Gavagai, the God-Emperor

[Gavagai]

I invaded GJ's lands in the "South Africa" and offered him peace. I think, he would be a fool not to accept. Gawdzak already did a great job devastating my eastern coast. Terra will fall this turn and after that GJ will get slightly ahead of me in all important metrics. So, no real reason to keep beating me down. What I'm worried about is Gawdzak landing his army and starting to move deeper inside my territory (and that, by the way, is the main reason I even offered peace without taking any cities). With my troops out of position I won't be able to immediately stop him and will have to allow him to raze cities which were actually possible to defend.
Of course, that would be a pretty risky move by Gawdzak but he seems to have enough ait surveilance to see that I don't have my army anywhere close. Still, I think that after Terra falls it is a good time for him to turn towards GJ. I wonder if he thinks the same and if GJ understands that. He seems to be remarkably oblivious to this threat.

[Gavagai]

Also, I now think that going for Biology and delaying industrialization was the crucial mistake. If didn't do that, I would have battleships and tanks before the start of this war and GJ would be much more hesistant to attack me as he still has nothing of these. And without GJ and with battleships of my own I would have enough forces to defeat Gawdzak's fleet.
On the other hand, it now looks like that I wouldn't be able to stop Gawdzak even without GJ participating. If GJ kept out of war, I would have something like 20 more destroyers and this still wouldn't be enough to kill what Gawdzak has.

[Gavagai]

GJ finished his turn but I wouldn't be able to check if he offered back peace for a pretty long while Well, he at least didn't capture anything.

[Gavagai]

Terra is razed Really, it hurts.It was defended by a single ceremonial archer. My opponents and lurkers must be thinking that I'm an idiot or a pussy as I have given up the best city in the world without a fight. But I could do nothing to defend it, stuffing it with infantry would only result in a one-sided slaughter.

[Old Harry]

So where do you think the balance of power with GJ and Gawdzak lies now? And what's your path back into contention?

[Gavagai]

I have lost about a quarter of my economy which puts me a little bit below GJ in GNP and a little bit below Gawdzak in mfg. This is OK. If Gawdzak has guts to disembark, I will lose at least one more city as my troops are currently out of position but I don't think I'm forced to lose more. If GJ has accepted peace than it will be relatively simple to stabilize. And if Gawdzak attacks GJ and GJ would be able not to break down completely, I would consider myself in a good shape.
If GJ rejects peace than things will be more complex. It will be much harder to keep the situation under control but I will also have an opportunity to gain some land from this war.
I have a plan to research Plastics next and to build this Great Dam. I currently have only one coal plant completed - not sure if my competitors realize that and I'm pretty sure that Gawdzak, for example, already has power almost everywhere. So, I still have potential to expand my production capabilities by far. Of course, that would mean to delay airplanes. In a way it is alike to my earlier Biology gambit which proved to be so disastrous.
Main danger which I currently see is that GJ falls apart right after Gawdzak attacks him - and this can very possibly happen. In this scenario Gawdzak will take most of his land and will become to powerful to really compete with him. That's why I'm not sure if I even should try to get 10 turns of peace from Gawdzak. I want to keep the option to come to GJ's rescue open.

[Gavagai]

Peace with GJ.

[Gavagai]

Peace with everyone. Two thoughts about the war:

1) It is quite remarkable that Joey's participation had zero effect on the end result. All he did was killing something like 20 destroyers of mine but I wouldn't be able to kill Gawdzak's fleet even if I had them. If Joey didn't participate in this war at all, the result would be the same. As I said before his best strategy would be to do nothing and to wait for Gawdzak to kick my ass. Instead he skipped Biology, locked himself in a Police State and sacrificed 30 destroyers of his own.

2) It is interesting to note that both me and Gawdzak were able to achieve strategic results by maneuver alone, without fighting major battles. I forced GJ to peace and Gawdzak forced me to surrender several important cities.

Aftermath thoughts. It appears that we all are now remarkably even in demos. GJ did something mysterious to his mfg to put him a little bit ahead of everyone. Don't really now what could it possibly be, may be completing a lot of coal plants simultaneously. Gawdzak seem to be a little behind in GNP, his gold income is about 2000 gpt while mine and Joey's is about 2500. But Gawdzak is far ahead in power and can afford to build commerce a lot.
This situation seems very stable. Gawdzak is actually colonizing the eastern peninsula of my continent. He is willing to leave quite a lot of troops to protect his new holdings which is surely a sign that he doesn't want to attack GJ. May be this is even a correct decision: it appears that I underestimated his potential earlier.Also, GJ is certainly more capable of defending than I were, though he seems to see me as the only threat and to ignore the possibility of attack from Gawdzak altogether.
It doesn't look like we will have another war. This kind of analyses has already failed me once but I can't really see reasonable war goals for any of us. Battleships make attacking from seas difficult and I don't see how I can navigate my fleet to any important Gawdzak's centers. I thought about attacking from the other side, through Plako's or Dtay's territory but I'm not going to have a good angle their either. In the east Gawdzak has a fat buffer of unimportant cities, I wouldn't be able to one-turn anything valuable at the start of the war.
On a flipside, Gawdzak ran out of opportunities to harm me easily. He will now have to fight a land war if he would want to attack and I will have an advantage of fighting on my continent and a natural defender's advantage.
Potential with with GJ will be very dangerous for both of as. We have quite a few ways to attack each other and to raze stuff. He is certainly more vulnerable than me but I'm not going to start a war only because he would lose more. However, I have no idea what his thoughts are. Unlike me, he is very vulnerable to Gawdzak but it doesn't seem that he cares. He already has shown a propensity to start wars without any reasonable strategic goals. Really, his personality is the biggest X in my analyses. I think, I can understand Gawdzak, his actions were very reasonable all the time. But what this Joey guy is thinking - this I don't understand.

[Gavagai]

Things are looking bad. GJ is building units like crazy, it looks like he is up for a second round. I'm not ready - can't really keep up in the arms race with a guy with about the same hammers as me and in a Police State. Of course, no sign of any hostility between him and Gawdzak. Balance of forces system on which I relied is simply not working for some reason. Really, don't know what I'm supposed to do at that point...

[Gavagai]

Also, it appears that Plako made EE work. Stole Industrialism from me, of all things. I was told that Espionage is nerfed in this mod...