Lonely Hearts Club, BtS Edition, Chapter LXXV: Brennus

[krikav]

Deity saves attached.
This one I*m playing.
Writeup to 1AD will follow.

 

[krikav]

T0-T79

Spoiler :

Started by moving scout NE two times, to see if there was something north that would justify a move 1N to gain more rivers. Seeing nothing I just settle in place which is nice because it kills a horrid plains-tile.
I want to settle 1W of the corn to be able to work 3 grassland cottages for the capital to use later on, this spot I think have 0.5-1g higher maintenence than it would if placed SW of the corn which is also tempting as it could perhaps work a farmed floodplain of the capital right away.
But I rather keep my options open by settling this second city coastal, and claiming another floodplain in first ring.
Wine speaks monarchy, but Brennus is Cha, so we have +1 happy natural, and another one with a monument, and also there is them island furs which could be worth to settle just for the traderoutes, if no seafood we can settle on the southernmost fur and work the corn.
It took me a loooong time to realize that you can settle cities closer to each other if they are on different landmasses, did you know you could?

T39 GLH, I don't know if I have ever seen it go that fast. Augustus with a coastal capital?
Forgot to check demographics at T0-T5 to look for clues.
Techpath so far: Agri->Mining->BW-TW.
I whipped a second worker after BW as I both wanted to improve the copper and start chopping.
Settler sees the light of the day at T42.

Vienne was settled T43, and that road toward the river was there, it's always nice to have the second city connected as it increases yield in both capital and that city by 1 commerce.
Third city is less important to connect as the yield is just a single commerce.
Here I land a chop into SH to get some failgold and keep teching abit longer. I go AH after pottery is finished to settle by the pigs.

Now I feel dumb as a brick for not landing the chop into an axeman instead. >_<

My warrior garrison won his fight against one archer, but the other archer moved on top of my copper. Not good as he will pillage this and screw me up completely.
I offer him my scout.

The barb archer kindly accepts my gambit and gobbles up my scout so my axeman can finish. The eager axeman slays the scoutslayer.

@AH I see this much land, I no longer want to settle the easern pig, but will settle 1S of the western pig instead. NE of the horse also looks nice now as it can aid capital with two cottages. w/o the horse this spot would have been far less ok.
I also see that I have gotten some friendly neighbours. I'll farm a lvl4 Gallic warrior from them.

I changed my mind and instead settled to the south to get the fish. Mostly because I'm starting to have troubles in my capital not being able to work all good tiles. This souther helper city will alleviate these problems.
Slider to 0% while building library in capital.
Totally forgot about garrison in Vienne, and will resort to whipping a axeman to fix this (overflow into library is nice).

5 turns later capital has it's library and I start teching again. Probably should have waited untill Vienne had finished it's library too, there is no rush getting fishing.

Apparanatly I went IW before sailing, that was probably dumb, getting to sailing and settling that fur island would benefit all cities with an extra commerce, the extra happines would also be nice.
I was probably eager to see where the iron was located, and perhaps wanted to get my gallic warriors out to start attacking that barb city.

 

[krikav]

T80-T115

Spoiler :

Only now I was in a position to settle the island, should have done this before that horse city, and at horse city I should have had another chopper ready.

Suicide mission for the galley.
To further cement it's fate I moved it backwards (I didn't see that there was 2 boats to the west. Moving toward the eastern one would have given me some hope to hide in the city.
Won't be able to work the clam for a long time, but I might get a workboat out to the fish, as barb galleys can't enter ocean that fish would be safe.
The worker will have plenty of work to do on his exile though.

A long term plan of city placements to utilize my land most.
Probably won't settle anything pre-optics, and most of these cities will only be settled after astro when the traderoutes start to make them at least close to economically neutral.

A brave workboat speeds past the nasty galleys!

This is that 1AD situation.
Not at all sure how I should do with the GScientist who spawned last turn.
I'm very tempted to make an academy, as the capital is very well suited for burocracy.
However, my GPP management have not been that good, and if I run two scientists in the cities that are closest I will get two GSci for an astro bulb at T158, which doesn't really cut it.
I could try to make up for this by aquiring CoL, or perhaps simply self-teching half of astro.

 

[Fish Man]

T80-T115

Spoiler :

Only now I was in a position to settle the island, should have done this before that horse city, and at horse city I should have had another chopper ready.
View attachment 517072


Suicide mission for the galley.
To further cement it's fate I moved it backwards (I didn't see that there was 2 boats to the west. Moving toward the eastern one would have given me some hope to hide in the city.
Won't be able to work the clam for a long time, but I might get a workboat out to the fish, as barb galleys can't enter ocean that fish would be safe.
The worker will have plenty of work to do on his exile though.
View attachment 517073


A long term plan of city placements to utilize my land most.
Probably won't settle anything pre-optics, and most of these cities will only be settled after astro when the traderoutes start to make them at least close to economically neutral.
View attachment 517074

A brave workboat speeds past the nasty galleys!
View attachment 517075


This is that 1AD situation.
Not at all sure how I should do with the GScientist who spawned last turn.
I'm very tempted to make an academy, as the capital is very well suited for burocracy.
However, my GPP management have not been that good, and if I run two scientists in the cities that are closest I will get two GSci for an astro bulb at T158, which doesn't really cut it.
I could try to make up for this by aquiring CoL, or perhaps simply self-teching half of astro.
View attachment 517076

Spoiler :

I feel like that island (or, well, 3 islands) is far too generous to be a challenge to either of us .

 

[krikav]

Spoiler :

I feel like that island (or, well, 3 islands) is far too generous to be a challenge to either of us .

Spoiler :

Could be. Here we are blessed with a good capital, alot of river, many food sources and a decent amount of land.

It's somewhat balanced by the bad starting techs, and no superstart, as we "only" start with a dry corn, and we dont' have any extra hammers from settling on stone/marble/plainshill.

More importantly, I do have a nasty habit of racking up multiple small mistakes as I play along a game though.
And also... they AIs as always have a say on how the game turns out too.
Played to optics now and some challenges have arisen. Will post writeup soon.

 

[krikav]

T121-T139

Spoiler :

Machinery is finished, I'm going straight for optics here. No math/alfa.
Cities are stagnating on settlers when they reach happy-cap, most working 2 scientists and as much river as they can.
I have a really hard time to stop working hammer/food heavy tiles even though I probably should.

Optics at T128. This could probably be improved on dramatically I think. That horse city has been weighting down for quite some time, and should probably have been settled after optics.
Now I have 3 settlers standing by ready to settle, an gallic warrior+axe ready to take that barb city where a lone archer is left (I have a lvl4 gallic warrior standing in Gergovia already who won 3 fights at 78%, 90 (?) and 95% odds promoted to city raider.
I have gotten through the bottleneck of optics, and now my science matters much less, but since I screwed up with libraries early on, I need to get CoL to speed up the GSci in Tolosa.
I'm teching polytheism->priesthood->CoL, this is also good sice it opens up the posibility for a trade for monarchy.

I meet monty just a pair of turns from optics. I get nice trades!
His tech situation looks abit behind, and it's usually safe to feed these warmongerers tech, I usually want to trade alot with the first few AIs I meet contrary to common wisdom of refraining from trades until you know the diplo situation.
Getting a lot of trades out of the way makes the problems later on with "we find you are becomming too advanced" less troublesome.
The AIs that are closer also have a higher probability of getting my first targets as they are easier to get to, and the upkeep is less crippling.
Some distant AI on the other side of the planet is more likely to become my long term trading partner.

First I could get monarchy+alfa if I wanted, but I wanted math first to possibly get calendar. Probably a mistake.

I continue trading, here I could have waited and put 130beakers into calendar to get calendar+alfabet for machinery. But I choose to keep 100% focus on getting to CoL instead. I really need to cover up for my earlier mistake and run more scientists in Tolosa.
HBR might not be a complete waste, as it's possible (but not likely) that I'll start shipping cuirs.

Here I see the cultural boarders of another AI, and get carried away with trading, fully preoccupied with the thoughts I had with "make as many trades as possible before meeting the rest".
This was a mistake since the AI I'm about to meet might give me calendar way cheaper.

Well.. he already has optics, so what I thought was a mistake probably wasn't.
Mao... Conqurer of India and builder of AP. Bejing also has basically every wonder in the game (forgot to take screenshot) but basically everything except the early stone wonders.
This fellow is my main competition in this game and every action from now will have to be judged on whether or not it hurts or benefis Mao.

I make a trade with his vassal anyway. I really want currency.
Get -4 worst enemy trade with Monty, but it looks like Monty won't be a major player in this game, and I have already traded so much with him that I'm likley to hit his limit soon anyway, he is also a likely first target.
Gandhi here is a weak spot of Mao, as Gandhis extreme peaceweight make other AIs hate him right from the start. And this spills over on the master.

T135 I get CoL and swap to HR+Caste system.

T136 I trade currency to Monty for aest.
I reason that Mao will be too advanced for me to trade with for much of the comming game, and that I will avoid trading with him often too, as I don't want to help him. So I might just trade away with this crowd while I can.

At T137 I'm VERY pleased to meet this guy.
He will hate Gandhi, and he is also a known unit spammer, it's likely that he will be at Maos throat sometime soon.
Monty also starts plotting, don't know if he is suicidal enough to have mao as a target, but Gandhi is his worst enemy so it could be.

As I want to avoid CS until the astro bulb, and Mao is likely to win lib, I might go down the guilds line toward steel, also I want to boost Memhed.
I can't get Feud for compass+CoL (not sure if that means he has started any of them, or if it's just to little) so I trade away compass to make it possible for me to give Mehmed optics.
I choose drama since Monty doesn't have it, and I might be able to get something from him (gold if nothing else) for it.

It seems like he was teching CoL.

Next turn I trade my map and 45g for Mehmeds map.
My western caravel is moving along some islands west of monty. It's highly unlikely that Mehmed has knowledge of that area and getting his map is the only chance I have for circumnavigation as my eastmoving caravel is hindered by their continent.

Just cruising westards here. Carefully avoiding the coast with my caravel, don't want to get murdured by a barb galley.

 

[krikav]

T140-T145

Spoiler :

Don't want to trade for small stuff anymore as I will probably want both Mehmed and Hannibal as trading partners later on. Monty is the only one lacking Drama.
Self-teching litterature and other small stuff now as I hope for some trades before commiting to either guilds->gunpowder or cs->paper myself.

Have been running 3-4 specialists sustainable for some time now, but now it's time to burst near the end, possibly also starving this city down.

I get circumnavigation at T142

At T144 Mao wins lib and pick astro. I have given up all hope of going down the papers line and instead commited to guilds.
I might get nice trades from guids actually, almost noone has it.

Here Mao, have a horse! Mehmed has engineering and thus pikes, I'm not sure if it's dangerious to give Mao ability to build knights, but I want his stuff and I rather not trade him more happy/health.
Not sure what would have been better here.
Also note that I got my second GSci this turn. IF I would have put ~80-100 beakers into astro last turn I would have gotten astro this turn as well. But I forget it every single time!

Mehmed is plotting! I hope that he will start wearing down Mao abit, but probably he will just crush Hannibal first.
If these two start to dance, I might have time to take Montys land, and then go for Gilgamesh before I tackle any of them.

I get Astro, raw GPT jumps by 51 at 0% slider when I open borders with everyone. Well... Not Mao. I won't open borders with him ever. Don't want to give him intercontinental trade routes.
Prio right now is to race toward the central island, and hopefully beat Mao to the race. If I can it would also be nice to settle that island west of Monty.
Alot of new settlements, and I'm thinking that I should probably get more workers, probably also switch to slavery to get some whipping going, perhaps also vassalage for diplo with Mehmed.

Nice deals. Everyone wants Celtic fur!
I have too much happines, but I still want to lock up some deals so that they don't dissapear (such as the silk with Hannibal)

Tech situation, not a problem in the world except for Mao.
I hope to trade Guilds for engineering with someone if I put some beakers into engineering.

Maos home.

 

[krikav]

T145-T156

Spoiler :

It seems Mao wasn't too eager to settle the island, good. In a thousand years, I imagine I will need to fill this island with forts at load them up with bombers.

I would like to have his gold, but...

If one looks at his land, there is an abundance of farms. His cities are likely to be deep into unhealth/unhappines. And giving him a lone pig is equivalent of giving him 11 food per turn, since he is my main competition I really can't do that.

His collection of wonders...

Guilds is done, and I start to trade, unfortunatly both Gandhi and Gilgamesh have started teching guilds the same time I did, so I only get some gold from them.

Poor Gilgamesh got handed a fair bit of plains.

Stumbled on this, thought it was kind of funny, the great aqueduct of Aztec, visible form space.

T151 Mehmed declares on Hannibal.
I swap to burocracy+Caste system (I hope the delay was becuase I needed to do some whips first, but likely I just forgot to swap the turn I got CS.

Hannibal starts to lose cities.

T156, gunpowder is in and and Gilgamesh wants me to become a Hindu.
I haven't spread any religion yet, and accepting these types of demands is a major bonus with being SPI.

 

[krikav]

T156-T165

Spoiler :

The first (and only for a while) trade I do with gunpowder is with Mao.
This does help him, but I think it is worth it. He is far ahead of the rest, and giving him this tech is safe since he won't do any trade with any other AI. It might also be the only chance I have to get something from him.
He will be in modern armor fielding jetplanes and fancy helicopters when I'm ready to tackle him anyway.
This move helps me keep the rest of the crowd less advanced. I imagine that the second any other of the AIs would get gunpowder, they could do a traade with mao and get printing press/replacable parts or something else from him, and then start trading that around amongst themselves.

A few turns later Mehmed discovers printing press. I have quite alot of villages/towns now so the tech is nice in itself, but it also looks like a good trading chip in this situation.
It's also on the path to rifling, which I need.

He wouldn't give me it for astro only, so I sweeten the deal and get philosophy too, I don't think I'll have much use for philo, but getting nationalism might be nice for the draft.
Now follows just a long series of trades, thats kind of uninteresting, but it plays a huge role at this stage in the game.

Next turn nationalism.

Then more goodies from Gandhi.
Gandhi is usually a nono to trade with because everyone hates him due to extreme peaceweights, but in this game I only piss of Monty.
Education is something that isn't really essential and when you are in tougher spots you might not be able to get these trades and have to skimp on it. But it's nice since you get toward economics+corporation, and liberalism->communism.
Getting banking could be a mistake since it's so cheap, but I'm thinking that the time for trades soon is over anyway, and when rifling+steel is in, I'll get some vassals to trade with soon enough.

At T161 Monty declares me, I was really suprised by this because he doesn't have astro. But apparantly me settling this city was the straw that broke him, he have had enough!
IIrc I have a pike+mace+settler in that city, was planning on settling two cities on the island, but there was no second food source.

...

His city was guarded by a lone knight.

Nice war Monty, here have paper. I'll be back with riflemen/cannons before you know it!

 

[krikav]

T166-T192

Spoiler :

T165, I get the rest of chemistry for PP with Gilgamesh

T166 Tech situation. At the limit with Mehmed now... Now I pay for my early trading around optics.

T166
Had to give both PP and Chemistry for Economics @ Gandhi, he is probably already going PP, on his way to Mass media through Scientific method.

I sell banking to Mehmed for 10g, I want +fair trade diplo points as I'm caucious with him.
I recal that I bribed Mehmed off Hannibal at some point, but I seem to have forgotten to take a screenshot. Was hoping that he and Mao would start to dance, but after 10 turns or so, Mehmed just returned to beat on poor Hannibal.

I made glorious plans, looking at this tech situation. Was planning to get lib from hannibal, and then trade lib+replaceable parts wth gilga and in turn trade them to Gandhi for SciMeth.
When I checked it though, Hannibal wouldn't even give me music for RP. :/

Took lib from Gandhi for RP instead, and then.
I think I was under the impression that he was in merc, but I see from the SS now that he was in decentralization, so that swap was not necessery. Probably even harmful. I think I got a few beakers per turn in boost though since he stopped trading with monty (Who is not entierly w/o trading partners).

Abit of a warmup!
I did not go for steel first, but rifling.

I got a merchant and his trade mission helped me get to rifling quick.
I traded it for SciMeth right away, perhaps a mistake, but I wanted to clear the way to communism right away, it's even more pressing than usual since I want the diplo boost with Mao.
I have been spreading hinduism, but I'll soon regret that I didn't go for confucianism instead.
Mao with Gandhi as a vassal is problematic, since they go for completely different things, and can trade among each other.

Civics set to rep-nationalism-caste-freemarket-theocracy, now I'll draft an army or rifles!
Have slowly been building a bunch of trebuchets while teching.

At T189 Mao goes fist-mode, so I swap to confucianism right away, get up to pleased and beg for 10g.

And fist goes away, phew!

I then knock on Montys door. Unfortunatly for him, my boats where not filled with only catapults.
It seems that he has forgot that caravels can't defend cities.

I'm not sure what Mehmed gave Mao to get him to join. Perhaps just alot of gold?
Anyway, I wouldn't want to be in Hannibals position.

Gilgamesh decides to declare on Monty soon too, I was glad for the company. (I shouldn't have been)

 

[Fish Man]

T156-T165

Spoiler :

The first (and only for a while) trade I do with gunpowder is with Mao.
This does help him, but I think it is worth it. He is far ahead of the rest, and giving him this tech is safe since he won't do any trade with any other AI. It might also be the only chance I have to get something from him.
He will be in modern armor fielding jetplanes and fancy helicopters when I'm ready to tackle him anyway.
This move helps me keep the rest of the crowd less advanced. I imagine that the second any other of the AIs would get gunpowder, they could do a traade with mao and get printing press/replacable parts or something else from him, and then start trading that around amongst themselves.
View attachment 517308



A few turns later Mehmed discovers printing press. I have quite alot of villages/towns now so the tech is nice in itself, but it also looks like a good trading chip in this situation.
It's also on the path to rifling, which I need.
View attachment 517309

He wouldn't give me it for astro only, so I sweeten the deal and get philosophy too, I don't think I'll have much use for philo, but getting nationalism might be nice for the draft.
Now follows just a long series of trades, thats kind of uninteresting, but it plays a huge role at this stage in the game.
View attachment 517310

Next turn nationalism.
View attachment 517311

Then more goodies from Gandhi.
Gandhi is usually a nono to trade with because everyone hates him due to extreme peaceweights, but in this game I only piss of Monty.
Education is something that isn't really essential and when you are in tougher spots you might not be able to get these trades and have to skimp on it. But it's nice since you get toward economics+corporation, and liberalism->communism.
Getting banking could be a mistake since it's so cheap, but I'm thinking that the time for trades soon is over anyway, and when rifling+steel is in, I'll get some vassals to trade with soon enough.
View attachment 517312

At T161 Monty declares me, I was really suprised by this because he doesn't have astro. But apparantly me settling this city was the straw that broke him, he have had enough!
IIrc I have a pike+mace+settler in that city, was planning on settling two cities on the island, but there was no second food source.
View attachment 517313

...
View attachment 517314

His city was guarded by a lone knight.
View attachment 517315
Nice war Monty, here have paper. I'll be back with riflemen/cannons before you know it!
View attachment 517316

Spoiler :

Classic Monty, shooting himself in the foot as always with his war decs! Brings back fond memories of the recent Hannibal iso where he doomed his entire empire by swearing to destroy me when I had a dozen cavs right next to his core and he was still stuck on longbows. Yeah, great strategy there, I'm sure it won't backfire at all.../s

I don't think Mao will be as big an issue as you make him out to be, though I might eat my words soon. This is because he is a pretty terrible techer, and also only really has 11 cities, whereas you usally need about 15 to really go full throttle on tech (or have 13 and be an OP civ with an OP start, I guess, cough cough HC). But regardless, another way you can tell Mao isn't that big of a threat is what he's got at 1000AD. If an AI has one of these big shot expensive techs - communism, physics, or steam power - at this date, then it's a cause for concern, because it means they've got the beaker output to start running away at that point in the game. If they have two or more then you better scramble together a plan to deal with them, quick. But from what I can see Mao doesn't even have SM or RP yet. So he shouldn't have infantry before you attack. And if he doesn't have that then cannons will make quick work of anything he can field.

 

[Fish Man]

Spoiler :

Another thing: Mao has production and growth flavors. This is bad news in that he might go for AL a bit earlier than most (maybe even before physics, though usually the AI can't avoid the allure of free GP). However, it also means he's really likely to go the biology + medicine line and blow a dozen turns or more getting those techs, in the meantime not advancing militarily whatsoever. And he's pretty stingy about trading so he'll be holding onto that monopoly until it's too late, and you beat it out of him.

 

[krikav]

@Undefeatable
Could be that I put myself in worse position than I could have been.
I'm at T256 in the game. (Felt more like playing than writing up , and since I was so afraid of Mao, he is the only guy standing and the infantry he has now is mechanized.
Hitting him earlier could perhaps have been better.

 

[Fish Man]

@Undefeatable
Could be that I put myself in worse position than I could have been.
I'm at T256 in the game. (Felt more like playing than writing up , and since I was so afraid of Mao, he is the only guy standing and the infantry he has now is mechanized.
Hitting him earlier could perhaps have been better.

Not a problem that a couple of nukes can't fix. Or do it @Lain style and amass 100 tanks and 50 bombers .

Also, silver lining! He's got mech inf? That means he's wasted 5 turns researching robotics, delaying his space win by that much. And he probably only has one oil, if that. So pillage or destroy it and no more nasty modern era stuff.

 

[krikav]

T197-T224

Spoiler :

Just continuing to his next capital. Didn't have enough units to take it right away though.

A frigate of mine was to eager to scout out his territory. I renamed it once I saw it's inevitable fate. Quite impressed with it's last stand though!

I was just one diplo point from friendly, so I swapped back to hindu to get trades from Gilga. After the trade I promptly swap to free religion to avoid pissing of Mao.

Continuing to pick cities from Monty, Steel is in at T206 and I put one turn into steam power and then trade steel for steampower with Gandhi.
I start to build cannons in almost every city, then next turn I swap to slavery+theocracy to whip out a first wave of cannons.
Won't do more whipping though, as I want my cities to grow and work workshops.

Then this happends.... Argh! I was just about to take that southern city too.

I have no idea how Gilgamesh is teching as he does with his crappy cities in plain-hell, but this is that situation (I have just given Mehmed Steam power to make peace with Hannibal.)

I felt bloody smart when I did this. The idea was to keep Gilgamesh preoccupied on the mainland, while I mopped up what was left of Monty.
I forgot, however, that Mehmed would have 0 chance of getting OB with Hannibal. >_<

This was funny. Both Mao and Mehmed have been trapped for quite some time, Mao for probably 500-1000 years, he still has elephants in there.

Finally done with Monty.
I have 53 Rifles and 38 cannons at this point. But not tempted to land on Gigglamesh land and have them shredded by infantry+artilery.

I can and do make peace for the reasonable price of 55g. (I think the size of my army might have played role in that?)
Then I start to ship an obscene ammount of units, will hit Hannibal first because he only has infantry and no artilery to go with it. He also seem to lack a SOD, being down to 4 cities and having been hammered on by Mehmed for most of the game.

Speaking of artilery... I want my own artilery!
Due to our shared war (something Mehmed loves) I'm close to friendly though. And a swap to vassalage gets me over the limit, made me able to trade AL for physics!

 

[krikav]

@Undefeatable Hadn't thought about the oil, but that makes alot of sense. That would mean he can only build marines/paratroopers and such stuff?
I'm going for nukes at the moment, although I think my army could take him on just due to their numbers, but it feels way too risky.
Space doesn't seem to be Maos style.

Oh well, getting ahead of time. More writeup to do!

 

[krikav]

T226-T257

Spoiler :

I get rather high losses attacking this infantry, but I have the numbers. Worst part right now is shipping all reinforcements from my homeland.

His first little city had the Jewish shrine too, but that one was just 10-15gpt, this hindu one is nice. Especially since I got the city intact with market+grocer+bank!

Hannibal doesn't look too happy with the deal.

Mehmed and Gilgamesh are still at war, and I think Gilgamesh main stack is somewhere at Mehmeds place, leaving the door wide open for me. Artilery is just in and I have upgraded some cannons.

Here I leave two galleons filled with artilery for Gilgamesh to sink, because I think things where going abit too smoothly.

No screenshots of neither the Uruk fight nor the Lagash one, but it was only bombarding to 0%, suiciding a few artilery, then a few more cannons, and then picking units closest to promotion. Free xp.
Uruk was really nice 3 settled generals, factory and coalplant in place and a military academy! Pentagon was also a pleasant suprise.
Gilgamesh had to spend 2 more turns suiciding a few stray cavalry before he capitulated.
Onwards to Mehmed!

First went for Mehmeds stack stuck in Leptis, like shooting fish in a barrel.

His main stack is moving in, it seems he is diminished by his previous non-stop warfare with first Hannibal and then Gilgamesh.

Green color is good.

Red color is bad. I was so eager killing him that I only had a bunch of damaged cannons guarding Leptis. What I should have done was to simply let him re-capture Leptis right away and then attacked him there.
I did move out of Leptis now. He moved in his remaining units which I shot down (left one damaged unit though, to lure him move in even more.)
But apparantly he was fresh out of units, because Hannibal took the city and Mehmed was ready to join my team.

 

[krikav]

T258 situation:

Spoiler :

I got Thapsus in the peacedeal with Mehmed. Gave back the rest. I gave back Lagash during it's first revolt too.

Homeland, for once I didn't overbuild factories. Only placed them in really good hammer cities, the rest just got to slow-build units or build wealth. Feels like I'm finally getting my builders mentality partly under control.

Montys old home, ferrying units over the strait to Gilgamesh.

The island I rushed to @Astro,

Tech

And the front... Gandhi looks very soft.

It doesn't look like Mao has alot of units either.

Thats because he has a SOD of outdated units, stuck down at Gilgamesh, because noone else has open borders with him...

Once I declare, that outdated stack will be teleported back to the front, and It's likely that I can kill it first turn of the war.
That would give me enough war success I think, to get a ceasefire rather easy.

Perhaps I should gift some of my army to Mehmed to help him defend Edirne, certainly most of the outdated rifles.

Teching for nukes now, but a war of attrition would probably also be possible as I have so many cities cranking out units. The only thing I'm kind of worried about is that I would get problems transporting units over the ocean. I haven't seen Maos fleet yet, but they tend to build an insane ammount of boats.

 

[krikav]

T258-T287 Final

Spoiler :

His outdated stack was teleported to flatland when I declared. It didn't go well for them...

Things didn't go Gandhis way either.

Absolutely not.

I was going to lose my city on the island I and Mao share, since he had an godawful lot of units there. So I pillaged what I could, and took ceasefire.
Did a few trades with my vassals, but for the rest of the game, I built nothing but nukes.
Cities with decent production built ICBM and other cities built tactical nukes.

I don't really have much experience with nuclear warfare, but I moved my army south to avoid having it killed.

I launched what I had, smashing his inner cities with ICBM and as far as I reached with tacticals.
Then I waited for the retaliation, but it was mostly Mehmed who was trigger happy! Mao must have forgotten to build nukes in his craze to build spaceship parts.

About a third of my standing army was moving toward Gandhi, I figured it was safer to go for him, but I was wrong.
They where obliterated.

The last turn Gandhi was alive, he broke free from Mao, but then promptly rejoined. Bad choice of master on Gandhis part.

I just continued to throw nukes at Mao, moved in with tanks and took a few cities that where almost empty.
This is the last picture of chairman Mao as a free man, with a glowing wasteland in the background.

Woo hoo!

 

[Fish Man]

T258-T287 Final

Spoiler :

His outdated stack was teleported to flatland when I declared. It didn't go well for them...
View attachment 517369

Things didn't go Gandhis way either.
View attachment 517370

Absolutely not.
View attachment 517371

I was going to lose my city on the island I and Mao share, since he had an godawful lot of units there. So I pillaged what I could, and took ceasefire.
Did a few trades with my vassals, but for the rest of the game, I built nothing but nukes.
Cities with decent production built ICBM and other cities built tactical nukes.
View attachment 517372

I don't really have much experience with nuclear warfare, but I moved my army south to avoid having it killed.
View attachment 517373

I launched what I had, smashing his inner cities with ICBM and as far as I reached with tacticals.
Then I waited for the retaliation, but it was mostly Mehmed who was trigger happy! Mao must have forgotten to build nukes in his craze to build spaceship parts.
View attachment 517374

About a third of my standing army was moving toward Gandhi, I figured it was safer to go for him, but I was wrong.
They where obliterated.
View attachment 517375

The last turn Gandhi was alive, he broke free from Mao, but then promptly rejoined. Bad choice of master on Gandhis part.
View attachment 517376

I just continued to throw nukes at Mao, moved in with tanks and took a few cities that where almost empty.
This is the last picture of chairman Mao as a free man, with a glowing wasteland in the background.
View attachment 517377

Woo hoo!
View attachment 517378

Spoiler :

Absolutely brutal! I think you got the award for biggest army ever made - I mean, 150 units??? I've never even gotten close to that number (and admittedly you don't need that much for even deity 20-city Shaka, as Lain showed). Still, better safe than sorry. You handled it really well, I must say .

One thing you could've done: use airships on recon missions to see where the nukes be at. And also take caution when attacking Gandhi, because...y'know, he's the nukelord of this game.

 

[krikav]

When I played on emp/imm I often did the mistake that I built a small army, and then I just stopped and started building either buildings or just wealth again. And too often it resulted in me losing tempo once the army started to thin out, as it inevitable does.
Well, I learned that was no good, so now I just continue to build units.
It's nice to be able to just throw rifles&cannons at a technological superior opponent though and roll over them with pure numbers.
I thought that Mehmed would put up alot more resistance so that they would be needed, well most of them.
But looking back at the game now, yes, it was kind of excessive.

Also, getting to these late stages of the game is quite new to me. When I played ~2012 my computer just wouldn't take it, so I spent all time in the early game.
I did have 3 airships roaming around, but I threw most nukes just blindly on cities. Have such a hard time keeping focus up when I know I'm 100% winning. This is also a reason why I am somewhat inexperienced with the late game.

The nature of the game seems to stay roughly the same untill infantry+artilery, but after that it seems that you don't work with a huge standing army anymore.
What do you usually do, in nuclear warfare? Paratroopers? Utilize navy more? Or is it game over for 1-movers entierly, only tanks?