Gavagai climbs the chaos ladder

[Gavagai]

The last turn of my GA. I went full wat mode: revolted to Nationalism and Theocracy and started drafting up. I am attacking Piccadilly next turn, so let's talk about the disposition one turn before the war.

Madras garrison.

Madurai garrison. Piccy also has a reserve under my chariot: two elephants and a bunch of axes and knights. Further to the North East he has five knights stashed and he has some more units in the North.

I won't bother showing everything I assembled but it's 43 Knights and 8 HAs. Also some Catapults but I doubt they are going to be relevant.

Superdeath is an ally - of a sort. He signaled to me that he is committed and is going to strike in the north but, if I understand him correctly, will do it one turn later than me. Well, fair - he is the weakest of us two by far. His army is on the screenshot, it's mostly elephants and cats.
For the record, I believe this war is a strategic suicide for SD. His army will very likely get massacred as he is attacking with elephants into castles and pikes (and soon - Muskets, Piccy does have gunpowder). After that Plemo will just walk in and take all his cities. Not that SD has any good options in his position though.

The Northern Theatre. Here I fear a counter-attack against Minitrue, so I am assembling a garrison there. Piccy has what you can see under my monk plus what some units in the north, deployed against Greenline. There are, I think, five knights there and some trash.

I also have this. I checked Agra this turn, it is warrior-defended, but I am not even sure I want to capture it if I have a chance. This might be one of those cases where the threat is stronger than execution. I don't want to burn it because it is a valuable city, and I won't be able to hold it even for one turn. I will just throw away three good garrison units I can use, for example, to reinforce Madras after I take it. On the other hand, while I have galleons in this puddle (I have one more coming from the north), I can force him to keep units there.


Global tech situation. Several observations.
1) Piccy got Replaceable Parts this turn. He also got an Engineer and he already has a Merchant in store, so he can launch a golden age and go for Rifling. If he does that and revolts out of Slavery one turn before I attack, it would be glorious. I doubt he would be so brazen though, he tracks my unit movement and he has to know that the war is imminent.
2) Commodore is doing something weird. He put lots of EPs in me (I am pretty sure he ran 10 percent of a slider for a turn) to deny me tech visibility and to get one on me in turn. After that he shut down research, postponing Scientific Method. It could be he decided that plan was too ambitious and now wants to go RP or Chemistry road.
By the way, his golden age ended and he stayed in Mercantilism / Pacifism. I expect him to launch his third GA soon because in the long term these civics are highly suboptimal. Also, he keeps settling island cities like a maniac, I see a new city at almost every turn.
3) Plemo has Astronomy. He also asked me for an interest-free loan of 1000 gold and I know for certain he spent at least some of this money on upgrades. I hope he is going for Commodore's island empire, that would be a great development for me.
4) Metal has zero gold. I think his units are on strike, there is also someone with negative GNP in demos. Pindicator declared on him this turn. Sadly, it confirms my suspicion he was aiming to invade the other continent over declaring on Commodore. Well, at least, he will put this dude out of his misery finally.

[Gavagai]

As my GA is about to end, I'll entertain you with some golden age porn, I guess.

Moai supercity. Miniplenty indeed.

The capital before I revolted out of Bureau.

Old capital converted to a GP farm. Also the best city in the world, according to Top-5.

[Gavagai]

Here is something funny I wanted to show for a while. This city was in the midst of GT vs Scooter fighting. Originally it was settled by GT, then captured by Scooter, then recaptured back by GT.
Guess what - of all the infra you see I only added Courthouse. Everything else was in place when I took the city. I especially like the market - amidst all their fighting either Scooter or GT found time to build this 150 hammers miniwonder here, of all places. For the sake of comparison, when I invaded GT I only had one market in my entire empire - in my shrine city.
On the same topic:

It's the last city I captured from GT. See anything interesting right next to the Library there?

[GT]

Well, I'm certainly a peaceful player

About Bishan, I think that market was built by me. The city had 3 food resources, and I could whip neatly there. One of my best cities, even if I held it too shortly..

[Gavagai]

Well, I'm certainly a peaceful player

About Bishan, I think that market was built by me. The city had 3 food resources, and I could whip neatly there. One of my best cities, even if I held it too shortly..

Hello, GT! Welcome to the thread!

Update of the first turn of my Piccadilly war coming soon, it was very successful.

[Gavagai]

In the war with Piccadilly I pursue two objectives.
1) I want his land. It is not just naturally good but also well-developed, in stark contrast with what I inherited from GT and Scooter (seriously, Lucky Plaza was almost fully covered with jungles when I captured it). To be sure, what I already have plus Astro islands plus what I can take from soft targets like scooter and greenline is more than enough to firmly put me in the lead but I doubt it is enough to win the game. I can already foresee the last step of the chaos ladder will be fighting off the dogpile of Egypt and Commodore and need to be able to rely on more resources than both of them combined - tough call, given that Egypt gets an entire continent on the platter.
2) That brings me to the second point: I want to eliminate a threat. Piccadilly cannot do much against me by himself, we are past that point but he can do a lot of damage if I get distracted by someone else: I have little strategic depth against him. Potentially, he is a potent ally for Commodore and I do not want that next to my door.

Now, the previous two wars I fought in this game were won before they began: I entered both of them with overwhelming strategic superiority. This is not the case now: I do have superiority but it is not overwhelming and it is not out of the question that Piccadilly will be able to fight me to standstill.
Here are my advantages:
1) Complete naval superiority. I have Galleons, he does not.
2) I have access to draft, he does not.
3) My economy is about 1.5 of his.
4) My army at the start of the war was bigger but not by much: 1.2 or 1.3 of his.
5) Alliance with Superdeath
However, Piccadilly has his own set of trumps:
1) Tech parity at tech era which is highly advantageous for the defender: knights, castles and muskets. I will hit Rifling soon but so will he and Tokugawa Rifles are a match for Redcoats, especially drafted ones (of whom I have a majority).
2) Access to Slavery (I am in caste).
3) Protective + Aggressive combo.
4) Defender's advantage.
As I said, I am better but not overwhelmingly better. Still, I decided that was the time. Rifling will massively improve his defensive capability so I wanted to at least put him off balance before he reaches it. Also, global situation favors me: Commodore would love to help him, I believe, but I do not think he quite has the capacity yet, and Ginger is also busy with his wars. At later stage I am not sure Piccadilly would have to stand alone.

...and sorry, but I think my actual report will have to fight - I am falling asleep now. TLDR - Piccy two cities at the border and I think most of his catapults on the first turn. I cleared up all you can see on my last screenshots of our border region at the cost of 8 Knights, 16 Knights are at full health and ready to advance deeper.

[Gavagai]

Also, Pindicator is taking cities from metal and GKC, so it appears he embraced the ocean strategy. I think it is a mistake. He will end up being thrown back to the see by Egypt team. He had to attack Commodore, especially given that Commodore goes ultra-greedy with his SciMethod path.

[Gavagai]

At least, when metal and GKC are eliminated, it will do wonders to turn pace.

[Gavagai]

Well, apparently it's a new turn and I could not resist taking a peek. No rest for the wicked.

That was the situation at the end of the previous turn.

And this was what I found when I logged in. Piccadilly reacted by launching a golden age, adopting Vassalage and starting building Muskets. Also, he is gathering the knights dispersed all over his empire into one stack. There is eight in Delhi and more is coming:


Only Agra stack can reach the war theatre this turn though.

The only war-related thing I done so far is taking Vijayanagara and moving in a garrison. A lone unpromoted and unfortified Musket killed three of my knights - almost half of what Piccy's entire army killed on the previous turn. Btw, he had Gunpowder for a while, could easily have put 2-3 Muskets into each of his border cities. I suspect the war would have gone a bit differently if he'd done that.
The rest of the turn will be played tomorrow. My current thinking is that I should just gather everything I have and bolt towards the capital. I will be able to move in position to strike an army of 18 full health or mostly full health Knights plus, I believe, 7 wounded Knights plus 7 HAs plus a couple of Knights and a Musket loaded on a Galleon. Against this he can assemble in Delhi 12 Knights (including those in Agra) plus I assume 2 Muskets (one whipped in Delhi, one moved from Bombay) plus 1 Axe (is visible on the pictures) plus whatever surprise units he might be able to scramble. Worth a shot, I think, but I want to sleep on it.
Oh, one more thing. Superdeath did not enter the war and signaled to me that he was going to attack in two turns if I understood him correctly. Typical. I haven't yet decided what his ultimate fate in this game will be so he is playing with fire with his Stalinesque manevreus.

[GT]

He doesn't have any pikes?

Considering he saw how easily you cut across me with your knights, he should have gotten a dozen pikes ready at the very least to stop any 2-mover actions.