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

[BING_XI_LAO]

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. 

I felt that I had to attack you because to a certain extent i was 'squeezed' between you and the edge of the map; we both had both cities next to the other. Meanwhile the eventual border with Aetryn only had his latest-acquired cities of low value for him. The highlands mountain lake setup was fun, but not so sure on the absence of wraparound.

[BING_XI_LAO]

Hidden is not the right word, but unintuitive.

For example, going by what happened this turn, putting machine guns as city defenders when you only have rifles makes the machine guns weaker, because they will defend directly against siege, which collateral your trash and rifles wile directly weakening the machine guns. But if you have infantry, then the infantry always defends first, and machine guns suddenly get better.

Don't like it. Simple as.

To me it seems like a cool way to give MGs a 'second life' with a new allied combination. I didn't think about it too much, but I did expect guerilla 2 infantry to have defense priority. Congrats on ending the game with Creation back in your hands, I'm glad it wasn't intended as kingmaking behaviour.

[BING_XI_LAO]

Despite the appalling losses I took last turn, Bing pulled back his remaining garrison from Creation. He must really need those units elsewhere!

There was an Aetryn stack in your land, as I recall. So my injured Creation infantry and MGs would've been attacked by tanks and marines. The duel was truly over when that happened...

[greenline]

I felt that I had to attack you because to a certain extent i was 'squeezed' between you and the edge of the map; we both had both cities next to the other. Meanwhile the eventual border with Aetryn only had his latest-acquired cities of low value for him. The highlands mountain lake setup was fun, but not so sure on the absence of wraparound.

Yeah. Late game really emphasized that the shape of the map wasn't that fairly constructed, as Aetryn notes in this thread that I still have to finish reading. It is good as a learning exercise if nothing else. I had not thought so much about map geography influencing attack vectors until I had to live it.

To me it seems like a cool way to give MGs a 'second life' with a new allied combination. I didn't think about it too much, but I did expect guerilla 2 infantry to have defense priority. Congrats on ending the game with Creation back in your hands, I'm glad it wasn't intended as kingmaking behaviour.

The weird thing about the MG interaction is that it makes no sense to build them when you don't have infantry, because MGs will defend over rifles and get chewed to pieces by cannons. Unless you prebuild a lot of CG2-CG3 crossbows and mass upgrade them, which was a strategy I hadn't considered during the game.

There was an Aetryn stack in your land, as I recall. So my injured Creation infantry and MGs would've been attacked by tanks and marines. The duel was truly over when that happened...

I actually never noticed it. I might not have attacked right away if I realized it was there, as Aetryn could have easily just razed the city.

[Mjmd]

Just skimming last little bit. If you had taken the peace treaty for Creation would you have allied with Bing?

I know it never feels like it on the receiving end, but I thought Bings attack made sense. A) Geographically (I was telling Aetryn I expected before your UU for like 20 turns), but also B) he was in second at the time and it looked like you were running away. Aetryn hadn't launched 3rd GA / switch to free speech, gotten Kremlin, gotten food corp to go with it yet, and had pathetic power. IE he was looking really weak. So saying "should have let us fight" doesn't really encompass the game state at the time. Bing hit you at a perfect timing window of you just losing a stack and delayed assembly line and he had a large army. I think the fact you were calling for Aetryn to concede to Bing shows how scary this was. I can confirm we also were scared he would just keep rolling. Between that and Aetryn not being able to advance much more at the time was what led to eventually offering peace.

The corp thing is more of an graphics issue. It really should show the corp is "there" but not active somehow. When SD took a city in PB66 I thought I was going to have to put my corp back in and was presently surprised when I got it back. Not something that happens a lot in single player.

Aetryn moved in to attack creation after you attacked. Had been planning for a bit, but never got enough army to move first (IE I think Aetryn was putting more to east which was prob correct). I think Aetryn put army in one of your cities which is probably why you didn't notice. Didn't have enough to take it, but wanted to force him to defend with injured units / raze if lucky.

[greenline]

Just skimming last little bit. If you had taken the peace treaty for Creation would you have allied with Bing?

Not allied, more of a neutral position. I would have taken the time to rebuild and see where the war went. I probably would still been inclined to attack Bing in ten turns if he was losing, just out of revenge.

I know it never feels like it on the receiving end, but I thought Bings attack made sense. A) Geographically (I was telling Aetryn I expected before your UU for like 20 turns), but also B) he was in second at the time and it looked like you were running away. Aetryn hadn't launched 3rd GA / switch to free speech, gotten Kremlin, gotten food corp to go with it yet, and had pathetic power. IE he was looking really weak. So saying "should have let us fight" doesn't really encompass the game state at the time. Bing hit you at a perfect timing window of you just losing a stack and delayed assembly line and he had a large army. I think the fact you were calling for Aetryn to concede to Bing shows how scary this was. I can confirm we also were scared he would just keep rolling. Between that and Aetryn not being able to advance much more at the time was what led to eventually offering peace.

I don't think I was ever running away at that point. I had a high mfg, but a lot of that was locked in my Ironworks city. It would give me a monopoly on many late game wonders, but I would need the techs first, and I was still just keeping pace with Aetryn there.

I think Bing could have rolled further to take Republic and diamond age if he attacked without pausing after Creation fell. I think his hesitation was that ALL of his siege units died taking creation from what I recall. So it would have gotten even bloodier and with only nationalism and no slavery rebuilding that army would have been slow. Bing can correct me if I am wrong there. So the attack still looks like a strategic misplay to me.

Aetryn moved in to attack creation after you attacked. Had been planning for a bit, but never got enough army to move first (IE I think Aetryn was putting more to east which was prob correct). I think Aetryn put army in one of your cities which is probably why you didn't notice. Didn't have enough to take it, but wanted to force him to defend with injured units / raze if lucky.

The reason I didn't attack from the east is that Bing razed several of the rails I had built, so it would mean two turns marching. I wanted to do a one turn lightning strike because I thought I could take the city in one go. Unfortunately infantries let me down.

[BING_XI_LAO]

I know it never feels like it on the receiving end, but I thought Bings attack made sense. A) Geographically (I was telling Aetryn I expected before your UU for like 20 turns), but also B) he was in second at the time and it looked like you were running away. Aetryn hadn't launched 3rd GA / switch to free speech, gotten Kremlin, gotten food corp to go with it yet, and had pathetic power. IE he was looking really weak. So saying "should have let us fight" doesn't really encompass the game state at the time. Bing hit you at a perfect timing window of you just losing a stack and delayed assembly line and he had a large army. I think the fact you were calling for Aetryn to concede to Bing shows how scary this was. I can confirm we also were scared he would just keep rolling. Between that and Aetryn not being able to advance much more at the time was what led to eventually offering peace.

I don't think I was ever running away at that point. I had a high mfg, but a lot of that was locked in my Ironworks city. It would give me a monopoly on many late game wonders, but I would need the techs first, and I was still just keeping pace with Aetryn there.

I think Bing could have rolled further to take Republic and diamond age if he attacked without pausing after Creation fell. I think his hesitation was that ALL of his siege units died taking creation from what I recall. So it would have gotten even bloodier and with only nationalism and no slavery rebuilding that army would have been slow. Bing can correct me if I am wrong there. So the attack still looks like a strategic misplay to me.

Maybe I should've continued onto Republic, the main concern was the possibility of an extra +5 unhappiness from WW. At one point even a core city was down to effective 6 population due to unhappiness from drafting and the WW hit of Creation. I did have some more artillery in the back.

[BING_XI_LAO]

I disagree with you discounting pre-factory/coalplant cities as "taking 3-4 turns to make infantry". This is true, but the other way to look at it is that a factory or coal plant is enough hammers for what, 2-3 upfront infantry?

[Tarkeel]

So that's everything done with, and overall I think it went pretty well. I had fun at least, even if there were parts where I felt the game moved too fast for me to contribute much. I do think I achieved my own goal for this game, which was to have you Greenline play your own game with me offering opinions from the sidelines.

If there was one part where I should have pushed harder, it was in the initial invasion of Xis: we should have kept whipping out fresh waves of 'phracts until the objective was met. In the end the net gain from that was negligible, as xist's lands were pretty evenly split between all three invaders, and we never managed to properly secure the salient.

[greenline]

I disagree with you discounting pre-factory/coalplant cities as "taking 3-4 turns to make infantry". This is true, but the other way to look at it is that a factory or coal plant is enough hammers for what, 2-3 upfront infantry?

The upfront infantry definitely would have been valuable. I just bring up the production time to highlight that I was by no means running away with the game just going off of the MFG graph. In the end game you were way ahead on MFG despite losing in the last war vs Aetryn.

If there was one part where I should have pushed harder, it was in the initial invasion of Xis: we should have kept whipping out fresh waves of 'phracts until the objective was met. In the end the net gain from that was negligible, as xist's lands were pretty evenly split between all three invaders, and we never managed to properly secure the salient.

I agree the gains from the invasion were disappointing. But we would have needed a lot of siege rather than just cataphracts to get through xist's cities (maybe crossbows?) Even phracts do not trade that well vs formation pikes in castles.