Turn 238: Romans go home
Well there wasn't much drama in it, but Xist finally exits as one infantryman reaches the unguarded city of Satiricum and captures it. Despite trying to destroy his land as much as possible, the city remains with a Granary and Mint (I'm aware he can't destroy his own buildings), so I kept it. Meanwhile near Rome Aztec culture is dangerously dominant, but that was to be expected. I expanded Creative Construction to the old roman Holy Site, and have an exec inbound to Rome by the time it comes out of resistance next turn. There will be few turns of window where Bing could attack, but I have a LOT of forces in the area and Bing still shows no signs of buildup on this side of the map.
Xist, if you ever read this, I think you had by far the worst map position with seas on both the east and west and smack up against the southern border. You had pretty much nowhere to go except north, straight into me, and the halfway line in between us left you with far less space than anyone else had. I understand why you went aggressive on Prudence and settled Mediolanum. I still think you should have put more effort into going east and settling the gold region aggressively instead of worrying about your west coast, and I'm not sure the wisdom of taking aggressive picks on a map that I thought would be slow grindy war because of terrain, but other than that I think you played what you had pretty well. Good job smashing my inadequate stack in the east, and sniping Prudence when I wasn't paying attention properly. And your destruction of Greenline's main stack probably was the biggest swing in this game, opening the way for Bing to go in a second time, for me to pile in, and probably converted a third-place position for me into... well, I don't know where I am now. But ahead of Greenline! Your defense was tenacious and you fought to the last man. Well played!
Also, in the east, the battle of Pillow Book was won at significant cost. I had JUST enough troops to take it, though I lost a couple coin flips and might have been overall slightly unlucky, though I also forgot to promote one infantry before sending it in, so user error definitely contributed too! It somehow kept a Granary, Mint, Courthouse, Market, and Coal Plant(!), so that was probably worth it. At this point, I don't see where the war with Greenline goes. I have pretty much no desire to push farther in the east - Anathem is stacked with too many Machine Guns and Infantry for it to be profitable to take, and Bing continues to do something I can't understand and can best characterize as "dither", though I'm sure that's just my inexperience. Anyway, it doesn't seem like it's appropriate to push in the west since Greenline has forces free to respond, so I've pulled back to Huckleberry Finn. At this point I have no further offensive plans against Greenline.
So where does the game go from here? I'm far ahead in city count, though a lot of those are captured or newly founded and minimally productive. I've got a hammer corp that's pretty decently spread and is helping to secure me reasonable borders even in newly captured areas (though a few key cities are "stuck" with Mining Inc, the corp I thought I wanted). I've got a very good shot at a food corp. And I have Kremlin, and a military tech lead. I have to imagine those paint a MASSIVE target on my back. I'm assuming Bing wants to go after me at some point, and maybe that's why he's advancing so slowly against Greenline? But on the other hand, I had pretty much all of those things 5 turns ago and Bing sent me an extremely favorable resource trade, and did march into Greenline's territory and take over a city, so I don't know how to read this. He's also been spending tons of EP on me, and saving cash. I see a few possibilities:
a) He wants to continue to take Greenline's core, but doesn't want to do it in such a way that he loses a large portion of his army, so he's jockeying around trying to secure territory by cutting rails and leaving Greenline few opportunities for counterplay or mobile defense.
b) He wants to take what he has now, cut it off so it can't be easily recaptured by burning rail lines, and then shift to attacking me.
c) He hasn't decided yet and is avoiding commitment whlie he makes up his mind.
d) He's expecting to get a 4th golden age, is saving gold for that, and will come blasting out of that taking over the tech lead and rampaging over the whole world. Or some other doomsday scenario I can't imagine or understand
Obviously A is highly favorable to me. The longer he continues to attack Greenline, even without losing units, the better positioned I will be as my captured/new cities become useful and my cultural border solidifies. The difference in land quality between Greenline's core and the stuff I took also won't matter because it will take too long to be useful to Bing and corps + Kremlin almost don't care about city tile yields anyway except for Commerce.
B would be bad, but is more or less what I expect to happen at some point. I have recon units out looking for a buildup along the relevant borders, and so far nothing, so I have at least a few turns of prep. Marines will soon be augmenting my armies, and tanks aren't too far off. He still has a power advantage, but it's not that large anymore. I probably lose if he takes his entire current stack and faces it off against my stack in a pitched battle this turn. But if he does it in 10-15 turns? Harder to say. Even later? He probably loses as I get to things like Bombers and missiles.
C & D there's not much I can do about. If he had a secret plan I don't understand and therefore can't counter, I'll learn about it and not fall victim to it next time. If he's just undecided, well, it will depend on what he actually decides.
So that feeds into the diplomatic situation. If we're in scenario B, I absolutely want peace with Greenline if he'll give it. If Bing is 100% locked into scenario A, I also want peace with Greenline. But if he's in C leaning A, I might want to remain at war for at least a few more turns to encourage Bing to continue. I took a city this turn, I lost some forces. Bing doesn't necessarily know I'm not planning to risk any more - he could take that as evidence of my continued commitment and plan a new offensive. It's a long shot, but it's also not really COSTING me much to stay at war with Greenline, at least not until I'm ready for offensive or liberation operations against Bing, and my forces are too scattered and my border near Rome too tenuous to want that for at least a few more turns.
Well there wasn't much drama in it, but Xist finally exits as one infantryman reaches the unguarded city of Satiricum and captures it. Despite trying to destroy his land as much as possible, the city remains with a Granary and Mint (I'm aware he can't destroy his own buildings), so I kept it. Meanwhile near Rome Aztec culture is dangerously dominant, but that was to be expected. I expanded Creative Construction to the old roman Holy Site, and have an exec inbound to Rome by the time it comes out of resistance next turn. There will be few turns of window where Bing could attack, but I have a LOT of forces in the area and Bing still shows no signs of buildup on this side of the map.
Xist, if you ever read this, I think you had by far the worst map position with seas on both the east and west and smack up against the southern border. You had pretty much nowhere to go except north, straight into me, and the halfway line in between us left you with far less space than anyone else had. I understand why you went aggressive on Prudence and settled Mediolanum. I still think you should have put more effort into going east and settling the gold region aggressively instead of worrying about your west coast, and I'm not sure the wisdom of taking aggressive picks on a map that I thought would be slow grindy war because of terrain, but other than that I think you played what you had pretty well. Good job smashing my inadequate stack in the east, and sniping Prudence when I wasn't paying attention properly. And your destruction of Greenline's main stack probably was the biggest swing in this game, opening the way for Bing to go in a second time, for me to pile in, and probably converted a third-place position for me into... well, I don't know where I am now. But ahead of Greenline! Your defense was tenacious and you fought to the last man. Well played!
Also, in the east, the battle of Pillow Book was won at significant cost. I had JUST enough troops to take it, though I lost a couple coin flips and might have been overall slightly unlucky, though I also forgot to promote one infantry before sending it in, so user error definitely contributed too! It somehow kept a Granary, Mint, Courthouse, Market, and Coal Plant(!), so that was probably worth it. At this point, I don't see where the war with Greenline goes. I have pretty much no desire to push farther in the east - Anathem is stacked with too many Machine Guns and Infantry for it to be profitable to take, and Bing continues to do something I can't understand and can best characterize as "dither", though I'm sure that's just my inexperience. Anyway, it doesn't seem like it's appropriate to push in the west since Greenline has forces free to respond, so I've pulled back to Huckleberry Finn. At this point I have no further offensive plans against Greenline.
So where does the game go from here? I'm far ahead in city count, though a lot of those are captured or newly founded and minimally productive. I've got a hammer corp that's pretty decently spread and is helping to secure me reasonable borders even in newly captured areas (though a few key cities are "stuck" with Mining Inc, the corp I thought I wanted). I've got a very good shot at a food corp. And I have Kremlin, and a military tech lead. I have to imagine those paint a MASSIVE target on my back. I'm assuming Bing wants to go after me at some point, and maybe that's why he's advancing so slowly against Greenline? But on the other hand, I had pretty much all of those things 5 turns ago and Bing sent me an extremely favorable resource trade, and did march into Greenline's territory and take over a city, so I don't know how to read this. He's also been spending tons of EP on me, and saving cash. I see a few possibilities:
a) He wants to continue to take Greenline's core, but doesn't want to do it in such a way that he loses a large portion of his army, so he's jockeying around trying to secure territory by cutting rails and leaving Greenline few opportunities for counterplay or mobile defense.
b) He wants to take what he has now, cut it off so it can't be easily recaptured by burning rail lines, and then shift to attacking me.
c) He hasn't decided yet and is avoiding commitment whlie he makes up his mind.
d) He's expecting to get a 4th golden age, is saving gold for that, and will come blasting out of that taking over the tech lead and rampaging over the whole world. Or some other doomsday scenario I can't imagine or understand
Obviously A is highly favorable to me. The longer he continues to attack Greenline, even without losing units, the better positioned I will be as my captured/new cities become useful and my cultural border solidifies. The difference in land quality between Greenline's core and the stuff I took also won't matter because it will take too long to be useful to Bing and corps + Kremlin almost don't care about city tile yields anyway except for Commerce.
B would be bad, but is more or less what I expect to happen at some point. I have recon units out looking for a buildup along the relevant borders, and so far nothing, so I have at least a few turns of prep. Marines will soon be augmenting my armies, and tanks aren't too far off. He still has a power advantage, but it's not that large anymore. I probably lose if he takes his entire current stack and faces it off against my stack in a pitched battle this turn. But if he does it in 10-15 turns? Harder to say. Even later? He probably loses as I get to things like Bombers and missiles.
C & D there's not much I can do about. If he had a secret plan I don't understand and therefore can't counter, I'll learn about it and not fall victim to it next time. If he's just undecided, well, it will depend on what he actually decides.
So that feeds into the diplomatic situation. If we're in scenario B, I absolutely want peace with Greenline if he'll give it. If Bing is 100% locked into scenario A, I also want peace with Greenline. But if he's in C leaning A, I might want to remain at war for at least a few more turns to encourage Bing to continue. I took a city this turn, I lost some forces. Bing doesn't necessarily know I'm not planning to risk any more - he could take that as evidence of my continued commitment and plan a new offensive. It's a long shot, but it's also not really COSTING me much to stay at war with Greenline, at least not until I'm ready for offensive or liberation operations against Bing, and my forces are too scattered and my border near Rome too tenuous to want that for at least a few more turns.
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