I was saved by the bell!

[PrinceBimz]

Yep, if my last game was a boxing match then thats exactly what would have happened. Why? Well because I was scared of China the entire game! I managed to "coward" out of war with them numerous times. Although I was 2nd most powerful nation in the game and in fact one of the last 3 nations left. By all means I was not weak, I was very powerful. Compared to China I was not up to par with them at all. So I managed to keep peace with them all the way to 2045 when they declared war on me out of nowhere! Bad timing for me, I just changed from communist to anarchy! I was planning to go back to democracy. Can you say trouble?!?!?

Oh yeah, it got ugly. I mean capital U.G.L.Y. ugly! First off they had modern armor and I was still using tanks. Big mistake upon my research but hey I thought I was safe. I nearly fainted when I seen, kid you not, approximately 60-70 modern armor moving to my borders. Oh no my friends, don't think thats all the military they had either. Lets say maybe a third of it!

Anyway China was so powerful, they had nearly ripped my entire nation apart in only 5 turns! Talk about unbelieveable! Man here I was thinking, "oh it don't matter the game will be over in 5 turns anyway". Yeah after 4 turns I was on the edge of my chair scared I was going to lose everything. I have had around 24 cities at the time. Garrison average was 4 infantry to each city and nearly 10 units in my most important cities.

They had to be the most powerful nation I think I ever seen in this game. I had a screenshot of all of that armor but I forgot to save it into an image! Too bad! Anyway game ended and I was down to like 6 cities at end! Damn it was ugly.

[PrinceBimz]

Oh I would like to add, in the very beginning of this war China had attacked a frontal city of mine. This city was serving as a very active airbase. It was being used in my previous war with babylon whom I beat the hell out of. Anyway the chinese army attacked that city, beat down my garrison of 6 infantry and destroyed, guess how many of my aircraft? Try 35 Jet fighters! Which was practically my enitire airforce other than the 4 jets I had on my offshore aircraft carrier. One word..."HURT"

[Sheik]

What difficulty level?

[vmxa1]

I have some empathy for you, but tell me. Why on earth would you switch governments with 5 turns left in the game? How is it possible to get to 2045 and not have Fibers researched? Anyway, you could have stopped them with a few means. One is to rush nearly all you have to their attack point. Another is to fort up the cities where they are coming and open the cities back far enough that they can not reach in one turn and see if they will go for it. If they do, start to thin them out. I always have a bunch of arties on hand to help with that. Draft all the units you can and buy others to get more. If you had no way to get fibers in research, I would beg borrow or steal so I can have MA and help keep China from liking the way I looked. In any event, always check your advisor to see if you are considered weak, if so get cranking troops out. If you do not, you may get a visit. One other thing, never station planes in a city that can flip or be over run. If you needed them there, send massive units to protected them from the only threat you had (china). I lied yet anther question, why have 35 jets in the first place? At least you had some excitement.

[Theseus]

I agree with vxma1's comments across the board, but damn I'd like to see it!

[PrinceBimz]

This was on Regent level and I was doing fairly well the whole time until all of this happened. I was in 2nd place and still finished at 2nd but it was scary. You see I switched goverments with around 7 turns left and the declaration was a few turns after but bad timing. I was thinking of playing this game a little further then 2050 which is why I switched the governments. I figured It was just me, china and I think the zulus were left. Babylon was still in but like only a few cities left. I certainly did not expect a war at all. I was just going to play on a little longer just to see how I would do.

You see because everything was at a peaceful state, I turned my research towards other things. I went with rocketry, fission and computer trees. Recycling I just got towards the end. So I had like 75% of the modern techs. Plus some of the wars slowed my research badly. I won them but it was a fight. One was with Japan at the beginning and then Egypt and another with Babylon. I completely destroyed Japan and Egypt not long after I destroyed with the help of China. I was fighting Babylon alone towards the ending and was beating them back down to their last two cities. For the most part my science sucked this game until I started getting towards the ending.

Artillery I did have in some of the major cities and it made a big difference. It allowed me to counter attack with my old tanks and finish off some of the armor. I was just so freaking outnumber here. They were attacking me from three different directions so it was like three seperate fronts to fight on.

Those jets...when I was fighting Babylon I needed them! Their bombers were getting me extremely angry and I got tired of it. Put the jets there, got air superiority and started busting up their cities and improvements. Those jets kicked major butt. I was knocking down size 18 cities over a few turns of bombing runs to like level 12 and stuff. I would destroy many improvements within their cities too. All the while I am sitting back laughing and not losing anything. Just watching the planes fly in and bust them up. I had a field day on their improvements, tore apart roads, mines, everything. They had some intercepts and I lost some planes at one point but I had them outnumbered.

I will say China better be glad they destroyed my airforce. That would have made a major difference in the war. There would not have been all of that travelling and quickly sending armor over. Not if I would have busted up their roads and rails. Plus I could have softened up their armor by bombing them.

Really mech infantry would have stopped all of this mess. I just did not build them and it was too late because I was so outnumbered. I really did not expect a war with China.

[vmxa1]

Nasty business. I like to keep an eye out for any civs getting to big and try to put them in check, so I do not have to face an over whelming force. Get others to fight them and help them against a large civ. I would suspect that your empire did not have all of the shield production it should have and that is why you did not get the tech tree finished by 204x. This could happen if you stayed in Monarch for too long (frankly even going to monarch instead of republic) and did too much irrigation, maybe even not enough expanding. One good way to expand is to take cities from others as this makes you bigger and them smaller. Skip unrequired techs and get them later in only 4 turns or trade/buy or extort them. This lets you get down the tree faster. I skip things like monarch or rep, I only need one or the other. Printing press/music, comm/esp. I am never going to use comm and I will get the spies later, yes ploice stations are good, but by the time I am able to build them I will have that tech cheaply. At regent you can out pace the AI still. Go get em.

[Bambul]

The only thing close to that that I have ever experienced was a surprise attack by the Aztecs in which they took 5 cities in one turn. I took back 3 on my subsequent turn, then one more on each of the next 2 turns.

It was quite interesting seeing how far they got with city after city falling. I would have had more units defending, but I was fighting a war against China on the other side of my borders and my units were concentrated there.