|
And In the End... |
| And then, amazingly, the Americans in New York developed
rocket-propelled bronze spears, defeating my entire knight army with
hardly a scratch. What's more, the ten swords I brought along flailed
against the defenses of New York, and even with only two deaths, I ran
out of swords before he ran out of defenders. <boggle> This
coincided with a general run of super-buff computer units, dropping the
3-hoplite defended Calcutta down into an extended run of a single 1 hp
hoplite barely hanging on against four guys, all in a turn. They also
drove down to Sparta, which hand't seen a computer in a while, and more
or less wiping out the New York attack force. OTOH, I sort of barely
pulled this off:
7 resisters, and no earthly way to hold on to it, but I kept it anyway. The Great Wall IS the Great Wall, and, well, the Americans seem to be running out of units. Seemed. Seemed. Er, wait a sec... If I read right, we can do intel gathering on compy by offering peace then not going through... so let us do so. Greece: 8 cities, 57 gold, average military Rome: 9 cities, -Chivalry, 0 gold, strong military to us India: 8 cities, -Chivalry, 64 gold, weak military to us America: 3 cities (2 of them Indian!), 0 gold, no horses/iron, weak military to us England: 3 cities, -Polytheism/Currency/Republic, 103 gold, weak military to us (No wonder they're not doing anything!) Zulu: 2 cities, -Chivalry, 0 gold, weak military to us EXCELLENT. And of course, we're back to the whole "I hope my highly inadequate defending force in my newly captured town can hold out a couple of turns for reinforcements to get there" show I've been having all game. One vet hoplite, 4 really wounded swords vs however many horses Abe and Gandhi can muster to attack me with. The first round of attacks fails... And the evil horse blocking my way moves, captures a catapult somehow in the open, and leaves the rest of the relief force open to dash into New York! Invincible again! The fact that I no longer have a credible attack force will be...ignored. And then, suddenly, in a fit of supreme intelligence, Gandhi sends a horse by NY across the river the wrong way, then attacks across the river into the city, not surprisingly dying. Go figure. Whoops, looks like somebody picked up Chivalry... phants have arrived! Ick.
And for that discovery, the people plant a nice garden in the palace to save me from having to look at the phant corpses piling up at New York. And in the dying grounds at Calcutta, a great leader revealed himself in Ajax the Second. Woohoo! And for the day's annoying Great Library tech gain, Theology came in with 2 turns left on my min science. On the other hand, the stars aligned, thunder boomed, and Ajax suddenly turned into...
The people were so impressed with this achievement, they added a second story onto the palace, not knowing that the Great King had taken all of their sons and sent them off to die as knights against the uberspears of Philadelphia. Watching the carnage there, it occurred to me to go back to swords. Knights are expensive, and I'm fighting wars of attrition, really, where a sword does just as well as a knight. Slower, certainly, but. 1405 AD, and Invention pops out of the GL just in time to see American longbows cruising around. Ick. Ick ick ick. Looking at the popup, it names the Romans and Americans as having discovered it. Does it always say that? I never pay attention. In any case, Gunpowder is started at min sci, with the hopes that the AIs aren't beelining for Education. And then the Americans launched the most spectacular amphibious invasion I have ever seen...
And then, 1435, the Romans broke through my hoplite wall near Athens! Ruh-roh.
This, well, this is bad. The Romans have a lot of troops, and I, well, I don't. Beginning of the end for the Greeks? We can hope not. The Roman troops pouring through the gap turn after turn aren't boding well, however.
And then, after some fierce fighting near Athens and New York, compy pulled out hordes of phants and longbows, and New York's heavy defense just...evaporated.
And after another giant stretch of gruesome fighting around Athens that involved chopping down entire forests to make longbows enough to throw away in one battle, it was suddenly 1515, and the people decided the palace needed an expansion, and added on a wing. It was immediately turned into a refugee shelter. And lo, it was then 1525, and my DEFENDING longbows on open ground slaughtered a legion, and a great hero appeared! You figure with those kind of odds, you'd need a great leader... ;) Of course it was too good to be true, and a 1hp knight ran down both longbows and leader. :| And the end grew ever nearer... 1560 AD, Calcutta goes down despite heroic efforts by the three elite hoplites and two catapults tasked for defense.
1575, and Delphi goes down, hard. The game is clearly lost by this point, but by god, they're gonna hafta beat it out of me if they want me dead. This same turn, Printing Press(!) comes in from the GL. Leaflets are printed saying bad things about Caesar.
A mere three turns later, Delphi overthrew the American oppressors and came back to the Greek fold, not that there was any way I was going to keep it. Sure enough, two turns later, a stray American SOD took it back. 1605 netted me gunpowder from the GL. I had saltpeter near Athens, but of course couldn't GET to it. 1610, Atlanta went down to Zulu longbows. 1635 saw first contact with an outsider - France. I trade communications with the Americans and Zulu for communications with the Chinese and the French map. France, it seemed, was SMALL. 4 cities, and just now hitting the Middle Ages, which is why nobody had seen them before... And of course, being the Greeks, I immediately declared war. While I was at it, I declared on Mao, too. The funny thing is, China was within a galley's sailing distance - I predict at least somebody else made contact FAR earlier. 1645, Thermopylae goes down, after a 1hp hoplite defender takes out three longbows while at 1hp and then almost takes down a fourth. 1670, the Ever Victorious Hoplite Army dies fighting, and Washington is taken by the Americans. (I've got the game entirely automated by this point. I just want to see what else is out there...) The same turn, Athens finally dies fighting, and the Romans gain a treasure trove of wonders. 1680, Thermopylae comes back to Greece, and in 1685, Athens comes back as well. 1690, Education pops from the GL, and that's all she wrote for Greek science. 1695, Athens goes down again. The next turn, 1700, the Zulu take Thermopylae. 1715, Thermopylae comes back, AGAIN. 1720, Sparta goes down, and the Romans raze it to the ground (why they haven't been doing that all along, I have no idea). The capitol moves to Corinth. 1725, Thermopylae falls again, once more to the Zulu. It's like musical cities around here. 1740, with Corinth about to fall, Calcutta revolts and joins me. Heh. 1745, Corinth is captured by India. 1750, Calcutta falls, and the race of the Greeks to a rather permanent end, suffering an embarrassing defeat. The first that I can think of in quite a while for me. Quoth Abe: "All your base are belong to us!" The replay was somewhat informative... Apparently China and France fought a fairly vicious war in the middle ages, and yes, America and the Zulu WERE fighting. It was also fairly apparent how close I really was - America, had they lost Philadelphia, where I was attacking pretty constantly, that would have ended them. I was also something like halfway to a 20k culture victory in Athens. <shrug> Alas, no. History will remember me as having 527 score and being RBCiv-14 the Foolish. |
|
Quite the informative game, that one. Most of the time it felt like one of
those games of Age of Kings (which I've played a lot) where the 7 allied
hardest comps are beating on the gates and beating on the gates, but can't
quite get in, and if you can wear them out, you'll have done it... I came
close, I think. Certainly had Philadelphia fallen, America would have been
out of the game, and from there, India and the Zulus were doomed, and then
the world. I really didn't expect the hoplite wall to fail, though, since
it had been working admirably for quite some time. Then it did, and it was
all over. Similarly, I couldn't pull off an attack on a city to save my
life. 8 or 10 guys would go in, and they'd all get cut down. It was
insane. The computer would have had me obliterated long since, except it
does not know how to drive units. Pillaging it has down quite well, but
there's no concept of using all those pillagers to take and hold ground.
One, two, three units would toss themselves against a city futilely, when
if they had held on for a turn longer, reinforcements would have shown up
and I would have died. On that same note, compy continually threw himself
across rivers to attack me, and made all sorts of godawful moves. By
comparison, the idiot moves I made were brilliant. The warrior attack on
Washington, in hindsight, was doomed. Had it worked, though... Blocking
the pass near Athens should have been a priority, too, but didn't happen.
The only other crushing mistake I made was not building an overwhelming
force before going after cities. I tried, with New York and Philadelphia,
and then something always happened. Philadelphia just so happened to be
the main healing spot for America, and there were numerous RNG-hates-me
turns. On that same sort of note, I couldn't get promotions or leaders to
save my life. Corinth was defended by a pair of regular hoplites for
eternity, and I got, what, 8, 10 leaders the whole game? <shrug>
It sure was a lot of fun, though. Definitely a worthwhile change from my usual game of Civ. |
