Gavagai in Wonderland

[Gavagai]

GKC is down to one city now, I will eliminate him in two turns.



No idea why I am so dominant in food, given that I whipped everything into the ground to get an army of Praets. Also, the fact that I am third in GNP somehow is simply ridiculous.

[Gavagai]

GKC will be dead next turn.



I have everything to the left except Meditation. Also, HBR is almost researched: at some point during the war I have become overly pessimistic about my chances to break GKC without a strong two-mover but I canceled the tech before it was done. The plan is to go Currency - MC - CoL for infrastructure builds. I think I can afford myself to ignore Monarchy for a while: the situation with happiness will improve drastically the moment GKC is eliminated and then I will get +3 happy from Forges and another +3 from Markets in key cities.

[Gavagai]

Actually, that could be a better idea: go CoL -> Monarchy after Currency, swap to Caste/Monarchy and generate a Great Merchant. It could be used for Civil Service bulb or golden age.

[Gavagai]

GG, General. For what it worth, I think that his circumstances were genuinely unwinnable from start. He was too far away to rush me with skirms; another alternative was Oracling HBR and making something happen with HAs. But this option to work requires to catch your opponent unawares and I would be prepared for such development. To be competitive he needed this south-western region for which we fought early in the game but I was never going to afford him to get this land.
On my part, I believe, the key decision was going for Calendar early and using Calendar resources to fuel my whips but there are few good things to say about my performance in this war beyond that. Losing Red Queen was particularly stupid and good call on GKC side to capitalize on that mistake. I don't think I have been playing particularly well in this game so far.



Alhazard is not even second in food anymore, it very much looks like he got himself caught in the Pyramid trap. Still, I think he has the best chances for winning right now. He is well-positioned to get Knights well earlier than his neighbors and after that he will just steamroll Commodore (with DZ and RegentMan dead even earlier) and get 4 civs worth of land. I offered my spare luxuries to Commodore for free but this, obviously, will not be enough.



This illustrates how much of a toll the war with GKC has been taking. Next turn my happiness situation will become much, much better.

[GeneralKilCavalry]

Guess I'm a lurker now.

I think you were totally right about the pick we made, and every reason you listed for why we made the pick (both good and bad) were true. Organized, we felt, would be key to reducing maintenance and running org rel (which we didn't because at the point I could've switched, it was entirely a matter of mobilization) along with slavery and bureaucracy. However, we did go for the stupid synergy with IND/Mali forge, but also saw that we're the only industrious civ. In any case, Mali did not warrant a first pick.

I would say that he got absolutely screwed up by circumstances

I really think there was much more I could've done. Before the assault on red queen there were preparations I could've made to take out white rabbit all at once, potentially keeping one of the cities. I do have a geographic qualm with the entire western seaboard being fishless, but c'est la vie. We were planning to even settle a city 3NW of Baluga, but that spot was such crap that we decided against it, even though we had the settler.

Moreover, internally, our worker micro was pretty lacking at times and we just didn't build enough - we could've been a stronger competitor.

To be competitive he needed this south-western region for which we fought early in the game

Totally agree, but we didn't give you a hard fight for it, and weren't prepared for the eventuality. We naively assumed 20+ more turns of peace.

Another mistake we made that you didn't really see is my indescision over what tech to pursue during the war with you. I realize now that we would've had HBR and could've hit Tweedledum or Red Queen while it was unprotected. Or, even more interestingly, a fork on Tweedledum and Tweedledee.

The final 20 turns of the war were also poorly managed by me, but I had gotten lazy at that point. You also, I believe, made the mistake of not mopping up my axe stack in Baluga. It let me hit you a second time and drain away forces, but it doesn't really matter at this point.

Finally, here is the tally of our war (excluding the last turn):
Total kill count + 31 skirmishers.
(skirms) 25*31+ (catapults) 29*50+ (chariots) 3*30+ (axemen) 35*43- (praets) 37*45- (cats) 17*50- (chariots) 8*30- (axes) 3*35 = 960 hammers in your favor ~ 32 pop differential.

6680 total hammers lost to the conflict total.

Again, really good game, I had a lot of fun.

[Gavagai]

Welcome to the thread I don't think HBR would have helped much (though it would help some): HAs actually trade with Praetorians worse than with spears and they are pretty expensive. More HAs would mean fewer Cats and mass Cats were the only thing which could really stall me. Ultimately, your problem is that Praetorian is just too good a unit, especially with native C1.
Have you researched anything after Construction? It seemed like you stopped caring about tech entirely.

[Gavagai]

In respect of allowing you to retreat axes from my cats - that was a close decision, I was not sure that I have enough healthy units to take Baluga even after all cats are sacrificed. You had quite a lot of full health skirms in the city, with all bonuses they would have non-negligible chances against low-health Praets even after being reduced to strength 2 by collateral. I could be screwed by bad RNG and I have already lost a string of over 50% battles to your axes while defending. Ultimately, I decided that in future I would have a chance to attack these axes on flat ground instead of a hill which would cancel out their shock promo. But it is possible that I was wrong back then.

[Gavagai]

Probability of victory as of T145.
Gavagai - 0.3
Alhazard - 0.6
Superdeath - 0.1

[GeneralKilCavalry]

Have you researched anything after Construction? It seemed like you stopped caring about tech entirely.

My research rate was 21bpt constant from science specialist and one super specialist in the capital (which you are now the owner of). I was making around 5GPT at best, maintenance costs on units were absolutely huge. I was close to finishing metal casting by the time you finished me off, and was trying to do currency when you invade. I was all over the place with research, mostly because it was proceeding with a frustratingly slow pace.

[Gavagai]

Demos after war weariness went away.