Chapter 53: Nuclear Summer
The decision made in 2024 to launch most of Rome's arsenal of Tactical nukes at China's 6 mainland cities was a difficult one to make, and it is sometimes criticized as a bad decision. Critics of it argue that it wasn't a necessary move. Supporters of it argue that the Chinese killed by the nukes probably would have been soon killed anyway, and it saved casualties on the Roman Army, as well as time.
Ashur was bombed late in 2023, but you already knew that was going to happen, right?
In early 2024, the War Council continued to debate about whether or not to use the nukes. One of them suggested that they try and find out the Chinese military strength via a spy. So, Agent Darkness went to Beijing...
...And his corpse appeared in Rome a little bit later. So, according to an already agreed upon deal, the nukes were launched.
On the night of June 21, 2024, the summer solstice, the citizens of Beijing, Shanghai, Chengdu, Nanking, Tsingtao, and Tientsin went to sleep, not thinking anything of importance would happen. In the middle of the night, though, they were awakened by a loud, flying object. 6 of these objects, one for each city, soon crashed into the ground. Rome's Tactical nukes. It was the last thing most of them ever saw. The total civilan casualties are estimated to be around 12,000,000 (I got this number by finding the population number, the one that you can see in the top center of the city view screen, of each city's citizen number, the one at the left of the city label outside the city view screen, of the cities before and after nuking, found the difference, and added them all up to get 12,000,000. How did I find out what Citizen Numbers corresponded to what populations? Well, I made a scenario a while ago in which in the empire of the Human Player has 255 cities, one for each possible city size you can get in the editor. So, I just opened up that scenario, and looked at all the city size numbers, e.g., 8, 15, 20, etc., and find out what population they correspond to. It was actually probably a little below the actual number though, because a city's population number increases by 2,000 for every piece of food stockpiled. For example, if a size 1 city, which has a population of 10,000 without any food, had 2 pieces of food stockpiled towards growth, it would have a population of 14,000. So, I was actually probably off by several thousand, but who really cares. Anyway, I'll get back to the story now), and most of the survivors were soon killed by the Roman army. Much of the Chinese military was also killed.
The roman army now advanced on the nuked cities. Some of them showed signs of resistance to the bombs, especially Beijing. But others were nothing to laugh at: Shanghai still had 2 Mechanized Infantry left in the city, although these were easily beaten by the 9th army.
Chengdu and Tientsin, on the other hand, had all their defenders wiped out by the nukes, so all the Roman troops had to do was walk into the cities.
Tsingtao was only slightly better off, keeping a small part of a TOW Infantry unit. The 11th army easily beat them.
Nanking and Beijing, on the other hand, proved very tough. Well, Nanking wasn't that tough, but it was out of reach of most of the Roman army, so only one unit of Mechanized Infantry was killed, and the city remained still defended by something. Oh, and a Radar Tower and Infantry unit were killed nearby by Octavian's Army, and some nearby Chinese workers were captured.
Beijing proved to be the most resilient, with scattered pieces of 4 total TOW Infantry and Infantry units. That would be impossible to plow through, so Beijing was bombed, and all of those TOW Infantry/Normal Infantry were killed, as was a Fighter. A bomber was shot down, though. At this point, it was now easy for Roman troops to walk into the city.
As this happened, Mao, who had miraculuosly survived both the nuke and the bombings, was setting up a new government in Nanking. Most of the rest of the Chinese government was dead, though.
And it was evident that China would not give up without a fight. They continued to pointlessly Bomb Ashur, and to the south of Tatung Island, The Battleship
RS Distraction seemed to serve it's name, getting the Chinese Destroyers
CHS Xianchai and
CHS Zhangti to leave Tatung Island to fight it, and in the ensuing battle, the
Distraction was sunk, but so was the
Xianchai.
May 23, 2025. The Roman armies converged on Nanking. The now 4 TOW Infantry in the city couldn't hold out forever. Octavian's Army killed the first. The 5th army destroyed a nearby undefended Radar Tower, and then went into the city and killed a second one. The remaining 2 were then killed by a unit of Modern Armor.
Mao and the makeshift Chinese government Fled east into the desert, with the Modern Armor in Hot pursuit. Luckily for the Chinese, there were some TOW Infantry there. Although they could not beat these Modern Armor, they stalled them for long enough for the Chinese Government to escape. They reached a ship at an unknown location that transported them to Tatung. But they would not be able to remain there for long. Soon they would be destroyed.
Tatung was the new target of the recently rebased Roman Bombers. Unfortunately, they did no damage at all to the Infantry defending the city- they just caused damage to the city itself, and also destroyed the 2 Bombers that had long plagued Nippur, Babylon, and Ashur, as well as a Destroyer. The ground forces would have to do the rest.
A recently created Modern Armor unit launching out from Nippur attacked some Infantry defending a Radar Tower outside the city, destroying the tower. They seemed unstoppable, but they were anything but. When they marched into Tatung, they were wiped out by the defending Infantry without the Infantry even being scratched. A similar fate befell the Marines that soon attacked the Infantry, although they caused some damage. Grr. This means that China will survive for one more year. But the 13th army, a recently created army that only just arrived on the New World continent, has landed outside the city.
This will end in 2026. Caeser swears it.
) Anyway, I have an army there now to pwn them.
your army. Their SDI has probably been destroyed by now, so no more expensive ICBMs getting zapped 
.
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