Gavagai's revenge

[Gavagai]

Commodore started a golden age (his third!) and decided to use it to go for Nationalism. Mistake. Using Nationhood is not using Vassalage which would permanently put his navy at a disadvantage with respect to mine. I think going Chemistry -> MilScience and revolting to Police State would be a better use of GA on his part.

[Gavagai]

By the way, here is a funny thing. I ended up making peace with BaII and asked him for OB after that. He responded with a counter-offer of OB for 10gpt. Really? Really!? NOW you value gold. Hey, what about that thing a couple turns ago when you have thrown out 230 gold just to fuck with me? Well, fuck you in that case. I do not really need this OB that much.
I still want to take the second island city but I will do it later when he is dying for real. The second city is close enough to his core that he would be able to put up a fight for it and I am not interested in a serious fight.

[Gavagai]

I am more than a little irritated by Savant's passivity. Wally Wexler here could have been captured on the previous turn already - Savant has four Knights in Lome, enough to take out these defenders. If it goes like this, Commodore will capture everything with DS just watching from the corner and jerking off. This is not optimal at all.


Oh, fuck off!

[Gavagai]

Well, well, well, Commodore decided to go Constitution after Nationalism. Mistake. His problem is that my UU kills everything up to Cavalry and the path to Cavalry does not allow Commodore to pick up the next tier of naval units. In other words, he is going to need a lot of techs to put himself at parity with me in terms of army quality. I do not think that Emancipation + Representation combo is going to pay for for itself quickly enough. Also, Representation without Emancipation is too weak in his situation and Emancipation will lock him out of both Vassalage and Nationhood. I feeling myself better and better with every decision Commodore makes.
On my part, I spent more than an hour in-game today just trying to understand what civics I should run. I think I will opt for Rep + Vassalage + Environmentalism + Merc + Theocracy, going for the highest army quality and full specialists synergy. I will lose some hammers from losing Caste, sure, but I will get more than a double amount of commerce to compensate for this and commerce is way more important for me now, given that Commodore is going for a very greedy strategy. I need to tech up to my UU ASAP and kill him before he outtechs me.

[Gavagai]

Rusen declared on Dark Savant immediately after eliminating Borsche. This is not optimal. I wanted Dark Savant to be a pain in Commodore's butt and I am not sure that Rusten would be able to play this role as he has so much more on his plate.

[Gavagai]

Decided not to attack Commodore. Three reasons:

1) AT is a very attractive target. Not prepared for a war at all and not disputed by any major world powers. I rather fight him.
2) Strategically, time is on my side because Commodore is in an awkward position between me and Rusten and cannot expand. Right now is actually the best time for him to fight the war because his southern border is safe. It won't be later after Rusten is entrenched there. On the other hand, I will have way more resources if the against AT goes fine. Commodore is also stuck in Nationhood which doesn't do anything for his tech.
3) Commodore is well-prepared:

He was actually perfectly setup to culture-bomb Gisborne and flank away my cats (they were 2E from Bremen). He even had two worker pairs ready for roads. I moved my cats away and sent him a defensive pact offer. I am worried about telegraphing too much info to third parties but it starts to get out of control. Something needs to be done to defuse the situation.

[Gavagai]

I want to put this on record that I believe what Rusten is doing here is incredibly dumb. He has what I believe to be more than half of his army stranded on the island at the literal end of the world. Harry can easily win the game right now.

[superdeath]

What should he be doing instead?

[Gavagai]

What should he be doing instead?

He should be trying to save Elkad. Rusten and OH are vulnerable to each other, at some point they are going to tie each other up, so that no one of them can expand. Rusten is currently bigger than OH, I suspect significantly so, given how fast he is catching up in the score. So, I think, it is an excellent point for him to cement this new equilibrium. On the other hand, OH is behind, so he has an incentive to try to cripple Rusten while there is an opening. Hence, it is stupid to give him such an opening.

[Gavagai]

(And one needs to keep in mind that succeeding against DS would mean making Commodore into an enemy which is not ideal. Rusten seems to have learned all the wrong lessons from PB41, I hope, Harry will punish him for this.)