Gavagai climbs the chaos ladder

[Gavagai]

Do you know how many Galleys it takes to kill a Destroyer? We might find out!

Just how many it takes depends on promotions and luck, but it's ... a lot.  I tried some tests with Vodka, and it took much longer than usual to spit out the answer.  Maybe because I used lots of iterations and had to use dozens of Galleys in to get any kind of odds, but I suspect because whatever Zulan's server (or whatever the machine is on which the Vodka calculator resides) was laughing too hard to answer for a while.

I tested with Frigates once, it was about 8-9.

[Gavagai]

So, I expected Superdeath to pack his stuff and leave, making peace with both of us. But the Superdeath thing to do was to double down.

He landed more units and now is moving back his fleet (to transport the next wave of units, I suppose). He has significantly fewer boats than before and I see a lot of wounded Caravels from Greenline, so Greenline is also doing his part. I landed more troops in the city and killed several SD's swords (and lost one Redcoat at 90 percent odds because of course). Now SD has less hitters than there are defenders in the city so he cannot capture it even in theory.

[Gavagai]

Superdeath suicided 12 boats into my Destroyer, bringing it to 23 health (and to 19 XP). His main stack is moving towards Tlateloco. I landed more units and killed some Elephants. Lost two Redcoats at around 98 percent odds. SD is exceptionally lucky in this war. He made peace with Piccadilly, so he is fully on the side of evil now.
I also found Commodore's naval stack. 18 Destroyers. Overall, I can see 24 and I am pretty sure there are quite many more. I have 22 in total. Sent fishes to Commodore but with this attitude I think I need to accept the reality that the war is inevitable. 
Commodore's score advantage over Mig and Pindicator is shrinking. As he has less land and population than both of them, winning the war against me will not win him the game. Sigh. I don't think I will win this - too many parties would rather throw away their own game completely than allow me to win.

[Gavagai]

Commodore is a piece of work, isn't he? He repeatedly refuses my fish-for-fish offers while settling poorly defended (and indefensible) Airship bases in my underbelly. I bet if I took them out he would lament in his thread about me being a dick to him.
(He has a settler under his worker on the eastern island in case you missed)

[Gavagai]

This is Commodore's main fleet. It is moving towards Plemo. I hope this is some sort of joke or a feint but I see many other Commodore's ships moving in the same general direction.

And this is what his typical garrison looks like. There are signs he is actually preparing for a two-front war with me and Plemo which is a bit insane if true because he does not need to fight any of these wars.
Forgot to take pictures of Superdeath front but I and Greenline almost destroyed the stack Superdeath landed. I lost yet another Redcoat, bringing my total Redcoat losses in this war to four. On the other hand, I farmed about half of my next great general and improved many of my drafted Redcoats, not to mention three destroyers. So I count it as a slight plus in balance, provided it would not trigger a war with Commodore which is still a possibility. If Superdeath wanted to annoy me, he would probably be better off just deleting all these units. If he had any other purpose in mind, I do not understand what this purpose could be. We had such a nice community of nations here, united in hatred towards Piccadilly, why he needed to betray our common values?

[Gavagai]

My peace treaty with Commodore comes to an end. It would be an understatement to say that he did not display peaceful intentions during the ten turns grace period. He ignored all my attempts to diplomacy, aggressively scouted my defenses, put massive garrisons in his border cities and deployed a giant fleet. All of these, it should be noted, came at great cost to him:

 Commodore is now behind all great powers in food. What he is doing looks like a light version of Piccadilly mode. If this is the road he decided to follow, the game is very close to unwinnable, I am not sure I can fight another great power in a total war and participate in the space race simultaneously.

My plan is to declare war, drop this small force near Air Baron, then offer peace, threatening to raze the city. If I have ten more turns of enforced peace, I'll be able to industrialize and maybe tech towards Battleships, then things will be much easier. But if I am right about Commodore's mindset, he will rather sacrifice this city then allow me to remain unmolested.

Commodore's main fleet turned away from its Plemo collision course and is now in an odd position. It would be hilarious if Commodore changed his plans reacting to my concentration in the south and canceled his attack on Plemo, because he, I reiterate, could have easily avoided all this by entering into a fish covenant with me.

Meanwhile, Superdeath sends me this. I do not know, whether this is his idea of being entertaining or he hopes I misclick. I now receive silly offers like that on the turnly basis.

[Gavagai]

Initially, my idea was to make my attack against Commodore a symbolic matter: to simply land units near his city and do nothing else at all to him, thus showing my peaceful intentions. I was hesitant, however, as so far Commodore has shown zero appreciation of my attempts to be good to him. However, when scouting this turn I spotted six galleons with considerable Frigate escort moving towards my southern holdings and after that decided to go hard on him. I removed all his naval assets I could reach, particularly in the south. It included six Destroyers, a Transport (most possibly with units inside), a Galleon (empty) and an assortment of wooden boats. I lost three Destroyers of my own in the process, so the exchange of initial battles is in my favor. But make no mistake - I am at a disadvantage in this war.

This is where I expect Commodore's main blow to land. I think I will lose both of these island cities.

And this is the southern theater. His fleet is where I put the "6 galleons" mark. I expect it to go after Crimestop but if six galleons is all he has I expect to defend.

I sent him a peace offer, I think more than one as I played the turn in several installments and did not remember clearly what I've done diplowise. I do not want him to mistake my intentions. I am willing to allow him to keep his cities in the south; I would actually be fine with not touching him ever until the end of the game as he is currently much less of a space threat than Mig or even Pindicator (entirely through the efforts of his own). But I do not expect him to be amenable to any kind of reason at this point.

[GeneralKilCavalry]

Is your estimation that you are at disadvantage in this war a result of commodore running his econ/food into the ground to fight you? Or is there some strategic point I'm missing.

[Gavagai]

Is your estimation that you are at disadvantage in this war a result of commodore running his econ/food into the ground to fight you? Or is there some strategic point I'm missing.

Roughly this but there are nuances. Commodore, to be clear, did not literally run his economy into the ground - that's what Piccadilly did. But he harmed it severely enough to put his long-term competitiveness into question - and not simply in relation to me but in relation to the lesser powers of Pindi and Mig. This fact makes his actions particularly frustrating because we are not playing a zero-sum game here. Commodore essentially throws away his own chances to give Mig victory on a golden platter.
One important nuance I don't think I have properly explained is that I hit Assembly Line and want to industrialize. So, my hammers will go into Factories, Coal Plants and supporting health buildings, not into ships. This means that not only do I currently have fewer ships than Commodore, but the ratio between us is going to get much worse in the short- and even medium-term. Eventually, after I build the infrastructure everywhere and spread Mining Inc around, and he runs out of pop to whip, I should be able to outproduce him. But it will take awhile and during all this time I will have to fight a war where my opponent will have absolute naval dominance. Not a pleasant prospect and a great chance for Mig and Pindicator to catch up.

[Gavagai]

For the record - Commodore missed his usual window today and it has been around sixteen hours since the turn rolled with no notice from him. There are three people in total (me, Piccadilly, Superdeath) who are supposed to play after him. Now, I understand that Commodore has non-civ-related life which probably takes priority - though I find it highly interesting that "life" happened to him on the very day when I declared war. My point is, this is very similar to things for which he has been such an ass to Plemo (who, by the way, was the first to play this turn).