[spoilers]Oh Canada! Victoria has a Commodore, eh?

[Commodore]

But the lurkers demand blood and angst! I already paid good money for all of this popcorn and don't want it to get stale.

Hrm...


Oh RIGHT. You're in the wants me to die list...

[fluffyflyingpig]

But the lurkers demand blood and angst! I already paid good money for all of this popcorn and don't want it to get stale.

Hrm...


Oh RIGHT. You're in the wants me to die list...

I prefer to think of it as being in the majority. We clearly outnumber the 'Peace out blissfully and love everyone!' peaceniks by a huge margin.

[Commodore]

Ottawa is now HYPER POWAH'D! Bureaucracy is almost always worth instantly revolting. I'll grow to size 17 in two turns after this one with a little bit of sharing, and I'll still be okay for timing on the Sophia. Love this civic.


Let's look at Banks a little more, shall we? Oh my stars and garters, youse guys. Two fish, five grasslands (three riverside), plains hill, silver. I need to be size 18 here, stat. That'll take some time, but this is one place that will be included in the Fiscal Jackhammer Phase II cottaging. Probably six villages soon, then. The silver will be offered first to China, then elsewhere.


We need to stick together, Lewwyn and I, because there is a monster in the middle. Looks like I've been scouted a bit; I'm just going to mass up in the ports, because darned if I can contest that kind of mobility elsewhere. Go look at Nakor, guys.


I'm about to flash some elephant here in Saskatoon to discourage anything overland. Elephants mean knights would not have an easy go of things, and they're pretty good against slower zerks too, so I think I'm solid. As can be seen, the Apostolic Palace chopping is starting now; we're about eight turns off.

[Commodore]

We're back, folks! Welcome to Canada, again. Hasn't changed much over the weekend...because nothing happened turnwise. Oh well, Monday rolls, and...


...not much. Except for four turns being knocked off the Apostolic Palace.


Here's the demos with things micro'd to hit Construction in one more turn at 50% science. Scary GNP is Pindicooter in a golden age, not direct worry...except that it means knights as well as berzerkers will be massing soon. And, um, my soldier count ain't good folks.


My highest unit count is in workers, second highest...strength 3 archers. That's not going to fly. HBR next then, eh?


I've been coasting along a bit because of my "neighbors". The tiny retep and faemer's gambit-to-recover TBS aren't going to go overseas to hit me, so it's just been meself and my PTSD buddies, really. Now they still probably hate the thought of fighting me, but the timing of this golden age is militaristic, and they're running out of peaceful lands...so they mass up a huge army, they look at Nakor who's been middling in the military, and then they look north at me third-to-last in soldiers...yeah.


So we're gonna be whipping some military over the next few turns.

[Commodore]

So I've been meditating a bit more on the geostrategic situation here and in RB-style FFAs in general, and I think I've come to a rather stark conclusion:
Maxim:
Protracted Land War Against a Competent Opponent is Never a Good Idea.

Now of course you need to qualify each element of that maxim:
-Protracted obviously means the existential kinds of conflicts, like Mackoti waged against MH or Ichabod is apparently now waging against Slowcheetah. Light skirmishing is certainly fine, using force to achieve limited goals, etc, etc...as long as both sides keep the investment minimal. Which naturally can be tricky.
-Land war means war primarily overland, be it with axes, knights, cannons, or infantry. I'm not sure how tanks modify the calculation, having built exactly none my entire life, but I suspect even then the statement remains true without air power as part of the equation. The seas are very, very different, as I'll expand on later.
-Competency is of course a majorly fraught evaluation, but what I generally mean is someone with the ability to not make major tactical blunders, who knows how to produce heavily rapidly, and who can stay within about an era and a half of you. So cats and maces vs. rifles, etc. Krill can clearly show how even cats and horse archers can stand off against most land stacks this side of machine guns...and if you have that much of a discrepancy then you are either incompetent or damaged.
!-I'm going to also allow for cripples to fall in the incompetent category. Earlier wars slowing down tech or, naturally, dogpiles can alter this calculation, but even then competent cripples are dangerous and dogpiles need diplomacy to function profitably; otherwise, the competent dogpilee can and will maul at least one of his attackers.
-Opponent assumes one out of several or at least two, naturally. Duels are weird grinding matches of zero-sum fun where all bets are off. And you can duel in a larger FFA but never profitably.
-I said good idea. People can certainly fight land wars for motives other than profit all the time. I myself have gotten sucked in to many a land war in Asia, where punishing my opponent is my goal, not winning the game. MAD doctrine is unavoidable, man, and if someone competent screws with you sure, screw right back. But don't delude yourself into thinking it is a game-winning move.

I can expand on this later but does anyone care to disagree with my statement as a whole?

TL;DR: Mackoti had MH. Plako has Dhalphir. Dtay had TBS with Jowy-shackles of stupid. Ichabod has Slowcheetah. Pindicooter have Nakor (maybe) and are c-nav Vikings. Your winner will thus be from among these. Sorry Lewwyn, Finarry, y'all are in my boat.

Also, Krill, this is why I am not fussed in the slightest by map imbalance. Give me Slowcheetah's pitiful start with MH and Nakor as my near neighbors and the rest of the bottom tier beyond, I am a favorite to win...at least if you put mackoti and Plako alone together on the other end of the world.

[Krill]

Nice post, and I don't think there is anything I'd disagree with, given the qualifications.

[SevenSpirits]

Who are you and what have you done with Commodore?

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

Who are you and what have you done with Commodore?

It was there all along, seething just beneath the surface bloodlust, trying to find a way out.

[spacetyrantxenu]

Guys, he didn't swear off MAD duels or anything, he only acknowledged that they might not be the best idea ever. It's the same warmongering Commodore we know and fight.

[BRickAstley]

Commodore is always like this, he just got stuck with the warmongerer mindset after a few unfortunate circumstances, and due to that has had to become warmongerer in order to survive since everyone treats him as a rabid dog.

Or so he tells me.