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Post by coffers on Feb 2, 2009 13:57:45 GMT
Nice work. :thumb:
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Post by Mr Bismarck's Electric Donkey on Feb 3, 2009 15:33:25 GMT
Did I say messy? Well it looked messy for a while, but what was actually happening was a clarification; the end game of the distilling down of the surviving civilisations to those who have some chance of survival and those who have no chance of survival.
So as we cross turn 1200 the Svartalfar Elven Empire is the strongest it has ever been. And is probably on the verge of being destroyed.
See, it turns out that my jolly jape earlier where I got everyone involved in a war and then ran away to watch wasn't the best idea in the world. While the Kuriotates took some losses, especially personnel loss on their border with the Khazad, this just allowed more room for the Basium Gods to expand and that they did, ruthlessly.
While I got ashore in the north east of the main continent, the Basium were eating major chunks out of the Hippus and Amurites and winning hard fought battles with the Malakim that gave it technologies and industrialised cities.
Before the war ended, the Hippus, Amurites, Malakim, and even Calabim were all Vassal states of the Kuriotates, because even though it was the Basium doing all of the heavy shifting, as the people who called down the Gods, the Basium are puppets of the Kuriotates.
When I realised what was happening, (too late), I started to crank out a bigger navy and shipped a large army north of the main continent, west of Star Trek island to the small pair of islands that constitued the entirity of what remained of the Khazad civ and killed the Dwarves, grabbing those two cities for my own.
This removed the last independent civ in the game and meant that there really are only two players left in this game. On one side, there's the Kuriotates, with their puppets the Basium Gods and their vassal states of the Malakim, Calabim, Hippus and Amurites.
On the other side, there's me.
Currently, the Civ power rankins look like this :
Me : 4808 Kuriotates : 2854 --- Basium : 2010 ----- Malakim : 1842 ----- Calabim : 1728 ----- Hippus : 1376 ----- Amurites : 1024
Attacking any of the Vassals will cause the Kuriotates to declare war on me. Which would cause the Basium to declare war on me. Attacking the Kuriotates would cause the Basium and the Kuriotates' vassal states to declare war on me. So that would be 4808 against 10834.
The bit where I get panned in the face is coming.
Unless I have a cunning plan.
Which I don't.
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Post by Moo on Feb 3, 2009 15:35:33 GMT
I like the face-panning idea.
Much better than the face-punching one, which was shite.
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Post by Boony on Feb 3, 2009 15:37:43 GMT
Ouch. The weasel meets a dead end. Good luck :thumb:
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Post by coffers on Feb 3, 2009 15:50:50 GMT
Dirty deeds have come back to haunt..........
Sounds nasty, call in Baldrick.
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Post by hornet on Feb 3, 2009 17:19:23 GMT
Seems a bit crappy that one Wonder can tip the game in this way. Any chance of sprinting for a Tech or Culture victory?
Actually, isn't the other side just going to vote you off as UN Leader the next time a vote comes around, then get a diplomacy win the vote after that?
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Post by elth on Feb 3, 2009 21:12:43 GMT
As far as Civuicides go, it's certainly original :thumb:
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Post by Mr Bismarck's Electric Donkey on Feb 4, 2009 22:53:41 GMT
Seems a bit crappy that one Wonder can tip the game in this way. Any chance of sprinting for a Tech or Culture victory? Actually, isn't the other side just going to vote you off as UN Leader the next time a vote comes around, then get a diplomacy win the vote after that? There is a counterbalance to it - I have the Ashen Veil holy city under my control, so if I wanted to I could turn evil and then call through the underworld Gods on my side to balance things out. But yes, the vote is coming up and I'm going to lose my leadership for the first time and then I'll have to act before the next vote to do something about the civ balance or I'm going to have to stand and watch the Kuriotates get crowned without having the opportunity to pan his stupid fucking face in.
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Post by Mr Bismarck's Electric Donkey on Feb 4, 2009 23:30:41 GMT
The turn in fortunes in the world clearly couldn’t be allowed to continue unfettered. Although my Svartalfar Elves were still the pre-eminent civ in the world, the combination of forces on the other side could put together a clear advantage over us. The first place that this new power bloc showed itself was in the UN when the vote for a new leader installed the Kuriotate chief into the role by a vote of 6 (Kuriotates, Basium, Malakim, Calabim, Hippus, Amurites) to 1 (Me). So I took my ball and went home and afterwards whenever a city finished a production run, I turned it over to raising cash to put together a war chest to sort out these issues in the one real way left to someone who has five votes too few to make any legal noise. With the decision to go to war made, the decision became a matter of where. As I saw it there were only two genuine options. 1. In the south, I could attack across the narrow straits from the Barbarian Island, west into the Calabim Vampire lands. The Calabim lands are hard against the southern poles with their eastern border near to the western borders of my Barbarian Island. This means that any supporting units for the Calabim would have to either come across the oceans from the Kuriotates in the northern continental arm, or all the way around the crescent over land. Although the Calabim appear strong and their cities seem to be well defended I expect their military pool isn’t very deep, so after some initial loses getting ashore and mounting the attacks, I should be able to weather any counter attacks, burn through the Calabim forces and gain some operational manoeuvre room before any counter attack lands against me. However, if the AI is really clever then the Kuriotate and Basium forces will just ignore my southern incursion and launch a strong attack into a different part of my empire, forcing me to decide whether I should divert forces away from my attack to ensure I don’t lose previously gained ground elsewhere. 2. The second option is just to smash into the Kuriotates and Basium in the norther continental arm in a true clash of the titans between the three biggest Civs in the game. Although the fighting will be harder, the losses more severe and any gains slower, more expensive and more difficult to hold, it should remove any surprises as I don't believe any of the periphery civs - Hippus, Amurite and Calabim - are strong enough to mount a genuine attack into another theatre to attack as a distraction. Fighting the big guys head on with a suitably sizable force should remove any chance that someone will load up some ships and land on my home island, for example. While preliminary work by our assassins means that we should crack the shell of the Kuriotate defence, I suspect that the Basium have a collection of Angels, Seraphs and other annoyingly powerful units that we won't match up against, one-on-one. Our hope will come from taking our huge pot o' gold and raising simply tons of mercenary units to blunt their attacks, allowing me to pick and choose where to send my assassins and two hero units (Valin Phanuel who you know from the Clain Island battles and Sphene, who's new) into battle. Certainly if we lose either hero unit we're almost certainly dead.
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Post by Moo on Feb 5, 2009 8:41:55 GMT
Or in other words, you're screwed.
WHere's your next save game going to be?
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Post by coffers on Feb 5, 2009 10:05:40 GMT
I'm sure Baldrick can come up with a better cunning plan.
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Post by Moo on Feb 5, 2009 10:30:56 GMT
Baldrick: "Sir, I have a cunning plan!" Slackbladder/s1ut: "What is it, Dave?" B: "Well, sir, we get Valin Phanuel and all the crew into a giant turnip that we've hollowed out, push it to the gates of the city and then when they realise it's a peace offering and bring it into their city, we all jump out and yell 'Surprise!!1!' and then kill them all." S: "So the old Turnip Surprise trick? That's the stupidest plan since Anne Boleyn decided to buy a new hat for the special parade she was asked to attend."
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Post by coffers on Feb 5, 2009 13:02:19 GMT
It might do the trick though.
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Post by Mr Bismarck's Electric Donkey on Feb 5, 2009 14:55:09 GMT
Let's get this party started!
With 10,000 gold pieces in the war chest and an ever-increasing ire at the smarmy pink fellas who were swanning it about in my blue UN beret of command now, I decided that the best way to do this was to line up on the Kuriotates and their Basium puppies and stab them, right in the face.
In the latter stages of the build up I opened the doors to our massive pot o'gold and stood back from the stampede of mercenaries, willing to be thrown into the cauldron to act as barriers between the bad guys and the units I actually wanted to protect in this war.
Then, as the clocks ticked to 1300 - a ceremonial date for the Svartalfar, as that's the time we get out of bed every day to eat breakfast - we called up the Kuriotates and told him we'd had a dream of a new leadership structure for the UN, and that it should in future be led by his head. On a stick.
The our forces stormed across the borders.
Day one went almost exactly as planned as our assassins had been working hard for months thinning out the Kuriotate forces in the area, then scurrying back across the borders before they could be tracked down. Az Ra "Chaka" Khan the assassin hero was especially active and he was now a polished and honed implement of war, striking out from the flanks of our attack to pick off straggling Kuriotate forces.
Our day one objectives were the cities of Kadar on the eastern seaboard, Kalocly in the north west and Riylod, south west of the old Dwarven capital of Khazad. Kadar fell without a fight to a trio of pure mercenary companies, but when that force tried to rush due south from there and capture Clar Karond, it was rebuffed by a small Kuriotate screen and returned to Kadar.
At Riylod the Kuriotate cavalry ran out to meet our main offensive thrust. The children of the Golden Dragon, (as the Kuriotate liked to call themselves (pretentious, much?)), had a very peculiar hodge podge of forces, mingling Basium Centaurs with Kuriotate chariots, Hippus camel archers and Decius beastmasters, riding about clinging for dear life to the back of large bears.
Unfortunately, they didn't have enough of any of them to face up to an army that dwarfed the one I had put onto the field int he battle for Clan Island all of those years ago. With Valin Phanuel spurring his white charger around the field and Sphene leading the ground troops, raising his burning white sword to the clouds to capture lightning, the Combine forces shattered and fled, falling back to a line of castles to the west.
The only day one objective we failed to capture was Kalocly. We were unable to bring our significant force advantage there to bear thanks to the actions of the sole defender who pulled up the road surface outside the town, leaving our five attacking mercenaries unable to make the march in a single day.
Tomorrow though, Kalocly will fall and a reinforced stike will go in to Clar Karond, south of Kadar.
To avoid being bogged down and to avoid the combine from gaining an advantage from any land they recapture, we set the torches to Kadar and Riylod and withdraw to high ground to watch them burn.
In the far west my hawks tell me the Basium are pulling forces off the line and heading east, but they disappear into the interior out of my sight, so I don't know how long they'll take to reach the front, nor which part, north or south, they'll reinforce.
At sea my Privateers and Man O War squadrons sink a pair of transports that were near my home islands, but a lone Privateer runs for safe waters a good distance west of Star Trek Island as it sees three Kuriotate Man O' War and a rag-tag collection of Frigates and Galleons from other civs set out in a very strong naval force.
That could spell trouble as the spread out nature of my empire means I have only a couple of points where I can concentrate naval force, (the narrows between the Home and Clan islands and the narrows between the home and Barbar islands), and the rest of my naval power has to stay spread out.
Tomorrow I expect counter attacks across the front and then two or three days later the first of the Basium western force will appear somewhere and then we'll find out of this was a good idea or not.
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Post by Mr Bismarck's Electric Donkey on Feb 5, 2009 16:36:45 GMT
Day one is usually the best for any attacker with a suitable size of force - especially an attacker with the quality of enemy intelligence that I had - but what comes after is usually very different as the enemy responds.
Following the shock and awe the second stage of our war with the Combine has a sedate start as we walk into Kalocly, brushing aside the unit stationed there and setting the town ablaze. While I remain with low confidence about how we'll handle a Basium counter-attack I'm just going to burn everything I capture, to ensure that even if we lose the ground, the Combine isn't immediately back to its old strength.
The forces at Kalocly then turn south and meet up with units coming west from Egerlar and head down the coast road to take up blocking positions north of the Kuriotate city of Lothern, which will be a target as soon as we order the battlefield again.
The large army that had pushed southwest to Riylod also took up blocking positions and then detached some units to aid the push south from Kadar to Clar Karond, which also fell quickly, sealing the eastern seaboard for us and allowing those units to turn west and face the large Basium city of Kaledor.
We took sporadic counter attacks across the line, but the combine seemed happy to set up blocking units and wait for the Basium to appear to attack in strength.
Then came drama as a Combine fleet appeared in southern waters and bloodied one of our Privateers, sending our sole Man O' War to scurry for Barbar Island waters and a safe port to wait out a blockade. Then another Combine fleet appeared north of Kalocly, which we'd just burned and landed a small Kuriotate expeditionary force behind our lines!
To counter this we could either turn around the army that had moved south from Kalocly to act as a defensive block, or we could push out a smaller force from the peninsular town of Niminsaol. We absolutely could not afford to lose Niminsaol as it was a staging area across the short strait from Star Trek Island, but turning around the southern army and marching it back the way it came would take too long, so we paid for some mercenary help and fought a bloody battle on the north shore, west of Niminsaol.
Our mercernaries waded in with their long swords flashing, while a pair of Nyxkin cavalry snapped at the edges of the enemy. The Kuriotate Crusaders were well armoured, but lacked mobility enabling us to pin them with mercenaries and then have the Nyxkin snap in and out of range. After two turns we'd been battered, but we couldn't afford to leave a wounded Kuriotate army in our reserve areas, so we kept fighting and eventually killed them all on the beaches on which they had landed.
Our forces limped back to town after that sharp battle, but way to the south there was an even more desperate fight developing, as our large mercenary force assaulted the walls of Kaledor.
The Basium city was a gift from the Kuriotates after they called the Gods through and was the holy city of the Empyrean religion, so it was stoutly defended. For turn after turn we smashed against the garrison in the town, regularly running cavalry and assassin forces around the town to strike at any reserves coming up the coast road, but we just couldn't shift the defenders. Eventually we won a battle on the western banks of the Kaledor River, sealing a vice shut around the town, meaning the people inside could only be supplied from the sea.
So it's little surprise that two trurns later Combine and Elven fleets clashed in a battle that neither side really won. While enemy Man O' War sought gunfights with our big ships, Elven Privateers swung amid the fighting, cannonading any enemy supply ships they could see until both fleets withdrew with less than a third of their starting strength.
In the south now Barbar Island was cut off as more Combine Man O' War showed up, chasing our small fleet back into port and keeping them there and also cutting off the supply routes, forcing unhappiness up as the towns on BarBar lost contact with their capital back on our Home Island.
The cowards at Condel on the western seaboard of Barbar Island even took this chance to revolt, asking for control to be passed over to the Calabim. They were told in no uncertain terms that all signs point to no, that isn't going to happen and all signs will point to them being stabbed in their sleep if they ask again.
I move two Nyxkin units there to double the garrison and then call in a mercenary unit too.
As it stands now I've captured and burned four Kuriotate towns and lined up a fifth, brushed aside the first land counter attacks and a sea landing, surrounded a Basium city and lined up assaulting forces, while fighting an inconclusive sea action outside of that city.
In the north, a large Combine fleet is sailing north west of Star Trek island and could run down the borders there to launch attacks on those towns, or swing around the southern end and hit the north of my Home Islands. this is pinning my large Home fleet, as I don't want to move it anywhere where it can't protect our homelands.
Elsewhere we've split sea battles, winning near our Home Island and losing around the Barbar Island. We've burned through half of our war chest so far buying in units, but more and more of our cities are finishing their production runs and are being switched to gold production.
I figure I have a couple of turns before the Basium show their hand.
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Post by Sonic on Feb 5, 2009 22:16:25 GMT
Such drama! Sounds like it's fun, but I'm betting this takes a while to get through.
Things looks like they'll definitely come to ahead once the Combine know what they are going to do with that fleet of theirs.
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Post by Moo on Feb 6, 2009 10:51:21 GMT
Such Eastenders-like drama! Sounds like it's fun if someone else was to tell us about it, but I'm betting this takes a while to get sleep through. FYP
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Post by coffers on Feb 6, 2009 10:57:45 GMT
It sounds as if the AI is quite intelligent too, sending fleets towards your homeland to try to distract your main push. Ho hum this could be interesting. Just don't open up an eastern front or something. KUTGW! :thumb:
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Post by Mr Bismarck's Electric Donkey on Feb 6, 2009 14:48:08 GMT
After a pause to catch breath it was time to launch the third stage of the war and our forces move from their blocking positions down into the Kuriotate town of Lothern. They captured it after just a short fight and then set the torches to it, before returning to their blocking positions in the hills just north. Their original move south had revealed a medium-sized Combine force moving east toward our central blocking force, which it hit head on, trading some casualities. With the Kuriotate force's energy spent in that attack, our mercenaries who had sat in reserve for the attack south to take Lothern now decamped and thrust straight into the side of this new threat, smashing it from the field. To the south, despite the encirclement of the Basium city of Kaledor the buggers inside weren't going to come out and with medical help from a pair of Acolytes inside, I was only slowly wearing down their garrison. With the rest of the front mostly stable I could move units down from the centre to complete the capture of Kaledor, thereby slowing my readiness to assault down the middle of the continental arm, or I could push on ahead and slowly wear down the city. There wasn't much of a decision to be made though, as Kaledor's port meant that it could be suddenly ressuplied from the sea with fresh troops, which would make a mess behind my lines if I'd moved on. So I pushed the ageing Valin Phanuel back onto his horse and sent him with Sphene and some mercernaries south to bolster the units already assaulting Kaledor. I took a turn's break after the new forces arrived to refit and restore the ones that had been fighting and send my assassins and shadows into the city, picking off the weak units who had been healing the main melee defenders. The following morning Sphene lead a charge that breached the walls, freeing Valin Phanuel to run down the forces inside and Kaledor finally fell. I took a certain amount of glee in setting fire to the holy city of the Kuriotate's religion. With speed in mind we hurried through another mercenary force on the southern coast, through the ruins of Kaledor to strike at the large Kuriotate city of Karond Kar. Their attack left them with an exposed flank, stuck out of the left side of our front, but provided no major Kuriotate or Basium forces showed up, we'd be fine. That was when we noticed this guy : Apparently, his friends call him "Angel of Death." :thumb: Still, I'm sure that's just one of those funny kid names, like calling the short one "lofty" or some such. He's probably a perfectly nice guy. Regardless, nice or not, I only really have to worry if he's got a large army with him. f u c k s ocks.
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Post by Moo on Feb 6, 2009 15:05:48 GMT
OK, so here are the likely outcomes:
[X] You get a tonking [ ] You win
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Post by Sonic on Feb 7, 2009 1:09:45 GMT
OK, so here are the likely outcomes: [X] You get a tonking [ ] You win No time for lucky music? Or is that become the domain of The Angel Of Death?
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Post by Sonic on Feb 7, 2009 1:10:11 GMT
OK, so here are the likely outcomes: [X] You get a tonking [ ] You win No time for lucky music? Or is that become the domain of The Angel Of Death here?
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Post by Mr Bismarck's Electric Donkey on Feb 9, 2009 0:53:58 GMT
With the left flank of our army extended out in front of everyone else, "everyone else" gets to watch the Angel of Death come in and rip through the army that just took Karond Kar. First off the Angel of Death waded in with a rain of fireballs and then started hacking people to bits, followed closely by his mahoosive army who chewed through the tiny pieces that were left over. I called back the troops that were left in a desperate attempt to save some of them and send out further mercenaries to meet them to try to burn less experienced units and save the guys who had mounted three successful assaults before meeting everyone's favourite Angel of Death. Needless to say this didn't go well. The Angel of Death, or Kevin, as I've started calling him, swings his army east, marches through the rubble of what used to be Karond Kar and smacks my guys up the air, brushing aside the mercenaries I had sent out as a screen and then finishing off the units retreating back to safety. Then a second, smaller Basium army appears in the centre, north of Kevin's happy band, heading east toward what used to be Riylod, which means I now can't move forces down from there to the south to seal the gap that's opened up courtesy of Kevin killing, well, everyone down there. I can't let Kevin move down there unmolested however, so I have to move some of the central blocking force south and then scrape around behind the lines to find anyone who can fight and isn't currently doing anything. I pull together this counter attacking force, but it clearly isn't going to be enough to blunt Kevin's push east, so I break open the banks again and just empty everything. Hiring each mercenary costs 180 gold pieces and I've been using them as a surrogate for a proper army, because I've always been militarily stunted by my focus on research. They aren't strong or well-armed, but in enough numbers they're passable. And I've certainly had enough numbers. For turn after turn I've had almost half of my cities concentrating on producing money rather than research or units and thus far I've spent well over 11,000 gold pieces on mercenaries and now I push out another 3,600 gold for yet more. This grand swathe of men are all untrained and unpromoted but ultimately the reason for their existence is to get in the way and allow me to pick and chose where to send Valin Phanuel and Sphene. The mass of humanity (being paid to fight for Elves) pours through our line and hits the two Kuriotate/Basium armies head on and fights and fights and fights, unit after unit falling to the side, falling back before the Angel of Death's army. For a long time the only dying going on is among the mercenaries as they have less than half the strength of most of the enemy they're fighting, but the sheer numbers are wearing down the bad guys and their advance begins to slow ever so slightly... So it's time to send in Sphene... Eat it, Kevin! The turn after that, the Kuriotates call a vote in the UN to end the war. I vote no. And lose 6-1. So I lost the vote and won the war.
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Post by Mr Bismarck's Electric Donkey on Feb 9, 2009 3:11:33 GMT
I know how much you all like maps, so this is what just happened :
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Post by Mr Bismarck's Electric Donkey on Feb 9, 2009 3:17:27 GMT
And this is how the continent looked before our little spat with the combine : The white border in the north east is me. The pink border is the Kuriotates. The other white border is the Basium Gods. And this is what it looks like now : Not a great deal of difference considering the thousands of gold coins spent and then 100+ units killed on both sides. I have five cities building settlers so I can reclaim the land under the cities I burned.
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