Adventure 60 - Cornflakes incinerates the enemy

[Cornflakes]

I happen to enjoy warfare in Civ 4, and this adventure looked particularly interesting since I rarely play the modern era. (Usually winning before or getting bored and sloppy with the game when I have zillions of units to control. I started off by launching Recon missions with the Blimps-or-whatever-they’re-called. Then I forced myself to think through the scenario before actually moving anything. I love planning attacks (see my PB9) and I hadn’t touched Civ 4 since January so I was fresh and ready.







My initial thought was Paratroopers + Bombers. I do think that would work, and I was going to play again with that later and compare. But to achieve the highest score in this scenario I don’t think than any of the conventional warfare weapons can beat … Nukes. Why?

– Scoring is based off of speed.
– The scenario ends when all four capitals are in your control. If all four are captured on the same turn then there is no fight and hold, just strike and win. The time required to build 3 separate armies would surely take longer than
– Once you near victory, all long-term advantages can be sacrificed for the immediate short term. Slave out a round of nukes from every city and … BOOM. Incinerate the enemy and waltz in with a commando.

It has been a long time since I used nukes, and it turns out that I didn’t actually know how they worked … I thought that they destroyed all roads/RR adjacent to the strike tile. Maybe that is a leftover scrap of trivia from Civ 2/3? They were also much more potent than I expected. Regardless of the number or type of unit on the tile, three nukes always destroyed everything on all surrounding tiles. Two nukes almost always destroyed everything or left a single redlined unit. I tested a couple dozen times with various stack sizes and only once did two nukes leave more than one survivor.

[Cornflakes]

Beijing is easy. It will take about 10 turns to build the Manhattan Project, and with 25 weak defenders I can surely build enough paratroopers in this time to wipe out Beijing. The important point will be to NOT stack the paratroopers as they invade since the defenders are all ChoKo. As long as I spread out I don’t care whether China attacks out. Each paratrooper should kill at least 2-3 either on offense or defense before dying and that will be more than enough to beat the Manhattan Project completion time.




Tokyo is slightly more difficult, but not really. Tactical Nukes can be launched directly from Gordium, the Heroic Epic city. The GG counter is at 20/30 so I’ll easily get a GG long before I get nukes. I just have to load it on ship, sail across in time, and Land > Promote to Morale > Capture city




Gergova I thought would be the most difficult. I thought that all roads/RR in the nuke blast zone were destroyed, thus cutting off my access via Commando. I wanted to use Tactical Nukes because they are 1/2 of the ICBM cost, and speed wise they can easily be whipped everywhere after one turn of production. I thought that I would need Commando + G2, but then I realized that (a) I can drop the nuke to the SE of the city and built RR’s myself to ensure that I have access from the north. And (b) I decided to test the nuke on roads/RR and discovered that for some reason they survive the blast

Anyway, with a commando and a pair of Tactical Nukes Gergova can be snapped up easier than a piece of cake.




This brings us to the final capital Constantinople … Everything from Gergova applies here, except that I immediately saw that the only tile that I could hit Constantinople with a Tactical Nuke was the NW, leaving the road in place to the south. But since roads/RR survive that is now irrelevant. I’ll just march through the radioactive blast zone that I know will be free of enemy troops on the road.

The only hitch in the plan now is making sure that I have 1 Morale-promotable unit (un-promoted until needed!!!) and two Commandos. Hmmm, I’ll easily get one GG in the first couple turns of the China attack. Attach that to any random unit (Morale for Tokyo) and it can sprinkle 10XP to a second unit that already has 10XP. With CHA I only need 20 XP for 5th promo Commando. I have a few 7XP Cuirassiers that can gain the additional 3XP against the barbarians … right? … RIGHT??? -<< skipping ahead a bit, those barbs were a lot more potent than I expected and almost killed all my high XP units. Fortunately I held one in reserve just-in-case when I sent the others in together.

So I have 1 Morale and 1 Commando. There’s no way that I’ll get a 20XP unit from the China war, so what now? I’ll need 60 GG points to birth the next one. I forgot that we are IMP in this scenario until an additional GG popped out unexpectedly later in the game so I initially ruled that out as impossible. The only other hope was the free GG from Fascism, but I couldn’t count that as 100% because depending on how the scenario was set up. If it was played up to this point as a SP game then one of the AI (or even the human civ) may have already researched it the then got the tech edited out later and I didn’t know how that would work out. I’d play hoping to get the free GG, otherwise Plan B is to wait an extra turn or two before launching the attack to build a force of paratroopers first. Then I drop those outside nuke blast zone next to Constantinople (the enemy with the weakest units). I just need one to survive the interturn counter attack to walk into the city after it gets nuked.

[Cornflakes]

Tech order … Fusion > Fascism > Rocketry > Military Science

Fusion first because time is important, and the critical path for the attack is the time it takes to whip out a full round of Nukes. Therefore I need to start the Manhattan Project ASAP. Fascism next so that I can start dropping Paratroopers into China. This will also tell me whether I’ll get the GG or whether I need to do some additional brainstorming on my Plan B. (Turns out I did actually get a free GG, so all’s good ). Rocketry next because I need to make sure that is completed before/simultaneously with the Manhattan Project in order to begin the Nukes immediately. Military Science last because it just needs to complete end of the turn that I rebase all the Tactical Nukes to their staging tile, which is two turns after I complete the Manhattan Project (one for a turn of production and one to whip). After whipping out the Nukes I can build Research at all of my cities so I shouldn’t have a problem.

I made sure that I would have enough beakers to get Fusion first turn and Fascism second turn. Other than that I didn’t do any pre-play beaker counting. My plan was just to build Research everywhere until I could build Paratroopers, except the Bureau-Capital where I would start the Manhattan Project ASAP. Then I would get out two sets of Paratroopers from all my cities which should be ample to overwhelm Beijing, and back to Research Builds until I could build Nukes, then back to Research for a turn after whipping. I was confident that I could get it out.

[Cornflakes]

Up to this point, everything above was planned out before moving anything except the Blimps for Recon Missions. I spent a good 3-4 hours total planning this out, but split into a couple sessions so that I had time to think it over unconsciously in between … which actually works. It was during my first break and unconscious planning that the idea of Nuclear Weapons came to me. My first half-hour or so session I was planning along the lines of Bombers first, followed by either Tanks or Paratroopers.




I was surprised at how pesky the barbs turned out to be. 80-something ChoKo can do some damage! What really got me though was the rapidly-expanding Chinese culture which kept bumping them out because of the Great Wall. I moved all my initial military, including Machine Guns, Cannon, Muskets, Maces, cuirassiers, etc. … everything except one 7XP Cuirassier that I held in reserve just-in-case something went horribly wrong and I lost my stack. I needed at least one 10XP unit to sprinkle when I sent off the first GG Morale on ship.

On the 2nd turn I moved six of the seven Machine Guns onto the hill adjacent to the ChoKo fort. I did not realize that machine guns specifically indicate that the don’t take collateral from Siege … and ChoKo are NOT Siege. Therefore my Machine Guns died a miserable death amidst a storm of collateral. I had a kill-ratio or about 3:1, which still left about 40 in the fort plus another stack that’s outside in the fog (screenshot was before Recon). Well, I threw my cannon at the fort, which had 90+ odds thanks to CR2 which I didn’t know worked against forts. I spanked the Barbs heavily, resulting in :




I thought things were going well … except that China’s borders expanded EOT bumping the force in the fog out and landing it next to my stack. If that was planned by the sponsor than that was a genius trick. The ChoKo absolutely wiped out my stack with few losses. I had three cannon survive for some reason (I don’t remember why I didn’t have them in the main stack) and that Cuirassier which I thankfully held in reserve. I still had about 20 barb ChoKo in those hills but now I literally had just longbows in all my cities and pikes/Axes which are useless against crossbows so I didn’t even include them in my stack. I was just finishing my 2nd round of Paratroopers by this time so I wasn’t too worried, except that it was distracting them from the real attack against Beijing. Kudos to the sponsor. This was a great little challenge inside the main scenario.

The barbs had at least 3 turns of marching time to either of my cities, so I decided to just send a single paratrooper on the hill in their path, and continue this each turn. Fortunately the Barbs turned chicken at this point and just sat in place and didn’t bother me. I still had those 3 cannon, and my 4 airships had been knocking away at the barbs, so I was able to whittle down the stack until it was safe enough to get my remaining Cuirassier up to 10XP.

[Cornflakes]

On T309 my first Paratroopers descended into China (1-turned from HE city).




I was planning to take the hill to the East of Beijing because of the hill defense bonus but after parachuting in, the units cannot attack to capture the workers. I decided to remain behind the river and follow the hill line to the SE of the city. I was going to keep my paratroopers spread out anyway. The following turn I dropped 4 more paratroopers into China, and about five more so approximately 10 paratroopers total. China’s ChoKos sat back and watched the entire attack except for two stacked Paratroopers that they wiped out with about 5 losses.




I captured Beijing on T314, after falling one attacker short of capturing the previous turn




Manhattan Project and Rocketry synched up. This didn’t require any additional micro work, it just timed perfectly. I was hoping that they would remain synched after the GA ended and they did




Civics leaving the GA. Side note, I had swapped into Organized Religion at the start of the scenario because I was expecting that to aid the Manhattan Project … not so The bonus applies to buildings and wonders but apparently not projects.

I have a gap in my screenshots from here until after I whipped the Nukes: Basically this time was just the assault on Beijing and dealing with the barbs as described above.




One thing worth mentioning, I scored an extra GG on the turn before I eliminated Beijing. He was not needed for the victory, and I didn’t realize that the IMP was accruing GG points at a faster rate until a turn or two before this when I happened to notice the GG counter bar almost full.




This was the nuclear arsenal on the turn I launched but prior to any launches. I had whipped out 6 tactical nukes, two for each city. The extra tactical nuke was one-turned at the HE city as insurance against Tokyo. I had also whipped out 3 ICBM’s a turn after the tactical nukes (the turn that the tactical nukes were being rebased). I did this because I was going to win the following turn and had no more long-term goals and didn’t need anything else. The ICBM’s gave me a tad extra flexibility in case of mishap with the tactical nukes. If for some fluke reason they left several enemies standing in any of the cities I could hit them with an ICBM regardless of where it was based, whereas additional tactical nukes would be worthless if not needed at the location where they were based.




I had to be careful how I began the war because I did not want my transport to get booted out into neutral culture and out of range of Tokyo. I had been staging inside Ottoman culture. I ALT-declared war on Japan, moved into Japanese culture, and then ALT-declared on Ottomans. And this was the most difficult part of the offensive , aside from the pre-game planning




Gergovia pre-nuke.




Gergovia after its two assigned tactical nukes. One poor redlined unit. If I did not have the backup GG for an extra commando I would have sent in an ICBM just to be absolutely 100% certain of success, but I took the 99.9% shot




Gergovia falls. The other battles were similarly easy.




Constantinople fell next. Two nukes wiped out everything and the Cuirassier commando rode in through the radioactive countryside to swap out the flag.




Tokyo had a redlined unit remaining after two nukes. I had that 7th tactical nuke in Gorduim and I wasn’t going to take any chances of a fluke loss by my Morale musket on ship so I send in a third nuke to do its dirty deed.




With the capture of Tokyo the scenario ends. My civilization certainly would not stand a chance in the counter-attack from these three nations, but fortunately that is not necessary

Score:

Beijing: 350 – 314 = 36
Gergovia/Constantinople/Tokyo: 350 – 316 = 34 each
TOTAL = 138

[Cornflakes]

I played this through with the purpose of beating the specific scenario as time-efficiently as possible, not as I would conduct a normal conquer-and-absorb war. I managed to “win” on the 12th turn (counting T305 as T1), which I’m pretty sure is impossible by conventional means. I don’t think that the Nuke method could be sped up any more than 1 turn. It requires two nukes per city. The only way to speed this up (which admittedly I didn’t even consider until writing the report) is by whipping ICBMs instead of tactical nukes, thus skipping the turn for re-basing. I went back into the autosaves to try this. I need a minimum of 6 ICBMs. I only have 3 cities that can whip off 8 pop and the rest can whip 7. All of the cities are essentially equal production-wise, getting +25% each from Police State, Forge, and Factory (no power). That is 500 – 7*(1.75)*30 = 132.5 > 133 hammers that I need to get in order to whip. That is not possible in 1-turn, so I wouldn’t be able to get out enough ICBMs any quicker than Tactical Nukes + Rebase … although I did not manage the cities to generate overflow hammers into the nukes, so with overflow it might still be possible

It may be possible to speed up Manhattan Project and Rocketry tech by a turn since I didn’t do any micro work there. For sure Rocketry could be sped up by a turn, but that requires building Research instead of Paratroopers. That’s ok though because I finished a couple extra on the turn before eliminating Beijing, and those could not reach in time to participate anyway so they were unnecessary. Also, as mentioned above I swapped to Organized Religion at the beginning of the scenario expecting it to help speed Manhattan Project, but staying in Free Religion would provide that extra 10% bonus. I don’t know if the Manhattan Project could have been sped up by a turn though. I was maxing production and projects can’t be cash or whip rushed, and I fell 67 hammers short of completing it a turn early. I had no food in the box either to swap off farms for extra mines/WS. On the first turn (while researching Fission initially) I had nearly-maxed overflow of 52 or so base hammers so even if I could have squeezed out a couple spare hammers I don’t think I could get 67.

I was going to play through this again using conventional warfare, but I wanted to take a couple days break first and in the meantime other things came up to keep me busy. I still will probably play through it again at some point and may post a brief shadow report afterwards.

[Cornflakes]

After reading the other reports I am genuinely surprised that conventional warfare was competitive, and in fact probably could beat the nuke-em attack time by taking a bit more risk. I vastly under-estimated the production output from the 10 turns that it took me to get my nuclear program rolling. Now this really makes me want to play through it again without nukes.

[timmy827]

After reading the other reports I am genuinely surprised that conventional warfare was competitive, and in fact probably could beat the nuke-em attack time by taking a bit more risk. I vastly under-estimated the production output from the 10 turns that it took me to get my nuclear program rolling. Now this really makes me want to play through it again without nukes.

Great show! Since I'm not sure I've dealt with AI fighters, it shouldn't be a surprise that I didn't even consider nukes as an option.

On an amusing notes, this happened to me:

But you had already won by that point

[Fintourist]

Nice report and well done! It was nice to see a nuke-commando approach! I didn't really even think about that when I was testing this map! As you said, you lost some scoring points due to "slow" first capture, but 12 turns for the whole thing is nice.

[GermanJoey]

Wow, I didn't even consider nukes as an option as I thought it would take too long to build the MP - great job!