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

(+) Yeah! (+)

Since our citizens are thrilled with our empire thus far, we decided to expand and gain some more resources. Thanks to the friendliness of our neighboring city-states, we feel comfortable enough to settle between them, though it will be a bit of a tight fit. Welcome the city of Vijayanagara!

Meanwhile, we discovered Spain to the Northeast, which leaves just one civ undiscovered. We also have another tract of land to the immediate east across the strait, though we will wait to see if England claims it by the time we're ready to settle it, as we don't want to upset them.
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Got in a short session today, we managed to claim the open land to our west across the strait, next to Ur, so we should be able to get a couple more luxuries with that land! Pataliputra is our 4th city now, I don't yet know if we will expand any more.
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After a long voyage, one of our ships has discovered the last civ: Byzantium! They are on the northeastern most part of the map.

Our economy is starting to bustle, our trade routes are able to reach several other civs and are providing us with much gold, and the arts are flourishing as well! We are even in the process of constructing the Sistine Chapel.

Meanwhile, there may be some unrest brewing on the eastern continent, Siam approached us about a war with England but we declined, but then Byzantium told us that England is plotting against us. I can sort of understand as they may be jealous of our city we just settled on their continent, but it was open for a long time, I feel they had plenty of time to settle it if they wished. Nevertheless, we are monitoring their activity for now.
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We have befriended Songhai, the Iroquois, and Byzantium in short order, hopefully this peace lasts! Though we are a bit irritated that a few turns before completing the Sistine Chapel, Byzantium finished it, but alas. At least the arts are flourishing throughout the world. Our economy is flourishing as well, we got a Great Merchant, and the funding combined with our previous wealth has allowed us to sign four research agreements in quick succession.

Meanwhile, England became host of the World Congress, so it's good that we're friends with them!

-10 turns later-

Sadly, it did not. Siam desires England's land, so they declared war. Shameful really, I had hoped we would be above petty land-grabbing, but it appears I will have to keep an eye on them. They've even settled near our borders.

-a bit later-
England's outpost city of Newcastle has fallen to Siam, but it was well away from the main English empire, so hopefully they will be able to withstand Siam's assault when it counts. Even worse, the new vote for the host of the WC went to Siam as they are friends with many city-states. I find them loathesome, but we will have to bear it for now.

Meanwhile, this is getting tiresome, as Byzantium has now blocked us from building the Uffizi while we were building it. Even I have limits to my patience.
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Emeraldegg posted...

Our economy is flourishing as well, we got a Great Merchant,

:(

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I don't understand why a frowny face for that
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Finally got some time to play, got up to turn 300, not a lot is happening in the world but there is quite a lot of good things happening within our empire! We have the most tourism in the world right now, and we built a couple of world wonders in Hermitage and Big Ben. We adopted the Order ideology and got 33% off of purchasing buildings, combined with Big Ben is giving us nearly 50% off. That will increase even more once we finish up the Commerce policy tree, allowing our strong economy to help rapidly expand our empire. We are also close to researching hospitals, which will boost our food production which at this point is badly needed. Our cities are a decent size but not really blossoming in population.

The only conflict happening is the ongoing war between England and Siam, which seems to be favoring neither side at the moment. Both sides have landed somewhat weak blows against some border cities against each other, but that's it. The lack of conflict and friendship with nearly every civ has allowed us to keep only a token military and put our funds towards infrastructure and research agreements.
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Should find some time tomorrow to play, busy week at work
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Siam is becoming quite an annoying thorn in our side. Not only do they rule the world congress and have the funds to back it up (a whopping 18000 gold in their treasury) but now they have proposed an embargo on us! I have been willing to overlook their war with our friend England (who just lost another, not so important city to Siam), but the time as come to deal with Siam. We are officially building our first major military in our civilization's history. Once we have built a substantial force, we will take Siam by surprise and show them that we are not to be trifled with despite our peaceful ways.

Also we have 69 happiness.
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We joined the war too late to save England's capital, but we did manage to liberate a major city of theirs, Hastings. Unfortunately, Siam's military is too great for us to take head on, we not only had to abandon an offensive on London (England's captured capital), but have now had to pivot and protect our city of Pataliputra. Luckily, we have just enough naval and aircraft to help beat back this offensive, but we also lost 2 city-states in this effort. Hopefully we can liberate Ur soon enough, but Bucharest will be under Siamese control for quite some time. For now, though, we must focus on keeping our troops fresh enough to stem the tide before we can go on the offensive. On the bright side, we have a submarine and they do not, so we are keeping the southern flank under control with just that sub.

https://i.imgur.com/lGzRwXf.png
This is the state of the board after the initial war declaration. We soon retook hastings and made north towards our own city after Siam had too much air support to make a dent in London.

https://i.imgur.com/NMTUxa6.png
This is the vanguard of the Siamese army. I know it looks bad, but since this picture, we have managed to stay their forces with the combined might of army, navy, and air force, as well as our city's natural defenses.
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Emeraldegg posted...

I don't understand why a frowny face for that

Great Merchants share a great people points timer with Great Scientists and Great Engineers, most importantly scientists, so getting a great merchant delays further Great Scientists for a relatively minimal gain.

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Oh I didn't realize that, I thought their meters all increased separately after use! Thanks for pointing that out, I'll keep that in mind going forward.
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This war is much tougher than I anticipated, Siam's massive empire allows for a near-continuous resupply of troops; at one stretch their troops were actually increasing despite the casualties they were taking from our bombers every turn. The City-state of Ur has changed hands no fewer than 10 times, and just when we thought we had finally broken through and secured it for good, Siam began fielding anti-air units that rendered our war bomber fleet vulnerable. They've also seemingly focused all their energy on us and left England alone, as there has been no further action on the southern border. In addition, they have been bombing our forces just as fiercely as we were bombing theirs, and their technology exceeds ours, for the time being. Our interceptors are doing well but there's just no end to their aircraft. Finally, no other nation seems interested in joining the war, despite nearly everyone else having denounced Siam.

Therefore, since it seems we will make no progress simply fighting against a wall at Ur, we have switched to a different strategy. While most of our land forces hold the main front between Ur and Pataliputra, we have sent our newly-researched battleship fleet nearby and begun bombarding their city of Nakhon Sawan, as most of their aircraft is stationed there. If we can land a couple of infantry units on the shores just as the city is at its weakest, take it from Siam, and use our aircraft and ships to clear the immediate area of hostiles and prevent it from being retaken, that will give us a major staging area from which to better assault Siam from, as well as just a generally good tract of land for our empire.
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You can also take cities with melee ships like the privateer or ironclad, which might be a little easier than doing it with infantry.

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Sadly, this city is one tile off the coast so it is inaccessible to such ships. I was taking Ur with Ironclads, but unfortunately liberating it means you lose the ship you took it with so eventually I ran out anyway.
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Our plan to capture Nakhon Sawan went reasonably well! We captured it as intended but unfortunately had it taken back, which forced us to recapture it. That wasn't difficult, but it did greatly reduce the population we had to work with, sadly. We intended to remain at war with Siam and recapture Ur, but their land forces outpaced our somewhat range-limited naval fleet and threatened to retake Nakhon for good, so we were forced to end the campaign for now in order to give ourselves time to rebuild our forces.

In the meantime, we are actually reasonably set up for a culture victory if siam does not get a diplomatic victory first! We are influential with 2 cultures, and have gotten the 3rd tier order policy that gives us bonus tourism to civs with less happiness than us (aka everybody).

...so now real talk, can someone explain air combat to me? I thought I understood it but to be honest, my forces were getting hammered by bombers the whole time, mainly my city. I had no fewer than 6 triplanes against like 6-7 next-tier bombers at any given time, upgraded to fighter jets midway through, and although I don't expect one hit kills I would have thought their bombers were taking damage but it was literally every turn my city was taking multiple bombings that kept its health perpetually in the red, to the point it seemed like their bombers had been taking no damage at all from my interceptions.. Am I missing something here?
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As soon as the peace treaty expired, we resumed our offensive against those filthy Siamese. We took Ur in one turn by storm and in the process eradicated the aircraft they stationed there, and liberated the city-state. Then we set our sights on the pivotal city of Martaban, which served as a key point for their frontal army, as it's presence prevented our navy from venturing closer to the coast, and our army from making meaningful progress inland. After several turns of naval bombardment and aerial bombings to clear out the surrounding troops, we managed to take Martaban, but unfortunately were forced to raze it, as it was immediately liberated and then re-captured. At that point, it had just one population left, and our ground forces available should it have been liberated again were vastly outnumbered by an oncoming onslaught, so we decided it was more valuable gone, rather than spending the time trying to protect it. At least now, our troops have more room to maneuver.

As far as air combat, I guess being a tier below really did make a lot of difference, because we had noticeable gains in the air battle this go around. We were getting notifications that we were intercepting, as opposed to last time our city just eating it.
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As our campaign against Siam continues, we turn our attention to two immediate targets: The former English city of Newcastle (north of Nakhon Sawan) and the city of Suphanburi. Newcastle is the only Siamese city north of us on the eastern continent, so eliminating and liberating that will allow us to have a unified front, while Suphanburi would be our first major acquisition in siamese mainland (Sawan is pretty much on the outskirts.)

The battle for Newcastle was over reasonably quick. We simply sailed our battleship fleet over and pounded them into submission, quick and easy. Then, we split up our fleet and sailed some over to our mainland to take care of some siamese outposts, a couple taht were on the islands above and one directly to the north of Delhi that had been hounding us for some time. Those crusades were also successful! Suphanburi, on the other hand, is proving difficult. We did take it over, but it was then taken back from us as they had more forces in reserve hidden in their territory. We should be able to take it again with our sizable air force, but it is a ferocious battle. While this is happening, we have a couple of submarines that have happened upon a modest navy to the south, near London, so they are scuttling those ships and whittling their numbers down. With some aid from our bombers, the fleet was made short work of. After Suphanburi is taken and secured, we will likely march our army over to the former city-state of Bucharest so we can liberate it, and at the same time sail our navy down to London since our navy can reach that. Once those two cities are liberated, we will likely stop this campaign as long as siam will allow us. Mainly because we finally can see the whole map and are able to see just how vast the Siamese empire is.

As far as game-wise, the endgame is rapidly approaching. Most civs have researched the Apollo Program, and a few civs are culturally dominant over a few other civs as well. There are regular votes for World Leader, and Siam has that on lock for the time being thanks to their massive city-state lead, but I noticed their income has dropped steeply since earlier on this game, so perhaps some of that control can be wrested back. They definitely aren't close to a diplomatic win yet. I suspect this will come down to a research victory first, as without world congress majority it's hard to get a pass for a world ideology (and therefore a culture victory).

https://i.imgur.com/VgWlVfK.png
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At last, after standing up to Siam, the other nations have seen our example and have joined the war! Though it is not my desire to incite global conflict, I believe it's necessary to keep the peace. It didn't help that Siam denounced pretty much all of them. England spent the time we bought them rebuilding their forces, and with our help they quickly retook their capital of London! Meanwhile, on the other end of map, Spain swarmed and eradicated the last Siamese outpost on that side of the world. We managed to keep hold finally of the Siamese city of Suphanburi, so the next targets are the former English city of York, and the former city-state of Bucharest and liberate them both. After that, we may decide to end the war and let the other nations take over, we have extended ourselves very far and our people are weary I am sure.

https://i.imgur.com/37ioJbf.png

https://i.imgur.com/g7AwWAN.png
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The war with Siam is now over, at last. They have sufficiently been put in their place. After we liberated York and Bucharest, we actually decided to press on and take the remainder of their coastal cities for ourselves in short order, razing the smaller ones and keeping the larger ones. After that, we ended the war, so that we may scale back our military and replenish our funds. Have a fleet of 7 battleships with 4 range that can attack twice a turn will do that for you.

The space race is officially on, with ourselves and Byzantium having one part each. World Congress and culture are too far away, so the winner will be the one who successfully builds the spaceship first.

https://i.imgur.com/to7P8Zk.png

Tak And Uthai Thani were razed, while Chainat, Muang Saluang, and Nakhon Si Thammarat have become part of the glory of India. The other nations of the world are carrying on the crusade against Siam, but our part is done, and we may rest.
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Thankfully, this game is finally nearing an end, it's mostly to the point where I'm just clicking end turn now. We are 2 space parts ahead of Byzantium so it's looking like we will win the space race!

An interesting thing just happened and totally screwed over the Iroquois. They were very unhappy with their ideology and switched to Freedom...which they were then even more unhappy with, and the very next turn one of their cities revolted because they prefer our ideology of Order, so...I guess we have the city of Akwesasme now! Very unusual, never seen that happen.
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And we've done it! Victory through space with India achieved!

With that being said, it's obvious through my more infrequent play that I've been getting burnt out and have other things I've been playing more, so what I'm gonna do now is take the month off where I don't have to force myself to play, then I'm gonna pick back up refreshed at the start of the new year! Big wars always take the energy out of me since they proceed so slowly.
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Bump
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War takes too long, agreed -- I try to go for the least amount of military presence possible, just enough to deter invasion.

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