Round 12: 1796 AD to 1844 AD (26 turns), Part 1
As the round got underway, I heeded your advice about the cost of the corporations and espionage. I lowered the espionage slider to 0% (I had several E-point-generating buildings now anyway), and I cancelled several deals for seafood.
This was a sensible adjustment, especially since taking over Ragnar's territory meant I had acquired several more sources of seafood on my own. I made some further adjustments to my trades a few turns later; furs and ivory are going to become obsolete before too long, so I did away with any and all deals involving them. This had the additional effect of making life a little bit harder for my rivals, so it's all good.
Hannibal built the UN, and proceeded to beat me in the S-G election:
So that could complicate my life, as if the Apostolic Palace isn't bad enough sometimes.
Next tech:
After that, I began researching Industrialism for Tanks, Battleships, and Marines.
My next Great Person was a Great Engineer out of Mecca:
I didn't really have much of a use for him; I'd been beaten to all the available late-game wonders at this point. So I set him aside, and found a use for him later, as you'll see.
The first UN vote was for a universal civic--Emancipation, which everyone was running anyway.
By this time I was feeling ready to take on Justinian. The first step was to make it harder for him to strike back at me through espionage:
And the next step was to start building some units that would stand up to his:
Meanwhile, I also implemented some of the other advice I was given, about spreading some of my corporations to other civs. As was suggested, Spain was an excellent target for Sid's Sushi:
Isabella has very little seafood, but this gave me some extra cash nonetheless.
I did my usual diplomacy check before declaring war:
Hmmm... Justinian has managed to make himself a pretty popular guy. So I'd be earning demerits from everybody for a DoW.
Well, ya wanna make an omelette, ya gotta break some eggs:
Now for some illustrations of modern warfare--how I conduct it, anyway, which I'm sure several of you will contend is not the best way. Well, that's what these threads are about. I don't write them for the praise, I write them because I want to improve my game and help other people improve theirs.
Anyway, here's how I conducted my initial naval invasion.
I approached Uppsala with a fleet of Destroyers and Transports. I had not yet managed to build any Marines and move them to the former Viking cities in the north, so I had to rely on Infantry (and a couple of Grenadiers looking for their last couple of XPs before a promotion).
First off, the Destroyers removed the city's cultural defenses.
With that done, I then used the Fighters on the Carrier to attack the city defenders. (I don't have Radio for Bombers yet--and if this had been an intercontinental invasion, I wouldn't have been able to use Bombers at any rate.)
The first attack really just removed the Byzantine Fighters.
Fortunately I had some additional fighters in the nearest former Viking cities, and they were able to do some damage to the city defenders. If this had been an intercontinental invasion, however, I would have been in trouble; but then again, I would have brought along more Carriers with more Fighters.
In the past, I would have launched Artillery and/or Cannon attacks from aboard ship, but as of the latest patch, those units can't attack amphibiously anymore. I suppose this was done for the purpose of balance. However, I'm not fond of the change for the simple reason that it makes a late-game war even harder to fight, and therefore more tedious, and Civ's late game warfare really didn't need to get any more boring. I would have preferred it if the AI had simply been improved to be aware of, and to counter, the "Syrian Doctrine". All you need is more air units to damage the attacking navy, more ships (the AI already makes tons of them) to sink them, and more defenders in coastal cities. But I suppose changing the rules is easier (and cheaper) than improving the AI. Fair enough. As I said, modern naval invasions now mean you have to bring along more Carriers and more Fighters.
With the defenders damaged, it was time for my Infantry units to attack.
Even without the Amphibious promotion, these units got pretty good odds--thanks to the Figher attacks. You'll see another battle in Part 2 where I didn't have enough Fighters to pull this trick, and it cost me.
This time, though, it was relatively easy. I didn't lose a single unit in this attack.
On the next turn, Justinian retaliated by launching Guided Missile attacks on some of my tile improvements.
Which was slightly annoying, but hardly bothersome. Note to self: I have to remember to send some Workers there to fix some of those tiles, which haven't been repaired since the attack.
I had a land-based stack attacking Amorium, but they were having a tough time of it. Justinian had moved several units into that city to defend it. And he had Radio for Bombers, unlike me.
He was also willing to indulge in active defense, one my my favourite tactics, and attacked out of the city. I lost a few units as a result. Nevertheless, he didn't attack my stack with the few Artillery he had in the city, preferring to reserve them for defense--a non-sensical tactic for the AI which Firaxis has never fixed, not since Vanilla Civ IV came out.
Because of the Bombers, I had decided to research Rocketry next rather than Radio so I would have SAM Infantry to counter them.
I've noticed that the presense of SAMs is enough to deter the AI from making air attacks at all. The rest of us, however, quickly learn to just attack with cheaper Fighters first and make the SAMs use up all their counter-attacks so the Bombers can attack without taking any damage.
While all this was going on, the UN votes kept rolling in. The next one was fairly innocuous--in fact, it's one of my own favourites, so I was pleased to see it: Single Currency/+1 trade route in all cities. It passed easily.
However, the UN resolutions were not going to stay trouble-free. But that's in part 2, which I'll post in a little while.
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