ALC Game 30: Germany/Bismarck

We left off debating between declaring war on Shaka or Wang and company. I decided that Shaka was the biggest threat to me. He had a lot of land and was pretty quickly catching up in tech. I was worried that if I left him untouched he would get too big too handle and given the massive number of units he builds I was worried there wouldn't be any way to stop him. We'll see that this might not have been the best decision, but it is what it is.

With the goal of taking down Shaka in mind I teched towards tanks and bombers. Given my poor early game set-up I found myself with no good way to research except for building research, which admittedly isn't bad.



I had some cities start on a navy. Transports would be vital given that every potential target was on a different landmass. Destroyers would serve as transport defenders and bombarders of coastal city's defenses. Everything was going swimmingly until Emancipation became the civic of choice around the globe.



Given my shortage of resources I was having serious problems. My cities were starving and becoming increasingly annoyed with me. The capital was having an especially rough time of it.



I really had no choice.



But there's some good news too.



With Industrialism in I started on building some battleships to accompany the destroyers. There's been discussions about what combination of these two ships is best. Destroyers are cheaper, but battleships are stronger. I tend to just build them in a one to one ratio. Seems to work fine. I could also build panzers, he added as an afterthought.

And here's the navy at that point in the game.



I need some land units to help out, but I also want to get some bombers. So I found this happy median.



This would allow me to keep my slider at 100% while also building panzers at a reasonable rate.

Shaka was still at war with Wang Kong.



For some reason, I thought it would be a good idea to declare war on Shaka with my too small force. I think my logic was that Wang will have done some damage to Shaka. Note to self: in a battle between Wang and Shaka, Wang will not do any damage to Shaka.

In a move I'd regret. I went to visit Shaka.



I landed my tanks, since they do a pretty decent job attacking from land, but not amphibiously.



At home, I used my great generals to build Military Academies. One medic is enough and I don't like settling.



Some people really like to settle their general for the extra XP. But I'd much rather have 3 5/10 tanks than 2 7/10 tanks. That's especially true when my tanks were all attacking at 99% odds and I needed more tanks, not stronger ones.

Golly gee! He has a lot of units.



I'm hovering over the northern stack, but the stack due west of my beachhead is nearly as menacing.

Agggh, too many units.



My token force was just not going to cut the mustard.



Ridiculous. Okay, let's try this again. Bombers will help.



Units for the win!



That's more like it.



Bombers are awesome and I've got more tanks on the way.

It appears Wang is going for culture. I'll have to pay him a visit sometime soon.



The war against Shaka was going great. His stacks were gone and he had nothing but city defenders left. I'd captured four coastal cities and was going to get three more, one of them the capital, on the next turn. I was in a pretty good mood at the beginning of the turn. Wang had turned off his slider and I was first to Mass Media, allowing me to build a 7 turn UN.



But there's some really bad news. Sigh.



Well baste me with sauce and serve me with mashed potatoes. It appears it's going to be me versus the world. A quick look at the turn before autosave shows that Shaka was not willing to capitulate and Wang could not be bribed to peace. Why the heck Shaka would cap to Wang is beyond me. But now I've got some problems.



He's more advanced than I am, but not that more advanced. And I'm smarter and I build enough units.



to my



On the downside it looks like I'll be fighting the rest of this game at tech parity.



So this game is turning out to be rather difficult. The plan is to put some infantry in my Zulu cities as defenders and then amass tanks and some carriers loaded with fighters and go raise Nampo and then see if I can't take the rest of Wang's cities.

This could definitely be a loss. We'll find out soon enough.

There seemed to me to be two options. The first, and probably more prudent one, would have been to load up my ships and gone straight for Seoul. The main reason for doing this was that Wang was the last threat to win the game. If I was able to eliminate his main culture cities I would probably have been able to win without much in my way. On the other hand, I'd just spend a long time preparing for a war with Shaka and destroying his stacks and that war was nearing completion. Declaring on Shaka was enticing. The downside of this is that I leave Wang more or less alone for a few more turns. I was hoping that just the act of declaring on him would slow him down a little bit either way. In the end I decided to finish what I started and hope I could get over to Korea in time.



The first few turns I was plagued by destroyers from both Wang and Shaka, but my navy was quite sizable and I held them all off without too many losses. Remember that battleships cause collateral dammage, so I was able to hit their "stacks" of ships with a battleship or two and then sink the rest without fear of losses.

After the initial onslaught on sea, the war continued much as I hoped it would. I split my army into three main stacks. One went north to take out the top half of Zululand, one went southwest to take out the cities down there. And another army was landed in the former Ethiopia and took those cities.



The thickness of the lines is supposed to represent the size of the army that would go along the path including the reinforcements that would trickle in.

The things that helped a lot with this war were.

• Bombers removing all defenses before my armies arrived.
• Bombers taking all defenders down to half strength making incredibly easy work for my panzers.
• Bombers doing their thing and in so doing keeping the entire continent in my line of sight so I always knew exactly where all of Shaka's units were.
• Panzers getting two attacks per turn. Be careful that you move to within one tile of a city you hope to attack because otherwise, moving counts as one of the panzer's moves and it then gets only one attack.

To execute late game wars successfully takes a lot of micro. More than I care for, anyway. When TMIT does these late game wars he's usually done a better job in the first 5500 years allowing him to build tanks at a rate that allows him to be as careless as he wants. I was trying to be a little bit more careful and not lose any units unnecessarily. This wasn't too hard to do, but it did take a while. Anyway, 9 turns after re-declaring and 4 turns after that last screenshot here's what happened.





Careful planning and distribution of troops allowed me to capture 6 cities on the last turn of the war. Even if I lose this game, that war was well executed enough that I'll at least have something to feel good about. We now have 34 cities to Wang's 14, Stalin's 7, and Mansa's 4.

Here's some important screenshots:



We have a great deal of completely improved land. Unfortunately, most of it is under revolt and will take a while to become useful. But at least we have it, right? . Even with border pops I don't think it will be enough for a Domination win, so we'll have to pay the other continent a visit.



Wang is getting scarily close to culture. I may have just made a serious mistake dilly dallying with Shaka, but I had a good time. So it's all good. .



The map is at least a few decades out of date. I expect it looks pretty much the same except that some more of Mansa's and Stalin's land belongs to Wang.



I'm officially the tech loser. Luckily, the other guys don't have too much on me except SAM infantry. Those will be annoying, but not game changing. As long as they don't get to jet fighters I should be able to outmaneuver any terrible situations.

Actually, not only am I the tech loser, I'm the everything loser.



Look at the GNP ... recession much? .

Unfortunately, Wang will not go for a cease fire. He will declare peace for 180 gold, but I don't have ten turns to spare (or do I? What do you guys think?). Either way, my entire army is located on Shaka's continent, so attacking from the east seems the best, and quickest, course of action.



I'm undecided how best to invade the continent. Bombers from my island can reach both of the two eastern coastal cities, but none of the others. I'd really like to have bomber support on the capital and other inland cities. But I think it might be really hard to get a foothold on the continent. As I see it, I'll need a bunch of fighter support and marines to help with the invasion of the continent and holding of those two coastal cities if I choose to go that way.

This game is looking to be a close finish, so I'm a little worried. Any advice or words of comfort you have to offer are appreciated.