CHRONICLES

RBCiv Epic Eight

It was bad enough that Egypt declared on me before I wanted to deal with them, but a couple turns later, she brought Toku into the war with her.

Since I feared more civs aligning against me, and I also thought it would serve my interests at this point to pit the AI's against one another, AND since Egypt had made the breakthrough on Chemistry already (I saw that as I dialed her up about her intrusion into my territory), I decide to give away Chemistry to each of the remaining civs to pull them into alliance with me vs these two.

First, China:

Then also England and Rome. I took shots of those, too, but they are redundant so I deleted them. It was pretty much the same deal each time.

The war went slowly for me. I was still using my meager forces to try to finish off the Zulus, and to fend off the minor Egyptian incursions. I massed my cannon at Z-town, but turn after turn they proved ineffective! Arrgh. I did nab a hp or two off the defenders, but not enough to want to send in my units vs their defense bonus. I took off a population or two, but mostly my shots just missed. Time passed, and I started to train/upgrade to cavs once the tech came in.

Then a good break for me: one of the Zulu towns captured by the Chinese flipped back to Shaka, and I took it over. I also took the other Zulu small town. Why? Because the last town of a civ will not go into resistance at all when captured. So if you are certain you are capturing the rest of a civ, it may pay to save the biggest/best city for last, so you get no resisters and have a better chance at saving the infrastructure inside. Well, my attack on that fishing village to the south actually went badly and I had to bring reinforcements. (I had awful luck vs the Zulus all game here). So that was even more delay.

Finally, I finished them off:

You can also see that Japan's completion of the Lighthouse let them sneak up the sea connect to the West Isle and settle three cities. Interesting that the civ closest to that bit of land got the means to go grab it. I will be interested to see if any players did this.

With most of my infrastructures already built before the war with Babylon, except for bank and uni, I got Wall Street completed and universities built in my core cities around this time, and the former Bab locations are starting to pick it up by now, too, on basic buildings. So I had a number of cities on cavalry and musket production at this time. The war with Egypt raged on, but my alliance with China mostly kept them occupied in the south, allowing me to leave lower garrisons at Zimbabwe and concentrate force on the north.

My first Egyptian acquisition was their incense town on the north coast. Shortly after taking that, I razed their main city on my western border. I didn't have the need to take it, it was too culturally strong to be attractive. So I satisfied myself by hurting them instead, to slow them down. They resettled the site and I allowed it, waiting for the city (Elephantine) to grow to size 2 then taking the rebuilt city, which had only one foreign national and no cultural memory.

While waiting for that city, I took an expeditionary force of four cavs to strike at Memphis. This attack failed. I lost two cav, and the others retreated with 1 hp each. I had a musket occupying the iron tile on the mountain (mountain pass, with a road) above Elephantine. This smallish mountain range separated core Egypt from its eastern holdings, but it also provided them a good defensive barrier. So I took control of the choke point in the mountains, at that iron, and just held out there. They attacked with several longbows and actually drove me out of there once, but I returned.

My second attempt to attack Memphis razed the city, effectively breaking the back of Egypt. They still had their capital, but I'd drilled a hole right into the middle of their nation and they were on the decline. Right after that, I occupied and disconnected their saltpeter tile at Giza, and they were no longer able to train new muskets. The rest was mopping up, and it was at this time that that old knight unit, one of only a few elites I had yet produced despite heavy warring, popped my first leader, Washington.

Steam power is coming, and you can see my forces closing on Giza from the south. I named the unit "George's Boys" in honor of General Washington, and he went back to Elephantine to form up a great army. I dropped three cavs into the army and got it a victory, then swapped one of my cities over to the Epic, due shortly. Also note on the minimap, an English colony on East Isle, to the north of the continent. I had a ship racing up there with a settler and a couple of units on board.

With that success, I shifted most of my southern garrison northward to press Egypt toward oblivion. Earlier, China and England had kept to their alliances with me, but cowardly Rome broke the deal and had made peace with Egypt. Now they backstabbed me again, the turn AFTER I moved my cav garrisons out of the south, moving in for a dastardly sneak attack:

Seeing no other possible explanation for this incursion by three Roman knights, I dialed up Caesar. "Why are those Roman forces on American soil? Oh? Just routine maneuvers? Uh huh. Hey, how's about you sell me a few techs on gpt credit here? Oh swell, thanks." Printing Press, Democracy, Navigation, at a fairly steep gpt price. The risk of "swindling the swindler" is that if you read it wrong, and he's NOT about to sneak attack you or changes his mind, you get stuck with a huge awkward bill. On the other hand, if you guess right, you get a low-cost return to make some kind of lemonade out of THIS sort of lemon:

Well blah. Three turns to completion of the courthouse, now I have to start that over, and I also lost my temple there. I was so concerned with the Romans possibly bringing a force larger than my units in the area could handle, that I signed China and England to alliances vs Rome, while renewing deals vs Egypt and Japan respectively (one each with each ally). I would soon REGRET these alliances, but more on that shortly. Check the minimap again, you can see that I lost the race to get the second spot up there, and had to settle for a squeezed spot between the other two, with bad pressure. That was an Egyptian colony that beat me, too, so I now have to race my ship home, load up troops and get back up there to attack.

With China now fighting Rome, and poor Lizzie torn between both Rome and Japan (and about to start losing), I was freed from any further distraction from that direction and soon pressed on to finish off Egypt.

George's Boys got upgraded to cav, and strangely enough they lost their asterisk. (Does that mean they could produce another leader?? It didn't happen, so I can't say for sure, but it does appear that way). You can also see that Giza is now gone. And no, that fort on the iron is NOT empty, it just isn't showing you the elite musket standing guard there. Below, you see General Lee popped the very turn after the Epic finished.

I used him to rush Smith's in Zimbabwe, which by now had been thoroughly reinforced. One advantage of scienfitic civs after the new patch is getting that now-PRICEY Nationalism tech for free, most of the time. No such luck here, so I'm still using muskets, beelining to industrialization and replaceable parts.

With only pikes being built now by Egypt, it was easy to run over their remains. I captured rather than razed the last four Egyptian mainland cities, nabbing some wonders: Bach's, Sistine, and Cop's. My forces returned to the island, three cavs and another musket, and took the last Egyptian settlement.

The problem I had now was: I'm locked into a long alliance with China! Woops.

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