[PB72] Xist10 plays far to home

[BING_XI_LAO]

Aetryn did tried to get peace, but no.
I have praets, my Iron is connected in 3 turns. He can have his war. 

Heh, should've accepted the peace and spent it building praets ) '"war is deceit" as muhammad said

[greenline]

Reading the thread, I am surprised that you were pushing for early aggression more than superdeath! I think it was an understandable reaction given that Aetryn made a decisive landgrab with his pig city plant. IMP can be hard to beat on landgrabs. I'm not sure what I would have done in that scenario - although I think it would have been better to go all in with cats + Praets rather than trying for an earlier push with a few axes or warriors.

You were definitely right in coming to the conclusion that the savings factor alone on AGG is pretty worthless. Late in the game, when I was 2nd in power (before suffering some catastrophic blunders), my unit costs were peanuts compared to maintenance and corp payments and inflation. It does let you freely run Pacifism, which Bing got better use out of, but that is about it for the economy.

Praetorians are a very strong 'lose less' type unit. I was frustrated by how bad odds phracts would get against them in hills. I'm sorry I wasn't able to push for an earlier elimination - it took me a long time to get to cannons and then Bing made it very difficult to pull units out of my core.

Overall you definitely did a good job fighting off 3 opponents and surviving for so long. I think you would have been competitive in the economy too if you had not picked Boudica and not went all in on Aetryn's city at first. GLH seems like it would have been a good build for you, since Bing took a while to complete it.

[xist10]

The early push were attempts to burn the damm city cheaply - I aborted after I saw that Aetryn had the axemen there.
And I think, I wanted the whip the axemen so or so, so not really a "wrong" investment

And then Aetryn burned my city. Like Bing said, Peace and all in a few turn later could be better.


And yes, you had problems on the other end of your empire - and Aetryn was a vulture who invested nothing, I think ?
But after you researched steel (or railway a tech later). stop teching for 2 turns and upgrade your catapults. I had nothing which would be able to (cheaply) kill the cannons (or a upgraded crossbow) and the cataphracts are good enough that they soak the collateral damage.
And a question: Why didn't you try to bypass Neapolis and Antium and march against Cumae ?

[Mjmd]

Aetryn lost 2 stacks, that isn't nothing. But yes vulturing is often a good tactic especially when you aren't particularly strong atm.

[greenline]

But after you researched steel (or railway a tech later). stop teching for 2 turns and upgrade your catapults. I had nothing which would be able to (cheaply) kill the cannons (or a upgraded crossbow) and the cataphracts are good enough that they soak the collateral damage.
And a question: Why didn't you try to bypass Neapolis and Antium and march against Cumae ?

There never felt like a moment where I could safely turn off tech. Aetryn was also racing ahead and Tarkeel convinced me to go for corps once I landed an engineer.

I never tried going straight for Cumae once I saw you had a large stack because it would take several turns of walking one tile per turn over hills, and I was afraid you would send your forces to get the cities back I had conquered.

[xist10]

@Mjmd I think otherwise.
The first army was a bit bigger than Bing‘s „garnison“, but still nothing I would call real investment. Especially if you compare it to Greenline’s investment or bing’s reaction to that. I think I built more troops in this time.
And Prudence was a loss, but not an investment in the war.

And I don’t know if I would tried to counter attack. There where a few turns where you only needed 3 turns to Cumae. And then Rome would be only 2 turns away.

[aetryn]

If you mean did I switch to a pure military footing and whip out a bunch of units in preparation for / participation in the war with you, then no, I didn't do that. Part of that was uncertainty over the timing because I wasn't sure for sure what Greenline was signalling, so I didn't want to invest a ton only to find that he'd changed his mind because Bing had built up a bunch of military. Then when I was sure the war was coming I had like 4 turns to prepare and was in the middle of some other goals. I also aimed for a limited investment and the split I was working off was that Greenline would take everything west of the isthmus and I would take the triple gold and stone on that side of things. I advanced pretty much all I had - despite a paper rating of decent power, most of that was tied up in mostly obsolete axes and similar units. And really, it was being too eager to put pressure on to help Greenline advance that led to me pushing that stack too far away and leaving it vulnerable to counterattack, however big it was or was not.