Round 9, 1691 to 1836
Part 1: The Song of War
The sarissa's song is a sad song.
He pipes it soft and low.
I would ply a gentler trade, says he,
But war is all I know.
I just finished reading Steven Pressfield's
The Virtues of War, a novel of Alexander the Great, from which those lines come. I highly recommend it, as well as his other books. With
300 opening next weekend,
Gates of Fire is an especially worthwhile read.
The round began with a build-up to war with my former ally and Defensive Pact partner, Spain. In some ways I was still a little ambivalent about this plan, but I figured a military buildup was warranted, either for war or defense. I pretty much followed cabert's plan to the letter. I started by inserting units into the queues of just about every city:
A turn later, I inserted different units into the queues. On that turn, however, events began to run away from me:
Yes, Huayna saw an opportunity he couldn't pass up and declared war. And this forced my hand as well. I can't claim to completely understand the AI's programming, but its objective seemed obvious, because it had to be the same as mine: aluminum. Huayna was after it, and if I wanted some, or even more important, if I wanted to deny it to him, I had to invade Spain.
Here's the ironic thing: even though I was about to declare war on Spain and fight on Huayna's side, Isabella was not my true enemy; my erstwhile ally, Huayna, was. He's my rival for the tech lead and the space race, not her. I realized this at once and never lost sight of it, and its truth guided much of my actions in the first half of this round.
I realized that I would have to jump into the war sooner than I wanted and without as much preparation as I'd like. That meant I could definitely benefit from some better units, so I made a trade with my neighbour:
A little dangerous, perhaps, since the Defensive Pact I had with Mehmed was about to become null and void. But necessary. Besides, as was pointed out in the thread, Artillery is on the way to rocketry.
On the next turn, the military wonder completed in Walata:
Aces. This triggered my next civics change:
Again, all according to plan. Universal Suffrage so I could rush-buy most of my units, and Theocracy so they'd have a couple of additional XPs on top of those from barracks and the Pentagon. Because I'd spent at least a turn building each unit, their purchase price was lower than buying them brand new. (Come on down to Bob's Used Military Dealership! Bring the whole family! We got balloons for the kids, and we're givin' away a bar-b-que with every tank purchased!)
Once my gold-rushed units started rolling out of my cities, it was time to declare war.
My first two targets were Valencia and Santiago. To say I had a mixed force, because of the rush to get into the war, was an understatement. I still had my 4 Accuracy Catapults (I ran out of gold buying modern units and didn't upgrade them), which saw action at Valencia, along with several Cannon and City Raider III Infantry. Those Infantry units, as you might recall, last saw action as Swordsmen against Mongolia and that barb city--several centuries ago! If nothing else, that tells you how peacefully I've played this game; normally my City Raider units go through iterations as Swords, Maces,
and Rifles before finally becoming Infantry.
And speaking of those CR Swordsmen, I still had one who needed his CRIII and earned it taking Valencia:
Yes, he killed a Rifleman. In some ways, the old spear-beats-tank scenario is alive and well in Civ IV. You just need enough siege units to make it a possibility.
Santiago, that worthess thorn in Gao's side, fell on the same turn. I also ran out of cash before I could upgrade the Frigates protecting Gao's fish, but I pressed them into service, helping to strip away the city's cultural defenses. The ground forces consisted of 4 Tanks, 2 Marines, 1 Infantry, 2 Artillery, a Cannon, and, just to make sure every era was covered, a Catapult.
Well, almost every era. It occurs to me that I didn't build a single Trebuchet in this game.
Now you'll notice the conundrum I was in if you look at those last 2 screenshots closely. The objective of the war was to claim aluminum, and I had not obtained either source. Meanwhile, Huayna was no slouch, rolling up Spanish cities as well. He took Atico (a little city on a tundra/ice island NW of Madrid), Madrid itself (!), and Murcia (the coastal city SW of Madrid). Ragnar also dog-piled Isabella (yeah, try getting
that image out of your head over the next hour or so). The Vikings razed Zaragova, that city Isabella had founded on the island that lay off my southeast coast.
I think you can understand my concern: I assumed that Huayna wanted access to the aluminum, just like me. He had declared war first, several turns before me, which meant Isabella's "refusal to talk" would drop with him before me. And she had lost 6 cities in short order to three different enemies.
I was sure that she'd capitulate to Huayna the first chance she got. Huayna would then gift her techs to Industrialism, she'd mine the Aluminum, and he'd insist on getting it from her.
I tried to prevent this scenario from transpiring, but I had no techs to offer Huayna in exchange for making peace with Isabella, and not enough gold for that option either. On top of that, war weariness was becoming a huge problem for me; I hadn't had enough time to build Mount Rushmore to help with it, so I had to raised the culture slider and stall my research. Even though I'm spiritual, I was reluctant to change civics to Police State, preferring to go back to Representation and its research boost for every specialist (like my free ones from the Statue of Liberty). I was getting worried that Huayna would beat me to Plastics and the Three Gorges Dam if I had to dial down my research much longer.
Well, remember I mentioned that I was reading a novel about Alexander the Great. So I came up with a strategy of which I think Alexander would have approved: bold, aggressive, and maybe just a little risky.
To guarantee that I had both sources of aluminum, I needed to capture three more Spanish cities to remove their cultural ownership of the aluminum tiles: Barcelona to Valencia's west, Seville to its north, and Cordoba, north of Santiago. I needed to take all three cities quickly, to either keep them from Huayna or to ensure Isabella no longer owned them once she became his vassal.
So I took all three cities. On the same turn.
Hey, I already had 2 stacks. I just had to cobble together a 3rd.
The smallest of my 3 stacks was outside of Cordoba, but the foe there was not that formidable: 3 Rifles and a Pike. My Frigates (and a brand-spankin' new Destroyer) had reduced the city's defenses to 0%.
I gave one of the Tanks Barrage II, and he won his battle and damaged the remaining defenders, who were no match for his armoured brethren.
Another stack, this one far more eclectic in its mix of units, was outside of Seville:
Huayna had helped me out here: his Artillery (which you see north of the city) and Cavalry had attempted to take the city and failed. But he had, in the process, almost completely eliminated the city's cultural defenses and weakened its defenders.
(Sidebar: this is one of those less-than-optimal approaches the AI uses that I hope Blake and others will repair. Artillery I can understand, but Cavalry? When the opposition has Riflemen? You can, of course, overwhelm the enemy with sheer numbers of Cavalry, which it looked like Huayna was doing, but Cavalry are not the best city raiders, especially against fortified, CG-promoted Rifles. I suspect that Huayna lost a lot of horses taking those Spanish cities, and that's why his weakened attack force couldn't capture Seville. I didn't see a single Incan Grenadier. Rangar had some Grens, though, so what's Huayna's excuse for such mediocre generalship? Anyway...)
So that's battle's result was also inevitable:
The main battle, however, was going to be for Barcelona. My main stack had marched there, the toughest of the three targets. My Accuracy Cats went with this stack, along with several tanks and all of my CR Infantry:
That was a long, nerve-wracking march, let me tell you. I kept expecting to discover that Isabella had capitulated on each turn, and to find myself in a forced peace and without any of my war objectives met. I actually delayed my attacks on Cordoba and Seville so they could happen at the same time as this one. My thinking was this: some of you reminded me that Isabella can be reluctant to capitulate. But if she lost Cordoba and/or Seville, that might be enough to push her into going hat-in-hand to Huayna. Better to wait, I decided, and get all my pretty chickens at one fell swoop.
The gamble paid off. As you can see, in 1721, the war was still underway and the stack was ready to attack the city. I probably should have either taken more siege weapons, or upgraded the Catapults. (With what, though? And that would have delayed me 1 turn, besides.) In the end, I had to attack the city while it still had some of its cultural defenses left--I couldn't chance waiting until the next turn. Fortunately, its defending Riflemen and Longbowmen (actually, 2 CGI Rifles, 1 Grenadier, 3 CGII Longbows, and a Pikeman) were no match for my Tanks and CR Infantry:
Since my siege weapons, such as they were, had used their moves reducing the city's defenses, I gave one of the Tanks Barrage II, just like I had done at Cordoba, and had him attack first. He barely survived (dropping to about 2.3 strength), but win and survive he did, and caused collateral damage to the other defenders so my remaining attackers were successful as well.
And so the war as a whole was also successful; I had achieved my main objective of securing both sources of aluminum, as well as my secondary objective of sheep for health, and I'd obtained sources of incense and wine in the bargain. The only thing remaining was to push my Tanks north to Salamanca to obtain a source of Crabs.
Sadly, however, that was not to be.
Yes, Isabella caved on the very next turn, and peace broke out everywhere.
Thus ends my affair with Isabella. In the end, it turned out that she gave me everything
except crabs.
To be continued...
This thread is getting more surreal by the day. Sisiutil had a 300 year one-night-stand with a normally-religion-crazed-but-now-strangely-secular Spanish harlot, and then jumped into bed with a heavily-bearded Turk to ease his sorrow at the inevitable break-up. Dagenham Dave has given everyone a wonderfully stereotyped impression of my fellow Essex men (don't ask). It seems pigswill is now communicating in shortened Haiku. And as for patagonia's itching comment coming two posts before jerVL/kg's crabs gag...
You just can't let her do that to you! Otherwise Meh- errr...the next one will walk all over you!
Probably the latter, sadly...
in the middle of the night). In the end I could have givem the 5 GA (I even had one spare, bad planning) to either hittites or kumbi Saleh or beshbalik. I chose Beshbalik.
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