[continued from previous post]
Just before we declared war, I cancelled all deals with Shaka to see what effects it would have on our empire. Ouch. We were getting valuable wheat and gold from him. This made Refrigeration and Malls our next priority. We definitely needed the extra health and happiness (we were getting Hit Musicals and Hit Singles from Stalin).
As a few tanks saved Gandhi to the east, we began our amhpibious assault in the west:
This was D-Day. Coastal bombardment with our ships, followed by airstrikes with the fighters and then the Navy SEALs attack. First city captured:
We didn't lose anything in this battle. Our garrison troops moved in. An extra infantry was airlifted in. I think Shaka threw a few pieces of artillery at us in retaliation, but the SEALs took care of those.
In the east, our tanks had successfully repelled the Zulu offensive. It looked like Shaka relied on artillery and relatively higher numbers against the Indians. With our tanks, we had superior quality and were able to destroy their forces quickly. But our blitzkrieg arm had been delayed a little. Another coastal city fell on the western front:
We lost at least a Navy SEAL due to bad luck in this battle.
Then our tanks began to roll into Zulu cities:
Hey, we're playing the parts of both the Americans and the Russians in WW2
Of course, the area to conquer is a lot bigger here. We airlifted an infantry to the new city for defense, which would be a procedure repeated for every new city in the east.
We captured the Mahabodhi and the Statue of Liberty among other neat things in Delhi. The shrines really helped keep our economy afloat as time went by. The SoL helped get our new cities running with free engineers.
And we got a GG for our pains:
Ironically, he's Japanese
He became another instructor at Bibracte, which was pumping out veterans with its Heroic Epic, GMIs and West Point (plus the Pentagon bonus).
Our tanks, supported by bombers, did a fantastic job:
I think we lost one or two to bad luck so far, but we had more than enough to take care of the limited defenders in the eastern Zulu cities.
On the western front, our troops and artillery, not to be outdone, captured the Zulu capital with the assitance of the carriers and a few bombers:
Victory did not come free. We lost a CRII artillery, a CRIII rifleman and one fighter plane. But dividing our stack into two SEAL-protected groups really helped us overcome Shaka's artillery attacks and prevent higher losses. And old Gustavus Adolphus was there to make sure our units healed up quickly. Of course, we also had spies to tell us where exactly the Zulu artillery were, so that we could position our troops accordingly in the first place.
The relatively quick loss of their capital indicated that the demise of the Zulus was only a matter of time. Stalin, though, remained a worry. We had a spy in one of his core cities. He was building the Space Elevator, obviously engrossed in his space programme. However, he had mech infantry. If he were to join in on the side of Shaka, we would really need nukes to be safe from his technologically superior forces.
Would we be able to end this war before the Russians come into the picture? Or if they did join in, would we be able to overcome them? Find out in the second part of this update, which will be posted later.