Gavagai's procrastination bin

[Tarkeel]

2) Tarkeel and Civac are the weakest of great powers, I think, at least in terms of potential. Their demos are good right now because they timed their GA very well and revolted into very powerful civics. But they rely on religious buildings greatly (AP + Sancnore) and SciMethod will hurt them greatly. Also they have no corps and are very unlikely to land Sushi, I believe - long-term this is very bad. They are behind me in tech (though by now they almost caught up because I am spending money on upgrades) and I am significantly behind Rome and mjmd. I signalled them I am going to attack Rome some time ago and they signaled they'll help but without any specific date. I suspect they will do nothing, content to develop peacefully while the world burns around them. Last turn I sold them Oil for corp resources so they can now build metal navy despite the lack of SciMethod. Maybe it would make them bolder.

Totally agree that we were the weakest of the great powers, but we would have followed into a war, but had to rely on being the follower.

Ok, Biology they are guaranteed to take - both mjmd and Tarkeel have it. Refrigeration is cheap, so whatever. But I am definitely going to delay Superconductors now (I assume Tarkeel will be there before me), even though this is not how the space race is supposed to be played.

We actually went Laser for SDI, and hadn't settled on the next tech just yet.

4) I will have another golden age before the game ends. I doubt any of my rivals, excluding maybe P&P can say the same about themselves.

We didn't have a guaranteed golden age, but it was a possibility.

5) I have a decent shot at getting Aluminium Inc. I believe in the space race context the combo of CreCon / Aluminium Inc is stronger than Mining Inc as it will give me more research in the end.
I expect that in my final form I will have a higher output than Plemo - and I mean significantly higher. Especially if I add Miguelito's cities (which I plan to do). Mjmd and Tarkeel, I believe, are irrelevant as space race rivals. Mjmd is not going to win by space due to his setup, unless he wins or loses on the battlefront. Tarkeel is simply too weak, not having a corp is crippling. He still can get Sid's Sushi but I don't think even this would be enough. So, the game will be decided by the answer to the following question: will Rome be able to launch before I catch up with them?
And these considerations define my endgame strategy: victory in the nuclear war. I will let Rome build their spaceship, maybe I will even let them launch. Their problem is that they don't have that much strategic depth. They will be eliminated from the game before their spaceship arrives. This is what I am going to count on.

Yes, lack of a corporation was crippling. We almost got Sushi, which I think would have been a very good compliment to the civics we were running.

The only realistic scenario of me losing at that point is Tarkeel attacking and being surprisingly succesful. But it will be very hard for him to seriously hurt me as it is very difficult to reach any high-value targets of mine from his territory.

At this point we also had you down as the leader, and were set on performing the ceremonial duty of attacking the leader. We might have gotten some useless cities in Superland, but not sure how much real damage we would have done to your core alone.

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.

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.

Honestly, I feel like a draw is the fairest outcome here. I don't see a way anyone wins this game by any other means than pure luck.

[Tarkeel]

Also, and this deserves a post on it's own, I think you were probably the most deservedly victor. I was very impressed with how you played your game, building instead of conquering early on and then eating neighbors with minimal loss before being Superdeath-ed. I don't think we had any beef with you at any point, so the only reason we were about declare war was to make you prove you could win this.

[Plemo]

Sorry Gav I had no intention of playing kingmaker. Rather, my goal has been to draw for quite some time, since everyone played a very good game for me. I could have taken your city Gimle for a longer time (10 turns?) just as I could have taken Tarvac's city Kaladim at almost any time with ICBM and Nukes. That I chose you is due to several things: Your trade with Mjmd, your many transporters, your single visible submarines, and the location of my most important cities on your border.

[Plemo]

So, mechanics question. What possible reason P&P could have to move their capital to Adrea? It must be some "same continent" effect but it escapes my mind which one of them could be relevant.

You were pretty close here with the continent thing. We had too many big merchants and therefore couldn't ignite a golden age. So we used a total of two merchants for trade missions. By moving the capital, we got 600 more gold each in Tarkeel's ToA city (2700 gold per merchant).

[Qgqqqqq]

Huh that's really smart.

[Gavagai]

So, mechanics question. What possible reason P&P could have to move their capital to Adrea? It must be some "same continent" effect but it escapes my mind which one of them could be relevant.

You were pretty close here with the continent thing. We had too many big merchants and therefore couldn't ignite a golden age. So we used a total of two merchants for trade missions. By moving the capital, we got 600 more gold each in Tarkeel's ToA city (2700 gold per merchant).

Fucking ingenious, I think such idea would have never crossed my mind.

[Mjmd]

Gavagai
What happened with RB players during my absence? In my previous game, Nauf got bloodlusted because of a deer, now mjmd is going berserk because of a fish. Guys, can't you chill out?

Me trying to take the fish was because you had pillaged Jacks improvements even though I offered open borders for your warrior to get out. 

There is a huge gap in your reporting so was wondering why you invaded me? AI diplo at the time we basically were telling each other "yes plemo is a threat" but for some reason you thought I would just let a major city go? I had specifically never roaded the hill tile toward you so there was no chance of me doing a "surprise" invasion vs you.

Gavagai
Rome attacked mjmd. I need about six more turns to set up a raid on Rome and other stuff. I fear in that time mjmd will be overrun. I sent him a complex charade asking him to tell me where my oil is (I do not have SciMethod yet), let's see if he figures it out.

A) Glad I could outperform expectations of being overrun and B) ya I didn't understand that message. I think I took pictures of as I was trying to figure out but never posted in my reports. C) did you ever understand my AI diplo of attack Plemo and I'll let you win? T/C also didn't understand that AI diplo. This was later in the game when I requested iron and was giving aluminum and fish for 100 turns.

I forgot to quote it but basically you wondering why flight over artillery can be seen in my massive book of a war. Any stack can just be nuked. So a stack of artillery moving in can just be nuked. A stack in a city can just be nuked. Flight offered me range in attack and capability I was otherwise lacking and was a key component to being able to push Plemo back on peninsula. I was close to taking Captain Morgan multiple times without artillery and eventually scrounged up enough nukes to take it all without ever getting my own stacks nuked. 

And ya I can't take credit for my whip economy, I stole that idea from Amica. My land didn't really have another good late game engine. Although if I had a chance for peace I think I could have done T/Cs economy but maybe even better, but that would have taken longer to set up. 

Gavagai
Plemo did something that caused him to lose 184 points during his turn. Did he nuke himself? I am lost for explanations.

If you do your whips REALLY close together time wise they show up as one whip. I'm assumed at the time / am assuming he did this to hide how many ICBMs specifically he built. Let me tell you I had a heck of time moving units around to avoid stacking too many units in one place because of it.

Gavagai
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 think some others pointed it out using your own quotes about first strikes, but yes basically not having a strong army / navy and not first striking would be the mistakes. I also don't think it was king making. I was fine taking the draw as literally I think any of you other 3 had legitimate shots as you had actual production (as you noted my whip economies can't do this, have to rely on conquering), but ya it would have been a prolonged game of switching 2v1 wars, so can understand why other people also wanted a draw. Edit: my only out was this 2v1 switching went on so long I could eventually sweep you all up lol, but I suspect a straight space race would have developed first.

[Gavagai]

1) I attacked you because at that point I believed you were running away with the game. From my perspective I had to at least hurt you while you had no army, otherwise I would be overrun with the rifles. The way I saw it, just forcing you to whip lots of Medieval units was already a win (though I hoped to be able to grab and hold Jack's capital).
This perception started to shift just immediately before the attack. When Plemo won the Taj race against my expectation, I saw it as a reason to massively reevaluate the game state (I think it happened just around the date of my invasion). I had an agreement with Plemo that he would join into my war a few turns after me (that was the reason I was so optimistic about how the war would end) and it was actually a big incentive for me to give you a quick peace because now I would not want Plemo to become stronger at your expense.
Later I was reluctant to give back the city because I did not want to give you a land border with Mig, because I thought I could defend it against you and thought you just had to make peace with the idea that the city is mine. But eventually I decided that it would be a better idea to give you the city and free up forces to attack van rober.
2) No, I did not understood that you were going to let me win. I think I need to explain why I was so reluctant with my attack against Plemo. My idea was that I should not repeat the same mistake Plemo made with you - burn one big city and then get locked in an eternal struggle forever. Or, to put it in a different way, I was aware that Tarkeel existed and thought that our three-way war would just hand the game to him.
I wanted not just to hurt Plemo but to crash him completely and do it fast enough that Tarkeel would not run too far away in space race. I did intend to go through with my promise to join you war on T260. The plan was to destroy Plemo's corporate HQs, his island capital, his Redentor / Pentogon city, his Heroic Epic city, a couple of other high-value production cities, his Eastern fleet - all in one attack with almost twenty nukes to spend on it. I imagined that after that kind of blow it would be relatively easy to finish him off and eliminate from the game. Of course, it all was conditional on you tieing up his forces which did not happen.
3) I now think my main mistake there was attacking Mig. I invested quite a lot in that war and cannot say that I had time to really enjoy its fruits. But I am not sure I could possibly see it before the fact.
Also, I could not imagine that Plemo would try to force a draw instead of playing for win - this idea is simply rather alien to me. His attack did not really hurt my economy - only one of the cities he razed was of some value and even its value was not particularly high. The problem with Plemo's attack was that he destroyed my alpha-strike capacity. My fleet was exposed and I could not really shelter it from him without giving up my own capactity to alpha-strike. I could still fight a war with Plemo and maybe eventually took all Amicalola's land from him but that would be a pointless slog as I would not be able to win the game after that in any case.
4) With respect to Flight - I did not understand your position, I thought it was about survival in the next few turns, not about planning for nukes.

[Mjmd]

1) Ya I didn't know you had coordinated with Plemo for an attack. Suffice it to say I think Plemo takes the game in a walk if you had gone through with it. And I also expected you to just roll into Vanrober. I was actually really worried about you freely just taking Vanrober and then straight into SD before he had rebuilt forces. I'm pretty sure that was the winning move and instead you took 1 city and then we stared at each other for a while. And then you finally went and did the correct thing.

2) Ya I wasn't sure if you would actually go in on T260 since you hadn't before (which was the right play probably, but did have consequences in me wanting to keep fighting once my war aims were completed). Now if you or T/C had attacked when I asked either of the times I did, it would have gone very well for the first person to take that deal.

3) I liked the Mig attack. If the game had gone on much longer you would have been really glad for it.
-How is Plemo attacking you not playing for a win? You were clearly benefiting from a peace dividend and going super light on forces. By first striking and bringing you down he made himself a lot safer and got himself in a better position going forward. It stopped you from winning and he was still in it. Now me, I was out of the game and I was pretty sure I was just going to sit out the rest of the game and watch the fireworks.

4) it was more that I didn't consider it needed because nukes weren't that far away. A good reason to push tactical nukes effectively back on tech tree in newest version of mod. On the other hand flight was fantastic for attritioning bombing resources, cutting railways / roads, and softening up cities. To be fair this may have been an abnormal late game for importance of air power.

[Gavagai]

1) My economy sucked after I eliminated the general and if I immediately tried to consume rober it would suck even more while you were running away with tech. I was worried you would just come in with Rifles and take whatever you want.
3) Plemo attacking me was not playing for win because Tarkeel existed. As I said, he did not actually hurt me much, I still had a higher output than he did. My intent was to put this entire output to the task of fighting him and I was not going to give him peace until the end of the game. Given we were in nukes era, I do not see how he would win space race against Tarkeel under these conditions and I am pretty sure he understood all of this. So, no, it was not a play for win.