Gavagai manages his personal GULAG

[Gavagai]

Techwise I plan to target Free Speech, picking up Cuirs techs in process. It appears that I will be controlling huge carpets of green cottages, so FS seems fitting. Rep also will be useful as I seem to be having empire-wide food proficit on balance.

Another targets are Frigates, Stature of Liberty, Kremlin.

[Gavagai]

A bunch of news this turn. First, this happened:




HAK declared on boak which confirms the reputation of bloodthirsty maniac. I mean, look:




His has no power and if the stack I can see is truly his main stack, it's just nothing. He will be shredded in pieces.

It appears that he is relying on my vague promise of help which I gave 10 turns ago in a completely different situation. Not something you build your game around. He actually sent me an iron/horse for iron/horse deal with 1 gold on top - which I read as "I need you to attack RIGHT NOW!"

And I've made another discovery this turn:




It appears that some of my assumptions about the map were completely wrong and Adrien actually has another border with boak. It most probably means that he signalled me about a forthcoming attack against boak, not Barteq. He actually reacted to HAK's move by this:




Apparently he decided to speed up his schedule.

In return I sent this to both:




I decided that I'll move a part of my army against Chesterton. I don't think I want to sacrifice much to take the city and will back off if I decide it is too costly; but I would like to keep boak pressured at least until Adrien is fully commited. Also, I did offer them a coalition against boak before and feel obliged to provide at least a token help now. At least, it would make my move against Barteq more surprising - and potentially more powerful. If boak, Adrien and HAK are entertaining each other, I'll be able to leave only a small screen on my eastern front and fully concentrate on Barteq.

I think, that a comprehensive plan of Barteq war will be completed during this weekend. Stay tuned!

[Gavagai]

Almost forgot but this may be of interest. My demos in golden age after I switched into Monarchy - Vassalage - Serfdom - Theocracy:




As expected, I surged up in MFG and GNP. On the other hand, I dropped to 7th place in food from the fourth - and this is after removing just a few food tiles.

[Gavagai]

Barteq got a great scientist, so I assume he'll fire up a GA. Also, he has Guilds now. All these will make the war against him just a bit more complicated. It makes me doubt the idea to launch an offensive against boak even further, especially given that Adrien and HAK seem to be doing a good job on their own.

[Gavagai]

OK, the reason I'm not reporting my war plans is that I have become sceptical about perspectives of the war with Barteq. Castles and knights are just too much pain in the ass. I'm running a huge risk of entangling myself into a long war of attrition on a remote front. I should win eventually because I have a huge production advantage but at huge cost. Much better option is to come later with Cuirs and gain an easier victory.
This makes me turn my attention to the east once again. I think I'll take a couple cities from Boak and fully annex HAK. I've got a lucky great scientist, so should still have an option to bulb Astro after I clear away Philosophy. After this Chemistry will become a priority.

Will try to upload some pictures later.

[Gavagai]

For lurkers: who is "macmic" and why he is logging for taotao at the same time when mackoti is posting in his thread? If mackoti decided to come back playing with taotao after reading lurker's thread, I'm gonna object.

[mackoti]

For lurkers: who is "macmic" and why he is logging for taotao at the same time when mackoti is posting in his thread? If mackoti decided to come back playing with taotao after reading lurker's thread, I'm gonna object.

I am not playing just looking around whats happening because no one reports..., well you a litle bit from time to time...I would enjoy loggin in yours as well tsometime if thta would not disturn you too much.

[Gavagai]

Sorry, mac, I thought myself that I was too paranoid right after I posted this. You are free to log into my civ, btw, at least to fuck with other players' heads.

[Gavagai]

OK, posting pictures.




This is how my idea to attack Barteq originally looked like. The plan was to quickly raze Tenochtitlan before he is able to muster up a proper response and assume a defensive position there. It will cut off two large fragments of his empire (directly to the south of Tenochtitlan and to the south-west) which could be then captured at comfortable pace. However, Barteq is too militarized (I saw something like 10 knights in his territory already) and castles mean that blitzing him is possible only at huge cost. He keeps a lot of junk in cities AI-style and behind 100% defense bonus even a Jaguar gets decent odds against a Knight. I think I'll better wait until Cuirs to execute this operation. Will also be able to support with Galleons from the eastern sea.




And this is my idea for the war against HAK. I'm going to take to boak's cities and circel towards HAK's territory while preparing two follow up attacks from the north-west. Three cities can be one-turned and I hope to blitz most of his core before he is able to repostion his main army.




This is his main army which isn't particularly impressive. He got some beating from boak on previous turn and had to give up one of newly conquered cities. However, I think that now boak should relocate his army to a more urgent front (more on this later), so HAK may even gain some more ground and move his army out of position even further.




Frankly speaking, Adrien here is getting a little more success than I'm comfortable with. His units are dangerously dispersed and a strong counter-attack could be devastating for him. However it looks like boak's army is very far away, so Adrien has a good shot at keeping a large chank of his core.
Bad news for Adrien is that I think Barteq will attack him soon. Barteq power is high already and he is building way more units than he needs just to defend himself. Of all his targets Adrien appears to be the most vulnerable.
Of course, Barteq's power level by itself isn't a meaninful indicator. He had a very high power during the whole game but didn't really attack anyone but total cripples. Still a large war between Adrien and Barteq would be a dream scenario for me.

[Gavagai]

Barteq has put 585 EP into Adrien (to put it in perspective, he has 189 EPs in me and even less in everyone else). I think he should have visibility by now.