Whoa! Lots of activity here.
Seems I'm the last one to finish his beta 9 (update 2) game. Here's the rest of the story:
10. Flexing the muscles
After the world was fully colonized, all mages continued their peaceful buildup for a while. Then Tlaloc declared war on me for the fourth time. Again he didn't have many units in strike range, so there was not much fighting going on. We never reached each other's mainland, but instead fought over two larger islands. With my champions upgraded to White Riders, I managed to take three cities from him; the "promised land" was mine now. (Tlaloc had resettled the city there that I destroyed in an earlier war, however I blocked this hills when I saw his settler arrive, so that he had to settle on the grassland. The city was much easier to take that way. With the stronger defense in MoM, enemy border cities on hills are to be avoided.)
Showering his last city on another larger island with Fireblasts (which would have put his mainland in range of my Fireblasts), I was one step away from taking it, when Tlaloc signed a mutual protection pact with Ariel. That was a smart move, because I didn't want to lose my trade with Ariel. I still sent her three or even four luxuries for 30+ gold per turn.
I built up my military a little, until I had some Thunderers defending my cities and a handful of Paladins near the city I wanted to take from Tlaloc. I waited for his next declaration of war, but my small but high-tech strike force seemed to frighten him. Instead he decided to bugger Vlad. I don't know whether they actually engaged in combat (no cities were conquered), but soon after Tlaloc declared waron him, Vlad did what I considered before: He signed an MPP with Freya. Freya had two borders with Tlaloc and was the only one who could attack his mainland directly. Tlaloc responded by capturing the two Freya cities north of him, then made peace to rebuild. Vlad had effectively turned Tlaloc's attention away by dragging Freya into the war.
A period of peace followed, but as turned out, it was just the silence before the storm ...
11. The World at War
To my total surprise, it was Vlad who started the ball rolling by attacking my northeastmost city (the one which I crammed into the empty space when Freya took a city from Ariel). I had neglected my defenses there, and the road to that city lead across Freya's territory. So I made a RoP with Freya and managed to get a Thunderer into the city. This seemed to impress Vlad, as he never actually attacked the city again. However it didn't stop him from flooding the city perimeter with his cursed legionaries and necromancers. But one or two Angels and Paladins were enough to deal with those, one by one.
In the meantime, Tlaloc had started a major offense against Freya's mainland. He left the two cities in the south alone, but rolled westward with Earth Elementals. Within ten turns, he captured two of her cities and destroyed another, which left her shattered - Freya was reduced to the two cities in the south of her mainland and the one that she took from Ariel before, which was behind one of my cities and therefore out of reach for Tlaloc.
Since Tlaloc was still at war with Vlad, an interesting situation emerged. We met at a mountainous spot where three bottlenecks met - I came from southwest, Tlaloc from southeast, and Vlad's mainland was north. Coincidentally, Tlaloc (who declared war on me four times before) and me were fighting side by side against the forces that Vlad sent to both of us.
After some time, Vlad seemed to run out of units, and I managed to position some units in a good position in his mainland. (This wasn't as easy as I expected as Vlad made use of his Death spells against my Thunderers; it's nice to see that the AI actually uses them. I've never seen the AI using cruise missiles in my unmodded games.)
As I was ready to stike, I noticed two Earth Elementals of Freya nearing my city. I wondered whether she used our RoP to send them across to her cities to attack Tlaloc, but she had other plans - the nature of which I found out when she attacked me. (I'm still not sure whether she RoP-raped me or whether I somehow triggered the MPP that Vlad and she still had, but I didn't attack Vlad on his own Turf yet and she declared war in her turn, not mine, so it really looks like a RoP rape.)
Freyas two Earth Elementals died by attacking the thunderer I fortified in the city. By then i had a handful of Angels in Vlad's territory, I sent them back and took Freya's city (the Ex-Ariel city) with little resistance, Freya still defended with Rangers.
In the meantime Tlaloc had managed to bring a small strike force into Vlad's territory and attack two of his cities. Vlad's defenses (necromancers) held, but I knew that Tlaloc had lots of Earth Elemental running around to the southwest, and I feared that he might get to strong when he managed to overrun Vlad. So I sealed the access to Vlad's territory by fortifying two units on the choke point that lead to his lands. Seeing this, Tlaloc's army of Earth Elementals immediately turned back. The small strike force that he already had inside Vlad's territory died while trying to attack a city.
I then had some time to rebuild units and overran Vlad's mainland. He still defended with necromancers, whereas I attacked with Angels, and most of his army had died before anyways. I made peace and started to build up my economy again.
The World War left Tlaloc and me as the only two significant powers. Freya was shattered (reduced to two cities), and Vlad only had the four cities on an island he colonized before. Ariel stayed neutral and remained at 8 cities (still getting four luxuries from me for now 40-50 gpt), Tlaloc now had 16 cities and I had 31.
During the war and shortly after it, I had two rebellions of cities who flipped back to Vlad. This was somewhat unexpected, as both cities were far away from his capital (okay, even farer from mine), and he had only half the culture that I had. I tend to favour culture buildings and only very rarely experience rebellions in unmodded Civ3. I'm not sure whether this change is a bad thing though.
12. The Runes of Mastery
While I was building up, Tlaloc remained aggressive. Together with Ariel(!) he vanquished Vlad's remaining cities. Tlaloc then declared war on me for the fifth time.
By now he defended with Gnoll champions, and my handful of Angels was enough to win one or two battles in the field, but I could not effectively theaten his cities. I had to decide whether to build up a large army and destroy him, or to just defend and win by space race. I opted for the space race, partly because I could achieve it quicker than mounting a large military offensive, partly because I wanted to see what Drit had done with it.
Tlaloc continuously tried to attack me, but wasn't very smart. An army of some gnollish units and a few earth elementals ran circles near our border. The army was large enough to take a city or two - I abandoned a newly founded city there because the sheer mass of the attackers would have killed my defenders. But the passage to the rest of my territory was blocked by a single Thunderer (later four of them) in a fort on mountains. Tlaloc didn't even try to attack me there - which actually was the wiser decision. What wasn't so wise was that his whole army ran circles in front of my Thunderers, while my barely defended heartlands lay just two sea tiles across; Tlaloc just needed to build a some ships, but never did (at least not there).
On the two islands we fought on before, Tlaloc continuously sent a sea serpent, escortet by two sea drakes, and landed two units near one my cities. Sometimes he tried Earth Elementals, sometimes Gnolls, in the end he even had Elven Lords. However a single Paladin and an Angel were enough to thwart all these attacks. Despite having a larger army, Tlaloc just didn't manage to mount a significant offense against me. Bad AI.
So I kept defending my cities, until I researched everything and built the ten runes (nice idea Drift
).
All in all, it was a very interesting game. I'm looking forward to my next one.
Unfortunately I won't have much time during the next two weeks, so I probably won't be able to post here very often. But I'll still be around and start my beta 10 game soon.
Thanks for reading.
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