Longest/Bloodiest War

[Darth Tribble]

What was the longest or bloodiest war you ever fought in Civ5?

In one game, I was Askia and I fought a long and bloody war with the Aztecs. I attacked them a 1000 years prior, but they drove me out. I decided my conquering spree was over and focused on science and commerce.

The Aztecs held a grudge for a millennium because I razed a city in our previous war.

In the 19th Century, he DOW'd me once I withdrew troops from the border.

Most of the fighting took place along the border and the war lasted almost a century. Even though Monty had the world's most powerful military, I managed to hold out long enough for him to offer an unconditional truce.

It was technically a stalemate, as there were neither side gained nor lost any territory. There was also very little damage to infrastructure. The only real devastation from the war was the number of soldiers killed on both sides and we both threw cannon fodder at each other for the entire duration of the war.

I guess I technically won as Monty couldn't take any of my cities and I a quickly caught up with him in military technology and he offered a truth once my units barely made it pass his border. After that, we actually became friends. I guess I won his respect by not being a pushover.

 

[danaphanous]

the longest continuous war I've ever experienced is in my latest Deity challenge. As portugal I started crammed into one bad city spot crowded by Spain on a 22-civ world map. I took her capital out before turn 50 and rushed sailing to settle north africa before I fell behind.

That was when the massive Songhai hordes attacked (~T80 as soon as I'd put down my first 2 african cities). Troops were already on the way but they were no match for the enormous army he sent across the Sahara and my new colony Porto fell in one turn (he planned well). He had a tech advantage of course it being Deity and my giving myself the bad early game handicaps as a challenge so it was a grindy war that lasted millenia. I had settled my first african city in a very defensible area and I was able to hold it and the strait of Gibraltar from his constant simultaneous naval and land attacks. I killed over 100 units of his but they never stopped coming and after even 100 turns of war he would not consider peace and no one wanted to help me (at least not for the price my tiny 3-city empire could afford). Finally around turn 180 (over 2000 years later) I managed to get logistics and range crossbows from the constant warring and out-teched him to frigates by rapidly growing my core cities and stealing techs and took Porto back. The warmonger Askia still wouldn't make peace after all my successes so I finally had enough of him and vowed I would destroy him since he'd completely wrecked my mid-game plans with his constant invasions, preventing me from any further settling. I needed cities to become competitive and I figured his would do nicely while fulfilling my revenge. Resistance was brutal with waves of 3-promo, 5 movement Mandekalu knights and carpets of musketmen but I mowed through them all with the support of my two frigates! I burned the first crappy sahara city I took, and was finally able to bring Rome in on my side of the war. Right as we started to make progress and I was marching on his second inland largest pop city Ethtiopia, my friend, declared war on Rome and all his troops withdrew from the battlefield. I had seen the amount of troops this guy could produce before and knew if I didn't move fast he would recover and possibly kill off my logistics crossbows with his mandekalu so I desperately besieged Tombouctu and despite heavy resistance and being far away from healing territory and my frigates I managed to snatch it. Had to make a sacrifice or two of some veterans but now had nearly 5 logistics bowmen. I was massively over-extended by now and right next to his capital but the terrain was now in my favor with a new city to heal near and some nice layout for rivers. It is now turn 205 (about 2000+ years since the war started) and I have his capital down under half health and have pillaged all its production tiles so it can't build troops fast. He has one other that keeps sending troops south but finally at a rate I can destroy while continuing to hit the city a few times. I think I'll finally have his capital in about 5 turns and complete my revenge! Longest and most brutal war I've ever fought! Usually logistics Xbows is gg but not this time. They are in constant danger from his knights and I've had to really play smartly to keep up the offensive against his tech superiority melee units.

My plan is to take his capital and another colony in a peace deal and leave him wishing he never messed with me! Then head for a space victory which is about the only possibility with this particular scenario and the current world powers. He's already calling me up offering 19-pop cities so I know he's gettings desperate, feel great! hehehe

 

[76ers]

Playing a deity game as England now. Needed a break from it. Shoshone declared war on me at around turn 80. York is an easily defended choke point surrounded by mountains next to ocean. Just about to hit turn 200. This is a rough estimate of their units I've killed. 7 Pathfinders, 5 archers, 8 composite bowman, 25 knights, 15 crossbowman, 20 musketmen, 15 longswordsman, 15 swordsman, 15 pikeman, 5 lancers, 40 workers, 20 missionaries, 3 galleas, 3 catapults, 8 trebuchets. I've lost my opening game warrior. It is ridiculous. No sign of ending. The message "come to beg for mercy" gets on my nerves when a fight this lopsided has taken place. The first invasion fleet was so funny with so many pathfinders and some archers. It has hurt my progress but it has been such a unique game that I don't really mind. Hopefully my spies can keep me in it.

*Finally had peace on 203. Paid Dido to join the party. Pretty much no choice at that point. Comanche Riders were starting to pop up and they would put an end to my longbowmen. Can't win though. Cost me the game but it was still fun. I wasn't all that enthusiastic about my chances from the start though. London was one of the lowest production capitals I've ever seen. Not a single hill in range. All grass or marsh besides a couple jungle tiles

 

[poxpower]

My new favorite strategy is to declare war right away on the nearest AI ( deity ) and then just farm him for promotions and eventually when I have +1 range comp bows, I take 1-2 of their cities and peace out.
This is insanely good usually. You get a steady stream of free workers, you get to forward-settle on them before they do it to you, you get a promoted elite army, you get 2 capitals and you prevent them from massing a force to sneak attack you, which they do 100% of the time on Deity anyway. You couldn't deal with their dumb turn 70 rush of like 25 units, but you can easily deal with then sending 1 unit per turn.
This generally results in 100+ turns of war.

 

[Kimiimaro]

Now I have some really long war. I'm going for domination victory with Suleiman on Archipelago, King difficulty, and I declared war on Askia. I've already took Edinburgh and Onondaga (both had a lot of wonders, so before I conquered them, I proposed Cultural herritage sites and now I'm enjoying massive culture boost), and Askia was my next target. I prepared massive naval invasion force (some 8-10 frigates and 2 privateers) to conquer Gao. He has Red Fort there, so I excepted it would be harder. I paid him to attack Oda Nobunaga to get rid of his navy near Gao. It worked. Then I attacked. HP of Gao was going down really slow, and he was sinking my frigates one by one. I was (and still I am) sending some frigates and privateers at him from my nearest city, Edirne, but it didn't help. I eventually paid Bismarck to attack him, but he's not doing anything. The only thing that prevents him from totally regenerate is my best elite frigate with nearby Great Admiral and range of three, so he can't attack it. I'm currently preparing second wave of ships, and I'll soon get submarines, so I hope I'll finally take care of him.
I eventually made peace with him. His navy returned back to Gao from fighting Japan and I didn't want to lose my elite frigate. Now I plan to take Berlin to get closer "base" to support my next attack on him.

 

[Returning Lurker]

Longest war (in turns) in Vanilla:
In one of my earliest games of Civ 5 I was playing as Gandhi going for a culture victory (Way back when this was accomplished by completing 5 Social policy tracks and achieving "Utopia"). I had 4 cities in the northern end of a continent split between north and south by a massive range mountains and hills. It was the 1850's and I was chipping away at my 5th policy track when the tyrannical warlord Washington the Terrible decided he didn't much care for the idea of not winning and decided to invade. Luckily for me Washington was to the south and having to traverse the great mountain range bought me some time. Unluckily for me Washington had a massive army of state of the art infantry and tanks supported by a fleet of B-17 large enough to blot out the sky. My minuscule army of Infantry and tanks was quickly turned to the consistency of hamburger meat and steel wool respectively as Washington ran bombardments day in and day out. As his foot soldiers inched towards my borders I had a dilemma, I didn't have the productive capacity or the economic means to pump out infantry at the rate he was blowing them up from the safety of the sky. I didn't know what to do.
Then, I noticed that AA guns took only a turn or two longer to build than foot soldiers and only had 4 fewer combat strength. And they would devastate Washington's bombers. In a moment of brilliant strategic ingenuity and masterful cunning (ie "idiocy") I switched all of my cities to producing AA guns 24/7 and started using them as my frontline army, my rearguard, my special forces, my cavalry... everything. Nothing but AA guns. An entire army of only AA guns.
Washington's bombers were torn from the skies while his infantry and tanks were slowly fed into a steady stream of explosive machine gun rounds... very slowly fed... too slowly fed. By the time my AAArmy could destroy a column of tanks and a division of infantry Washington had already recruited one or two new units to replace them while I could only build one new AA gun for every 1.5-2 lost. I would eventually be overwhelmed. But that didn't matter, because I didn't need to win the war, I just needed to win the game. All I needed to do was hold him off long enough to complete my 5th social policy tree. From 1850 to 1960 Washington clawed inch by bloody inch into India, a steady stream of bodies being fed into the meat grinder and mulched into a puree of organs and viscera that forced the front lines back through nothing but the "water" pressure. Armies marched for decades to be cut down in minutes, generations of children born, lived, and died with the sound of quad guns ringing in their ears 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. Our artists painted with their own blood in the bombed out remains of field hospitals while they awaited redeployment, hoping to find the secret to utopia hidden somewhere in their veins.

Then, while me and Washington were busy having the stupidest and least efficient war possible and making Henry H Arnold spin in his grave, Russia won a science victory. Bugger.

 

[EDre]

Once when I was playing as America, I started expanding my empire north on my continent, but Shaka was there. Shaka hated me because in the first hundred turns of the game he took one of my cities so I took it back, he still held that grudge. We were in a never ending war as I had advanced unites (Industrial-Modern Units) and he did not (Ancient - Dark Ages Units). But Shaka had 10X more troops. This lasted hundreds of turns. I call this one WW1 because allies from around the world helped both sides. It was a stalemate but after a while I one. I lost a good amount of troops but not as much as Shaka.

Later in the game, industrial-modern era, I started expanding my empire to every continent. Many wars broke out, I consider it WW2, it was pretty devastating for my empire and military, I ended up selling a some cities and liberating other nations, like India. After WW2, the age of imperialism and colonization was over for me. But once I sold my cities, I became pretty rich and my population became happy. I focused on military to make sure that this would not happen again, but it was for defense not expansion.

Around the end of the game America (Me) and Russia were the world superpowers. We both had a nuclear arsenal and modern units but we both were on separate continents (we both entirely controlled our continents as well). But tensions were high because Songhai was on a different continent, one that I had colonized centuries before, and at the end of WW2 I sold my cities to India and other buddies. But Russia went to war with some of those nations and took some of the cities. Now there was tension because we had a physical border + India was my ally. Songhai was down to one city and was my vassal (I use that mod), India turned on my so I crushed them (they still had mid evil units), and Morocco was down to one city. One thing led to each other and Russia and America went to war. It started off like a normal war until I started loosing a bunch of units. At that point I launched my nuclear weapons at the nearby Russian cities. Russia then launched their nuclear weapons at my colonies down by Songhai, and it also hurt Songhai. No one was winning until Russia came in and took my colony and made peace. It lasted around 20 - 40 Turns but it was deadly. It was WW3.