Gavagai, the God-Emperor

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

Have you mentioned this in the tech thread?

[Krill]

Yeah, post and tell them to give you a window.

[Gavagai]

Update time, folks.

First, the war is basically won, it was shorter and more successful than I expected.

Let’s go through all fronts I currently have

This is how the results of “Faith” look like:



Here is what happened. When I moved towards Nanjin (now Mordian) Donovan reacted by suiciding his stack of 10 knights and 7 assorted collateral into my army. He achieved nothing and left his cities wide open. I dumped about 1000 EPs into him to get visibility and realized that Beijing (now Scintilla) is left undefended and can be safely captured with knights. I did that and also took Tianjing (Caliban) with units formerly earmarked for Charity (which got cancelled; more on this later). In the north I was able to take Shandong (Dimmamar) amphibiously. What is worthy of note is that Donovan, having visibility on my galleon, whipped there a SotL, of all things, right before my attack.

After that I moved further to Shanghai. At this point Donovan had a small stack of grenadiers (his pre-war tech path was Printing Press – Replaceable Parts – Military Science which is hardly optimal) which he at once suicided along with the few siege units he could scramble, this time killing two Redcoats and two Knights (and a turn later he attacked once). As he was left with no collateral and next to no assault units after that, I was able to split my stack and to capture both Harbin and Shanghai on this very turn.

Now, this is a naval theatre, where Donovan offered me a surprisingly stiff resistance:



Donovan has chosen a very peculiar strategy in this war. As you have seen, my heavy land-based northern stack was practically ignored; on the other hand he started to build a lot of Ships of the Line instead of Grenadiers which were to be expected. In just a few war turns he produced six for the southern sea and two more for the north-eastern (one of them was killed in port).

Also, despite being wrecked from all directions, Donovan has chosen to keep four muskets in Chengdu and still refuses to move them away from there. It looks like that he was more worried about an elusive naval raid than about much more clear and visible threat on land.

Needless to say, I wasn’t quite ready for this. “Charity” had to be cancelled partly because of this reason (and also because “Faith“ developed faster than I expected and the need to capture Tianjin to clear away hostile culture felt more urgent). My fleet is mostly deployed in the east to stay vigilant against Gawdzak and here I had a relatively small naval force. Still, I was able to resolve the developing crisis by capitalizing on Donovan’s mistake. He left Xian (Dregruk) lightly defended and I was able to capture it amphibiously. This effectively cut his fleet in two halves as some of his ships were being transferred from the northern inner sea (and also, I was able to kill a freshly completed SotL in port). Those ships which got trapped in the south were just swarmed (although at great cost: RNG was brutal).

Still, this strategy yielded him at least one important advantage. I now can’t establish control of the northern inner sea without some really painful sacrifices. It means that my plan to take amphibiously ______ and then proceed to Macao will need to get scrapped (unless he fails to block my path, of course, but I don’t count on such mistake). It will win him a few more turns of existence as I will need to reach these cities by land.

Western theatre:



Not much to say here. After Donovan’s main stack got destroyed by “Hope”, he didn’t have much left, so I practically moved in vacuum. My decision to rely mostly on knights here has been proved to be correct, as mobility was more important than strength, just as I expected. As of now, I almost reestablished former HAK’s border and is ready to move further.

One complication here was Plako’s intervention. As you can see, Plako captured Taiyuan from Donovan. He actually raced me for Ultima Macharia but backed off when my knights turned out to be faster. Now he made peace with Donovan but left a lot of observers in the area which worries me slightly. There is a low-probability scenario that he would attack me and try to extend his foothold on my continent while I’m busy finishing off Donovan. This is of low probability because he doesn’t even have Rifling yet.

That's how current war situation looks like. This is what Donovan has now left:



All his six cities. I plan to use former “Faith” stack to capture northern cities and take the rest with my southern troops. I estimate that Donovan should be dead by T210.

I don’t think anyone expected that he would fall that quickly, certainly not me. Why it happened? After all, he was quite large and was in golden age until this very turn and during the crucial pre-war turns. Well, mostly because of two mistakes Donovan made:

1) He failed to prepare to the war properly. Huge resources were spent on researching PP and RP and they turned out to be next to useless after all. Instead, he could just research Military Science straight up and spend some gold on upgrades.

2) He left his western stack in a city threatened by a culture bomb. That was important and the mistake was to keep that many units in HAKland at all. This territory isn’t that much valuable, would be very difficult to hold and in any potential war between us defending his core (or projecting pressure upon Segmentum Obscurus) would be much more important. This is, by the way, one more proof that Mackoti’s strategic choice to expand into HAK was a mistake from start.

Those are the essential mistakes. Of course, building SotLs instead of Grens during the war and futile suicidal attacks against “Faith” stack sped up his demise but by that point, as I estimate, he wouldn’t be able to assemble a large enough stack to stop me anyway. At least, not until I took Shanghai and without Shanghai he can’t hope to hold for much longer.

I would also really like to make a survey of international situation but I really can’t. The world is now in flux and my evaluations change turn by turn. For example, I never thought much about long-term chances of GermanJoey and Gawdzak but now I may want to alter this estimate.

However, few highlights should be given.

1) The biggest news is, of course, 2metra’s attack against dtay. I don’t understand what he hopes to achieve by this and the fact that he burned a valuable city on their border indicates that 2metra himself doesn’t expect to make lasting gains. But 2metra may have a huge army, I suspect that he is the first in power now and I, being, second, have 66(?) Redcoats. But dtay has Nationhood, US and vast resources, so he should be fine, though slowed down significantly.

What is interesting is that Commodore was willing to give dtay 10 turns of guaranteed peace immediately after the war started. Why?

2) Plako built the Sistine which most likely means that he is going for a CV. This is a very important development if true and deserves a separate post somewhen in future.

3) Gawdzak is consuming Furungy while GJ got stack in his war with AdREM. This last one I don’t understand at all, AdREM has less power than Donovan and Donovan has like nothing left.

[Gavagai]

Hey, I tried to make a report but found out that after some changes which google drive has implemented the forum doesn't want to show my pictures anymore. For example, here is the link on one of them: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B65XYyP...RHYWM/view You can open it with the browser but after I put it into image tags the picture just isn't visible. Can anyone help me with it, please? I know nothing about how these things work.

[Gavagai]

I had to switch to an old view of google drive to get correct links back. In this new interface they are nowhere to be found or I'm just retarded. I don't really get what makes software developers cut down useful functionality when updating their programs...

The war with Donovan is over, he is dead now. Right before the end I stole Philosophy from them. This way I returned back at least some part of commerce I earlier invested into EPs against China, though Philosophy was a very cheap tech for me.



Now, to other matters. A lot of important events and processes are happening around the world. Let’s do a quick survey.

1) Imperium ascension.



One of the visible results of my military successes was the fact that I ended up at the top of the score board. In demos, I’m currently the first in food, narrowly ahead of GJ, second to Gawdzak in mfg (not going to beat him to the first place anytime soon; see below) and the first in land by far. My GNP still sucks (well, relatively) but it shouldn’t be for long.
My weakness is that due to constant warfare over the whole region many of my cities are underpopulated, badly developed and badly specialized and a lot of important infrastructure is unbuilt. Also, I lack some crucial technologies in relation to my main rivals and this particular deficit may be of strategic importance. For example, I’m not even close to Assembly Line and Gawdzak already has it. For quite a while I will have to keep up equilibrium with an industrialized neighbor without having access to factories and power plants myself. This is quite a fearsome prospect.

2) Gad-Zak industrialization.



Dreadful Orcish Waaaagh! Gad-Zak which holds the islands to the east of Imperium is still a substantial threat. I’m really still not sure what to make of them. Gawdzak lacks land, he is falling behind in CY despite all his conquests and his empire is spread upon the islands over an equivalent of Pacific Ocean and is very difficult to defend. On the other hand, he already has Assembly Line with no one else even close to it. He is in a golden age and will now rapidly industrialize. Given that he was a leader in mfg even before his GA, his lead in hammers is going to be absurd. His next textbook move would be to make yet another conquest, converting his hammers into more land. This particular nuance makes him a gigantic loose cannon.

[Gavagai]

3) Gad-Zak and Imperium: Destroyer’s race.

Just look at this:



I absolutely can’t afford to lose control over these waters and yet this is very likely to happen. Gawdzak currently needs Railroad – Combustion – Physics – Artillery to unlock destroyers. He has excellent research capacities and a strong incentive to be aggressive. I, on the other hand, need to research all these techs plus Steam Engine (OR I can skip SE, RR and Combustion and go Electricity – Fission instead. But this option appears to be suboptimal).
Of course, it isn’t as bad. In particular, I don’t think that Gawdzak will beeline destroyers. As minimum he will want Communism before. He already lost GSpy race to dtay but his land is covered with workshops and is clearly optimized for state property. He may also want US, though about this I’m not sure. Stature of Liberty doesn’t look especially attractive for him because of reasons obvious.
On my side, I need two crucial techs outside of destroyer’s sequence. I need Corporation which everyone of importance already has and which worth few hundreds units of base commerce for me. Also I need Biology as food is increasingly becoming a bottleneck of my empire. Also, I have a GA (Mausoleum-powered!) scheduled pretty soon. During the GA I will be able to switch at last from my archaic civics (Bureaucracy is ridiculous when you have more than 50 cities) and adopt Representation/Environmentalism. This will really boost up marginal utility of my citizens and not having Biology will become a huge bottleneck.
Of course, I’m going to try to delay respective hard decisions for as long as possible, observing what Gawdzak is doing. But for now I’m going to research Corporation but ignore Biology until after Destroyers.

4) Tyranids and the Korean heroes.



For a long time GJ had some ridiculous problems with the conquest of Korea. A few turns ago, however, he seemed to have broken there back and is now taking cities rapidly. I don’t expect Korea to live longer than for a few more turns. Also, GJ finished off Furungy taking what Gawdzak left to him. This way he will soon end up with an empire in all respects comparable with mine, though much more difficult to defend.
Another interesting story is Physics race. Few turns ago I contemplated an attempt to get Physics scientist as I’m in an urgent need of a golden age (more on that later). I deduced that my only competitor is likely to be GJ: Plako, Dtay and 2metra are busy, Commodore doesn’t have enough commerce (and is also busy) and Gawdzak clearly has different priorities. With that in mind I started to research SciMethod and invested enough EPs into GJ to look into his research. Of course, he was researching SciMethod too and he had better GNP than me. I decided to finish SciMethod anyway as I wanted Biology… and then GJ switched into Steam Engine, having Physics half-researched. I thought that I can have a shot at scientist after all, put a couple kilobeakers into Physics only to see GJ switching back and taking this prize. Perfect troll, man, perfect.

[Gavagai]

5) GJ, Gaw and Gav: a stable equilibrium?



Assuming that none of us three screws up and we all willhave destroyers in time, I think, that we are going to have a lasting peace in our macro-region. The rules here are clear and simple: a total war between any two of us is an auto-win for the third one. And limited war doesn’t even worth broken trade routes. Hence, we are going to live in peace. Of course, it would benefit me as I have the shortest border to guard and the highest potential to develop.
Of course, I would love to see a war between GJ and Gawdzak and not only from in-game perspective. I mean, just look at their border.

That’s about it for now. Events on the other continent may be surveyed in a different post, I think.

[Gavagai]

Gawdzak got Physics which is actually very scary. Now, after the scientist is taken, prioritazing Physics makes sense only if you want to beeline destroyers. And... he should want them really badly if he is willing to skip Communism for a while. State Property will be a very powerful civic for his empire. Also, his GNP seems a little bit too high even for a golden age, I suspect he is building a lot of commerce. This is also a sign of a high priority which he assigns to research.
And this is something I would actually do on his place. Forthcoming equilibrium will work to his disadvantage and getting destroyers early will be his best chance to break it. I will need to think what I can do about this. Currently I'm leaning towards finishing Corps and then making a beeline of my own while building research everywhere except a few cities engaged in crucial projects. I'm not sure, though, if it will be enough.

[Old Harry]

Great report! Thanks.

[Gavagai]

Got Commodore's graphs. Poor Plako, Commodore's game looks like a complete troll.