CHRONICLES

RBCiv Epic Twelve

The first thing I did was sign the rest of the civs to MPP.

Pricey, but my best hope was for the Aztecs to decide England was a juicier target, once they got done swallowing my poached lands.

Oh, and I'd seen this message for the first time ever:

Does that mean the AI does NOT already effectively know where all your units are? Doesn't seem like it. They always seem to know, even before Espionage tech, so I have to wonder at this. I guess it means the AI will spend some of its money this way, and who knows, maybe it DOES affect their decision-making in some regards.

Sadly for me, after mopping up my colonies, the Aztecs did not head for England. Here's another first-ever event for me, the AI's using Propaganda. What? The Aztecs have SO much cash, they felt it burning a hole in their pockets and had to spend it any way they could? Good grief.

I had all my infantry and almost all my defenses in Swazi. The Aztecs did attack it, and you see one of my infantry got promoted there, but the INSTANT the infantry was promoted, with its five defensive hit points, the rest of the Aztec units chose a new target and bypassed the city. Oh that's great, just what I need.

Well, Swazi was too exposed anyway. I had no more real use for the horses. I got my value out of this city. It had done well as an extra border city. It was painful just to abandon a city with this much infrastructure, culture, etc, but these were DESPERATE times. Oh, and of course I was drafting from every city I owned on every turn now, but having lost my rubber deal just a few turns into it, all the new recruits were riflemen, which even if I survived this, could not be upgraded to infantry. Blah. In hindsight, I would have been wise to have drafted some as soon as I got rubber, but... I was playing to try to win, and could ill afford to weaken my economy by spending population to draft units, when I was struggling to catch up to the rapid AI hospitals already.

What's that you say? "Golden Age"? Oh, yeah. Forgot to mention that.

One AI tank from Lutetia wandered into my territory by itself. I moved all my artillery to a hill, bombed it to one hp, then attacked with impi's. The first two lost, promoting the tank to elite, so I hit it with more artillery, then the third impi managed to kill it off. So... I had a grand and glorious golden age, for all that was worth, me with no rubber, training rifles to fight off mechs and tanks.

Here's a shot of the victorious "third time is the charm" impi unit. Elite, no less, after its victory -- for whatever that will be worth.

Note the oil in the picture? Yep, I made it to combustion. There were two oil in the starting peninsula, both in my lands. One was in the ice in the far far north, the other in the ONE tile within range of my Ulundi. For what those were worth. I had no customers for the second oil, and never would.

The best news of this game was when my elite infantry unit held out to its last hp to DEFEAT the Aztec tank army. I jumped up from my desk cheering (literally), shouting and pumping my fist. This was personal now. This is the worst betrayal I have ever suffered at AI hands, and I wanted to spite that treacherous, backstabbing bastard any way I could. I was NOT going down to conquest defeat. I would survive this war. Never in Civ III have I been conquered by the AI. I've lost to domination, culture, space, diplomacy, but never conquest. Some choice quotes I had for the Aztecs: "With my last breath, I spit at thee." "From my cold dead hands." "Bow to you? Not in this life." "Go to Hell."

Ulundi was Fortress Zululand now. I was hitting with all the artillery I had each turn. They attacked with heavy force and were repelled, although they took out two of my precious few infantry in the process. Then they seemed to decide my other, almost undefended cities would be better targets. A vanguard force advanced on my capital, and I had rifles defending it, as the Aztecs had now cut off Ulundi and I could not move my troops around. Their first attack was repelled. Z-town lives on!

Now check out this craziness: more Propaganda attempts, and even though they were failing, they were affecting my population. Until this point, I didn't even realize this was possible!

The draft alone was devastating my economy, but my initial hopes of "stopping them at the border" were now wholly dashed, as they swarmed behind my defenses at Ulundi and aimed for the soft underbelly of my two best cities.

Also, let me take a step back and show you something else. Apparently, there is nothing to drive up weariness faster than defeat. Losing units, cities, workers, I had BAD weariness in this war, under Republic no less, after the first turn of attacks! The first turn!

You can even see that's before I abandoned Swazi, so all of that weariness was just from the pounding taken by my colonies. Wow! In the face of that, no wonder Babylon imploded SO quickly in my Epic Nine, isolated, losing cities and lots of units, etc, yet still clinging to democracy. Insane.

The weariness got so worse so quickly, I collapsed into Anarchy, which just about sealed my fate. My game was already lost, but I remained intent on surviving.

I also decided that I would hurt the Aztecs any way I could. So... instead of trying to stop them from wiping me out, which I could not do anyway, I started targetting their weakest units. (Haven't we all rolled our eyes at the AI, for attacking some useless target and ignoring the defense of their cities? Having walked in those shoes now, I will never criticize that again. There is something distinctly human about defiance for spite's own sake. It all makes perfect sense to me now!)

Yep, I went nuts. Completely wacko. I was cackling with glee, laughing, pounding my desk in triumph, and having more fun than is legal in seventeen states. Haha! The title of this screenshot is "Goes Nuts":

Those archers killed a mech infantry unit! I kid you not. I was absolutely loving it. And those rifles picked some paratroopers off a hill. All these folks wounded by my artillery, of course, and sitting on 1hp left.

Haha, you Aztec sons of bee-hatches. Take that!

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