[PB78] Dreylin boldly goes

[Dreylin]

T164 - ugh.

Well Spock fell, but Gavagai neither razed it nor defended it - probably because the bulk of my counter-attack force (and all my siege) are 3tiles from Spock and couldn't hit the stack tile. Oh, and Magic decided to get involved. He's deploying the lesser known offensive Pike stack tactic.



He does have 4Knights & 4HA positioned SE that can join in 2t. Unfortunately I had pulled all my 2-movers out of the area so couldn't cut the indicated road this turn.

But the major news of the turn is that I rolled the 30% Engineer at Chapel:


Imhotep will get me 95% of Guilds so I can start fielding Knights from next turn.

Gav offered peace in return for Scott. He spent 13Cats taking Spock, which is over half his siege. (by my count also 5Knights, 4HA, 1WE, & 2Maces).

So here's my position:


Borders fell as expected, so this siege stack should not be accessible. The mini-stack 2NW is ~6units & same amount of siege is probably a mistake, but may be worth the risk. Mathews needs to keep Pikes to deter Magic from using that vector; I pulled the contemporary units from Troi into Riker on that front. Finally in the NE I used my Workers to extend the Road towards Lahore to assist Superdeath's approach - the workshop NNW of Chapel in the previous shot /should/ not be visible to him, but I covered with my Pikes incase. Next turn I could road the Pig to allow SD to hit Lahore from the fog, but I'm not certain we can coordinate to make sure I do it on the correct turn and not early.

Everywhere without an existing build has queued up Horse Archers to be whipped into Knights next turn. On research side I actually only need to run 20% to finish Guilds, but am buffering to make sure I don't get knocked out from maybe losing somewhere other than Spock.

I did consider offering Magic the city of Troi in exchange for Peace - giving him the Stone he wants without bloodshed - but I decided against. I also did not offer a deal to Gavagai this turn because it's clear he is not to be bought. So I hunker down, keep him occupied and rely on Superdeah and Donovan to fulfill their commitments.

[Dreylin]

T165 - Carelessness costs lives

He's dead, Jim!!



I got careless, and my Redshirt fulfills his destiny. I diverted 2 Elephants in the "HA Here" stack back to kill the HA and the Knight, but didn't follow the other HA onto the flatland. It did give me enough GG points to spawn my second; he will run in from Sulu for potential use next turn.

Now my siege is in position, I considered if this turn was right to hit Gav's stack. It would make sense not to give him another turn to heal but ... then I noticed that Superdeath's plan is not to hit Gavagai in the North at Lahore; his 2-move stack is now in Scott. He's already played this turn though, so wouldn't be able to follow me in. I hold for another turn.

Re-took the city of course and then shuffled everything over. Whipped Knights everywhere that had started them. My first GG took 3xHA and a WE and upped them from 5 to 10xp then upgraded to a Knight.

Clench buttocks and end turn.

[Dreylin]

T166 - tum-te-tum

Superdeath got to this turn before I did, which was surprising and disappointing. I was ready to wade in and have him follow the same turn. He did basically signal to be that he would follow me in, but if it's after turn roll it's just not as effective as both hitting the same turn (regardless of if Gav plays in between). Gav's force is basically healed now, so I'm not sure what his plan is other than to wait for more to trickle in and gradually let me whip Spock down to worthless? Maybe he's waiting for a settler to arrive to finally raze & replace? Anyway, I'll try to dive in early next turn before Superdeath. Not much else happening other than my starting to assemble a small force to hit Diamond City. I can't hit the city amphibiously without him spotting the galleys, so I'll prepare hidden in the lake NE of McCoy and then land the force S of the city to attack the following turn.

[Dreylin]

T167 - go time.

Donovan's diplo is confusing:


I do hope this means something other than "I'm coming in 20t", because we're already 5t into the war and waiting total ~25t for a supposed alliance partner to contribute is disappointing. In 25t I'm either dead or crippled to the point where you should be vulturing my remains with no guilt. If Gondor lights the beacons, then Rohan should ride. He finished Guilds last turn and has been on a whipping frenzy, so maybe this means 20Knights are coming; though if that then what does the 20g on my side mean?

Anyway, Gavagai continued to offer Peace in exchange for Scott which is frankly getting annoying. I only offered him a payoff twice, but he insists on sending me the same deal every turn even though it's clear I'm not taking it unless something changes.

Well something did finally change:


Time to hit this thing:


I toyed with having what could attack from Spock so the wounded could box him in, but when I recaptured I found a mini-stack of 6 Knights waiting there to move in. So instead I attacked from the Vulture hill. Cats first, then mixing it up between the Knights, Maces and WE as the odds favoured. HA hit last and came away about on their average 60% odds. I didn't count my losses, but he lost 13Knights, 3-4WE, all the Maces and a couple of Horse Archers. CtH really did nerf Flanking though didn't it; I'd expected to start chipping a couple of his remaining siege away, but they are looking banged up but still mobile.

A lot depends on Superdeath now:


This is his stack holding North of Sulu. If he sends this in before Gavagai plays, then I think that'll more-or-less wipe out the stack and I get to keep my injured troops. If he plays after, the outcome depends on whether Gavagai regroups in place or pulls back into Spock. Either way, I don't think that waiting a turn would have helped me appreciably as there would only have been a couple of additional units available next turn.

I was tempted to ask Gavagai for Dehli for peace just to be annoying, but decided against. Of course what I really want is Diamond City, but I don't want him looking in that direction right now. This turn I did offer Troi to Magic in exchange for Peace. I doubt he'll take it, but it would get him the Stone he's been wanting. I probably need to abandon Riker and pull my forces back to make a stand in Sulu, which is far more important and easier to resupply. Probably next turn judging by his progress on my defenses.

[Dreylin]

T168 - aftermath

So here's what I open up to:


Top-left, you can see that Magic took my offer of Troi for peace. How much this was influenced by what happened to Gavagai I don't know, but regardless I think this is good for me.

Bottom-right, Superdeath's stacks and Spock still in my hands. All-in-all, I think I can give Superdeath 50g for saving my ass, even if it cost him little and neutered his main military rival.

Then comes this:


Oh man, that's a tough one. On one hand this is exactly what I want; on the other, I did just secure Peace with Magic and Superdeath might be a bit miffed that I'm bailing on the war at the first opportunity.

I stare at this a long time.

In the end it comes down to a detail in the previous shot - Gavagai is 1t from Gunpowder. I can stay in the war and try to force my way into Diamond City, but he'll know I'm coming and it's going to be against Muskets. Gavagai made exactly the right offer here, because I don't think anything else would have got me to take Peace.

Of course it's only now that I realise that Donovan has also joined the war:


Well now I have no idea what that mutual 20g was from last turn's message? Best guess it's extending the alliance to 20t, as I think we only had 10t remaining.

(also note Spiral Minaret powering up Magic even more!)

I don't really have a good idea how to apologise over AI diplo, but here goes:


Basically these are the closest cities to Gav's Southern Border; I'm attempting to say "in 10t I'll be ready to go again", though there's a decent chance that things will be over by then one way or another. And yeah, that's an additional 5gpt offer to Superdeath over the one I already accepted - hopefully he notices that this is a duplicate!

So after all that I get to keep Spock - albeit at size2 and with only a Terrace remaining, but importantly the culture accumulation and border expansions are still intact. That does mean that I can use the combat Settler elsewhere:



My red shirt is dead and I decide that rather replace with another, I'll stay in NextGen. Maybe I should consider not naming this city location after doomed characters?

I finally have an island!



I'll lose tiles before I can stabilise the culture, but I don't care now that this is mine.       

So I'm at peace. First order of business is to get religion into my 2 new cities, so I queue missionaries - both religions. Next is civics, which is actually tech: I'm ~4t from Banking to get Mercantilism, which means I've got 4t to make the most of Police State before leaving for Rep. Walls here & in Spock to be followed by Castles, but units everywhere else - mostly defensive and siege as I lost huge chunks of both during the war. Secure my borders, then prep an assault force to vulture from Gav's remains.

More thoughts on the international situation later / next turn. Also happy to answer any questions or take pictures of anything you want to see.

[Hitru]

How you see odds of winning for each player? I have sporadically lurked this game and don't have clear idea what has happened this far, but it looks like quite dynamic situation currently with multiple war decs, peace offers and so on.

[Dreylin]

How you see odds of winning for each player? I have sporadically lurked this game and don't have clear idea what has happened this far, but it looks like quite dynamic situation currently with multiple war decs, peace offers and so on.

So 15-20turns ago, I had Magic & Superdeath as roughly equal favourites, with the other 3 of us as second or third tier contenders - with Donovan probably slightly above Gav & myself.

Magic Science had a very solid, Wonder-based economy and was in transition to Monk. He was starting to expand again after we clipped his wings in the previous world war, but was seriously lagging in army.

Superdeath had the second strongest economy and the second largest army. He was the first to key military techs but had been stifled in applying them to expand.

Donovan inherited the largest land empire and "don't fight me on equal terms" traits. He was behind on tech, but had the potential inherent in the acreage. He had a small army, but no major vulnerable attack vectors.

Dreylin has been constrained by his economy for much of the game but managed to land Pyramids, which coupled with SPI has given him a bunch of potential yet to be realised, but requiring time to do so and having little room for peaceful expansion.

Gavagai suffered the most from the 3-way early wars with Magic and Thrawn; his empire was forced into an awkward shape and his major asset was a huge army that he was not able to find a way to turn into gains.

The layout of the map has made it hard to focus an attack without exposing yourself elsewhere, so trust and diplo have been important. Gavagai & Superdeath have had the 2 largest armies facing off against each other for a long period, unable to build the trust to apply them in concert. I was forced to apply some of my potential (Great Engineer) to counter my economic disadvantage and stall an attack on me by 15t, but I to remain competitve I needed to change the landscape.

Thrawn and then Donovan repeatedly encouraged me towards a war with Gavagai, but there's no way that wouldn't have been suicidal for me given the positioning of his army. I did at one point accept/propose to join them in future war, but mostly to stop them bothering me about it in the short term, and I wonder if that diplo may have somehow whispered its way back to Gav and poisoned our relationship? Something had to change; I desperately needed/wanted an island paradise of my own, and Little Lamplight is practically in my 1st ring and so I looked for allies to clip Magic's wings again. Superdeath was willing and we put the plan in place. After the first war when I went first and everyone else delayed by 1-2turns (not counting Donovan who jumped the gun), I was concerned that I'd go in alone and be hung out to dry. I left the opportunity for the others to go first on the turn we agreed, but quickly realised that I had to go first - see also "something had to change". So in addition to Superdeath, I signaled to both Donovan & Gavagai what was happening - at that point it didn't matter if it leaked to Magic as my Galleys would already have been visible if he was watching.

I don't understand what happened next. Oh I completely understand Gavagai invading me; my focus was elsewhere and so was Superdeath's, my adjacent land is better than Magic's and I have no idea what diplo they have going. I don't get the timing; why he attacked me before we were fully engaged with Magic? I also don't understand not razing Spock for any of the turns we exchanged it, nor why it took so long for him to advance again - that delay and a lucky dice roll allowed me to spend more of my potential (another GE) to grab Guilds and have some Knights in place to hit his stack when it did advance. Those handful of Knights made a huge difference to the result of that counter-attack.

So how has this changed things and where do we go from here?

Well I think that Gavagai has killed his own game; he made no territorial gains, ceded a huge economic boost to get me out of the war, lost Bombay to Donovan and a city has changed hands with Superdeath. I only have PBSpy to go on for the last; it changed hands very early in Superdeath's turn which makes me wonder if it was a peace deal or just abandoned in retreat - paranoia says that having neutralised Gav as a threat, it would make some sense for Superdeath to end that war and pvot to grab some territory from me, but Gavagai's territory fits better with Superdeath's and I don't see there being one border city that Gav could offer to incentivize not pushing to grab a larger chunk.

So let's assume that Gav is the big loser and Superdeath the big winner here. Magic picked up a bit from me and Donovan will grab more from Gav. In 10t I may be able to grab some land North of Chapel, but there's no guarantee there'll be anything left there. I am back to where I was with "Potential", but not much else. Superdeath probably moves ahead of Magic as the clear leader, unless Magic stabs him in the side rather than vulturing from the remains of Gavagai.

We'll see how things play out over the next few turns...

[Dreylin]

T169 - dude?

Superdeath is pressing and will likely take Gavagai's North. I should take a look and see if there are any gaps for me to slip a border city into while the cultural walls are down.

Both he & Donovan reiterated our alliance with Iron-Iron, which is great. In addition, Superdeath offered me a Crab-Crab and 5gpt back. Perhaps he thinks I sent the second trade by accident thinking I hadn't accepted the first? It was deliberate, but I accept his returned offer anyway. It was then followed by a Crab-Crab and an offer to go to war with Magic in 10t time. I very much want to call Magic's low-troops bluff, but I also want to vulture from Gavagai's corpse. I sent back proposal that I will join the Gavagai pile on as soon as I can in my North, and am open to going after Magic in 15t at Riker.

I also proposed a couple of trades; I found a pair of health resources to swap with Donovan, and then I also offered him 4gpt for his spare Silver and 4gpt to Superdeath for his spare Incense. I shouldn't need either long-term, but I have a couple of cities (Sulu & Chapel) that are about to overgrow their whip anger and the buffer would be welcome until that goes back down.

[Dreylin]

T170 -

Not much going on, so I thought I'd post some shark fins for you:

[Dreylin]

T171 -

Superdeath is eager for us to go to war with Magic ASAP. I can see why; Magic just kicked off their 3rd MoM Golden Age and then finished Nationalism. SD Has a few turns head start on Taj, but that may not be enough when pitted against IND GA Marathon. And of course they are teching freely without an army to back that up:



I'm hosed either way; may as well try to help #2 dent #1 and see if I can profit from the process.

Here's a fun thing you won't see every day:


There are a couple of these hold-over barbs that got trapped in corners by The Great Wall. Well Gavagai lost that city last turn and it seems this buy ended up taking out a lightly/un-defended city.