[Spoilers] This Perfect Place

[Mr. Cairo]

We're going to ignore my homeland for now, Gawdzak has rifles, cavs, frigates, etc, and will have no trouble eating me up. I am at least now able to whip and draft into oblivion.

Instead let's focus on ex-Aztec lands, where I might be able to do some actual damage, although the news here isn't so good either, as I messed up:


The signs say it all. I thought I could pillage that road, preventing his Cataphracts from hitting my stack of one-movers on that hill, I wanted them there so they couldn't be attacked from the sea (he has 3 galleons in range). But you can't pillage roads within your own territory. So, Ichabod could wipe that force out with his ~40 Cataphracts he has next to Sumiregusa. He'll take losses, attacking across a river and up a hill, but once past the Pikes, my maces wont have very good odds. Maybe now that AT has attacked him, he wont want to suffer the losses that would entail.

My 2-movers at least should be safe, and able to hit Tenochtitlan and Nicaea next turn, and send a sizable force onwards into what used to be Russia.

This is a lesson in doing things in the right order. If I had tried to pillage the road first, I would have moved that stack 1N or 1NW. Vulnerable from the sea, yes, but able to be attacked by a maximum of 12 Cataphracts, instead of 40.

I only have a few turns left, but at least I'm still learning.

[Mr. Cairo]

Ichabod did not attack my stack, I think I underestimated the culture coming from And Winter Came to the south, even after he took Sumiregusa, he was in my territory. Therefore, he moved his army 1E, capturing Sumi with a single Cataphract. I was therefore able to capture Blanquette. I had wanted to raze it, but I had too much culture in the city (makes ssense now that I think about it), and didn't get the option. Nevertheless, it cut off his main army, and by dumping my pikes in the city, and drafting a Musket, he wont be able to take it back this turn with the Phracts alone. Meanwhile, my knights auto-razed that newly planted city on Dreylin's borders, and are moving on two of his more established cities. I tried to go after Tenochtitlan, but after 2 knights failed to even scratch the defending LB, I moved on. If my mace + cat stack can survive, maybe they'll be able to burn it. He is coming home with some of his trailing galleons, so I expect to see some Phracts landed there soon.



Meanwhile, Gawdzak is having no trouble taking my cities with rifles and cavs. I kind of feel sorry for Ichabod, since he's having a much harder time dealing with me than Gawdzak is, and for a lot smaller reward. But, sometimes that happens, I was strongest where Ichabod attacked me, and weakest were Gawdzak attacked me. Not that my army could have dealt with rifles and cavs anyway. I wonder if Ichabod even will land any troop on my home continent? Even should he manage to take a city, he wont be able to hold it from Gawdzak.

[Mr. Cairo]

I'll start with a text update on the "war" with Gawdzak. He's slowed down some lately, probably just consolidating his units before pushing on my cap. I did make my first offensive move of the war this turn however, killing a cavalry with a Pike + WE that was left on its own outside Pax Deorum, which Gawdzak has so far ignored. I continue to draft and whip Muskets in my remaining cities, but now I'm starting to see cannons arrive, so I doubt I'll be able to even slow him down. The same can not be said for Ichabod on the other hand.

This is what greeted me over there:

It seems he's running out of patience, and simply slammed Phracts into my pikes in Blanquette to take it back, it only cost him 5 Phracts unfortunately, my drafted musket losing a good odds battle. He also managed to put more units in Archangel: another LB, 2 Phracts and 2 Rifles, while emptying Tenochtitlan and Juno. Sumi had a single Phract in it.

So, first things first, I retook Sumiregusa with a pike, then killed Juno. From Juno I explored a bit to see what he had in the cities beyond there, and while Orpheus had plenty of units, I did spy another opening:

Queztalcoatl had only a single Xbow and 2 workers in it, and there was a naked GG there as well. I don't think that Ichabod suspected that losing Juno would give me a path to Quetzalcoatl . I razed it, losing 2 knights in the process, one of them losing a 90% battle flawlessly. I was also able to kill the GG. Up north my options were a lot more limited; however, my GG medic also had Morale, so it was able to ride over that hill and raze Tenochtitlan. The rest of them I moved on to the named cows, burning a road outside Archangel to prevent the rifles from hitting them. He still has a couple of Phracts that can kill some knights but it was the best I could do. My mace and catapult stack I just moved back into Tea-House Moon, I'll probably use them to take Blanquette once again. My GG Morale Mace I renamed Darling and sent alone into AT's land. Maybe I can help him out in his war, or if they sign peace and Ich leaves some border cities vulnerable she can do some damage.

This is how that front ended:

I deleted most of those leftover Knights, except my medic Croaker, who deserves a more heroic death than that.



If my memory is correct, in the war with Ichabod, I have lost a total of 5 cities. One (Blanquette) I took back and then lost again (and will hopefully retake once more), another (Sumiregusa) I took back this turn. The other three are all island cities, one of which was just captured by Gawdzak, who will likely take the other two as well

Ichabod OTOH, has lost 6 cities, the three he took from Adrien, 1 newly-planted auto-raze, size 5 Juno, and size 14 Quetzalcoatl, as well as losing a Great General. If Gawdzak weren't attacking me as well, I'd actually be winning this war right now 
Although if Gawdzak weren't attacking me then Ichabod's fleet would have been able to offload some 20-30 Phracts outside my capital, so there's that 

[OT4E]

Looks like Aztecs have cursed their land and can no longer bring any happiness to its owners entertaining Aztecs War gods.

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

Good stuff. Keep it going.

[Ichabod]

Hey Mr. Cairo,

well played on those last few turns. I got totally outmaneuvered there. I think you'd still do me a lot of damage if the game wasn't called.

GG

[Mr. Cairo]

Hey Mr. Cairo,

well played on those last few turns. I got totally outmaneuvered there. I think you'd still do me a lot of damage if the game wasn't called.

GG

Thanks, although I imagine if you weren't distracted by Gawdzak and AT I would have had a harder time of it. There was nothing I could do to your actual stack, and once rifles got on the scene to garrison the cities I was finished.
Although I do like to think I would have captured Blanquette one last time. According to my memory, that city has been captured 6 times in its life   

Well, not the most dignified end to my very first PB game, but at least I'm still alive, and I even got a kill. Here's where things stand in England at game end:



Thanks for the game everyone, I certainly learned a lot, and I thought I'd go over what I think were my two biggest mistakes this game:

1) Not finishing off Adrien. I stopped building military partway through my conquest of Adrien, underestimating just how many units he would be able to fit into those last few cities. As it was, by stopping when I did my conquest provided me with only a few useful cities, and set the stage for mistake number 2. However, if I had taken all of Adrien in that first war, then there wouldn't have been anything stopping Ichabod from rolling me over with Phracts once he finished with Jowy. But that is neither here nor there, the important lesson to be learned here is to commit to a war, don't stop until you have to, or the enemy is dead.

2) Retaking Blanquette from Adrien. I should not have let Adrien's recapture of Blanquette interrupt my plans. I should have just shipped over enough units to keep him from taking any more cities and kept on teching to Rifling. If I had done so, I would have had Redcoats by the time Gawdzak and Ichabod attacked, and I would have been a much tougher nut to crack. Although Gawdzak would still have been able to defeat me, his edge in land was simply too strong.

One final thing, I do have to mention the map. I do not think that "more neighbors + more land" is equivalent to "less neighbors + less land". From my perspective, both myself and Adrien were limited by the map in the directions we could expand towards, Adrien especially. If I hadn't aggressively expanded towards Gawdzak in the early game, I probably would have ended up with even less land than I did.
I haven't read their thread yet, but from what I saw, Adrien expanded to the west, towards the sea, and as a result ran out of land very quickly as Jowy and Dreylin expanded more freely. Overall, I liked the map, and what I saw of the lands to the south looked interesting, but I do think that myself and Adrien got the short end of the stick when it came to starting locations. 

Anyway, GG everyone, and congratulations Gawdzak.

[Dreylin]

Hey Mr. Cairo, I've finally made it through your thread; great read!

About the canceled Open Borders; probably about 50% was me being pissed that you'd used my territory to attack a friendly neighbour, and the other 50% was that if you kept them sailing East then I had a couple of lightly defended cities over there.

Also, the Loan came through correct, but I wanted a chance to look over the situation and work out whether it was worth risking my relationship with Ichabod to help you out.

BTW, I was having great fun watching you counter-attack into Ichabod; I thought about stepping in to the situation, but had to keep my money on Ichabod for the long-game opportunity to take down Gawdzak.

Good Game!