TECH UPDATE: https://support.gog.com/hc/en-us/article...roduct=gog - this appears to work.
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Gavagai climbs the chaos ladder
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Wow, it's been almost two months... A lot has happened and I think I owe some sort of report to the lurkers. I keep forgetting to make screenshots but I think an unillustrated report is still better than no report at all. At least, others are reporting quite a lot, so I'll assume lurkers are familiar with basic geographic facts about the game.
1) TLDR of what happened so far. There are not three as I initially thought but only two continents, a large one and a small one. We have Donovan. the General, metal, Magic Science, and the Egypt team on the small one and everyone else on the large one. On the small continent we have a chaotic free-for-all war, more on that below. On the large continent Commodore conquered Bing and I conquered GT. No significant movements in the war between Plemo, Superdeath and Tarkeel. Plemo peaced out Tarkeel some time ago and just this turn made peace with SD. 2) Let's start with my situation. I had to rush my invasion to GT because the dude consumed almost all of scooter and was close to Engineering which would make the war ten times more difficult. Happily, all went smoothly, the war went the way you would expect from the war between Knights and mostly classical army. Attacking early turned out to be a good call, I was able to break GT's back before he teched up to Engineering. GT is still finding ways to be annoying though, a couple of turns ago he made peace with scooter and a stack of over ten highly promoted units got teleported to scooter's former backyard, far away from my main forces. That was among the most random pieces of crap I ever so - not the peace teleportation itself but how the hell he had all these units in scooter's land during all the time I've been taking his cities. Why did he go there in the first place - did he not understand I am going to attack? Whatever, I cleaned up this infestation and now I am going after his island holdings. Unless I get really screwed by rng, GT will be eliminated in three turns. Domestically, I won Liberalism race, pretty much uncontested, and launched the golden age. I will mostly be saving gold during GA, though, because my gold multiplier is actually much higher than my science multiplier. After GA I will use the saved gold to quickly tech up to Rifling. 3) Commodore. Last time I reported I said his position is dominant. To help you understand what sort of BS I am dealing with - we both have 30 cities right now but Commodore took the equivalent of one civ's land to get here while I had to take the equivalent of three (xist, GT, scooter). To be fair, he settled some Astro islands and I am not quite done with GT and scooter but still - impressive map balance here. Luckily, Commodore is doing some weird bullshit which gives me a fighting chance. He stole Economics merchant from me, got there one turn early (yeah, I am losing all close races in this game). In a large part it happened because he teched Philosophy - it threw me off because researching Philosophy only makes sense if you want Nationalism. So I reacted accordingly and was blindsided when he went Philosophy - Education - Economics. Wtf is that tech path, seriously? Then he had a weird affair with Plemo when he took a city on an island near Plemo's core, tried to hold on to it but eventually lost it and peaced out. Now I expect Plemo to be pissed with Commodore and I think he will do all he can to stop Commodore from winning. I will give Plemo all the help I can, I actually consider subsidizing him for free after I get through my critical tech bottlenecks. He is going to be an excellent bone in Commodore's throat if he survives - and he is very likely to survive. At first, I thought it was a genius move to push Plemo towards implosion as it would leave a huge power vacuum for him to fill right up to Piccadilly's border. I do not know whether this was his idea but it backfired hard. Now, I thought Commodore has two viable paths forward. - Bet on land power big, get early Rifling and crush Tarkeel. - Bet on sea power, go Chemistry -> Steel and rely on Muskets and Cannons to crush Tarkeel while putting pressure on me in the Southern Ocean. He chose neither and decided to go for SciMethod instead which, I think, is the same mistake the Egypt team made (more on that below). Now he just needs to hope Pindicator and Tarkeel won't do the smart thing which is dogpiling him. Commodore's army right now is pretty much non-existent. A big tell for me is that he did not go Chemistry before SciMethod, even though it has lots of synergy with SciMethod path. It means he does not value sea power that highly. I, on the other hand, believe that the game will be decided by who controls the Southern Ocean and have big plans in that regard. We will see who ends up being right. 3) Ginger / Miguelito (aka "the Egypt team"). So, recall how long time ago I told that prioritizing religious wonders over military expansion was a losing move. Oh, how right I was! Egypt eventually ran out of religious tech to research and went into berserker mode, building the largest army in the world. But it was a bit too late - he had to fight Magic Science at tech parity and the war obviously did not go as planned. At that moment Donovan and the General did the stupidest thing possible by giving Egypt ten turns of peace (thus performing worse than lethargic metal who did nothing). Back then I thought it is all over but Magic was able to fight off Egypt somehow and after their peace treaties expired, Donovan and the General re-entered the war. Once again, I though it was all over but no, Donovan made peace with Egypt and is now attacking Magic instead while Egypt is making gains against the General. So, there is a total clown fiesta going on. Amid all this, Egypt is very close to Rifling (and Donovan must know that, so idk what is his plan here). I imagine, after they get Rifling, they will quickly murder everyone. Despite completely misplaying their position, they still have a pretty good shot at winning the game, not far behind me and Commodore in that respect. That's how good their position is. 4) Pindicator, who has the strongest army in the world right now, is also not without still winning chances. His needs to entangle himself from Amica (who has a lot of units) at all cost and go after Commodore, together with Tarkeel. Unfortunately, I don't think this is going to happen. He has a weak economy but despite that chose to invest in Astro which suggests to me he has his eyes on the small continent. Bad idea if true - Egypt will eventually throw him back into the sea. But I feel he has some sort of understanding with Commodore, otherwise I do not get why Commodore is so chill. Pity. 5) I do not get what Piccadilly is doing. When I went after GT that was his window - he had to either backstab me or attack Superdeath. He did neither and instead kept his stack in a very aggressive spot from which it could quickly reach my HE city. So during my war with GT I had to almost always keep half of the army in reserve. I even considered a pre-emptive strike - probably it would be the most accurate way to play this: use the entire war with GT as a feint and go after Piccadilly instead. I also offered him to capture GTs city which was closest to him and out of the way of my main strike. He refused and kept his stack in its aggressive position instead. Now Superdeath offers me to dogpile him in five turns. I tentatively agreed, though 5 turns is too soon, I will need at least seven. What worries me about Piccadilly is that he can get Rifling at about the same time as me and I really do not want to fight Toku's Rifles. So the correct play might be to strike him sooner, cripple his Economy, so that when I come back later with Rifles, he does not have a counter. That's all for now. Any questions or requests from lurkers?
What are your big plans for the southern ocean?
Erebus in the Balance - a FFH Modmod based around balancing and polishing FFH for streamlined competitive play.
(April 1st, 2024, 20:26)Qgqqqqq Wrote: What are your big plans for the southern ocean? This is very long-term. I want to convert the entire Eastern shore of GTland and all the islands into a giant shipyard. Go Steel immediately after Rifling and then apply some serious pressure on Commodore. If he is not careful, I'll take all the islands he has settled there and terrorize his coastline. But more likely the Southern Ocean will become an arena for complex positional warfare until the end of the game. I am building Notre Dame. This wonder is a bit underrated, in my opinion: it never obsoletes and happiness is often a scarce resource in late game wars. Power. This is actually a pretty fast buildup from Commodore. Perhaps, he is sensing danger from Pindicator who took Amica's last mainland city this turn. Now Pindicator's army is no longer tied up. If you ask me, his most reasonable course of action would be to slam it into Commodore. I am not even sure this development would be to my liking: in the late game Pindi is a more fearsome opponent than Commodore. Demos. Me and Commodore share the lead in everything interesting except power and observe how close we are to each other (he is also in GA). I guess, I can count it as a win given that Commodore has more pop (something like 17% against 15% in Victory screen). On the other hand, Commodore is now in Pacificm and Mercantilism, combined they should tank his GNP considerably. I expect him to revolt to Free Market and some sane religious civic at the end of GA. Tactical situation at Piccadilly's border. Both Madurai and Madras have trivial garrisons. I can take them at the first turn of war. It would free up the Banana tile 2W from Madurai from Indian culture, which, in turn, would allow me to eliminate Piccadilly's defensive stack 2N from Madurai. Piccadilly has castles everywhere and this is actually a concern. Even after I have Rifles castles would matter as it would slow down the speed with which I can bring down defensive bonuses. And this, in turn, would mater if Piccadilly would defend with Riflemen of his own. I am considering building some Trebs. GT's last stand. The most annoying thing he can do here is to build a castle. But he has been ignoring those (forgot they exist?) and now he does not have time. He needs to build walls first and if he does this, I'll just pillage the stone. I have four more knights on galleys but still, my advantage here is not overwhelming. With good rolls he can hold. In that case, I am going to make peace and leave him be for a while. It will be painful as I want these cities for my naval strategy against Commodore but the war with Piccadilly is coming and I cannot afford to spend any more resources on this nonsense. (It does not help that I forgot to blockade the city. GT receives Iron from Commodore and he will be able to add one more good defender to his stack before I attack. It would be funny if this one unit would decide things). Check out the name of Egyptian scout. They got a score increase mid-turn and I think they popped Astronomy from the hut here. It's a bit too much I think; perhaps, we need to make hut techs no better than classical? I am sending a scout towards this hut because I do not want to miss out on the fun. Check me getting a map from here in about ten turns... A sudden Commodore's colony. Now I more or less have an idea how he keeps up with me in city count. (Jokes aside, my larger point stands, see Pindicator's city count) An Astro landmass of my own. Half expect to find Commodore's settlements there. (April 2nd, 2024, 20:55)Mjmd Wrote: Can you explain thought process in moving capital location? To get a better bonus from Bureaucracy and save on city maintenance a little bit. The initial capital got specialized in GPP generation and the new one got cottaged. Palace counts as a National wonder for which I have 100% bonus to production, so it was cheaper than it seems. Probably would not worth it without the bonus. GT is dead - captured this last city this turn. What a beast he was in this game. Ironically, what you see here is one of the strongest stacks he assembled during his last war. I expected trouble but it went surprisingly smoothly - only lost one catapult, one crossbow, and one knight (this last one killed by an Impi as a last hurrah). GT's defeat in this game is a textbook example of how strategic mistakes cancel out any sort of tactical brilliances. He decisively won his game-long conflict against Scooter - only to lose everything to a more advanced neighbor just a few turns later. The war with scooter was the wrong war to fight. |
