Rat 09 - going for conquest

[Dimy]

Turn 0 1970 AD:
Declare war on Frederick and trade Spices for Hit Musicals and Rice for 10 Gold/turn with Victoria.

Turn 1 1971 AD:
We destroy a German MA with one of our Gunships. I’m bombing down the defences of Timbuktu with our Bombers and advance our units.

Turn 2 1972 AD:
Collateral damage with our Bombers on the defenders in Timbuktu and started bombing Chehalis. Start the attack on Timbuktu, we loose a Gunship to a Mech Inf, destroy the Mech Inf with a Modern Armor, kill two SAM’s with Mech Infs, another SAM and and Artillery with Modern Armor, we kill the last remaining defending unit, a heavily wounded Mech Inf, with our last unit that can attack this turn…a heavily wounded MA…but we win and burn the city.

Turn 3 1973 AD:
We start the attack on Chehalis, MA kills Mech Inf and SAM, Gunship kills Artillery, Mech inf burns the city of Chehalis. The city of Sutrium is founded in former Mali land…I rebase most of our airforce there.

Turn 4 1974 AD:

Spot German Invasion Force west of our continent. After a round of very bad luck with bombardments we attack Awdaghost, we loose a couple of units, but burn the city to the ground regardless, we’ve got to keep the momentum and new units are flown over every turn.
I also attack Niani, the city has not been bombed and still has 60% defense bonus but is only defended by a SAM and 2 Artilleries. Our MA kills the SAM and the two Arties are easily killed by another MA. We burn the city! We’re going good, Mansa has only 3 cities remaining on his starting continent. I’m advancing a stack of units in the direction of the German city of Essen. I also sink a German destroyer with one of our Battleships outside Antium after having it bombed by a Stealth.

Turn 5 1975 AD:
Frederick lands his invasion party outside Circei on the southern continent in between turns. I have a couple of MA’s in the neighbourhood and some bombers, so shouldn’t be a problem.
Our turn starts…and then…. Game Over! Frederick has won a Space Race Victory!!!

 

[Dimy]

And now some stats and history overview in the following posts:

 

[Dimy]

 

[Dimy]

 

[Dimy]

 

[Greebley]

Well a valient attempt at the end. We got farther than I thought we would at the end. I think if space victory was turned off we might have had a chance to win by the last year via conquest.

We just fell too far behind in tech this game - a valuable lesson learned I think.

 

[ThERat]

In the end we put up a good fight. However, I think we went to war too soon with Egypt. Those early wars didn't gain us the momentum but actually slowed us down. But due to Roman early UU, I felt the early war is needed.

I hope we learn our lesson for Rat10 and don't panick too early but build up solid and then go to war properly.

I agree with Greebley, that with SS disabled we might have achieved the conquest in time.

 

[Xarathas]

I think it's the overexpansion that hurt us more than the war. Usually I could war and tech without much problems, but I have to consciously limit the amount of cities I actually own.

SS disabled we would've been able to do it, no doubt about it. The computer doesn't consciously go after any victory other than SS or Diplomacy. It woulda been too easy

 

[Dimy]

About the game... I was surprised we managed to stop Mansa and actually able to conquer him! Just look at the Power Graph, he was so much more powerful than us when we started the war... but we were outproducing the AI by far. I think had we declared war on Germany earlier we might have been able to stall the AI from building the Spaceship even longer.

I just deleted all my save game attachments from this game except for the final one. I'll keep the saves on my harddrive though, so PM me if you want a specific save from one of my turns.

 

[friskymike]

Great game guys. I like the stat: Cities built - 26, Cities razed - 34

 

[Darwin420]

I just read through all of this, and I must say you all did a great job! Heck, I was even expecting a win... which probably would have happened if Space Race wasn't an option. Still, quite an impressive turn around!

 

[Dimy]

Yeah so was I! If only we could have got to Germany faster...I was about to start attacking German cities...I had already started moving units in German territory, but it was too little too late. Still it was a great game and my first succession game. If you liked this, also read Rat10 where we're going to take our revenge . And of course my own game "DG01 - Snake eye" which has just finished and won by Domination.

 

[Shillen]

Managing your economy in a warmonger game is definitely a whole new line of thinking that never existed in civ3. I've found that to wage successful wars you actually want to raze more cities than you keep, even. When deciding whether to keep them or not you must consider the distance the city is to your nearest capital/FP/Versailles and how good the land is that it can work. Sure most cities can be turned into profitable cities no matter what their maintenance cost is, but how long will it take them to do so? Quite often they drag you down so much before you can make them profitable that overall they are a hinderance and not a help. Of course if you want to win by domination or get a very high score then you will need the territory/population and that adds a whole new layer of strategy to the game. But if I was just going for a conquest victory without caring about the score I would be razing cities like crazy.

 

[knupp715]

Great Game guys. You got much further than I was expecting. Once I saw how far Mansa Musa was in tech I didn't think you guys would be able to conquer him, but you did great none the less.

 

[ThERat]

I guess we all didn't quite know how many turns are left. I expected the AI to finish this much earlier. And was only concerned about the leader. We should have gotten the Germans to fight as well.
As it seems, the AI can put up a good fight only for so many turns. They tend to burn all their units in modern warfare and once broken, can be easily torn apart. That is no change from Civ3. With good tactics like bombers as artillery (who actually needs the real artillery once bombers/tanks are out), stinging the hornets nest to get the AI to burn their units, the human can turn things round as it seems.

it is the early period which causes much trouble when warmongering really hurts the economy.