wildWolverine
L'Etat, c'est moi
I just finished (and won
) my first regent game (C3C), and I observed something new (to me). I don't know if this was a unique set of circumstances or a fairly frequent event in regent (and/or above). Bear with my verbosity.
The situation:
I was playing as the Celts on a standard sized map, continents, 8 civs. All (original)victory conditions enabled. There were two main continents, roughly on opposite sides of the world, with a fair-sized island in the middle. I played through into the early modern age (~1300) with no worries. I had built the UN, and had been declining to hold votes (going for military win). I owned my continent, ruling by Republic. On the other continent, there were four roughly equal-sized civs, but the southern two (Maya and Iroquois) did not have saltpeter, rubber, or horses, and were significantly behind in the tech race. The second northernmost (Vikings) had only iron and saltpeter, and the northernmost nation (Inca) had all necessary resources, and was at a technological parity with me (they were my closest rival in all categories). The island was occupied by the Netherlands, who were only a couple of techs behind me, and had all necessary resources.
The event:
I was going for a domination victory, so I constructed a massive invasion force for the other continent. By my reasoning, the lower two civs and part of the second from top would give me the necessary land and population for domination. However, the turn after my fleet put out to sea (4 turn crossing), the Netherlands declared war on me. [Foolishly] I diverted the fleet and crushed William and his puny kingdom. However, the war dragged a little (my force was constructed to fight the bowmen and TOW infantry of the Maya and Iroquois, not the regular and mech infantry of the Dutch), and I had to switch to communism to avoid war weariness problems. By the time I had eliminated the Dutch and regrouped my forces for the much delayed invasion of the other continent (still in the south), the Incans had a three and a half tech lead on me. In one turn, they completed two spaceship parts. In response, I nuked their two most productive cities (including the capital) with ICBMs. Over the next 10 turns or so (as the invasion of the southern civs on the continent progressed), I sabotaged production twice on spaceship parts in Incan cities, but the Incans still managed to get 7 parts completed as I finished my first two (after a blitz on research and some creative prebuilding, much to the dismay of my domestic advisor). When it was looking really bleak (they had somewhere around 85 mech inf -- I could have beat them, but not before they finished the space ship), the Incans inexplicable stopped building spaceship parts. They had all the necessary techs, but suddenly almost all of their cities were producing ICBMs instead of spaceship parts. I realize their two most productive cities were ruined for a while, but they still had some nice size 20 cities lying around. I won by both domination and the space race another 10 turns later.
Now to the point...
Why did the Incans stop building spaceship parts? Did the combination of my nukes and recurring production sabotage just discourage them? I had given up hope of winning, when Hiawatha went and got a lobotomy... What gives?

The situation:
I was playing as the Celts on a standard sized map, continents, 8 civs. All (original)victory conditions enabled. There were two main continents, roughly on opposite sides of the world, with a fair-sized island in the middle. I played through into the early modern age (~1300) with no worries. I had built the UN, and had been declining to hold votes (going for military win). I owned my continent, ruling by Republic. On the other continent, there were four roughly equal-sized civs, but the southern two (Maya and Iroquois) did not have saltpeter, rubber, or horses, and were significantly behind in the tech race. The second northernmost (Vikings) had only iron and saltpeter, and the northernmost nation (Inca) had all necessary resources, and was at a technological parity with me (they were my closest rival in all categories). The island was occupied by the Netherlands, who were only a couple of techs behind me, and had all necessary resources.
The event:
I was going for a domination victory, so I constructed a massive invasion force for the other continent. By my reasoning, the lower two civs and part of the second from top would give me the necessary land and population for domination. However, the turn after my fleet put out to sea (4 turn crossing), the Netherlands declared war on me. [Foolishly] I diverted the fleet and crushed William and his puny kingdom. However, the war dragged a little (my force was constructed to fight the bowmen and TOW infantry of the Maya and Iroquois, not the regular and mech infantry of the Dutch), and I had to switch to communism to avoid war weariness problems. By the time I had eliminated the Dutch and regrouped my forces for the much delayed invasion of the other continent (still in the south), the Incans had a three and a half tech lead on me. In one turn, they completed two spaceship parts. In response, I nuked their two most productive cities (including the capital) with ICBMs. Over the next 10 turns or so (as the invasion of the southern civs on the continent progressed), I sabotaged production twice on spaceship parts in Incan cities, but the Incans still managed to get 7 parts completed as I finished my first two (after a blitz on research and some creative prebuilding, much to the dismay of my domestic advisor). When it was looking really bleak (they had somewhere around 85 mech inf -- I could have beat them, but not before they finished the space ship), the Incans inexplicable stopped building spaceship parts. They had all the necessary techs, but suddenly almost all of their cities were producing ICBMs instead of spaceship parts. I realize their two most productive cities were ruined for a while, but they still had some nice size 20 cities lying around. I won by both domination and the space race another 10 turns later.
Now to the point...
Why did the Incans stop building spaceship parts? Did the combination of my nukes and recurring production sabotage just discourage them? I had given up hope of winning, when Hiawatha went and got a lobotomy... What gives?