The first great war didn't turn out as well as I had hoped. My army and their army slogged it out in the defensive terrain, neither side being able to overcome the other. Eventually I was able to concentrate my forces and prepare for what I assumed would be the killing blow, only to have my plans shattered by the arrival of a distant upstart power into the fray and aligned against me.
Forced to make peace under humiliating terms and with victory snatched from my grasp, I vowed never to forget, and to one day make all the nations of the world rue to the day they had conspired against me.
It took many years to rebuild my armies. In fact, the worldwide conspiracy of allied powers only grew further ahead in technology and influence while leaving me forgotten in the corner of the map. I however had not been totally idle. What I lacked for techs I made up for in innovation - knowing their rifle-based armies could be overcome with my supposedly obsolete grenadier divisions. Add to it my new elite cannon corps, packing tripple city raider promotions and I felt ready to fall like waves of the ocean upon my rivals.
And fall upon them I did. City after Persian city fell, their tech advantage counting for nothing. Their historic allies to the south's declaration on their behalf only gave me the incentive I needed to crush their forces as well. So what if they possessed Infantry to my Rifles - numbers, and increasingly sheer force of will proved decisive - my willingness to sacrifice elite cannon brigades was proved the right decision, and my seemingly endless supply of replacements assured me of eventual victory. So what if one of the western powers had begun playing with rockets in space - rockets serve little purpose when your cities are occupied by the enemy.
With the Persian and now Mongolian empires incorporated into mine, I set my sights on the new front. I moved corps after corps of troops to the drop-off point, eventually assembling some 50 front-line brigades. Scouting courteous of my top-secret advanced bomber aircraft had shown little resistance in the border cities, and I knew my destiny would not be denied me.
I checked the power graph before ordering my forces to set off, but simply dismissed the information as exaggerated enemy propaganda. It wasn't possible the enemy had so many advanced troops. I did find some small measure of satisfaction in that I was attacking the weaker of the two remaining legitimate powers. Therefore it was a bit of a shock when I was greeted with an immediate second declaration of war by the power-leading Japanese. Still, I vowed to make them regret their defensive pact with a lightning advance on their border city, scheduled to start in only a few turns, as my reserves reached the staging area.
Things didn't go quite as planned however....
_____________________________
Translation: I'm calling this a loss in 1940AD. My final war can be devided into about four distinct phases.
1) The first interturn, when my stacks were slammed into by JC's artillary, heavily damaging every one of my units.
2) The second interturn, when my retreating and regrouping units were summarily slaughtered by his newly arriving tanks.
3) The next five turns where I withdrew from one city after another trying to establish any sort of a defensive line, with all of my troops wounded, my stealths damaged or shot down, and two different amphibious lands by Toku burning my cities and in one case leaving my cities empty due to only have gunships on the assault force - a pair of warriors could have burned two additional cities.
4) Me finally making peace with JC by giving up a city, and still facing several dozen of Toku's tech superior units in front of me, having lost a total of 8 cities, and having half a dozen gunships rampaging through my core....while not having researched railroad, democracy, or biology.
I called things at that point - I know I could have eventually sued for peace, but I would have never been able to rebuild in time to stop JC from launching.
My major mistake in this game was to play wonder-and-GP-happy like a noob and not ever make a successful war that actually took cities until approx. 1500AD. After that date, a decent human player can still probably pull off a win on Monarch by playing smarter than the AIs, but I don't think they can win a domination victory on a standard sized map. Cyrus and Kublai Khan did fall easy, but I simply wasn't able to keep up in tech enough to take on the remaining AIs.
Anyways, the stealths were fun to play with - I ended up only using two great people - taking CS with a GP and making an academy in the capital. I sacrificed a total of five others waring Cyrus (the Mongolians had better tech, but I had CRIII cannons, which can chew through even Infantry just fine). I had four GPs left for the remaining wars, but they weren't exactly fought on enemy soil.
Besides my attempt at (barely) creative writing, my title is pretty apt - I really did suffer from a large degree of hubris preparing to invade JC. I didn't check for the defensive pact, but more than that I simply didn't expect a Vanilla Monarch AI to be able to defend against a group of 35 artillery, even with a tech advantage.
To the AI's credit, they totally whipped me out simply by actually using their siege units offensively. During my assault on Cyrus and Kublai each kept their siege units sitting in their cities. Had JC done so as well, and had Toku not entered the fray, I could have taken JC's cities. Instead, he smashed my stacks with his own artillery between turns, and it was all over.
I played this game in one sitting - SG's, BtS, and World in Conflict left little time for the Adventure. I'm 100% sure I could win this game playing again, even without the stealths. But I will say that this particular game certainly got the better of me. It forced me to not take the offensive for the first half of the game, and by the time I was ready, I simply wasn't a good enough player to go from 7th in land and tech to Domination in the time remaining.
PS - Toku got to Liberalism, 12 turns ahead of me. He also took out one AI (Hatty) on his own, critcally weakened Roosevelt, and forced me to resign from the game. For a player of my (very modest) skills, the Vanilla AI may be predictable, but it can still hold its own from time to time.
Forced to make peace under humiliating terms and with victory snatched from my grasp, I vowed never to forget, and to one day make all the nations of the world rue to the day they had conspired against me.
It took many years to rebuild my armies. In fact, the worldwide conspiracy of allied powers only grew further ahead in technology and influence while leaving me forgotten in the corner of the map. I however had not been totally idle. What I lacked for techs I made up for in innovation - knowing their rifle-based armies could be overcome with my supposedly obsolete grenadier divisions. Add to it my new elite cannon corps, packing tripple city raider promotions and I felt ready to fall like waves of the ocean upon my rivals.
And fall upon them I did. City after Persian city fell, their tech advantage counting for nothing. Their historic allies to the south's declaration on their behalf only gave me the incentive I needed to crush their forces as well. So what if they possessed Infantry to my Rifles - numbers, and increasingly sheer force of will proved decisive - my willingness to sacrifice elite cannon brigades was proved the right decision, and my seemingly endless supply of replacements assured me of eventual victory. So what if one of the western powers had begun playing with rockets in space - rockets serve little purpose when your cities are occupied by the enemy.
With the Persian and now Mongolian empires incorporated into mine, I set my sights on the new front. I moved corps after corps of troops to the drop-off point, eventually assembling some 50 front-line brigades. Scouting courteous of my top-secret advanced bomber aircraft had shown little resistance in the border cities, and I knew my destiny would not be denied me.
I checked the power graph before ordering my forces to set off, but simply dismissed the information as exaggerated enemy propaganda. It wasn't possible the enemy had so many advanced troops. I did find some small measure of satisfaction in that I was attacking the weaker of the two remaining legitimate powers. Therefore it was a bit of a shock when I was greeted with an immediate second declaration of war by the power-leading Japanese. Still, I vowed to make them regret their defensive pact with a lightning advance on their border city, scheduled to start in only a few turns, as my reserves reached the staging area.
Things didn't go quite as planned however....
_____________________________
Translation: I'm calling this a loss in 1940AD. My final war can be devided into about four distinct phases.
1) The first interturn, when my stacks were slammed into by JC's artillary, heavily damaging every one of my units.
2) The second interturn, when my retreating and regrouping units were summarily slaughtered by his newly arriving tanks.
3) The next five turns where I withdrew from one city after another trying to establish any sort of a defensive line, with all of my troops wounded, my stealths damaged or shot down, and two different amphibious lands by Toku burning my cities and in one case leaving my cities empty due to only have gunships on the assault force - a pair of warriors could have burned two additional cities.
4) Me finally making peace with JC by giving up a city, and still facing several dozen of Toku's tech superior units in front of me, having lost a total of 8 cities, and having half a dozen gunships rampaging through my core....while not having researched railroad, democracy, or biology.
I called things at that point - I know I could have eventually sued for peace, but I would have never been able to rebuild in time to stop JC from launching.
My major mistake in this game was to play wonder-and-GP-happy like a noob and not ever make a successful war that actually took cities until approx. 1500AD. After that date, a decent human player can still probably pull off a win on Monarch by playing smarter than the AIs, but I don't think they can win a domination victory on a standard sized map. Cyrus and Kublai Khan did fall easy, but I simply wasn't able to keep up in tech enough to take on the remaining AIs.
Anyways, the stealths were fun to play with - I ended up only using two great people - taking CS with a GP and making an academy in the capital. I sacrificed a total of five others waring Cyrus (the Mongolians had better tech, but I had CRIII cannons, which can chew through even Infantry just fine). I had four GPs left for the remaining wars, but they weren't exactly fought on enemy soil.
Besides my attempt at (barely) creative writing, my title is pretty apt - I really did suffer from a large degree of hubris preparing to invade JC. I didn't check for the defensive pact, but more than that I simply didn't expect a Vanilla Monarch AI to be able to defend against a group of 35 artillery, even with a tech advantage.
To the AI's credit, they totally whipped me out simply by actually using their siege units offensively. During my assault on Cyrus and Kublai each kept their siege units sitting in their cities. Had JC done so as well, and had Toku not entered the fray, I could have taken JC's cities. Instead, he smashed my stacks with his own artillery between turns, and it was all over.
I played this game in one sitting - SG's, BtS, and World in Conflict left little time for the Adventure. I'm 100% sure I could win this game playing again, even without the stealths. But I will say that this particular game certainly got the better of me. It forced me to not take the offensive for the first half of the game, and by the time I was ready, I simply wasn't a good enough player to go from 7th in land and tech to Domination in the time remaining.
PS - Toku got to Liberalism, 12 turns ahead of me. He also took out one AI (Hatty) on his own, critcally weakened Roosevelt, and forced me to resign from the game. For a player of my (very modest) skills, the Vanilla AI may be predictable, but it can still hold its own from time to time.