Gavagai manages his personal GULAG

[Gavagai]

To Grimace's credit, he still finds ways to be annoying. Well, not a concern. I have surplus worker turns in this area and counter-measures have been taken.




Main front. Jaguar in the upper-right corner has Combat1 Woody2. This sight suddenly makes "forest highway" which Bacchus spoke about very real.

[Gavagai]

I mean that in a game where uncertainity is present it is never right to evaluate actions exclusively by their results. Old Harry is correct here: I'm thinking if the war would be that successful if Grimace defended properly.

I understand your statement better now. Of course the best analysis is to review your process rather than the results.

This early attack plan was Bacchus' idea:

So, I think HBR first is the way to go after all, but I also don't think we should wait until we have it for the attack. It looks like we can easily attack with 10 axes by T80 -- this let's us take Borzoi and cut his copper. We should then follow up with the HA stack, and we won't need 16, 10 will do the job. Even if he goes "full military" after out axe attack, the damage we will do by cutting the metal, the roads to capital and the harassment of workers is greater.

We don't have access to the chats you two presumably had debating the merits of attacking on Bacchus' plan or your later HA plan (or at least I missed them here). That being the case, I don't know the underlying assumptions you relied upon in choosing the plan you did. I would guess, having read your threads and knowing how deeply you analyze differing strategies, that an evaluation of the defending player's ability would factor into your discussion on choosing the Axe plan or the HA plan. Whatever you chose, you know best whether that was sufficient justification. Bacchus could weigh in too.

In any event, the success you've achieved was a possibility in choosing the Axe plan, and this particular result may be the best possible outcome of any war against Grimace. But I am not certain how likely this result would have been (5-25%?). You seem to be as well. Even a low percentage of this chance of success though may have justified the seemingly greater risk. But the added certainty and ease of conquest, independent of Grimace's actions, under the HA plan, could have been equally illusory with a few more spears over 10-15 more turns to prep. But I don't know what you talked about, you could have been imagining Bacchus in another dream.

Congrats on the victories so far. And it is better to be lucky than good.

Yeah, we analyzed our future war extensively. We would be posting our chat logs but they are all in Russian, so hardly of any use. The main argument in favor of Axe plan was the presence of Barteq. If we delayed the attack by 10-15 turns we would give him more time to attack Grimace himself or to prepare to react to our move.

[Gavagai]

Btw, Grimace has connected another Copper in the north, so metal units are again a concern. I'm not sure, however, that he has pop to make them.

[GermanJoey]

Is that Grimace's last city?

[Gavagai]

Is that Grimace's last city?

No, he has another one. No idea where.

[Bacchus]

I don't think the war was a mistake simply for the fact that had we not taken at least Borzoi and Doberman, Japan would have been rolled over by Barteq. We have to assume that Barteq's army is largely Jaguar based, with them being, 2-mover unkillable +50% city raider units at 35 hammers, why build anything else. We knew for a fact that Barteq had a high power, we didn't know the direction of his attack until the very last turn, so launching the war when we did was I think justified.

If you take the Barteq factor away, then maybe yeah, even with such a big advantage in power and mfg, ancient/early classical war is still mostly a bad idea. We could expect to get two marginal cities, instead of settling the flood/moai/ToA spots which are, really, better. Also instead of building Libraries in Kolyma and the capital.

[Gavagai]

Grimace had an archer and a warrior in the city. I sacrificed a chariot to weaken the archer and then took the city with another two chariots.




In the north-east you may see the borders of his last city. The big question is if we go for it. We will have to raze it, of course, because it is far Barteq's sphere of influence. And I don't really want to irritate him:




Rival best power is Barteq and it is growing. I'm very concerned. It's been a while when we register any activity in his war with AT, can't really bank on them keeping on hostilites. If we raze this last city, not only we irritate him, we will also put our army deep out of position. So, I vote to stop our advance here and to allow Barteq to capture this one.




In other circumstances I would be pleased with that many forests to chop but with Jaguar-capable neighbor this is alarming. What Grimace was even thinking? I'm moving two workers in the area because this should be chopped away ASAP. I'm not what I willchop them into: just straight up military or first Barracks/Mint? Skirmisher first seems like the best call here anyway.




Axe killed our chariot on defence. It was bound to happen at some point, given how often I attacked his axes on forests with 75% chance. Still annoying. I had a skirmisher to clean up the mess but chances were so good that it even hasn't earned a promo. Pity. CG2 Skirm would be really useful at this point.

We have trade connection with Barteq. I offered him Corn for Corn deal and a gold for silver deal. He has 3 silvers and we have only one gold connected but we can connect two more easily.

[Gavagai]

Bacchus, any good idea for names of cities in Grimaceland? I just think that we will need to select some distinct group of camps for them.

EDIT: Option I have in mind is to use camps on Kola Peninsula. Fits geographically.

[Gavagai]

This last city location by Grimace is something, btw. So utterly and completely undefensible. The guy was really asking for trouble.

[Gavagai]

Some positive thoughts about Barteq. I think, that troop deployment we have seen on his part so far indicates that he doesn't currently have a lot of units in our area. If I were him I would want to scout aggressively with Jaguars, mapping out my army and planning on a counter-offensive. Because, really, this city which borders we are seeing is his first ring city and from his perspective the situation here should appear pretty catastrophic. The fact that he doesn't try to scout out suggests that he doesn't really have units to both do this and defend. Of course, in a few turns it may change but few turns is all I need.