Yellow, Orange, Green: A tale of triumph, pain, and real artificial intelligence.

Deity level, Spanish Civ, start on the bottom of a vertically long island, with the Russians on top of the Island. English on a round continent to the west of the Russians, Mongols and Chinese on a long horizontal one to the east. Japanese on a continent in the far north. Finally, the French on a small continent to my far east. The stage was set. I grew my empire, using all the standard methods. Got crusaders really quickly, and attacked the Russians. I got the English to declare war on Russia, but the b******s plopped units down in the way of my advancing armies, and I was forced to make a detour through the jungle. By the time I get there, English have taken Minsk and Novgorod. I was pissed. Luckily, by this time my armies were in place and after a few false starts I launched a right hook that crushed the Russian empire. I then swung east to the distant coast, building and conquering. A brief war wrestled Minsk and Novgorod from the English. So, by this time I had conquered my whole HUGE continent, and was feeling pretty good. I finished Leo's and Mike's and so on. Now, this is what killed me. Contrary to my standard policies, I settled in and started perfecting my empire-which allowed the Brits to create huge cities and a mammoth navy, and even more dangerously-allowed the Japs to launch a war of conquest in the east. Needless to say, I had seriously underestimated the capabilities of my opponents. On to phase two.

Ok, it was almost the industrial age, and I was suddenly shocked by a series of messages announcing the fall of one Chinese, English, and Mongol city after another to the Japanese. Swapping maps, I saw what had happened. Somehow, despite the relative weakness of their empire, the Japanese had succeeded in taking on three civilizations at once-overseas. The English colonies on the long horizontal continent to the east of me were the first to be attacked. A few cities got swapped, then both sides dug in across a narrow swampy bottleneck. The Chinese succumbed almost instantly, and their vast technological knowledge passed to the resourceful Japs. The Mongols fought hard, but their armies, WHICH OUTNUMBERED THE JAPANESE APPROXIMATELY 3 TO 1, were defeated by Japanese COASTAL LANDINGS to the rear of the front(!). Losing critical support cities, the Mongols craved peace, and received it. By this time, it was the automobile age. I had had my hands full with internal worries and continual bickering with the English over various tiny islands in the straits separating us. I waited for the tank, and built a huge invasion force. At the right moment, and after securing my rear with peace treaties, I launched Operation True Khan, the invasion of the Mongol empire. In a few turns, my bombers had annihilated the Mongol forces and I took approximately nine cities. Just when things looked their best, the Japs entered the war. I was dangerously overstretched. The size of my force had led me to abandon my normally economical approach, so by the time of the counterattack I had only about one tank per captured city. Horrified, I watched as japanese bombers destroyed the defense of city after city, and as japanese ships slipped around to the flanks of the narrow continent, cutting my army off from the homeland and making amphibious landings. A turn later, the Mongols entered the war and managed to retake all but two of the cities that I had captured from them. Licking my wounds, I fortified those two cities and rebuilt my forces. In 1895, the Japanese backstabbed the Mongols and launched a surprise invasion that nabbed half of the Mongol empire (whose cities were looking more and more like ground-up meat). This opportunity allowed me to finally launch my long-anticipated counteroffensive, Operation Nippon Highway, against Mongols and Japanese alike. The Mongols fell instantly to the power of my new howitzers. The Japanese were tougher-much tougher. They fought city by city, hill by hill, and devastated my howitzer force with concentrated air power (I had the bulk of my navy and air force in the west, watching the English-good thing too, as wood later be proved) Yet, due to the fighting power of my veterans, and the springboard nature of my offensive, I gained much ground. It was time for the Japs to launch the greatest AI offensive in my Civ2 playing history-phase three.

The English had been allowed to build up unmolested, and their fleet was larger than the rest of the world's combined. It was reinforced my many bombers and, by this time, a few helicopters. The French had large cities, but their military was an unknown factor. In 1931, the Japanese arranged a secret tripartite Anglo-Franco-Japanese alliance. In 1933, the attack descended upon my rich Spanish coast. In the east, Japanese launched a powerful offensive against the recently stabilized lines. They retook the former Mongol capitol and a size-9 border city, but were then stopped cold. More successfully, in the same turn, Japanese tanks and guns landed on my northeast shores and headed hell-for-leather towards Odessa and Moscow. They were reinforced by a small English amphibious detachment. The main English blows came in the west. Battleships bombarded cities in my Northwest, and landings took three cities for the Orange Empire. Just when it apparently couldn't get any worse, English tanks emerged from the unscouted jungles of the far west of my continent, and threatened to cut my main north-south railroad line. Finally, a huge French navy emerged from out of nowhere, bombarded Madrid my capitol and the wonder-city of the world, and landed huge stacks just outside of it. Finally, this hell-turn came to an end. It took me a few minutes to recover my wits. Immediately after that, though, I began to formulate plans for the counter-offensive. I bought all the tanks, guns, and planes my formiddable treasury could afford, and scrounged up a few veteran spies from my Communist days. Gathering up all of my reserves, I launched attacks at every Allied bridgehead. Just barely, the English were defeated, and I regained two cities. In the northeast, I was forced onto the defensive because Japanese cavalry and English tanks had cut my only railroad line to the region, and it was densely forested and hilled. The Japanese captured Odessa but all Allied forces were driven out by an armoured counterthrust a few turns later. In the souteast, the giant French rifleman(!) stacks were annihilated by tactical bombing and tank attacks. My sub sank three French ships (The French were definitely the junior partner of the enemy firm). Finally, to be able to speak of actually gaining something from the war, swift coups gained me a British and a Japanese island city. The Japs countered by buying out a distant colony. Yet, my forces were exhausted, and so I accpeted a peace treaty with all three combatants. I had successfully defended my empire, but only thanks to the power of the Sppanish coin. In the year 1942, the building of the Manhattan project signified the beginning of phase four-Nuke Hell.

The next sixty years are hazy and unclear in my memory. Huge quantities of nukes were swapped following an escalation of a border conflict with the English. My resources were too strained by fighting the Japanese in the east to support SDI construction. Some cities were nuked three times or more. The cursed Limeys had SDIs in every city, though. Not the japs :). In the west, a nuclear stalemate reigned. In the east, slowly, painfully, I finally managed by 1977 to clear the last Japanese forces off the continent in which they had first landed what seemed like many centuries ago. Ruined cities and skull-capped hills testified to the intensity of the struggle. Twice, global warming scarred the landscape. A few years after that, a stunning spy coup & howitzer blitz landed me possession of about twenty British ships (including four battleships), stationed in their colony ports. However, the British promptly bombarded the city into dust. Nukes started flying again. Frustrated by my lack of success in dealing with the Brits, in 1981 I launched operation Abandon Hope-the terror-nuking of the British homelands. Twenty veteran spies were shipped to the British continent. In an enermous waste of precious manpower enduced by my mad rage, only three British cities were nuked and captured-an unrequited failure for Operation Abandon Hope. I fared better against the Japs. In 1992 I bypassed their main island wall and flung a dozen howitzers and seven tanks against the Japanese homeland. The fighting was bitter. Inch by inch, hill by hill, jungle by jungle, forest by forest, the Japanese were pushed back. I was unable to support my ground troops with air power due to my failure to capture advanced island bases, and my lack of a carrier fleet. Yet, somehow, by 2002 only Tokyo remained unconquered. Finally, in 2003 that great city fell, and I renamed Spanish cities in honor of my valiant opponents. Unfortunately, before I could maneuver my forces westward to attack England, the game ended, and I was in no mood to continue.

Thus ended my least successful deity game of all time, by far. It was also my most fun game ever. The Japanese were almost human in their maneuverings, falling down only in the area of tactics. They held up my advance for centuries, out of all proportion to their initial size. My struggle against them also had numerous parallels to WWII. Eveything which I have written here is true. Nothing has been embellished. This was the way every Civ2 game should be-bloody and uncertain.

By Notnvs