OK so I went ahead with the plan of marching across Monte's lands with my still-large elephant army, popping some GP for a golden age>GS fest.
I was originally going to revolt to Caste+Pacifism right when I got philo, but I ended up waiting a few more turns to whip out courthouses in each formerly-American city as it came out of revolt. Courthouse was almost every first build, and many of them were size 10+ so they could be whipped out no problem (after waiting a turn for hammers to go in).
As mentioned at the end of last round, Monte was in WHEOOHRN, and we had a peace treaty, so...
yup, had to be Hannibal. I hope I can get there in time!
I have my 2-movement general scouting (carefully) ahead. Remember, I'm already at war with Hannibal, who let Washington peace-vassal him before he died. I find Monte's stack eventually:
Yeah, not something I especially wanted to face if I had backstabbed him. Also, no shots of this, but Monte had typically 1 LB and 1 pike in every city at least, and many military units just milling around, so I toyed with stopping my march short, bouncing my army back to my lands with a DOW on Monte, but decided to keep going.
5 turns later I have a sizable force ready to throw at Hannibal.
This garrison is pretty thin. The Monte/Hanny battle is going on north of here, so thanks Monte!
Next turn I take it no problem. Lost a couple of catas?
Notice also in this pic I'm teching paper at 0% but still getting a bunch of beakers. The scientists are being run all over now, and washington will supply the GA trigger in 1 turn.
Golden Age is popped, and
I finally see why I know the AIs on the other landmass. Actually, I'm still confused, bc I wouldn't think I could see WBs from HC and/or HRE from here. Also, I'm connected to their resource trade routes. Anyone care to explain?
The war continues, bc Hannibal is not capitulating yet:
After this city falls, he still won't go. I also have a satellite stack next to the city Monte is slowwwly bombarding. He suicides a pretty enormous stack into like 10 LBs so I opportunistically take 8 of them with no losses. Oddly, Monte goes for peace after this suicide mission. So I round up all the troops for a last stand:
I take out city #3 (of 5!) and he STILL won't cap. I almost declare peace for some techs in shame, but then I pick off a couple more random maces who are trying to take back an earlier city, and...
BOOM! I of course give back the 3 cities I took and now have a nice vassal. No idea how he techs so fast (was competitive in the lib race!) but I'll take it. Speaking of the lib race: I got 4 GSs, which went academy, trigger GA (I waited for GA to grow cities more), partial bulb edu, and then that one last one coming in the pic above from philly. He bulbs into lib (have compass, no machinery) to produce this result:
Hooray!! But wait, notice anything else pertinent to our success in that screenshot. Yessir, Monte declared on me
. Pretty sure it was opportunistic, bc he doesn't seem totally prepared, and I had a border city undefended, which was bone-headed.
Here are the state of the world pics:
Well, at least you can't say this game isn't exciting! I still have maybe 15 veteran ellie's, but they are still up in Hannibal's house. Also, I suicided basically all my catas in the Hannibal war, so I don't really have a city capturing force up there.
My plan before the war was to get yet another GP out of the golden age, this one a merchant to set up deficit teching-> cavs. I don't think I can afford to stay in caste right now, and I also don't think I can afford to whip all those Uni's right now, although it would be nice. Plan is to revolt nationhood (which currently drafts AXEMEN!
but I can trade my trusty vassal for machinery and get some maces), slavery, and probably FR so that the world doesn't hate me so much, and then tech gunpowder as soon as I can. I also likely need to upgrade several skirmishers to LBs, so maybe 3 turn GP is not possible.
There are some questions I have:
-Is it true that an AI will ALWAYS bombard a city down to 0% before attacking? Even if overwhelming numbers?
-Should I both whip and draft in my border cities or try to be minimalist in my defenses?
-Should I try to strike back now, or just end the war asap, and tech to cavs or at least cuirs as planned? (I would like peace asap, but I dunno)
-What is Monte's deal?