Civ 5 GMR 16 Reject Earth Edition

[Shishnarfne]

Do you want me to revert? If not, your AI replacement is offering to surrender Honolulu in exchange for a peace treaty; I don't know what you think of that, but can decline if it's not something you'd want to offer.

What *I* was planning to do was fight to the bitter end.

The AI is probably being smarter.

Please don't tell it I said that.

Don't worry about the revert.

[Nerd-o-rama]

Fun fact, I've never actually gotten to a point in the game where I was using X-COMs or anyone was using X-COMs against me since I almost always play single player.

Those things are absolutely incredible.

[Illven]

The Polynesians have no need to exist in this world. They have gone the way of Japan and are far too archaic to be brought to civilization by gentle methods.

[Nerd-o-rama]

Once again, the planned-economy dogmatics of the Amsterdam-Carthage Axis prove themselves most smashingly capable of wiping out civilizations that cannot defend themselves, snuffing out the liberty of everything you can't burn down in the name of your empire.

But I'm not here to talk about that today. I'm here to talk about the Bering Sea, so thick with ships and submarines our trade vessels can barely navigate it. Might I suggest we all move our surface ships, barring Destroyers, back to our respective coastlines before somebody does something foolish?

[Illven]

We decline your suggestion.

[Nerd-o-rama]

I'm going to be heading out of town tomorrow morning. I will attempt to play as I'm able (especially since I'm probably going to either win or get eliminated in the next 3-4 turns) but I'm turning off the turn timer until at least Sunday for my own sanity.

[Illven]

"Today. On this historic day of the foundation of the American empire. We report that our immortal enemies, the Venicians no longer exist as an independent nation. Their armies lay spent and broken, before the might of our people. Enrico Dandolo, the hateful leader of the Venice people has been captured to stand for crimes against the Dutch state.

The American people are safe forever with the death of the Venician horde. The city states that they had bribed to their side, return to free flags over their borders. The stifling embargo they had proposed have been dealt with for all time. I look forward to greener pastures for the Dutch people."

~Emperor William. Defender of all Americans.

[Nerd-o-rama]

Meanwhile, outside the orbit of the moon, clinging to an incomplete spaceship.

"Well, that was fun while it lasted."

"I'll be honest, I was expecting more jokes about the Boer Wars."

"No one makes jokes about the Boer Wars."

NO ONE WITH TASTE, AT ANY RATE

"When d'you suppose we'll make it to that turtle-shaped thingy what the satellite telescope saw?"

"At our present velocity...about 278 billion years."

I WOULDN'T WORRY TOO MUCH ABOUT THAT.

Well played, guys, I'd have had that game if I'd had a little more patience.

[Illven]

I am host once more, shall I put a turn timer up?

[Illven]

In the year 1981, although the Ottomans did start this great war, it is their capital that has fallen.

[The_Snark]

A fine gambit, Mr. of Orange, but you will find that the serpent of Ottoman industry has many heads.

(War update soon, I've been saving screenshots but haven't found time to put them up yet)

[Nerd-o-rama]

Spoiler: Spectator Prediction

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If Illven has Istanbul, he has XCom range on Carthage (although I think he also had that from South America?), and Carthage's military is spread out and comparatively backward. I'd expect a backstab and a quick decapitation strike against Carthage and the game to be over soon unless Snark's got a bigger surprise in store than I thought or Shish is proactive with nukes.

[The_Snark]

Spectator update! With pictures!

Spoiler: Spectators

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A lot has happened, and I have been semi-faithfully recording it! As of my last update, the Ottoman navy were advancing on Carthage’s home territories, while ground forces clashed in Central Asia. Let's start back there.



Here you can see my newest acquisition, Gades, as well as the opening shots of the siege of Utique. Carthage has *finally* gotten a fighter here to defend against my bomber assaults, so I’m holding off on the air attacks until I can get one of my own down here. Things are going well, my conquest is slowing as I run out of easy targets but it doesn't look like they'll be able to turn the tide anytime soon.




My plan to paradrop deep into enemy territory and pillage their uranium deposits succeeds! There’s another deposit in Southern Europe, but apparently it’s not developed? Or it’s locked up in nuclear plants. Whatever the case, construction of the nuclear missile ceases.




Or… the uranium was diverted for this?? Not sure what’s going on here, honestly.




The northern theater is also going well. My forces took Tokyo and Samoa, finally ridding me of the annoyance that was the citadel taking a bite out of Edirne’s territory. We slow down around Honolulu, mostly because I'm not sure I care about Honolulu.




Venice took the rest of Japan’s cities from Carthage and liberated them, presumably in order to secure votes for World Leader in six turns’ time; they do the same with a Polynesian city. The Netherlands swiftly conquers Japan with XCOMs to deny them those votes (and will do the same to Polynesia in a couple turns). On which note…




This is becoming a problem. Getting another 3-7 votes at the last minute would be tricky, but not impossible with judicious use of bribery, coups, or suddenly discovering that one tech which gives you a delegate for every diplomat you have. I think Nerd-o-rama was aiming for a science victory, but he got awfully close to a diplomatic one here. Venice has been a good ally up until now, but I think our interests are starting to diverge.

And so, we set out to resolve this problem like any civilized, sophisticated people…




… with NUCLEAR WEAPONS.

Obviously, just nuking Venice won’t stop anything; I’ll need to take their cities. too. I’m sending ships and planes up to Kamchatka in preparation for that, with a paratrooper to finish off Ankh-Morpork.




Our target. It’s a pretty absurd city, as is only to be expected from Venice: lots of wonders, high production/gold/science/etc. It also has an impressive air force: ~8 bombers, with a fighter to defend it and a nuclear missile in case of emergencies.




A second atom bomb is under construction in Anchorage; I’m not confident a single bomb will wipe out the Venetian air force with 100% reliability, and I really need that gone or there is no way I can land a paratrooper and have it live long enough to attack the city. If I’m wrong, then maybe it’ll get used on Mogadishu.




Venice bought out a city-state in South America at one point; I diverted the fleet laying siege to Utique in preparation for the strike, but the Netherlands saved me the trouble. Apparently you can raze former city-states if they’ve been assimilated by Venice (or Austria), I didn’t know that.




Apparently I’m selling crabs to Venice while plotting against them? I can’t recall why I felt this needed a screenshot, honestly. I guess it gives a good picture of the area immediately south of the flashpoint. Over the next few turns, more Venetian ships will gather around Kamchatka, along with a contingent from the Netherlands

I’m not confident in my ability to pull this off in six turns; if Venice struck first, they could potentially take Kamchatka before my nukes are launched. (I could put them in carriers instead, but that’s even easier to sink.) Their navy here is large enough that it’s going to delay the attack on Mogadishu, and I’m not sure how quickly I can take Ankh-Morpork (if I can do it at all).

As it turns out, this will remain a mystery, because...




The Dutch beat me to the punch, hitting both cities with a nuclear strike followed by XCOMs. Normally they can’t attack on the same turn they paradrop, but apparently if they have the Blitz promotion then they can. Illven has a lot of XCOMs with Blitz. It’s a high-level promotion, but if he builds them in a city with Alhambra he gets Rough Terrain I for free, and with Autocracy and all the barracks-style buildings he has enough starting XP to buy three more promotions atop that.




Here’s Amsterdam, the city responsible for that. It’s an industrial and scientific powerhouse, capable of churning out an XCOM squad every turn.

So. I no longer have to worry about Venice winning a diplomatic victory! But the Netherlands are looking very worrying all of a sudden. I don’t think I can meaningfully close the tech gap in time... and I already have all these forces positioned for an alpha strike neary, so…




Boom! A nuclear attack followed by conventional bombing wipes out the XCOMs around Mogadishu and opens it up to my navy. My remaining bombers go for the XCOMs around Ankh-Morpork, but don’t make much progress; this is going to be a tricky fight.




On the other side of the world, the Atlantic fleet opens fire on Orleans. Ideally I would have gone for Paris or Utrecht first, Orleans isn’t that important, but they weren’t in range when I declared war. This is kind of an afterthought, to be honest.

Meanwhile…




BAM. My second atom bomb is used here, to try to cripple or at least slow down their production of XCOMs.




Here’s the carrier that launched the attack. Also nuked: Rotterdam. It’s their second-oldest city and probably their most developed port, and it’ll make a good staging ground to move on the capital.




The next turn, I seize Ankh-Morpork, the enemy soldiers having mysteriously vanished. Cool. But hang on, where did…




… oh.

I was expecting XCOMs to hit my capital at some point, that’s why I had a bazooka and some planes there. I didn’t expect them to abandon Ankh-Morpork and do it right away. I can see the logic in it, though, I had a considerable air force there and he probably couldn’t get a counter there - not to mention that in a few turns I’d have filled some of the hexes around my capital with my units, to prevent XCOMs from landing immediately adjacent.

I manage to kill one of them with air bombardment, but figure I’ll lose the capital next round. Some of my air force shuffles around so that they’ll be in position to bomb it next turn.




Sure enough, next turn I lose the city. But my bombers take its health back down to 0 as predicted, and a paratrooper moves in to take it next round.




Things over in the Atlantic are not going as smoothly. A nuclear strike and some bombers have taken out half my fleet or more. Without only a single battleship and no air support, I’d have trouble taking the city even if Illven left them totally alone from here on out. Oh well, a nuke used here is a nuke he doesn’t have later.




As projected, I retake my capital the following turn. It’s kind of stunted now, but the great thing about building wide rather than tall is that the capital isn’t really a failure point. I lost my artists/writer’s/etc guilds and my National College/East India Company/etc, which is annoying, but this doesn’t really impact my war machine.

Except for how it affects my economy, of course. That’s going to be a problem in a few turns.




Amsterdam is nuked again. A 20-pop city with all the capital infrastructure is still a prime target!




Rotterdam falls. (This is the second time, actually, Illven retook it with an XCOM the first time.) It contains Prora, which gives me enough happiness that my score actually goes *up* when I take it. Nice not to have to worry about that.




I besiege Kyoto with the leftover land units from my unexpectedly brief invasion of Ankh-Morpork. Illven drops in an XCOM to slow me down, but I take it out with bombers. I’m not sure he can afford to throw those away at this point, I’ve killed a fair number, and his production of blitz-capable XCOMs is now rather slower than it used to be...





Demographics as of turn 255. I am leading in many categories, but not science; I’m technically above average, but only because the recently-restored Polynesian state is still in the Renaissance or something.




Demographics as of turn 263. Much the same, but Polynesia is gone and the Netherlands are falling behind in most categories. I’m pretty confident in how the war is going to turn out, at this point - Utrecht and the South American cities are all solid mid-sized cities, but they’re outnumbered by my Austronesian cities. My economy is in bad shape, but my treasury won’t run out for a few turns, which I can stretch out by switching my cities over to gold focus.

Carthage is looking pretty good in this shot, albeit partly because I've kneecapped his main rival. Here’s something I saw while my wayward paratrooper trekked back across Africa (the long way)...



Carthage’s military: no longer so small or backwards! We're at peace now, incidentally, the war died down to a simmer when I started prepping to take Venice and we formally made peace just a couple turns ago. He's doing a pretty good job rebuilding. I'll have to try and hurry things up with the Dutch.

[Illven]

Panic in Dutch streets.

Emperor William Defender of all America's has vacated Amsterdam Palace for an unknown location. Ottoman forces swoop in on the barely defended capital. Is this the end of A free America.

Spoiler: Last Spectator update

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So you may be wondering how I lost this.

There are two main reasons.

1 With the exception of Amsterdam, and possibly Rotterdam. All of my other cities suck. They hover around 30 production only, because most of them don't have hills. I probably could have played better but I'm at a serious hammer deficit.

2

The Ottoman's have nearly 900 hammers. Bird put out alot of cities, and while that kneecapped him in tech that made his production skyrocket. Were they attacked earlier, someone could have probably carved out a chunk of his empire but right now we're at the point where his higher tech costs don't matter as much. Especially on a naval map where no one has missile cruisers.



Still the most productive city in my empire. (Rotterdam before the a.bombs though would have edged this out.)




My policies and ideology.

I'll be surrendering in game after Shish takes their turn so as to prevent the file from getting glitched up.

GG bird, well played.

[Nerd-o-rama]

Getting eliminated is worth it for getting to read about both sides of this war early. Well-played, Snark.

So the championship round in this game is...wide communists vs. aggressive communists? Okay then.

[Shishnarfne]

Getting eliminated is worth it for getting to read about both sides of this war early. Well-played, Snark.

So the championship round in this game is...wide communists vs. aggressive communists? Okay then.

Is this a hint that I should put together a spectator update?

No pictures (for now), but I can oblige:

Spoiler: Spectator Update

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The Ottomans seized two of my original cities after completely trashing my navy. I got cocky and paid for it.
We're currently at peace while the Turkish forces finish off the Dutch, although our peace treaty has expired.

I'm at a definite hammer deficit (he's got nearly twice as many as I do), but I've got a tech lead (for what it's worth).
I don't know if he has X-COM squads yet (which I am turning out as fast as I can), but my big tech benefit is that I have the Internet.
And World Religion. And more happiness.
Which means that the game is on a timer (two, actually, since I have the allegiance of the majority of city-states) of around twenty turns (maybe less if I can get national visitor center up) before I win via tourism.

I still control all of the Iroquois cities and two Polynesian ones (including Honolulu), so I have a little resistance against military conquest. I also only need to take five cities (all of which are weakened, some of which heavily so) in order to triumph. My cities are a little stronger. I've also started building Bomb Shelters in some of my key cities. I hope that this won't be necessary, but...

I'll probably try to declare war soon to get "first blood" with my Nuclear Missiles. Here's hoping that I survive long enough for his people to decide that they love Carthiginian culture.

[Shishnarfne]

Delenda est Carthago.

Delenda est Carthago!

I didn't see any way to stop the Ottoman Empire from taking Onondaga, which, if memory serves, is the last capitol not under their control.

This means that we have an apparent domination victory (as soon as the Snark takes the turn).

Well played, I had fun. I had my chances, and I learned that having a few Deity wins under my belt does not mean that I know how to make war against a human.

"Good against the living? That's something else."
-Han Solo, Star Wars: A New Hope

[Nerd-o-rama]

Never underestimate pirates who've seized the means of production.

[Tehnar]

Thank you all for the reports, it was a most exciting game to follow.

[The_Snark]

You fools! You fell victim to one of the classic blunders! The most famous is never to get involved in a land war in Asia, but only slightly less well known is this: never let that one player turtle up in Australia when death is on the line! Ahahahaha! Ahahaha! Aha -

Ahem.



The Ottoman Empire has indeed seized control of the former Iroquois capital; with the last of the great cities under our heel, Captain Suleiman hereby declares global domination. Avast!

One last update chronicling the final war:

Spoiler

Show

This is Amsterdam, a few turns after being captured. Note the presence of the Forbidden Palace, which has a huge effect on my wide empire’s happiness. Other than that and its capital status, the city isn't doing a lot for me - the damage from repeated nuclear strikes is pretty extensive. If I had time to repair the surroundings it'd bounce back to a solid city pretty quickly, I expect, but... I don't.

Utrecht fell on the same turn that the capital did, I believe - it was within easy range of my aircraft carriers and didn't have much left in the way of defenses. The Netherlands at this point are basically spent.




With Utrecht under my control, I can send my navy through Central America rather than having to go around Cape Horn. Paris falls a couple turns after my battleships and carriers get within range.




The AI in charge of the Netherlands offers everything it has in exchange for being left alone...



... but I don’t need or want most of their cities; Groningen is a terrible snow city Illven only founded because they needed a forward base to use against Ankh-Morpork, and while Orleans and Valletta look decent I don’t expect the game will last long enough for me to make use of them. I do take the city that’s within bomber range of Honolulu, though, just in case.

My next step is obvious: re-open hostilities with Carthage. They have the three remaining capital cities I need for a domination victory, which is the only kind of victory I have a shot at. (I'm still lagging behind a little in tech, my tourism has gone way up thanks to captured wonders/museums but I have a long way to go, and while I've stopped my economy from plummeting with a timely Golden Age and switching most of my cities to emphasize gold, I wouldn't want to count on a diplomatic victory. Carthage obviously knows it; they've built up a substantial garrison of XCOMs and have nuclear missiles ready to deploy in Honololu and the capital.




The peace treaty expires on turn 272; Carthage goes before me, but luckily they pass up the chance to launch a pre-emptive strike. So instead I open hostilities with a nuclear strike just south of Honolulu...




… and another on their capital.




The aftereffects of which can be seen here. I think the nuclear missiles are also destroyed? I didn't think so at the time, but both of them were gone next turn and I know I never got nuked




My navy begins shelling Carthago Nova. With only three battleships available, it’s slow going - I have three carriers at this point, but one of them hasn't made it to the battlefield yet and the other two are busy attacking the capital city in the south.




Carthage retaliates by landing X-Coms near Istanbul…




… and Saguntum…




… and Amsterdam, just for good measure. I guess they're hoping to force me to split my forces trying to defend my territory; it's not a bad idea in theory, but in practice I'm not sure they can spare these XCOMs. As Illven discovered, XCOMs alone don't have a good way to deal with bombers, so it's not too hard to whittle them down to the point where they can't credibly threaten the city anymore.




There's also an XCOM dropped right behind the artillery attacking Honolulu. More important is what doesn't happen, though: namely, I am not hit by nuclear missiles in retaliation. I was expecting to lose Samoa entirely (it's small enough that it would have been destroyed outright by a direct hit), or maybe Shishnarife would go for Edirne to destroy the bomber contingent there. Instead, nothing. The same is true in the African theater. Last turn it looked like Carthage's nuclear missiles survived my nuclear strike, but I guess not? I never see either missile again, and I'm pretty sure Shish would have used them if they were available.

Apparently, mutually assured destruction isn't a thing in Civilization V. (Or at least, it's harder to set up.)




The siege of Carthage Nova continues. Slowly. Note the presence of a Carthaginian missile cruiser here - they have a tech advantage, they just don't have enough productive ports to leverage it.

Next turn, my third carrier will arrive and drop an atomic bomb on the city, which removes the defending ships, planes, and most of the city's health; it falls easily after that. Honolulu also falls, but I don't have pictures of that either - I skipped screenshots for a few turns.




At some point, I notice that Carthage is making credible progress on a culture victory. It's probably nothing to worry about, but I have Istanbul start building the Great Firewall just in case.




I hit Utique with an atomic bomb - it's one of their most productive cities remaining at this point, not to mention it'd be a useful staging point for hitting the capital - but it appears Carthage has finally gotten bomb shelters built; this hugely reduces the damage to their population, and apparently protects the garrison and air force too. The fallout and damage to the city walls is still considerable, though.




The Ottoman navy besieges Ondonaga from offshore, with assistance from bombers. Little resistance is met, as Carthage's remaining forces are mostly gathered in Africa.




The city of Carthage falls, after repeated nuclear strikes and heavy aerial bombardment. It would have fallen a turn or two earlier, but the first time I tried landing a paratrooper nearby it was killed by air strike before it could take the city.

(In the background, you can see that Hippo Regius has also been nuked, but like Utique it has a bomb shelter now.)




And here's a shot of Ondonaga right before it falls.

Well played, everyone! This was an interesting game; usually by the late game there are 1-2 clear front-runners, but this time around we had four major powers, which was fun. And hard to predict.

I'd say my victory rested on the following four factors, in no particular order...

1: the Ottoman unique ability. Sure, it's situational, but capturing enemy ships is a big deal early in the game, since you don't have a lot of production to spare and your ships can't heal outside friendly territory. Normally, that means you get quickly worn down by barbarians if you venture too far from home. The Ottomans can just keep going, using disposable captured ships to capture still more ships. (In the late game melee ships are less important, so it boils down to "sometimes you'll get a free submarine if you use destroyers", but that's still a nice perk in naval warfare.) And while I'm never sure how to tell how much gold I'm saving on maintenance, a 66% discount sounds it makes a difference... Anyway, without this ability I'd have been stuck fighting a land war in Asia if I wanted to expand past my third city, and we all know how that goes Instead, I was able to grab...

2: Australia and the surrounding islands. I got lucky here; the Earth map never starts players here, but normally there are a few city-states. In this game, there was nothing (except barbarians). I ended up with two cities on Australia proper and another four on various nearby islands; none of them were game-changing individually, but all of them were solid (especially with internal sea trade routes supplementing production). They were also hard for enemies to get at; I had a pretty strong navy for most of the game, and Japan was the only one with a city anywhere nearby. XCOMs don't care about distance, of course, but they'd need visibility via a spy or submarine to land, and XCOMs are great at sudden strikes but less so for sustained, repeated city-leveling. (Two of the cities were impervious to XCOMs by way of being one-hex islands, too.)

3: Shooting first. This gets more important the further you get in the game, I think. It's vital in naval warfare, because submarines and aircraft carriers have firepower wildly out of proportion to their ability to take a hit. It is apparently vital in nuclear warfare too, because atomic bombs seem to be able to destroy nuclear weapons in their target cities. Even land warfare is faster-paced: paratroopers and XCOMs can appear out of nowhere to threaten cities and strategic resources, siege weapons can move and fire on the same turn. The best defense is to blow up your enemy's invasion force before it gets a chance to move. (Corollary: the best offense is one the enemy doesn't see coming/can't hit.)

4. Mixed forces. Being the undisputed ruler of the seas is great, but it won't help much against landlocked cities, and almost every map has some of those. Bombers are excellent, but you'll want alternatives if/when your enemy starts massing anti-air batteries. XCOMs are awesome, but if used without support they're vulnerable to bombers. And nuclear weapons are of course great, but even those can be partly stymied by bomb shelters, and you need conventional forces to finish the job. It's easy to get carried away focusing on one of these (I'm always tempted by bombers), and against the AI it can work, but it leaves gaps a human enemy can exploit.