1420AD       A Date That Would Live in Infamy


I apologize for the WWII reference, and certainly don't mean to offend anyone, but the line has relevance here. In 1420AD, I got this message completely out of the blue:

No warning, no threats, no hint that anything was coming at all, just a flat-out declaration of war. They clearly had this planned, because 8 cavalry landed on my Russian island city of Sverdolovsk the turn that war was declared. I thought that I could ride out war for a while and then settle for a peace, but Tokugawa crossed the line when he captured Sverdolovsk and RAZED it to the ground. Those were *MY* people in there! Ignore the Russian name, because the citizens were all of Indian nationality. That crossed the line. If he wanted a war, then he would get it. Of course, Japan was the strongest civ in the game...

Here's the map from 1400AD, just before the war broke out. I had very little military at this point.

Notice those Japanese warriors are still there blocking traffic! The best thing about the war was that I was able to slaughter those two idiots, and took great pleasure in doing so.

The early phase of this was was mostly naval. The Japanese had the largest fleet in the world, and I had no ships worth mentioning. If you look at the 1400AD picture, you'll see I have over 14,000 gold stored up. I was saving it for use in an emergency situation. Well, this qualified as an emergency situation! I rushed lots of ironclads in Jaipur and Calcutta to do battle with Japanese Frigates and Galleons. The sea outside of Yokohama and Jaipur became a veritable graveyard, as dozens of ships died there. I sunk at least three galleons (presumable full of riflemen or cavalry) that were headed for my tundra colonies. As it was, the Japanese landed 5 rifles and 1 cavalry up there; fortunately I had seen it coming and those cities had seen a bunch of rifles rushed for defense. None of the three cities up there were ever lost.

Slowly but surely, the Japanese went from 13 frigates, 10 galleons, and 7 ironclads to 2-3 ironclads and 1-2 galleons. I lost many naval units, but they lost far more. It was really interesting, as I had never conducted much naval warfare before. And, in fact, control of the seas was pretty important, as control of the seas allows your transport ships to land forces at any location of your choosing. This was a change of pace, and actually quite a bit of fun. What was not fun was the coalition the Japanese were organizing against me:

These came in 1485 and 1495AD, respectively. Now neither of these civs was strong enough to threaten me, but what was the deal, really? Since I've never seen this before when dominating the power bar (Japan and I were far ahead of everyone else), I have to conclude it was another result of breaking a deal earlier. That seems like an unfairly harsh penality for breaking one deal; keep in mind that the AI civs were breaking trade agreements with ME by signing these alliances. In any case, although I never declared war on ANYONE the whole game, I now had everyone permanently furious with me at all times (*sigh*). The F4 foreign advisor screen was pretty funny at this time - take a look:

Got all of that? I sure don't. I have no idea who was fighting who, but it was pure chaos out there. I called this screenshot "unfriendly world", and I think that's a pretty good description of what was happening.

Meanwhile, in my cities I was slowly building up a force to attack the Japanese cities. I built mostly cavalry, since Replaceable Parts had not yet been discovered and that prevented the building of cannons and infantry. A testing probe of 6 cavalry I landed on the Japanese mainland was slaughtered by tons of riflemen. Oh yeah... the AI civs like to use them on offense now. This was going to be a bit dicey. To give them something to play with, I landed 12 riflemen on a mountain and just kept them there. After some 10 rifles suicided on them, Tokugawa called off the attack, which was an amazingly smart decision. Probably coincidence though. My rifles stayed on the mountains and managed to move to an inland mountain tile that had a saltpeter resource on it, and successfully pillaged it. Unfortunately, two turns later Replaceable Parts was discovered. How did I know this? The Japanese upgraded all their rifles and committed a horrendous slaughter against them; every rifle died, but so did some 25 infantry. It was... monstrous to watch, as the AI clearly had no value whatsoever on the lives of its units. It was an almost frighteningly real depiction of how modern generals are willing to send thousands to their death to capture a piece of terrain. In terms of game mechanics, this slaughter, along with the loss of luxuries due to everyone declaring war on me, forced me back into a Monarchy in 1510AD. Japan had gone Communist almost immediately.

The AI does do better in Communism now, as they draft as opposed to doing endless whipping; no longer does the AI instantly self-destruct under Communism like it did under 1.16f. But they still don't do well under it. In any case, I got Replaceable Parts shortly thereafter and began my own stack of death. The SOD was landed on the Japanese mainland in 1555AD; here's the picture of it in its initial form:

Not bad for a start. But as SODs tend to do, it would only grow with time, going from its intitial 9 artillery to over 40 with time. I completed Theory of Evolution on the next turn (1560AD), but I'm not going to post the picture as it wasn't that exceptional. It was a matter of bombarding Yokohama for a few turns and waiting for the defenders to be weakened so my cavalry could move in for the kill. In 1585 I got my chance:

I chose to raze the city, as I would do to ALL Japanese cities as an act of revenge for their burning of Sverdolovsk. They started the war on their terms, but I would end it on mine. They were going to pay a price for starting the war and organizing alliances against me, and it was going to be on their own home turf now.