[PB25-SPOILERS] The Lunacy of the Reign of HAK Continues

[HitAnyKey]

Here is a show of GavLand. Pretty much all of my units in this area are unmoved while I plan for this turn. Just getting this shot out there now for the morning chat.

[HitAnyKey]

Here's our 2 Wendy's stacks:

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Finally the turn came around and Commodore played early enough tonight for me to start taking screenshots and get the non-military stuff out of the way.
Firstly I log in to this:


Um, yeah right. Like I would give you OB even if I weren't going to attack...with you saving gold and starting your Gunpowder research....

Next, here are the demos and graphs. Commodore seems to have lost another handful of units....

Then we have the Gavagai front. He doesn't have his Knight stack in that fog tile, but his stacks are in kind of annoying places. I can't really hit them even after razing Leptis. Only my Cuirs could reach his Knights, and we really want the LKs to go after the Knights with my Cuirs going after his 1-movers.

I have not moved any of the units yet on the Gavagai fronts. Will leave that for tomorrow morning when we can hopefully connect to discuss.

This batch is all showing Commdore's front, and that he took another city from retep this turn:

[HitAnyKey]

One thing I'm trying to figure out is where the rest of his CBs could be. Did he really leave that many behind up in Kerk? I realize I only see 4 of them in that stack. I'm kind of wondering if maybe he put them on that fog tile. Won't know that until we declare war and set a scout onto that mine by the Peaks.

Also, you'll notice I picked Printing Press as the next tech. I'm not 100% locked on it, but I can get it in 3 turns and that'll give a big boost to the economy for further research efforts with the +1 gold for each Village and Town. We may even want to consider going for Replaceable Parts after that, just so we can get the same increased production capabilities as Commodore. I know it would slow down us getting to Grenadiers or even Cannons ourselves...but we do also need to not let him get too far ahead of us in production. He's already beating us in production with us even in a golden age for the next few turns. I'll also need to slow down on the Drafting. Popeyes will of course keep it up, but many other cities need to start recovering. This turn I drafted Popeyes, McDs, & FiveGuys. Wendy's fell into unhappiness because of all the prior drafts. I wasn't paying attention to that one with the upcoming civic switch (luckily I had a Missionary in range to keep it from starving). Same with Hungry, but I was expecting that one.

You'll also see in the first Commodore screenshot that he has a Great Artist walking NW. I'm really hoping he's not planning to Culture Bomb CoA. That'll kinda just suck.
And in the last image, there are a few galleys in his waters over there by his capital. Not sure when those appeared, but previously I hadn't seen that many. So I need to keep watch on those, as he might load them up and send them into my waters to attempt something. Or try to attack Battle Island again.

[HitAnyKey]

Here is the pic from razing Leptis:

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Here's the updated Knight stack:

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Here's the pic of his SW coastal cities. Actually right now it is 3 pics, but I will edit the highlights into a single pic later.

[MindyMcCready]

So quick update for the lurkers:

We'd been moving in Gavagai's direction since he had been leaving stacks in vulnerable positions. We unfortunately lost that opportunity when he moved against Donovan and thumped yet another CIV that was bigger, stronger and more advanced than he was.

Given that Gav's army has healed up and he's secure against Donovan; well our timing is not great on this one. We're also going in with a virtual numeric equivalency. So it's a bit risky especially given Gav's military track record + defense advantage. If he kills us off here, he'll definately earn the title of Giant-killer. Master Commodore's sustained production + tech advantage is now translating into a city count equivalency with us. So we basically have to swing for the fences to continue to have any chance.

Game objectives:
1. I think that the only possible win condition is Space Race. We're far behind but we might be able to catch up with organized Rathuses. Domination would require us to take cities off of MC. With greater production, greater science + the protective advantage that probably isn't going to happen. Our industrial age advantages (organized factories + expansive health) will be good if we can get there.
2. If we succeed in GavagaiLand we could have a 10 city count advantage over MC. Then we just need to survive his upcoming military tech advantages.
3. We're landing Sistine to make culture a viable threat as well as crush some cultural borders. This is likely a non-starter, but better we have it than MC.
4. We're also going to try to land some Monk econ wonders as part of our new (and rather late game) effort to gain a tech speed advantage over MC. If we can hold our borders and contain MC, this could be an advantage.

Tactical objectives:
1. Utica. We can walk up on hills to this city. If we can drop that cities culture we can freely move units along the entire southern coast. That would allow us easy acces to Dragon Judge.
2. Tie up Gavagai's units while we take control and reinforce the SW cities of Tacape and Thaspus. The mountains and lake make Thaspus a decent choke point. We have about 20 units coming form our "SE Island" (which is now SW when referring to GavagaiLand) and if we're not taking a defensive stance we can converge on Utica if our other stack is looking too light.
3. Save Retep's island cities. We're in a rush to try to make this happen preferrably before MC gets rifles. We can upgrade Retep's knights to cuirassiers to keep MC's war weariness alive. Carthage can wait a bit. This is a pretty high priority.
4. Entice Gav to try to raze one of our cities. If Gav loses his knights we could end this very quickly. I would be more than happy to accept a razed city to eliminate his 2-movers. Hopefully, Gav's hotblooded enough to try this.
5. Cripple Gav before he gets protective muskets.

As our 1-movers move along the hills we'll have some forking opportunites with the capital and maybe even a 3-way fork between Hippo, Utica and Carthage. We're going to have to be a little fluid with our attack plan and objectives since Gav's still sporting a 23 unit Knight stack. Our cuirassiers may have to act as both offense and defense until we get a few more muskets into our newly productive Borsheland cities.

This game has felt very much like each objective is to make sure that MC doesn't completely run away with the game. This one is no different with the sense that failure here means the end of the game.

Finally, it does feel a little ironic that both Gav and us are fielding smaller armies than we were 25Ts ago. Around T170 I was trying to figure out how a 100 unit stack battle would go while we were facing off against Gav's 82 unit stack. Now both sides of the Wendy's line we have about 70 units staring at each other. We do have a numbers advantage by including the units from the SE island, but we'll be facing some MC units there soon and we've also got a lot more cities exposed to Gav.

So the outcome is very much in question but we don't feel that we have too much choice.

[GermanJoey]

How many Rathaus do you have right now?

[HitAnyKey]

How many Rathaus do you have right now?

I'll count up when I log in next, but I'm pretty sure there are only a few cities (the newer ones) that don't have them yet. Though I think Happy & Hungry also doesn't have one yet. Since they were right next the the capital, they have always had higher priorities other than cutting their minimal maintenance.