This was what my territory looked like in 1190AD on the turn after Greece attacked and the turn before Cleo stabbed me:
Things are under control at this point. The invasion of Egypt saw my northernmost city razed and by my count about 50-60 cavalry moved into my territory around Nineveh. A human would have simply gathered those units into a stack and THEN sneak attacked, but due to the stupid way that the AI declares war only two cavs actually attacked Nineveh and my conscript rifle thus survived and kept the city from falling on that first turn. Why Cleo didn't simply take the undefended Uruk with her ROP rape is beyond me; that would prove to be critical later on.
With such an enormous front to defend and an absolutely insane number of AI units streaming into my territory, I quickly saw that there was no way to defend all my cities. Rather than let those cities and their rails fall into Egyptian hands and speed Cleo towards domination, I drafted another round of rifles out of all of my cities and then gifted almost all of them to India, my one friend in the game. Here is what my territory looked like at the end of the 1200AD turn:
This picture has been lost.
Now that looks a bit different doesn't it? You might think I was overreacting to this crisis; I wasn't as some future pictures will show. What was my thinking here? Well my primary goal now was survivial, and here on a pangea map shared only with the two civs that wanted to kill me there weren't many places to go. But I seized upon a desperate plan: I would use the settler I had produced last turn to go found a rubber city and put it on a galleon along with a lot of my forces. I would thus evacuate my army and a settler by ship and send them to... the island where Rome was doing some OCC action. I would then attack and kill Rome and turn the island into a fortress, unassailable except by marines. The odds of success were low but I saw it as my only chance for survival. Thus I held on to Babylon and my two coastal cities while gifting the rest to India. It was time for the the heroes of Babylonia to start proving their worth.
It would take Egyptian cavalry a turn to pass through the now-Indian territory, but that would be enough to evacuate a large number of forces and my settler. You can see already in 1200AD I had the refugees sailing to the New Jerusalem (OK, a bad joke) in the west. In 1210AD with cavs pouring in everywhere, I evacuated Babylon itself, pulling all my defenders out and letting the Egyptian savages capture it. You can't abandon or gift away your capital, after all. It quickly proved too difficult to hold on to both Uruk and Samarra, so I left a few token defenders in Samarra and placed the bulk of my forces in Uruk. Samarra was razed to the ground in 1225AD, leaving only Uruk to face the horrible menace of the Deity AI civs. It was on that city and my naval refugees that all my hopes were placed.
Was I too hasty in gifting away those cities to India? Well, look at what was coming at me and judge for yourself:
Every one of those stacks has at least 10 units in it, and there are two cavalry ARMIES in there as well. But Cleo failed to attack with all of her units at once, allowing my defenders time to heal between turns. The turns kept going by, 1230AD, 1235AD, 1240AD... still my brave defenders held out. Uruk went into rioting, and I couldn't take it out of city disorder without starving it and going below size 13. My battered and broken riflemen, almost all former conscripts promoted to veterans or even elite status, fighting from building to building in the flaming ruins of a once-glorious city, continued to hold out turn after turn. Things were not going so well out at sea, as a Greek destroyer appeared out of the fog and sank once of my 4 troop ships. I drew the destroyer away with a second troop ship, sacrificing it to save the other one and the final one with a settler on board. But then disaster struck in 1245AD: a second Greek destroyer appeared out of the fog and sank my last two ships. Stupid AI ability to see the map at all times! No human would ever have been able to do that. Now how was I going to get out of this...
The turns kept passing with no end to the fighting. My defenders were slowly dying, but they were leaving their mark on the enemy, that's for sure. The three cavalry I had in the city sallied forth again and again, killing 1hp Egyptian cavs that had retreated from my rifles every turn but never getting a chance to heal themselves. 1250AD, 1255AD... how long could I last at this rate? I was running out of defenders, and despite the unbelievable heroism displayed by my forces they were not going to be able to prevent the inevitable much longer. I expected this to be the final picture of the game when I snapped it in 1255AD:
Uruk is being pounded every turn by multiple Greek destroyers. Greek bombers had just begun flying sorties over my poor cities to harass the defenders further. About twenty Egyptian units are in range to attack, and a stack of another dozen Greek units will be arriving to attack next turn. "What did I ever do to deserve this?" was my thought at the time. There actually is another cavalry army under that right Egyptian stack, which actually died to a veteran rifle on the next turn. I was going down, but they were going to suffer too. There were about 10 rifles left in Uruk at this point, down from over 25 at the start. It was too much; I just couldn't hold out any longer.
But then a ray of hope appeared: Alex was willing to talk to me in 1260AD!!! Despite the fact that he finally had units in range to attack me, he was willing to conclude peace for only 200g! I signed gladly. And, what was even better, now his units were in the way of Egypt attacking me. I survived another brutal rounds of attacks and in 1265AD Cleo was willing to talk to me too!!!
Peace achieved in 1265AD for 80g. I survived. Barely. Uruk was ruined from bombardment and the draft, and contained all of 5 rifles, 1 cavalry, and 1 artillery at the time of peace. Ironically, it was the fact that Egypt had converted over from fast cavs to slow infantry on the attack that allowed me to survive. But I was alive damn it, and it felt really really good indeed. One city with a handful of defenders survived for almost 10 turns against two Deity AI civs that stretched across the entire map. And they did - not - pass through the gates of Uruk. My continued existence was a slap in the face to Cleo and Alex; maybe I didn't have a shot to win, but I wasn't out of this game yet, and I wasn't going to quit until someone else put me out of it.
