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

[greenline]

Do you have enough workers to chop out the lumbermill? Don't expect so. Could always do the SD thing and pillage our own improvements, and spitewhip down to 1, but that's not something I like doing.

I don't think it's worth upgrading the archers, but could fall back to Forgotten Soldier, which is the more important city of the two, since it's a port on our lake. Could even offer peace for the Good Book?

I was thinking of offering peace for that city. If we get a 10 turn peace lock, that would be a good opportunity to turn around and use our forces to crush what is left of Xist - who is currently invading Aetryn again with his mega stack. The only thing holding me back is that even Forgotten Soldier will be hard to hold and reinforce since it is on flatland, but we can do our best to stuff it with machine guns for the duration of a peace treaty.

No workers in the area, sadly - I was trying to ship them around to put rails in the core first. Can't whip or draft either, no civics for it.

[greenline]

Offered Bing peace for The Good Earth. Will try to hold in Forgotten Soldier if he does not take it.

[greenline]

Bing played a double turn, so he must have taken the peace offer.

Looking back on, what was the biggest things that influenced having to give the city up?

#1) Not being in nationalism / serfdom

This is the part I am not certain can be called a mistake. Why? Because, while not having these civics has meant a level of military inflexibility, it also has given us the economic juice to race to MinInc. If I had waited to pop the second GA for nationalism, or had swapped out of Bureau / Serfdom, I am pretty sure Aetryn would have been first to MinInc and we would have been stuck with CreCon.

#2) Building too much infrastructure in a border city.

The Good Earth was size 14 and had a lot of buildings : market, courthouse, library, even a bank (to get to the 5 necessary for Wall St. Hurts to give it up!) I think I should have prioritized the forest chops in the city for units.

Where do we go from here? Well, we have 10 turns guaranteed peace with Bing. Best use of that time is to do three things:

1) Spam Machine guns on the border where Bing can advance. Bing will not tech a unit good for killing MGs anytime soon and it will make it likely we can at least hold The Forgotten Soldier.
2) Spread MinInc to remaining cities and build Statue. In progress.
3) Finish off Xist. He can't touch cannons and his army is busy pissing off Aetryn.

(Is it too much to ask for lurkers to weigh in on whether I've been playing well or not, given the land I have?)

[Tarkeel]

FWIW, I think you've been mainly playing a good game. Settling these two cities might have been questionable due to the geography, but I can't fault you for trying to hold it.

[Qgqqqqq]

I have no idea tbh. You seem to be doing well.

[greenline]

Thanks for the encouragement. Losing a city and having to burn the merchant just to get to MinInc has had me doubting a lot of my decisions lately.

Waving farewell to our colony, ceded without a fight. I am tempted to move our next target to Bing just for revenge purposes. Still not a game winning move, but now a satisfying one. Once we unlock an oil navy, we can make him pay.

But, for now, the best way of dealing with the pain of city loss is to conquer some new ones:




Xist's superstack has been tormenting me without end for months, and I will be happy to crush it now that I have 10 free turns to use my full power without restraint. Whether I will need to rotate these forces back to the core after immediately attacking Neapolis is unknown. But hey, fuck yeah, cannons will get the job done here.

Statue due in 5 turns. Bing enforced peace up by t216. Hoping to get a bunch of MGs done and MinInc spread in the core by then.

[Tarkeel]

Don't overextend when going after Xist; he's got nothing else going than that army, so don't let him use it against you. Aetryn might also swoop in and hurt us.

[greenline]

Do you think going after Neapolis would be too far? There isn't anywhere else I can really advance.

[Tarkeel]

I agree we should try to take it, but also be aware that we're just carving out an even larger bulge (for now). Just do it carefully.

[greenline]

I'll try and keep enough forces in reserve at Njal's Saga so Aetryn doesn't get tempted. If he sees us move in he might also go for Neapolis - I wouldn't mind ceding that to him if it meant we got Rome and Cumae.