Lonely Hearts Club, BtS Edition, Chapter LXXX: Isabella

[Fish Man]

Spoiler :

Concerning units killed and lost...

That's 93 killed total, 11 lost. Almost a 9:1 ratio! Really shows how powerful conks are before grens, and how minimizing the amount of gunpowder units you face is almost always a good thing. Pikes are basically slightly weaker longbows to these bad boys, and knights and everything else are fodder, as usual. I wasn't up against anything stronger than a handful of muskets, which really aided me more than anything else. And I got to upgrade half my army to cavs in the middle of my tussle with Darius, that probably helped .

 

[Fish Man]

Spoiler :

Hatty wants to go culture with 2 cities, from the looks of it . Now's not the time to be braindead, you absolute moron of an AI. I need steam power!!!

 

[krikav]

Spoiler :

Woaah... yes thats way more units than Hatty can defend against.
Justantin had 13 cities in your 1000ad screenshot. So just plain old rotten luck I guess.
Nothing that you could have done prior to that could have changed the course I think.

 

[krikav]

Meanwhile in easyville:
T183-T192

Spoiler :

I probably shouldn't sell techs to Wang this cheap, but I want to upgrade units. :|

Another mishap... I calculated wrong with the units, and after my attack, there was a damaged longbow and a catapult or something left in the city.
My reinforcements where 0.3movements away from attacking, pretty annoying.

The result:

T188 Wang asks me to join his war against them "Nasty Khmers", and I, dumb as a brick thinks that sure! He only has 5 cities, it's well worth to join a phony war to keep relations with Wang good!

T189 I swap into burocracy from vassalage, all cities except the capital is down and jumping between 2->4 or 3->6, and I think that I need the extra commerce and hammers from the capital more than the extra XP.
The swap gives me 60 gold per turn.

The same turn, while shipping reinforcemets, I realize a huge mistake.
Wang and Sury had been at war for some time, but since they are not on the same continent they haven't been throwing units at each other.
When I joined the war, Sury promptly sent his SOD against my undefended former persian cities. >_<
Dealing with these units are not impossible, but I really don't want to divert my cavallery army from justantin to attack Surys units at this stage for no gain what so ever.

Wanted Hatty to close borders, but even though she is friendly with me, she doesn't want to upset her close friend.

Meanwhile at Justantins place. Just longbows and Cataphrakts. A few stray cuirs.
I did this attack the turn after a AP vote (his AP) to stop the war against him. I didn't defy but just voted no. But I wanted the holy city before the war ended.
I intended for my army to just continue toward Sury after this vote, but...

On the next turn, a miracle happens. Seems like everyone is glad I'm bashing Justantin.
Also, Justantin decides to capitulate. This must be a result of my heavy whipping of cavalry? I haven't had that much war success against him?

Yes, thats two conqs defending Pasargadae, with a whipped rifle and some more units that can reach to reinforce (about 2-3 more conqs)..

But Sury aims to get the gold medal of stupid AI decisions, and instead wants to pay me 135gold to stop fighting.
Nono Sury, you can keep your money. How about just a short ceasefire instead? ^_^

 

[Fish Man]

Meanwhile in easyville:
T183-T192

Spoiler :

I probably shouldn't sell techs to Wang this cheap, but I want to upgrade units. :|
View attachment 516382

Another mishap... I calculated wrong with the units, and after my attack, there was a damaged longbow and a catapult or something left in the city.
My reinforcements where 0.3movements away from attacking, pretty annoying.
View attachment 516383

The result:
View attachment 516384


T188 Wang asks me to join his war against them "Nasty Khmers", and I, dumb as a brick thinks that sure! He only has 5 cities, it's well worth to join a phony war to keep relations with Wang good!

T189 I swap into burocracy from vassalage, all cities except the capital is down and jumping between 2->4 or 3->6, and I think that I need the extra commerce and hammers from the capital more than the extra XP.
The swap gives me 60 gold per turn.

The same turn, while shipping reinforcemets, I realize a huge mistake.
Wang and Sury had been at war for some time, but since they are not on the same continent they haven't been throwing units at each other.
When I joined the war, Sury promptly sent his SOD against my undefended former persian cities. >_<
Dealing with these units are not impossible, but I really don't want to divert my cavallery army from justantin to attack Surys units at this stage for no gain what so ever.
View attachment 516385

Wanted Hatty to close borders, but even though she is friendly with me, she doesn't want to upset her close friend.
View attachment 516386

Meanwhile at Justantins place. Just longbows and Cataphrakts. A few stray cuirs.
I did this attack the turn after a AP vote (his AP) to stop the war against him. I didn't defy but just voted no. But I wanted the holy city before the war ended.
I intended for my army to just continue toward Sury after this vote, but...
View attachment 516387

On the next turn, a miracle happens. Seems like everyone is glad I'm bashing Justantin.
Also, Justantin decides to capitulate. This must be a result of my heavy whipping of cavalry? I haven't had that much war success against him?
View attachment 516388

Yes, thats two conqs defending Pasargadae, with a whipped rifle and some more units that can reach to reinforce (about 2-3 more conqs)..
View attachment 516389

But Sury aims to get the gold medal of stupid AI decisions, and instead wants to pay me 135gold to stop fighting.
Nono Sury, you can keep your money. How about just a short ceasefire instead? ^_^
View attachment 516390

Spoiler :

I have had it with these runaway AIs on these iso maps!!! Screw your war and screw your stacks of infantry Justin, you just lost the game, courtesy of the Apostolic freakin' Palace! Too long has this sick joke of a wonder stymied my war efforts and caused me unending frustration. Now it's the AI's turn to learn what it feels like to be screwed and lose from out of nowhere and be able to do absolutely nothing about it, and with no real significant effort on my part!

Catharsis and celebration aside...I first got the idea when I wandered into the "resolution" screen and saw that I was just 20 votes short of a diplo win. Prior to this I didn't really have any idea how the AP worked but the moment I saw the election projections I knew this seemed like the perfect opportunity to avoid a 10-hour endgame grind. I mean...as I said, Justin was close to industrial units but far from the really nasty modern stuff and lightyears from actually starting on a spaceship. I could pretty easily bash him in with a crapton of artillery, cavs, and infantry, with 16 cities to whip from, after which the game would essentially be won. But I've done that already, and against a far more dangerous opponent. So to save myself the trouble, I researched how to get an AP win. I will admit it is a bit cheesy - however, in my defense, I really wanted to avoid the grind and just hurry the game to its foregone conclusion. Here's how you do it:

1. You must be in the AP religion (well duh).
2. You can't have over 75% of the votes by yourself.
3. Every civ must be a voting or full member (voting means has the religion, full means running as state religion and you get double votes).
4. There has to be more than 1 candidate available (this one I'm not so sure about, but it's true from what I've seen?).

After that, win 75%+ of the votes and you're good!

For me, getting to this point required some work, but the majority was done when I captured most of the cities with the AP religion and then vassaled the rest of the folks who had the religion in most of their cities. I'm not going to pretend I was an omniscient mastermind and say "I planned this from the start" because I didn't, but I noticed this map was just the perfect setup for the AP win. My mainland had almost no Hindu presence but my capital did, so a quick switch into organized religion (thanks spiritual!) remedied that. Besides guaranteeing myself a lot of personal votes and votes from vassals, two of the civs running theocracy (Justin and Surry) already were "infected" with the AP religion in one of their cities - which was optimal, meaning that they were in the AP (remember, one of the conditions for diplo win), but had basically <1% of the vote apiece (especially since they weren't in the AP religion), so it didn't matter if they were never going to vote for me. Wang had no AP religion and was running theocracy so I thought of building a crap city somewhere, spreading Hindu, and gifting it to him, but...he switched to OR about 8 turns before the vote. Not sure if contributing to his own demise...or just really wanted to spite Justin .

The only danger I had of things getting screwed up was during the 10 turns I had to be in Hinduism before the diplo win vote. Justin really hated me for that, and I was afraid he's start plotting. Fortunately Surry broke away for half a dozen turns and that weakened his power rating enough to make him hesitate from taking on a guy with 3 vassals (even if the vassals were weak...well, Darius was going pretty strong but I-think-I-can-win-culture-with-2-cities Hatty and era-behind Nappy weren't really pulling their weight at this point).

At the last moment before the vote, I converted Hatty into Hinduism so that I was now below 75% of the total votes (but close...poor Hatty didn't really have much pop left, with 2 cities). However, Darius and Nappy, my other vassals, were obliged to vote for me seeing as they weren't in the running. And so, just as Justin finished combustion and started plowing his way towards tanks and whatnot, thinking that he had got me for sure...I won! Suddenly, unexpectedly, and all but unpreventably . I was almost last on every demographic that mattered, but did it matter? A win is a win, as they say - and at least in this case, it feels better to win with trickery and guile and smarts than with brute force.

 

[Fish Man]

Meanwhile in easyville:
T183-T192

Spoiler :

I probably shouldn't sell techs to Wang this cheap, but I want to upgrade units. :|
View attachment 516382

Another mishap... I calculated wrong with the units, and after my attack, there was a damaged longbow and a catapult or something left in the city.
My reinforcements where 0.3movements away from attacking, pretty annoying.
View attachment 516383

The result:
View attachment 516384


T188 Wang asks me to join his war against them "Nasty Khmers", and I, dumb as a brick thinks that sure! He only has 5 cities, it's well worth to join a phony war to keep relations with Wang good!

T189 I swap into burocracy from vassalage, all cities except the capital is down and jumping between 2->4 or 3->6, and I think that I need the extra commerce and hammers from the capital more than the extra XP.
The swap gives me 60 gold per turn.

The same turn, while shipping reinforcemets, I realize a huge mistake.
Wang and Sury had been at war for some time, but since they are not on the same continent they haven't been throwing units at each other.
When I joined the war, Sury promptly sent his SOD against my undefended former persian cities. >_<
Dealing with these units are not impossible, but I really don't want to divert my cavallery army from justantin to attack Surys units at this stage for no gain what so ever.
View attachment 516385

Wanted Hatty to close borders, but even though she is friendly with me, she doesn't want to upset her close friend.
View attachment 516386

Meanwhile at Justantins place. Just longbows and Cataphrakts. A few stray cuirs.
I did this attack the turn after a AP vote (his AP) to stop the war against him. I didn't defy but just voted no. But I wanted the holy city before the war ended.
I intended for my army to just continue toward Sury after this vote, but...
View attachment 516387

On the next turn, a miracle happens. Seems like everyone is glad I'm bashing Justantin.
Also, Justantin decides to capitulate. This must be a result of my heavy whipping of cavalry? I haven't had that much war success against him?
View attachment 516388

Yes, thats two conqs defending Pasargadae, with a whipped rifle and some more units that can reach to reinforce (about 2-3 more conqs)..
View attachment 516389

But Sury aims to get the gold medal of stupid AI decisions, and instead wants to pay me 135gold to stop fighting.
Nono Sury, you can keep your money. How about just a short ceasefire instead? ^_^
View attachment 516390

Spoiler :

Nice work and a particularly hilarious display of AI stupidity .

I think Justin capped early because more than one civ was in a war against him? Idk if that contributes but it certainly feels like it does. In my NC200 playthrough Darius capped after I had just taken 2 cities because Mansa broke free but also because I bribed Zara in on him a couple of turns ago. If that's the case though...why didn't Hatty just completely fold to Justin in my save when he showed up at her door with 50 units and took 2 cities in the first 3 turns, a bit after I myself declared? Perhaps it's better to not look a gift horse in the mouth...

 

[krikav]

Nice nice!!
I have never done an AP win, and was very unsure of the mechanics. Thanks for laying down the facts.
No shame at all in taking the easy way out. Or rather... here it wasn't really easy, but you explored new territory.
I need to get an AP win in some game of the month eventually to get that nice medal for one of each victory condition, so it was nice to learn abit about it.
This is what I did:

Spoiler :

This city (the one Hatty took from Justantin when I left a broken catapult in it) was only guarded by 3 half-hp infantry, so I took it with some stray cavalery.
I didn't know that AP was in this city, but when I saw it I realized that things had been awfully quiet. Now I get it that it was because Hatty took this city, and since she was Hindu and AP Buddhist noone got the chair?

SInce Justantin is furious with me, I didn't want to give him any chance of pulling of some nasty "Return Constantinople to it's rightful owner" on me, so I just razed the city.

 

[Fish Man]

Nice nice!!
I have never done an AP win, and was very unsure of the mechanics. Thanks for laying down the facts.
No shame at all in taking the easy way out. Or rather... here it wasn't really easy, but you explored new territory.
I need to get an AP win in some game of the month eventually to get that nice medal for one of each victory condition, so it was nice to learn abit about it.
This is what I did:

Spoiler :

This city (the one Hatty took from Justantin when I left a broken catapult in it) was only guarded by 3 half-hp infantry, so I took it with some stray cavalery.
I didn't know that AP was in this city, but when I saw it I realized that things had been awfully quiet. Now I get it that it was because Hatty took this city, and since she was Hindu and AP Buddhist noone got the chair?
View attachment 516404
SInce Justantin is furious with me, I didn't want to give him any chance of pulling of some nasty "Return Constantinople to it's rightful owner" on me, so I just razed the city.
View attachment 516405

Spoiler :

If you really wanted to avoid the AP coming into effect bribe Justin to switch into free religion (or off Buddhism). If nobody's Buddhist then the AP essentially doesn't exist because the AP resident needs to be of the AP religion .

Also...dang, it's pretty impressive that Hatty got sub-1400AD infantry as well, with only 6-7 cities even. At least Justin had 14+ so that was understandable. I'm sure with airships and/or some cannon support taking her should be no problem, though. One of the leaders with lowest unit build probs, with 6 cities, having just finished a war - you can probably roll over her despite being an era behind in military.

Side note: I think I know why Justin got so big in my game. Nappy DOW'd Hatty in basically the classical era and after taking 1 city from Hatty in a surprise attack, they were stuck in a bloody standoff with no ground gained or lost on either side for thousands of years, throwing units at each other. So Justin got an extra 1-2 cities each where they would've gotten them. Then Darius went off on his merry way and started wonderspamming so Justin got a city or two that he should've founded as well. The Khmer were also boxed in from the start, though the 1 extra city they forward-settled on France did mean they kept up in tech all the way throughout the mid-game, almost stealing lib from me. I guess this is a case where, in iso, wars amongst AIs are actually detrimental to the human player since the folks who stay out of it just snowball ahead and grab what the fighting parties don't.

 

[Fish Man]

Slightly related...do you know where the LHC before this is? I can't seem to find LXXIX anywhere...

Edit: found it!

https://forums.civfanatics.com/thre...b-bts-edition-chapter-lxxix-roosevelt.469641/

For basically every LHC...

https://forums.civfanatics.com/sear...earts+club&o=date&c[title_only]=1&c[node]=155

 

[krikav]

T192-T200

Spoiler :

Took a look at the statistics, and it seems that it took me 6 cavalery to capitulate Justantin. Very nice.

After a capitulation, I usually ramp up micro, and now I just realized that I had forgot to assign EP. >_<

Did some trading with my Vassals, replacable parts and liberalism to Justantin for Democracy, and a few turns later Democracy+Rifling for Steel with Darius.

While Surys SOD was still deep into Hattys territory, I decided to hit him at home.

T195 Wang wants me to adopt caste system. I oblige since I'm SPI, it's probably time to stop whipping anyway.

Surys stack is moving north. I don't want to engage them if I can avoid it. Partly because I don't want to lose any cavalry, but partly because I plan on keeping him as a vassal to, and I want him to have units to throw into Hatty and Nappys gears.

His cities are ripe for picking. Why can't all AIs play this nice?

That city was enough to get him to capitulate. He didn't want to get out of enmancipation in the deal though. But we did some nice trading once he was in the fold.
Why do I accept divine right? Because it's annoying that they constantly throw that tech up when I ask them for deals.

Trying to decide who to go for next. Napoleon? NOPE! Machineguns, no thanks!

Much better!
I want to know what she is teching though, so I put a full turn of EP on her.

Nex turn, I see that she is one turn away from infantry.
Oh well, better hit right away.

I make a safety beg from napoleon for 10g, then I swap to confucianism (which I have spread on the home island) and beg 10g from wang. Nice to know that won't get backstabbed.


The holy hindu city is mine!

The city that Hatty stole from me while we where waring against Justantin.
My vassals probably suicided against it and left me with a nice opportunity.
When I took the city and realized that AP was in that city however, I razed it to the ground.
My vassal Justantin is furious with me, and is likely to get the AP chair. If he does, he would constantly pester me with "Return Constantinople to it's rightful owner".

 

[krikav]

A few more screenshots from T200

Spoiler :

After razing the AP city, she was willing to talk. So I had hopes that she would capitulate when I took her capital.

Unfortunatly, I lost 7 cavalry at 30% odds, and now she isn't even willing to talk anymore.

It's a very nice city though. Kremlin is nice, and MoM is spectacular. I haven't done a single GA yet.
After these few fights, my army is getting abit thin, and I have to do something before turning my attention to machingunner Napoleon.

 

[Fish Man]

A few more screenshots from T200

Spoiler :

After razing the AP city, she was willing to talk. So I had hopes that she would capitulate when I took her capital.
View attachment 516422
Unfortunatly, I lost 7 cavalry at 30% odds, and now she isn't even willing to talk anymore.
View attachment 516424
It's a very nice city though. Kremlin is nice, and MoM is spectacular. I haven't done a single GA yet.
After these few fights, my army is getting abit thin, and I have to do something before turning my attention to machingunner Napoleon.
View attachment 516423

Spoiler :

Now might be a good time to use the steel you just traded for?

Also...dang you got lucky, getting to fight an AI with infantry but no army to speak of. If Hatty had even a few more units you would've been in real trouble with just cavs...but as it stands I think your numbers are going to carry the day, for her at least.

Another option is to just blitz Nappy with cavs too. Maybe some airship support is nice. Think about it - to cavalry, machine guns are just infantry but 2 strength weaker and without CG promos. They'll have a much easier time relatively speaking (though still expect like a dozen to die). And also AFAIK only grens, and by extension crossbows, pikes, and maces upgrade to MGs, so longbows will stay longbows if he doesn't have rifling.

 

[elmurcis]

Thanks @elmurcis ! I am not all too sure anymore. Perhaps its the fourth city that starts to get very expensive, or it could be as you say, that it is dependent on map size.
Thanks for following and joining in on the fun!

Now that question got in mind and I couldn't resist testing little bit more to get some answers (all about pure colony maintence part).
Game speed has no impact on this (same numbers for Normal, same for Marathon).
It really does depends on map size (100% at Standard size, ~69% at Large and ~45% at Huge)
It also changes depending of difficulty level (Immortal is ~18% more expensive vs Emperor, Deity is ~13% more expensive vs Immortal). For easy calculation - Emperor is 75% and Immortal is 88% of Deity costs (can use for numbers below).
It also depends on city population (more or less straight line when placed in graph) so size impacts this - for easy math size 10 = 2x and size 20 = 4x (versus size 1 city)
Some numbers for Deity/Standard (if all cities are at size 1) -
2 cities - 0,44 each; 0,88 total
3 cities - 1,79 each; 5,37 total
4 cities - 4,04 each; 16,16 total
5 cities - 7,18 each; 35,90 total
6 cities - 11,22 each; 67,32 total
7 cities - 16,16 each; 113,12 total
8 cities - 21,99 each; 175,92 total
Colony maintence caps if city already is at 2x distance maintence value - so it will be let say 20,70 if distance maintence is 10,35 etc.).
If I understand correct, also distance maintence is related to city size so if city grows, also colony maintence cap can grow up because of that.
Now I feel good with some answers

 

[krikav]

Spoiler :

Now might be a good time to use the steel you just traded for?

Also...dang you got lucky, getting to fight an AI with infantry but no army to speak of. If Hatty had even a few more units you would've been in real trouble with just cavs...but as it stands I think your numbers are going to carry the day, for her at least.

Another option is to just blitz Nappy with cavs too. Maybe some airship support is nice. Think about it - to cavalry, machine guns are just infantry but 2 strength weaker and without CG promos. They'll have a much easier time relatively speaking (though still expect like a dozen to die). And also AFAIK only grens, and by extension crossbows, pikes, and maces upgrade to MGs, so longbows will stay longbows if he doesn't have rifling.

I have always thought that cavalery/cuirs are gunpowder units. But I have now looked it up, and it's true.
Cavalry against infantry is not fun. 1% chance of victory? 30% chance of withdrawal. Some fights now I have been unlucky and lost a handful without even denting the defending infantry.

 

[Fish Man]

I have always thought that cavalery/cuirs are gunpowder units. But I have now looked it up, and it's true.
Cavalry against infantry is not fun. 1% chance of victory? 30% chance of withdrawal. Some fights now I have been unlucky and lost a handful without even denting the defending infantry.

Spoiler :

Yep...with cultural defenses, fortify, CG, etc. it means that you are effectively fighting a 40 strength unit with a 15 strength unit. There's a reason infantry puts up a good fight against even tanks. Unless you outnumber the enemy 10 to 1 that's usually not good to take them on with something half as strong as a tank.

Another rule of thumb I keep in mind is: when doing a mounted rush, if the base strength of all defending units before promos, fortify, and terrain is greater than or equal to the base strength of your attacking unit, it's time to stop. So...for example, once the AI reaches longbows virtually every unit they have will be stronger than an HA before any other bonuses are even taken into account (7.25 at least vs 6, 8 vs 6 for spears, 6 vs 6 for swords). The same applies for cuirs vs rifles (even more yuck), cavs vs rifles (a bit less yuck but rifles are in fact stronger than cavs unpromoted so you need numbers) and, of course, cavs vs infantry. There are of course some exceptions like when you're wailing on Hatty or Gandhi but for the most part...this is what I go by.

It's also to be noted that cavs/cuirs are gunpowder-"based" mounted units which means they can quantum phase through walls and castles unlike knights, HAs, chariots, and phants.

Can't wait to see the finale .

 

[krikav]

T200-T215

Spoiler :

I start the turnset by becomming annoyed at my vassals.

Then I'm heartbroken, because evil Hatty decides to attack my injured cavalry flock which was camping out in her former capital.
I had moved most of the healthy ones westward to elefantine and pi-ramesses.
Apparantly I took this hard, because I forgot to take a screenshot of the elefantine battle.

The city was guarded by 3 infantry, and iirc it took me 6 dead cavalry to get them. A nice city with statue of liberty.

Rounding up the murderers. Had better luck here, the first two attacks won at ~60% odds, and after those two initial, everything fell like dominos.

After what felt like an eternity of bombarding, Sury and Justantin finally muster up courage enough to suicide against Heliopolis. Thanks alot, I'll take it from here!
The same turn I also finish railroad, and trade for communism.
Upkeep drops from -523gpt to -85gpt at 100% slider. Eyy comrades!

Two turns later Justantin finishes biology. And gets rewarded accordingly!

I really should have gotten some cannons. I had ONE cannon bombarding this city for an eternity. Was also waiting for sury and justantin to snail their way there with their trebs.
They bombarded away all culture, but I didn't dare wait for them to attack, so I just threw a few cavalry away.
Can't remember the odds now, but it was at least way better than the 1% (30%) I had earlier. But it didn't help this time.

Darius seem to have been working hard in the cold south.

I think I should probably just have accepted higher losses, and taken Alexandria 5 turns or so earlier. But at least now I'm rid of the motherland anger.
I have quite a few GGenerals saved here and there. Now when I'm starting to get teching going I get MilScience and will place military academies in cities with alot of settled GGenerals.
With Kremlin, Police-State and Military Academies, I think I should simply start whipping like crazy again.

Tech situation. As always when I'm in a war, I start to lose focus of what the other AIs are doing, but it seems like Napoleon haven't done much at all the last 10 turns? Still no rifling.
He was plotting but that dissapeared when Hatty went poof. It could be that he has assembled a monster stack of cannons and musketeers, I'll have to scout that. But it could be that it's best to just declare asap and let him take out his anger against sury/justantin who I have as a meat shield.
Doesn't really matter if he takes a few cities if he spends his stack in the process.
Wang is plotting against napoleon as well.
Not sure how to wrap this up best.

 

[krikav]

T225-T227

Spoiler :

I found Nappys stack. Always important to find the AIs main stack. When it comes to warfare, the AIs live and die with their "stack of death" (SOD).

T218 Assembly line is in. I swap to police state, slavery, vassalage. I normally don't like to be whipping at this stage of the game, but with policestate and the kremlin it's probably the way to go.
Then follows 7 turns of relative calm as I whip infantry everywhere.

I declare on Napoleon, and he is so kind and just jumps out of his city. (He got Rifling the same turn, but didn't want to stay at home and upgrade, he had such a rush to learn me a lesson!)

A complete bloodbath ensues:

As always, not all things go smoooth. I think I left this city without a garrison? Napoleon had some stray units who took advantage of my clumsyness.

Wang is silently moving some boats too, it seems that not all is going Napoleons way...

My main army is comming from the south, but I do get some reinforcements from my home island, 2-3 boatloads full come from the west and take advantage of an ill defended city. Odds where not good, and if one more fight had gone wrong Sury would have stolen it from me.

I'm just throwing units away. If we where in an even fight this method would be catastrophic. Trading unit for unit with deity AI is the road to ruin. But now I'm in such a dominant position that I can afford to rush.

Wang helps soften up a city for me. And with bombarding to 0% with destroyers the cavalry just rode to town.

Can't stay here Justantin! We have work to do, gogo!

 

[krikav]

Final T228-T237

Spoiler :

Marseilles and Orleans got taken with destroyer bombardment, then cavalry after airships had dented the infantry/machingunners.

Napoleon makes a heroic last stand in his capital, but is quickly overwhelmed.

After that, I swap into caste system and free speach and turn the culture slider to 100%.
I also start to move all units and transports to the main continents western end, to prepare for a naval assault on Wang.
But after a few turns, the land I secured was enough to trip the domination limit.
GG!