The Most Interesting Game I've Ever Played

WolfHound22

Chieftain
Joined
Sep 12, 2009
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Maryland, United States
I started off loading up the Nextwar epic mod so that if I reached the future era I would have the Nextwar techs and units to play around with. Then I selected the "perfectworld2" map script which gives you a realistic map with tectonics as well as weather patterns for terrain taken into account. I chose the Americans with Roosevelt, huge map size, noble difficulty level, and marathon speed.

When I first got in game, my starting point was less than ideal. I had a single fish resource nearby on the coast and a few forests and then bare grasslands. I set up my capital, Uniontown (in this game I was naming cities after towns I know), and began work on a work boat to get that fish while sending my warrior out to explore and researching mysticism. I got the work boat out there and set my city to grow up pretty fastly while I was building Stonehenge. After mysticism I went for polytheism, assuming that another civ was already going for meditation and would get Buddhism, and I would likely get Hinduism shortly thereafter. Got it and then expanded out a bit to claim the isthmus between my landmass and the northern continentto connect the two oceans, naming it Bedford, another coastal city to the west, calld Cumberland, and a third city on the southern shore of my landmass called Westernport.

While exploring the continent, I found hardly anybody out there for a long way and it almost looked as if I had an entire continent to myself and this was looking like it was shaping up to be a very boring game. I found that my capital was on a small peninsula sticking out of a nearly circular landmass there was a small isthmus connecting this landmass to a larger continent in the north, which was full of mostly empty jungle, and another isthmus connecting my landmass to a smaller landmass to the south. Before meeting anybody I received messages that America Inc. (a Nextwar specific faction) and the Vikings had been eliminated. Eventually I ran into Stalin on the far other side of the northern continent and Hannibal who occupied the landmass to the south across the isthmus there. These would be my only contacts until I discovered optics. Stalin was my buddy early on because he got Hinduism spread to him by sailing. Hannibal, however, got Judaism later and decided that he was my "worst enemy" and I couldn't have any productive dealings with him at all the whole game. He and Stalin were still buddies though.

After getting Hinduism and Stonehenge, I was pretty well culturally set so I decided that I needed to build up a force to defend myself from the horde that I knew was about to start pouring out of all of that empty space. I started with animal husbandry and revealed a horse near my capital. I got that and started building chariots and then went for bronze working, but found no copper in or anywhere near my territory, so I had to make do fighting off the barbs with archers and chariots and some rather tricky maneuvering. They were hitting Cumberland pretty hard from the western part of my landmass and hitting Bedford pretty hard from across the isthmus to the northern jungle continent. I decided to research horseback riding instead of iron working for now, deciding to use a resource I knew I already had rather than one that I wasn't sure I would have. Turns out this was a smart move since, when I got iron working, the closest source of iron was pretty far outside my territory.

After building a decent force of horse archers and archers I was able to hold back the barbarians a bit better and get them under control enough to expand outward and found a few cities to claim the western half of my landmass as well as the isthmus to Hannibal's landmass to the south with a town called Hancock. Also I colonized a small but rather nice nearby island and founded a few cities on the northern continent to hold back the line against the barbs further, claim some iron, and occupy a sizable portion of the continent before Stalin began to expand into it.

I had built the pyramids and switched immediately from despotism to representation and had pulled really far ahead of Stalin and Hannibal in tech, and used this advantage to spam out the wonders. Recognizing that I was able to build wonders before the others, I decided to concentrate them in 3 main cities, Uniontown, Bedford, and Westernport, in order to prepare for a potential cultural victory. I was getting pretty far ahead in technology of the others, leading me to think once again this was going to be a rather boring game, but once in a while another civ would complete an advanced wonder before I could, hinting that there was someone on another continent as advanced or nearly advanced as me.

Coincidentally, Uniontown birthed a great merchant as soon as I discovered optics, so I stuck the merchant in a caravel, along with an explorer and Hindu missionary in other caravels and sent them off across the sea. Sailing west, the first person I met was Wang Kon, founder of Confucianism, who was a few techs behind me but still far more advanced than Hannibal and Stalin. He hated me over religion and also I wasn't able to have any good dealings with him during the whole game. The caravel sailing east ran into The Glorious Leader of the Pan-Asiatic People's Cooperative, another Nextwar specific civilization that resembles Mao in personality. He had Buddhism but was a bit easier to get along with than Wang becase he doesnt take religion as seriously.

When I sailed north from Wang Kon was when the game started to get interesting. I ran into Isabella and Justinian who both started out "annoyed" with me over religion as they both had Buddhism and Justinian was ahead of me in score, despite being maybe 3 or 4 techs behind. I was still able to negotiate a map deal with Justinian for 500 gold where I got his map of his whole continent without giving him mine. This revealed a very large continent with a central desert. Justinian held the largest territory on the continent and occupied the fertile rivers through the central desert. and he had the biggest cities. On his western border he had Zara Yaqob and to his east was Isabella. South of him was Wang Kon and south that was Saladin. Justinian, Saladin, Zara Yaqob, and Isabella all had Buddhism for their religion and, being very religious, were all totally in love with each other. Zara Yaqob and Isabella, by no means very weak, had voluntarily vassalized to Justinian. Wang Kon had Confucianism and was therefore totally hated by them all and stuck uncomfortably between Saladin and Justinian. Thankfully I had built the Apostolic Palace myself or this religious fanatic's club would have been even more scary.

Not long after this, The Glorious Leader and Saladin both voluntarily vassalized to Justinian and he decided it was time to declare war on Wang Kon. They asked me to join the war with Wang Kon and, since none of them even had optics yet, I had nothing to lose and it was a chance to try and gain some diplo points with them so I could at least get open borders out of it (thinking ahead to astronomy). So.. I accepted and declared war on Wang Kon, who already hated me anyway, couldn't reach me, and was sure to be quickly smooshed. Doing this, I scored a few plus points and open borders with the other leaders and dropped my great merchant into Constantinople for a ton of gold. Wang Kon eventually capitulated to Justinian, giving him total control over the large continent.

Justinian and his vassals started aggressively sharing techs with each other and catching up with me rapidly on techs and I could see this was going to be a big problem. I started the game thinking I was really ahead and this was going to be a cakewalk, and now I could see that the whole large continent with all of the religious fanatic leaders united under one faith and vassalized to Justinian was going to be a really formidable foe, especially when the time rolled around to build the UN. About when I was trying to figure out what to do about this, Hannibal finally decided it would be a good idea to attack me.

Hannibal showed up outside of Hancock with a gigantic stack and a bunch of catapults and I wouldn't have stood a chance. I moved my troops back out of the city to join with other troops coming up from my other cities, sacrificing the town but not losing all those units so that I would have something to defend the rest of my cities with. Hannibal took the town and I was able to take out some of his forces but he was dangerously approaching the next city when the AP resolution votes came up. Now that Hannibal took my city he had a spot on the AP along with me and Stalin, and I used it to force a peace on him... so that I could rebuild my own forces up to retake Hancock and punish him properly of course. I came back at Hancock with a giant stack of trebuchets, knights, and musketmen and retook the place. Having recently researched astronomy as well, I built galleons and used them to land troops along Hannibal's coastal cities, confuzzling his AI and spreading his forces out. Soon after this I got cuirassiers and decided it was time to put an end to Hannibal once and for all so I started taking all his cities and wouldn't let him capitulate.

During the peace, Stalin founded more cities and Hannibal spread Hinduism to his other cities, giving him a bigger vote in the AP, and I also switched to free religion, helping me out diplomatically with the players on the other continent and boosting my research, but lessening my AP votes, so I lost control of that to Stalin during the war with Hannibal. I ignored it, reasoning I could simply defy a peace resolution and was already only a voting member because of free religion. I had gotten Hannibal down to 2 or 3 remaining cities and had taken Carthage when Stalin decided that he would vassalize Hannibal and declare war on me whlie I had cuirassiers, grenadiers and frigates and he was only just barely entering the middle ages. Big mistake. He tried to force peace on me with a resolution but I defied it and had now decided it was time to dominate my whole hemisphere the way Justinian was dominating his if I was to stand a chance against him later on, so I figured that I was going to destroy Hannibal and take all his cities and then force Stalin to capitulate.

Using the Pyramids, I switched into police state and went into heavy war mode. I used my frigates to sink all of Stalin's triremes, which he kept wasting hammers building, and reduced all of his cities' defenses before moving my galleons up to land my cuirassiers there and taking his coastal cities, including Moscow. Finding myself confronted by pikes, I had to swtch to grenadiers. I didnt leave much defenses in the taken coastal cities so he retook them, but this split up his forces badly and allowed me to push up through the center of his empire to his main port of Krasnoyarsk. He finally capitulated and then I started figuring out what I was going to do to keep Justinian from winning an eventual diplomatic victory, as I had less than 1/3 of the population and he had a full mega-continent of drooling vassals.

I sent my galleons out to claim some of the islands in a chain in the ocean to the east of my continent, which stretched in a chain up to the arctic. I got to one rather nice one with some fish, lots of hills, and dye and rice resources which I called Russell, but found the other islands had already occupied by Zara Yaqob and Justinian while I was busy at war with Hannibal and Stalin. No big deal, just a few islands. I figured that what I needed to do was keep going for my cultural victory, but build two mega strike forces to focus in on the UN city whenever it was built and then raze it. I started work making two naval assault forces, and would maintain them and upgrade them when the right techs came along and make sure I had them right and ready to go as soon as the UN popped up. I assembled one of the strike forces in the eastern ocean at Russell, cobbled together from some frigates and ships of the line I had and a whole lot of grenadiers I had left over from the war with Hannibal, and some riflemen. I was starting construction on the western strike force when Justinian decided it was a good time to declare war on me, even though we had no borders and he was on the other side of the world and theoretically "pleased" with me. Thankfully, Saladin and The Glorious Leader had renounced their vassalhood so I was able to still have some good overseas trading partners and friends.

As soon as the DOW came, I used my giant fleet and tons of grenadiers to take over the rest of the island chain from Zara Yaqob and Justinian. Justinian sent a slow but steady stream of galleons towards Russell which were easily dispatched. As he hadnt discovered chemistry yet, the galleon was the best ship he could turn out. He tried to attack Stalin but once the DOW came I handed Stalin a bunch of techs to get him out of the dark ages and up to date so he could stand a chance against Justinian, and I sent some forces up to help him out. Once I had finished taking the islands, I figured I didn't have the resources to launch a full-scale war on his continent so I negotiated a peace deal and began to reform my two big assault forces at Russell and in the western ocean near my main continent.

It went on like this for some time until Justinian suddenly DOW'ed on me again, once again while "pleased." This time he was serious and had really been catching up in tech thanks to sharing with his vassals and friends. He attacked the islands with a huge force of galleons and ships of the line and landed a ton of cavalry. I reformed my defenses and eastern fleet at Russell and then sent my western force out to harass Isabella, who was the weakest of Justnian's vassals. I had just researched assembly line and was about to drop some serious revenge on Justinian and get my islands back with my infantry, then suddenly I ran into destroyers from Justinian and Zara Yaqob. Seems their combined research had managed to get them combustion before me. My infantry wouldn't be doing me any good without a way to get them across the ocean, so I gave in and gave away one of my remaining islands that I had taken in the last war for peace and a chance to catch up. While industrializing with factories and coal plants in all of my cities that I could,I beelined combustion and quickly upgraded my two marine strike forces into an impressive fleet of battleships, destroyers, carriers, and transports and filled up the transports with Navy SEALs and tanks. About the time I had gotten flight and was building my carrier force up to a decent strength, Justinian decided it would be cool to declare war on me for a third time but now I was ready for him.

During the intervening peace, Saladin, was was still alright with me, came and offered me a defensive pact, while at the same time getting one with Justinian. I figured that if there was to be another war I'd let Justinian make the first move and then be forced into a war with his religious fanatic buddy, Saladin, hopefully opening some rifts there. It happened but, sadly, they were in such love before that they remained "pleased" with each other even through the entire war. I was able to bribe The Glorious Leader into war with Justinian for some techs as well.

Now, after the DOW I took my fleet back north from Russell and retook all the islands, airlifting more troops in from my factory towns back home all the time and keeping my transports nice and full of Navy SEALs. At the same time, I sent my western fleet across the ocean to attack Isabella. During this war I mopped Justinian from the islands but noticed that Isabella was coming at me with gunships in Spain and apparantly my foes had sneaked satellites and advanced flight on me. Isabella's were too few in number so I managed to brush them aside and take all of her cities on the mainland, reducing her to a few worthless polar islands and creating a colony with Qin Shi Huang in charge to replace her on the mainland. I had to negociate a peace again because now Justinian was coming at me with jet fighters and gunships and tanks and I didn't have any decent counters and needed to catch up. I started beelining for computers (which in Nextwar unlocks the internet). Cleaned up what was left of Isabella after she renounced her vassalhood. Once I got computers I started building the internet and then began research on robotics so that I would get advanced flight from the net and also be able to build mech infantry and missile cruisers.

At the end of the war, Saladin had created the UN but I had taken enough territory from Justinian and grown enough that I had become first in population and it was between me and Saladin, who won easily, but thankfully I noticed I had taken enough to have at least 1/3 of the vote and keep him from winning a diplomatic victory, which he tried anyway. I decided to leave the UN be, since Saladin was still at war with Justinian (who voted for him anyway), and I had enough votes to prevent a diplomatic victory and didn't want to upset Saladin by razing the UN if I didn't have to. I used a great artist to found Civilized Jewelers to help speed up my cultural victory, and negotiated a trade with Saladin for some silver in addition to my gems.

As I was looking over the map, I noticed something else. During the last war I had managed to take three uranium sources from the Justinian alliance: two in the islands and one in mainland Spain (now China). There remained 3 uranium sources for them. One was in the center of Zara Yaqob's territory, about 4 tiles inland. A second one was right on the north coast at the border between Justinian and Zara Yaqob. The third was in a desert region of Justinian's near the border with Spain/China, right under a city. I figured if I could build some bombs and capture those resources quickly I could flatten and humble Justinian forever and not have to worry about him again. So, I started building the Manhattan Project in another city while I was building the Internet, and using the rest of my factory towns to airlift a gigantic invasion force into Spain/China to make an invasion of Justinian's uranium with tanks, SEALs, and later mech infantry. while two large sea forces full of Navy SEALs would attack the coast and destroy the uranium mines there with airstrikes until the area could be secured with troops.

As soon as the Manhattan project was finished I started cranking out some ICBMs. A couple turns later I had researched robotics and gotten advanced flight through the net so i upgrated my fighters to jet fighters and my battleships to missile cruisers and then moved everything into just the right positions. When the time came for war, I sent my huge invasion force into Justinian's territory and took his uranium source and then took Zara Yaqob's coastal uranium source and dropped ICBMs on him to thin out his unit concentrations and clear the way to capture his central uranium source. Soon after this and being nuked in all the right spots a few times, Zara Yaqob's forces started to wither away and I took out all his cities and killed him.

In the meantime, the attack on Justinian went a lot harder. Once I had taken the city over his Uranium source, he started throwing everything but the kitchen sink at that one spot to get his uranium back. His entire army of artillery and tanks and gunships as well as all his old units even back to swordsmen as well started converging on that one point and, even though my army there was huge, it withered away pretty quickly against the entire force of Justinian's army. I tried nuking the approaching stacks but there was still way too many of them and the list was going off the screen. I lost a lot of guys there but this had the hidden advantage of opening up Justinian to two big disasters. For one it left all his coastal cities on the north coast of the continent nearly undefended against attacks by my fleet with SEALs, so I took most of them including Constantinople. Secondly it concentrated the vast majority of his units into a single spot on the map when I had ICBMS... big mistake. I flattened that place with a couple ICBMs, one diverted to smash a tactical nuke I saw that he made, and reduced the gigantic stacks down to about 5 or so units. Justinian did a vertical plunge on the power graph over halfway to the bottom. Saladin, who had unfortunately made peace with Justinian, had gotten nukes by this time but didn't use them, prefering to remain neutral.

In the meantime I was giving all of my captured cities from Zara Yaqob and Justinian to Qin Shi Huang, which was nice since I both didnt have to pay the maintenence cost for holding the places, and also Qin got 2 mech infantry in each "liberated" city so I didn't have to leave a bunch of troops behind to hold the places either. Also I kept airlifting in mech infantry, gunships, navy seals, and modern armor from my factory towns into Qin's new "liberated" cities and kept the war effort pumping until I had killed Zara Yaqob. Wang Kon broke free and I negotiated a peace with him and then turned around and declared war on Justinian. Justinian finally capitulated and I took all his gold resources for Civ Jewelers, and then could sit back and wait for my cultural victory which was now only about 20 turns away. I won control of the UN after taking so much territory from the Justinian alliance, but it didn't matter cause my cultural victory came before any other votes could be held.

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This is probably the most awesome game I've ever played. I had to be really creative with my strategies and got to experience a decent amount of combat and strategy in all eras using just about every unit in the game. The only thing that would have made it better was if I could have gotten to some of the Nextwar units before winning the game. I was particularly impressed that the AI was able to launch an effective amphibious assault on the islands in Justinian's 2nd war with me and also seemed to appreciate the importance of defending or retaking the uranium resource.
 
Wow, that sounds pretty epic. Even on Noble, nothing on that scale of interesting happens for me.
 
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