[pb72 spoilers]: the esteemed gentleman's literature and book club

[greenline]

lmao

Uh... maybe I should start building some pikes too?

[greenline]

At this point I'm tempted to offer a war / peace to Bing just to guarantee I don't get stabbed once the war does start.

[greenline]

hahahahaha nevermind




This has been quite a coup. If Bing had burned to Guilds I'd be scared, but now he's burning his GA on a bunch of whips on defensive units.

[Tarkeel]

We pop a Merchant from Huckleberry Finn. Now whatever great person we get from Dune guarantees us the second Golden Age. Rep / Merc / Bureau are pretty solid civics for the endgame, so I'm not bothered by how long GA #3 will take. Main thing we would be missing out is emancipation. Is the hammer bonus to specialists that good anyway?

Third GA is usually all about industrializing, pushing out factories and coal plants everywhere.
Emancipation is in a pretty nice spot now; you need to combine it with the other specialist civics, but it feels like it's in a good spot. Not enough to compete with MinInc on it's own though.

We can declare next turn with these forces. Is this enough for an initial strike force, or should we wait an additional turn for stragglers to catch up?

I think this looks good enough to take the border cities. It's better to strike sooner and let the reinforcements catch up on the next cities.

[greenline]

So, way back in the thread, I said this:

I think those posts still undersell the value of the Cataphract. It is generally true that a land war against a competent opponent will incur heavy enough losses that would leave one vulnerable to counterattacks and feints from neighbors. Pindicator managed to stop a stack of Cavalry with just Cho-Ku-Nus and cats in PB18. The Cataphract shouldn't be seen as an auto win button against any enemy with Guilds or Engineering. That being said, I still see the +2 strength as being significant enough to cover several different scenarios:

1: Civ with Longbows but not Knights or Pikes

While a sufficiently big Knight stack will generally wreck most ancient age ones, using them to push through cities with Longbows on hills with cat support can get sketchy. I used this to good effect in one of my own games (against Commodore, funnily enough), where I had just enough production and research to scrape together Longbow stacks in front cities and ward off an attack. The extra strength on a Phract, though, does let it blitz through even longbow stacks fairly efficiently in comparison.

I don't think Xist has LBs yet, but he definitely has Praets. So, time to put that theory to the test:




Xist played a double turn on the roll, so I declared after he had finished turn. From now on I will be playing second, I assume. Bad timing on his scouting chariot being there - my one 2xp Phract killed it flawlessly.

I do feel bad for Xist, I am ganging up on him with Aetryn instead of attacking the leader. But civ is a game of sharks eating minnows and Bing has put the effort into being prickly. So it goes.




I promoted about half the phracts so far to shock, in case he attacks out. Should I do that for all of them, or save some for healing?

[Tarkeel]

I general you should save promotions for when they are needed. In that case we need a few promoted to shock to defend, but you should try to get some C2 Formation. Also, why aren't there any threatening Arpnium?

[greenline]

Also, why aren't there any threatening Arpnium?

My last attempt at offensive war in civ multiplayer left me very leery about splitting stacks. I can send a group of 6 or so Phracts towards Arpnium next turn.

[Tarkeel]

Also, why aren't there any threatening Arpnium?

My last attempt at offensive war in civ multiplayer left me very leery about splitting stacks. I can send a group of 6 or so Phracts towards Arpnium next turn.

Agree that splitting is usually not a good idea, but the opening move is the one time where it's usually advised. That should be enough to seriously threaten that city.

[greenline]

It seems we dallied long enough that Aetryn can jump right in. No idea what kind of forces he is packing, but anything helps to ease the pressure.

[scooter]