Lonely Hearts Club, BtS Edition, Chapter XXXIX: Saladin

[Gooblah]

1928 Space Race Victory:

Spoiler :

Most fun I've had in a game in a while. REX'd like . .. .. .. ., filling out my continent by 1 AD. Founded Confucianism. Met the other AIs, with a juggernaut Joao II and Justinian I in a Buddhist lovefest. Justinian had one of Monty's cities, Monty had one of his, indicating previous warring. Washington was a voluntary vassal of Sitting Bull. Teched to Grenadiers and Cannons, then launched an amphibious assault of Sitting Bull. Halfway into the war, Washington became the master in the relationship, and I landed a secondary Cavalry/Cannon force near his capital; I kept every city, switched into State Property, and began to cruise towards Infantry/Tanks/Artillery.

In the meantime, Monty had declared war on Justinian, and Wang Kon became the vassal of Joao II. His power rating was sky high. At any rate, Monty capitulated, and I began a massive arms buildup. Declared war on Wang Kon, took all of his cities, made peace with Joao II, then settled down for space.

Being an idiot, I did not check out Joao's power ratings, but he was PISSED with me (-28 IIRC). Declared war with overwhelming force...I think 10 Fighters, 5 Bombers, 20 Paratroopers, 25 Tanks, 25 Marines, 25 Infantry, 10 Artillery. My forces were spread around, resulting in a massive pitched battle outside P'yong'yang. I won the day, but he sent two more massive stacks into former Korean territory. I looked at my situation and gulped - he had a weak navy (Carracks and 2 Destroyers), with no Transports that I knew of (though he did have Attack Subs). My Transport/Destroyer armada was still parked outside Seoul, so I made a Dunkirk and withdrew all my troops and moved them to Washington. I set up a quick, crappy defense of Transports providing LOS around key cities. Finally made peace (giving him 2120 gold), and launched in 1928.

 

[ungy]

immortal, normal

Spoiler :

not really that exciting or well played game. I settle 1S and build SH.
Early land is good but I oversettle and try to bulb my way to astro--getting a priest too many. Unfortunately everyone is in merc when I get there.
Relations are good all around ex Monte--I go for him with rifles/cannon but Just caps him first and I find myself with a single island city which I give back
So I just run to space and it's not too exciting--I launch the ship in 1876 probably 15-20 turns ahead of the AI

 

[Earthling]

Immortal/Epic Checkpoints 3.5ish

Summary

Spoiler :

I'm at the point where victory is certain, would take a while to play it out though. Continuing off my last checkpoint as I got rifling, I geared up for war with Sitting Bull... but I'm rapidly thinking of renaming the guy SpearmenbeatsTank Bull-

I basically gave up on optimizing stuff as the war went on (this game is just for fun, watching basketball last night, excuses etc...). Combined with the fact that SB simply would not lose the war probably took 3-4 times as long as it could have. Multiple assaults on cities saw 6-7 riflemen where all but one lose at 60-70% odds. Bulls' frigates might as well have been destroyers; I'd die on defense in the coast, and my frigate would die attacking his hurt one too... Then there was just incredibly sucky stuff happening - like capturing one of his weaker cities and it had the Ironworks, and I lose 10 turns of production in it at my capital (this was near the end of the war so I wasn't cranking out military anymore, but ouch that sucked). I mean, could he have at least had the Forbidden Palace or something...

In the meantime, at least this game brought some surprises that I don't often see in civ4. Justinian is at -24 with Montezuma, from Monty warring with him (before I ever met them) and -7 for past events. Never see it get this high between AI...(perhaps Monty simply gaining some of that FfH "You are evil" penalty However Justinian can't do much with Monty being Joao's vassal. What I was quite happy about was the fact that Washington capitulated in just 3 turns after Sitting Bull (separate war that is) - course this is more lazy MM on my part since I probably should have just taken his cities. But now I have a massive economy (actually didn't realize how strong this really is for culture - for instance I've got two cites outside of my capital with 120, 130 base commerces, let alone actual culture-producing buildings). But now my plan is to just invade the other continent, probably wang or justin first - backdoor diplo is still going to be the win when I get around to it. SB had the AP but I only had the religion in like one city during the war so I'm not going to mess with it (at least defying never killed me happiness wise).

Also, I failed to get a screenshot of it due to simply going through the war frustrated, but I achieved a very, very special title from someone's "Great Work." At turn 350 I was actually "Earthling the Forgotten" in technological advancement This was due to splitting Louis off as a vassal on that small island, and he researched like archery and monotheism plus had all my techs...

Screens

Spoiler :

Pre-Rifling (looking at the years/turns will show just how long this war dragged on...)


Drafted rifles got my power up quickly, but all through the war I never got too much higher... units kept dying (+ stagnant tech, man if I'd known how much my rifles would lose to muskets, and then grens when SB got them, and then he gets to Machine Guns but it's too late... But if I'd just teched a little more maybe).


His AP had no effect


Taking his capital (boy I thought it was over here too)


SB was vassalized and now Washington is too, end of my report here.

 

[Arlborn]

@Earthling:

Spoiler :

A hundred turns of war, boy does that suck! Bad bad RNG hehe. Well, congratulations in not just giving up though!

 

[Earthling]

@Arlborn:

Spoiler :

Yeah, but it's not quite a 100 turns to be more accurate - I probably started around 320 and SB was done around 390 (then I hit Washington). I didn't take enough screenshots because I wasn't expecting the war to last that long. As you'll see in the AP screenshot if you can make out the minimap I had already taken a couple of his coastal cities - he should have been done for there except I lost like 10 rifles against the next city (in fact I seiged out Chaco forever...). Biggest problem in the war was not having cannons (SB had steel on me at the start but otherwise only muskets... got worse as the war went on though). And I also could have drafted more (switched back to FS pretty quickly). SB is also a horrible afton about peace settlement, it seems - he was willing to cough up a decent city for a long time but not any techs (or capitulate). I'm hoping to trade for a few things from SB/Wash now that they are my vassals (and I was lazy enough to not finish the wars). But no one except wang has any significant economic strength, and I can outproduce them all as well (plus Justinian's on decent relations, and hates Joao/Monty). I'm thinking of your typical inf/tank force with a lot of fighters to do the trick.