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Post by hornet on Feb 9, 2009 16:57:55 GMT
You're so much better at these stories than St... no, hang on, I've got that wrong somewhere.
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Post by coffers on Feb 9, 2009 17:07:27 GMT
Oh dear all is not well.
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Post by Sonic on Feb 9, 2009 23:44:14 GMT
It looks that way doesn't it.
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Post by Moo on Feb 10, 2009 9:27:27 GMT
Lo! A very pissed off Angel of Death returneth to seek his vengeance! And the Angel decreed unto the gathering "Tis but a scratch!" and slew the gathering, their families and the little scientist fellas who were making Phoenix blood.
And the Angel of Death was pleased. Not just because of the slaying, nor that he had "two turns" in the sweepstake, but because he got a 8/1 in the 3:30 at Thirsk.
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Post by Mr Bismarck's Electric Donkey on Feb 10, 2009 22:09:23 GMT
What happened then? Well, after the borders stabilised there was a clear no-man's-land between our new territory and the shrunken Kuriotates' land as their borders had receded when I'd burned down some of their cities. In this gap there were quite a few units marching about and all of the squares have usually got someone or other loafing about looking for something to do. My favourite of these units were the pair of Calabim catapults who'd hauled themselves thousands of miles, one space at a time, only to get to the front about half an hour after the declaration of peace. So I got used to see people there. Used enough that after about fifteen turns I stopped paying attention. Then fate appeared to tap me on the shoulder and point out my impending doom. Combat in Civ is done between the strongest unit in each of the combatant's squares - the strongest unit "in the stack" - however there are certain units, like assassins, that can attack the weakest unit in the stack, so that you can try to mount surgical strikes against the disciple and medical units without having to kill the Angel of Death, for example, to get at them. So if you switch between assassin and conventional units then all enemy stacks will flip between showing you the strongest and weakest units in all opponent stacks. As I was moving about between my units on the mainland, I noticed that a couple of the units hanging about in the no man's land now had angels attached. This prompted me to take a closer look and that prompted me to realise I was completely boned. It seems that the Basium had been busy and had replaced the Kevin I'd killed earlier with two more, plus a bunch of other upper-echelon angelic units and they'd been joined by the cream of the Kuriotate forces which now included musketeers and canons. Which is nice. What follows is desperation. The Combine park two huge armies right on my border in the north and the south of the mainland and then Cardith Lorda declares war officially and the armies cross the borders. With the additional technological advances the combine have made I just don't match up well any more, as I'm putting swordsmen and archers against angels and muskets - the Elves can't use gunpowder for ground forces for game concept reasons that I no longer like. I try to cover for my downfall in quality with a blanket of quantity and churn out simply hundred of mercenary units and start my adepts cranking out spectres. Now a stack of eight or nine units in Civ is considered a large army. If you get into double figures then you're showing off. The army I throw out has 22 units in it. And they all die. Thankfully their death isn't in vain, as they do blunt the northern Combine attack, but in the south the smaller mercenary force I send out barely slows the angels at all. After contemplating this set of events, I pull in my borderline a little, throw out a sacrificial screen in the south of troops who'll thin out the enemy attack by bleeding on people and turn my production back to gold, as it's clear that this is going to get very expensive. In the north now, the Combine pause to take breath and recover from killing most of my mercenaries and in the south, they fall into my trap. They smash aside the screen that I put out, but any unit that fights the screen cannot advance beyond the field of battle, whereas the units that move with them, that didn't fight, are free to push on. Behind my screen is a gap, left deliberately, and the Combine forces advance into it, but this thins their forces by elongating them across two squares and while the front of the Combine army prepares to attack my second line, my assassins go in and slaughter the line of Combine troops that had attacked my screen and were now left standing on their own. This had a double benefit immediately after, as my assassins were unable to safely recross the lines back to safety after attacking, so I pushed them further west in the hope of getting them out of the way, but it didn't work as the northern army had refitted and moved south to smash them - the benefit mentioned was that this move south opened the northern coast road completely. There wasn't a single unengaged Combine unit on it and so I broke out the war chest again, bought in another ton of mercenaries and pushed them down that coast road to the suddenly unprotected Kuriotate city of Avelorn, which we took and promptly burned to the ground. Of course, the next turn, the former Northern Combine army turned around from its routing of my assassins and smashed these relatively inexperienced forces underfoot, but this victory couldn't rebuild their city. This was the point where my scientists rode to the rescue, a little, with a technology I renamed "Stargate" as now I can send any one unit from any city to any other city each turn. The one unit through per turn limitation meant that I couldn't load up the cities on the mainland very quickly, but if I could spread units out then I could send ten units from ten different cities to one target city each turn. Combined with the Blood of the Phoenix wonder, the Stargate turned into something of a lifesaver, as any killed unit reappeared in my capital the first time it was slain and could be sent back to the front without the need to use my navy, which was having its arse handed to it again. This only slowed the bleeding though, as I was losing as many as ten units a turn, and could only return two or three from various cities. Eventually I had bled dry my Home Island of all of its forces, meaning that any landing by the Combine would be practically undefended. On the mainland, the Combine forces have split to north and south again and are now bringing up a third army pushing toward the centre and I've no choice but to just push everything in. All my mercenaries go in, all my heroes, my Crusaders, Swordsmen, Nyxkin, Assassins, Scouts and even Priors and Acolytes... we lose a couple of cities in the south and retake them through sheer numbers and then repeat the trick in the north when we lose both Telek and Tekon and then retake them again by just have ten times the number of units of the Combine. But now almost all of our money has gone. The cities on Barbarian Island are all miserable because of the blockade that has cut them off from our Home Island. I've slowly been pushing the heroes in more and more and Alan the Assassin fell a few turns ago and Valin Phanuel also died in recapturing Telek. When Sphene is caught behind enemy lines and killed, we've really got very little left. We've killed scores of Combine units, including two more Angels of Death, but we've lost ten times more men, including all of our hero units which are literally irreplaceable. A sneaky trade offer to the Kuriotate gives me a glimpse of their bank accounts and it seems that they're drained of cash too and their people are incredibly war weary. I ask what they want to conclude a peace and they ask for 800 gold pieces and the former Khazad capital of Khazak and I really can't say no. I have only 870 gold coins and I'm defending 9 cities on the mainland with 14 units, none of whom are especially powerful and while I've bled the Combine's northern and southern armies white, their newly involved central army is virtualy unscathed and I'm on the verge of losing Kuliar and Swethen if I don't stop the war soon. I click the "Yes" button and watch the very centre of my continental holdings change from white to pink. :moop: I have a feeling now that I'll be doing very well indeed if I manage to rebuild my armies before the Combine are back for more.
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Post by DC on Feb 10, 2009 23:23:02 GMT
You're not very good at this, I rate you :moose:
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Post by Moo on Feb 11, 2009 9:17:07 GMT
I agree with the Midlander. Also... Seven points off the playoffs. Porbably little consolation, as it seems to be a grind for you, but I'm enjoying this story. KUTGBoaGfYW! This.
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Post by coffers on Feb 11, 2009 9:42:02 GMT
I agree with Moo; very entertaining. :thumb:
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Post by hornet on Feb 11, 2009 10:41:23 GMT
The die was cast when you stopped advancing techs in order to build up your cash - you were gambling on giving all the other civs a long-term advantage in exchange for a chance to make significant short-term gains. When your military thrust was cut short you were in trouble, and every turn of peace from there was increasing everyone else's tech-lead over you. Bloody UN. Cracking read, though. Defeat is always more fun than victory.
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Post by Mr Bismarck's Electric Donkey on Feb 11, 2009 16:08:28 GMT
I agree with the Midlander. Also... Seven points off the playoffs. Porbably little consolation, as it seems to be a grind for you, but I'm enjoying this story. KUTGBoaGfYW! This. Hoist on my own petard there.
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Post by Mr Bismarck's Electric Donkey on Feb 11, 2009 16:18:34 GMT
The die was cast when you stopped advancing techs in order to build up your cash - you were gambling on giving all the other civs a long-term advantage in exchange for a chance to make significant short-term gains. When your military thrust was cut short you were in trouble, and every turn of peace from there was increasing everyone else's tech-lead over you. Bloody UN. Cracking read, though. Defeat is always more fun than victory. There was definitely a flavour of that, but I really have hit the right hand edge of my tech tree now. The Elven races have a fairly fast developing tech tree early on and get some neat stuff like the Hidden Nationality that lets you mess with other people, but there are some down sides in the end game. Primarily, these are the inability to use gunpowder on the ground and the over-reliance on heroes that this causes. Now that the Kuriotates are able to put cannon and muskets into the field I have to dramatically crank up the number of units required to achieve anything. Fighting in the open is bad enough, but trying to assault a town defended by cannons is a bloodbath. My strategy for as long as I can remember has been to throw tons of mercenaries at any spot I want to attack until it's worn down from killing all my men and then hit it hard and fast with heroes. Sadly, the desperation of the last war meant I wasn't able to pick and choose where and how to fight - it was all hands to the pumps - and I ended up losing Valin Phanuel and Sphene because they had to go in on enemy forces that hadn't been noticeably softened up first. So now I've got no really powerful units and no heroes. Which is nice.
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Post by Boony on Feb 11, 2009 16:19:52 GMT
So are you totally forked, or do you have a joker in the pack?
I'm guessing the former...
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Post by Mr Bismarck's Electric Donkey on Feb 11, 2009 16:30:31 GMT
Suffice to say that things haven't gone exactly to plan recently. The success of the first war was blunted somewhat by the failures of the second war. We actually came out of the second war much healthier than we had a right to, losing only one city - Khazak - and burning down one major Kuriotate city in return.
However, beneath the surface, almost all of our experienced units had been killed - twice - and all of our heroes were gone. As unique units, there was no way to get them back either.
Khazak was a problem too, as it festered in the midst of our holdings on the mainland - a pink sore on my empire's face that had to be picked. With nominal peace around, we had to do this subtly though, so we began cranking out religious acolytes on our Home Island.
The Acolytes weren't going to win any wars for us, but they could zoom off to our towns that surrounded Khazak, and perform "a great work" - this was some artistic masterpiece, like painting a great fresca, or nitting an especially awesome christmas sweater, which raised the spirits and the culture of the cities, expanding its borders.
Eventually, we were turning out five of these a turn, stargating them to our cities surrounding Khazak, quickly unveiling a masterpiece, (...another sculpture of David? Put it over there with the rest...), and began to choke out Khazak, starving it by forcing the farms that fed the population to come over to our side on account of our awesome mural of me punching the Kuriotate leader in the fanny.
For some reason though, this (Berlin-style) stand off where the Kuriotates were unable to supply a city surrounded deep in enemy territory didn't please the Combine too much and you'll never guess what they did next!
Still, it had been at least nine minutes since our last war.
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Post by hornet on Feb 11, 2009 16:41:33 GMT
My strategy for as long as I can remember has been to throw tons of mercenaries at any spot I want to attack until it's worn down from killing all my men and then hit it hard and fast with heroes. Trying to reach the killbots' pre-set kill limit?
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Post by Mr Bismarck's Electric Donkey on Feb 11, 2009 16:44:52 GMT
Absolutely!
Point to my medal, Kif.
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Post by coffers on Feb 11, 2009 19:57:41 GMT
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Fuzzy
Spider Monkey
stop chewing!
Posts: 918
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Post by Fuzzy on Feb 11, 2009 20:20:02 GMT
Cracking read, and now instead of swordsmen or whatever, you have a bunch of Acolytes fighting the war. Good going!
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Post by Sonic on Feb 12, 2009 0:37:28 GMT
(... another sculpture of David? Put it over there with the rest...) God, David Beckham gets around doesn't he! KUTGW :thumb:
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Post by Moo on Feb 12, 2009 8:53:19 GMT
I thought they handed out velvet hats, but apparently it is sculptures these days. Rich pooves. Nice work on causing trouble, Stuart... shit or bust, right? KUTGW! :thumb:
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Post by Mr Bismarck's Electric Donkey on Feb 12, 2009 13:58:34 GMT
Shit or bust is exactly right. I can either have a slow death in this game, or I can try to kick over a few tables.
The good news is I have a new plan. And it can't fail!
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Post by Sonic on Feb 12, 2009 14:34:06 GMT
Excellent! So when is the new thread for the new save? If your last one is anything to go by, it'll bevery entertaining.
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Post by Boony on Feb 12, 2009 14:37:29 GMT
He'll have Hogmany Underbrush soon, to give him a Civ-break.
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Post by Sonic on Feb 12, 2009 15:33:58 GMT
He'll have Hogmany Underbrush soon, to give him a Civ-break. Your not wrong, and it won't be that long either. I'm very keen to see what Stu does with what he gets from me.
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Post by coffers on Feb 12, 2009 16:09:20 GMT
He's sending Baldrick ito the frontline Yay! :humb:
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Post by Mr Bismarck's Electric Donkey on Feb 12, 2009 18:21:58 GMT
Don't call it a comeback!To quote the famous philosopher Moo Ski, it is indeed shit or bust time. I knew that cramping the former Svartalfar, former Khazad former Kuriotate, former Khazad, now Kuriotate (again), city of Khazak would not please the combine too much and I knew my antagonistic knitting of great sweaters could ultimately only bring about yet another declaration of war. (I’m papering my throne room with them.) But the good news is that I have a new plan. Somehow, one of the towns in the arse end of my Clan Island – the city previously jokingly referred to as “Jesmond” – converted to a new religion. The set up a church for the Council of Esus who are the most unusual of the available religions, (the ones that give you Gods or Devils aside), in that they don’t have acolytes wandering about telling people fairy tales, as such, instead they use gold to spread the religion, paying people to come to church (which would totally work with me). The upside to that is that the acolyte isn’t consumed when spreading his religion to a new city. The vicars for the other religions disappear when spreading the religion, meaning you have to make a new one to then spread to a new town. With the Council you just pay to set up the religion in town, move to a new town and pay again. So roughly five minutes after the Council of Esus showed up in Jesmond I’ve sent the “Shadow Monk”, (silly name), around a thousand stargates and spread the religion to every single town we run – something we hadn’t managed with our official state religion in the previous 1000 turns. In Civ IV every city generates extra money, health and happiness if they have a representative of the state religion, so now it’s time to switch our civ over from The Order to the Council of Esus. So now we have an extra happy bunch of healthy cities, producing extra tax revenue, which is nice. And now, with the addition of some extra buildings, (tie-dye shops in Wiltshire, probably), I can raise some Druids and those druids can raise all sorts of goodies, like Spectres and Mistminds and Golems and who knows what else.. But, in the words of Jimmy Cricket, wait… there’s more. So war is declared, blah blah blah, the first thing that happens is that we reoccupy Khazak without a fight and it’s ours again. The Basium and Kuriotate army is on its way east again, split north and south again and we’re set up to try to stop them in almost the exact same way as before. Almost. Previously we’d thrown the mercenaries in the way, not purely as a human wave of sacrifice, but because any enemy that attacks in a turn, can’t attack again. So they would attack the mercenaries and then they couldn’t attack my powerful units. Then my powerful units could move in, attack and fallback behind another line of mercenaries, so that they can’t be attacked again. Of course, this cost a crap load of money to pay for the mercs, but now I could put out a line of raised units, like skeletons, spectres and so on, for free. These units were considerably weaker than mercs but they weren’t there to win a fight, they were there to burn the enemy attacks. Because now it’s sneaky time… The big Combine armies fall down on my thin line of rubbish magical units and slaughter them, all and sundry, but now their attacks are done. So in come my ever-growing collection of Druids, waving their official Harry Potter replica wands with their two new spells, one of which roots enemy units in place and the other converts them to our side. Two turns later our new, admittedly small, army of Angels is fighting against a slightly baffled collection of Combine units. The capture spell can wear off at any time, so I’m throwing the turned soldiers back into battle immediately, then after I’m capturing more and throwing them into the fight. With a metric crap load of Mercenaries mixed in with Angels and other Combine units, our own Shadows and new Dusk Rider cavalry, Druids and raised units, we tear west and capture Naggarond before the Combine can even react and move forces up. We pillage 160 gold pieces from Naggarond and then burn that fucker down. The Combine are refusing to concede defeat and have raised a couple of truly huge armies to bring over, but the Kuriotates are down now to two large cities and three or so tiny ones, two of which are way in the south, the other side of the Calabim lands. Only the Basium are holding the Kuriotates up and all they do is follow the Kuriotates like a drunk puppy. If I can finish the pinks, I can finish this nonsense for good. How you like me now, bitches?!
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