The Ultimate Evil Cooked Maps: Prepare to DIE!

Update!

Gwaja asked what the tech situation was so here ya go

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It's the same as it was 100 years ago I'm not a big believer in most of the modern techs. They're not really game changing enough to justify the beakers, so I usually stop after refrigeration and ecology, although I did suffer for not having SDI, and marines would have been ever so slightly more efficient than infantry. The AIs are pretty much done with the tech tree, although only Darius and Toku built the SDI.

Meanwhile Toku had started plotting, and the most important war of the game (imo) was coming up! I tried to prepare for the war as quickly as possible. As soon as I got this naval group together I moved them up to the top of his base to attack from there.

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When to declare war is a risky balancing act. If I attack too soon I won't have enough nukes built and will lose the war. But the later I wait to attack the more likely it is that he attacks first -- and attacking first is extremely, extremely important. By 1880 I had the minimal amount of nukes I thought necessary to carry out a successful attack.

Basic War Plan: - Nuke, capture, and keep his northern coastal cities including his capital. These are his strongest and most vulnerable, and all of them can fall on the first turn. The geography was also decent to hold these off as choke points.
- Launch of bunch of nukes from Pyongyang to Tokyo, and at any units in between, blunting any attack aimed at my vulnerable core.
- Nuke his Northwestern city of Goth, and all the troops near there. Most of his army is actually stationed by this city, as they recently razed a barbarian town. I had to deal with this stack right away before they spread out.
- Ignore the island, southern, and non-coastal cities at the start.

The attack started off well with all my nukes hitting Kagoshima. Once Kagoshima was ours, the boats could use it as a canal and attack Kyoto directly.

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Woot Woot!

Kyoto came with some goodies like Broadway and the three gorges dam!

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Unfortunately when I turned my attack to the right side of his island lady luck abandoned me. I actually had five nukes miss IN A ROW at Shimonoseki. This meant abandoning any dream of capturing four cities on the right side. Instead I captured the three northernmost cities, which was probably a better idea to begin with, because Nagoya was a good choke point.


Here was the situation in Goth:

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There are about 30 troops camping that marble tile, and about 20 troops in the city. I dropped nukes in three different spots, such that only two mech infantry in the top left corner were left.

And these two mech infantry actually caused a lot of drama for the next couple turns. Basically I had 5 infantry in the vicinity. The first infantry beat a mech in his first attack. I was so proud! I clicked the other four and told them to gobble up the last guy -- and they all died. I really did face the prospect of losing all my ice peninsula cities to one rogue mech inf So I sent out a brave airship commander, a suicidal hwacha and the injured infantry to clean up the mess. What started out with almost 100 units ended with only a 3hp infantry left standing.

I forgot to mention but I also took his most southern city, which was across the bay and bordered former Zulu land.

Lastly, Toku had a big stack of Artillery stationed in his border city of Tokyo, as well as a bunch of units chilling in forts. By throwing a bunch of nukes as them I was able to get rid of almost all of his "free" units all on the first turn.

That first turn took me forever. It got tedious and I got stressed, so did a bunch of laundry and cleaning in between. As a result it took me all night to play like 10 turns


By the time it was Toku's turn he didn't have many units left, but he did launch a lot of nukes and that kind of hurt
He also got real annoying with gunships and started hunting down my workers. I promoted my GG warrior to a SAM infantry and he rounded those guys up.

Despite the initial success, this war was by no means over. You see, my empire was quite... well... I've never seen it get this bad before....

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To summarize: I'm at -300 gpt, half my cities can't run ANY tiles, production has stalled across the board, and my population is in total freefall

I think it's time for a couple turns of revolt

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It's almost the 20th century.. i GUESS I should switch to emancipation .

After swapping to emancipation, and then cycling through and remicroing EVERY city, i was able to get the economy out of the red and stop the starvation. Still it became obvious I didn't have the production capacity to wipe Toku in this war. The only good news was that his production had pretty much collapsed too. So I grouped all my infantry together and pushed towards Tokyo and Osaka. With the last of my nuclear arsenal I was able to take those cities.

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Toku in his infinite wisdom decided to park his destroyer in an empty fort bordering my empire.... I wonder what the merry band of archers thought as they boarded the steel monstrosity.

I was hoping the UN would bring up a peace vote, unfortunately Gandhi wanted us to vote for Universal Suffrage for the third time Good news was Toku was ready to deal on that turn anyway.

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No time to rest though, look!

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I have 10 turns to stop Mansa Musa from winning a culture victory, and even though he's crippled, Toku is darn close to finishing his space shuttle. I also know India is close to a culture win, and Darius is not far behind Toku. Let's hope these wars don't overlap

 

I have to hand it to you.... with all those problems with your cities and the nuclear war and everyone hating your guts and these AIs being less than dozen turns away from victory, I would have had no stomach to bear with such conditions... and yet, you have persevered. I would consider that a victory in itself, even if you end up not winning the game. Kudos!

The pessimist in me says that it may be too much for you to try to stop not just 1, but ALL AIs who seem to be closing in on different types of victory conditions... it seems like as if someone is constantly choking you and you are forced to just try to stop it at all cost.... but I will be pulling for you. But like I said, what you have done so far is a victory in itself.

Just one question: Other than nukes and Infantry, what do your army and navy consist of? And are you using any type of conventional air force at all? I was rather surprised at your comment that you don't think highly of the late techs in the tech tree.... I'd feel immensely uncomfortable waging wars against Modern Armors and Mech Infantries using Anti Tanks and standard Infantries and SAM Infantries (Not the Mobile ones).... or at least I hope you have Anti Tanks... ^_^

10 turns isn't a lot of time... and at this point, we aren't even sure how close Ghandi is from Culture and how close behind Darius is with the spaceship. I believe that Timbuktu and Persepolis are both inland cities, so that may be even more annoying like you mentioned way earlier in this thread... hmmm.

 

If you look back an update I managed to take out Persepolis with some icbms and chariots his capital is coastal now. Mali is far away from space (usually when AIs go culture they try even less at space)
I only have infantry, nukes, transports, subs, two SAMs and one destroyer. Toku didn't build tanks (I dunno). Oh and some airships ofc. Air Force is less effective than nukes, and navies are almost always completely unnecessary. I have a few twomovers as well.

 

Ah... my bad of course. Then that's one less thing to worry about Persian capital being non-coastal inland PITA... ^_^ I wonder how in the heck AIs can manage to tech all that well while going full culture like that though.... makes you wonder a lot... hmm.

 

Oh my god drewisfat. I'm completely excited for the ending to your game. I wish you all the best of luck. Please do win. It's insane.

 

I can only agree, best of luck! This is possibly even more exciting than the team game against a runaway Shaka and Pacal I once read about...

 

Wow that end game is TIGHT. I guess the Culture guys have to be first targets...

 

gogogo Drew

 

OMG It's EVANA~! I mean... Lymond~! ^_^

 

Update Time!

Mayans were the immediate threat with a culture victory and they had to be dealt with immediately.

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I actually overbuilt nukes here. For some reason I was under the impression Mansa Musa had SDI. He did not. As a result after blowing up niani I had 6 extra nukes. I could have passed them back to capital, but I figured I'd throw a few at Timbuktu, and at this really cool artillery stack I found (just in sub's range!)

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I decided to check the Victory tab.

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What a (expletive) (expletive) stupid (expletive).

Fortunately Burgundian was on his eastern coast closest to my base. I scrambled a stack to take care of this quickly. Most of his navy was over there, so I actually had to offer a few sacrificial transports to sneak the real troops past.

A few turns later he was ready to make peace.

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Not a bad price, I'll take it!

After killing off Burgundian I checked the victory tab again:

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DISPATCH DELTA SQUADRON.

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I razed Bombay. I wanted to leave Delhi since it was a coastal capital, but this would turn out to be a pivotal mistake later.

Never a dull moment....

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I had been planning a war against Toku for some time. He was my natural expansion target, and he had been plotting against me for several turns.

Unfortunately I wasn't able to get peace with Gandhi yet, so I'd just have to dodge his navy. However I could reach all of his coastal cities in one turn (thanks to a critical fort I built a few turns before on the southern coast). Most of his troops were stationed in the north.

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Toku did have SDI, so I was cutting the nuke margin rather thin. Still I was able to obliterate virtually all of his units on the mainland on the first turn.

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With only a single gunship left after the first turn he was unable to prevent me taking his capital and ending the space threat.

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Scipio Africanus has become a really clutch GG for me this game
There's a lot you can do with a two-mover SAM Infantry!

 

And still far from the Dom limit!

Great play once again, it's a pleasure watching you global warm your map into Tatooine!

 

Timbuktu and Kubi Saleh are on the interior of Mali (not the Mayans ), I presume?

 

How can you be doing so well man. Gratulations. I'm so excited. TO think I had to wait three days and now propably a couple again to get my fix ...

 

He has this though for sure, and very well played . Now that the culture games were interrupted and the empire is that size with , it's just a matter of time really.

 

@Angst you could read this in the meantime

 

Thanks pomthom!

 

Update!

Finally the evil Japanese were wiped out for good.

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I ruled over the entire continent!! Or what was left of it at least...

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It looks like a critical threshold has been passed, and now a majority of tiles are desert

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I was building up an army to hopefully wipe Mansa Musa out for the win. Unfortunately Darius was plotting and to make matters worse, was rapidly approaching space ship completion.

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Well we can't have none of that can we?

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Unfortunately since Darius had been plotting he had quite a military built up and was ready to try to invade mighty Korea! I was hiding my navy/army on the southwestern coast. I didn't really want to fight Persia at all. He had a lot of inner cities, a more advanced, stronger army, and most importantly SDI. And there was really nothing to gain by attacking him. So instead he attacked me.

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Nothing that can't be solved by the

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Then something absolutely devastating happened in 1953.

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You may think I'm talking about Persia's little stunt attempting a second invasion, this time with parachutes. But think again....

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Here is the victory tab this turn (Before he could use the GA).

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(50,000 - 45,622)/19 = 230+ per turn.
45,622 + 4,000 + 230 + 230 = 50,082. Gandhi was two turns from a culture victory. I had no transports, no subs on the right side of the map. The nearest ships were like 6 turns away from Bangalore. I could rush subs/transports on my eastern islands, but it would cost a turn to build and then still take 3 turns to get there.

:suicide:

I got really upset at myself for not leveling Delhi earlier when I had the chance. I didn't think I would come all the way to the 1950s to lose, and to a stupidly lucky GA pop for the AI. I had some hardcore nerd rage, slammed my computer, punched a puppy and ran outside.

 

@drewisfat your pictures appear to be broken I can't see them I just get a broken link icon.

 

Thanks, fixed. How do most ppl post screenshots to the forums. The attach file manager thing on the forum is very tedious and buggy.