1st Annual Budweiser D-Day Challenge

[TheMeInTeam]

And we're off!

10 AD:

Spoiler :

Settle in place. I have IND and opt to use it, rushing for great wall (opening up an abusive 1 warrior lead expansion strategy with lots of cities starting on workers at 1 pop working their only good food tile, etc). I also pick up oracle and a good tech for IND:

Basically the continent shook out on friendly terns - only HC declares at pleased, but is far away and unlikely to do it. I opted for almost no defense and mass expansion, so even with pyramids, oracle, gwall, and much more I am still good on city count also:

1818 AD

Spoiler :

That's surprising, lib going this early on monarch:

I still have no trouble picking up wonders like AP, sankore, spiral, and virtually everything else I can get my hands on in the capitol while my other cities develop.

One caravel and a not-so-brilliant AI map trade makes sure I don't lose the other "first to" race that's announced to the world:

Okay?

I refused a demand but then signed a DP with allies. This is the stupid result. I upgrade to infantry and that just about ends any issue - the rest of her navy is beat down by charlie.

I prepare a 4 prong attack on Sal with tanks/bombers:

And America completely blows the Arabs off the world. Quaint.

Charlie is bigger but not much better:

I do so much damage so quickly, drag HC in (doesn't like hattie), shaka comes in on his own, and this all leads to a kind of comical scene:

At this point, charlie capped. This also allowed hatty to cap without me killing a SINGLE UNIT, much less actually landing on her soil or capturing cities.

All that remains is a REAL world war. Declare on 2 civs? No...not just 2. I'm taking on everyone over there except hattie at once.

I'll finish it up later. It's going to be a bit of a slog dealing with so many enemy cities and units simultaneously, although obviously I have the power, where I'm already easily #1.

 

[lymond]

bud - you know you could have added Japan and Germany in the custom game

Spoiler :

they are not in the game

 

[NihilZero]

@ Budweiser - the rules state that to land troops without attacking, ie in another friendly civ's territory, we have to have an "ally". How is this defined? A vassal, or somebody who is at war with the same foe?

At the moment the fascist dictator is beating up on a helpless victim and it pains me to sit by and do nothing (I've already been asked to join the war and declined). I only have sail ships at the moment. If I join the war is it legal to ship troops over there into friendly territory?

 

[budweiser]

@ Budweiser - the rules state that to land troops without attacking, ie in another friendly civ's territory, we have to have an "ally". How is this defined? A vassal, or somebody who is at war with the same foe?

At the moment the fascist dictator is beating up on a helpless victim and it pains me to sit by and do nothing (I've already been asked to join the war and declined). I only have sail ships at the moment. If I join the war is it legal to ship troops over there into friendly territory?

The latter, both at war with the same foe.

Since its the other continent, you cant ship any troops over with sail.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

The latter, both at war with the same foe.

Since its the other continent, you cant ship any troops over with sail.

What DO we do with vassals on the other continent before the world war? I actually obtained one via capitulation...and legally according to your rules which is ridiculously rare...and yet it happened. I have plenty of targets over there, but I guess I can consider that vassal an "ally" if I declare before putting troops in port there?

 

[NihilZero]

@TMIT: How are you always making positive money while running the slider at 100%? I don't see any cities building wealth. Where's it all coming from?

 

[TheMeInTeam]

@TMIT: How are you always making positive money while running the slider at 100%? I don't see any cities building wealth. Where's it all coming from?

AP

Spoiler :

(Capac)

/Sankore/Spiral (I even have sistine ). Combined with ORG, courthouses, a number of settled GPP...and later on a weak sushi that is in both domestic AND foreign cities with wall street + free market.

I'm finally having some bills after crushing 2 AI down and being in environmentalism however. Still the flow is quite good.

 

[NihilZero]

Spiral is pretty good alright. I never, ever tech Divine Right, however.

 

[budweiser]

What DO we do with vassals on the other continent before the world war? I actually obtained one via capitulation...and legally according to your rules which is ridiculously rare...and yet it happened. I have plenty of targets over there, but I guess I can consider that vassal an "ally" if I declare before putting troops in port there?

Yes, you can use Hatty's land, to move through. You could put the troops in now since she is under your protection. I did not consider that an AI would join you like that.

EDIT: Becareful, you most likely will face many spearmen with your tanks. Which could lead to disaster.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Yes, you can use Hatty's land, to move through. You could put the troops in now since she is under your protection. I did not consider that an AI would join you like that.

EDIT: Becareful, you most likely will face many spearmen with your tanks. Which could lead to disaster.

Nah, I can wait until they're all upgraded to rifles .

 

[Isikien]

D-Day, June 6th 1944, a day that will live in infamy.
In order to commemorate the 66th anniversary of the Germans bombing Pearl Harbor, I am posting the first annual Budweiser D-Day challenge.

Am just curious, was that around the same time Mecha-Churchill was built, malfunctioned on its fifth use in the field and went around eliminating millions of French people, all the while repeating the 'We will fight them on the beaches' speech in an endless loop?

 

[NihilZero]

I've been playing this for a couple of days and I'm nearly ready to deliver the coup de grace. Sadly my obsession with micromanaging everything is even more of a liability on large map size and epic speed. Regardless, the time of amphibious invasion draws near.

 

[budweiser]

I've been playing this for a couple of days and I'm nearly ready to deliver the coup de grace. Sadly my obsession with micromanaging everything is even more of a liability on large map size and epic speed. Regardless, the time of amphibious invasion draws near.

Good luck. My computer is broken so I cant even play it.

 

[NihilZero]

Here's the action up to some time in the 1400s:

Spoiler :

Settled 1S on the plains hill, began wonderspamming.

My initial settlement was not especially aggressive. I got all the sites I earmarked except for where Saladin placed Kufah. I wasn't too bothered as I expected him to be my first target anyway and he hadn't grown too huge to handle.

Early teching was augmented with some espionage from a settled GW spy. It was easy enough to get off to a solid tech lead and I didn't have to trade since I could steal what I didn't research myself.

I delayed Lib for a long time as I wanted to get a headstart on cavalry.

Steel is a nicer slingshot as far as beaker count is concerned, but I was after swift conquest.

As we prepare for war, I meet the other continent. Looks like Shaka is the villain of the piece, with his lapdog voluntary vassal Hannibal they are beating up on Hatty and Wang.

The rather large Charlemagne also attacks Huayna, we can't have that as Charlie is more than big enough already, thank you very much.

Kicking off our diplocamtic relations with the rampantly expansionist warlord across the ocean, we first try a policy of appeasement.

Content at a job well done, our envoys smugly return to great applause. Blessed be the peacemakers and all that.

Unfortunately it looks like we got taken for a ride, as the bastard just declares again a few turns later.

We can't exactly claim the moral high gorund though, because as you can see in the screenie, the US had also udertaken an expansionist war. Note that this questionable event doesn't get its own screenshot and is mentioned only as an aside. Our attack on the Ay-rabs was initiated inder the pretext of liberating the holy city of Judaism and was certainly nothing to do with imperialism or ultra-Zionist pressure groups. Stop whining and support the troops, hippies!

Willem puts himslef on my hit-list as the axis powers dogpile the damsel in distress.

I want to help, not least as she will probably get capped out soon, but the rules are vague on assisting someone who is under attack. I do feed Egypt military techs, but it's probably too late.

Then I decide enough is enough and bribe for peace a second time:

I have no trade or other interaction with the axis, other than the occasional rude verbal exchange, and my appeasement policy with Shak. This time I give him Astronomy, an implicit challenge to cross the sea and come and get me. Might make a few rude demands, maybe I can become his worst enemy.

The Ay-rabs are eliminated/liberated:

Curiously, Huayna is willing to become a vassal, even though he doesn't like me. Odd. Weirder still, when I take him up on it our relations change to friendly, despite the fact that he's at -1.

 

[NihilZero]

And the rest of it:

Spoiler :

Willem knocks out one of Hatshepsut's cities and I am forced to play the intermediary again to stop her getting capped.

It's pretty annoying then, when she voluntarily capitulates to Will in peacetime on the next turn. It might keep her safe from Shak, I suppose. Interestingly, a review of the diplo relations reveals that the normally demure Hatty has been no shrinking violet in this game, having DoWed both Shak and Will, and Hannibal twice!

I take over my continent with cavalry and drafted rifles

and proceed to industrialise the whole thing ORG style while teching all the prerequisite techs.

Meanwhile the Pan-African-Zulu-Carthage-Pact hit the Dutch-Egypt Alliance. The latter's cities start falling like ninepins despite technological superiority.

Then Hatshepsut breaks away from Will and gets peace. I want to keep stalling Shaka's conquest as it could make things messy later, so I negotiate yet another peace.

Shaka takes what I give him and just redeclares three turns later.

Cheeky swine. Looks like he's wised up to my delaying tactics. Willem is going to get capped now, it's virtually certain.

So the World war started without me and I'm not quite ready. The bottleneck is my lack of transports. I haven't enough coastal cities with decent production. My armed forces are big but they have no means of crossing the ocean in adequate numbers yet.

With the situation getting critical in the other continent, I am forced to declare war sooner than is ideal in 1768.

Time to be the world police and forcibly bring peace to this war-torn continent, whether the locals like it or not. Americuh, fack yeah!

The strategy is to arrive in force and start smacking everybody silly. All the foreigners look the same, so just shoot them all. The idea is to bring peace freedom and democracy by killing everybody that doesn't understand how good peace and freedom and democracy are. To this end, we will DoW all the warring parties, both the Zulu-Carthage Pact and the Dutch. And anybody else too, if they look at us funny.

I DoW Shaka first to prevent Willem capitulating.

[/IMG]

Little does Will suspect that he's in for it too.

First beach-head is opened at Elephantine. SEAL landing party meets minimal resistance.

I DoW Willem and take Pi-Ramesses with SEALs supported by fighters.

Tanks and infantry pour ashore. Next turn Thebes and Helepolis are freed from Shaka and returned to Egyptian control. Memphis is also released on the following turn.

Willem loses another coastal city to the SEALs, and suddenly it's all over in anti-climactic fashion!

Except it isn't quite over, because I'm 3% land area away from domination, and as per the rules I have to give the captured cities back anyway.

So I do the only sensible thing, and I turn on Egypt...

...and my soldiers suddenly start recapturing the cities I liberated from the Zulus a couple of turns before.

It doesn't take long.

Washington built quite a few wonders. It was also a good science city under Rep (I was in US in this screen).

It was kind of fun to go back to Monarch after so long as a change of pace. I'm not sure how winnable this map would have been on Immortal, with probably two massive AIs. Still, two massive AIs is better than just one I guess...

 

[budweiser]

Good job NihilZero!

Is there any other news from the front?

If you tried this out, can you tell us what happened politically in your game? Who beat up who and why?

 

[r_rolo1]

Bah , was going to post my progress when I remembered that i had made Kremlin ( was for failure gold, but I forgot to not end it ... ). I guess i need to reload a earlier save and move on

Atleast i had no need to use SP ...

Spoiler :

Since charlie was kind enough to build Versailles for me Anyway Charlie was quite a nice guy in my game: I, after libing steel and make musket+ cannon war on Sal, marched against him with rifles+ muskets+ cannons ( discovered rifling during the recover time of the Arabian conquest ) and the guy decides to tech .... corporation + Mil trad, and this before having Gunpowder Atleast it was better than Shaka, that is being the big bad wolf of the other continent.... and this with not having CoL until 1500 AD. The AI in my game are being quite clunky indeed

Anyway, after ending the rest of Charlie + HC ( stupid AP... at a point I had 15 because of it ) so I couldn't disagree much more with it ... and no sail navy rule = no possible fast move on AP city ( HC cap )), I have a dilemma regarding the targets of my D day. The other continent Is divided in 2 diplo blocks: Hatty + hannibal ( that is reduced to 2 cities and vassal of hatty ) and Shaka + the rest ( all vassals and in varied states of of cripling, from Willem that has a handful of crappy cities to Wang, that could probably beat hatty by himself and that was the main oposing power of shaka when I met the other continent ( obviously before Shaka zerged him ). If things continue this way Hatty will crumble soon or will crumble as soon as I attack there, leaving me with the option of warring the whole continent... fun stuff ahead. Let's see how many knights can a defending infantry kill

 

[budweiser]

Bah , was going to post my progress when I remembered that i had made Kremlin ( was for failure gold, but I forgot to not end it ... ). I guess i need to reload a earlier save and move on

Thats OK, dont waste time reloading if you dont want to.