[BERT] Earthling Settlers - Not Exactly Warriors

[vorlon_mi]

Playing last night as Slavic Federation (Russia), going for a Contact victory. As I light up the Beacon, two AI tribes object, as they always do. This time, it was Daoming and Samatar.

PAC was not a big concern. She had been skirmishing off and on with Chungsu for most of the game. Only two self-founded cities and 3 puppets; she had capped Chungsu, since it was aquatic. Her capital was on my land mass, so I could sweep in and take her big cities.

The other (Africa) was more worrisome. Samatar had been Cooperating with me for nearly the whole game, but more importantly, had avoided wars and had 10 cities or so. I would need to tear up his sizeable army. Adding urgency to this was his announcement that he completed the Warp Gate for a Purity victory.

My covert agents watched him add to his Purity affinity for a 100 turns, but he had not left himself any where for the settlers to ... you know ... settle. He had filled all the good spots with cities! Not to be deterred, he started bringing Earthling settlers through the gate, even as my forces swept in from the south. Here's a screenshot during the battle, where I can see Earthlings running around, running into the war zone, no doubt screaming inside their little space helmets.


Fun fact: once can capture them, and they turn into workers.

 

[vorlon_mi]

I pressed forward, destroyed the gate, and finally got peace. He let me take a whole slew of his cities, along with some techs.
I have plenty of positive health, so I could annex 4 of them straightaway.

Do you all usually take cities in peace deals? Or focus on techs? When you have a large advantage in your war score, that is.

But the old African had one more trick up his sleeve. During the mandatory period when we could not re-declare war on each other, he *allied* with the other big power in the game, Franco-Iberia. Who had also been my Cooperating partner since turn 50 or so. When he declared on me -- as they AI always do, after a spanking -- his ally came in, too. Now I'm fighting two wars, where my troops and ships are positioned to fight one (the revenge attempt from AU).

Fortunately, my Beacon is on the other end of the land mass: inland, and Elodie has to sail halfway around the planet to get to it. She hasn't started her Emancipation Gate yet, so I will still win. But the AI actively pursued victory this game, making the end game a lot of fun.

 

[legalizefreedom]

I just had a very similar experience, except that I was playing Africa. I started the game on vacation, so it was not the most focused effort. I was generally landlocked to begin with and my second city, which I went out of my way to settle because I really needed to get to the water, ended up to be on a large lake. At one point I had 3-4 cities and I knew of at least two AIs with 9-10, so I was kinda screwed.

Once I got back home, I almost threw the save away, but I stuck with it. Hey, I'm efficient with this game without even trying (when I'm actually paying attention), so I could do with a little challenge this time, right?

I had been tight with my neighbor Al Falah the entire game, solid 9. And had been declared on by Chungsu from the ocean. I did have a few planes and the artifact upgrade for them, so I was able to fight him off and settle a water city near him.

I had all my bonuses in tech and natural bonuses in food so I hit the tech hard and started building units. This is going to come down to military and virtually everyone I've met is hassling me about how small and inexperienced my military is.

With a tech lead building, I decided to shoot for the victory since I was at a disadvantage in many ways. As soon as I get the Mind Flower up, Al Falah was one of the objectors. This just became an uphill climb.

It took me a while, but I held Al Falah off with a couple of walls of units thanks to my spying. They were incredibly strong. I was doing single digit damage at times. They must have really gone in on the Might tree... They had also built the settler gate and had about 8 Earthling Settlers planted. So I whacked a few settlers and finally destroyed their gate. Once I finally got peace, they allied with two other strong AIs including NSA, who had an impressive navy, and declared again as soon as they could.

Fortunately, by then I had the numbers and the upgrades to fend them off. The last 10-15 turns of the game I was only at war with one AI who was busy with an assault. In addition ARC sent a large force down towards my Mind Flower. Hadn't ever gotten past 4 or 5 with them the whole game and saw a DOW coming, so I blocked them off, made a deal for attrition damage and they never declared.

Ended up winning a Transcendence victory on turn 300.