Board 8 > An attempt at beating civ 5 with every civ

(+) Yeah! (+)

Annexation is not settlement!

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Bump, doubt I'll play tonight but I should be able to get back to it tomorrow. Pso2 diverted me
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Managed to get in a 50 turn session tonight, and quite a bit has happened! Though nothing noteworthy enough to warrant an immediate update.

After much deliberation and scouting of islands, we decided to just settle our 3rd city, Ankara, to the north of Istanbul and near the Grand Mesa. We found one island in particular that would have provided us with ample wine, but it would have taken a long time to get a settler over there. Perhaps we'll keep our eye on that landmass though.

We discovered the final civ of the game, Brazil, and man they have been building wonders like crazy. It's tough to tell what their actual situation is so far though, as I haven't been able to get near their settled lands. They did make friends with us though! So we're friends with Morocco, Russian, and Brazil. Helpful to have allies in case France turns on us.

Speaking of France, they seem to be an on-again/off-again worry, as they alternate between coveting our lands and being neutral, and being completely fine and friendly with us. However, since we have been quite successful at, *ahem*...procuring additional vessels, we have decided to park a few in the sea between us, while another few ships goes out and clears up a barbarian encampment that has been wreaking havoc on our trade relations.

Finally, civ economy wise, things have looked a good deal better than the last time. Edirne has almost no production, but it is growing like crazy. We are building some more cargo ships to help reinforce our income, and we generated a great merchant to help shore up the coffers. We maxed out the tradition policy tree which helped us with happiness, so our next step is going to be to get another worker and get some trading posts built on the vast tundras of Istanbul once that tech is finished researching. Overall though, I feel like we're on an upward trajectory!

https://i.imgur.com/4WpDrQJ.png

PS: Yes, I am still contemplating fighting france, but I'm trying to hold off and see if my navy will keep them at bay. I'm not in a great position for actual conflict at the moment.
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Went another 50 turns, pretty smooth sailing for the most part and uneventful, but I suspect things will start happening really soon. France has a navy that rivals our own and has been discovered to be plotting against us. More troublesome is that they have become allies of 2 militaristic city states that border 2 of our cities, so war would mean having to defend against them as well.

We did discover astronomy finally, so we can finally go across the ocean, and for now more of our ships have been upgraded over France's, but I don't think it'll stay that way for long. I am undecided on whether to launch the first strike and risk angering the other nations, most of whom I am friends with at the moment. But letting France get the first shot would be potentially crippling.
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We continued to build up our naval forces, might as well take advantage of that 1/3 cost. France continued to outpace us in military research so we built more caravels and the few frigates we could afford with our imported Iron from Morocco. Things looked tense for a while with France, with our navies playing chicken in the channel between Paris and Edirne, when suddenly...their navy completely backed off? Turns out they were plotting against Polynesia as well as us, so we used the downtime to...pump out more ships! And bolster our economy, but mostly pump out more ships. We used our great income from trading to win the favor of the militaristic city states that we were worried about, just in case of an attack. We held our navy around Edirne when suddenly...it happened.

They covet lands you currently own!

French fools, always a lust for power with them. They went from friendly to neutral in an instant, so I knew we had to move fast. Things became certain once a massive French navy, which I thought had headed for Polynesia, appeared right in front of, not Edirne, but Istanbul. OH CRAP. We sailed our navy full speed from Edirne toward the capital, hoping to take the French flank before they could hammer Istanbul, and they made it just in time to keep Istanbul from taking a direct siege. We ended up declaring war on France so as to get the first attacks, tried to make our prize ships perk work as well as we could. This was what the battleground looked like near the start of the war:

https://i.imgur.com/mKUQnFu.png

They're all spread out like that because they had open borders and were all bunched up around the city, but once war was declared they lost open borders and got ejected out all over the place. I had also already killed a few ships before I took this screenshot. A fierce battle ensued, but our numerical advantage proved the difference as we mopped up their split forces, and even converted quite a few ships to our cause! They then somehow had a SECOND navy come up from the cold southern waters east of Istanbul, but by that time our navy had grown even more, and they were no match for us. This is what it looked like after the battle:

https://i.imgur.com/WjuMhQP.png

We took at least 2 frigates and a few privateers to replenish our lost ships during the battle, so now we have total naval superiority. And thus, the Battle of Istanbul Harbor comes to a close, but...

https://i.imgur.com/35eXgyk.png

As you can see, the french also have some land forces trying to make landfall in Edirne. We purchased a couple of units to brace for the siege, but things will go much better once our navy recovers and we can sail it up to Paris.

PS: A reminder to take some shots of these AWFUL Babylonian settlements. These locations are such ass it's hilarious. Literally settling on snow with 2 tiles that give any resources at all.
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https://imgur.com/a/pHydxmQ

Look at these cities. Look at them!
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PARIS IS OURS! Their meager defenses were no match for our constant frigate barrages, and now their lands will make a fine addition to our own!

https://i.imgur.com/3SlC3Gh.png

I know we will raze Orleans to the ground once we capture it, as Paris' borders . can encapsulate most of that area anyway. I haven't yet decided on Lyon, there are so many truffles there, but I don't want to be contesting Polynesian borders if I can help it. We shall see.

In other news, Brazil looks like the heavy favorite thus far, they just entered the Modern era while we only recently hit Industrial. They also have a massive culture/tourism lead as is their MO. Hopefully our spies can help us do some catching up science-wise. We're really hurting culturally because there seems to be only one culture based city state from which to get extra culture from. And Brazil has already claimed all the World Wonders that would relate to...just about anything.
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Orleans and Lyon have both fallen, and the war has come to an end (for now). We decided to raze Lyon for happiness purposes, as there aren't really any extra luxuries available for trade from other civs this game, so the extra truffles aren't really worth it. We agreed to a ceasefire, but only because the French have one more outpost -- Troyes -- To the far north that needs to be eradicated to wipe out the french for good. Unfortunately, they had the favor of a city state in the direct path to that area, so we decided to just buy ourselves some time to sail some ships north unaccosted until we're ready to attack. Soon they will be gone once and for all.

The acquisitions have done wonders for our tourism and culture, as there were several works of art we plundered for ourselves, free of charge!
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Are you enjoying the Ottomans more than the others?

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I like them a lot but I also realize that this is a very favorable map type for them, I simply got lucky. Their passive is very useful this game but on the flipside, not being much land there is basically nowhere to use their special units, which saddens me some as I don't feel I've made much use of civs' special units much during this time.

France has been eradicated, but hoo boy has the political intrigue spiced up tenfold because of it. Evidently, renewing the war to take care of one last measly french outpost has caused my warmongering to "become an issue of global prominence." Mainly, the problem is that Russia denounced me (while being my friend), and that caused everyone else to join in the fun and do the same because they like russia more than me. A bunch of other civs also denounced venice so I tried to jump in and get some positive points, but most if not all the civs are guarded against me. Which I mean, I wasn't planning on attacking anyone else any time soon so I have no problem settling down for a while. Another option is going to war with Venice and taking the several city-states they've bought (Which is venice's specialty) and liberating them for a bonus to getting rid of my warmongering score. I might go that route, if other civs end up going to war with them first.
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When Venice purchases a city state via a Merchant of Venice, it permanently loses its city state status and can't be liberated, so you won't be able to gain favor with the other civs by taking them on.

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Darn, that sucks. I saw the puppeted icon over them so I thought they could be. Good to know!
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Bump, should be able to get back to it tomorrow
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The world has entered the Modern Era! We became hosts thanks to our bountiful riches allowing us the favor of the most city-states. The entire world's hate has shifted somewhat towards venice, as everyone but us has declared war on them. Unfortunately, Brazil sees us as too much of a threat, as they just declared war on us. However, we have many ships and many coins to make more ships (especially subs) so I feel confident this is a good chance to eliminate some of their coastal cities.

Also, Babylon's poor settlement strategy is coming back to bite them, they are currently at -33 happiness.
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Well things just got very interesting. I took brazil's fledgling city of... I don't even remember anymore, it had 2 citizens, and now Russia, Babylon, and Morocco have all declared war. Hey guys, I was the one who was aggressed against, k? But fine, I'LL TAKE YOU ALL ON.
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https://i.imgur.com/nb7Tnxl.png

The 2nd of their "Outer Rim" of cities has fallen and will burn to the ground like it's predecessor. Belo Horizonte is next, though I will probably pull back and upgrade those frigates to Battleships, as well as get a carrier to carry some protective triplanes before continuing the assault. meanwhile, our city-state allies have been taking a beating, so we sent a token force to the west to clean up some Brazilian ships, with Russia soon to follow. Our coffers have taken quite a beating with no trade happening currently, but luckily we are self-sufficient enough to get by without it.
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And now polynesia has joined in on the fun, so that makes Venice the sole country not at war with me right now.

Meanwhile in babylon, one of their awful cities revolted and joined me. BURN!
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I've gotta hand it to Brazil, they're resilient pests if nothing else. They just lost the last of their outer rim cities and they still aren't ready to give up. We decided to keep the city of Fortaleza as it's sitting on a coal gold mine and we've needed coal for a while. It also came with wine. Of course, now the real battle begins. All that's left is their mainland cities and one more island city, but those are extremely fortified with the Great Wall. I doubt I can crack them with the forces I have right now, and my funds, while stockpiled to a few thousand, are starting to dip into the negative in GPT. Things are about to get interesting.
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As we end our long session for the night, we have made peace with everyone but Babylon and Brazil. We are in the process of throwing money at brazil in the form of battleships to try and break Rio de Janeiro, we have 2 great admirals there to help.

We also won the World's Fair! That will help us stave off Brazil's culture, which is imperative as they are influential over 3 of the 6 countries.
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I was pretty tired when I ended last night, so now that I've got a minute I'd like to go into more detail about where things stand:

Right now, Brazil is definitely the biggest threat, as I mentioned they are influential culturally with half the world and are closing in on 5/6. However, Venice is not even close to that threshold yet, which means as long as they stay competitive in that regard then brazil cannot win culture unless venice is destroyed. Which, I'm not saying it's impossible cause most other civs besides me hate venice currently (Morocco even took over a venice-aligned city-state when they were at war) but venice seems pretty strong. If it became apparent they were in danger of folding, I could step in and try to defend. If I take Brazil's capital of Rio de Janeiro, though, it's all moot as I'm sure a great chunk of their culture/tourism is coming from that city.

For us, we're on track to have a scientific victory, or a diplomatic victory. We emptied our reserves of money to buy back 8 trade routes, so our income will start flowing in once again now that most of the world has laid off us (Morocco even declared friendship with us!). With us also being host of the world congress, it is feasible for us to eventually get the votes. Scientifically, we have an advantage in that we adopted the tier 3 freedom ideology that lets us buy spaceship parts with gold. So we have some flexibility there in what we can do with our money, if one of the victories doesn't seem feasible any longer, we can flip to the other one. Our spies also have helped us become the top nation in terms of techs researched, so we lead the way. I GUESS we could go for a domination, but there were a couple of times during the last world war in which we were almost flanked by various nations and barely held the line. I'd rather not fight the whole world again if possible.

Regarding politics of the world, Polynesia has denounced Brazil, so perhaps there will be some turning on them at some point. Meanwhile, even though Russia ceased hostilities with us, they then denounced us soon after. But all in all, things are looking alright for a victory here!
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At last, Rio de Janeiro has fallen! A whopping FIFTEEN world wonders were built in this city, and now they are ours! Brazil is now a shell of its former self.

However, the battle is not yet won. A massive squad of Brazilian Pracinhas (Their equivalent to late-game marines, very powerful units) has made towards their former capital. It will be up to our fleet of battleships to fend them off, but luckily they have reinforcements! A carrier we sent up containing a squadron of bombers has just arrived to help fight off the assault.
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The siege has been broken, and now Brazil are defenseless. We offered to end the war but they still will not have any of it, so they shall die. Sadly, I can't wipe them out completely as they own one of Babylon's far off cities, but I will wipe them from this continent. Victory for my civilization is now all but assured.
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We decided, though it would be easy to simply wipe the mainland clean and let brazil live on in their (stolen) city of Nippur, we decided to cease fire in exchange for Nippur, who we then liberated back to Babylon. And thus, in 10 turns Brazil will be finished for good once our terms expire.
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Lol, amazing what a little war can do to relationships. Polynesia hated my guts, but declared war on Brazil while we were in peace with them. Few turns later, our peace is up and we declare war on brazil again, and they flip from hostile to friendly in an instant because it meant war against a common enemy, and apparently that wiped out their "They worry about your warmongering!" nonsense.

Meanwhile, several other civs are ganging up on Venice, but that's none of my concern. Morocco chief among them seems to be losing.
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Get fucked, Brazil.

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So much for their culture victory.

So how are you going to win now? Seems like you have options

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Any way I please! TBH I am low key trying for a culture victory as the only civ left is Venice, but it is projected to be 60+ turns before i'm influential with them. I'm already starting to make spaceship parts, and I could amass enough gold given some time to get a diplomatic victory.
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And it's over! We ended up getting my first ever culture victory! I decided to keep playing for a few more turns because I was close to researching every tech (which there's an achievement for). Fun fact, did you know that you can't build a spaceship apparently if the game is already over?

Anyway, that was quite fun! Again, I acknowledge the Ottomans were probably kinda busted for that map, 1/3rd naval cost is just amazing. So who shall we play next?

Beaten the game:
Ottomans
Germany
Netherlands
Sweden
Poland
Denmark
Songhai

Failed:
Aztecs (2nd place)
Spain (Last place)

*rolls* Oh but you might be wondering, "hey you forgot to do the map type first!" Well genius me figured out a new thing to do! You see, there's all these awesome maps based on real life landmasses that I'd love to play, the problem is that there's no random setting for them. Even if I did like an rng on it, I'd still know what was picked and as we discovered with the Earth map type, if you know what it looks like then it kinda takes some fun away. So....enter my lovely wife, who I've decided is going to pick a map in secret and start the game for me so I don't know what was picked! That works right? I'll keep a log of what she picks after each game if I can't figure it out myself. ANYWAY

Rolls for real
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Harun al-Rashid of Arabia!
Alrighty, I know nothing about these guys, so let's dig in!

Passive: Ships of the Desert - Land trade routes get +50% range on them to start (which I assume stacks with caravansary later on). All trade routes spread religion twice as effectively (it'll be nice to have a religion again, I missed out as the Ottomans). Oil resources are doubled.

Unique units/buildings:
Bazaar (replacing the market) - +2 gold (on top of the normal market bonuses), +1 copy of each luxury resources near the city, +2 gold per Oil improvement and Oasis tile
Camel Archer (replacing the knight) - No penalty attacking cities (but it's ranged so w/e), move after attacking, increased ranged strength but decreased melee strength

I have to say I am VERY interested in how this will go. The Bazaar sounds amazing, any luxury I get near a city with one basically gives me a free copy to trade away for another resource to help with happiness. The gold is just a bonus. For the archer, the only other base mounted archer is the chariot archer which is much weaker, so having a ranged unit this strong and fast is great, especially cause it can hit and run, thus keeping it from being bombarded by an enemy cities the following turn. Honestly though, the game winners here just seem like the extra copies of luxuries and the extra land trade range, those feel like the most useful boons here.

I cannot play right now as my wife is currently not home, but look forward to the start sometime soon! I know I am!
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And we have begun! We start out in a pretty good spot, we take a few turns scouting out the best location before settling on going for a coastal city. There's plenty of silver around (including the tile we settled on), some marble, a river, and a pretty diverse tileset, this should make quite a fine capital. Long live Mecca!

https://i.imgur.com/AfViYil.png
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We discover some of the usual suspects are playing along with us. France, Russia, and Poland are all in this game. Is there something I can do to affect which random civs play cause I feel like I see these guys all the time, and never see some other civs.

In any case, Mecca is having more trouble than expected growing, food was short for a while but it's getting better now thanks to social policies. We just founded our 2nd city, Medina, to the west of us. There is much better food there, as well as decent production. Russia settled northwest of that but hopefully they're far enough away that they don't get mad at us. We settled at like the exact same time. Meanwhile France is bottlenecked far to the south. Poland has to be on a different landmass because their 2nd city was founded on our mainland but it looks like they came from the east and just got Optics very fast.

https://i.imgur.com/w7HALtq.png

Edit: Yep, russia covets lands we currently own, though it's in dark red so hopefully it won't turn into a big deal. I'll have to keep an eye on them for sure.
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As we end our session for the night at a whopping 168 turns, we still haven't found any other civs. The continent we're on is pretty big and we just have one trireme, so it's just now made it to Russia's side and hopefully will find more civs there. I know one of them is Rome because a notification came up that they took another civ's capital already. So that's interesting! There is a cluster of city-states to the east in the seas near Mecca, and another peninsula to the south east has another quartet of city-states. Our trade is limited to them for now by sea, as the peninsula makes it impossible to wrap around the whole continent.

Our economy is brisk, but France informed us that Russia is plotting against us. We are friends with both them and Poland, so I hope it doesn't come to blows, but I've started making military units just in case. I even avoided taking land that could be theirs just to make sure I don't get on their bad side! We also founded our 3rd city, and likely our last original city, Damascus. It's going to be mainly a production city, with lots of hills and sheeps, and a small source of Iron which we like to have, as relying entirely on imports for strategic resources is not usually a good thing. Hopefully once we discover new civs we can get rid of some of this silver, we have SO MUCH SHINY.
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Arabia is ridiculous.

Bazaar is amazing with its additionnal resources.
Camel Archers are insane: Ranged + movement after attacking, means you can just kill your enemies (including cities) without casualties if you are careful.

The better land trade routes are probably their least useful trait, and even those aren't bad at all.

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We discovered Astronomy! Finally, we can get exploring.

And just like that, not far away, are the rest of the civs. We meet the Shoshone, Rome, and India in short order. We also found that the missing 8th civ was Byzantium, who appear to have been wiped from the game by Rome who is puppeting their capital. Seems there's some beef between them and the Shoshone, so it'll be interesting to see how that goes. Regardless, we wasted no time trading our plentiful silver for a variety of resources.
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Camel Archers are probably the most insane thing in the game. Just obscenely powerful.

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https://i.imgur.com/yHH2tum.png

Here have an image of some clouds! In all seriousness, you can see Rome's capital there, the Shoshone are directly south of them, and India further southwest.

India and Shoshone both declared war on Rome, and the Shoshone took the rome-aligned city-state of Sydney. A convenient excuse to land-grab, no doubt. We are friendly with everybody right now so we're staying out of it.

As for our own empire, we are just rolling in dough right now. We also finally got off the ground culturally, and we generated two great scientists in quick succession so we sent them far north to Damascus and created labs there in the tundra, away from any potential warring. I've decided that Mecca will be the manufacturing and gold city, Damascus will be research (helped by the Observatory, only gettable if you're next to a mountain), and Medina will be our great person generator. I love when I'm able to compartmentalize my empire like this.

Meanwhile, while things have not escalated yet, I am keeping a very close eye on my neighbors. Russia and Poland remain good friends but do have rather substantial forces, and France has been plotting against me and did covet my lands for a time. We're trying to catch up in terms of military research but we are focusing on building some camel archers and musketmen as a deterrent. We have the money to afford it after all.
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Camel archers are the best unit in the game.

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Rome is getting the smackdown laid on them between Russia and the Shoshone. They've lost 3 cities, they don't look long for the world. Meanwhile, France is definitely after us as they tried to embargo us in the world congress (and failed, thankfully.) We responded in kind by putting them up for embargo, but they're amassing forces near Medina's border, so we are fortifying our position.

Meanwhile we got screwed over on coal big time, so we're gonna have to rely on imports entirely for the time being. It sucks, but one of the benefits of not being a warmonger is that some other civs are more than willing to export some to us.
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And so it begins. France denounced us, we denounced them, and that set most of the world against France because they like me better. France has declared war on us. Meanwhile Russia is guarded for some reason? Our ideology certainly didn't help matters but they denounced us for some reason. Now they covet lands and wonders that we own, I hope that doesn't escalate because I am not equipped for a war on two fronts right now.

https://i.imgur.com/yNJebUq.png

Finally those camel archers see some action!
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I remember that in pro Civ 5, people would often gang up on Arabia just to take them out before camel archers come into play, because they're that much of a threat.

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I feel like I always get screwed on at least one of the later resources.

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The battle for Tours was fierce, but finally, we emerged victorious, marking an end to the French-Arabian War. We were going to keep Tours to help us clear out the lake that separated it from the mainland of France, but after being taken, taken back, and taken again, and with most of its land pillaged to sustain my units, we decide to just raze it to the ground.

Meanwhile, I will be surprised if the Shoshone do not win this game. They are well on their way to dominating the eastern continent, having now made a blatant land grab war against India and taking one of their cities. However, having to worry about the possibility of war with Russia, I am in no position to intervene, especially against someone far ahead in military technology. They already have aircraft and we do not. We're gonna do our best though.
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Rome has officially been wiped from the game, as the Shoshone continues their offensive. India is down to one puppeted city-state. It's too bad everyone on my continent has swerved into being rather standoffish with me, working together we might be able to beat them. I know for a fact that the Shoshone are plotting against Russia, because they approached me about going to war with them. Perhaps if they declare war, I can do so in response and try to rally the rest of the countries into it.
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Well so much for that, Russia has declared war on us. Time to swarm them with bombers thanks to my double oil resources!
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Sounds like you need to start working against the Shosone.

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Those Russian fools didn't know what they were up against. We easily beat back their attack thanks to building some triplanes to intercept their bombers, and promptly took their city of Novgorod. Not only that, their capital city is completely undefended, they clearly didn't anticipate us pushing into their territory. The Shoshone declared war on them as well and promptly owns the entire continent, so soon Russia will be dealt with on both fronts. Poland remains a concern, however.

Working against the Shoshone is going to be a bit tough because there's such a vast ocean between us, but if I can get our continent settled down soon, I am considering making a march over to their and seeing what I can do. We aren't super far behind in research at the moment, so I'm hoping these extra cities from Russia will help us keep pace. Our economy is suffering some because a key city-state, Manila (who is allies with Russia), keeps intercepting our trade ships at the turning point of the continent, so we're limited to just a few city states at the moment, but we're still making money and have about 2000 gold stored up for an emergency. It'll be worth making them our allies once this war is done.
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And then there were four. India has been mercifully put out of its misery by the Shoshone, and Russia has been wiped out by France and I. We took Moscow with some difficulty, and from there it just snowballed out of control for them. We ended up bribing france into the war where they promptly took two of Russia's cities, after we negotiated the rest of their cities to be handed over to us as a cease-fire. Now it's just Arabia, France, Poland, and the Shoshone.

But there's no rest for the weary, as france has eyes set on Poland. We agreed to go to war in 10 turns. While I really should be trying to figure out what to do about the Shoshone, this is a good chance to keep France off our backs and get rid of another potential rival. We still have plenty of forces leftover from the Russia campaign, I feel confident we can put them to work in this upcoming war while building up our naval and air forces for an overseas attack against the Shoshone.

There's no going back now.
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The war with Poland went swimmingly, we cleared them from the mainland continent, and they surrendered all of their worst cities to us, leaving only their 3 main cities on their mainland. We're keeping one and razing the rest.

Then, the Shoshone approached us with a war againts france, and...we accepted. France didn't help us at all in the Polish War, and they've been plotting against us and not so subtly marching forces around their outpost cities they got from Russia. I would relish this chance to be rid of this immediate threat.

Victory-wise, I don'tt hink there's a chance of beating the Shoshone in a fight. They have so many troops and are superior research-wise, so we're banking it all on either diplomatic or adopting the freedom social policy that allows us to buy spaceship parts. We are finishing up the apollo program now, so I'm hoping that perhaps what we lack in research, we can gain back in the non-existent production time from straight buying the parts rather than building them.
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I didnt even know you can buy spaceship parts.

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Normally you cannot, but if you adopt the freedom ideology out of the 3 available, one of the tier 3 policies allows you to then buy spaceship parts for gold. Order also has a tier 3 that allows you to use Great Engineers on spaceship parts in progress (normally also not allowed).
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