Gavagai comes back to his roots

[Gavagai]

I killed every single unit BGN had and will finish off his fleet next turn unless he deletes it. But I feel little satisfaction from it. If BGN is willing to send this army to stab an already dying civ in pursuit of some petty revenge - I expect, he is OK with losing all of it.

[Gavagai]

Also, Donovan had a lonely C4 Formation HA hanging out in the area. It killed my Knight at 75% odds as a final fuck you. By the way, Donovan still has one city left. Which, I think, deserves a separate post at some later point.

[Gavagai]

I got a second low-odds Artist in a row, so I now have two of them. No idea what to do with those, I hoped to get at least one of Engineer for Taj or Scientist for Chemistry out of two tries. And by the way, this is the third low-odds Artist in this game, I got one of those as my very first GP when I was trying to generate Merchant for Currency bulb. This game... In terms of raw amount of all types of bullshit happening it beats all other games I played here, I think.

[superdeath]

I feel for ya. Wasnt the best game imo.

[Gavagai]

OK, Rusten is at war with Commodore and Naufrgar. My first impulse was to join in on Commodore's side but now I am reconsidering. This is because I think I still have a very remote chance for victory. Sounds crazy, given that Rusten and Commodore are both more than twice as large as me in everything except GNP, but hear me out.
My empire now mostly consist of a huge number of crappy fishing villages - I can even add one or two more. There are, however, two things which make such setup good: Free Market and Dikes. What if I get them while Commodore and Rusten are killing each other? The thing is, Commodore cannot peace out because it would mean to through Naufragar's land to Rusten which would give Rusten the decisive advantage. It is very possible that he war will be very long and very bloody and my job would be to wait until one of them starts clearly losing and join in on the loser's side to keep things rolling. I am strongly considering this strategy.

[Gavagai]

OK, the plan was to build MoM (still unbuilt!) and use 24 turns of GA, wealth builds and Free Market to get to Levees and drafted Infantry while Rusten and Commodore are keeping each other busy. Not going to work, as the war turned out to be much more one-sided than I expected. Rusten slaughtered Commodore's invading units, peaced out Naufragar and now started taking Commodore's cities. The game will end in a few turns unless I intervene, so this is what I'll have to do. I do not know how, but Commodore, who was in a completely dominant position when the war started, fucked everything up and I will have to bail him out. If he keeps fighting for a couple more turns, I enter the war, if he makes peace then I concede.

[Gavagai]

To be clear I would have declared a few turns earlier if I expected Commodore to fail so miserably but this is not something one could foresee. I a little bit hope that he has some kind of ace up his sleeve, like, an attack from a new and unforeseen direction because if this is all he's got, its kind of pathetic. But I cannot wait longer than a couple turns. In my experience, this kind of situations - when we have a twilight struggle between two superpowers - often lead to unexpected endings when one side loses a couple of cities and concedes from the lack of morale. I will try to prevent it happening here because if the game continues I have some chances to win but it may be too late.

[Gavagai]

Rusten built the Taj, I declared war on him. But most likely my purpose is to take back the land which was rightfully mine to make a point and then just concede, unless Commodore would do something in his war which is not ineffectually suiciding his units.

[Gavagai]

Also, from now on I will always trust Commodore to screw up the late game if I play against him. Still do not understand how he lost so easily here but demos are quite telling (forgot to take screeny but you should be able to find one in his or Rusten's thread, thankfully these guys are updating).

[Gavagai]

To clarify why I think so poorly of Commodore's war. What I saw was Commodore's rather dedicated attempt to take my southern lands which are a) unimportant, b) well-defended. Maybe there was some important action on other fronts of which I am unaware but I highly doubt so. This seems to me as very questionable strategy. And I am not even talking about tactical execution here.
Also, for full disclosure, I believe that I have fucked up my war with Donovan in a much worse way, allowing Donovan to take back his capital was an absolutely inexcusable thing. So, it's not that I am harsh to Commodore while being blind to my own failures. Yes, my start was bad but I could have played it better in many ways and I think that I would have good chances to win this game if I have played perfectly. In that sense, both me and Commodore did not deserve to win here, so I will concede (when and if I will) with an easy heart.