[pb74 spoilers] Miguelito and Ginger bring about the end of the world

[Mjmd]

In this instance while you two are not at direct war you are at war with the same player, in close proximity, and for the same territory and therefore part of the larger war turn order. In this case that would mean Pin plays first.

[Miguelito]

Fine, we'll live with it

[Miguelito]

In this instance while you two are not at direct war you are at war with the same player, in close proximity, and for the same territory and therefore part of the larger war turn order. In this case that would mean Pin plays first.

Fwiw, we're talking about a city that replaces one that I took from GKC and which was then razed by Donovan. And it's not like pindi had an army in the area until this turn. I did see his settler and should have called for the coinflip, but I don't see how it is related to pin and I both being at war with GKC. It's a settler race for an empty area. Anyway, I had fuckedup already yesterday andwas too tired to argue/wanted to get the turn in, so here we are.

So, how could I miss that I was doing a double move? Well for once I guess being in a 3 to 4 way war split over the last couple months has desensitized me to having peacetime splits on top. Maybe another factor is that I just couldn't fully compute that pindi would actually do this:



It is so blatant. He cuts off our GKC conquest, claims the Korean heartland, and produces an attack vector deep into our core. Apparently he expects us to be happy about it though:






He also sent free gems. We are already getting some from Gav but yeah he wants to make up for stealing ours.

Let's pick this apart.

• He wants us to stop Gavagai from winning while he conquers Commodore and becomes the big continent top dog. First off, there's of course the huge discrepancy in possible spoils if say we both are successful - he'd get to double his territory, we would get a couple islands and a metric ton of whip anger for all the boats we'd need. But of course actually Gavagai will eat us alive if he only has us to worry about. And who else could realistically cause him trouble in a joint effort? Well, pindicator and Commodore, duh. If anybody but him is to win here we need a joint effort.
  Now Comm is about to get Kremlin, and probably pin rather wants to defend against him without having to worry about another front. I don't know what Comm is planning of course, but I think it would be pretty much in character for him to throw himself against Gav navally on a massive scale. In which case pin should rather swallow more to his north; Tarkeel, Plemo and so on until he gets a Gavagai border.
  But yeah, no way we're going against Gav alone, or even first.
  
• I try to make sense of the second message. Wheat/Cow/Ivory is Pusan. Is he telling me that he'll take all of Korea, and he'll generously let us settle the banana on our border? Or am I reading it in reverse: He's giving us Pusan, we give him the banana, i. e. Namp'o? That is an acceptable result from a rather unacceptable starting point. What does the gold mean? He'll start in 2 turns, we start later?
  
• The last one I can't make any sense of. Well 40 gold probably means good vibes for that duration? Wheat+Stone = grow and build? Wheat+Stone is also Marseille (see below), which we are bombarding. He could send a fleet to threaten it and trigger us to declare eternal blood war. Ginger suggested he's proposing forus to switch control of the city every 40 turns  
  

So, pindicator scavenged GKC after we broke his army twice, and now is poaching the territory that we fought DZ over.
And this is the second egregious pinkdot that we get planted in our faces this game, and we razed the last one. So what about now? He has 30 knights in John Muir. Can we deal with that? Sure, we have the Rifling monopoly! (ok Gav also has the tech but that doesn't matter here)

It's just that right now it would be a very bad time for things to boil over. We are just done annihilating Donovan's stack that was marching on metal's capital. Our units are wounded and scattered about, so this turn or next pindi can do devastating damage. Kill all of our units, or kamikaze into our golden tetragon of Armageddon-Ragnarök-Grey Goo-Atlantis.
On top of that, we have just broken into Donovan's core and are making advances. And that does seem more profitable right now than feuding with pindicator of more cities and the knight storm.

So, we decided to not do anything about it for now, mostly because we can't, also because we'd rather do something else. I sent him this:


It's supposed to mean Namp'o for you, Pusan for us. And a fish/fish message on top. 

I didn't want to send fish to his war with Commodore, because of course Commodore eating him (or at least all of his attention) and us taking what's rightly ours is the opportunity we're waiting for. And I don't like lying (that has cost us before this game). I hope the general fish/fish still gets across that we don't plan anything against him currently, which is true anyways.
I could send War with Gavagai from us both, to tell him that we need a joint effort.

If pindicator attacks and whacks our units then we give peace to DZ returning his cities, and dedicate the rest of the game to driving Sumer off the continent.


So, yeah there was also the battle. Here is DZ's stack retreating from metal's capital (metal's contribution here has been frustratingly little. He did not want to, and then couldn't, bring his collateral into action, which would really have helped).



The turn after we attacked:


There were a lot of these knight on phant fights. Promos carried us a lot, and I also think we had above average rolls (apart  from the inevitable rifle losing to a pinch knight ) 



The turn after, Donovan had used what was left to kill our G2 rifle plus Wellie protecting two workers. We are down to 5 workers empire wide, because when I sniped 4 workers of Donovan's with a sentry knight I learned that his C2 musket actually gets odds .


This turn it was cleanup, and Donovan's big army is no more. However as I said it left us positioned pretty badly against pindicator, so we need to pray that next turn he still believes in our friendship.
Also seen: Magic Science avenging Donovan's betrayal. He's almost back to his original borders.

I got no screenshot, but we took Wittenoom this turn (see last report) and are marching on with rifles. Donovan first whipped muskets, now knights again (we got ourselves EP vision). The challenge of course is to maintain a stack that can push and then leave enough behind to prevent him from retaking or sending a kamikaze stack. Should be much easier once we have freed up capacity in the south, i.e. moved and healed.

[Ginger*]

Miguelito has been quite calm and rational about this while I’m screaming for blood in our discord chat. I’m not impressed by Pindicator maneuver here

[Miguelito]

pindicator invaded the Korean capital. metal did not fight but was rather pulling back to Pusan -


poof his stack.
I had messed up teleportation of the knights that were healing in Pusan badly (landed on that unroaded hill). But one of them was our Morale guy, and metal had just left a single spear. And then wewere reasonably lucky at 72% odds. The medic war chariot could have cleaned up if that situation came up.
Now I'm just hoping pindicator is as content with this development as I am. Since metal couldn't even be a speedbump He could cause a lot of trouble if he wanted to. But I hope he'd rather have his attention back home, where Commodore now did finish Kremlin.



We're making progress with Donovan, but of course with rifles we're not that fast. We can't hold Skeleton coast this turn, which is a shame as it conserved several buildings. But units should be harder for Don to replace than for us (while admittedly we are more reluctant to whip). Last turn I baited some knights away with diversions in the east, so this turn I could feel rather safe with our not that big attacking stack . Donovan has 8 knights left now, which of course can be handled, but we need to be watchful for kamikazes.

[Miguelito]

Donovan made an unlucky attempt to throw himself against our somewhat wounded stack (and zerg our privateer), then left cities empty and his 4 move galley in range of our privateer. We may have broken him, finally. He still whipped dutifully, now muskets again.

We again exchanged fish/fish with both pindicator and Gavagai. Gavagai is very likely to run away with the game, but we are not doing anything about it in the next ten (or twenty) turns, we're just spent at this moment. Regarding pindi, of course it sucks, but spending our remaining energy on throwing him off the continent, and then perpetually defend the weak west coast, doesn't sound like a fun time. For now we can wrap up DZ, and finally finish the job with Magic Science, while gettingin some desperately needed growth and maybe even some infrastructure.



People keep telling us to fight their rivals for them which are more powerful than us and whom we can't really reach. Well maybe he just means we should do that exposed Commodore island south of France. But, deal a small injury on Commodore?

[Ginger*]

I think the defining question is whether the two leaders will try to outrace by exploiting other resources on the map (piccadilly, pindicator cities) or whether they'll go for a cross-continent naval war

[Miguelito]

first event for us in what feels like a hundred turns. I was wondering already if something was broken





pindicator is taking the island. We are far from having anything in the water on that side of the continent, so yeah this isn't up for debate. Don't know what the gold numbers mean, is he putting us on a timer ?




,
botched overall. In my defense, we needed all we had for DZ and pindi and stuff. We trust pindi now . We've decided that this isn't enough, so we will bring in 2 more cats and some more rifles next turn, and that will do hopefully.

[Miguelito]

lovely events keep rolling please . It rolling in the NE city is pretty awesome of course.
(also I really have forgot some basics, queuing observatories before banks - not sure if I should reschedule yet two turns afterwards)



We were so going to raze the absurd on-the-cow plant....



Building haul decided otherwise for us though.

No pictures, but the turn after we captured Skeleton Coast and Ozyorsk at moderate cost (fortified CG2 muskets on hills and with culture defenses which we will not bombard down against castles are no cakewalk even for rifles). Pripyat will take 2 more turns (at least), having some old junk in it, and us bringing knights mostly. DZ has one island city left which pindi will take, and the one that he founded on MS's old capital spot, which MS apparently wants to take by revolt rather than force? I'm sending rifles there now.

[Miguelito]

Very lucky break here, won all the 90s with the rifles, 80s with the knights, and even 60s with the muskets.
The turn after:


Lovely building haul!

As well as here:


even won a 25% fight with a rifle on CG2 musket.

Achievement unlocked:




I didn't invade Magic Science right away, but will likely do that in the next few turns. He has a respectable tile of defensive units in each city, but I haven't seen cats or knights yet.

Also we stumbled upon a spy near our capital! Unsure where he was from, only MS makes sense, really. Good enough for a casus bellie