Civ 5 mutliplayer GMR 14 On the Euro

[DodgerH2O]

Spoiler: Sweden

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Persian XCOM forces have taken out the Egyptian Aluminum mines. Unless they have other sources their space program should be stopped for the present time. We do not know how much military force they can commit to restoring their supply so we cannot be certain how long they will be deprived of the resource.

As for the war with Byzantium, our troops cannot easily reach their metal supply with your borders closed to us. We have a scouting party headed west around the French lands to find a spot for our XCOM crews to land but it will take some time (OOC: Probably at least 6 turns). Are your forces adequate to the task or do we need to send reinforcements?

[RayGallade]

Spoiler: DodgerH2O (Persia)

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Alpha Complex is rushing to join the XCOM initiative, though we are about eight years from having battle ready technology for it. However, our troubleshooters are maneuvering our rocket artilleries towards Byzantium Complex's border city with us. Our one concern is they have at least one nuclear missile that we have lost track of. It may be located on a ship off the coastline. If our troubleshooters are hit with a second nuke, it may be too difficult for us to make the final push.

[DodgerH2O]

Spoiler: Sweden

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Persian intelligence indicates that Byzantium nears completion of its interstellar craft and is constructing an Airport, presumably to airlift the last part from whichever city is working upon it. Time is running out and we cannot wait, we request that you Open your Borders to our troops to expedite our scouting mission and the landing of our XCOM troops.

[RayGallade]

Spoiler: DodgerH20 (Persia)

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We certainly shall send a message as soon as possible. Unfortunately, we missed your message before issuing our orders, but will send the paperwork as soon as possible. If necessary, we could attempt to use a recent R&D device to rewind our timestream to allow for new orders.

In other news, our forces have been struck by a third nuclear missile, destroying our last intact nuke before we could launch a single one. All that remains anywhere near the warzone is a battalion of recently hired foreign legions that we are mobilizing as soon as our logistics can provide.

[The_Snark]

Behold:



The Empress Theodora takes her leave of this world. She leaves behind her the annals of our scientists and philosophers, chronicling the crowning achievements of the Byzantine empire. May they have some civilizing influence on those unfortunates who remain.

Spoiler: Final update

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Our overview starts 8 turns or so ago. The race to a space victory is kicking into high gear:



I built my first spaceship part a while ago, but only recently gotten close enough to having all the necessary techs that I felt comfortable starting on the rest. Building a spaceship booster or two doesn't make other nations feel threatened; building every spaceship part as soon as it becomes available does, and the last couple techs have prerequisites that take a while, which gives them time to invade you before you can even start on the final parts.



Here's an overview of the Byzantine heartland. Or heartsea, rather, since my central cities ended up being built around an inland sea. This limited my trading opportunities pretty sharply, but on the other hand it meant I could use internal sea trade routes to boost my core cities' growth and production. I haven't had to worry about barbarians for a long time, since I had enough ships left over from the Aztec invasion way back when to patrol my coastline and keep camps from spawning. (Those battleships all started life as dromons.)

You can also see my plan for victory here, more or less: finish several spaceship parts around the same time, then rush them to the capital and put them together before anyone has a chance to panic and invade me. Not having railroads connecting my cities makes this annoyingly slow. I could have used airports to speed this up, but until I looked it up just now I didn't know you could airlift spaceship parts. Oops? I'd have needed to delay a bit to build airports anyway, so I don't know that it would have saved me any time.



Here's Varna, my western outpost. It's okay, I guess. I founded it before acquiring the techs that let me see late-game strategic resources like oil and aluminum, and it ended up not containing any. It had an okay spread of bonus resources and one luxury I didn't have before, but the lack of access to internal sea trade routes meant it fell behind my other cities. I probably could've dispensed with it and not felt the lack, but I don't think it hurt me, either.

The pillaged resources to the left show that I wasn't paying a whole lot of attention to this city.



And here's Antioch, my eastern outpost. Its spread of resources is pretty similar to Varna, but it had three luxuries, plus a mix of hills and rivers that made it competitive even without sea trade routes. Also unlike Varna, I founded it with a specific purpose in mind: it was meant to serve as a first line of defense against Sweden. I was pretty friendly with the Swedish for most of the game, but they showed warlike tendencies early on and I figured it was only a matter of time until I was the target. The mountains, rivers and hills would've made a pre-modern invasion difficult.

It turned out not to matter, because as the minimap clearly shows Sweden ignored me and went for the Aztecs, giving them a base of operations well behind Antioch. But the city paid for itself anyway, I think.



My final city, Ohrid, founded late in the game. It had two main purposes: firstly, to prevent anyone from putting a city on the coast and getting access to my inland sea, and secondly to secure those three large oil deposits. It also ended up being a forward air base, with just enough reach for a bomber to hit Tenochititlan. Internal trade routes brought this city up to speed pretty quickly, although it still lagged behind some in production.



Demographics. I'm first in science and comfortably high in most of the other categories. Persia is in the lead overall, but they're distant enough that they won't have any air support if they declare war on me, so I'm not worried about them.



Here's the World Congress. The embargo on the Aztecs is irrelevant now that they've lost their war. The ban on nuclear weapon construction is more interesting; I decide to support it, since I've already built up a good stockpile. (Not that my support is terribly relevant, given how many votes I have.)

The astute among you may notice another impending threat to me; more on that later.



My nuclear arsenal is mostly housed on a carrier. This is normally a risky choice, because carriers are much more fragile than cities, but the inland sea is a huge tactical advantage here - nobody else can get , because I haven't let anyone build a port. As long as I keep it away from my cities (which could have spies in them), they can't even see the carrier, which means no targeting it with air strikes. In theory, they could embark a land unit to go looking, but those have very poor visibility and are very easy to bomb. And they'd have to know there's something to look for, which - as far as I know - they don't.

Anyway. What this boils down to is, I don't have to worry about losing my nuclear stockpile to enemy action. I do keep one A-bomb in Ohrid; it's vulnerable* to a nuclear first strike there, but I'm pretty sure I have more nukes than anyone else, so I'm willing to trade on a one-for-one basis.

[sizze=1]*I think? I have bomb shelters in all my cities, but I've never tested whether that saves nuclear weapons from destruction if their home city is nuked.[/size]



Speaking of which, look at this. Tenochititlan is just barely within nuclear missile range of my own capital, and not a lot else. (Sweden recently made peace with the Aztecs, so this can't be intended for them.) Is this a prelude to attacking me? Probably. So...



Boom.

If there's one thing GMR games have taught me, it's that striking first is important in late-game warfare. No more nuclear threat from Sweden. On the following turn, the World Congress will ban them, preventing Sweden from trying again unless they have more already constructed. (Which, as it turns out, they do. We're prepared for that.)



Turns out Sweden and Persia have a defensive pact. This is almost entirely irrelevant to me, but I lose a couple trade deals, and a tank that I assume was acting as a late-game scout shows up to try to raid my oil fields. I have a lot of oil and can afford to lose some, but I also have a lot of bombers and can spare a few to take out the threat.



A couple turns later, and things are going smoothly; Sweden has stationed a small air force in Tlacopan - which manages to destroy one of my ship parts while it's embarked, teaching me to keep them either in cities or well outside them, not right next to cities where spies can see them - but no nuclear weapons yet. I have vision of both places he could launch from, and I think they're the only thing (short of losing a city) that could stop my spaceship now, so I'm feeling pretty confident.

It does occur to me, though, that I have a potential weakness:



A carrier or nuclear submarine at the rightmost edge of this shot would be within bombing range of Adrianople at least, if not my capital. Sweden can't get to this body of water either, but Persia theoretically could... and Siam definitely can. If I were Illven, and I wanted to slow me down, that's how I'd do it - position a nuclear sub out of sight of Varna, then zoom in close and launch a nuke at one of my cities when there's a spaceship part in the blast radius.

To defend against this possibility, I move a fighter and my sole nuclear missile (purchased right before the ban went into effect) into Varna, giving me visibility and the ability to destroy anything I can spot. (The artillery is backup, I had it garrisoned in the city and figured it'd be more likely to be useful here.) As it turns out, these precautions are unneeded - Illven was probably focusing on their own spaceship rather than sabotaging me - but I like feeling prepared.



Two turns and no significant events later, I am a hair's breadth away from winning; these are the last two parts I need. I could move the SS engine into the capital now, but then it'd be doubled up with the SS cockpit when it finishes next turn and I wouldn't be able to stick them in the spaceship without moving one first, so instead I keep it safely offshore and out of sight. I'll move it in next turn, after using the other part.



Meanwhile, Sweden is starting to muster a conventional invasion force. With two turns until my projected victory, I don't expect anything to come of it, but I have three atomic bombs and a large air force just sitting around, so...



I use them. (Not all three of the bombs, I mean. Just one, followed by normal bombers.) The artillery dies, the air force dies, the infantry and paratroopers get to live to next turn (but not past that).



The greatest threat to me is not military but diplomatic: if Sweden and Persia agree to it, they could vote one of themselves world leader. There's nothing I can do about this - their lead is huge - except win before it happens. Which is going to happen, but the margin is awfully narrow.



A final shot of my empire, the turn before victory. The final spaceship part enters my capital, ready to be assembled next turn. Siam is rushing spaceship parts pretty fast, but espionage tells me they've still got a few turns to go. Egypt is in the same boat, and also they've just been attacked by Persia, which might be able to take their core cities before they finish and will slow them down even if they don't.

The only thing that could stop me now is...



... a nuclear attack on my capital destroying the final spaceship part. Excellent dramatic timing on Sweden's part, but I still have atomic bombs in reserve.



Boom. Again. (Tenochititlan is still in resistance, so RayGallade never got an opportunity to install a bomb shelter. If that would have helped. I still don't know.)



The demographics haven't really changed since the start of the war. My happiness is low enough to give me a -10% combat penalty, but it didn't come up much. Siam is now the leader in tech, although at this level that probably means they have 1 more tech than me. I suspect both they and Egypt have been about on par with me for a while, possibly Persia as well.



Victory!

Good game, everyone!

[thatSeniorGuy]

Thanks to everyone who made spectator posts! Much appreciated!

[Illven]

GG The snark.

I'll be honest I mentally checked out of this game.... About the time photobucket revolted.

[Dada]

GG everyone and thanks for playing! Grats on your victory The_Snark!

[RayGallade]

Well played The Snark.

I must say, keeping your A-bombs on a carrier really had me guessing the whole time. I thought for sure after you bombed my conventional force out of existence that you were out of them.

I'd do a final spectator update, but I'm still trying to figure out how to host from imgur here instead of photobucket.

[DodgerH2O]

Nicely done The_Snark. GG and well played everyone, thanks for letting me drop in.