T247.
The Literally Insane Event:
The best event still left in the game: +4 raw hammers to each coal plant, or +2 hammers +1 health to each drydock. The second option is also amazing; if I were Gawdzak, I might seriously consider that option instead, as health is harder for him to come by as he his non-Expansive. But, for me, I only care about health in a handful of cities, whereas I have 35 coal plants and am in Police State. Thus a coal plant is worth 4*1.25=9 hammers per turn in 35 cities, 315 hammers per turn, plus another 4 in Maracana and Ma3. That's like almost two free tanks a turn!
However, then we get to this situation, which I somehow did not save a screenshot of? Of his stack I mean... I must have saved over it, because I know I take one cause I kept referencing it when building a sim. Ugh. Anyways, I have this:
And he had, IIRC:
There was no blue glow from the stack... I figured the unpromoed Infantries were upgraded drafted redcoats, and maybe the cavs were upgraded garrison chariots perhaps. Anyways, I had nowhere near enough on hand to defend this as it stands, but was able to get pretty close by blowing another 1540 gold on upgrades. The attack timing was really so unfortunate for me. First of all, there was the ship problem that I mentioned in the last post:
This doesn't look like a lot of troops, but those rifles are heavily promoted (and two of them are 13/2, for two more CG3s) and upgrading them into infantries would have sealed the deal. With what I had on hand, I simmed that the city would have essentially even odds at holding, although more horses could be hiding in the fog. Even odds of holding... even odds of losing my one and only city that's good at producing things:
This city isn't even maxed out yet as it still has two watermills and an engineer left to grow onto, considering its final state after Biology. I mean, sure, Ma3 is a hell of a military pump, but Ma3 can only build military. As far as things like Apollo, major spaceship parts, CR, the Internet, 3GD, etc I do not have any other city above even 40 base hammers per turn! Ma3 did 41 (45 now with the coal plant event), and Zen Pencils did 36 (40 with the coal event). That is, to put it simply, completely pathetic. It all goes back to having only two landlocked cities in my whole empire.
Anyways, I felt like basically what happened here is an alternate reality version of this:
I'm Blondie, Gavagai is Angel Eyes, Gawdzak is Tuco, and 2metra the carrack king is the guy from Once Upon a Time in the West wearing both a belt and suspenders. The first part of the duel goes the same but then...
In this reality, both Tuco and I draw on Angel Eyes, except this time Tuco discovered his gun was missing bullets and reloaded it and emptied my gun instead - except for the first three bullets. Angel Eyes still gets a shot in his gut, I still walk up to him, a lordly executioner. I fire - click. Nothing. A misfire? My eyes widen in suprise and Angel dives forward... and grabs ahold of my balls with a fist of iron. He doesn't speak a word but his eyes say it all - drop the gun and walk away or else I crush your balls. I may die, but your balls, man, they'll be fucking mush for the rest of your life. Time stands still. If I drop the gun, maybe I keep my balls, sure - maybe. But... Tuco is standing behind me with a loaded gun and I'm very sure Mr. Can't-Trust-His-Own-Pants is hiding out there, slouching behind a gravestone or whatever, with a knife in his teeth and a bone to pick with yours truly. One would surely love nothing better than to wipe away all competition for the gold and the other just wants to taste blood for the many insults I've hurled his way. And what happens when Angel picks up the gun? Does he then turn it on me, or point it at Tuco and limp away?
So, in the end I sent back peace. If it were just the question of "lose Maracana to eventually kill Gavagai, with eventual gains there making up for the loss of that city", I think I'd have accepted. However, if I lose Maracana and that decent-sized garrison, then Portugal will jump on me too. They've already got about a dozen destroyers and 4 transports (as well as at least 20 Carracks XD), which is nothing really significant on its own but certainly a huge threat if my ships are tied down and my land force is weakened. I've nervously noticed a flurry of updates in Gavagai's thread, I wonder if he sent it back or not. It really was a bold and brilliant play, succeeding on the narrowest of margins but incredibly successful nonetheless, I've got to hand it to him.
What's really tragic about this is that we really were so close to breaking Gavagai's back. I get Industrialism at EOT, pop out two C4 Battleships out of Ma3, and then nail Gavagai's destroyer stack. Although we've had dead-even naval buildup (he's got 46 destroyers in his stack, I have 45), the collateral from the BS, the closer proximity of my shipyards to the front, and my superior promos mean that I can wipe his stack with such an attack if he left it in position. This has been my plan for some turns now. On the other side, Gawdzak now had room to land a back-lines settler and flood in troops with a transport chain of his own. In addition, we each had a seperate front to push - me at Maracana, where I had just finished setting up a transport chain and had brought over loads of workers (another reason his attack succeeded - many of my transports had workers instead of military on them JUST FOR THIS TURN) to railroad behind Gavagai's front lines, while he could persue Mackoti's former domain in the northeast. Both would be so profitable there would be no reason to backstab the other, not that a suprise backstab between us would even really be possible at that point with airships everywhere on that front. (I had only one Airship at Maracana, for all my other minor misfortunes here I have to admit this was a big, costly mistake). As it now, what will Gawdzak do with his huge navy and transport stack? Most of those units are still unscratched. Will he keep pushing into Gavagai or turn around and hit me? I really don't know. From where he's positioned now, I can defend myself I think, but if he wheels the fleet down south he could Sirian Doctrine me pretty hard... and I certainly couldn't blame him, betraying him like this by peacing out of the war. And Gavagai will be back in force in 10 turns. There's still a decent argument to be made that if nothing else changes, he has the best potential in the endgame even after losing almost a dozen cities - that's just how far ahead he was when we declared. He still has better land, still has the shrine, and I don't think he's even close to finishing Industrialization, and yet he's still competetive in every metric.
On the plus side, thanks to Gavagai losing 10 cities (11 with Terra dead too) and that event my demos are now fabulous:
The MFG numbers don't even include all the hammers I get from Police State, which I estimate at something around ~250 hammers per turn total. Police State ended up being a great decision I think, between the WW immunity (Gavagai had like 300 total WW, for example) and the bonus hammers. I realized that if economy was a concern, I could just run wealth for the same total hammers I get from PS to end up better than what I had from Rep.
Any questions? When I get home I'll see if I can ctrl-Z back through MS Paint to find the screenshot of his stack that I took, although maybe he already posted it in his thread and nobody cares.
The Literally Insane Event:
The best event still left in the game: +4 raw hammers to each coal plant, or +2 hammers +1 health to each drydock. The second option is also amazing; if I were Gawdzak, I might seriously consider that option instead, as health is harder for him to come by as he his non-Expansive. But, for me, I only care about health in a handful of cities, whereas I have 35 coal plants and am in Police State. Thus a coal plant is worth 4*1.25=9 hammers per turn in 35 cities, 315 hammers per turn, plus another 4 in Maracana and Ma3. That's like almost two free tanks a turn!
However, then we get to this situation, which I somehow did not save a screenshot of? Of his stack I mean... I must have saved over it, because I know I take one cause I kept referencing it when building a sim. Ugh. Anyways, I have this:
And he had, IIRC:
- 31 Infantries, 16 double real promo (mostly C1+Pinch), 15 with either no promo or CG promos.
- 7 Artilleries, one with CR1 and Barrage
- 2 Cannons, no promo
- 3 Cats, no promo
- 3 Trebs, no promo
- 10 Knights, 3 C1, 4 C2, 1 C1Pinch, 1 C1 Shock, 1 C3
- 3 Cavs, unpromoed
There was no blue glow from the stack... I figured the unpromoed Infantries were upgraded drafted redcoats, and maybe the cavs were upgraded garrison chariots perhaps. Anyways, I had nowhere near enough on hand to defend this as it stands, but was able to get pretty close by blowing another 1540 gold on upgrades. The attack timing was really so unfortunate for me. First of all, there was the ship problem that I mentioned in the last post:
This doesn't look like a lot of troops, but those rifles are heavily promoted (and two of them are 13/2, for two more CG3s) and upgrading them into infantries would have sealed the deal. With what I had on hand, I simmed that the city would have essentially even odds at holding, although more horses could be hiding in the fog. Even odds of holding... even odds of losing my one and only city that's good at producing things:
This city isn't even maxed out yet as it still has two watermills and an engineer left to grow onto, considering its final state after Biology. I mean, sure, Ma3 is a hell of a military pump, but Ma3 can only build military. As far as things like Apollo, major spaceship parts, CR, the Internet, 3GD, etc I do not have any other city above even 40 base hammers per turn! Ma3 did 41 (45 now with the coal plant event), and Zen Pencils did 36 (40 with the coal event). That is, to put it simply, completely pathetic. It all goes back to having only two landlocked cities in my whole empire.
Anyways, I felt like basically what happened here is an alternate reality version of this:
I'm Blondie, Gavagai is Angel Eyes, Gawdzak is Tuco, and 2metra the carrack king is the guy from Once Upon a Time in the West wearing both a belt and suspenders. The first part of the duel goes the same but then...
In this reality, both Tuco and I draw on Angel Eyes, except this time Tuco discovered his gun was missing bullets and reloaded it and emptied my gun instead - except for the first three bullets. Angel Eyes still gets a shot in his gut, I still walk up to him, a lordly executioner. I fire - click. Nothing. A misfire? My eyes widen in suprise and Angel dives forward... and grabs ahold of my balls with a fist of iron. He doesn't speak a word but his eyes say it all - drop the gun and walk away or else I crush your balls. I may die, but your balls, man, they'll be fucking mush for the rest of your life. Time stands still. If I drop the gun, maybe I keep my balls, sure - maybe. But... Tuco is standing behind me with a loaded gun and I'm very sure Mr. Can't-Trust-His-Own-Pants is hiding out there, slouching behind a gravestone or whatever, with a knife in his teeth and a bone to pick with yours truly. One would surely love nothing better than to wipe away all competition for the gold and the other just wants to taste blood for the many insults I've hurled his way. And what happens when Angel picks up the gun? Does he then turn it on me, or point it at Tuco and limp away?
So, in the end I sent back peace. If it were just the question of "lose Maracana to eventually kill Gavagai, with eventual gains there making up for the loss of that city", I think I'd have accepted. However, if I lose Maracana and that decent-sized garrison, then Portugal will jump on me too. They've already got about a dozen destroyers and 4 transports (as well as at least 20 Carracks XD), which is nothing really significant on its own but certainly a huge threat if my ships are tied down and my land force is weakened. I've nervously noticed a flurry of updates in Gavagai's thread, I wonder if he sent it back or not. It really was a bold and brilliant play, succeeding on the narrowest of margins but incredibly successful nonetheless, I've got to hand it to him.
What's really tragic about this is that we really were so close to breaking Gavagai's back. I get Industrialism at EOT, pop out two C4 Battleships out of Ma3, and then nail Gavagai's destroyer stack. Although we've had dead-even naval buildup (he's got 46 destroyers in his stack, I have 45), the collateral from the BS, the closer proximity of my shipyards to the front, and my superior promos mean that I can wipe his stack with such an attack if he left it in position. This has been my plan for some turns now. On the other side, Gawdzak now had room to land a back-lines settler and flood in troops with a transport chain of his own. In addition, we each had a seperate front to push - me at Maracana, where I had just finished setting up a transport chain and had brought over loads of workers (another reason his attack succeeded - many of my transports had workers instead of military on them JUST FOR THIS TURN) to railroad behind Gavagai's front lines, while he could persue Mackoti's former domain in the northeast. Both would be so profitable there would be no reason to backstab the other, not that a suprise backstab between us would even really be possible at that point with airships everywhere on that front. (I had only one Airship at Maracana, for all my other minor misfortunes here I have to admit this was a big, costly mistake). As it now, what will Gawdzak do with his huge navy and transport stack? Most of those units are still unscratched. Will he keep pushing into Gavagai or turn around and hit me? I really don't know. From where he's positioned now, I can defend myself I think, but if he wheels the fleet down south he could Sirian Doctrine me pretty hard... and I certainly couldn't blame him, betraying him like this by peacing out of the war. And Gavagai will be back in force in 10 turns. There's still a decent argument to be made that if nothing else changes, he has the best potential in the endgame even after losing almost a dozen cities - that's just how far ahead he was when we declared. He still has better land, still has the shrine, and I don't think he's even close to finishing Industrialization, and yet he's still competetive in every metric.
On the plus side, thanks to Gavagai losing 10 cities (11 with Terra dead too) and that event my demos are now fabulous:
The MFG numbers don't even include all the hammers I get from Police State, which I estimate at something around ~250 hammers per turn total. Police State ended up being a great decision I think, between the WW immunity (Gavagai had like 300 total WW, for example) and the bonus hammers. I realized that if economy was a concern, I could just run wealth for the same total hammers I get from PS to end up better than what I had from Rep.
Any questions? When I get home I'll see if I can ctrl-Z back through MS Paint to find the screenshot of his stack that I took, although maybe he already posted it in his thread and nobody cares.
