Extremely Interesting Observations

[smallfish]

Apparently if you are fighting an Immortal runaway (from another continent) for some decades, the best way to force a favorable peace deal even though he outnumbers you two to one and isn't really threatened... is to get to Stealth ASAP.

But they don't like it at all if you suddenly take some of their core cities, and will switch to a peace deal that demands back those cities.

So in that case, if you didn't prepare hard enough and the invasion is faltering due to lack of reinforcements and some pretty horrendous casualty rates (invading deep-rooted runaway with SBs is like that), start paying off everyone else to bring him into a Three Front War. But what happens if all of them are too afraid? In that case, one must hold the line at all costs... make sure that you make that runaway bleed really hard, make him pay with your Stealth stack, give him the occasional nuke and it'd be really cheap to pay off anyone else to go to war with him because he has a subpar military now.

Immortal Runaways will also have several staging points for amphibious invasions - its mainly their coastal cities facing your continent, and they will form them up quickly with touch & go in mind. Disrupting them - requiring nuclear submarines - will reap huge rewards such as +1 sight +1 range Logistics Hunter Killer Submarines, also you might even eliminate part of their nuclear arsenals right there and then. But don't be surprised if runaway still wants you to surrender unconditionally - they are also likely rolling in 500+ gpt and will rushbuy everything they can to replenish their losses its literally mind-boggling, and they will switch staging grounds among all their many, many cities/former puppets if one has been busted but its really easy to tell provided one pays attention with your subs constantly on the move. This poster thinks it would be best if they actually built that fleet out in open waters somewhere else, preferably under the cover of their SB umbrella and have it be really huge. But I digress.

 

[DaveMcW]

But what happens if all of them are too afraid?

Conquer them and become #1 yourself.

 

[smallfish]

Conquer them and become #1 yourself.

In the process of doing that, actually. It's just... well, tougher than usual? I've not yet played a "Long Immortal War" scenario post-Fall patch, so I decided to roll one up on a saved map I think is pretty good challenge for Domination-style games. There's also a lot of screenshots I wanted to show of runaway fighting capabilities and stuff, so I'll break this down into some parts

The first is the outbreak of hostilities, and we begin with a quote to get the ball rolling:

"Comrades, it is a matter of nominating General Bonaparte consul for life. You are free to hold your own opinion; nevertheless, I must warn you that the first man not to vote for the Consulate for life will be shot in front of the regiment."

On the 1802 Election

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The thing about this fellow is that he loves to ICS. Loves. Even after Steam Power has made his UA redundant, he will still spam crap cities all over the place if there is still space...

But during the age of Industrialization and imperialism, Napoleon here had the wisdom to spam two crap cities close to my core cities. As it turns out, they were right on top of crucial Info Era resources - 4 uranium and 7 oil, respectively. He took Order, I took Autocracy, and he was over the charts score leader while at war with no.2 runaway Greece (my fellow Autocrat friend). He kept giving me less-than-friendly prices for embassies (never gave him one, and thank goodness). Geopolitics thus dictated that first target would be Runaway France

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At that point in time he was still in a hundreds year war with Alex, who is also allied with every other CS on the map. Right after I took Rennes, both of them inexplicably made peace

He then demanded something outrageous for "Peace" - what's interesting in that demand was that all of them were French cities, even the Hunnic ripoff called Toulon.

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Usually when AI approaches you with Peace, it's either because:

1) they are about to hit hard with a sledgehammer
2) the War is going badly for them

With France here, it was the former

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The following naval battle between my planned naval invasion of... let's call that CS/French isle to the north [AIRSTRIP ONE], and France's own thrusts will be shown in the following shots

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No biggie this one, it was a converted BB:

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It was short, yes... and I figured since it would probably be all that he has in these waters, it was the time to march into the southern tip of AIRSTRIP ONE: Bordeaux

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Applying the power of four nuke subs, one IIRC with +1 Sight off the bat, they were all sunk and we figured it might be the end of French naval presence for now

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Estimated that it might take another five to ten turns for a response...

Why hello, more fish food coming to the forefront!

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It turns out that they were merely shields, so to speak, a ploy to buy time for reinforcements to swiftly come into play

Judging by the amount of embarked units and ships, it seems that his "planned" counter-invasion was to be really big. That was assuming his first wave would actually succeed in creating a beachhead to push further onto my cap...

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The invasion fleet sunk all those stuff presented, yes. Even converted a Frigate I had planned to turn into a BB should Bordeaux fall soon.

Then Napoleon lashed out with air strikes

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... well, this was getting really BAD

There would be no taking of a 143-def city with current state of my fleet and lookit what he brought into play!

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I think the AI actually handed me a naval defeat there... it was horrible. French air stack just went and played target practice with my fleet

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The defeat then was also in forcing me to do the only thing, the only way my horribly outclassed military can win right now

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It helped get rid of that air stack and several other units, but apparently France can spam (and rushbuy) so many of them it almost didn't matter

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After dealing with the survivors of the atomic strike, we finally got the beachhead we wanted and began pushing for Nice

An interesting name, because just then a GIANT DEATH ROBOT stomped in the face of my poor lead unit there (SAM)

Nice

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Not so nice was forgetting the fact that GDRs totally ignore ZOC

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We hammered it with battleships, bombers... and thing still won't die. How then did we defeat it?

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Then with the only apparent French unit out of the way, we took Nice. So many stuff lost, and the only thing keeping our invasion afloat were the carriers and BBs... and the nuclear subs, of course

I figured they must have had a spy in Bordeaux... the fact that it got nuked out of existence just as my carriers were passing by was too coincidental

yeah, Nice...

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We then figured Napoleon might want to talk peace after losing just as many units and his precious island...

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Also, Military Tradition rocks. The French began streaming reinforcements in bits and pieces from the east, we sent most of our nuke boats there as well to prowl up and down the coastal borders, and there was much stuff to be sunk we'll talk more about it in the next post. In retrospect, going leftside Honor instead of usual Tradition (and not even completing Trad for free aqueducts) was not that bad...

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[smallfish]

In the last paragraph of OP, I mentioned that AIs will use several coastal cities of theirs to mass an amphibious invasion or five. A key component to identifying those sites is the presence of aircraft carriers, even if empty, and embarked troops. They might even have a settler tagging along to create new bases cities from which to surround you with...

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I also mentioned touch & go - it will apparently take them a couple of turns to mass said force and then off they scoot to whatever target they have in mind

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With nuclear submarines, these are all easily disruptable

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Quite often, you might spot a nuclear sub (or a sub) in the vicinity or as part of the group. The first targets then would be those and any aircraft carriers that has aircraft onboard - they are the eyes of the fleet, and taking them out will make your wolfpack's life much easier to pick on the remaining escorts and embarked

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But one must be too careful as to NOT approach too close to their coasts - if a juicy convoy is spotted but is too deep inside, it is usually best to wait for it to move out before picking them off one by one.

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Remember - keep your subs prowling up and down the runaway's coasts. Not only is static positioning of wolfpacks not going to net you much kills, kills necessary to dent their military demographics, but it will make the AI's job much easier in locating and destroying your forces with applied firepower

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Keep them movin' and huntin', and very soon, you'll have single subs that can act as decent force multipliers in prelude to invasion

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[smallfish]

As for beelining Stealth to get favorable peace treaties from Immortal runaways, this was what I noticed. Prior to finishing Lasers, Napoleon was pretty adamant in demanding insane deals that I would not accept

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This one was followed with a nuclear strike on a city close to my cap

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One turn prior to finishing Lasers (and getting a free tech steal that should have given me Stealth), his mood began switching inexplicably

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I'm not sure what is happening here. Demographics check alone shows he still has the largest military on the planet. I had a hunch then that it might have something to do with Stealth Bombers...

This was indeed confirmed 5 turns before finishing Stealth, when I approached Napoleon and he had this really pissed off look (C'est toi)... and of course, a far larger sum to offer

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It might not have been possible without the constant 100:1 kill ratios my wolfpacks were dishing out, but given that he was still at least twice the size of me in military and land and had that enormous gpt to back it up, I would daresay in conclusion that Stealth is still the answer to runaway problems.

 

[Hammer Rabbi]

i didnt read all of this but are other VCs disabled? that late on Immortal is pretty surprising. fascinating posts though. i will make it thru all of it later.

 

[smallfish]

i didnt read all of this but are other VCs disabled? that late on Immortal is pretty surprising. fascinating posts though. i will make it thru all of it later.

Nah, they were all on. Hence the Long War moniker; in my book, losing on Immortal is when the enemy has taken your cap.

France did try to attack me from an unusual spot - the west. He had a lot of cities there too, even though they weren't as well-developed as his west coast cities and they had the additional problem of having to face of with four different civs

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What was interesting about this was that his ships were out of sight... its definitely a good sign that AI can now hang back their carriers and let rip with their aerial cargos, but the biggest one I think is the use of that poor fishing boat as a targeting mechanism, possibly to spot what the spies could not see...

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Well they got sunk... but me thinks that they had simply ran out of naval units (busy trying to form invasions in their west coast cities and then getting sunk by my wolfpacks) and whatever they had left were there to guard against Mayans, Ethiopians and Greece (they all hated Napoleon - he never was the diplomatic type).

Likewise, here was my attempt to return the favor. It was entirely shabby, and in hindsight, I should have gone for something really big like the ones in my old Hunnic industrial game.

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A poor man's D-Day, and Napoleon slapped me in the face for it

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Even after I managed to clear a beachhead, French SBs still continued their reign of terror

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At this point, the Grand Consul began switching to a peace treaty demanding the return of that core city I took. An extremely rational action to take, and certainly one that should be applauded for.

The only problem I fear... was that he was dealing with an irrational warmonger

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I managed to take his cap after losing two SAMs (and you might guess who won what VC). Then he brought in the usual response crew for taking core cities back from hostile forces

Unlike Sejong however, I had no nuclear weaponry left in reserve... well I had, but it was only an A-Bomb

Oh and he nuked Lyons at some point of the battle but being Quick Battle, i didn't notice it until I needed that destroyer healing inside and that some of my units were redder than they should be

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Target of priority for the counterattack was a Fat Man on that rocket artillery, and the GDR (massed firepower plus SBs brought it down on that same turn.

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At that point, I don't think I will be able to take out his entire empire with all I had on the beach, even if I had brought in more stealth stacks (with Bomb Shelter)

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And worse, he kept demanding the return of those cities I had previously taken from him

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Well, this was where the utility of diplomatic isolation came into play - Ethiopia never liked me, I never liked them, I even randomly denounced them at one point just to please my friend Alex and back then Nappy. He took Freedom while I went Autocracy; naturally we should be enemies... but in this post-Victory world, he turned around and went back to being Friendly.

And now after decades, close to a century, of me bloodying the French, the Ethiopian Army had finally surpassed it in numbers

So we rang up Addis Ababa and asked them what they would like to join in the Great World War II

(Un)Surprisingly, not much

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So in conjunction with massive Ethiopian push from the south, we took Orleans

Napoleon still demanded the same thing - now instead of Paris, it was Orleans. Extremely interesting...

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So we rang up our other friend, the guy who has 75% of the world's CS as his allies, and asked him the same question we poked at Selassie

This one was even cheaper

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Now with Three Fronts to fight on, the French Runaway began to crumble, slowly but surely dying from a thousand cuts and its corpse ready to be carved up by fresher empires

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But Napoleon was still full of fight - we took Constantinople and Valletta and a couple more cities southward, in attempt to link up with Ethiopia (and perhaps grab that Pyramid city of Harar before they do), but he had far more bolder demands than ever before

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I had annexed Lyon, rushbought a Bomb Shelter and then transferred approximately 7 SBs plus an atomic delivered all the way from Phoenice

I quickly added another atomic with some rushbuying

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... and will you look at that mood swing?

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