All hell broke loose

[Deep_Blue]

Playing with Hammurabi I struggled tell 1800 AD to be able to build a decent military, my game settings: Emperor , Pangaea, Huge Map , 14 opponents.

At my 3rd war with Caesar throughout the game I finally kicked his butt and captured Rome in addition to half of his empire, next I made peace with him for the rebuild. my plan was to build jails in every cities after struggling heavily from war weariness, switching to Police state and then re-attack. But..... in the next round all hell broke loose!

Shaka declared war on me !! ... he has 5 vessels
Suddenly I became at war with 6 countries .. Shaka alone is hard to deal with he is a super power spreading over a big chunk on the continent.

While trying to figure out how to deal with the situation Hannibal declared war on the next turn..

Next turn Kublai Khan declared war while he has 2 vessels with him.

In 3 turns I found my self at war with 10 countries at once



Now Huge forces are building up on my borders , I pulled back from my first city in the line of fire to save as many units as long as I can. I was able to destroy the first two stacks of doom with minimal causalities (after using up to 20 Artilleries), now I have 51 Infantry units and 7 artilleries left.



I am building infantries like mad hoping to hold on for few turns until I can make some peace treaties.

Any suggestions? do I hold on or restart?

 

[SJN]

Do you have a military super-city that can pump out units with 3 promotions? I had just a few units with Guerilla 3 that held of a stack of 30 units in the mountains. I see that you have a bunch of hills, you might be able to halt their advancement into your territory.

-- SJN

 

[Deep_Blue]

I fear their artilleries some of their stacks contain up to 20 artilleries meaning that there is no way that I let them attack first, my strategy is to pull back and attack next. If I have 30 units stack on a hill it will be destroyed in one turn after being bombarded with 20 artilleries !

 

[TheDS]

Since you're unwilling to defend from the hills, you'll have to wait until they get off the hills and into the valley in front of your city. Ignore any pillagers, you need your whole army to hit the enemy stack just as soon as it has no terrain defense. Then, throw EVERYTHING you have at them, starting with your aircraft, then artillery, then ground units. Be sure to attack from a defensible position! From the city, or from a hill, since your units won't be able to move after they attack. You shouldn't have any cities with more than 1 defender.

With them in your territory, you won't get WW, but they should. Once they lose a bunch of units, and their SoD isn't strong enough to mount a useful counterattack, they should be willing to come to the table.

Focus your attacks on the masters. If Shaka declares peace, he takes 5 combatants with him. You might also weaken him enough that someone breaks free, but this is unlikely so don't pray for it.

If you have a navy, send it out and try to find bad guys to sink, or blockade them. They hate blockades and will churn out boats instead of ground pounders. The blockade should hurt their economy and maybe will cause them to lose money and their army may refuse to march.

Hit them with spies - devote your slider to espionage! Smash Banks and Markets to reduce their money and happiness. Hit their Holy city HARD. Change their religion or civics if you can to try and get yourself some +diplo points and to put them in anarchy for a turn, disrupting their production and economy.

In the meantime, switch to Nationalism and Theocracy and DRAFT LIKE THERE'S NO TOMORROW! You should probbly also go into Slavery, in case you over-draft and have to whip away unhappy people. And Police State if you can. And you may as well go into Mercantilism since you don't have many people to trade with and the extra Specialist will help. Get every city building Infantry or Artillery; you're gonna need it to hit SoDs.

If you can bargain someone to attack an enemy, do it. And check at the end of each turn to see if someone is willing to talk about peace.

If nothing else, this game should teach you a thing about how to defend yourself (or at least how not to!)

 

[Deep_Blue]

Great words TheDs ..

I recently made peace with Khan (the one who has 20 Artilleries stack) thanks god, now 3 are down off my shoulder.

I have no time to build spies I am building infantries and drafting like mad..
I teached stupid Shaka a lesson in combat as the killing is at 10:1 ratio . He is sending his troops in medium size groups making killing them easy and giving me time to heal till the next group arrives.

My moral is up.. Several great generals have immerged in the battles and most of my units have 4+ promotions (some have 6).

I expect to hit peace in few turns.

 

[djvandrake]

Wow! Good job on holding them off. When Shaka senses you're over extended or weak, he'll strike. He and everyone else.

I've never faced anything like this so can't offer you much help (I lost when Mony, Hammy and the little Corsican ganged up on me.) but I'll cheer for you. Please post a few more screenshots of the aftermath.

 

[CHEESE!]

Wow i think you need to work on the diplo abit... No friends.

 

[TigerBotHesh]

I don't know if there's a better feeling in Civ than facing overwhelming odds and pulling everything together to come out of it in one piece. Congrats on turning the tide!

 

[Deep_Blue]

Aftermath

In the next few turns I kicked some butts and Shaka was bleeding badly, soon he was forced to accept peace along with 5 of his vessels for a tech . Although peace was refreshing but I cannot relax, from now on I have to build military units only for expected future collapse.

I was aiming to take on Roman Empire entirely but the World war on me interrupted this plan. After few turns I declared war on Caesar and took him in 10 turns .. the fool refused to give up Medicine for Peace and only accepted Capitulation even though he had one city left.

Now I have to act fast as I am aiming for conquest victory !!

How to do that against this global alliance???

The Plan

After taking the Roman Empire I got a huge boost in production because many of the Roman cities are super production cities. Now I have to find a way to face Shaka but I cannot do that directly.
My plan was to expand my empire by capturing the remaining civilizations that are not vessels to Shaka, then building a huge army using the production boost from captured civilizations.



The problem is that Shaka and his vessels are blocking my way to my targets and there is no way in hell that they give me Open Border agreements.

So My hopeful plan was:

1- To Move my forces overseas using transports to Persia.
2- Moving to Egypt after Capturing Persia.
3- Taking puny Chinese in my way
4- finishing my expansion by capturing the celts
5- After having a huge empire I will be surrounding Shaka's neck and I will be able to attack him in the deep.




The unexpected disappointment:

The plan worked slowly and I was successful in 1 and 2 but Shaka suddenly joined me against Egypt and took 2 of their cities and next turn Egypt became a vessel to Shaka and I cannot attack..

More annoying is that my remaining targets became vessels to Shaka so now every single civilization became a vessel to Shaka except me and Hannibal (Shaka's best friend )


(Last map in the game)

The irony is that Shaka won the game by a diplomatic victory

The lesson that was learned from this game is that never let an aggressive opponent to grow large before you react.

Despite the defeat it was very enjoyable and dramatic game and I learned a lot from it.

Final statistics:

 

[King_Ford]

I had the same thing happen to me once. The entire world declared war on me four times before I just quit, because it wasn't fun anymore. I was a protective leader, so I took on SOD after SOD and survived, but it got old real quick and my tech lead vanished.

After the game, I decided to disable vassals and have never looked back. The game is much more enjoyable without them and now I don't have the problem with the entire world declaring war on me. The main problem with vassals, is that even if they are friendly with you, they will still declare war on you. For me, it ruins fun games.

 

[Deep_Blue]

I did the same thing, I am playing now with vessels turned off.

 

[TheDS]

Um, a VASSAL of yours cannot declare war on you. If you've force-vassalized him, and you're letting him outgrow you, then if he wants independence, he has to DoW you, but you shouldn't be letting them get to that point.

People, diplomacy is a GOOD thing. You get good relations from trading and sharing religions and even choosing favored civics.

What I typically do:
1. Sign OB with everyone when I meet them (except Tokugawa, the jerk). This gets you +1 diplo easy, though there is a chance of -1 to -4 from his worst enemies, but this doesn't factor in much so far for me.
2. Make any non-critical resource trades I can, even if I don't gain. Frex, I may trade my only Spices for Bananas. I'll get +1 or +2 diplo from this over time, and I've probably got another Spice nearby I can grab in a few turns so it's no big deal.
3. Sell off any unused resources I can for gpt. Either of these trades get you +diplo, but when you're selling for gold, you often have to cancel the deal to arrange a better one when more gpt shows up, and this means your deals don't last long enough to get the bonus.
4. Trade techs! Early, cheap techs won't get you much, but mid-game and later, agreeing to a lopsided trade will get you +diplo, up to +4. It fades, but it's not too hard to get and keep.
5. Switch to whatever religion is in my best interests - usually the one had by the AP or the biggest civs.
6. Almost never break agreements or go to war when asked to. This does hurt relations, but not as much as it hurts your economy or your relations with the victimized civ. This can be made up for by the above bonuses. HOWEVER, if it's someone you wanted to attack anyway, then go ahead. +diplo for sharing a conflict is good.
7. If everyone else is dogpiling someone, get in on the act to get relations boost. You may have to devote a couple extra units to defense, maybe send an expeditionary force to get an even peace, or just live with being at war.
8. I pretty much ignore requests to change religion or civics. The jerks never do it when I'm Spiritual or have Cristo, when it wouldn't matter. Again, this is a diplo hit, but a minor one. I generally can't afford the anarchy or the uselessness of the civic in question.

Doing all these things, I generally have no problems. Sure, I need to keep my military up, a lesson I'm slowly learning, but I don't get DoWed very often, and I've never been dragged into a world war, except as part of a scenario. (1000AD as the Vikings or Arabs, anyone?)

If you've got a bad-guy civ next to you, then you just need MORE military.

 

[Deep_Blue]

Dilpo makes wonders when you plan it wisely, I once get a diplomatic victory with Ghandi with one city challenge (I think it was Prince or Monarch but I am not sure). In that game I planned my actions very wisely so that I don't upset the leaders that have the most votes in the UN (and I let my stupid competitor to declare war on them before the elections to secure the win)

The problem is that when I aim for conquest from the beginning Diplo will be screwed because I will not take the same considerations as I do in peaceful games, and I will have no choice but to let thing collapse.