(October 21st, 2016, 13:29)OT4E Wrote: I think Mack's conquest will make him troubles. Noone will see any threat except him. So I have serious doubts that the dogpile he is speaking about is ever possible. More likely he gets in the situation we got in PB33. Everybody will be no there by Mack and hidden leader REM will just win.
But I will be happy to see if Mack finds a way how to get away from this trap.
Yup yup, I too felt like his invasion was a mistake because of this. If he had gotten the Kremlin for his efforts and only had to research Demo for cash rushing to use w/ his Fin trait, that would be one thing, but by now he's realized he got himself into the same situation he was forced into in PB31. (and like you had in PB33). His empire will be the biggest but that also means has more to defend, and yet his income, both per-city and total, will be a lot less than the "hidden" leader(s), so he'll keep falling further behind.
I think he needs to try to close out this war as soon as he can. Switch back into slavery ASAP and just whip out a hell of a lot of infra/workers/whatever he needs to consolidate while his huge Cataphract stack still make the other players too fearful of messing with him. Other players have been saying that they're fearful of dogpiling Al because they're afraid Mack will backstab them but IMHO someone helping kill Al faster (especially if they just razed the cities rather than try to hold them) would be a huge blessing for Mack. What does he care if he only gets 7-8 cities out of this war rather than 12? If he's forced to wait 10-15 more turns before he can consolidate he'll never be able to get that stuff, there will be a new crisis to deal with.