Before I even start, I want to apologize up front for this excessively long page. Readers with dialup Internet connections may have trouble getting all of the images to load, and for that I'm sorry (there is a reason why I split these reports up into multiple pages, after all). A great deal of things happened between 1250AD and 1375AD, and I decided that it would be better to preserve the 25-turn continuity of my sections than to split this one up into two parts. Bearing that in mind, here's the picture of the northern front all but conquered in 1250AD:
This picture should give a pretty good impression of the enormous progress made in the north against the Japanese and the Indians. Instead of confronting a powerful civilization wielding dangerous samurai, I now only faced a broken collection of isolated settlements unable to resist in the slightest. This front was all but over, it just remained for my cavalry to dot the "i" and finish off Tokugawa and Gandhi. Just as a side point, notice how just about every single tile has a road on it; I was possibly a little too enthusiastic with my workers, but better off safe than sorry. Here's the similar situation in the west, where the real fight continues to take place:
Much like my previous effort, I had advanced forward a line of cities in the last 25 turns to form a new line from Philadelphia - Miami - Grand River - Mauch Chunk. The next advance was going to be tricky though, as the continent opened up and widened a bit which would make holding a front more difficult. For that matter, the terrain to the north was also extremely mountainous, which would limit the mobility advantage of my cavalry. To make matters worse, the Babylonians have begun showing up with cavs of their own, as you can see in the picture. With the effects of the Great Wall negated by my discovery of Metallurgy, my muskets were definitely not invicible anymore. With cavs on the scene and my city walls no longer impregnable, the best defense would become a strong offense. There's no need to defend your cities if you keep moving forward so fast that the enemy can't react! That is the philosophy behind the blitzkrieg, and it was one that I would employ to good effect in the upcoming turns.
The west was now my main objective, but first things had to be finished in the north. Osaka was captured in 1255AD, and I continued to roll south to take Kagoshima in 1260AD. A small group of cavs advancing up from mainland China took out Nagoya too on the same turn, and the Japanese were DEAD... or no, wait, they aren't. Tokugawa must have a settler on a boat somewhere. Dang it! Does anyone else think that this is a BAD feature of Civ3? I better find him soon; my nightmare scenario is conquering the whole continent and then chasing around the ocean to find settlers on galleys. The one good thing to come out of this was another leader (#21) who went back for another bank. Fortunately Gandhi had been landlocked for some time now, and lacked evacuation facilities for his civ. When Jaipur fell in 1265AD, it was curtains for G-man:
At this point the north was finally cleared once and for all. That minimap showing nothing but the Chinese pink in the northeast is a pleasant sight to behold. I could now finally turn all of my forces to the west, which up to this point had been getting only half of my cavalry. It would take a few turns to move my cavs from the north over to the western front, but when they got there I would have plenty of striking power.
I hadn't been idle in the west while wiping out the last few cities in the north. Boston was captured from America in 1255AD, as I tried to push forward before the discovery of rifles. The AI civs needed only one more tech (Magnetism) to enter the Industrial Age, where Nationalism was all but certain to be drawn as a freebie tech with three scientific civs still opposing me (Persia, Babylon, Ottomans). If anything, I was willing to sacrifice a bit here to be able to gain more ground before rifles arrived and slowed down my progress. With that in mind, I pushed forward to take Tonawanda from the Iroquois in 1265AD, leaving them with but one city left. I also captured a horse resource in the process, which cut off Babylon's horse supply (Hiawatha was sending them to Hammurabi). As I pushed further into the west, I began disrupting the resource trading network of the AI civs and was able to limit their access to units.
1270AD was a worthless turn of random number generator luck. Two cavs died attacking a 2hp musket, and a third was redlined before finishing it off. Then my attack on Houston failed as eight cavs were unable to kill three pikes. They were on a hill, but still - come on. This was punctuated by my losing 13 rounds of combat in a row, in which I had a 53% chance to win each round. The odds of that happening are .00015, or about one in 7000. Give me a break... and don't try to tell me that the RNG isn't streaky in this game. This set me back for the next few turns; fortunately most of my cavs had retreated without dying, but they needed to heal up before going against a new target. I decided I might as well wait another couple of turns for the units from the north to show up and boost my striking arm. Meanwhile, in the southern part of the western front, I had enough cavs on hand to move forward a bit and end some long-awaited business:
This image has been lost.
Cross another opponent off the list! The Iroquois had been a worthy foe in the early game, and I might have been in trouble if they had sent more mounted warriors instead of archers and spears. But Hiawatha had been unfortunate enough to start relatively close to the Chinese, and so he was the first of the western civs to fall. I need to point out another important fact here; notice how I am only two turns away from discovering Magnetism? When I discover that tech, I will enter the Industrial Age and can start working on Steam Power, yielding the all-important rails. BUT I noticed at this time that none of the AI civs were in the Industrial Age yet either, and it would be in my best interests to keep them away from it as long as possible. If I discovered Magnetism, the price to research it would go down and it was possible that this would catapult the AI civs into the Industrial Age, likely giving them free Nationalism. Therefore I decided to turn off my research completely when I had one turn to go on Magnetism; when the AI civs jumped into the next age, I would simply top off my research and then follow them on the tech tree again. This proved to be an ingenious decision, which will become apparent as I continue the narrative.
My offensive stalled for the next few turns, as I waited for more reinforcements to arrive, but by 1295AD I was ready to go. The 14th century would be the era of the blitzkrieg for the Chinese. I kicked it off one turn early by capturing Buffalo (defended by a spear?!) and then Atlanta in 1295AD, while at the same time finally getting my hands on Houston further north. This put America down to just three cities left; suddenly Abe was reeling from a massive assault on all fronts. New York was captured in 1300AD, and all of a sudden I controlled all but one of the world's saltpeter sources (!) You know what that means: no enemy cavs to counterattack me and no muskets in the cities of my AI opponents. They still hadn't reached the Industrial Age yet, and I wasn't complaining. Chicago was autorazed on the same date in 1300AD, and then all of a sudden America was down to but ONE city left on the continent. Abe had another on an island far to the northwest though, so it would be some time before I could eliminate the Americans.
Another leader (#22) popped in 1300AD; rather than cart him all the way back to my core cities, I just used him for another cav in a city by the front. Hey, why not? I was rushing another cav or two every turn close to the front with my now-massive income thanks to turning off research completely. I was really moving forward now, and in 1305AD I took my first Babylonian city of Samarra down in the worthless southern tundra. Look! Hammurabi has left me an unexpected and VERY nice present:
Wow, 540 gold - that's enough for almost two more cavs right there! I have no idea why Hammurabi had so much money for me to loot, but I wasn't about to complain. San Francisco was captured in 1310AD, reducing the Americans to some island OCC fun. El-Amarna was taken as well and razed, becoming the first Egyptian city to fall to my forces. The offensive didn't let up on the next turn either as Antoich became the first Persian city to fall to me. It was joined on the same turn by Gordium and Sidon; Persia lost almost a third of its core on this single turn! But the greatest prize of the 1315AD turn was capture of Babylon itself, along with its enormous treasury:
This image has been lost.
Woohoo, 904 gold! There's another three cavs to speed along the attack. Babylon's gold was proving enormously beneficial in speeding up my offensive; I could rush 2-3 cavs every single turn right up at the front (thanks to Sun Tzu's free barracks) and continue dashing ahead before the AI civs had the chance to react. 1315AD would certainly classify as a "very bad turn" for the AI civs. One other important thing occured on that date though; as I was preparing to end my session for that day, I was idly scrolling through the list of AI cities to count how many they had left (it was faster than looking at the map). When talking to Cleo, I noticed the city of "Asyut" in her city list, but I couldn't find it anywhere on the map. This meant that there was more land out there somewhere that I hadn't found yet, with AI cities on it! I hadn't even really been thinking about islands, since this was a pangea map, but clearly there must be some out there somewhere. I used my stolen Babylonian gold to rush about a dozen caravels across the entire extent of my territory; they would go out scouting in every direction to find the location of this mysterious Egyptian city. The fact that I noticed this trivial detail was a great stroke of luck in terms of speeding up my finishing date.
In between the turns of 1315AD and 1320AD, I saw my first sipahi opponents. Well "saw" isn't really the correct word, as two of them just appeared out of the fog and raped two of my injured cavalry out in the open. I could just wave bye-bye to anything attacked by the mighty sipahi; the Ottomans were of course the only civ besides myself with saltpeter at this point (since their starting postion was right next to a saltpeter source; definitely NOT a coincidence). Fortunately for all their strength on offense, the sipahi don't defend any better than a cav, and I killed the units easily in my counterattack (cool death animation, by the way). I was much better equipped to deal with losses at this point than the Ottomans, so my defensive strategy was simply to pack a bunch of cavs into each city; the top one might die, but it was unlikely that Osman could find 10 sipahi to kill all my units and take the city. I spent most of the 1320AD turn resting my units from the blitz the previous turn, but still managed to take Ellipi and its 662g from Babylon.
1325AD was another turn to advance forward. Ur was taken and gave me an amazing 1186g (!!!) upon capture. Dang, just how rich is Hammurabi if he can afford to put that kind of gold in every city?! Susa was captured with considerably less booty, as I only got 0g from its treasury. Perhaps most significantly though, I sighted new land this turn with my exploring caravels; could it be that I had found the location of the hidden city of Asyut?
If 1325AD was a good turn, 1330AD was a great one. I started out by razing Ashur from Babylon, which kicked in another 908g for my cause. Then I decided that I was tired of dealing with Hammurabi's ugly mug, so I razed his final city of Akkad and helped myself to a king's ransom of gold:
Has anyone here even gotten more than 2727g from capturing an enemy city before? I've never gotten any amount even remotely close to that much; that was close to enough cash for TEN more cavalry at the front lines, enough to punch through an entire line of defense! The fact that Babylon was now eliminated was almost less interesting than this ridiculous amount of cash I was pulling down. Just for kicks, I decided to move forward and capture Persepolis too this turn, doing so quite easily after killing about seven pikes guarding the city. Persepolis occupied a nice chokepoint in the continent, and thus it makes a convenient place to step back and take a look at my progress so far. In the 16 turns from 1250AD to 1330AD, I've made some rather decent gains, wouldn't you agree?
That map looks a lot better than the one at the top of the page in my eyes! I had to include a little "thank you" to Hammurabi as well, since without his funding this never could have happened so quickly. Naturally, I took this picture before my 1330AD spending spree; I spent down to about 1000g rushing cavs in just about every city you can see in that picture. Now it was time to penetrate north into the heartlands of my two remaining foes, the Egyptians and the Ottomans. Egypt was crippled by its lack of horses and saltpeter, so the main challenge would be the Ottomans, who still had not advanced into the Industrial Age yet. It appeared as though the AI civs really needed the help of one another to research; once I began knocking them out of the fight, the research capacity of the ones remaining was decimated by lack of gold trades going back and forth and an end to trading luxuries. With my enemies still in republics, or even democracies, they probably were using tons of entertainers in their cities too.
I didn't stop upon reaching this dominant position, as my cavs barely had a chance to rest before surging forward again. Arbela was razed in 1335AD, Bactra captured, and Pasargadae captured as well. That pretty much did it for Persia on the main continent, though they also held out with one city on an island to the northwest. The nine cavs I had rushed in former Japan/India last turn with Hammurabi's pilfered treasury boarded the three caravels I had rushed there as well and set sail on this turn for the newly discovered land. Babylon's treasury had gone to finance my overseas expedition to the northern islands, a better use than anything else I could have thought of. My scouting caravels even had the fortune to notice that the northern island was the final resting place of Tokugawa - aha, found you!
It's an odd quirk of fate that the final Japanese settler proved to be standing next to Asyut, the city whose name had led me to search for the northern island in the first place. Meanwhile, as another turn passed I rushed forward again in the west. Pi-Ramesses was the first Egyptian core city to fall to me, followed by the capturing of Giza (Egypt) and the razing of Arbela (Persia). Since I still had cavs left with movement points, I went forward and took Iznik, my first Ottoman city, as well in 1340AD. The only bad news was that one super-pike killed two cavs and retreated another in a size 4 city on flatland. *sigh* Fortunately I had enough units that one bad run of RNG luck wasn't enough to have any serious effect anymore. To be fair, the streaky combat results were just as likely to go in my favor as against me, but since I pretty much always attacked when the odds were in my favor, it didn't show up as much. The Civ3 combat system is imperfect, but it gets the job done - most of the time.
What is a blitzkrieg, exactly? It's a German word meaning "lightning war", which came into popular usage to describe the rapid advances made by German armies in the early days of World War II. My dictionary defines blitzkrieg as 1) sudden, swift, large-scale offensive warfare intended to win a quick victory 2) swift, sudden, overwhelming attack. I go to these lengths to explain the word because 1345AD was a perfect example of a well-executed blitzkrieg in action. That turn saw Heliopolis captured, Memphis captured, Izmit captured, and Edrine captured all on the western part of the continent. The cities were all hit by overwhelming force without any kind of warning and before Cleo and Osman could prepare any kind of defense. Meanwhile, the units I had landed on the northern islands razed Asyut from the Egyptians and razed Salonika from the Ottomans. And to top it all off, they killed the final Japanese settler to wipe Tokugawa from the face of the earth. That's SIX cities taken in one turn and another civ destroyed WITHOUT the use of rails or artillery. Never underestimate the power of cavalry and the power of the blitz offensive.
This image has been lost.
The offensive juggernat continued forward the next turn. Thebes was the first city to fall, paralyzing the Egyptians further if they weren't already hopelessly out of luck, and allowing me to drive forward and raze Alexandria. My cavs continued onward with a veangeance and captured Elephantine, which allowed me to plow forward again and raze Byblos. And um, there goes all of Egypt's core, leaving them with two isolated cities scattered across the remaining map. Konya was captured from the Ottomans, allowing me to push forward and take the greatest prize of the turn, the city of Istanbul itself in heavy fighting. I captured the last remaining city on the northern island this turn as well, though the Persian spear in Hamadan killed THREE cavs before dying. It was a good thing I had brought NINE just to be sure (I leave nothing to chance). So after taking six cities the turn before in a blitz, I took seven more on this one. Even better, capturing Istanbul had given me control over the world's last saltpeter source:
This image has been lost.
Yes, that is Sir Sun Tzu capturing the city of Istanbul from a 1hp musket defender. He never produced another leader, but did have the honor of capturing no fewer than two captial cities, as well as providing me with the leader for the Great Wall. If only one could get such faithful service from all units. I also noted this turn that I had all five cities on F11 (by default, hehe). Beijing had been #1 for most of the game, but now that I had eliminated the competition, only Chinese cities were showing on the list. In case you haven't figured it out by now, the AI civs never reached the Industrial Age. They had foolishly chosen to research Free Artistry over Magnetism, and I never gave them the time to research another tech. From a reload tested after the game though, I found that if I had discovered Magnetism it would have dropped the cost enough for Osman to get it too and enter the Industrial Age. His freebie tech? Nationalism, of course. I had clearly made the right choice to stay out of the next age and keep the other civs out of it as well.
I wasn't able to do much advancing in 1355AD, as a number of units were resting from my previous monster assault and some mountainous terrain limited my movement. Antalya was the only city captured that turn. My cavs were ready to go again in 1360AD though, taking Bursa, Aydin, and Uskudar in rapid succession. Just a comment on the streakiness of the number generator outside Uskudar: my combat results were lose 4 (retreat), win 4 (kill enemy unit), lose 4 (retreat), win 3 (kill enemy unit and enter city). Yes, that's just a little bit streaky there. The Persian island town of Samaria was razed, and the Ottoman town of Kafa was captured as well to close out the turn. Another leader (#24) popped in the fighting and rushed a final cav in Kafa to speed along my attacks.
After some careful planning, I reasoned out the best way to advance on the 1365AD turn to finish as soon as possible. Sinop, an Ottoman island town, was first razed without issue. Adana also offered no strategic importance and so it was razed upon captured. Hieraconoplis was then captured, Tyre razed (to imitate Alexander the Great), and Ankara razed as well. Without me even really thinking about it, the Ottomans were now dead!
I hadn't taken the first Ottoman city until 1340AD, and now they were already dead by 1365AD! Killing a civ in five turns before the advent of rails is nothing short of incredible, but that goes to show just how many cavs I had by this point. There were three more cities remaining, one from each of the Egyptians, Americans, and Persians. Thanks to my planning, I had a dozen cavs in position to hit every one of them on the next turn. Rather than try to dramatise this, I'll just say that I captured Abydos, St. Louis, and Sardis with ease (I even got a final leader, #25, outside Abydos!) to kill off all of my opponents in 1370AD. Here's the nice pictures:
These images have been lost.
With all nine AI civs dead, I was now the only civ left on the face of the earth. Victory was mine! But wait a minute, I finished off all the AI civs in 1370AD, which means that my victory is going to come on the next turn in 1375AD - which is exactly 25 turns from my last checkpoint! Ha, I could NOT have timed this any better myself! Go to the next page for the conclusion to this story, and some final thoughts to wrap it up.
