AU207: Big Planet - Strategy, Spoilers and Comments

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The Babylonian Campaign (230 BC - 10 BC)

Our War Chariots raced into southern Babylon with a little bit of sword support, while swordsmen converged on the tiny Babylonian towns to the east. In the south, our initial push stalled due to not having enough of our mighty war chariots ready, a mistake we vowed never to repeat. But additional troops assembled, and Babylon's fate was never in serious doubt. In the meantime, warriors were recalled from our last anti-barbarian campaigns to the northwest for upgrade to newer weapons. By 10 BC, Babylon was no more.

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Zululand and Germany (10 BC - 340 AD)

But conquering Babylon was merely a small first step toward the expansion Germany craved. Egypt was in its Golden Age, building war chariots and horsemen like there was no tomorrow - which, for any who stood against them, would soon be the case.

Egypt's industrious workers had been accompnaying or following closely behind its troops marching up toward the Zulu borders. Jungles in northwestern Egypt near the German border had already been roaded or cleared. If the Zulus and Germans were counting on the area's rugged terrain to protect them from sharing Babylon's fate, they were in for a nasty surprise.

Our queen and her council drew up battle plans for both the east and the west. By that point, our forces were large enough that taking on two opponents at once would pose us with little difficulty.

In the east, the initial punch was with swordsmen, followed up by large forces of war chariots and horsemen. Initially, war chariots operated mostly against German posessions while swordsmen focused on the Germans. Later, war chariots and horsemen joined our surviving swordsmen on the Zulu front.

[Note that the map I drew this battle plan on predates the Zulu war by quite a bit, as evidenced by the fact that Babylonians still exist.]

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War chariots also made up the bulk of our western strike force in spite of the effect the rugged terrain had on their speed. But enough horsemen and swordsmen were involved to deal with cities war chariots could not get to. The western war was much slower than the one in the east, but no less sure.

[This battle plan uses a postwar map, with the cities that originally belonged to Germany marked with blue circles (except that I forgot to mark Germany's northernmost city). Note that there was some intermixing between Egyptian and German cities before the war.]

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The war went smoothly, with reinforcements coming in faster than our valiant forces could be killed. By the end of 330 AD, both of our enemies had been forced to pay high prices in technology (among other considerations) for peace. Egypt was still not a world leader in technology, but we had made up most of our deficit from having hoarded gold and neglected research ever since we discovered Monarchy.

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And here is a drawing of Egypt's empire (or what of it could fit on the canvas) after the war ended. The painter titled it, "What War Chariots Can Do."

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The Mongolian Trespass, 360 AD - 410 AD

In 360 AD, a Mongol warrior and a Mongol archer moved next to Fankfurt, a liberated German city that had no troops in range to defend it - at least not without going through the Mongol trespassers. An Egyptian messenger broke all records delivering a message demanding the withdrawal of Mongol units from our territory. The Mongols refused, declaring war instead.

The war began with the destruction of the Mongol forces in and around our territory and the capture of a band of Mongol settlers. Then Egyptian troops headed north and found that although the Mongols had knowledge of how to use pikes, their two southernmost cities were not connected to their core and were still defended by old-fashioned spearmen. Our war chariots needed no special instructions for how to handle the situation.

The fall of those cities took the heart out of the Mongol defenders. We asked Temujin if he was now ready to consider peace, and he agreed.

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The American Fiasco (430 BC - 520 AD)

Cleopatra's advisors had long since ruled out Japan and Mongolia as targets for further expansion. Their pikes would have made fighting them more expensive than we preferred. But America was another matter. Egypt's vast army, with over a hundred offensive units, needed to be used somewhere, and America lacked the technology to defend itself.

But in their eagerness to attack America, Cleopatra's generals overlooked something critical. Almost the moment the war with America started, a lone Japanese spear unit escorting a settler found itself next to an undefended city that we had previously "liberated" from the Zulus. They attacked, and we suddenly found ourselves faced by an enemy far more modern than we were equipped to deal with. And as if that were not enough, Japan's newly formed corps of samurai quickly launched them into a golden age.

As Japanese and American forces advanced, we had to hand all but our southernmost American conquest and an outlying western city over to the Mongols or Zulus in order to keep Japanese forces from capturing them and using the cities' roads to speed their advance. Worse we also had to give up a few other pieces of previously conquered territory. On the whole, by the time Japan could be persuaded to agree to peace, we had lost both net territory and about a third of our military.

By the way, it's hard to tell, but the island of yellow between America and Japan in the bottom shot is the city I gave the Mongols; I wasn't about to sign an alliance that would commit me to twenty turns of war, but I was perfectly happy to give the Mongols a city that might lead to conflict. Unfortunately, Japan never took the bait.

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Here's a shot of our main troop deployment going into the American campaign. The northern force consists of over thirty war chariots and horsemen. The central force consists of another fourteen war chariots and horsemen. (Both of those forces were moved into position under our Right of Passage agreement with Japan, the existence of which made Japan's attack all the more dastardly.) The southeastern force by Detroit includes a swordsman army, five war chariots, and assorted slow-movers. And a force in Leipzig south of New York (and just east of the German city of Nuremberg) has seven war chariots, an archer, and a previously captured catapult. Not shown are another ten or so healthy war chariots by the isolated western American city of Chicago (and a few more are healing from the Mongolian campaign in a city next door).

[Theseus]

Originally posted by Arrian
A couple of turns later, having made peace with Germany, I see Mongolian units coming for me. So I sign an alliance with the Mongols vs. Japan plus a RoP. That next turn, the Mongols violated our RoP and attacked me (and lost a horseman to a pikeman). Filthy jerks.

G*DDAMN, that pisses me off!!

Soren, future reference, given all the rep / attitude penalties that we humans are subject to (no confirmation as of yet that the AI civs get the same), this is just abominable behavior, and should put the given civ, whether AI or human, into an "axis of evil" category for centuries if not millenia.

Grrr.

[Theseus]

Originally posted by Catt
In other words, I built them out of vanity and emotional interest - not for any legitimate strategic interest.

Catt = Apolyton's Diogenes

Don't know about the rest of you, but it continues to amaze me that Civ3 has this depth.

Kudos to Firaxis, and compliments to Catt and Dominae and everyone else who explores this side of the game.

(And yes, I will get to AU302, and we'll see how I do)

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America, Revisited (810 AD - 860 AD)

After the fiasco that was the first invasion of America, Egypt decided to focus its efforts on research for a while. Our borders remained thinly guarded, but we felt that in the absence of Japanese forces passing right by an undefended city, the latent power inherent in our size would be enough to deter Tokugawa's aggressive tendancies. Fortunately, we were right.

As the middle ages wore on, we were able to catch up with Japan and Mongolia in technology, but not to gain a decisive lead. We were the first to Military Tradition, but that was the only technology we had that our chief competitors did not.

Our first cavalry action involved recapturing the cities we had been forced to give to the Zulus to protect them from Japanese aggression. Then, once again, we turned our eyes toward America. It was a nation defended by pikes in the dawn of the era of cavalry, and would thus be little challenge to defeat.

Ironically, our battle plan for the second invasion was much the same as in the first: sign a Right of Passage agreement with Japan and preposition large forces of fast-movers. But this time, the outcome was very different.

Below is a copy of the invasion plan drawn by one of our generals.

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And here's how the war actually went.

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Contact - 910 AD

In 910 AD, Egypt's caravels just missed being the first to establish overseas contact by about two turns. Egypt ended up even with the top civs on both continents in technology, but was only a turn away from being the world's first to discover Magnetism.

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The Second Mongol War (960 AD - 1020 AD)

Once Egypt finished upgrading, healing, and redeploying to bring enough cavalry to bear, we decided to target the Mongols. We had over sixty cavalry at the time, but considered it necessary to keep some of them back on defense on other fronts since we had so few units really designed for defensive roles.

Our initial strike went well, capturing three cities. But then Mongol slow-movers started pouring south. Turn after turn, Egyptian forces decimated their ranks, but still they came. We took a fourth city on a peninsula behind one of the first three, but our cavalry kept injuring themselves killing the Mongol hoardes (wait, weren't those supposed to be mounted? ) and so could not mass in sufficient numbers to press the attack farther. We also faced a culture flip along the way, although we quickly reclaimed the city involved.

Finally, we got together enough offensive power to capture one last Mongol city. With five cities captured,\our forces depleted, and war weariness starting to set in, we decided that it was time for peace - for now.

The war gave us three leaders, moving our palace to the former American city of Houston and securing for us Bach's Cathedral and Newton's University. Those were Egypt's either fifth through seventh or sixth through eighth wonders of the game.

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Finishing the Small Fry (1255 AD - 1340 AD)

After the Second Mongol War, Egypt went through an extended period of peace and prosperity. Egypt quickly pulled out to an industrial tech lead, a lead that only grew as time went on. New technologies were researched every four turns, with large amounts of surplus gold (most of it foreign) going to rush various city improvements. Foreign luxuries kept Egypt's people happy, and the Mystery of the Missing Incense was eventually solved to reveal the existence of a sixteenth race - the Vikings.

Two extremely brief wars kept the military in shape during that period. The first was an assault on America's tiny remnant - Atlanta in the far west beyond Mongol borders and Boston which had flipped before the capital was moved practically next door to it. A right of passage agreement with the Mongols, coupled with workers temporarily assigned to build military railroads through Mongol territory, ensured Atlanta's fall, and Boston was within very easy striking range. We even got a leader from the war, who went on to eventually discover the Theory of Evolution. (We waited until the AIs researched Medicine for us to even start worrying about that part of the tech tree.)