Gavagai's procrastination bin

[Gavagai]

They could. Will they though?
Mjmd is locked in the war against Plemo. He cannot win now (even if he destroys me and Plemo both, Tarkeel still wins by space) and I suspect his only motivation in this game is to stop Plemo from winning. I think Plemo's decision to burn mjmd's Kremlin city just because he could lost him the game.
Tarkeel I think should attack me. I will easily outpace him in a peaceful space race, so his only hope is to defeat me on the field of battle. But military victory will be very hard for him to achieve. I do not have any valuable assets he can easily reach, so it will be an attrition war in which I will have an advantage due to a larger resource pool. I think by now he missed his window - he should have attacked while I was busy with Mig.
Plemo can seriously hurt me if he really focuses on the task. But he needs to deal with mjmd first somehow and I am only a few turns away from getting the capability to deal him a crushing blow at will. His core is very exposed to me and I do not see how he can defend efficiently in the nuclear age.
Win condition - space race. At that point I can launch much faster than anyone else with the possible exception of Plemo if he is able to settle his war with mjmd somehow. But Plemo I can break by military means if necessary.

[Qgqqqqq]

Where's your advantage going to come from? Civics?

Are you stockpiling nukes?

Any thoughts on late game balance on this mod?

[Gavagai]

1) I have massive land advantage. Something like 30 percent to 22 for Tarkeel last time I checked. Land is power. I already dominate mfg - the only reliable stat at that point - and I have archaic civics and the newly captured land is not utilized with full efficiency yet. I am already ahead and yet have room to grow while mjmd and Plemo are fighting and Tarkeel is maxed out.

2) I am currently building 2 ICBMs and 3 Tacticals. Will start on another ICBM next turn. The plan is to focus on research until I reach Computers than use the rest of my GA to build a doomsday arsenal of nukes (little point in investing in research while the Internet is under construction).
On the topic of stockpiling nukes - Plemo continues to ignore basic strategic security principles. ICBMs cannot be moved from city to city, so you need to try building them in places that otherwise unineresting for your opponent to spread your value around. Plemo currently has two ICBMs, one in his Ironworks city that also has Pentagon and Christo Redentor, and another in his Heroic Epic city that, I assume, can produce commandos out of factory line. And guess where he builds his third one - Rom! All his ICBM cities are high priority targets for me already and all are vulnerable to alpha strike. So, this is part of the reason I will so confident about the prospects of fighting him: I can disable a large part of his nuclear arsenal and cripple his economy and military production in one stroke.

3) I have already voiced most of my thoughts in the mod thread. Making gunships easier to access, moving Christo Redentor to Mass Media - this stuff. What I am thinking now is nukes balance, whether nukes were overnerfed. I think Tacticals are fine at 750 but I am weakly inclined to the idea of making ICBMs 1000 or maybe something like 1200. The problem is - ICBMs become very cost inefficient after SDI and you cannot say that about Tacticals. I think their relative price should reflect this fact.

[Gavagai]

I am thinking about the current balance between Cruise Missiles and Tactical Nukes. Tacticals no longer have area damage and they cost almost as much as 20 conventionals. Of course, delivery of 20 missiles represents a logistical hurdle but still I think there is now a range of situations where ordinary missiles become a more cost-efficient tool - need to do some tests. This is by all means a positive result of the nuke nerf.
I also promised mjmd to attack Plemo on T260. I intend to keep the promise unless they make peace. The reason - Plemo dropped a whole package on nuke on mjmd last turn, burnt two important cities and devastated his capital. I think there is a real danger of mjmd losing and I also think I can no longer use mjmd as a meat shield without giving him anything.
The attack will be a huge and seemingly unnecessary risk. I am going to put myself in relation to Plemo into the same position he is now in relation to mjmd. Plemo will have no chance to win after my alpha strike and will have no other purpose in the game but to make me lose. I will have to compete with Tarkeel for space while having this mad monkey on my back. But if I don't do that, I fear mjmd would make peace with Plemo at some point and all three of them would dogpile me as I now emerged as a clear frontrunner. It is better to fight Plemo together with mjmd then to fight three other great powers alone.
The plan, therefore, is to not just to cripple Plemo the way he crippled mjmd - that would be repeating his mistake. I need to break him completely, inflict so much damage that he wound end up eliminated. This, I think, is the only path to victory I have.
In this light - I now doubt Internet is such a good idea. I have no one to steal techs from. Mjmd, I believe, already has his capacity to conduct research broken; Plemo is not much of a techer right now and will not be able to contribute anything after I am done with him. It is just me and Tarkeel, so Internet is useless. Right now Internert would only bring me Refrigeration from space race techs and even Refrigeration is made redundant by Computers. If I can at least get Satellites - it might be a worthwhile investment but I am still unsure. If I am to fight a war with Plemo, I need to build SDI ASAP as going for Internet would slower SDI unless I am able to get both Satellites and Laser. This is highly unlikely. In any case, I have a few more turns before I need to make this choice.

[Gavagai]

Feel devasteted - mostly because I do not know what I could have possibly done differently in this entire game. I feel like I played perfectly - and got owned anyway. There was very little I could do against Plemo, as he decided to play kingmaker against me while having a much larger army.
I offered draw in common thread but if Tarkeel rejects, I concede to him. He is the only player who has a chance to win now.

[Gavagai]

My reasoning was that the game will now shift to a peaceful state, as Plemo and mjmd made peace. We would have three-persons race in which no one wants to attack the other as it just throws the game to the third party. So I was totally blindsided when Plemo decided to throw the game to Tarkeel - despite me being peaceful to him for the entire game and never attacking while he was at war with mjmd.

[Gavagai]

I literally offered fish to fish to him this very turn, so no way he can sell it as some sort of pre-emptive strike.

[greenline]

How much would it have hurt your economic advantage to guard against a Plemo alpha strike? Would Tarkeel have taken the lead in that case?

[klops]

I am slightly confused. Last month, you sounded very confident in case Plemo would attack. Like he has major cities nearby and you could spare a couple fishing villages.

Plemo can seriously hurt me if he really focuses on the task. But he needs to deal with mjmd first somehow and I am only a few turns away from getting the capability to deal him a crushing blow at will. His core is very exposed to me and I do not see how he can defend efficiently in the nuclear age.

Maybe the situation is different now, but I did expect a massive counter strike. Did Plemo hit more than you expected or is more a thing about investing real-life-time?
I guess mp modern warfare makes a day become just work-civ-sleep

[Gavagai]

I am slightly confused. Last month, you sounded very confident in case Plemo would attack. Like he has major cities nearby and you could spare a couple fishing villages.

Plemo can seriously hurt me if he really focuses on the task. But he needs to deal with mjmd first somehow and I am only a few turns away from getting the capability to deal him a crushing blow at will. His core is very exposed to me and I do not see how he can defend efficiently in the nuclear age.

Maybe the situation is different now, but I did expect a massive counter strike. Did Plemo hit more than you expected or is more a thing about investing real-life-time?
I guess mp modern warfare makes a day become just work-civ-sleep

The pace was very slow. He caught me before the "few turns" I talked about passed. He did not deal that much damage, nothing critical was burnt, but he established control over the sea and denied me any future ability to strike at his core.