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Civ IV Teleportation

(June 21st, 2023, 16:35)TheHumanHydra Wrote: I will try and let you know what happens!

So it took only one closed border to get the troops home:

   
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Hey, that's great! I was wondering if even the northern civ was close enough for the teleport to reach them, and apparently they weren't! But also: I'd love to hear how your civ fares, and especially if the teleporting troops are enough to turn the tide here! It looks like an exciting game!
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(June 23rd, 2023, 01:17)RefSteel Wrote: Hey, that's great!  I was wondering if even the northern civ was close enough for the teleport to reach them, and apparently they weren't!  But also:  I'd love to hear how your civ fares, and especially if the teleporting troops are enough to turn the tide here!  It looks like an exciting game!

Honestly, this has been one of my most satisfying games of Civ ever. I played this game to death when I was younger and have struggled to get invested in it since, but lately I've been able to reconnect with this old friend.

I always play on Terra maps with 18 civs to get the grandest games possible -- chasing the elusive epic of colony wars and nations founded on distant shores. But I'm a slow, perfectionistic player, and I find the Classical age in IV a slog, so I play on Quick and started this game Medieval. My civ, Persia under Darius (Fin/Org), juts on a peninsula into the Atlantic, so was well placed for colonial adventures. I gunned for Astronomy, but my ambitions were sidetracked by a surprise declaration of war from "good neighbour" Roosevelt. We fought a longish Medieval war till Sumeria, in the centre of the map, stabbed Roosevelt in the back.

I was able to found some cities in the New World, a sort of Eastern Seaboard. The Industrial Revolution (Assembly Line) was at hand when Saladin, across the map, asked for help against his assailant, France, and I thought -- "Sounds like fun!" So after a round of Factories and some Coal Plants, I recruited an expeditionary army, which deployed via Sumer's helpful railroads onto a second front against the French. We were able to take ill-gotten Amsterdam and fight one pitched battle for Maastricht before Sumeria stabbed us in the back.

Immediately there was a swirl of minor skirmishes across the map as Sumer's cavalry set upon my troops. And a vast stack of cavalry spearheaded by infantry deposited itself next to Washington, the gem of my empire. I felt so crushed that my sterling game could take this turn and that my empire might be ruined that I quit and did not return to the game for weeks.

In the interim I got to thinking I might be able to hold the line of my original civ with freshly trained infantry, forfeiting America for a time. Then it (re-)occurred to me I might be able to teleport my far-flung forces home, and I turned to the forums for advice. I had surrendered Amsterdam to France for peace; as shown, the field army teleported out of the city and from before Maastricht to rally on a hilltop just inside the Khmer frontier. Upon closing borders with Sury, the army appeared 1E of Boston, a tile too far to make it into Washington (the details of the army's seizure of Sumerian express trains and harrowing cross-continent flight await novelization). I moved it 1W into the city to heal and garrisoned Washington with a scratch force of four infantry and a machine gun, hoping to buy time.

   

The enemy paused to bombard the city with artillery and did not commit to the attack. I chided myself for an error in moving the field army only to Boston, as they appeared still too far to make it into Washington on my ill-developed rail network (this I later discovered was untrue). I evacuated the latter city, leaving but one infantry, and hunkered down in Boston to heal and await the inevitable onslaught. My strategy was to assume the enemy would next move on Boston next, hope to receive the blow and cut down his stack, then when ready counterattack and retake Washington. I swapped into Nationhood and Representation (from Hereditary Rule and Bureaucracy) and began drafting units while researching Artillery.

I also had to guard my southern flank (chiefly Philadelphia) against potential Sumerian probes and against the prospect of Holy Roman invasion. Charlemagne was on the war path ("We've got enough on our hands") and his stack, while dated, was mobile. I stuffed Philadelphia with old longbows.

Washington fell, but its lone infantry rearguard destroyed three enemy artillery before succumbing, a tactical stand with a potential strategic effect. The enemy paused a turn, while all around minor bloodletting continued. On turn 240 the Sumerian stack left Washington for a mountainside redoubt threatening Boston. Simultaneously a small raiding force of SAM infantry and cavalry stole through Greek territory to threaten my core, which was scarcely guarded save for units undergoing training. The dust of the Holy Roman Army's passage could be seen from Philadelphia.

   

   

   

With artillery in the foundries I resumed teching Industrialism. I should note I have only offshore oil, so Plastics, many turns away, appeared likely necessary to enable all the oil-burning units I've unlocked. (Let us say my tech path has been ... ill conceived).

Turn 241 revealed the enemy's design, a bold and cunning threat. While his marauding SAM infantry entered the outskirts of Pasargadae, fixing seven infantry and a machine gun in my far north, his main stack of 38 units wheeled around Boston into Greece to follow in their bootsteps and threaten the whole arc of my core cities: the Schlieffen Plan of World War I enacted by the AI. Meanwhile new fighter aircraft circled above Washington to replace the zeppelins formerly based there.

   

This left me a little stressed. I couldn't cover all my cities against his cavalry. I determined the time for our attack had come, though I had not yet amassed as much artillery as I'd have desired. The Army of Boston marched into battle upon the fields of Knossos, and met the enemy in a quarry belt upon the chalky plain. The guns spoke.

You know how the attacker is able to direct the sequence of combats; also the random number generator may have been favourable. In assault after assault, the Persian infantry was able to defeat the enemy stack. Further north the enemy assailed Pasargadae unsuccessfully. In the south the Holy Roman forces passed on to the frigid port of Chicago (granted them by Sumeria after the war with America).

Turn 242 the army stood and healed in place. Turn 243 they advanced by rail and road to the storm of Washington, whose garrison was limited after the departure of the Sumerian spearhead. I tried to cover both the city and the assaulting stack against counterattack. Aerial reconnaissance detects enemy paratroopers gathering, though not yet in striking force. In the south, at last, Holy Roman forces violate the frontier as columns march by mountain roads toward Philadelphia.

   

   

Interestingly, the Apostolic Palace resolution agenda came up that turn (I'm the chair); I could've proposed peace with Gilgamesh, but I wasn't sure, since it asks you before you're able to look at the map, whether I'd be able to retake Washington in time, and I didn't want to gamble away the city. But I probably want to press Gilgamesh right now, if possible, anyway. I need to turn Charlie's blow, then my hope is to secure the oil field 1W of Ulm and use it for tanks and planes (though I suppose it's in strafing range of Sumer).

This has been one of those truly memorable moments in a Civ game, when I went from an instant of real-life despair to profound enjoyment of a rectified situation, and in for me the most evocative of eras. Civilizations in this game have a remarkable power of recovery (though it would have gone much worse if I hadn't been able to get my army home). Thank you for reading this little story, and until next time, may you remember to fight them on the beaches and in the landing places, in the fields and in the hills and in the streets, to never give up and never surrender, till the last hammer is spent and the final pop point is drafted.
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Wow - that sounds like a thrilling game! Thanks so much for posting about it and describing it in such evocative detail! I really enjoyed reading through it! (And now of course I'm wondering what happens next, and if you're able to successfully push back against Sumer!)
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