RBTS5 - Multiple Personality Disorder

Forgot to post this with my report: sunrise is up!

OK - got it. My turn to play the last-guy on the grid spot and make lots of mistakes.

Otherwise, looks like Swiss has me set up well. I will continue to on Shaka as well as set off that spy bomb.

sooooo said:

We were a bit unlucky with GPs, getting 2 great spies (why were we hiring spy specialists?). I used the priest for the Islam shrine and the general for a military academy in Oporto. The spies are not used, presumed to be saved for golden ages.

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That's the governor smoking weed. The governor AI tends too prefer hiring Spy specialists over other types. You can somehwat remedy this, I believe, by using all the emphasis buttons. Or by turning of the governor and MM your ass off (with all those cities).

Sorry I have not posted turns yet, I will endeavor to do so during my break between work and class this afternoon.

So.... sunrise? We're well past three days now since Swiss Pauli played his turns. I didn't want to post anything, but this is starting to drag out. Please let us know your situation.

Turn 0 - The first thing I do is check the tech trading screen. Nothing. Next I verify nothing is set to finish in any of our cities in more than 10 turns...only one 11-turn courthouse. Nice set-up Swiss.

Turn 1 - I do my best to continue with what seems like the course of the war. I detonate the Great Spy bomb as well.

Turn 2 - Flight is in. I select Radio next, for the bombers and because it's on the way to several other desirable military techs.

Turn 3 - Umgungundlovu is captured and kept. Nobamba is captured and kept.

Turn 5 - eThekwini is captured and razed. We're being limited only by the speed of our advance here, and as more 2-move tanks arrive things will only get worse for Shaka.

Turn 6 - Ulundi is captured and kept.

Turn 8 - Radio comes in and I set tech to 0%. Also, this happens:





For now there isn't much incoming, but I'm not going to order any more troops to head to the Zulu front from our home continent. I don't turn over the game here however because I doubt there is anything Peter can throw at us that the units we're producing can't handle. I will sail some of our excess naval units back home though.



What I don't expect however is for Shaka to suddenly throw the kitchen sink at us during the inter-turn. I don't have the forces in place to take out these stacks this turn, so I make the decision to get peace on favorable terms and then allow Sullla to re-declare if he wants on turn 1 (I think peace-treaties don't roll over post-world-builder). Therefore I take Nodwengu and keep it and then make the following deal:



Turn 10: I can now say that in spite of some unexpected events, the turn-set came out OK in my book. We didn't loose any production in any city, and we didn't loose one ground unit while taking 5 enemy cities. We did however loose a couple of destroyers in the inter-turn. I think the naval war so far is about 5 destroyers lost for 4 kills. Sullla will need to build some more battleships and regain naval superiority, since most of our remaining navy is trapped behind Zulu culture.



The save: http://forums.civfanatics.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=172434&stc=1&d=1206593275
RBTS5 - Personality Disorder AD-1840.CivBeyondSwordSave

OK, nice response to some challenging developments during that turnset. I'll grab the save and should play sometime later today. I don't know about invading Peter's homeland, but some of his islands...

(0) 1840AD We've made some impressive progress since my last turnset. Egypt has disappeared, and we've taken a sizable bite out of Shaka's domains. However, we're still only sitting at 29% land area, so we have a ways to go yet. When borders expand in ex-Zululand that will go up, of course... (I do wonder though, why did we raze so many of Shaka's cities? Now I have to build us some settlers and fill in the gaps. Not a huge deal, just another thing to add to the list.) I spend several minutes just trying to familiarize myself with the units we have. Plenty of infantry and tanks on hand, so very nice work there. However, we have two problems on the military front:

1) Our navy is spread out all over the map! Now that is NOT how you win a modern naval war. I immediately begin concentrating our destroyers and battleships into an unbeatable armada, which will both defend our transports and take down the defenses of enemy coastal cities. (Yep, I plan on doing a LOT of naval fighting on my turnset. Ever heard of the Sirian Doctrine?)

2) Even more problematic: we have no air force at all! Not a single fighter or bomber. What's up with that?! I will immediately rectify this situation once I go through the civ swap. A massive fleet of bombers is one of the necessities of blitzkrieg modern warfare.

We also have some outdated units hanging around, so I upgrade all our cannons and catapults (?) to artillery. That blows a huge chunk of money, but if you've got it, why not spend it? I keep a large enough force around to deter Shaka and start moving everything else to the north coast. Peter has "Chosen Unwisely" and we're going to make him pay for it. Let's see how far I can get by the end of these 10 turns!

Now, who are we going to draw this time? I roll the dice and our new civ is... China. Not a whole lot of interest there (Cho-Ko-Nus are a bit outdated!) although we can double-up on their unique building theatre and get some war weariness relief there. For our leader, we pull... Churchill (Charismatic/Protective). That's actually not too bad, even though the Protective won't do all that much. Charismatic will play nicely with our wartime setting.

Coming out of the swap, all war weariness disappears and all captured cities come out of resistance. We also go back to square one on relations with all civs (although we remain at war with Peter, who won't talk with us still.) I immediately sign an Open Borders agreement with Shaka to move our ships through his borders. "Japanese? No, we are the CHINESE! Very understandable mistake, happens to everyone. While we're at it, why don't we exchange some resources too? Shaka, what a nice guy!" I sent Shaka aluminum, iron, and horses for his gems and silks. He already has iron and horses, and aluminum is useless to him since he's backwards in tech - ha!

Then it takes forever to go through our cities and redo builds (ye gods the AI is incompetent at managing them! Just LOVES those spy specialists, even will starve cities just to make them!) Whew, well that first turn only took about an hour or so. Heh. Here's the new look of our civ:



(1) 1841AD Oh, lovely. Between turns Peter takes out two destroyers at low odds. Then we get this:



Shaka's back for more warfare. He was up to "Pleased" last turn, so I have no idea what's up with that. I take back that "nice guy" comment from last turn. *Sigh* Now I get to turn ALL of our units back around and move them back into Zululand. If there's one thing I absolutely hate, it's the incredibly tedious endgame mopup in all the Civ games. Like, this thing is completely over, yet we've got dozens of hours of playing still to go. A little depressing, to be honest.

Anyway, this turn is mostly spend re-manevering units from a planned Russian campaign to a second Zulu war (Shaka's not gonna survive this one, methinks). I have four different assaults underway in the planning stages.

(2) 1842AD The AI uses its turn to pinprick us with bombardment from airships and pillage one of our fishing nets. In one of our few combats this turn, I lose a tank at 96% odds. Umm, lovely. Good thing we have enough units that it doesn't matter!

(3) 1843AD Between turns, Shaka moves his massive stack of outdated units towards us. Unfortunately for him, it ends up right next to OUR massive stack of infantry! This sets up quite a battle:



And the result:




That's among the most gruesome turns I've ever played in Civ4. The carnage was absolutely appalling: 25 units killed against a single loss to our forces. And Shaka STILL had another two dozen units left! Just not enough attackers to finish them all off. My goodness does he have a lot of old stuff. Well, "had" a lot of old stuff.

I also capture Babanango in the west and Matshotsheni on an island in the extreme south. No pictures, cause there's going to be a LOT of cities falling before this turnset ends.

(4) 1844AD Shaka simply goes nuts on the interturn, attacking again and again at suicide odds:



I think we lost maybe two units, and he lost about fifteen. Madness. Unfortunately, we CANNOT win a coin-toss battle against the Russians, who take out another destroyer. Our transports are still safe, but there's been a lot of attrition in the north. A lot.

As Sirian would say, "then it was my turn":





Mopped out the rest of Shaka's stack to the last man. I take Hlobane (driving west into the heart of Zululand), isiPhezi and Irktusk - those last two both Zulu island cities. We also finish Eiffel Tower in Oporto (yeah, I helped it along with a Great Engineer. Might as well, since there wasn't a whole lot else to do with him.)

By my count, Shaka lost OVER ONE HUNDRED UNITS in the past two turns!!!

(5) 1845AD War weariness spikes enormously between turns, which makes perfect sense because we're winning this conflict with virtually nil casualties. We get another Great Engineer, which I will use to speed along Cristo Redantor. I capture Samara, another island city from the Zulus. All of their former Russian conquests have now been taken by us. On the main continent, Bulaweyou (the current Zulu capital) falls with ease, battered down by our huge artillery component. Khangela then is taken in a separate thrust driving further to the west.

I've now sliced Zululand into three separate parts, each of which will soon fall like ripe fruit:



Shaka not looking so good, eh? White arrows represent attacks made so far, yellow arrows the ones planned next. Five turns played so far, which took so long (more than four hours) I can't finish in one day! Stay tuned for part two tomorrow.

Some explanations: The separated naval stacks were probably non-optimal, but I had units bombarding Zulu cities on the north and south of his continent, and other units moving back home to defend against Peter. The airforce situation was because I only go bombers 2 turns or so before the swap...and I didn't thing fighters were worth building.

One thing I'm impressed by and learned from was Sullla's confidence taking on those numerically superior Zulu stacks. One of the reasons I made peace was because Shaka had so many more units than me, and I was worried that my units would be so wounded after an attack that Shaka's surviving units would then kill all of mine. Obviously Sullla has a better feel for those risks than I do

I only razed two cities (the third auto-razed) and I think it was the correct choice, seeing as they were both coastal without seafood. We'd have needed one settler to fill the culture gap between to coastal cities anyway, so in effect I traded a Settler against a couple of idle garrison Infantry. Seems pretty clear to me, unless I'm missing something.

I'm off on holiday for a week. So happy team!

Continuing from last time: Shaka is on the ropes, but can I land the decisive knockout punch? Let's find out...

(6) 1846AD Six different bombers roll off the assembly lines this turn. Yee-hah! Gonna rip that Russian navy a new one once they're rebased appropriately, and add some extra punch to the Zulu offensive as well. Shaka tries a naval landing in our backlines:



But knights don't fare that well against infantry, unfortunately for him! The island-hopping exercise proceeds apace at Emangweni:



Actually lost a tank there at 90+% odds, but no biggie. Plenty more where that came from!

We pound the defenses of... something... in the west:



Then the tanks roll in and blitz all over the defenders. Ha!

Total cities captured this turn: Two

(7) 1847AD Not a single attack on the interturn against us. Methinks the Zulus and Russians are starting to run out of gas. Meanwhile, our army just keeps growing and growing, as two more bombers and three more ships (destroyers and battleships) roll off the assembly lines. I'm finally starting to get control of the northern seas, particularly as our air force establishes air superiority. Although we were never in danger, I did suffer quite a few casualties in destroyer vs. destroyer battles at coinflip odds. The AI definitely likes to pillage fishing nets, even if it means a suicide mission...

I spot a Peter transport stack and pounce all over it with our northern fleet:



Down to the bottom of the sea! I miss non-expansion Civ4, when it was possible to see what was on those ships.

Illinois, the latest Zulu capital, gets to enjoy its status for all of two turns before falling to us in another naval exercise. Four tanks roll over Eziqwaqweni without even getting scratched. Our infantry are able to get into the action at Istakhr:



Total cities captured this turn: Three

(8) 1848AD Peter attempts a naval invasion on the little one-tile island between turns:



Unfortunately for him, I left a City Garrison III infantry there, plus he gets the 50% penalty for amphibious invasion... yeah, well, you can pretty much guess how that turned out. He also manages to sink one destroyer, at the cost of three of his own ships.

Then it was my turn!







Shaka's core is completely gone. All he has left is that penninsula in the north. We also have Cristo Redantor, finished in Oporto this turn. You may find it hard to believe, but this is the first time I've ever actually completed it. I really haven't played much Beyond the Sword in the late-game, to be honest.

Total cities captured this turn: Two

(9) 1849AD No attacks on the interturn, unless you count the half-dozen Russian airships pinpricking our navy. Now there is a seriously unbalanced unit. Someone please explain to me why those dinky little airships have 8 range (as much as a bomber) and can strike nearly as effectively? Someone at Firaxis messed up with that one.

I start by cleaning up the last remnants of Shaka's naval invasion (all they managed to achieve was pillaging some fishing nets). Typical AI. The northern seas are actually quiet for a change. I think I've sunk just about the whole Russian navy over the past half-dozen turns. Peter should be ripe for more aquatic aggression during the next turnset.

On the main Zulu front, I roll over Krasnoyarsk and kwaHlomendini. Whoops, not much left of Shaka's territory now:



All our forces are starting to congregate on the northern tip of Shaka's former kingdom. That will then be our staging area for the invasion of Russia! I actually queue up a few more transports, since we're largely gravy on destroyer escorts for now. Also burn one of our (many) Great Generals on creating an UberMedic:



Medic III/Woodsman III. I'm sure our team can find a place for this guy somewhere!

Total cities captured this turn: Two

(10) 1850AD Shaka decides to use his last turn on earth... to convert to Confucianism. What a guy. That kind of stupidity deserves a Darwin Award. One of our battleships actually sinks a caravel Peter never got around to upgrading - ha! Love that 40 strength vs. 3 strength matchup.

Here's the situation:



I have to get my giant Sirian Doctrine stack (circled) to both of the two remaining Zulu cities to finish the job this turn. But the Zulu navy is running interference! While I can move to the island city along the white arrowed path, I can't get to the mainland capital without taking out the interfering caravel and galleon, as shown in yellow. I only had three naval units in the area, so there were JUST enough pieces in play to get it all done. Then I had to make sure that there were enough units on my remaining transports (11) to take out the defenders in Pre Rup (10). Whew! Can't cut it too much closer than this!

The Last Stand of the Zulus:





And that, as they say, is that! Bet you didn't think I'd manage to finish them off completely in just 10 turns, eh? Never underestimate the Sirian doctrine! If the cities are on the coast, they're goin' down in a hurry!

Of course, my turns aren't quite finished yet. Peter has also "Chosen Unwisely", and it's time to start bringing the war to his front porch:



Audacity, audacity - always audacity!

Total cities captured this turn: Three

Total for the turnset: Twenty! (Nineteen Zulu, One Russian)

You'll have to work out some of the logistics in the north peninsula on the next turnset. I pretty much just kept moving every unit in that direction, "let the next guy figure it out", heh. Our Medic III unit is there as well, so we should be able to get some bigtime healing going (lots of stacks moving around in that area). Our bombers are all over the place, you'll just have to use F5 to find them all. Sorry! I used them as I needed them, and that meant they ended up widely dispersed.

Dare I say it? Dare I? Yeah, I can't resist.

Oh My God, What Happened to the Zulus?!?!



We're currently at 41% land, and there's at least another 10% waiting on cities to come out of resistance. I would just take the fight to Peter and keep pushing until the game croaks. I do not expect this game to get back around to me again, so enjoy your turnsets and have fun! This one took a looooong time (we popped FOUR Great Generals: the ones at 30, 60, 90, and 120XP!) but I did enjoy it.

Swiss Pauli's annoucement means he's being moved to the end of the roster, which is otherwise unchanged:

Sullla
Dantski <<< UP NOW
sooooo <<< on deck
sunrise089
Swiss Pauli

- Sullla

lurker comment:

Ch-Ch-Ch-Ch-Ch-Chinese... I kinda expected the Spanish Inquisition some Sirian puns as well.

OVER ONE HUNDRED UNITS

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I will avoid using a certain meme here.

Fine turnset. I think I will look at these saves from your game, because I never know how much units to bring to eliminate a civilization, actually, and you are doing some fine weed warmonging through the ages in this game.

grabbed the save

I'll probably start the turns tomorrow (maybe today if I'm lucky).

Guess plan is to just plough right through Peter.

Something came up and probably won't be able to play some turns until Tuesday.

Swapsies?

Noted and carried out:

Sullla
sooooo <<< UP NOW
Dantski <<< on deck
sunrise089
Swiss Pauli

Surprisingly few comments given the 25 pictures I used to illustrate my last turnset. Ah well, not every game can be the Cuban Islolationists, I suppose.

Sullla said:

sooooo <<< UP NOW

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I am already playing