Gavagai manages his personal GULAG

[Gavagai]

Of course, we lose more:

1) There is no way we can hide our attack.

2) He is moving everything he can inside the city anyway, our actions won't affect his decisions in this regard.

3) We don't have any significant reinforcements going our way.

[Bacchus]

So, to take the step back and overview the situation.

Krill wants a big confrontation on the theatre. We have no way into his core, and we don't even know where that core is — we are being very hurt by our lagging scouting.

Almost our entire army is on the theatre and there are no readily accessible reinforcements. Krill is significantly behind MFG, but significantly ahead food. We are about to get HE for a 30-hammer bump in MFG.

Krill's city make it impossible to establish a border east of Jerry Reed. This actually makes taking Jerry Reed even less of a priority, and it wasn't a burning one before. If we take it, we are only going to be open to attack.

In the north, we can still found buffer cities either per Gav's plan or mine, but only until the culture bomb.

I think we should still settle to put pressure on him to bomb.

We have a slow stack which is rather useless for fighting Krill. The current plan is to have it sit in Tsargon's land and suck money out of us, not a great one. We've just built a couple of catapults for it too.

[Bacchus]

To sum up: I just don't understand why Krill would force a massive even-odds pitched battle right now, given the circumstances. He seems already ahead for the purposes of pure long-term development with that CY count, whereas we really need the bulk of Tsargon's land to be even in the running, in a sense we have nothing to lose here. Is he afraid that in the medium-term because of our temporary MFG advantage the odds for him will only worsen? Don't see that, I mean, he is about to get access to CKN's, if he hasn't yet.

[Gavagai]

This is one of these moments when I truly hate myself. Before I built this road I thought that Copper tile has a road. The result? Two less HAs in forthcoming great battle assuming he bombs this turn (if I built the road 1N, northern HAs would be able to catch up).

[Gavagai]

Good news is that Krill stopped working Horses. So, it is likely that the Artist isn't close.

[Gavagai]

To sum up: I just don't understand why Krill would force a massive even-odds pitched battle right now, given the circumstances. He seems already ahead for the purposes of pure long-term development with that CY count, whereas we really need the bulk of Tsargon's land to be even in the running, in a sense we have nothing to lose here. Is he afraid that in the medium-term because of our temporary MFG advantage the odds for him will only worsen? Don't see that, I mean, he is about to get access to CKN's, if he hasn't yet.

Answer: he isn't forcing anything on himself, he always can just retreat writing off the cost of one settler.

[Bacchus]

To retreat his stack must be made of two-movers only, and if we get to chase it most of the way back to Chesterton, we are fine -- we will have enough turns to make favourable settlements and plant some missionaries for cultural resistance. Krill would have been better off just settling a little to the east in the first place.

[Gavagai]

As of now - not even close to "enough". Observe workers, however. My bet is that they are chopping walls and Krill has a stack of spears incoming. Alternative explanation is simply a spear.

Also this:




Gonna whip out reinforcements if things go badly.

[Gavagai]

Checked the city after Krill played. 19 HAs, 2 Spears, 3 Chariots, Axe. Not taking it

[Bacchus]

So, both our armies are stuck facing each other off... Looks like we will need those reinforcements, and elephants.

Hilariously, now it's all down to Barteq/HAK -- whoever decides to exploit the armies being far away will win the game for the other player. Should we send HAK an iron for iron deal or something?