[PB28 SPOILERS ] Fenn Presents: A Comedy of Errors

[Fenn]

Next time I fight somebody, remind me to try not to take the last half of the timer. Having to play after Jowy is messing up my schedule.

Nothing much has happened. Just some maneuvering inside our own borders, and Jowy offering peace for one city or another. Well last turn he offered white peace but I declined so I could check out the situation on that turn before reoffering...of course this turn he want Velociraptor for peace. IDK why, he knows I can reinforce any city with Knights and almost any with CKNs before he can strike.

Going to try attacking him through Adrien's territory, I bet he's more lightly defended there.

[Fenn]

Well, there went any remote chance of me winning this. Jowy caught my main Knight stack outside Mange and destroyed it with his massive Catapult force, and has 27 left over to batter Mange into submission with. I still have lots of CKNs to defend Grippe with but even that might not be enough. It was a stupid idea to leave any of my army within striking distance of his, I should have focused solely on defending and countering any incursions he made.

Obviously attacking him through Adrien is a lost cause...I'm pulling back to defend Grippe and Leprosy. We'll see how long I can hang on.

[Fenn]

Really wishing I had just hit accept on that white peace offer now.

[Molach]

Tough luck.

A bit bothersome that you can't assess the game situation before deciding to accept or decline peace

[Fenn]

It's more poor play on my part than luck, to be honest. I had a pretty good position for a while before I sabotaged myself.

Anyway, Jowy took Mange this turn and made yet another 2-cities-for-peace offer. Unless this war becomes too bothersome to play out or I'm unable to play the turns without pauses I don't think I'll be taking any of these deals. Neither of us has a chance to win this game by now, myself more so than Jowy admittedly, but even Yuris has Nationalism while we're stuck on Guilds and Banking. If he wants my cities he can take them himself.

[Cheater Hater]

It's more poor play on my part than luck, to be honest. I had a pretty good position for a while before I sabotaged myself.

Anyway, Jowy took Mange this turn and made yet another 2-cities-for-peace offer. Unless this war becomes too bothersome to play out or I'm unable to play the turns without pauses I don't think I'll be taking any of these deals. Neither of us has a chance to win this game by now, myself more so than Jowy admittedly, but even Yuris has Nationalism while we're stuck on Guilds and Banking. If he wants my cities he can take them himself.

I think a lot of it goes back to that misclick when you lost your army, as well as not being able to accept that white peace.

If you make Jowy fight for your cities now, that means you get the perception of someone not rolling over easily. Then again, it's your time to lose

[Fenn]

I'm still kicking myself for that misclick.

So last turn, I (barely) retook Mange and had a bunch of Knights + CKNs + Cats in place to re-retake it when Jowy re-captured it. As it turned out,


He razed it.

Then he offered peace for Rabies (a city on the island SE of me, bordering one of his) which I declined, followed by white peace. That one I accepted; I don't have the forces to do real damage to his cities now that Mange is gone. So now I'm sort of stuck in HR, Slavery and Vassalage until I can get a 3-man GA going, which may be a long while. Having the whip back isn't all bad, though. My young coastal/island cities have low production but a large food and happiness surplus, so Slavery saves many turns of building at almost no cost. In the mainland I'm building the HE in Leprosy, the NE in Grippe, and Banks in my commerce cities. Maybe I can buy Adrien/Mardoc's Marble for a while, I can't imagine they have much to build with it.

[Fenn]

Meant to post this yesterday, but then a bunch of stuff happened and I didn't.



Our core. Most cities will go back to unit production when their Banks or whatever finish. I'm trying to get to Riflemen, since Jowy is probably not going to abandon war against me, and Longbows and CKNs won't cut it forever.



With the loss of Mange, Clap will be our new Moai spot. Right now I'm whipping Catapults for the overflow, because I could use more collateral, and because we have a large food surplus here.



Our southwest holdings. There's room for about two more cities here before we're all out. I'd consider snapping up AM's city here, but Jowy looms over my military thinking.

[Cheater Hater]

How are AM doing? How far away is Rifling? Where is Jowy tech-wise? How many cities can we settle, and where will that put us in terms of city count with Jowy, as well as the other major players? Most importantly, is there any way to win this game other than hoping Jowy screws up in the inevitable war?

[Fenn]

AM are still quite far behind. They don't have Engineering or Guilds yet IIRC, so the best they can do is Longbowmen.

Jowy is about on par with me tech-wise, but I'm a little bit ahead - he's just starting on Paper while I'm halfway through Printing Press. Settling the 2-3 cities we can settle would put us slightly behind Jowy and most other players. The problem is that wetbandit has both an enormous city count and is teching faster than anybody else. If - if - Jowy were to critically mess up and I was able to conquer him and AM that could put me in contention, but that's probably not going to happen. With us being so close in tech level and production capability, I fear we'll just hammer away at each other until the game gets called.