Hi Curt,
Here is the latest update. I’ve reached June 1892 (turn #270).
I continue to operate under Imperialism and currently possess 183 cities around the world.
Back in February 1891, I took the plunge and finally declared war on my greatest rival, Queen Victoria’s Britain, and invaded that island nation. It was a tough nut to crack, but I just completed the conquest of her home island last turn when I captured Glasgow. It was made somewhat easier by the fact that the island had primarily only defensive units (mainly Maxim Guns) and very little offensive type units to repel me.
All the same, Britain remains a powerful nation as it continues to hold sway over most of the Middle East to Burma, along with Canada and Australia and a few isolated possessions here and there.
In Europe proper, I control all of the continent west of the Ural Mountains to the shores of Portugal. The only remaining hold outs are Ireland, Gibraltar/Malta and the Southern Balkans.
I control almost all of Africa save the few British controlled areas in West Africa, South Africa and the Horn of Africa (which I’m currently conducting operations to capture). It’s a slower process to conduct operations in my outlying regions as I need to gradually feed my campaigns with fresh and more modern troops from my more advanced European cities (especially against English territories which also has possess modern units).
I like that part of the scenario very much, i.e. it’s not like you can capture a remote city in Africa, for example, and immediately start building tanks and heavy artillery in it on the next turn, not at all! To build these types of units you need to have the prerequisite productive improvements in place and that takes a lot of time to do. Hence, it becomes vitally important to set up a naval transportation system, with corresponding ports along the way, to ferry your troops from one trouble spot to another around the world. It thus becomes critical to have a navy sufficiently strong enough to protect those vital shipping lanes or to contest other powers lanes. There’s a lot of strategic thinking and planning that goes into this scenario.
In the Far East my land battle against Japan in China is a very slow grind, as they have a very large army and are able to produce score more. To date I’ve only managed to capture Amoy (along with Hong Kong from the British) since my conquests of Nanning and Canton. On the other hand, I was able to launch successful invasions of the island cities of Taipei, Naha and Shinsho. I need to bring more troops over from Europe to augment my strength but that takes times as gathering troop convoys in the Italian port of Taranto and escorting them safely to Saigon can take around 6 months.
I currently possess 85 technologies and currently am researching Carrier Operations. My research rate is 1 advance per 5 turns (4 if I run a deficit).
That leaves me 4 other advances to research in game, as there are only a total of 89 researchable techs in the scenario, which I should be able to complete in roughly 20 turns or so. After which only ‘The 20th Century’ (aka Future Tech) will be available to research for the remaining 100 game turns.
By contrast the other powers own: America 64, Britain 84, Germany 55, Independents 39, Japan 40, Russia 37. For Germany and Russia, in this play through at least, it makes sense since they’ve both lost 50% and more of their cities.
But for the Independents, Japan and America who still control large numbers of cities I would expect them to be more advanced. As such, I continue to wonder whether in a single human vs AI scenario if most of the other powers can keep up in the arms race. This is important as a technological edge in most games will give the player a definite advantage over their opponents, particularly if that player is human.
Case in point, up till very recently, Japan was only able to primarily build Gunboats and Steam Frigates and I have gradually been sending more and more sophisticated warships (Battleships, Dreadnought and lastly Battlecruisers) to the area to the point that I now largely control the South and East China Seas and have made it a graveyard for Russian and Japanese vessels. You expect some kind of discrepancy in the technological progress of different civilizations during a game but the fact that I was able to research, buy, or trade 54 advances (I started with 31) in 270 turns to Japan’s 13 (they started with 27) may suggest some kind of aid may be required for the AI?
In the naval arms race, as I expected, most of the other powers, are still unable to produce the more advanced ships and as such the seas are no longer as cluttered as previously.
Finally, I noticed that the ‘Tank Design’ advance obsoletes both the Rifled Gun and Artillery units, which are both supposed to be superseded by the Heavy Artillery unit. As you know both the latter units require the much more expensive and difficult to build Factory and Steel Mill improvement in a city to be able to produce them, whereas the Rifled Gun only requires the cheaper Local Industry and Barracks improvements. So when I researched the ‘Tank Design’, the majority of my cities which could still build Rifled Guns, and not the more expensive Heavy Artillery, ceased to be able to build any artillery units at all. Was that by design?
Otherwise, I continue to thoroughly enjoy the playing experience, even though I've been playing it for a few weeks now. There's always a new challenge to overcome or new strategy to devise.
