Well to finish out this one, my strategy to break Kublai didn't work. He apparently was too smart to DoW with my defensive pacts in place. (Who'd a thunk it?) With the big time clock ticking down, a domination victory not in the cards, friendship with Roosevelt on the other side of the planet, and a snug relationship with Cyrus on my north border, I decided to go after one of my neighbors: Kublai, Montezuma, or Louis XIV. LXIV was problematic because of distance. Monte had somehow teched ahead to rocketry and had SAM infantry while I was still at musketmen. That left Kublai. And I was still ticked off at him because somehow despite conquering mighty Karakorum, his culture still enveloped the city on 3 sides for years and years.
I DoW'd Kublai and went after his next city, Ning-Hsia, I think.Well, he apparently had a pact with LXIV so now I'm at war with the French too. This whole thing is a long and bloody drawn-out affair. I eventually march slowly through twisty Mongol land, taking 4 of his cities, while keeping the French at bay on my far border. I got lucky in that I had some ships stationed at my city nearest LXIV, and picked off the French fleet one by one, which forced Louis to march his stacks step by step through a long no-man's land. His stacks never made it to my cities before I teched up to destroyers and began harrassing his waters. I took Chartres (which revolted twice, but I kept the city), and kept naval pressure on him until I saw a battleship in his waters, at which point I sued for peace, and he agreed. He had one city, Besancon, which was a thorn in my side and would continue to be, but I didn't have the muscle to root him out of it. Back on the Mongol front, I finally took Samarqand, leaving him with only 2 cities, and sued for peace. I had flight by this time, and a fleet of fighters constantly sniping his defenders to half strength, but the process was just ridiculously slow.
All this time, I had slowly risen from the lower ranks in terms of victory points, to second place behind Roosevelt. A few turns after peace fell upon us, I jumped to first in points, and basically just rode things out until 2050 and won a time victory. Lots of funny notes in the game, including Isabella, who DoW'd me: I had a stupid break in the front and let KK get some marauding cavalry dangerously near an undefended city (I was
extremely depleted in my push against the Mongols), and left Old Sarai undefended in my haste to block Kublai's marauders. Isabella happened to have some conquistadors near Old Sarai and it took a few strokes of luck and good prior planning to keep that city out of her hands. Then later on I started peppering her units near Salamanca, and sinking her galleys, and eventually she agreed to peace.
This was all on noble level, my first victory of any kind on noble, so I'm happy with it. I would not have won without Kublai's land, but my word, his culture was extremely resistant to my attacks. He had one city in the south polar region, only size 4 or 5, only defended by one infantry late in the war, and after reducing his defenses to 0% with my destroyer, I lost a pair of infantry trying to take it. I came back with 3 infantry and 1 artillery, and when I finally walked into town it was with one nearly dead infantryman who left behind a bunch of fresh graves on the hillside. And up in his home territories, Samarqand was squeezed from pop 13 to pop 1 after my conquest because of his cultural pressure from New Sarai about six tiles away. Despite buying up all the cultural improvements that were possible, including a radio tower, by 2050 Samarqand was still pop 1. The Spanish culture on the east (Salamanca) and the Mongol culture on the west enveloped it like a suffocating cloak. I've never seen that before, and it basically was the same thing that happened with Karakorum and later with Old Sarai (which eventually connected into my culture envelope though). He must have had some Wonder in New Sarai but I never found out what it was.
Sorry about the long post. I'm hoping someone will share more stories from the maze. It's a crazy, crazy place.
I'm curious to whether it's equally crazy on BTS. My son's friend has Warlords and has said we could have it, so I'm hoping to install that today. I think I'm going to be Civ'ing all through the bleak midwinter.
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until the message popped up onscreen that my galley had done the deed on its own auto-explore setting. It's a curious artifact of the map that all seas are coastal (no whales) and other than the sea ice, are accessible by coastal craft. I think in theory this means I can create submarine "mines" around my area as an early warning system.
