Spectral Sequences I: LeftAdjoint's Immortal Shadow

[LeftAdjoint]

Come on Lefty, we don't want to see any more Immortal FAIL threads this week. And remember, Quitters Never Win!

Well, I can't turn down a dare...

Advice would be appreciated, though. It's pretty challenging from here to win lib while losing fewer than 5 cities. Not that I'd quit over such a trifle—I just fought Joao for a couple of hours, but my drafted muskets+cannons were ultimately run over by a massive stack of rifles.

So the game isn't completely abandoned I suppose.

 

[Gumbolt]

Probably going to abandon this one. The position is certainly winnable, but it's awkward, and my city management has improved so much lately that I'm very annoyed at how I left my empire, and the slowness of my "rush".

Not like there's been a huge amount of interest anyway. I'll try to make current and future games a bit more viewer-friendly.

I would of continued. You could of easily whipped up an army and beaten off JoaII. You had plenty of land and cities too. JoaII was not that advanced.

Play on but get some advice on how to prep your defences. Treat it as a challenge game.

Edit - Oh you already changed your mind.

 

[LeftAdjoint]

I would of continued. You could of easily whipped up an army and beaten off JoaII. You had plenty of land and cities too. JoaII was not that advanced.

Thanks for the encouragement, but I'm really hung up on the tactics here. It's a challenge game indeed.

The fact is, João's attack comes 2 turns after the save and I'm completely unprepared for it. My front line consists of three injured horse archers, and my border cities just don't have the whipping power they need to survive more than one or two turns.

So Yaroslavl' and St. Petersburg are basically only there to slow down João's stack. The real line needs to be held at Moscow and Novogorod. But with what? Archers? They'll take heavy casualities against what he has. In one attempt I even lost Mowcow because João decided to attack it before the decoy cities.

Assuming that I can firmly hold the line, shall I counterattack? With horse archers? He'll be fielding elephants and longbows in a handful of turns, and I'll be attacking into a forested choke, unable to really abuse mobility. And Engineering is quite far away. So the only answer is elephants/catapults/swordsmen. But that's fighting against the clock—he'll be stomping me with his own Engineering units in no time.

The last option is accepting peace and taking the vendetta into the next era. I can win Liberalism with great scientists. (though I will shortly be beaten to the Great Library despite spending beakers on Literature) But once again, it's against the clock, as João would have 12 cities to my 8. (assuming I only lose three cities)

I'm learning a ton from just considering these questions, but it's hard to get them to crystallize into a plan I'm confident about.