[SPOILERS - El Grillo & Charriu PB51] One step at a time

[El Grillo]

My stack composition was very poor (too heavy on Knights and Catapults, minimal of everything else, really should've just brought a handful more Axes with this stack, not sure why I didn't), with my Crossbows so delayed (and I didn't realize that transferring between ships consumed movement, ouch). We mauled the defenders and evened out the hammers-lost ratio a bit in our favor, but vanrober has a window to hit the stack again. Due to my misplays, I'm somewhat relying on Catapults to defend against Impi, which, uh, yeah... we've passed the point where my Civ experience is at all applicable, which is another big part of why I feel so outplayed here. Plemo in his previous games has demonstrated very strong late-game play, and with his inbound Taj GA is likely to reach it very soon.

Well, if vanrober is spooked by his losses this turn and decides not to counter-attack, the Crossbows will finally be in place and I'll probably get to take his city (hurray, the one I explicitly said I didn't want, on the coast, under Plemo's EIM's watchful eye ). His best bet might be to retreat his redlined C2 Formation Impi and heal them up for another Catapult-boosted attack later, but honestly I have no reason to think that my tactical predictions have any validity. It'll all be a learning experience.

[El Grillo]

Vanrober chose not to counter-attack and also kept his injured forces in his city, which let me farm up a bunch of Catapult experience and then chew through more of his defenders. Not sure what I would've done in his position against such a relative power/tech lead, probably retreat, heal up, whip more Catapults, and accept the loss of a city for a chance to hit back later. With a third party likely to intervene in a few turns, avoiding collateral and preserving forces for a big fight on your terms when the enemy moves up their 1-movers is probably the most you could hope for.

[El Grillo]

Can we please call the game for Plemo already? I don't know what the etiquette is here, but who among us seriously thinks the outcome is in any doubt? Everyone else is fighting and whipping inconclusively, while Plemo effortlessly gained his treasure island cities, which have close to the same output as vanrober's entire civ of size-2 cities (no fault of his, what choice does he have but to whip everything to the ground?).

So once Plemo's uncontested Taj finishes and he burns through his gold, it'll be drafted Rifles and circumnavigation EIM with vulnerable neighbors in all directions. It'd be different if Lazteuq and Ramk had quickly partitioned GKC while superdeath conquered all of Mjmd, and in hindsight I obviously should've done more, earlier, and better, as well. Fine, then let's apply those lessons to PB54. We're done here, let's move on.

[Suite]

I can understand your feelings, but this game is nowhere near as decided as it should for it to be called in my opinion. You are not very far behind in tech and others may have their own strengths. Plemo getting that fat is to a big margin the product of your decision to rush Amicalola and the consequences which came with that decision. You do still have "safe" expansion land in form of Vanrober, you can choose to total-war Plemo which should drive him back a lot. Either way, his victory is likely, but not certain. Other circumstances, especially the - imo - poor map design and the carelessness about the starting positions contribute greatly to his lead as well, but these things should be discussed somewhere else, if at all.

[El Grillo]

I don't mean to downplay Plemo's accomplishments at all, he clearly knows what he's doing and used the opportunities available to him to great effect. You say his victory is only likely, not certain, but I'd argue that that's only if he stops playing at the level he has been consistently demonstrating - it's effectively out of our hands for the rest of us.

But if we insist on playing on, so be it. Plemo is showing his hand, about a dozen Knights and Catapults plus whatever he has loaded on his boats. I should've withdrawn my forces at vanrober's borders a turn earlier, but at least we ate up a questionable vanrober counter-attack. I offered him a ceasefire, whipped basically all my cities, and spent my saved-up gold on Pike upgrades. Probably not the optimal play since that was enough gold for Gunpowder, but what the hell. Let's make this as bloody as possible for him. Plemo lacks Engineering at present so I can get in some good hits with C2 Formation Knights until he adds in his own Pikes.

[El Grillo]

vanrober signed peace and I was up early for a call and managed to play the turn after him, but before Plemo, letting me reposition my newly produced units so my front city should hold, in turn giving me time to bring in my units from that war. I'm sure Plemo wanted the first half of this turn to declare war on, and he couldn't declare war last turn because of our peace treaty, but he could've PMed for a peacetime turn-split in that case. Anyway, what was I supposed to do, intentionally not play the turn and just let him capture two cities?

Ramk, wisely opportunistic, declared war on vanrober and captured the port city that had been my original aim of the vanrober war, and the game hasn't been called so I assume someone else wants to keep playing... so I guess it's just final war time with Plemo. He built the Taj right on schedule of course and is making 500gpt, so he has the option now to just hold off on his attack until he can field Cavalry and Rifles, forcing me to go in first and get hit by all his collateral, while still pinning a bunch of my units in my coastal cities with his EIM. Fun times.

[El Grillo]

We're at war again with Plemo, hurray. I opened the turn and looked at it for a bit, but I really don't want to play it right now after a pretty long day at work.

EDIT:

So here's the plan:

1. Throw pairs of C3 Galleons at isolated EIM and hope to get 1-for-1 trades.
2. Make a great big land stack and hope to march it into Plemo before he can amass too many Cuirassiers and drafted Muskets.
3. Go back to saving up gold for Gunpowder. Maybe the game continues long enough for us to tech to Military Tradition or Chemistry and then we get to prolong our suffering.
4. ???
5. At first light on the 5th day, all of Plemo's other neighbors join forces with us, and together we beat him by sheer weight of numbers and force him into exile on his winter vacation island.

[Suite]

I want night or Blücher GKC

[El Grillo]

First blood to Plemo, he razed Victoria Peak on our southern coast, which I had left a bit too lightly defended, oh well. I got to kill his Knight and traded a Galleon for 2 EIM, while the main body continues to group in the north. I also sent Lazteuq, Ramk, and GKC big lump-sum gold-for-gold offers meaning "work with me here, it's a big deal!" I mean I hardly expect Lazteuq to disengage from superdeath or Ramk from vanrober, and GKC isn't exactly much of a powerhouse, but I'm working with what I've got here.

Lazteuq in particular could put a ton of pressure on Plemo, but he seems content to keep his hands clean and hasn't teched Astronomy, despite the lightly defended Dutch islands and coastal cities he could 1-turn out of the fog. Instead, his war against superdeath has stalled out, presumably as superdeath brought his forces back north from Mjmd-land. I just don't get Lazteuq's long-term plans here. He was never going to be able to run over superdeath the way he did gira, and with such a long naval border there's no way he can just stay at peace with the Dutch for the rest of the game. Plemo may have circumnavigation EIM, but they can't be everywhere at once, and with a dozen boats in my territory I doubt Plemo has enough left in reserve to avoid losing cities to a determined boating attack. It's especially ironic because I had expected the PHI pick to be based on bulbing Astronomy ASAP, but alas.

Plemo's at 1500+ GNP at max research in his GA, by the way.

[Kurumi]

Any chance for pics? Hope you'll be safe with the fire 'n' all that.