Does Bing have infantry?
Erebus in the Balance - a FFH Modmod based around balancing and polishing FFH for streamlined competitive play.
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[pb72 spoilers]: the esteemed gentleman's literature and book club
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Bing doesn't have infantry, only rifles. The problem is that he borders me on a contiguous landmass, whereas I am vulnerable on several fronts that require moving troops on boats, and they are spaced further apart than I would prefer. Machine guns are a better defensive investment because they won't take collateral from his cannons.
here are some pictures to try and illustrate the problem:
 ForgottnSoldier is critical to hold so that Bing can't threaten Republic and Creation and several other cities with boats. But that means supplying troops via boat chain across this stupid lake. Meanwhile, Bing's troops can travel via rails back and forth from his heartland. Metamorphosis also requires a large defensive garrison. I haven't been slacking on military builds by any means - I am #2 power in the game, significantly ahead of Aetryn and Xist. It's just that Bing has been going even further with both natural production and drafting. He has another GA to propel his meagre tech forward, for now, so he can probably reach infantry in a short ish time frame.  Meanwhile, there is this stretch, where Xist still has something like 20 praets and catapults hanging out. I'm trickling in Machine Guns slowly which will be pretty much impossible for Xist to take out in bulk, and I have a rifle / cannon stack playing zone defence. But it still feels like everything could be down to the wire. The game state really has my civ feel like it is juggling. Can't go all in on military builds vs Bing because Aetryn is still an economic force, and going all in on bing would throw the game. But can't go all in the economy to outpace Aetryn, because then Bing takes more of my cities and I am further behind. It is frustrating because from my perspective it means Aetryn and Bing can essentially just keep fucking around, low pressure, and I am not in a position to punish either of them. For now. I am hoping with a critical mass of machine guns I can then take the offensive to one of them.
Speaking of juggling, one of the balls just hit the floor.
   2 for 2 on getting bogged down and counterattacked while invading. By throwing everything Xist had at it, he was able to wipe my Phract + catapult + 10 musket/LB stack in Antium and retake it. Me moving the cannons + rifles out of it was the tipping point. It is really my fault for not simming this and realizing the city being on flatland would make it much more vulnerable than Njal's Saga. Going for the city already was kind of a reach with Bing breathing down my neck, but I felt like I had to react after losing a city. But I was probably playing a little on tilt. At least most of the units here were obsolete. And we have two great generals now. Xist took a lot of damage killing our stack, so he won't be advancing anywhere. In fact, I'd say he's now prime dead meat for any other player who wants to grab his cities - he is not whipping a new set of twenty five catapults any time soon. Although his holy city culture will make advancing slow (feeling a bit of schandenfreude on Aetryn's new plants being crushed).  Bing is finally in Rep / Free Market now, so he will be a much harder economic threat to deal with as well as militaristic. Let's see how long Aetryn keeps giving him free trade routes.
for some reason there's a turn delay on WW unhappy coming in - several cities are hit pretty hard. And we lost our only wine EOT to Aetryn's stupid CreCon culture. joy....
Bing didn't instantly redeclare though, so we may have a grace period to build factories and coal plants.  This is the sole oil source in our lands, ironically where I wanted to build national park. Was this map balanced for late game strategics?
September 17th, 2023, 17:47
(This post was last modified: September 17th, 2023, 17:50 by greenline.)
respite? nope. Bing is determined to use the big stupid army he has been building, even if it means attacking machine guns with cannons.
 Vodka suggests he cannot take the city this turn without bombarding first. Or maybe he can. I have reinforcements on the way, but of course a bunch can not make it this turn, because I am stuck also defending a really stupid lake. But yeah, without my 30 phracts to help break his stacks this is probably game for me. Happy to concede to Aetryn as he gets to planes first and gets to finish off Xist with little resistance. Sad that my chances here went down to a stupid blunder and general kingmaking, and a lousy map. But that's civ 4 for you, and I don't think I have the best temperament for lasting through these games. I get dissuaded too easily. It's a little double frustrating because I didn't even want to play a game of civ 4 in the first place, I wanted to do Civ 6, and I just joined this one to kick it off the ground. Oh well.
losing that city wasnt the biggest hit to productivity considering it was a size seven leech. the biggest problem for a lot of cities is unhealthyness and war weariness right now. but still. not fun to play. i am considering just hard revolting to nationhood + police state once pentagon is finished and going full military against bing until the game is over, because fuck it.
xist managed to ninja raze one of Aetryn's new plants, so he's making Aetryn work for his last four cities a little bit. |
