[SPOILERS] Ghostpants buckles up for PB39

[WilliamLP]

To be fair, who could have known that Boudica of Mongols would plan a massive mounted attack? What was I supposed to do, build a standing army of pikemen or something?

[WilliamLP]

No surprise, the 3-way dog-pile is on! Large armies of knights on two sides and cuirs on the other. I think either pikes or PRO longbows can hold knights cost effectively but not when I'm split 3 ways and hemorrhaging cities of course.

The big prize, of course, is the Buddhist holy city, which is where I'll make my last stand. It's going to be kind of fun observing the 3-way fight for it. Bandit is favored because he's starting a tech era up.

I'm trying to make the most principled defense I can given that I have about 10-15 mins IRL to play these turns right now without sacrificing sleep. But it's not much!

[WilliamLP]

Whew, this is going to be a complex situation for everyone next to my capital, haha. I begged Ipecac for stone and he obliged, so I'll have castles in my last two cities. There's enough junk in there that it might be hard to crack without siege. If Wetbandit moves a decisive force next to my capital I'll abandon to the Buddhist shrine for my last stand.

I spent my last turn killing off some sentry chariots and stuff for pyrrhic victories. I know those are a real pain to lose since they can't be replaced and hide under even very wounded mounted stacks. I also spent my last 3 cats taking out Wetbandit's mini-stack of a mace and 3 cuirs. It was almost cost effective but I lost 55% and 77% rolls.

I'm trying to be in a situation where three elephants are playing tug-of-war with a three way rope where the midpoint is stable... or something. I wonder if I can outlast Yuri...

[WilliamLP]

Post mortem in this game is basically: I blew a decent position when I went Paper -> Education instead of the necessary military techs. Engineering + Guilds + Gunpower, then castles and power parity with Pikes + LBs in all border cities. Very obvious in retrospect, but I was just drooling too much at the econ techs.

Or I could have tried Gunpowder from the Edu path, but I'm not sure that would have been enough muskets in time to deter Wetbandit who teched up very quickly.

Once attacked, I could have been harder to take out by teching Gunpowder (would have been 1 turn in my heyday) and whipping PRO muskets instead of pikes, but I really overestimated how well pikes could hold cities against masses of Shock cuirs. I.e. terribly. With the 3 vs 1 inevitable when Wetbandit broke me, anything would be a losing game in the end though.

Oh well, I have a lot to learn about this part of the game in particular! (And in general...)

[WilliamLP]

Wetbandit is starting bombard down the castle at GhostPants. You could say the city is

on its last legs

It is a mystery why he's placing his cuirs there instead of somewhere he could fork and capture SpectreShirt. There is a 41gpt shrine in there!! All I can think of is that maybe he just isn't trying hard to win anymore, like perhaps JR4 is seen as a run-away leader and some are considering conceding soon?

[naufragar]

Wetbandit is starting bombard down the castle at GhostPants. You could say the city is

on its last legs

[JR4]

After swapping maps with you I saw that you were running a very cottage-oriented economy and not a single workshop. That was slightly surprising because workshops are buffed in rtr mod.

It was actually a relief that you managed to get Liberalism ahead of Wetbandit as I`m sure that he could have used it to get a very expensive tech.

Relations between us were quite good but we had to pile on when the opportunity presented itself. Earlier on, could you have done something to stop us from getting the land around Academia?