Gavagai's procrastination bin

[Gavagai]

Plemo picked up Military Science. Very bad news, I low-key hoped he forgot about it. A while ago mjmd made a post in civ general that he does not have much late-game experience and, frankly, this is the moment when it can become critical. I worry he would not understand the significance of that and will be blindsided by commando units.

[Gavagai]

By the way, I thought that machine guns can hard-counter mass cannons, I was wrong. They don't do shit.

[Gavagai]

So, the combo of mass commandos and nukes is the apex of civ warfare. There is no counter to it, no answer. Whoever lands the first blow would break his opponent in a single turn and win.
This is my peril now but this is also my hope. Nuclear war is unavoidable but does Plemo understand this? When you are ahead, pulling the nuclear trigger is an incredibly hard decision to make. Human players do not like nukes. You can hardly hope to destroy all the nuclear capabilities of a competent human player in the first strike. The return strike would inevitably be much weaker but would still ruin at least some of your cities. And no one wants to see their capital they developed throughout the entire game turned into a nuclear wasteland.
The tempting option is to only build just enough nukes to scare off others and go for space. This is a mistake. In nuclear war whoever strikes first wins. If you have an advantage, you are under an obligation to attack or you lose your advantage. Plemo should nuke me as fast as possible, preferably before I even start building nukes, but even after that if need be. This is his only path to victory because otherwise I will nuke him.
Let us see, whether he will be able to make this decision. As I said, it is not an easy thing to do - it requires ruthlessness and clarity of strategic vision which few players possess. In a sense, this would Plemo's last trial. If he passes it - I will be all to happy to bow down to him. He played an incredible game and his victory will be well-deserved.

[Gavagai]

By the way, I am wondering who of the two - Plemo or mjmd - is responsible for the fact that they are still fighting. I think that this war is enormously damaging for both of them, especially now, when Miguelito is collapsing. They should make peace and I wonder why they don't want to do it.

[Gavagai]

Fuck. Plemo just burned a really big city from mjmd. I was right, the dude missed the fact that commandos are a thing now.

[Gavagai]

Mjmd has only one city in his entire empire with high hammer output and that can build ICBMs at reasonable pace. This city also holds the Kremlin. If this is what Plemo took out then fuck. It will be very hard to win.

[Gavagai]

Yep, Plemo burned down the Kremlin. I would say - a ballsy move on his part. One way mjmd can react to this is to decide that he has no other purpose in this game but to stop Plemo from winning it. And when you have access to nuclear weapons, this is pretty easy to achieve.
(It was part of the reason I was always lukewarm towards my plan to burn Rome. There is something in the concept that if you want to deny a path to victory to a strong opponent, you better break him completely.)
Plemo, interestingly, switched out of Vassalage / Theocracy. So, he is not building a proper commando force, it was just a one-shot thing. This, in turn, strongly suggests that he does not understand that this game will be decided in a nuclear war between us (unless he plans to peace out mjmd and attack me right now breaking me by conventional means which is a very risky path to take.)
I am wondering what kind of experience Plemo has - never played against him before and he is an interesting opponent. On one hand, he is doing amazing stuff that suggests lots of experience and a very good understanding of the game and strategy in general. The whole operation against Amicalola was just pure brilliance on all levels. On the other hand - things like key wonders in vulnerable cities and this entire mjmd affair suggest that he is not used to playing MP against competent opposition.

[Gavagai]

Just to make it clear. When I say that the game will be decided in a nuclear war between me and Plemo, I do not mean that one of us will win it. There is a good chance that we destroy each other and Tarkeel takes the win. What I mean is that the game will be decided by the outcome of that war.

[superdeath]

On the other hand - things like key wonders in vulnerable cities and this entire mjmd affair suggest that he is not used to playing MP against competent opposition.

This. Also most of the German forum likes to play with some really old/bad settings, and basically Base BTS.

[superdeath]

This city was size 10 a turn ago, now it is size 1. Typical Superdeath. Behavior like this is the reason why he is the only player on RB I would backstab without a second thought.

Lol. You forced me into doing that.



"I fucking hate myself. Jumped into the game to grab a screenshot and maybe talk more about the potential war with Rome - and discovered Superdeath killed half of my army. Absolutely no reason for him to do it: he needs his units more than I do and we ended up making white peace what I wanted from the outset. We ended up with the same result we both wanted, only with fewer units for both of us, a perfect lose-lose situation. Pretty pissed at both SD and myself: I did not expect him to attack because I was offering peace and the attack would serve no purpose at all. Serves me well to expect SD to behave in a rational and honorable manner.

There will be no more reporting from me for a while, go thank SD for that."

You came forward iirc, with a sizeable stack. Your cav's were fairly well promoted and likely could have shred'd even my few rifles i had in my city. I was FINE with you having taken the 2? 3? cities you had taken from me. It looked to me like you were attempting to finish me off when my true anger was directed towards Mjmd and Tarkeel.

Then at the end when i was making galleys? That wasnt to attack you man. It was to invade the islands of tarkeel/mjmd and maybe raze something important of theirs. You finishing off my final main city kinda screwed with that plan.

I hope you can not hold a grudge in future games. I certainly dont.