Turn 104
That's the situation at start of turn. To briefly recap what happened in the 4 turns I failed to report:
1)Overconfident after taking Japper's city, I pushed on both the capital and his northern city at once. Thrusting to the east, I stumbled into another city over a river, giving his archer a base of fire. No worries, I'll take the northern city, then. I direct 2 of my 3 swords and a warrior, with tons of archer support, at it.
2)Japper finishes a heavy chariot on turn 100, then a horseman on turn 101 judging by the city strength scores. Going by his domination score, I anticipate that that's his entire military, plus a few archers, and so I don't call off the attack. However, Japper produces a horseman on both turn 102 and turn 103, as well.
3)My army is pushed back, as I lose both swords and a warrior in the process, killing only one horseman in return.
Conclusions:
1)Chevalier is not very good at multiplayer warfare. This is really only the first tactical war I've played out, and Japper has neatly bloodied my nose. Well, hopefully I'll get better. Honestly, I don't mind sucking too much, but it is embarrassing when I feel like I can't let my dedlurkers down. Irrational, I know, since I've got presumably a wider audience than just the three of us, but still, my cheeks are red on this one.
2)When domination scores are low, don't be overconfident - you can balloon your domination from 40 (where Japper was the turn I declared war) to 120 really quickly (where he is now). I noted that Japper had no iron, and that he had no gold, and his low city strength - so I didn't think there was a way for him to counter my swordsmen. He's cranking out horsemen like there's no tomorrow (to be fair, there isn't). I can't check on his economy for another few turns, but I suspect it's not great. He can't have the gold to sustain this for long, and he's got barbs running all over his land.
3)Something else that really
irks the hell out of me - despite my concentrating all my envoys on Valetta from the beginning, Archduke has fucking
6 envoys in there now to my 4. I have one saved up, but I need 2 just to get Valetta to make peace with me. Where the
devil did he get all those envoys? I'll have my first naturally generated one in 5 turns, so I'll dump both in then and get Amani in there as well, but seriously, this is annoying. How is he doing this? Lucky quests?
Anyway, let's get to work.
We finish this this turn, so as soon as Universities are in we can push for gunpowder. We also grabbed Civil Service, but I forgot to ask Alhambram for an alliance 2 turns in a row because I'm stupid. Alhambram could really use the strength boost:
Alhambram is at 400 military power, I am down to 250, and Archduke is at...1400. He's also matched my science, although I have more seowons in my back pocket, and universities coming up next turn. We're not beaten yet but we're damned close. If Alhambram's capital falls, I think I might be willing to concede at that point. Shame, I'm crushing the builder game, but Archduke's just beating everyone up and taking their stuff.
This leads me to a metagame thought - maybe not the place for this but I am not known for my lack of rambing, nor my simple and straightforward sentence construction - that I really don't like how many of these PBEMs are decided by an early rush on a player. The three that I have enjoyed the most - 2, 4, and 7 - all had competitive games last a while. In 2, the western triad kept dragging each other done while Woden and Alhambram continually shadowboxed but never broke out into open warfare. In 4, Singaboy's successful conquest of Japper precipitated the dramatic second half of the game, with ltos of back and forth as various powers tussled over Norway's corpse. Now, I grant you that PBEM5 didn't have a successful early rush, and it's not among my favorites, but mostly that's because I didn't follow it too closely - I really need to give Krill and Pin's threads a readthrough, if nothing else.
But PBEM1? Once Sullla took out the Archduke, it was basically over. That's fine, it was a small map and the first game. But in PBEM3, Ichabod never lost his dominant position after taking out Kaiser. PBEM6, the Archduke never struggled after running over suboptimal. And PBEM9, I very strongly doubt that Japper and rho will be able to stop suboptimal (good luck, though, guys, rooting for you). Eh. I dunno. Really, I'm just frustrated at how easily Mongolia overran Sumeria, a supposedly strong Ancient-era civ. Emperor I can forgive, but Rowain has no excuse, and that's really what's dictated this game - Mongolia just can't be beaten with half the map under its control and twice as many cities as anyone else.
Anyway, what else?
Oh, right, the war. Well, Japper's pursued me back to A Frank Exchange, but joke's on him - I juiced it up with DotF (no point saving the missionary, right?). Let's see what this baby can do:
An archer shot and a spearman attack and the nearby horseman is wiped out. I bring up two more archers and wipe out the chariot as well, while my last shots cripple one of Japper's horsemen (the last one?)
We'll hold around this city and save our gold. Crossbows and muskets will sweep Japper away, but we need cash for those, desperately.
Speaking of cash, we finish our first Commercial Hub. We need a LONG time to get trade going, though:
13 turns for a Market, longer than a seowon! Jeez! THEN I've got to get a trader built! And that's AFTER chopping out the district with Limes! Traders are
much harder to come by in R&F. This makes Commercial Hubs WAY less useful, and I think it's also a buff for Rome and Cree - Cree because they get some free traders, which as you can see is no insignificant investment, and Rome because they at least get roads over rough terrain. Everyone else will have a hard time with that. I honestly don't think this was a great change for Firaxis to make. Not sure what the rational was - were traders TOO spammable before? Too many naked Commercial Hubs?
Overview and score. Valetta is annoying and we're all gonna be eaten by Mongols:
