After the war with HC, I took a little time to right my economy and beeline assembly line.
I looked at KK's techs afterward, and he doesn't have steel or AL. Goodbye KK. After a while of massing cannons and infantry, I figure its time to go after him. He's preparing war on me, and Ramses is preparing war on him, and the last thing I need is for Ramses to get another vassal.
The fight went pretty well. I split my stack 80-20, one for his main cities, and one to take out his junk tundra cities. I easily took his border city, and then his SoD wandered next to mine. There was a ton of units, unfortunately for him, it was a good amount of rifles, and then medieval junk. I killed as many units as I could due to numbers, and the rest of his stack retreated to his capital. From there, I moved on his capital, and in a questionable move, he sent his entire capital defending stack to reclaim the first border city, leaving 2 or 3 rifles to defend his capital. I easily took his capital, and then retook the border city since he lost almost his entire army retaking it. From there, I merged my stacks and took Ning-Hsia and a crappy tundra city that was the Confucian holy city. The shrine there is netting a massive 4 gpt.
I accepted his capitulation there, leaving him with 4 cities, 2 that are 90% ice and can't grow past 2 pop, another crappy tundra city, and one that I would've taken, but it's under a ton of culture pressure from Ramses, and acts as a perfect staging ground for an invasion.
Unfortunately, my happiness is short lived. Ramses is going for a culture victory, and to make it worse, he has enough on his hands. He isn't going after Cyrus, so there's only one other option.
I moved my army to KK's good city (I lost maybe 3 cannons and that's it in the last war,) and healed my troops. I gifted AL and steel to KK so he could fight Ramses with me, nothing to lose there, everyone else already had it.
I declared on Ramses and set off to get rid of his culture cities, not to mention capture some wonders. As far as I know, he has built every wonder except for the GLib that I built, and the 3 that HC built.
I changed my initial plan, which was to have a main force to take out his vassals, but because of the urgency of killing Ramses, I only had troops to defend the north.
The war with Ramses started OK. I managed to take Alexandria, a big city, probably his 4th culture city, also getting the Hanging Gardens. Unfortunately, cannons aren't nearly as effective against infantry as they are against rifles. Artillery is coming soon, but for now I'll just mass more cannons.
Hannibal did more than Ramses early on, he sent a big force with airships down to Machu Picchu. Luckily, he only had 1 infantry, despite being the second to get AL.
He suicided his stack, and was done as a problem. Then I finally get a break, somewhere in here he broke free of Ramses, I'm not sure why, maybe it was the 2 island cities that he settled, but either way, I asked him the price for peace, and he gave me some gold and a map. Now the north is pretty secure as Nap doesn't have open borders with Hann. I just have to deal with 1 of Ramses' small cities pumping out troops.
Ramses' cities were set up nicely, all the big culture ones were in the north of his lands. I sent my SoD to the far north to take Heliopolis. I ran into a huge stack of defense, 25-30 cavalry/infantry/some siege. My first stack (about 20/20 cannons/infantry) had to wait outside the city waiting for reinforcements. When my second stack arrived, it was time to take out Ramses city. I took the city losing most of my cannons, but few infantry. I razed the city, since I didn't think I had the troops to defend it. It turned out to be a bad move because of the stupid partisans event, along with Ramses resettling a city there later. In hindsight I should have kept it, it was a double holy city with who knows how many wonders. Either way, this pretty much clinched the game with Ramses' culture threat gone:
Anyway, now its on to bigger fish. My stack retreats to Alexandria and heals and gets reinforced before attacking Thebes. When I finally get my troops ready to take Thebes, I get a very bad surprise, marines sitting there, which means tanks are right around the corner. It doesn't matter though, I'm in full Monty style war now. I took out the stack of ~20 defenders and hit the motherload of wonders.
(The AP, ToA, Broadway, RnR and a military academy were there also, but wouldn't fit in the picture.)
Thankfully, Ramses' production took a huge hit after this. I got artillery and mass upgraded my cannons before moving onto the rest of his cities. I met minimal resistance the rest of the way, facing 1-2 tanks and 5-6 infantry per city. I took his last culture city Memphis, and then moved onto his marginal cities in the south, taking Pi-Ramses, Elephantine and Giza. Hannibal declared on me during this last assault, and he actually did more damage than Ramses. He took Machu Picchu with a huge stack of tanks and infantry. With that in mind, I decided to give Ramses a break. He wouldn't capitulate, but he gave me all his gold and a city that he took from KK. I need to redeclare on him to take out Nap anyway, so this is just a break while Hannibal goes down.
I almost pulled off a surprising APlomation win somewhere in here, but came up just short. The game was over by the time I was able to vote myself chair and choose a resolution.
Hannibal really bit off more than he could chew, he must have looked at the wrong number on the power graph before declaring. It took a few turns to get my SoD to the the other front, but once I did, he had no chance. I retook Machu Picchu, killing 75% of his troops, losing only a few artillery. After that I moved up to Utica. It was only guarded by a few tanks and infantry, and fell easily. After that I got the message that I was close to the domination limit, so I pushed on to Carthage. It was defended a little better, but I had way too much artillery for him to handle. I took the city, and next turn I got the message:
I didn't expect to get it that fast actually, I could have easily taken Hann's last continental city, then Ramses and Nap's single cities in the north. Then I had a second SoD getting around 50 units back east for a second war on Egypt. After a while, the AI's just couldn't keep up with me spamming units in all of my cities.
Here's the tech screen at the end, in true Monty style, I'm several techs behind and still spamming units. I was actually much farther behind than it says too. Everyone had industrialism, and I think plastics and some other stuff on me as well.
My power more than compensated for that. After teching AL, I played the next ~500 years building nothing but units.
And the score:
Not quite the 100k that some others got, but for my first win on monarch, I'll take it.
. He gives them to nap too. Fortunately, CR carries the day for me here, and they both cap...!
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