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

[greenline]

Frustrating turn.

Xist left 2 pikes in neapolis. Naturally, 2 suicide cats barely scratched them, so it took 3 phracts to kill them. And what do I find when I move forward.




He still has an uberstack of praets and pikes, far away from Bing. At least Neapolis is burned and I can refound a defensible city. I offered Xist a cease fire. Will see if he just smashes everything together. No chance of pushing into Antium. Not until cannons.

[Qgqqqqq]

Has it really been 10T since Bing was at war with Xist?

[Tarkeel]

The turnpace here is astonishing, but it could also have been a ceasefire.

[greenline]

It may have been a cease fire. I didn't check at the time if they had a peace deal.

[greenline]

Current status: Xist did not attack out. Last turn or before then was his best chance to go for a stack wipe. Maybe the odds were not that good and he refrained. Because of that, with Neapolis being burned, I can finally consolidate my gains with the founding of a new city that uses the pig:




Bing and Xist are at peace again. I assume Bing pushed for one more city at this triple crab spot (  , no wonder Bing has been drafting the field in CY ). If bing wants to go any further he will have to deal with Xist's uberstack.




No picture, but Aetryn has education. Better he takes Lib then Bing does. I assume Taj is next on his plate.

So, where do we stand following the war? We picked up 3 cities (1 sadly culture crushed from across the water for now) and founded a fourth on reclaimed land, in exchange for losing a handful of units, and decisively crippled Xist to finish off at our leisure. That's not a bad exchange, better than I've managed before in one of these games, but still disappointing. I was hoping that whipping out 20+ knights would be plenty to take all of Rome, but it was not.  Furthermore, not being able to take most of Rome has let Bing come out with very similar gains - probably even better ones, instead of him only getting a fraction of the land. Why was that? In retrospect, here are the mistakes and other reasons that made the attack less of a success, in my opinion.

1: My economic failures. The 20 turn period where I was stuck crawling through Math and Currency felt like a significant setback. I think when I saw the stone in my lands I should have ignored Oracle and gone all in on Pyramids. This would have lost me the shrine, but I would have been to Guilds much earlier.

2: The Rome pick. Without going into the civ being overpowered or not, Xist being able to prebuild a classical unit that was so strong at hills defense delayed me many crucial turns at capturing Neapolis and then pushing onto Antium. If all he had was swords and potentially LBs (which would delayed him another tech on the way to Engineering), then I would have been able to make more progress.

3: Underestimating Xist's economy. Seeing how he was 15-20t behind me to Currency, I thought there was no way he would be able to make it to Engineering before my attack. His golden age and refusal to mass whip until that tech (relying on the praets for initial defense) was a good play to ensure his survival.

4. Misreading Xist/SD's intentions. Given how Aetryn attacked and probably ruined their chances earlier, I thought that Xist would rather play kingmaker against Aetryn instead of me. Instead, all of his defenses were concentrated in my direction, and Bing and Aetryn did nothing but walk into empty cities. Ultimately, I also ended up capturing a fair number of empty cities, but the threat of the mega stack Xist had was my problem to deal with.

So the game is still afoot. I'm further ahead in tech than Bing is for now, and I have room to settle more cities that will make a better profit with my shrine and Merc online. But I don't trust that alone to be enough to catch up with Bing. What happens next may depend on what Aetryn does. He has the strongest initial economy and a Lib play to make something happen with. We shall see.

[greenline]

As the golden age wanes, our civilization basks in the wealth provided by its newfound infrastructure.







Printing Press will give us a coin back on all the mature cottages, and Rep Parts will add a hammer to each of those wonderful windmills, so the end of this GA will not be as harsh as the last one.

We have enough courthouses now to build Forbidden Palace. Not sure if it is worth building in Dune or Anathem. I plan to settle three new cities around the edge of where Anathem sits.




Now that my cities are slowly swapping off buildings, I plan to build up a strong garrison force in conquered Xistland. That way, I can have the flexibility of potentially holding in Njal's Saga while pushing for Cumae and Rome.

[Qgqqqqq]

How do you rate your situation vs your rivals?

[greenline]

How do you rate your situation vs your rivals?

Bing: 

Has been leading for the entire game. I think in this situation, he's been playing it a bit safe. I get the impression that he wants to get at least one win and isn't going to take a major risk to mess up his chances. Right now he still has the edge in CY (although the gap has shortened a bit), and he has the Aztec SAs to turn all that food into units and buildings quickly. He also has a ton of Classical era wonders. If we were playing base BtS those wonders would have him in a position where conceding would make sense - GLH obsoleting at paper and MoM obsoleting at nationalism has had a huge effect on this game. He can still get good value from those and his other wonders, but he's going to have to obsolete their value more quickly if he wants to get better techs ahead of the field. For instance, if he wants to pop another 12t GA, it will mean that the beakers and gold will probably be spent cleaning up a bunch of mediaeval techs rather than racing ahead an era on the tech tree. I think I have been misreading his tech power for most of the game. The tech screen with alphabet shows he's not leading the pack, and he used a lot of his initial power of his first long GA to get to engineering and fortify his border with me instead of getting an era ahead.

Right now he is also in the second best position to wrest more land from Xist. He can approach Antium from several angles or over water. The cities he conquered from Xist were of the highest quality overall and he expended the least units for them. I think he has no more natural land to expand to, beyond that, though.

In the future, I am most concerned about him being able to chain a bunch of GAs in succession due to him having tons of GPP generation from all the wonders, something I have trouble matching given the food paucity of my land. Though his Aztec SAs give him the ability to whip heavily for production, I am not sure if he can turn that into an economic strength as easily. What I was most afraid of when I decided to attack Xist instead of Bing is that Bing would be able to use that time to just Lord Parkin things and run away with tech and economy. Without civac at the helm that scenario has not materialized yet.

I'd say Bing is still in the driver's seat, but the gap between my position and his has narrowed instead of grown. When I was crawling to currency and he had 3-4 more cities I assumed the game was lost for sure - now I am first in cities and going to found several more with economy to spare. His capital is still vulnerable to a coastal raid from Metamorphosis, although he's probably just going to stuff it heavily with 1 movers for the rest of the game.

Aetryn: 

I think his fortunes have declined a lot in the past 10-15 turns. The main reason is that he was whipping a similar amount to me and Bing for generating a military, but from what I can tell has gotten the least out of it. Hard to say exactly how many units he lost without access to his graphs, but he was mainly building maces and his conquests were slow and then contested by Xist. While his city count is competitive now, I think that is about his limit for available land and he has little hope of squeezing much more from Xist. His economy right now is strong, but it does rely a lot on Colossus coast and when that goes away I do not see good things happening. I would think then he should be aiming to make a play now by going for Lib into something big. Maybe Statue? The whole map being one continent would give very high value to that wonder.

I am hoping that when Xist is finished off, I can convince him to join in an anti Bing alliance. But he might be frustrated with me for not committing 100% to the Xist war and backing off from Xist's megastack. He's opened borders with Bing, which isn't a good sign. Thankfully, his border with me is near the Bing border, so I can shuffle defenders around there quickly.

If he does crazy things with a Lib -> taj GA or similar, he could be in this for a while, but if he doesn't, then he might be regulated to a spoiler role in a conflict between me and Bing. We'll see.

Xist: 

Dead man walking. He shows up in the demos as the rival worst GNP, at a measly 55. He has enough units right now to prevent any one player from advancing, but he has no hope of getting to any better techs or getting back his conquered land. Once I get to cannons, I am going to put together my own mega doom stack and take his remaining 4 cities for my own.

(feel free to mock me in the lurker thread for being absolutely wrong in my assumptions. I feel like the game will go on a while longer before I can read it, though...)

[greenline]

As for my own situation: I have a couple of unique strengths compared to the field along with significant downsides I need to play around. My food situation has never been great, and even with a current lead in city count there's no getting around the fact that I don't have anything like Xist's double lake crabs (which he someone never lighthoused!) + wet rice available. I think for this reason it will make more sense for me to stick with Serfdom long term, growing my cities tall and not trying to use whipping as my production edge. Bing has SAs and I will lose in a whipping contest compared to that.

I only have two wonders, but they've given me pretty significant benefits. The early oracle I turned into the game's only shrine, and Pyramids need no introduction. Part of the benefit of running windmills everywhere is that the extra food feeds specialists. Biology will be a very good tech for me long term to buff my many, many plains farms. The cities I can settle in the tundra won't be good for any cottages, but they can work lumbermills and windmills and farms. I expect longterm to be running a hammer economy rather than a whipping or cottage economy and using shrine gold + PRO trade routes + oxford in a cottage cheese Bureaucap to push for research. I am hoping this will be competitive, but I have never tried it out before. Statue of Liberty would be a potentially game winning addition to this combo, but I have no idea if I can get to it first.

Trait wise, it is a mixed bag. EXP has seen most of its usefulness expire outside of making new cities a bit easier to spin up. Health is a non issue with every grain and pasture resource under the sun. I don't have many cities to build harbors on, but I might get around to that eventually. PRO + Merc has proven to be a strong pairing, along with the ability to spam castles everywhere for an additional route. Sadly the regular ones obsolete.

I am thinking it might make more sense to go for space. Bing seems like he will have the edge just in terms of numerical defenders. But if I get a stronger economy and more land he would have to attack me (through PRO defences). But I need to get that economy going first.

[greenline]

speak of the devil and he shall appear. Bing popped a GA, swapping into Serfdom/pacifism (ouch on that one, with his gigantic army! but he will put out a ton of Great People).

Last turn of our GA demos: our lead in GNP Bing hasn't matched (although I imagine he will catch up if he goes for PP), and he's nowhere close in MFG - I've built up the forges now, with the help of OR. As we draw closer and closer to the civ modern age that hammer stat will become only more important with time. I wonder if he has an academy in his capital.




So Aetryn will grab lib soon, and Bing will focus on some other goal with his GA. 

I decided to stick with serfdom instead of going back to slavery. We can slowbuild military rather fast now, and faster with Rep parts coming in (every windmill will be base 1f2h! nuts to think about). Time will tell if that was a big mistake or not.