Standard Shoshone on Immortal Fractal. Loss (SV) on Turn 411.
This turned into a very interesting game that came down to the wire. I absorbed Assyria early as my vassal, and had the score dominance for the majority of the game. But Portugal kept on trucking and eventually surpassed me. Ultimately, this game came down to culture. We had the World Science Initiative, which really slowed down culture, and I truly felt it. I stopped being able to get wonders due to lack of policies, while Portugal pushed ahead culture wise and secured key items in the late game.
I was able to weaken her diplomatically but ultimately I knew it would come down to war. I picked up Global Wargames from the WC to give myself a +25% attack bonus, and with the power of Autocracy behind me, I went in. This was true late game warfare, with real stakes. I was very close behind Portugal, so the end game military was key. It was missile cruisers, guided missiles, nuclear subs, and carriers + heavy bombers going at each other. Oh and of course....
NUUUUUUUKKKEEEES!!!
I managed to nuke Portugal twice with nuclear missiles, and started chipping away at him. I had colonized an island to the right of Portugal, which gave me a staging ground for stealth bombers. Note the map....France was to the left and very large at this point (also he had autocracy). I tried everything to get France to join a war with me, I gave him every warfare tech I had to make him competitive, I was willing to shower with every bit of riches I had. But....he would not budge. In many ways, it was happiness that did me in. I could just barely hold onto 35% happiness at this point, and my local unhappiness was so bad in most of my cities, that even though I had the best production overall, only a few of my cities could actually produce anything of note.
While I was winning the late game war....it wasn't fast enough, and I couldn't stop Portugal from sealing the deal. However, it did really show me what competitive late game naval warfare looks like, so a few notes.
1) A sighted carrier is a dead carrier. It only takes a few stealth bomber hits to take a carrier out (and only 1-2 more hits with heavy bombers), so you have to keep them at maximum range from the fighting. Once again, that aircraft range upgrade is basically mandatory.
2) Missile Cruisers: Even though they say they do +75% against subs, the combat screen showed me +108% (possible bug?). Missile Cruisers do alright but they ultimately lose without anti-aircraft support to stealth bomber/heavy bomber drops...as you would expect in modern naval combat. Its the aircraft that does all the heavy lifting...and it literally comes down to how many aircraft you can field....and how fast you can repair them. Interception slows you down, but if you are careful with your aircraft and only commit them when they are at key health levels (aka healthy enough to take an interception hit), than you shouldn't lose them.
3) If you aren't able to field your own stealth bombers, I don't know if late game sieging is really viable. I was fortunate to have an island in range I could use for stealth bomber use...but if I hadn't had that...it was his stealth bombers vs my heavy bombers...things would have gone downhill very quickly. I know its realistic....but I do think balancewise stealth bombers should work on carriers.
4) The AI seems to get really messed up by fallout. The fallout from my first nuke was still around 15-20 turns later, even though the AI had plenty of workers available. I don't think the AI really understands how to quickly clean up the fallout mess.
5) The AI does not target carriers properly. Case in point, several times the AI bombed my city with many stealth bombers....for a pittance of damage. I had carriers in the area, they could have sniped them. This happened multiple times, I never lost my carriers...even though by all accounts they should have died.
6) Interception is no longer protection. Something that the new interception system has done is that its removed the ability to protect assets from aircraft (aka carriers). In the old system, if I had 3 interceptors around a carrier, if you tried to bomb that carrier your plane was dead. Now it will take a lot of damage, but a healthy bomber will never die from one interception hit. Because of that, if I commit my aircraft I will always be able to destroy what I wish....and when it comes to carriers it is always worth 3 very hurt bombers to eliminate 2-5 planes from the enemy. And of course with stealth bombers, interception basically doesn't exist.
7) Nuclear Missiles are properly powerful and expensive. Nuclear Missiles are incredibly expensive, but I think they are the right price for the extraordinary power they bring to the field.
8) Guided Missiles "targeting" is off sometimes. When I point the guided missile at a city, it will often show me that I am going to blow up a plane (cool, that's worth it!). Then....it actually hits the Mech Infantry garrison for piddly damage. That's pretty annoying.
9) For subs...I found that subs/nuclear subs weren't that great against missile cruisers...they would do okay damage on attack with Wolfpack III. They were best served for taking out enemy battleships, which they do quite well.
10) Cities do too much plane damage late game. I never use my planes for city attacks anymore...they just take way too much damage....even without interception. All of my plane are unit killers, and I use other means to fight cities.
11) Nuclear Plants vs Hydro/Wind: I have been using Hydro/Wind plants a lot more often lately, as there bonuses are very good. And yet, I always feel hammer starved towards the late game if its actually competitive. Whether its hammers for more units, or to build space ship parts...I actually think nuclear plants in your key cities is still a better value than the hydro/wind. When its takes 8-10 turns to build an Xcom squad or a spaceship part...an extra +50% bonus is really really important.
12) Spying Rates: I still think spying gets nerfed too strongly by constabularies. I rarely even need police stations because I'm often already at 50+ turns to get a tech at this point. And when you do actually manage to spend all the turns, there is a solid change your spy will just get killed anyway.
Conversely I think pre-constabulary spying is probably a bit too easy.