Here are two screenshots taken at the very end of the war so you can get better picture of the situation (and also see the map first time in real and not just my own made maps

) Here are also some aftedwords and analyses
of the game, so enjoy if you are interested.
Western Front
Eastern Front
As I said in the beginning this was probably the most interesting game I have played in Civ 4. I think lot of it was because I played on pangaea map which gave the AI a better chance (this was warlords, so the AI wasn't that great with naval units). I don't usually play with pangaea because I like to build naval forces too and I think it is more realistic to play more "earthlike" maps (but not real earth maps, I hate them). Anyway, the pangaea map also gave the chance to lose the game complitely (which ultimately became my goal) because you just couldn't hide in some island. One thing that also contributed to the great game experience was that I used the Better AI mod (some of you might remember that from the forums) which changed the AI to behave in a certain way.
At the time when I started the war against Vikings the game hadn't been that interesting. As I stated in the story I had been strong in the beginning but had then declined slowly. I wanted some action and so I started the war. The
better AI mod made the AI to stack huge amounts of defending troops (with defence promotions) in the border cities but at the same time the inner cities were left without considerable defence. This inspired me to use blitzkrieg
tactics and strike deep into the enemy territory. The geographical situation also inspired me to try to split the Viking land into two parts. As told in the story this worked better than I had imagined. It was of course because I left large amounts of Viking forces untouched in the border cities (in fact only in Jelling) and the AI didn't use them (I think it was because of the defence promotions) which fit perfectly to the story later.
The game really turned interesting when I tried to invade Russia and China, England and America joined the war. At that stage I knew it was going to be very tough to try to beat them. I had large areas to defend in the former Viking territory and my army wasn't that big. English had massive troops and they could have easily conquered more territories but as before the AI had given lots of defensive promotions to its troops and so the English only took Moscow and Krasnoyarsk. The next attack by the Chinese against Stuttgart was really bad. When I first saw their stacks of troops I was so sure I'm going to lose. But in a way I was enjoying the game very much and I though, "this is perfect I'm going to fight for the last man". It was going to be like the fall of the third reich. But once again the AI made some mistakes. They didn't send any considerable troops against the former Viking territories which were almost without a defence. They massed nearly all troops against Stuttgart and I was just able to halt them. This was kind of a disappointment because I had already prepared for a defeat. After that I tried to push my luck and made the bold move against Russia (operation Sissle) and it was great. I thinks it was probably the best part of the game; an offensive which was bold and made good ground but still ended in a defeat (As one could foresee when considering the cituation). The last offensive by the England, Spain and China was also amazing. The AI really attacked at the same time with all the troops from different countries and did it in a way as described in the story. Of course I knew at that point that they didn't have a chance but anyway it was well coordinated offensive and fit perfectly to the story. I also very much enjoyed sending the troops to France to help Napoleon against America. There we (well almost me alone) pushed the Americans back and I gave Napoleon the cities he had lost (and some more). At that point when I had gone war against nearly everyone and had not yet taken serious losses I knew I couldn't lose the war anymore so the fighting became kind of a boring. It would have been hard to conquer the whole continent but I'm quite sure I could have done it (well not in the time to win the conquest victory but that doesn't matter for me). So I stopped playing the game as it had already achieved it's goal of being a great gaming experience.
When playing the game I liked to compare some of the battles fought to the actual battles fought in the WW2. The battle of Stuttgart I wanted to think as a battle of Stalingrad which was the turning point of the war. Operation Sissle I always thought as the Battle of the Bulge, which also tried to encircle huge enemy forces but ended in defeat. The operation Raccoon I think could be thought as the Battle of Kursk where the Germans (in this case the Western Powers) mounted the last major offensive which ultimately ended in defeat and crippled their offensive power in the East. The Expeditionary Army sent to France was little bit like the Rommels Afrika Corps which was sent to help Italians in Africa and to defeat the British (altough in this story it really did that, but against America).
So this was the final words for this story and I hope you all enjoyed it. I once again want to thank you all for the encouragin comments and requests for new chapters, and I also want to wish you all merry Christmas
