[SPOILERS] Out of retirement and into the fires of war. yuris125, Pitboss 68

[yuris125]

The general outline of a plan: take Commodore's cities. Build 3 galleys, get 6 amphibious knights (the great general about to be born can help with that), raze To The Strongest (would be a symblolic gesture more than anything, doubt losing a 8-pop city would hamper Miguelito all that much, but at least it would deny him access to the inner sea). Resettle See-Scape. Then see if we can get economy into some semblance of shape where it can keep up with Miguelito's

It's not a great plan by any means, but at least it makes me believe that there's still hope

[yuris125]

Moved in




What can possibly go wrong

Unit production is going to slow down next turn, capital will have to go to onto wealth builds to cover the budget deficit, and Gruul Smash started working on galleys in case we can make the To The Strongest plan happen (probably should stop whipping it anyway, think it's over 70 turns of whip anger now)

[yuris125]

Yellow Comet falls, at the cost of all 3 trebs and 1 cat




Granary and forge survived, which made the decision to keep the city even easier. However, Commodore retains control of all the land around it. Can we hold it? That's the real question

We'll see if Miguelito reacts to this development

Commodore's capital will be a tougher nut to crack, especially as he will finish Engineering before we can get there

[yuris125]

Predictably Miguelito is not going to stay away




I... think this is defendable. He does need 2 more turns to march to the city. I was able to get 5 wounded knights into the city this turn for healing, along with the medic 2 GG chariot (which can be upgraded to a knight for free) - they will be full health by the time the attack comes. There are more freshly built knights running around. I have 9 catapults which can hit the stack once it approaches the city, along with some number of crossbows (and 5 pikes, they're not very useful against this samurai-heavy stack, but will be in play if Miguelito tries to rush in the knights). And I can whip a musket or two

If Miguelito does take Gruul Smash, it will be concession time. If we kill this stack, it's suddenly all to play for, as long as I can fix the economy

Also concerned about Commodore retaking Yellow Comet, I now realised that he can hit it with units stacked in his capital once he finished Engineering. But if he does, well, so it goes. As I said, razing the city wouldn't have gotten us anywhere, pretty confident that keeping it and trying to hold was the right play. I did move in two muskets to make it less likely - that was always the plan, but I had to decide if it was better to carry on or send them to help defending Gruul Smash. But as we saw from skirmishes around Blue Moon, crossbows don't do particularly well defending against longbows, I needed stronger defenders

[yuris125]

Miguelito decided not to advance further. That said, I looked on the F4, and it looks very very bad




Hard to keep track of Miguelito's great people, but it looks like he picked up Philosophy, Paper, and Chemistry over a handful of turns. Most likely he will Liberalism for Steel and roll over the continent with cannons. He still has over 300g in the bank, won't even take long for him to get there

Oh well. As I said, fall of Gruul Smash will prompt a concession from me. Until then, I will keep trying

[yuris125]

You know, I'm not going to make Miguelito execute a very obvious play. Frankly, I was playing on because I thought he still was a few techs away from this point. Now that Liberalism is on his "can research" screen, and I'm nowhere near there and have no economy, it doesn't matter what he picks with Liberalism. Whether he takes Steel or MilTrad, I have no answer to units unlocked by those techs, and won't have one for a long time. And if he waits and Libs for something even more advanced, it doesn't make things better for me

I didn't want anyone to say that the concession was premature, but I see no way out at this point. As I said, Miguelito's winning play is very obvious, and even if he chooses a different one, I still don't see a way out

So I'm happy to concede, assuming Commodore is

[superdeath]

What turn(s) would you go back and change to make this come out differently? Or do you believe that you made the right choices and just got a shit run of luck?

[yuris125]

I think the first mistake was underestimating the power of CtH Agg. Especially in this game, which didn't have a lot of unit trading, and where stack positioning played a huge role, unit maintenance ended up mattering a lot. I had to constantly watch out for unit maintenance cost, and ultimately was unable to build a stack big enough for conquest. At this point I'm paying 42 gpt in maintenance; I don't know if any trait would've given me more than Agg halving this cost. My assumption that my traits were better for late game and all I had to do was get there on even footing didn't work out. The fact that my units were worse than what other players had, especially in the early game, so I was forced to build more units than them, didn't help. With the knowledge I have now, I probably would've picked Ragnar

Other than that... I talked a bit about things which could be viewed as a mistake with hindsight, but could be justified at the time. Maybe I could've had a better plan for great people, and not just worked specialists to find a use for my food surplus other than whipping. There were two points where Miguelito jumped ahead of the field - first during his golden age, when he was able to bulb Civil Service and switch to Bureaucracy, second now, when he's quickly rushing towards Liberalism. Both were fuelled by great people. His great artist bulb to kill my dreams of claiming part of Thothland was devastating as well (don't think he expected it to also let him raze See-Scape, but that sealed the game). Me getting cheap great people early, without a concrete plan after the first two scientists, and without even knowing which great person I was going to get every time, didn't work out

By the time I was in position to attack, I was already behind, and while there were mistakes made (not pulling back from attack on Thoth, letting Commodore raze Boros Burn; overcommitting to attack on Blue Moon, which resulted in me not having defenders when Miguelito exposed See-Scape), I don't think they were game-defining. The big factor was that me crippling Thoth in the early game meant Miguelito didn't have to worry about a praet attack, and once he was able to defend against Commodore's attacks (I know Commodore tried to make things happen from his power graph drops), he was free to develop and leverage Ind

Possibly I could've recognised the importance of Metal Casting, and that even 1/2 workshops were good tiles to work on this low-hammer map. But don't know, feels like my tech path in the early game was almost forced

[naufragar]

Hey Yuri, I'm a few days behind (apologies again) but I think you played really well. As you say Agg ended up being an weirdly important economy trait, and if memory serves, I steered you away from that.

This was a great game and a wonderful way out of retirement.

[Commodore]

Agree, very nice return from retirement, you did well here.