[PB79] End of the beginning?

[greenline]

how do you feel about the current game state and your chances of winning?

[coldrain]

I'm hanging in there I guess? To my surprise I was able to stay clear of wars for a long time and catch up in economy (somewhat). Now I'm ever so slightly ahead in space race, but I doubt my ability to stop xist10 if he turns around and invades me. I have a compareable military force to him, but with significant disadvantage in accumulated experience for the units. And he has more cities, so he can replace any potential losses faster than me. So until he declares war and catches my main fleet or army, I think I have a sliver of chance to win?

[coldrain]

Xist10 is advancing in every direction, I've lost several cities, especially islands. He had more tactical nukes than I thought, which destroyed half of my navy and a significant land force on a first strike when he declared war. I launched one ICBM in retaliation (all that was ready before ban on nuclear weapons, plus tactical niukes were sunk) against his northern army group, and harassed his workers with guerilla infantry, but this is delaying the inevitable. To top all of this, xist10 also got the Internet and now has jet fighters plus soon gunships. I had the admittably small advantage of having those air units for a bit longer time.

It's looking like my resistance will crumble in a couple of turns. I'll reach modern armour tech in two turns, but it will be too late build or upgrade in significant numbers. I'm ready to concede now, unless xist10 wants to see if he can pull of some interesting military moves (like super fast gunships to reach poorly defended inner cities?). It has been ages since I played modern era warfare, so it has been an refreshing (although very one sided) experience.

[xist10]

A shame you didn't have the time to report after our war.

Okay, I this is nothing new for me and I want to catch up my EitB report, but...

Anyway, from my point of view a very good early game and good usage of PHI.

I still question both leader and civ pick a bit. But it seemed to work for you ?

Actually, I think my game started to unravel when I let Rome be split uncontested. Maybe I should have invaded Miro when his cho-ko-nus were on the opposite side dealing with Rome? Or would I have just handed the Roman lands completely to Xist? Maybe. Right now I really don’t see a path to victory.

In general, I do think the 2 eco traits from me and Miro would have overtake you - in addition to the eco wonders.
Even without the land from Rick.

You spend most of your pulver (MoM golden ages and bulbs) to contest me on sea and we did draw more or less, but still a huge investment for nothing.

I do think you could have gotten a chunk from Miro if you invested this towards land units.
Still dangerous to attack in a capable enemy like you learned later.

And the only interesting move I didn't pull would be conquering a city and then land a commando unit.

[Mjmd]

Disastrous (?) war against Miro

I need to go back and check when exactly Xist and I made peace. I became worried of Miro running away while Xist and I battered each other, so we made peace and started a joint war against Miro. Xist invaded with grenadiers and catapults (later cannons) and managed to raze two Miro cities I think. I invaded with a large stack of rifles + cannons with some grenadiers and knights sprinkled in. I was able to capture the closest Miro city in west (Smash up). Miro was first to wield machine guns, but I still decided to march further into his territory. This was foolish, I got completely stack wiped there. Power graph of current turn shows my loss:


Yeah, not great. I mismanaged my army quite badly. I got railroad myself couple of turns after the stack wipe too. Miro captured his city back and we made peace. One positive about both previous wars: I kept my navy intact.

While your war with Xist was going on Miro kept asking me if he should join in the 2v1 against you (xist was requesting). There were two main reasons that I can remember telling Miro why he shouldn't. 1) Letting your opponents bash each other as long as neither is making progress is good. 2) If Miro invaded you would be forced to defend your core which would let Xist take islands pretty easily and Miro probably wouldn't gain much ground.

For very similar reasons plus a couple more I didn't like your war vs Miro. An additional reason is you didn't even get your cities back from Xist before helping him! I have to admit this more than anything confused me. Helping the #2 unseat the #1 and not even asking for the #2 to give you stuff back first to me is a puzzling decision. I agree Miro was ahead, but mind I don't think he was that far ahead. You attacked into Miro's core which he had to defend more than against Xist as those were new conquests and not as productive. And then you replaced Miro as #1 with Xist as #1 and horrendously weakened yourself. I will admit its always tricky when to jump in against a #1 and how much.

Which leads me to ask why you didn't jump in against Xist after he was clearly ahead. Now I don't hate sitting back when Xist was a little ahead (although some somewhat aggressive posturing may have been in order to distract and help even things up without actually jumping in yourself), but once Miro got nuked it was time for you and Gira to do SOMETHING. Letting the #1 swallow that much land you are never going to have time for space. If nothing else keeping Miro as a rump state would have let you use his culture and given you a large cultural shield in the west. Taking Miro's cities which will never pay back in the time frame of the game and just let Xist keep rolling into your forces which you conveniently moved out of protective culture.