[PB22 Spoiler] Joey and Borsche puke on the funny pages

[GermanJoey]

Any questions? And did anyone actually read all of that?

Nope and yup

Actually I lied: when are we going to learn more about the 2metra dying part.

All in due time.

[GermanJoey]

Looks like I'm outta the game, one way or another. =/

[GermanJoey]

I have a few dozen screenshots from the last half-dozen turns or so, but no energy to write them up. I can probably sum it all up in just a few words: Gavagai is one batshit crazy motherfucker. While Gawdzak and I are building Labratories everywhere and running wealth, Gavagai builds up from 9M -> 14M troops in like 10 turns and starts sending shitloads of submarines all over my coast, as if I can't see them or something, and sending shit to 2metra, who I'm at war with by the way. What the fuck ?!?? Then he decides to play stack chicken with me. Our big 250 unit stacks just sitting there within striking distance of each other, and of course, he races to ICBMs, getting his first this turn, 2T before my first 2. With those, he could break me. What on earth is this guy thinking? What does he hope to get out of this? I had completely stood down and was occupied elsewhere, why build up all this shit to begin with? So, I go for a preemptive decapitation strike, and come MILLIMETERS, fucking millimeters, from pulling it off, despite unlucky roll after unlucky roll after unlucky roll. A few dice rolls from losing 7M soldier points instead of just 700k. ARRGH THIS CRAZY MOTHER FUCK!

As it stands, I failed. I sent him 4000 gold for peace; we'll see if he wants to kill me more than win the game, because if he turns this down Gawdzak probably has about a 99% chance to win. Meanwhile, I don't think I have any chance anymore. With that gold loss, I won't be ever be able to catch up to Gawdzak before launch. =/

[GermanJoey]

Alright, I'll post what I can here, the story of how PB22 ends. Gonna be pretty terse and pretty rambly though... 3 dozen screenshots to get through and I'm feeling pretty awful about the situation. I guess it'll be cathartic to write it up?

T272-T278.

So, first, 2metra war. The war here was intended to just get the monkey off my back, reduce my need for paranoia. My goal was to somehow kill as many ships of theirs as possible and clear the island of their culture; hopefully I drop their power enough that dtay becomes their one and only concern. So, this war at least, has been going great, perfectly even. I've successfully baited out quite a lot of their ships, letting them pick off a couple ships here and there to kill 2 or 3 of theirs for every one that I lose, without ever sacrificing more than 2 or 3 at a time. I also razed the two closest of their cities, using bombers, missiles, and paras (to cut roads) to kill quite a lot of their troops at very little loss (a necessary requirement b/c of Gavagai, more on this later). I'd love to regale y'all with tales of my brilliant next-level tactics here, but it really doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things.

Next, two bits of bad news for the spacerace. Gavagai got the Internet and Gawdzak got the same coal event that I did, pushing his MFG above mine. =/ Stealing the Internet from Gawdzak was a great play for Gavagai, which makes his next actions so baffling. I guess he just can't help himself but act aggressive as hell, whether it helps him win or not. Well, I guess I'm the same way. The two of us just couldn't win this after all.

So, Gavagai. First of all, he's been building 9999999999 submarines and then scattering them all over my coast. Why he's doing this, I had and still havve no fucking idea. I have planes EVERYWHERE scouting for just this shit. I watched him go in here and he knows I've watched him go in here, so why do it? I chose not to react to see what he'd do... try not to freak out if he can't really hurt me... these transports are just my chaining ships anyways, they never actually have any units in them. Right? So what does he do?







And what he does is just bring in more, and more, and more, enough that it was getting to the point where my main naval stack would be completely pinned - his main stack to his west, this new stack to my south, and Gawdzak's to my east. My stack was positioned right in the middle of the other two big stacks. Mine needed to be kept exactly where it was because a.) If I kept it on the east side of the fort, Gavagai could just pin it from the west, forcing me to attack against the coastal bonus to access the western sea, and otherwise have full room to act as wild as he wanted, and b.) I needed to keep it northernly enough to also stop Gawdzak, were he to do the same thing from the opposite direction. So, quite a pickle to begin with. ANd then...







And then he does more! He sends 2metra iron-for-iron, meddling in something that has nothing to do with him just because he could take advantage of it. And it wasn't some idle offer, either - he's been building up a secondary fleet on his west coast, a bunch of battleships and subs and destroyers and transports, etc. No screenshot of this, but it was getting close in size to my anti-Portugeuse fleet, and unlike Portugal, England of course has modern units that can match mine at parity. I had just enough over here to keep 2metra pinned, but both of them together would certainly turn the tables on me. So, it seems he wants to pin me to prevent me from reinforcing my west coast, and let 2metra eat away at me from the southwest, and then jump in when I take some losses at his own convenience.




Oh yeah, I'm not sure if I mentioned this yet, but instead of building Labrartories and running wealth, like Gawdzak and I were doing, he's just been building military nonstop, up to 14.5M soldier points, over a 1M more than me. I turned military back on a few turns ago, but ofc it takes a few turns for the units to actually start rolling off the assembly lines and I still had many Labs builds half-finished that I didn't want to cancel. I would be already falling behind Gawdzak again simply by turning off wealth already, no need to go behind further, I thought. But then Gav gets Fission and 2-turns at least one of these suckers:







These cost 450 hammers, so the only way you can 2-turn them is with a pretty hefty amount of overflow coming in (I know because I also 2-turned some, getting Fission as quickly as I could after he did instead of waiting for my labs to finish). Now, ICBMS in RtR aren't anywhere near as good as those in BTS, but they're still pretty strong - 14 45% hits from like 32 range. Add in some cruise missiles and just a bit of sacrificial battleship collateral, and you could break a stack like this. But Joey, you say, how could he hit your stack if you out-range him? Wouldn't he put himself at risk? GOOD POINT! Well, on top of everything else here, the most aggressive thing he did was this:




I don't have an older screenshot, but he first moved his stack into this 1T lake around T271-T272, IIRC. Well, jesus fucking christ. He can fort out from here and hit my stack. This would still be a stupid idea pre-missile era, but missiles give the advantage to the attacker like truly nothing else. Most of these subs aren't armed I think, since he got Rocketry a lot later than I did, but you don't need that many if you have ICBMs for backup. So its like we're playing stack chicken here, I have to choose to either try to call his possible bluff and stay where I am, or else move out of range of the lake and risk getting pinned out from protecting over half of my cities. So now all has become clear. He doesn't just want 2metra to corrode my power so that he has an easier time of winning, he wants to destroy me more than he wants to win.

So, I felt like a rat in a cage here and again I have no idea why its come to this, other than pure spite and revenge. It made me feel sorta sick that the game is ending like this, I was really getting excited about the space race.

I had been thinking over the last few turns, that I still had one final option left to me, which was a decapitation strike on Gavagai. The idea here would be to raze his cities of Bakka and Amarah Prime in order to completely seal in his main stack in the lake in that island. Operation Entomb, I had been thinking it as. I estimated that he had about 6M soldier points tied up in that stack, and my simulations showed that I should be able to raze the cities easily.

Well, as you realize by now, sims can lie and it was not to be. First off, the attack on Bakka went about just like I expected, and I razed it with little problem. I had 16 superior attackers (18/2 level marines, paratroopers, or tanks, or old CR3 infantries) that could get 65% odds on even a full health CG2 Infantry, plus another 53 attackers on top of that, all of which were either CR2 tanks or amphibious whatevers. On top of that, I had 4 bombers, 14 fighters, and 17 cruise missiles at my disposal. He had just 6 Inf + 1 MG in Bakka, and 31 Infantries, 12 knights, 1 MG, and 2 anti-tanks in Amarah Prime. However, things were not to be. First, he built a bunker right before I attacked; maybe it was older, but I certainly didn't see one when I first thought of the idea 4 turns ago. That would cut all the collateral from my missiles in half, although my sims showed that I'd still take the city just fine. Next, not a single one of my bombers could get through. From what this thread had said, I thought Fighters could only intercept once per turn. He had 14 fighters in range, while I had 13. But not a single bomber made it through, and even though all my units had more promos than his, I lost way more planes than he did. More bad luck, I guess, and also air units working differently than I thought. I wish I had had a way to sim this, but I couldn't figure out how to set it up.

So, anyways, I had to sacrifice 2 (!) missiles to destroy his fort, leaving me only 12 half-strength missiles for the city and no bomber support. Still though, I have about a dozen redundant attackers, right? Well, turns out the odds were not in my favor on that day. Out of my 16 superior attackers, 10 lost their 65% battles, some flawlessly. My next best unit had 49% odds, and I realized that there was no way I'd take the city as I just didn't have enough attackers anymore. I only had a few more healthy defenders to get through before the cleanup phase. =/ So, I had to accept that I failed, and retreated with the rest of what I had and sent him the peace offer (4000g for peace, 2 great merchants worth of cash), which he did not accept, by the way. Here's a montage of the whole ordeal:

p.s. It is very stupid I get "brothers in faith" unhappy when I have Rushmore and Police State. IMO this should be considered a bug.

[GermanJoey]

BLughhh. Well, so it goes, right? Well, at least I have my PB25 turns to look forward to playing...

[GermanJoey]

So, I'm Shaka, Gavagai is Montezuma, and Commodore is Genghis Khan. Assign more computer AI personalities to your favourite Realms Beyond luntatics here in my thread.

[GermanJoey]

Spitballing off the top of my head here... first, some easy ones, that immediately came to mind:

Krill - Napolean
Mackoti - Augustus Caesar
Sulla - Mansa Musa
Mindy McReady - Tokugawa
spacetyrantxenu - Ragnar
Borsche: Hitler

next:

dtay - Wang Kong
TBS: Ghandi
SevenSpirits: Ghandi
retep: Dan Quayle

[Krill]

What's the Nappy AI personality like?

[GermanJoey]

He spams shitloads of units and gets swole.

[Commodore]

What's the Nappy AI personality like?

IIRC, kind of just "Shaka but also techs".

Sullla is more Liz, and Gavagai is pure Mao.