If you had Horses, though, I would have more units in the area to begin witn. The reason I had so few was that I have invested everything into the naval operation against your capital. I heavily counted on you having no Horses when I prepared it, this is why you were eventually able to crush my stack. If I knew you would have HAs, I would most likely just postponed it until Maces/Knights.

[Donovan Zoi]

Yeah, I think I snagged Horses from the new world (my primary reason for fighting BGN) as you were sailing to Pong , so I pretty much whipped my cities to the nub on HA's with the intent of getting it back for some kind of moral victory. That city had been untouchable for so long that I didn't even plan for an Astro invasion -- I got complacent there. At 80% defense, I could have planted 3-4 G3 Longbows and likely kept it despite your formidable stack.

Also you may not know but the turn before you took Pong, I had just retired a GG there giving me 4 promos by land and 3 by sea. It wasn't going to do much in the long run, but certainly would have bought me a few more turns if I got to use it.

My 3 favorite moves of the eastern theatre:

--taking out one of your roving EI's with a small fleet of 4 ships in a last hurrah. There was nothing much else they could do. The victor was promoted to Nav2, which allowed me enough movement to safely shuttle some troops to the mainland with a stop in Asteroids.

--the decimation of your stack outside of Krull on BGN's island, as I did leave some units behind to defend there from my stand off with BGN. The pisser with that one is that I had an HA ready to build there next turn, and for some reason switched it to a Cat the turn before to see if it could be whipped. Never changed it back -- otherwise I think you would have only been left with one unit. Oh well.

--blocking your second arrival at Pong by moving some units to the fort canal I had built for you earlier lol. I had a feeling you had at least one EI just waiting to coast into Pong with some defenses, and I looked to be right. This allowed me just enough to retake the city.