[PB25-SPOILERS] The Lunacy of the Reign of HAK Continues

[MindyMcCready]

Only good thing is that unless they are somewhere hidden, Tas may have sunk 2 of Commodore's Galleys. Since I now only see 3 up there. And he bunched together all of his Caravels in the south into a single stack.

So my only chance of being able to whip out the Taj is if I can get Tas to accept a trade that would include him sending me Marble. I don't really understand the 34gpt that he's asking/demanding from me. With the Iron from him, I can only guess he's hoping I'll pay him that much for him helping to fight Commodore. But he needs us to be aligned just as much as I do.
In either case, I think I may send back this trade but asking for his Marble instead of the Iron (which is obviously just symbolic)....but I don't think I can justify that much gold. So just trying to decide how much. Though if we do land Taj, it would pay for itself pretty quickly. And if we don't, it's basically game over.

I just reviewed this post of yours. With Tasunke having DOW on MC,...well that changes quite a bit. If MC really has 10 knights on those galleys he's going to be more than a little nervous of bringing them deep within our coastal territory with the possibility of facing 2 sets of caravels.

We may not want to screw around with Tasunke. Despite his bad faith deal we both stand to gain from an alliance over the island. MC would be a crazy to take a stab at the island with both of us up in naval arms. And he's also lost a lot of mobility options if we were his intended target all along.

Alternatively, we DOW tasunke to cancel the GPT deals. Later, if we manage to hold onto both cities, we make the remainder of the payment. The marble,...well 500g/ 50gpt probably eats up a fair chunk of our gain from the GA. Denial value,...priceless. :LOL:

As for iron, I guess Tas thinks that we're reliant on iron? We need it for LKs,...but not for maces. We're not building too many CBs and should soon be replaced with cheaper, better LBs. This 34 gpt + everything is really insulting if he wants to forge an alliance. I'm not really liking his diplo,...not one little bit. This is, at best, an alliance of convenience. If he was going to lose those cities anyway,...we gave him a hell of a good price for something that was essentially zero value to him.

I'd think that he'd want to reciprocate good things rather than exploit us further to prevent a DOW cancellation of his GPT.

A lot can change, but I like where this game is going. While MC wealth builds his way to a bunch of first to bonuses,...we draft 30 maces + build 20 cats over the next 10 turns and relieve "Gavagai the Instigator" :LOL: of his cities. 10T from now we should be able to force a lot of retreats out of Gavagai.

We do not declare peace with MC until it's strategically to our benefit to do so. I hope to get an acknowledgement from you on this point HAK.

10T from now we take our new 50 units over to GavagiLand while having enforced peace with MC. At that point we may let MC give Tasunke a well deserved thumping,....or maybe 100 gpt for an iron-alliance.


[EDIT]: Usually it's iron-iron on both sides trade to indicate alliance. So probably he's just trying to exploit us. Who knows? But I'm not inclined to buy his very expensive alliance or iron that we're not highly dependent on.

[HitAnyKey]

Sitting here in car waiting to go into my interview in about 15min. So typing from phone without being able to view your post to directly reply. Just wanted to mention that I agree with having no peace with Comm until it's good for us. That trade deal with Tas does suck but necessary to attempt to get Taj. If he accepts the 40gpt plus the resources I sent him then I whip it. If it ends up being a coin flip and Comm still beats us to it then I might want to do the DOW to renegotiate the war alliance since the high price I'm paying for the Marble would no longer be needed since we get our own marble back online next turn.
I really do hope those two galleys of commodore were loaded with knights. Those 4 knight losses plus the two galleys might give him pause to push into my core.
as discussed I should be back by 4pm for us to finish the turn and discuss optoons. Hopefully Tas will log in by then.

[MindyMcCready]

Just wanted to mention that I agree with having no peace with Comm until it's good for us.

Thanks.

Those 4 knight losses plus the two galleys might give him pause to push into my core.

Those galleys were loaded! Rival best power dropped from 843K last turn to 810K this turn.

Coincidentially(?), this is a drop of 33K power,....could Tasunke's diplo refer to this? Possible, but unlikely, since he'd need to be doing the graph analysis with a high degree of precision (I was generally off say 5K from actual when MC was top power). As with almost all AI diplo we can't tell exactly what the heck he's trying to say.

So on top of whatever MC built,...he's down 33K. Yeah, we're probably not going to see one of MC's typical threat/NAPs. In fact, as we grow to +200K over next best,...he's going to be the one crossing his fingers.

So we should be able to more heavily weight sending drafts to BorscheLand since MC might be a little more prudent.

We could also redeploy some of our island units to protect Thebes since our chance of holding it just increased.

And just to be clear,....those sunk galleys were the ones heading in our direction?

[HitAnyKey]

Back from my interview and will be logging into the game shortly. So anytime you become available to pop into the googledoc to chat, I'm here now.

[MindyMcCready]

:LOL: Did you see MC's new avatar? Wonder if that's got anything to do with us? I guess we'll find out tomorrow.

He's lurking PB28,...

[Dreylin]

You should check out his PBEM64 thread.

[HitAnyKey]

Heh. Something tells me it just may have something to do with us. Ooops. LOL
And I'll have to go check out PBBEM64 later tonight I guess. About to head out to dinner with my wife.

[HitAnyKey]

Just a single screenshot for now to start things off.....






Now to figure out what to do now that I've destroyed my capital and made it this puny little city. Yes, that 7pop whip was crazy.....but yes, it was fun! Especially for the denial factor to keep Commodore from getting it.

[HitAnyKey]

On the War-Front, he landed 2 Knights on the island. Likely as a quick probe, since I see he left the units on the other 2 galleys in the stack. I'll be 1pop whipping that LK out of Thebes this turn. So that city will be safe from the knights.



Down in the south, his 3 Galleys are still incoming. The rest of his units on the mainland seem to be comprised of groups and location for defense. Probably to keep me from tossing a stack into that area, which it will accomplish. With those units, I can't hit those cities with what I have.


As an aside, Gavagai has 2 Galleys and 3 Triremes just to the east inside his borders. I have a feeling, he will also take a shot at the island. So with both of them hitting it, it's going to be a lost cause.

Lastly, as you can see I have city visibility again just due to the base EPs I get on him each turn. And also this turn just got enough to see into this one city closest to me.



And what it shows is that he's actually going for Gunpowder first before Liberalism (he got Education this past turn). And he'll have it in 2 turns. So that's a bit of an issue. Since my walls and castles won't stop those Muskets. But hopefully I'll get enough of something before he can get too many Muskets to throw past my walls.

Now on to playing the turn and reviewing internal stuff.

[The Black Sword]

Congrats HAK. Good job figuring out what you needed to do and getting it done.

Next time you might want to start thinking about the overflow a bit earlier now that you know how it works.

Any chance of a big overview shot? Hopefully stealing the Taj makes the game a lot tighter.