Mistakes Have Been Made IV

[Sonereal]

Finally! Stable settings. This time, the game will come to a finish. One way or the other! Without further adieu, war!
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"The Fascist Greeks never knew what hit them nor why but in a scary fashion, Sparta and Corinth have fallen to England. At breakneck speed, a peace treaty was signed ended the brief two-year war. Then came the Americans and the Greeks realized very quickly the war against England wasn't over." The anchor to "World News Today" begun. He turned to his co-anchor and said, "Today, Mellisa Washington will report from the frontlines on the growing conflict between the American Aristocracy and Fascist Greeks.

"Near Athens, across the English border, American soldiers are once again launching artillery shells into Fascist Greece after the break down of peace talks during the Hastings Conference than begun two months ago near New Year's. Soldiers on both sides were hoping that 1967 would mark an end to the war but that is hardly the case today. American artillery is able to fire into Greece with impunity because of the 1966 English-Greece Peace Treaty.

The Greeks are losing the war greatly. The trenches, although long-established along the English-Greek border, are begin overran by American tanks to which the Greeks have no counter. Sparta Hill, named after the Greek region recently given autonomy by the English Republic, is pockmarked with holes caused by heavy bombardment by both sides trying to gain control of the incredibly important hill of the war. The Greeks, however, are fielding field guns that seen service during the Revolutions of the 20s while the Americans are fielding vastly improved models with longer range, better accuracy, faster firing, and larger shells.

The Greeks launched a counter-attack on Sparta Hill and rooted out the Americans but the victory was short-lived. The hill was bombarded for several hours before an American infantry unit mopped up the survivors, taking several hundred prisoners back through England."

Spoiler :

 

[Sonereal]

December 31st, 1969

"It may be snowing and New Year's Eve, folks, but our proud men in uniform continue to fight the Fascist Greeks. Operation Medea continues to see success against the last major Fascist hold-out in Argos. The Lhasa Protests against the Greek occupation forces have escalated to full-out riots. With the Fall of Athens last November, Greece is divided in two with the Lhasa region in the west and Argos region in the east."

Jordan Fox shrugged at the news. There were few TVs out here but a ton of radios. No day off? Maybe that was true a few months ago but he was pretty sure that people here on garrison duty are drinking and partying New Year's away. Who can blame them?

"....escalates! A Russian destroyer was sunk by an Monaco artillery shell. Monaco claims that they sunk the ship after demanding it leave Monaco waters. Russia claims no warning was given. Many political pundits fear that this could escalate to a war."

"Bull! I ain't fighting another war," yelled a drunk soldier, "Too busy with the one we're in!"

"I wouldn't mind getting transferred to one of the armored divisions in Argos. Heard those guys ain't facing any real problems."

"Tank guys and artillery guys never face no trouble," said another soldier, "One guy is surrounded by metal and the other guy is a bajillion miles away. No pity for the guy with the assault rifle. Tell you that much."

"Bah!"

It was snowing in Athens and unlike last New Year's, no guns were going off.

 

[Sonereal]

Long-story short, Argos falls and Lhasa is liberated by the US Army. That's the good news. The bad news is that by this point, English-American relationships have detoriated and the Pact of Cooperation is gone. Holding Athens and Argos, even as puppet states, would be pretty useless and I'm not aiming for any victory (probably will stumble into a Space Victory though) so I sign peace with Greece (still alive because they had a single artillery piece and Complete Kills are required).

Greece is alive....barely. Corinth and Sparta are puppet states leaving Greece with only Athens and Argos. It's going to fall behind a tech race and is largely agrarian. With them there, and the Russians still waving their fists at the English, I'm pretty sure England won't feel like attacking a guy whose army has extreme amounts of combat experience. If I really wanted to, I guess I could have three armored divisions surrounding Corinth in a turn and two artillery batteries raining unforgiven shrapnel rain on those poor people.

Oh, and B17s.

 

[Sonereal]

AND I got screwed over. God I hate the diplomacy in this game. I'm tempted to just do domination games for now on because the AI is stark-raving mad. What's the point in gifting cities or liberating civilizations?

Really?

Because they end up hating you anyway. Everyone ends up hating you. You never gain a real friend in this like you did in Civilization IV. The AI "playing" to win is alright but its like all the AIs in this game were replaced with Shaka's AI from Civ4 and the annoyance of Sitting Bull.

1974. England invades America and takes Washington. A few years later, America takes Sparta and instead of razing it, gifts it to the Greeks. Are the Greeks appreciatve? I really don't know. He's still an ungrateful jerk but at least I can rub it in England's face that they just perma-lost a city.

A few years later I even take back Washington thanks to a gunship and the fact England went to war with Greece. The war ends in 1979 ('bout 20 turns later) with me taking Corinth and the Greeks losing Sparta. The English lost one city-state ally and at this point are about to lose another. The only reason England bows out is because they had just lost their capital to Russia (along with York). This is a pretty big deal because it means Russia has grown tired of conquering its side of the planet.

This is an West Versus East map after all and Russia's score is double that of everyone else I know so yeah, big trouble there and at this point, there's no reason to try to not go to war.

Because the AIs can't make any long-lasting allies is probably the real reason of the Runaway AI. Anyone know about the Ruthless AI option from A New Dawn? Anyone who played it can tell you a few things about it.

1. The AI is more challenging diplomatically.
2. The AI makes friends with each other and you. Yes, an AI that plays to win can become friends with one another and you.
3. It had the best solution to Civ5 Runaway AI....diplomacy. In Civilization 5, everyone hates each other and attacking a friend isn't really different then attacking your worst enemy. That's different with Ruthless AI. Warmongers have to worry about the guy they attacked asking and bribing other countries for help.

For instance, in one game I played as India and controlled the Indian sub-continent and pretty much all of Southeast Asia but lacked iron so I invaded Byzantine, a two-city civilization in Central Asia. They got the Americans to go to war with me (another major power) and Khmer to go to war with me (another major power but just north of me).

It makes perfect sense though. The Khmer AI was terrible at diplomacy and like Catherine, would declare at friendly but drew the ire of the world internationally but this was massively counteracted by the fact they were on the "right" side of the conflict. The Americans hated me though.

If modders can make diplomacy so much better, why not people paid to make the game? CivIV diplomacy was vastly more interesting with just vanilla BTS. BBAI and Ruthless was the icing on the cake.

But in Civ5? You have no friends. No one has a common enemy because everyone is an enemy of one another.

That's my only real problem with this game because its one of the ones I can't seem to get around by playing with a mod or two. Seriously, combat is fun. Very very very fun. But diplomacy is so shallow its non-existant. Diplomacy isn't something you use to prevent war in this game. Diplomacy is what you use to delay war.

Even the UN is shallow. No Resolutions? Bah.