My plan was simple - take out Shaka without using nukes. Shaka had a huge production lead and I didn't want to deal with nukes. To be safe, I researched laser first to enable SDI in case Manhattan was built. Fortunately, Manhattan was never built.
I first started by declaring war on Shaka about 10 turns after picking up the save. I figured I had enough of a navy to repel any coastal invasion and I wanted to take out his vassals first to prevent any cheap diplo shortcuts. I went after Cyrus with the northern stack - the highly promoted CR infantry/maces made quick work of all the northern islands. They weren't the greatest cities but I wanted to reduce his land holdings so that he'd unvassalize. Lo and behold, he became free after I took all the northern islands - I took peace with him to take him out of the war picture.
I then went after Hannibal's island colonies. This was also pretty easy as marines destroy infantry with a little artillery support. I sent a stack of 6 transports filled with marines to raze his coastal core cities and he too, broke free. About this time, Shaka landed his first naval stack and took out one of the minor east coast cities. The stack didn't move too far though, and I took it out with some tanks that were moving around.
Flight was very useful, and I tried a run at the radio wonders as well but I was beaten to Cristo. Oh well, I had 2 GP to trigger a GA for the civic switch. I stayed in representation until WW crept in, at which point I triggered the GA to go into police state. I was also busy spamming mining inc. into every city - I didn't spread Sid's Sushi though. I just wanted the extra hammers. Big cities would just add maintenance without adding much production (the key at this point in a late game war). My marine stack was busy sailing around Shaka's continent razing all of his coastal cities. I ended up taking out all the eastern ones before I ran out of marines. But by then, my boats had reached Cahokia and threatened Hannibal's last good city.
I vassalized Hannibal after reducing him to a few island colonies (south of his mainland) and Cahokia. I airlifted a bunch of mech infantry into his city and promoted them to CG 2/3. Then I turtled there while I built up the necessary tech. Shaka was still teching faster than me since I was going all production - he beat me to modern armor and stealth bombers by quite a bit but he was never able to take down Cahokia. sitting Bull went down easy - he took all of 4 turns (1 turn attack, 1 heal, attack, heal - oh wait that's only 3...).
I then gradually moved northward. Since I don't play with Bhruic's patch, I loaded Cahokia full of jet fighters and left them on intercept for a while to take out Shaka's air force. I think at max, I had upwards of 20+ jet fighters orbiting. The one scare I got late in the game was when Shaka launched his spaceship. I had 10 turns to take out his capital so I sent all of my military northward. He had actually launched his SS without all 5 thrusters - I guess he was starting to worry
Eventually I took out Ulundi and destroyed his SS. I then mopped up his remaining cities - I had to reduce him to 2 cities before vassalizing him for domination. Here are some pics of the war effort:
The SoD when I first went northward from Cahokia:
Shaka's SS failure:
score graph:
It's funny that Hannibal had a higher score than Cyrus even though he was still a vassal!
power graph:
production:
You can see where I adopted state property. I had massive colony expenses (about 400+) so I tried swapping out of state property after I conquered the Cristo. However, it only bumped the slider by 10% so I turned back to free market the next turn to keep the mining inc. hammer bonus. I spammed mining inc. to all of my and Hannibal's cities so it was worth lots of $$ and
Even the island colonies were able to produce a few buildings! I definitely have new found respect for mining inc.
And the kill count:
The final score was a little over 40k.
I think it was a wise decision to not use nukes. Shaka built the UN and I was voted secretary general (I had freed Cyrus at this point). My first (and only) order I passed was the banning of nukes. I could have won diplo a lot earlier but I figured I should wrap up with domination since that was the goal. Had I left nukes enabled, I think Shaka would have decimated my continent and I wouldn't have been able to recover. He would have reached ecology first which would have killed me.
It is encouraging to read that far better players than I consider myself suffer from the same things. I also got the "one more unit"-syndrome. But my coping gets better from game to game.
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