Lacking the rubber needed to carry out his industrial experiments, Professor Mursillis was forced into a declaration of war against the upstart researcher named "Hammurabi", who wasn't willing to share his lab sample. Now this war was going to require a bit of planning first, since I was going to be sending an invasion force across the ocean and set up a new outpost of sorts there. My biggest advantage was of course the sizable tech lead that I had built up at this point; I don't know exactly what techs the AI civs had, but my guess was that they didn't have much beyond Nationalism in the Industrial Age. I was in an unusual situation where I had Replaceable Parts, but NOT Nationalism or Military Tradition or rubber. That meant that the best military unit (by far) that I could produce was... guerillas! So the plan for this war would be to send out an invasion fleet of guerillas, supported by a large contingent of artillery. With 6 attack and defense, guerillas would actually be quite dominant against the largely-medieval armies I was expecting to face, and artillery would simply turn the struggle into a slaughter.
For all that I lacked rubber, the double-speed workers I got from Replaceable Parts did greatly speed up my railroading efforts and promoted the further development of my core. The other good thing about getting Replaceable Parts so soon was the ability to go out and actually get a source of rubber while I still had a tech lead over the AI. While the military buildup commenced, I also built Suffrage, discovered Medicine and Scientific Method, and started in on Theory of Evolution (the AI civs were not close to discovering these techs). The invasion fleet of 5 galleons carrying 10 guerillas and 10 artillery set sail in 1410AD.
The Great Rubber War has begun.
This picture is taken on the next turn, after I contacted Hammurabi and (honorably) declared war. Coincidentally, there also happens to be ivory right next to this rubber source, so I figure I may as well grab an extra luxury while I'm at it. Nineveh, however, simply will not do. I have no worries about its culture (Hittite culture stands above all others by a very large margin), but the AI has idiotically failed to put the city on the coast, so it must be razed and replaced with one of my own cities in a more intelligent location. Hammurabi has rifles in a city on a hill - but I have 10 artilery pieces on that tile. I knew from pre-war investigation that Nineveh had only a regular and conscript rifle inside. The battle is no contest; on turn 2 of the war, they were killed along with a bunch of 1hp cavs that I had retreated the previous turn. First blood to Mursillis.
The plan was now to raze Uruk to free up more cultural pressure on my city (which was founded in 1430AD, due to my forgetting to put a settler in the initial conquest fleet) and then simply defend what I had until Hammurabi asked me for peace. That, of course, was the problem - there was no guarantee that he would EVER talk to me for peace. But I was committed to this course of action now, as explained earlier, and there was no avoiding the variant rules. Rubber Foxhole staked my claim to the resource in 1430AD, and a harbor was rushed up pronto.
With the construction of a harbor there, I could now build Infantry back at home, and I started building some extras as well as upgrading my rifles to provide a greater degree of security. Of course, Babylon wasn't going to let me just waltz in and take what I wanted without putting up some kind of a fight:
Hey, that's a lot of knights there! You can also see a 6hp Ancient Cavalry in the picture too (just my luck, I'm taking on the civ who built the Statue of Zeus!) Rubber Foxhole has already rushed a barracks and a harbor, and I'll be putting a cultural building there next to gain control over more tiles. I won't be attacking Babylon or any other Babylonian cities, since the variant rules prohibit it. I'm allowed to fight a war to get the resources I need, and nothing more beyond that. I'll just be defending my cities from here on out in this war. The artillery you can see was decimating the incoming knights, allowing my guerillas to kill them with ease. With so many outdated units getting killed, I suppose this was only a matter of time:
Well I wasn't expecting to get a leader, but now that I have one, I may as well use it for one of those ridiculously overpowered Conquests armies. In order to ensure the safety of my critically important rubber city, I used the leader for an Infantry army and kept it in Rubber Foxhole. Suppiluliumas' Stalwarts (say that five times fast!) was the rock that held down my important colony. After winning a battle with it, Tarsus would go on to build the Heroic Epic; Tyrana would eventually build the Military Academy, but couldn't at this point in time because I still didn't have Military Tradition!
By 1460AD, it was clear that Babylon was gassed, and the number of incoming units at Rubber Foxhole had slowed to a trickle. I had lost few units in the war, and was hoping for a quick exit so that I could get back to peaceful development. No such luck was forthcoming, however, as Babylon signed Rome into the war against me in 1465AD. Well - this isn't so great, but I was expecting something like this to happen, and Rome wasn't exactly formidable. So I'll just send over some more reinforcements to Rubber Foxhole, and I'll ride this out with no problems. No sweat.
Oh this is not good. Not good at all. 
In the interturn after Rome gets signed into war against me, Spain sneak-attacks as well. Note that this was not a case of Babylon signing Spain into war against me, but a second unrelated attack. Would it have happened if I hadn't gone after Babylon first? I don't know, but my gut feeling is probably not. So instead of a largely stress-free colonial war overseas, I now have a major hot war on my hands with a potentially very dangerous rival. Izzy is showing her true colors at last! The Spanish have been the real enemy all along, first competing for wonders and now striving for outright military dominance. I'm going to have to defend for now, with my military forces divided between two continents, but Isabella's come-uppance will be at hand, one day...
I like to build a lot of extra defenders in my cities when at peace, enough to have two in each city. Some say this is a waste of money when in a Republic/Democracy, but I don't know how many times I've found myself in the middle of a war and been extremely glad that I built up my defenses while at peace. (When I'm fighting, I usually concentrate on building offensive units, thus it's good to stock up on defensive units ahead of time). This was a textbook example of such a situation, as I was glad to have a significant number of Infantry on hand when THIS particular stack showed up:
Here they come! Remember how I got Sun Tzu's and Spain was left cascading to Knights Templar? Well, now all of those Crusaders are back with a vengeance as part of a massive Stack of Doom (SOD). The most important thing to do in this situation is to stay calm. As it says on the cover of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, "Don't Panic!" For all of the size of this stack, I wasn't particularly concerned. I could use my railnet to move all my infantry to any threatened city before the stack could attack it, and that slow-moving group wasn't getting anywhere fast. The only cause for concern was the fact that almost all of my military was over in Rubber Foxhole - and fighting a major fight there too! In other words, I had to build a new military to deal with the Spanish threat; I couldn't simply recall my forces from the other continent or risk losing the rubber city that had prompted this whole exercise in the first place.
I had plenty of Infantry on hand, which happened to be my best attackers and defenders, so I only needed to build a few more of those. The real need for my civ was more artillery. Mountains and mountains of artillery. Every city not on vital infastructure starts building artillery. I want a stack of at least 25 artillery pieces, to go along with the 10 I already have over in Rubber Foxhole. While my cities were working on that, I finished researching Espionage (face it, I need the Intelligence Agency) and went back to get Military Tradition for cavs, which also allowed me to run a low science rate and upgrade more rifles to infantry. After that initial stab of panic (caused by watching dozens of blue units wander into my territory), I reconfigured things and soon was back in control once again.
The artillery starts coming off the production lines and the Spanish units start to die. They're outdated junk units for the most part, and as some of the units get hurt from bombardment, Izzy foolishly separates them from the stack and sends them back home to be healed, where there are intercepted en route and killed by Infantry. Turn after turn, my artillery smashes the stack and reduces its hit points further. The SOD wanders around randomly, trying to get deeper into my core but not actually doing anything. As a result, by 1500AD its been destroyed, achieving nothing. Conquistadors continue to drive deep into my territory looking to capture workers (with no success after turn 1 of the war) and Spanish Frigates will torment me with useless (but irritating!) bombardment attacks for ages yet to come, but the danger has passed. Now the war will just be a time-consuming grind.
Meanwhile, over at Rubber Foxhole, my guerillas have cleaned out a smaller but still formidable stack of outdated Roman junk units. The result of fighting these wars with AI civs who have been at peace the entire game is having to kill off gigantic stacks of outdated units. In the course of that struggle, I get a second leader, who heads back to the mainland to form a cav army (no picture, didn't catch it fast enough). Hammurabi signs the Zulus to a trade embargo against me in the 1485AD interturn (quite possibly the most useless move ever for this variant!) then immediately sells out his allies and signs peace with me. What a sneak!
The ending of the war weariness with Babylon caused WLTKD celebrations to break out all over the Hittite Empire in 1490AD, I also noted at this date that I had finished upgrading my rifles to infantry. I had 46 infantry, 23 artillery, and 15 guerillas at this point, and the number of artillery was still going up. After finishing research on Military Tradition, I made a side detour and went after Ironclads (yes, Ironclads) just to take out the ridiculous Spanish Frigates that were driving me out of my mind with their bombardment. Spain had over 25 of them! Izzy was pursuing the "drive the player crazy with useless attacks that have long animations" strategy. For that, she must die.
1515AD was a strange turn. While cleaning up the Roman stack of outdated units, I had a guerilla attack and give me a third leader, which I turned into an army. Then another guerilla spawns a second leader just 2 or 3 attacks later. Wow, OK - let's turn him into another army. Then a THIRD guerilla at Rubber Foxhole creates ANOTHER leader on the same turn! This all in the span of maybe 10 total attacks!
I only got a picture of the third one, leader #5 overall, but I took a picture in the endgame replay showing that they all happened in the same year. I've seen this happen before, but only in the endgame when I had tons of elite Modern Armor running around, never before in a situation like this. Oh - and don't even TRY to tell me that the random number generator isn't streaky in Civ3. 
Evidently impressed by the mauling his forces had just gotten, Caesar asked for peace the next turn in 1520AD, which I was happy to grant. Spain continued sending stacks of junk units against me, only now they shifted their attention to my western border, which Izzy must have seen as more weakly defended. It didn't stay that way for long with rails, and the western deserts ran red with Spanish blood. Back at Rubber Foxhole, Babylon settled agressively near my city's cultural borders (and the rules for where the AI will settle have clearly changed in Conquests), eventually stealing the ivory luxury back from me! I resolved that if we were ever to go to war again, their offending city would be razed to the ground.
Refining is discovered in 1535AD, and I was relieved to find that I did in fact have oil up in my tundra colonies. Spain turned out to have 3 oil sources, Zulus and Iroquois had one each, and no one else had any. Not such a bad draw! More importantly, one of Spain's oil sources was right across my border, and I resolved to steal it from them. Now - this might, properly speaking, be outside the spirit of the game, since we weren't supposed to go warmongering here expect to capture needed resources. But - Izzy started this war, and if she's got a resource right on my border, I'll be damned if I'm not going to go and take it from her! You reap what you sow, after all. As a result, I used my cav army (the 1st Mounted Guard) to raze Palma to the ground and then burn down Zaragoza as well:
Those two cities were replaced with my own ones, and just like that I cut Spain down to only two oil sources. At the very worst, they would only be able to supply one of my rivals with an extra oil supply. Also notice all the Spanish and French frigates right off my coast, continuing to irritate me with their bombardment attacks (well, not the French ones). I also kept trying to plant a spy in Spain unsuccessfully; I failed 5 straight times, and couldn't get a spy into Madrid until their civ dropped into Anarchy. Good grief! Where is Mr. Pindleton?! Once I did finally get that spy into Spain in 1550AD, I was able to see that they had 54 rifles - and literally, just about nothing else other than 26 Frigates. Twenty-Six! No wonder they were irritating! Take a look at the city of Lograno, which I investigated to prove a couple of things:
First of all, note which government Spain has fallen into. 
You can also see how poorly Spain has managed its city here (mining everything? although I do believe they had only just gotten Electricity at this point) Take a look at the production of those tiles - they're all getting an extra shield. In other words, Spain has mobilized here. In fact, as I soon discovered, every AI civ was going into mobilization as soon as they became embroiled in war with me. That must be a new feature of Conquests, and I'm not at all sure it's a good thing. The culture of the AI civs I was fighting just kept falling relative to mine - it was really quite shocking to watch! Tarsus began catching up to Madrid on the Top 5 cities list after falling way behind earlier. Finally, notice also all of those Frigates holed up in Lograno - and I couldn't get to them, since it would have been against the rules to capture that city. Argh!
Spain eventually switched to another tactic, having failed to invade me successfully on both the middle finger of land and in the extreme west. Now Izzy began invading me across the French border in the east, apparently via a ROP. I must say that at least Isabella is persistent! She has no chance of winning, but simply won't sign peace as my other foes had done. And thus the struggle drags out...
By the time 1600AD rolled around, I had just discovered Flight and was preparing to initiate "Operation Bomb the Living Daylights Out of Spain". I had managed to kill off every single Crusader ever produced by the Knights Templar as well (I don't think a single one even won a battle). Just when I was about to turn Spain into a smoking ruin of craters, Isabella finally did ask for peace.
She was at least correct about where the blame was due! I had to accept it, since I was so weary of war. But I almost didn't, as I was just about to unleash a hellish wrath on Spain from the skies. Here's what was about to start falling on Izzy's head:
Multiply that bomber by 50, and you'll get an idea of what I had in mind for Izzy. Imagine every single one of those tiles within bomber range turned into a smoking crater. Spain avoided that fate by a very narrow margin! With no air force whatsoever, Izzy would have been utterly helpless to stop me. But, for once, she had actually made a smart move, and I was just glad to be back at peace with all the other civs after a long period of war. Unfortunately, that Spanish snake continued to plot behind the scenes against Professor Mursillis...
For the first time in centuries, I was at peace. The turns could finally start moving along at a rapid pace again, instead of the crawl that it took to constantly fight my way through a million junk units. I discovered Motorized Transportation in 1640AD and entered the Modern Age (wow, didn't realize that Conquests made Radio an optional tech), then pursued Computers first followed by Rocketry. I did have aluminum up in my tundra north, thank goodness, although there was another source exactly ONE tile outside my borders to the east in France. Wow, that's three different resources (coal, rubber, aluminum) all just outside my lines in France. Do you think I was kicking myself for not expanding just a little further east in the early game?
With rubber in hand, I figure I'll be able to research my way from here up to the spaceship in peace. All my cities are perfectly secure from attack by now, with mechs all over the place (or they would be once I got the money for upgrades), and my massive air force of bombers combined with my stacks of artillery would be able to decimate all unwanted attackers. I'm just praying that the game will allow me to play this out to a peaceful conclusion without having to invest hours and hours of my time fending off pointless AI attacks. It's not like I can influence AI diplomacy in any way, it all simply comes down to dice rolls on whether the AI attacks me or not.
Looks like the dice have come up snake eyes!
Predictable old super-aggressive Shaka, he can't ever seem to stay out of war. The sneak-attack comes at Rubber Foxhole, where my defending Infantry Army (behind a civil defense, and with defensive bombardment support) cuts the attackers to ribbons. At least a dozen cavs die without taking the army below half its hit points. Massive stacks of rifles and other outdated units move into my territory via the ROP Zulus have with Babylon. I respond by ferrying over two transports of artillery to Rubber Foxhole and rebasing all my bombers to the city. The Zulu have no airforce yet at this point, nor could they use planes so far away from their cities even if they did have them. By 1740AD, I have 26 artillery and 22 bombers in Rubber Foxhole, and I'm holding more artillery in reserve back on the main continent to protect against a Spanish sneak-attack.
The carnage is hellacious - at least for the Zulus. I lose no units at all. Artillery + Lethal Bombardment Bombers + Massively Overpowered Armies is simply an unbeatable combination. All that this sneak attack has done is to stretch out each turn to ridiculous lengths, delaying my finish by that many more hours. I mean, as much fun as it is to kill these units, it just gets irritating after a while.
You're KIDDING ME, right? Spain jumps into the war again?! Isabella, that lying, cheating, deceitful COW? Oh, it is ON now, baby! They have CHOSEN UNWISELY, and Isabella is going to RUE THE DAY that she ever signed that alliance! You do not mess with someone who is a) 1 turn away from discovering Synthetic Fibers and b) has FOUR empty armies waiting to be filled! Bring it on!
