Gavagai climbs the chaos ladder

[Gavagai]

wow, that was fast und effective.
When I saw your army, I didn't know how xist could possibly defend but still expected 1-2 dead HA per city.
Did you build some stables to promote? I think it's difficult to time well, either better chances or earlier attack date.

I have one city with Barracks / Stables duplet. Others just produce naked HAs.

[Gavagai]

And most importantly, what does one do with a huge HA army once the target battle is won...?  

An excellent question to which I dedicated quite a lot of thoughts! So, here is a detailed response.
The first possibility is to push further south against GT and scooter. I strongly believe to the south of them is the ocean (no one came from there, I have the position of everyone I met roughly pinned), so after taking them out I will pretty much have only Piccadilly to worry about. Together they have 10 cities, if I take this, I will have more clay than Plemo has. Throw in here my western islands - and I might have a chance to outsnowball him. The problem here is that I know nothing about them - their land is almost completely unscouted and there is also this:

So, it's not just that I cannot see their graphs - they have put so much EPs into me that getting their graphs will be a rather long-term project. GT is especially annoying: the dude had xist, scooter, Piccadilly as neighbors, yet decided to dump 138 EPs into me, even though until the latest events we did not even have a border. Wtf? I actually suspect he will have city visibility on the former Roman cities, I will have to put EPs into him at least to deny him that.
What I do know about scooter and GT is that they are at war with each other. Scooter has been bombarding me with requests to aid him since a long time ago and it looks like GT settled his Horses, so the conflict there is very serious. It could mean they are killing each other's units and have nothing but it could also mean they just pushed each other into hyper-militarization without making decisive moves. Sadly, the latter is more probable, as I do not remember seeing great general born notifications (btw, it appears I will fall just short of getting my own general from this war - lame). In any case, I am going to send some scouting units south to get first-hand knowledge of what is going on there. Then I will make a decision. Long-term they are certainly a target, given their war which apparently goes nowhere, the question is how long this term will be.
Another option is greenline:

This is... not much. He has an unshrined holy city here. Getting a shrine with Arabia is trivial but if I were in his position I would not do it  Greenline is not me though, he could be optimistic. Besides overall unimpressive land, there are two more problems:
1) He has island cities and galleys. It means I will need to invest in the fleet if I want to fight him.
2) I do not see it but I believe he borders Superdeath somewhere in the east. Superdeath offered me to dogpile him several times very early in the game. If I conquer greenline, it would mean I will border Superdeath and I do not want to border Superdeath.
Finally, there is this.

I just scouted these cities, they are lightly defended. I can ram my army straight into them and have some success. There is a great danger to bite more than I can chew though: Piccadilly has lots of strategic depth and production capabilities to fall upon, even if I take everything up to Delhi. There is also another consideration: Plemo is lurking somewhere to the east. I met his scouting warrior in Piccadilly's territory and from the relations screen I know that SD declared war on him at some point in the past (because of course he did). Do I want to dismantle what could become a thick brick wall between me and Plemo? The question is rhetorical.

[Qgqqqqq]

I assume you don't want to border Superdeath because he's Superdeath?

[Gavagai]

I assume you don't want to border Superdeath because he's Superdeath?

Yes, exactly

[Gavagai]

"but still expected 1-2 dead HA per city"

Have been thinking about what klops said here. I think there is one interesting cognitive distortion in play, a weird opposite of optimism bias. People often do not appreciate that winning chances in the area of 20-30 percent mean that a significant number of such combats will actually be won. The mental reflex here is just to firmly project a combat with such chances as a certain loss. I think this is one of the reasons unexperienced players often underestimate how powerful Horse Archers are - their winning chances are quite often in this territory.

[Krill]

Yeah, and the withdrawal chance adds up in the larger stack battles.

Still, planning for one dead HA per spear encountered has always felt to be right.

[Gavagai]

More pictures.

[Gavagai]

So, there is something interesting about the demo screen. I checked it when I was playing my turn in the morning and I remember for certain that I was second in power with 172000 rival best. Now rival best is 139000 and also a great general was born since my previous login. Apparently there is fighting somewhere in the world that is much less one-sided than what I have.
Scooter, Commodore, metal, Tarkeel, Mig and greenline played between my logins. Of those Tarkeel and Mig had unusually long turns. My hope is that this Tarkeel killing a bunch of Plemo's units.

[Gavagai]

I made another discovery while in game: it was Mig who built the Oracle. Curious. I was somehow sure it was Pindicator after oracling Metal Casting. Also annoying: Mig was supposed to build the Lighthouse which fell to Plemo instead.

[Gavagai]

I started exploring GT's territory and, frankly, he is wide open for me right now. Lucky Plaza is undefended, Kranji is defended by a lone axe, the capital is warrior-defended...