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

[greenline]

Promoted crossbows?

From my experience, it actually seems like MGs are best deployed to hold tiles of land, or against backwards opponents. The reason why they can't defend cities well against an equal opponent in tech is simple in hindsight: city raider promotions. A city raider catapult or treb is still something like str 8 or 7 vs an 18 str MG, but a cannon can easily get to str 15 and leave the MG very weak, and an arty will just straight up beat the MG. But if you can't take city raider or the opponent does not have cannons then the MG can keep a consistent 2:1 ratio on a lot of units. So I clearly overbuilt MGs in my initial defense and ironically it would have been better for me to stick all my MGs against the praetorians to save the cataphracts for defending my homeland.

But I did not know or guess any of that going in. My only experience with industrial warfare in civ 4 was a game with a much flatter map, which made me think that 2 moves beat all. But here there are a lot of hills to march 1 movers on, so my giant horse stack did not end up being all that impactful. And machine guns are a lot more niche then I thought they would be. Lessons to learn for the future.

And towards the map: I still think, I got the worst position from the layout on the map, but your land ? horrible

Layout wise, was there not much room to expand? I never saw the details of the early conflict between you and Aetryn.

[xist10]

crossbows (or grenadiers) can get garnison or combat promotions which counters the cityraider. And you can upgrade (not promote) them.
Add 50% against gunpowder and the are good defenders till marines. cannons counter them a bit thanks to city raider, but even then you need 1 cannon pro mg.

And positions, maybe yours was worse than mine, but no backline and I was able to settle 8 cities uncontested ?
And this was a close dotmap, few cities with a distance of 3.

I had 14 cities at the time of the war declaration and room for 3 more. And this with a few aggresive founded border cities

[greenline]

crossbows (or grenadiers) can get garnison or combat promotions which counters the cityraider. And you can upgrade (not promote) them.
Add 50% against gunpowder and the are good defenders till marines. cannons counter them a bit thanks to city raider, but even then you need 1 cannon pro mg.

That is a neat strategy. Would be pretty expensive to upgrade a bunch, I am seeing costs of 170 per unit for just axes - but I will have to consider next game.

And positions, maybe yours was worse than mine, but no backline and I was able to settle 8 cities uncontested ?
And this was a close dotmap, few cities with a distance of 3.

I had 14 cities at the time of the war declaration and room for 3 more. And this with a few aggresive founded border cities

I see. My land definitely had more room for expansion, although a lot of that was extremely marginal before serfdom mills + biology. I have 15 cities left now even with all the bloodletting.

[xist10]

With the garnison promotion the mg can held against modern units just fine. Or with guerilla 1/2 to defend an invading army.
Problem: Drill isn't that good against opponent with the same strenght. To win a fight Combat (or other promotions) is better. Drill is good to win without a scratch or to scratch an enemy.
And if you have a few promotions, 1 MG can wipe a whole old army.
After I saw you are researching railways, I wrote that 1 MG would mean, you can retreat the cataphracts from the front and defend only with the MG. Drill4 Garnison1 means 4-7 firststrikes and the MG needs only to win 3 combat rounds ?
Or when you can't get the 10 Exp - did you get an general from the war before antium ? - Drill2 and Garnison1 still means 2-3 firststrikes and about 80% to win a combat round against my units.

[greenline]

I actually didn't have any great generals until I lost my whole stack. I should have used some to try and defend against bing, but at that point I wasn't really thinking straight when playing the turns.

[greenline]

Aetryn has been peppering me with ceasefire offers for a while. This time, I sent one back. Why?




With machineguns, I could just barely fend off his thrusts. But I can't handle marines. So he can keep HuckleberryFinn, Julian, and the Pillow Book without pressure.

He has 37 cities to Bing's 25, so it seems like he will come ahead even if Bing manages to spread MinInc around and take advantage of the shrine gold. Bing's teching for the last 15 turns has been pretty atrocious. Bing retreated a bunch of his forces from creation, so it remains to be seen if he is aiming for a sneak attack near Atlas Shrugged or just wants a last ditch effort to slow Aetryn down. Out of my hands either way.

[greenline]

Cease fire goes through with Aetryn. He also added Cereals to his list of toys. If we had rolled a merchant or not lost the economics one we could have had it, but alas...

Bing keeps asking for a cease fire to presumably try and do something about Aetryn. Lol. Maybe I'll consider it if you hand two of my core cities and the shrine back, buddy.

[greenline]

Got airships to scout. Bing has pulled back his offense, content to hold forces to strike at Creation while spreading MinInc. He's seen a big jump in MFG, but his GNP is still below mine.







Aetryn is his main rival to win the game, already two techs ahead on his way to planes. Yet he has to keep at least half his army on my border to not lose the MinInc + Shrine combo. I'm not giving him peace until I get at least these two cities back. The way forward depends on whether Aetryn decides to finish me off or attack Bing. I am hoping to get artillery and then blast whoever I can.

[xist10]

I know this situation.
Creation could be a bit difficult, Bing was clever enough to destroy the roads, but DiamondAge ?
You need only a few units.
And maybe Peace could be an option. You could try to road the hills by Creation. And if Bing use the time to engage Aetryn ?

[greenline]

I could retake diamond age right now, but it is not a huge prize. The towns lost aren't a huge factor of the economy compared to losing the shrine and Corp - because I am in mercantilism, none of my cities can benefit from MinInc. I have zero chance of winning without Creation (not great chances even with it, but not much I can do), so I will not attack until taking the city is at least a possibility.

If I give Bing peace I think it is more likely he will just consolidate and attack me again when peace is up - that is what happened the last time I gave him peace. It is a gamble that Aetryn will not attack me instead of attacking Bing, which would be the worst case scenario. I am hoping Aetryn recognizes the value I am giving him by tying up half of Bing's military.