[SPOILERS] The Wild Card

[The Black Sword]

Well, some pictures, because I could use some input:





Whipping the LB in Black Eagle gives 2 LBs in each. I think we have to take the deal, we can't hold those cities if he wants to take them and we could use the security on the south coast of our main island. Of course, there's no guarantee that mack can't declare war and attack those afterwards, but my read on him from previous games is that he'd honor a deal like this as if it was 10 turns peace treaty. We could always declare war and get that insurance but it nukes our trade routes. It is a shame to give up the cities just as they have finished Granary and LH and are about to grow though.

Question is, how much should we try to haggle for here? I'm not sure, he did just declare war on scooter, as well as his one with Old Harry and he has over 1200g in the bank. Also, Father Squid is a net drain on our economy.

Btw, Scooter picked up Astro this turn as well, so we'll still have to worry about them. Maybe we should try offer some gpt as protection payment?

And, because I was writing this anyway:

[Jowy]

Well I'd just force him to take the cities. Giving them away just to buy good will is kinda on the edge on whether it's fair to the other players or not. I suppose it comes down to personal preference.

[The Black Sword]

I suppose the 2 cities are reasonable difficult to take, he'd need 2 galleons with 4-6 troops. Just one galleon forking the main island cities would be a huge problem though, forcing us to put static defenders in those cities instead of sending them north where every last unit really is needed. And the northern cities are obviously a lot more valuable to us. Plus he can rip up all of our seafood.

If we had a cast iron 10 turn peace treaty out of it, then that's well worth it I think. 4 LBs extra from the garrisons and maybe 2 extra defenders that don't have to be in Yeoman or Water Lily, so 8 extra units we can send north?

I did ask him for 300g in the end and also put in a copper for copper trade to try communicate that aspect to him, but from the sounds of the tech thread he's ran into trouble with the diplo offer due to the pauses.

Really looking forward to the big showdown this turn.

[The Black Sword]

Heh, not as much fun as I thought.



Looks like I left 24 defenders instead of 25 and he won every single combat to capture the city. Smart move eh .

That had a number of effects. Most importantly, we lost our culture, allowing him to bring in reinforcements. That stack of muskets defending Bagabond now sitting 1N of Jetboy and 3 Cuirs who attacked the knight stack, killing 2 of our top promoted Knights, fortunately we won the third combat.

On retaking the city with the Longbow, we had lost a number of buildings as well as the pop point, which was annoying and it also moved our capital to Sleeper, which now gets the Bureau bonus instead.

Anyway, I killed the Cuirs and then attacked his main stack from Jetboy. Here's how it ended up:





It would have been quite a good position if he hadn't been able to bring that extra stack of reinforcements in . I dry-whipped that LB and turned on auto-promote. A lot of units have promos pending, from winning combat and I scatter-promoted some select units using a GG born during the fighting. I'm not too sure what the situation will be like next turn.





You don't want to see his combat log, too depressing . That was a run of 3 ~90% combats in a row we lost there btw.

You can see he razed Modular Man in the north. Good news, we don't have to worry about him heading towards Sleeper. Bad news, I thought we'd have a good chance of retaking it and it would tie up his units. Good news, that was before the current fiasco.

[The Black Sword]

I guess it's our deal they're talking about in the tech thread. I'm not sure how much information we're supposed to give out but I honestly think the deal was in the best interests of the civ.

Giving up Father Squid is actually a good thing for us, so it was 2 size 2 cities with fairly bad land for 300g and some extra security, while we're in a war for survival in the north.

[Jowy]

Just ignore them

[The Black Sword]

It's probably clear already from civstats/dtay's thread that we subsequently lost the battle for Jetboy and dtay has since been clearing up our remaining mainland cities since we have no real force left there to oppose him.

I'm mildly annoyed at myself for losing the war with such a stupid mistake but tempered by the fact that at least we weren't in the running to win the game to begin with. Still, I thought we stood a great chance of beating dtay back there and it would have been nice to win the personal duel. It is funny to see what a difference a single extra unit can make, even at this stage of the game.

Anyway, apart from that catastrophic mistake, what else could have been improved on:

1. Revolting to slavery earlier. It was fairly clear for some time that this was coming. Wishfully thinking I could make it to our next GA until it was almost too late was a bad idea.

2. On that note, there should have been a plan for the second GA as soon as the first one ended. It has taken far too long to get the NE up and fill out 500gpp. There was clearly a good time for our golden age just before the invasion when a lot of our cities had almost reached their maximum height. I'm not sure what the plan would have entailed, maybe staying in caste system over serfdom, or just choosing a more mature location for NE rather than the 'ideal' one that took forever to set up, but there should have been a plan.

3. Maybe I should have thought some more on the turn we lost Jetboy. In particular, I could have razed Jetboy rather than recapturing or picked off dtay's smaller stack and kept our knights safe. It just seemed clear that we couldn't hold in the long run without Jetboy's culture though.

Apart from that, I think we did a good job of building the civ back up from our earlier mess. Maybe the Astronomy plan was a bit hopeful but I managed to switch off it in time without commiting much beakers and the caravels have been useful.

I haven't been putting as much effort into these last few turns. I finished off Gunpowder, I'll try to make it to Astro in the end after our GA and probably won't make it much farther than that in tech. Try to play the pirate on dtay a little if I'm allowed. Stacking the units whipped for the dtay war along the Viking border because they seem a bit pissed. The rest of the world should probably thank me though for giving the two superpowers a border to fight over.

Dtay's been offering peace for the rest of our mainland cities, which would save the rest of our troops. I've just kept whipping these cities as much as I can. I like the image of Popinjay, with the G2 Longbows in the castle making a last stand. In practice though, they won't take much casualties with them when he walks up some catapults so maybe I'll accept then.

[Jowy]

If you can make him work for the rest of the cities, then don't give them away just for peace. Maybe we'd end up with a few more units if we made peace, but at this point we've gotta think of the other players and make it fair to them by fighting till the end.

You played a great game man. Without Dtay's rush we could have been in the top 5, at least until mackoti or pindicator would crush us. Okay, even with his rush we could have still been up there, since it was easily preventable. We saw it coming but didn't react. And history repeats itself: We knew all the way back then that this later war would happen, but we weren't ready for this one either. Anyway, I think you did an awesome job with the micro management and getting our civ back on it's feet after disaster struck. Once you get the war thing down you'll be a top player in RB

[spacetyrantxenu]

I don't think you could have razed Jetboy even if you wanted to. I came across this in PB8 where I wasn't able to raze a city I had lost many, many turns previous. I think the rival (Scoopin) even had majority culture on the city center tile by that time, and when I recaptured I could only keep the city, I wasn't given an option to raze. It was subsequently explained that you're never given the chance to raze a city you settled.

[The Black Sword]

I don't think you could have razed Jetboy even if you wanted to.

Cool, one less mistake to cross off my list!

Thanks for the compliments Jowy, still some way to go I think though. For now, I'd settle for some revenge in PBEM 53 .