Fall Patch Boogaloo: What Measure a Utopia?

[smallfish]

You got the capital!

But Princess was in another castle



Coming back: here we bear witness to the power of Flanking bonuses, done with an obsolete unit no less:

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Now with his capital in Inkan hands, Hiawatha begins to have second misgivings about continuing the war... and hands over a great bounty to which the Inkan leader refused

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Meanwhile, Carthage takes the only port city Ethiopia ever had in 1785 AD

Instead of just accepting his tiny sum of gold and trash cities, Great Pachacuti modified it to fit Inkan desires for new luxuries and perhaps a personal gift to the Aztecs

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At this stage, Moctezuma was already fielding Gotha bombers, something the Inka were unable to acquire due to lack of natural oil deposits

Thus, the purpose of obtaining Cayuga from the Iroquois peace offer was to... be as friendly as possible with him

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He didn't even want the price we offered, so how about this to which he agreed

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1790 AD - Haile Selassie enters the Industrial Era, possibly with his Mehal Sefari in tow

Sometime soon or later (or both), Napoleon the Wise... unsure how wise he was actually in doing many things like city spamming in powerful peoples' faces... but anyways, Napoleon the Wise was appraised of a diabolical Aztec plot to take out his Mexican colonies

Now... Pachacuti was overseeing the latest of his wonderlusts, a certain monument of freedom and liberty to be a ceremonial harbinger of the Dystopic Age of Dust to come.

He was entirely satisfied with the results

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Compared to his fellow... brethren, poor and uncultured and unrefined in the light of Inkan Majesty

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Great Pachacuti even bought a Factory and had a worker did some wood chopping to make sure the odds were entirely stacked against this pale pretender

And a Pretender he was, unfit and pathetic to even dare to confront Inka for something as trivial as stealing techs

It was then Napoleon came to us with a hint of war... war against Moctezuma. Insane? Perhaps. But they were competing for wonders too

"Give us 10 turns to prepare"

And we played them all like a violin when Pachacuti informed Moctezuma of that nefarious French plot

Perhaps this is the time for us to wonder - what is happening when we play off the Aztecs and French? What do we have to gain from all this?

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Indeed, well hello my friend, its always a pleasure working with you too...

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1810 AD - the Inka launches a sneak attack on Marseilles, igniting the Second French War

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It turns out to have been a little...

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Inadvisable?

At the news of sudden presence of French Air Force, Great Pachacuti nearly panics... but he orders the operation to continue anyways irregardless of what his advisers were saying

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The French responded with a massive bombing raid on the beachhead, but with no significant mobile forces nearby, it turned out to be more of a psychological attack than anything substantial

1814 AD - Inkan WWII Infantry begin appearing on the Marseilles beachhead

Now with some powerful Infantry units at hand, the time had come to push into Dijion and its airbases

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The cost was a little heavy... but not as heavy as expected (no cannons destroyed this time)

And very soon Dijion was Inkan

This rather worrisome but at least spectacular victory over an army that prided itself as the most powerful in the world was drastically cut short when news came in that the uncultured and hammer poor communists in Tenochtitlan managed to beat us to the Statue of Liberty...

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BY ONE TURN

Then some French Privateer took out one of our Great Admirals while it was heading towards the French mainland

And the WWII Infantries demonstrated their extremely durability against French aerial pinpricks, even managing to shoot down a squadron of Triplanes and Gotha Bombers

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But then Dido showed her true colors - yet again - by stabbing us in the back while we were busy elsewhere across the world

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So to fulfill some CS quest, we denounced Dido in return

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Well I was wasting time with you too, and I should have conquered you outright when I had the chance to

And then Napoleon demanded that we pay a large compensation sum to end this war

1822 AD - France declares war on the Aztecs

In perhaps one of the most inadvisable moves ever, Dido also joins in the war against Moctezuma the following turn

1830 AD - the Brandenburg Gate is completed in Cusco

French Artillery begins appearing on the front as we begin the assault to take and raze Bayonne

French Foreign Legions guarding Stuttgart and its road from Inkan Infantries

The next turn, we received word that Moctezuma was constructing the Cristo Redentor in his capital and it was only 2 turns away from completion. Machu would produce that... in approximately 4 turns.

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Thus to prevent an unfortunate repeat of the SoL incident, the Inka declares war on Mexica

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And it worked terrifically. The build order, now that he was at war with 3 powers, was quickly changed to military unit production

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[smallfish]

Cannons are extremely powerful siege engines, coming right after Trebuchets. Against Industrial and early Modern cities such as these, they still hold up pretty fine. The problem begins when you have those 70 or 80+ strength cities, all backed with an air force and navy and death-dealing artillery... but the French had none of that, or at least much, here

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They had a mix of Cat A and B units, but so far nothing to show that there was a serious concentration of artillery or air support nearby

And (WWII) Infantry are pretty durable units for sieges

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Meanwhile, the French navy began showing up in force, starting with a pair of Ironclads appearing south of Marseilles and damaging an Inkan frigates

We could have sent a sub here, but at the moment, they were prowling (or rather, scouting) the northern uncharted reaches of Europe...

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But the problem with tough Infantry units... is that they can be killed. Very easily. Especially when they are holed up in cities that will be recaptured the next turn

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1840 AD - the Cristo Redentor is finally completed in Machu, allowing that city to focus back on producing (naval) units and other crucial buildings

On that same turn, Great Pachacuti decided with the influx of French forces and the fact that they still had so many of them even after being at war with another major power over precious colonies, he would have no choice but to turn Tours into a strategic block

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The shame of having to play Immortal tactics... on Emperor

Moctezuma was quick to offer us peace... and as it turns out, it was a wise move given that he entered the Atomic Era in 1844 AD

Also, our very first sub on recon patrol in northern Europe, uncovering what seemed to be a French fleet ready for action... somewhere

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With Tours now in Carthaginian hands, the French had no choice but to defend the other possession of theirs still reachable by Inkan ground units

The schwerpunkt had now shifted to Cherbourg

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It was an extremely weak attempt on our part, and with no major ground reinforcements coming anytime soon and being stuck with all we had with that 65-def city plus 2nd rate garrisons...

Napoleon offers us a white peace treaty

We accepted it, and the lines were thus drawn on Marseilles/Cherbourg. We also figured maybe Nappy could restart our friendship...

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Yeah, he wasn't interested at all. Then he made peace with Moctezuma again sometime later, and this massing of naval units was sorta worrisome

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Several things pickled Great Pachacuti's mind in this era of uneasy peace. One, he hadn't racked up as much cultural pillaging as he could. Two, he was quite behind his immediate opponent in techs.

1862 AD - Napoleon enters the Atomic Era

Yes he had managed to reinforce the beaches in the meantime... but compared to what Paris was hinting at, it looked to be quite inadequate

They also had Bombers. Bombers.

Then he looked around at the world stage, and found certain suspect individuals to be in "Neutrality"

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At some point when the Treaty ended, Nappy turned immensely "hostile" and confronted our placement of units at our mutual borders

I say quote unquote hostile because I'm pretty sure at this point he had a joint DOW agreement going with Hiawatha and Haile Selassie and that was very, very bad news

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A theory on why they had suddenly agreed to DOW me some time soon: I was a turn away from finishing Dynamite, which will render my greatest defensive asset null and void. And they all really hated the Inka to boot...

In mean time, we had an Open Borders agreement with Moctezuma (Friendly; offered us one in first place) and used that opportunity to send one of our garrisoned cavalries in Tiwanaku to go explore Mexica's interior

Nice

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1880 AD - Moctezuma completes the Manhattan Project. He has 11 uraniums in case you're wondering.

So then we paid off Dido to declare war on Haile Selassie yet again, and Ethiopia was engulfed in a perpetual cycle of war

This resulted in Napoleon making a friendship pact with him, however (and note the increasing amount of FFL on our borders, with Great General in tow)...

So we had no choice but to re-enter war with Napoleon on our own terms

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ahh... a diplomatic minefield ignited

Cherbourg was easily brought down now we had Artillery in place - until those 100+ defense cities start appearing, they remain the most powerful siege tool at your disposal to run down foes with

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The problem was that he had a mobile force now unimpeded by the Great Wall and had no hesitation in bringing his air force to bear

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Inkan infantry managed to retake the city, only problem was that he had a mini-carpet of his own, backed by an aerial siege train

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Now we wanted to give it to Carthage... but she wouldn't accept an Open Borders agreement. That was where Monty came in, and we sold it for a pretty cheap price

So now we had a complete blockage of any reasonable French counterattack from the wide north, and if they wanted to push ground units in it would be through that mini-funnel near Lyons

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His air force apparently didn't care and just struck my artillery, forcing me to withdraw most of my stuff further south to Marseilles itself

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Two things happened in 1894 AD:

1) The Good - we completed New Castle Wonder with the help of a GE who had nothing better to rush
2) The Bad (sorta) - the Ethiopians, after centuries of being picked upon by Pachacuti, finally declare war on us

The Ethiopians were not alone. The very next turn, Hiawatha launches a major attack on our Iroquois holdings... with GW Infantry, Battleships and a couple GW Bombers plus ironclads were involved somewhere

We had absolutely no garrisons stationed in the Home Islands; most of our major units busy trying to not get oblivionated by French Bombers/Battleships or watching the frontier with distrustful Carthage

So we sold them Iroquois cities to Carthage instead

And since the Iroquois made friends with them dozens of turns ago, they should be fine eh

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You might have noticed that I had quite a naval force around Marseilles - it consisted of at least 4 battleships, a couple Ironclads, a Privateer and our first submarine

Offensive ops conducted against Stuttgart starting with a preparatory bombardment...

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ended in failure when we failed to get a melee unit in to take the city and the French reinforced it big time

(oh and Napoleon completes Apollo Program - the first to do it)

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And in the mean time, the Aztecs were growing very powerfully... perhaps a little too much for comfort

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[Heerlo]

Whoa, this has been one crazy game.

 

[ense7en]

Wow, this is an epic game.
Cultural attempt with Autocracy not Freedom, and war-heavy with more powerful foes.

Impressive stuff, though i'd be getting rather worried about now.

Also, Frontier maps are awesome.
I think they are my favorite too as i've played them a few times now and they are always interesting.

 

[Heerlo]

I just got G&K.I think this might be the first map I try.

 

[smallfish]

Wow, this is an epic game.
Cultural attempt with Autocracy not Freedom, and war-heavy with more powerful foes.

Impressive stuff, though i'd be getting rather worried about now.

Also, Frontier maps are awesome.
I think they are my favorite too as i've played them a few times now and they are always interesting.

Yeah they have a ton of room to expand into, and there are barb armies running around everywhere, and ruins to find and nab before everyone else... it's a great map type for exploration & colonization games.

And yeah, I figure I'll try something out of my comfort zone when it comes for CV... otherwise it feels kinda boring

I just got G&K.I think the might be the first map I try.

Glad to hear you are joining the crew, grand admiral. Welcome onboard!


For now though folks, I have some terrible, terrible news. My long suffering gaming rig has finally... or is about to break down completely. It may already have, being unable to properly start up and freezing/hanging at random intervals even on Safe Mode. Thus I will now try and see if I can salvage the game... and if not, extract the saves at very least, and this shall be our last update for Big Main Epic for now.


For now, we have Inkan artillery shelling and obliterating certain French units trying to cross through the Lyons Gap

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The Inkan fleet around Marseilles managed to survive that French naval fleet... heading somewhere else east, and thus Inka is now at the crux of finally taking Stuttgart

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The price was rather heavy... or it could have been if I had not brought that extra melee unit

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Meanwhile back on the mainland, our cav had managed to explore most of the Mexican Interior and made its way back home. On the way, they were sent to explore the new Aztec colonies pushing westwards towards the Iroquois, Ethiopia... and perhaps us.

Here's them encountering a Mehal Sefari, and why it was dangerous for it to attack

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Aztec siege of Canajoharie, an Iroquois spam city colony about to get overrun and its populace sacrified to Huitzilopochtli the Communist War God

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They fell not long after this, with grisly results.

A consequence of the Iroquois declaration of war was that we had no more secure reinforcement pipeline towards Europe. Everything had to go the long northern route before plunging south and avoiding some hostile CS

One of the units sent in as escort was this aircraft carrier with our first pair of Gotha Bombers and a Triplane

Its first blood was this French carrier overwatching a larger French invasion fleet a little south

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Now with their "eyes" gone, the French fleet veered back west... towards our beachheads

It came in with predictable results

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At Kanesatake, a legendary general comes to the helm to lead the Iroquois to victory

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'

1907 AD - the Inka finally enters the Atomic Era

Apparently the Aztecs have stopped their assault against Iroquois positions, probably having to manage an extensively large empire without Immortal/Deity bonuses

Good thing he was smart enough to take Order...

And Dido finally makes peace with Haile Selassie. We figure something is going horribly wrong for her

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The perils of our unsecured reinforcement pipeline - French ironclad rams an embarked Gatling into davy jones' locker

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A renewed French push through the Lyons Gap; will it end successfully?... Probably not

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And yes, the war is going horribly bad for Dido. Poor Carthage, victim of Aztec Runaway

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And this is all where we stand, For All Time:

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[Heerlo]

Still an interesting game.Sorry about your rig, as well.

In my very first game on G&K, guess who is the first person I meet.Only one of my all time worst enemies, Mr. Suleiman.

 

[strijder20]

Glad to see one of your games again, Smallfish! Really enjoyed the read.

Only one of my all time worst enemies, Mr. Suleiman.

Yes, total jerk

 

[ense7en]

So are you going to be getting a new PC?

Or what's happening with that?