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

[greenline]

Thanks for covering, Tarkeel.

Bing declaring on Aetryn is not something I expected. I am guessing Bing was moving in on a city that Aetryn captured on the edge that was lightly defended. Frustrating that Bing seems to be getting the easiest prizes of the war for the least effort. But I did encourage him to whip out a giant military, so it makes sense that he would try and use it.




The GGs make it seem like Xist threw away a lot of cats to take out some of Aetryn's melee forces. I didn't see a big shark fin on the graphs for Xist. If I do next turn, I'll move in again on Neapolis with the intent of razing it.

[greenline]

Did bing just double move aetryn? kind of looks like bing played 2 turns based on civstats.

[greenline]

anyway, for our situation now that xist played:




Whatever battle Xist must have fought with Aetryn was more deadly than I thought. He had a significant power drop on the graph and he shows at a 2.3 ration instead of a 1.7. So I moved in with the intent to burn Neapolis and then maybe advance one city further. Put my whole stack on the pig tile: (a bit hard to see below)




Should have taken peace when you had the chance, SD...

With banking in, also popped another GA:




Normally, I'd think the two GAs we had were a bit close together. But pyramids + PRO really changes that calculation. Merc + Rep are basically endgame civics and now that we aren't really in hot war mode there's no reason to delay them any further. Our capital is also ready for bureaucracy, having grown on all its cottages. I also think the best play is to stick in serfdom - I will be aiming to get Rep parts done or most of the way so that super windmills will be the way to go.

Infrastructure agenda: courthouses, castles, and banks in large cities. We have really been slacking on the courthouses and I'd like to see other players' graphs again. Our research rate will explode once we can get maintenance down to a manageable level.

Future civics swaps to consider for a hypothetical end game GA: Emancipation if we land Statue of Liberty, State Property if we don't want to bother with corps, Theocracy or Free Religion at some point when infra is all built.




Our capital is really enjoying the switch to bureau. Feels odd to be the first player there, this late in the game!

[Qgqqqqq]

What are the medium term war aims?

[greenline]

What are the medium term war aims?

It entirely depends on what dregs Xist can muster to defend. A decent amount of units - we burn Neapolis, found a new more defensible city, and sit tight until cannons. If he is truly gassed, then I continue building units and try to take Antium and any other cities.

[Tarkeel]

Still not sold on swapping out of war civics, especially slavery, for as long as Xist lives. We'll have a tough time defending if anyone else piles on us as well, I'd have cone for Nationalism before losing slavery.

Did you get a picture of the garrison in Neapolis? I approve going in, but might not even want to burn, just conquer Antium as well if it looks this barren.

[greenline]

There's certainly time to change my mind and end our civics in slavery.




This is what the garrison in Neapolis looks like. On this turn at least there weren't any units hiding back where the scout could see them (on the hill with the iron and the hill next to it). I expect to burn several suicide cats here, but then if I don't see anything in Antium we can keep pushing onward.

Alphabet came in this turn, so here we can look at the tech situation and see if my paranoia was justified or not:




If I am reading this right, Aetryn is surprisingly ahead of Bing and first in line for the Lib race. It also seems like I was misreading the PBspy score updates and a lot of that was just geometric population increases rather than people researching techs much faster - so I could have held off on the GA longer. If you have a better tech target instead of Rep parts for this GA (nationalism), we can aim for that instead.

[Tarkeel]

I was going to suggest leaving the knights SW of Neapolis, but then I remembered those are hills. Blergh.

Is that Aetryn going full monk with Theo and Paper? That can be scary to compete with.

Also, note that due to the road he can freekill the Scout and move back into the city, only losing fortify bonus.

[greenline]

I knew I was risking the scout's life - I wanted to make doubly sure there wasn't a cat stack hiding in the corner behind the mountains. I am not sure if Xist will kill it anyway - he's had several opportunities where it was in the open.

Aetryn might be going full monk since he has the AP already built. He has the least amount of cities and had a bunch of military presumably destroyed by Xist, though, so I think in the long run he'll be playing catchup.

[greenline]

t160 (we have now passed pb71! sadly couldn't manage to beat pb66 before it ended)




Bing continues on his wonder cascade spree by virtue of having a monopoly on the Aesthetics line and re engages to chew through more Xist land. This may be the point where Xist is officially a goner. I don't know how much more pop he has to whip. I am hoping I can blitz through Antium after Neapolis. And then to Rome?




It's just a question of how many cats to use here. I have a settler on hand to raze and replace, and I probably will just so I can found two cities here.

The main benefit Bing is getting from all his wonders I would actually say is GPP production. He has no one to give him GLH routes, and a lot of his cities have been whipped down to pretty low sizes to keep churning out military. He has something ridiculous like 10 pikes and assorted xbows / warphants on my border. 

But even with all that military, city maintenance is still like 60% of my expenses.   The few courthouses I've built so far are saving quite a few pennies.