950BC     Licensed to Kill


In 950AD I declared war on Japan. They were caught completely unaware of my attack, and stood no chance of winning - exactly the way I like to conduct a war in Civ3. I sent 5 swords to the east to deal with Satsuma and Edo, with the other 10 that I had going to strike first at Osaka, and then on to Kyoto and Tokyo. In the south I quickly captured Satsuma (defended only by a single spearman) and it was autorazed. I would quickly replace it in a better location with one of my own cities. Edo put up no better of a fight, and I quickly controlled another source of dyes.

Osaka was a decently sized city built on a hill, so I expected to have some problems there. Still, 10 vet swords pack a lot of punch this early in the game, and it was never a contest. Two of my swords died, but the city fell and was occupied by the other eight swords. Since Osaka was in a bad place, I later starved it down to size 2 and then turned it into a settler, moving it a few tiles to the east. The last two cities put up even less of a fight; I don't think I lost more than 1 sword against either Kyoto or Tokyo. It was just a matter of walking them up there, since Japan had no units to fight back with other than easily killed regular warriors. In 730BC, it was all over:

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Now that I had killed Japan and taken their land, I had suddenly gone from a minor civ with 5 cities to one of the world powers. The other civs were none too happy about that either, I think. Suddenly everyone was cautious where before they had been polite; well, there was nothing I could do about that. My map looked very different at this point, so I'll post a full screenshot to show the gains of the Japanese war:

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So is this what your game looked like in 730BC? :) I tend to doubt that; every game should have wildly different results due to the different starting spots. I'll be interested to see how the other players in the English position do though. So I now had a couple more cities to play around with, and the job of tying the Japanese ones into my empire. Warwick and Coventry were fishing towns that both did their job admirably, providing a steady stream of income after the initial investment in a harbor and marketplace. Edo was a fishing town that had enough shields to build a military unit or two when the situation dictated. Osaka was moved to a more productive location soon after this picture was taken. Unfortunately Kyoto and Tokyo were never really all that productive, even with courthouses when I went to a republic. They mostly provided income as well, but had enough shields to build their own city improvements. My major cities remained London, York, Nottingham, and Canterbury.

I spent the next few turns deciding which direction to head in next. I had enough land to avoid ever fighting a war again if I desired; so should I play a peaceful game or a military one? I didn't see any real reason to keep fighting, so I decided I would build horsemen and wait for Chivalry to come along, then upgrade them all and destroy Rome. After that, it would be up to me to decide where to go. In case you're wondering, the game was already over by this point; I could have won any victory type I desired. But sometimes the game has a way of forcing you in directions you didn't quite anticipate...

530BC:

Whaaaat?! China had been moving an archer through my territory, and out of nowhere it suddenly decides to attack me? OK, so I'm at war with China now. Yeah, I wasn't really prepared for this one, but China is going to rue the day they ever messed with me! Fortunately the initial attack failed and I lost no cities, but now I had to deal with the world's strongest civ in a war I wasn't - quite - ready to fight. So I decided to take a look at what it would cost to buy some allies... and I was shocked to find that no one would trade with me! What's the deal? Except that (I swear my jaw dropped when I realized this) I had been trading horses to Egypt for incense, and when China sneak-attacked me it broke our trade route. And the game considered ME a deal-breaker as a result! This was even more ridiculous than what happened in Epic4; the victim of a sneak attack gets a bad reputation?! Absurd. Ridiculous. But it made me more determined than ever to smash China and make them pay.

My cities went to all-out military production, which wasn't a bad thing since the top ones were running out of city improvements to build (tech really goes a lot slower with the 1.29f patch). I produced swords in cities near the Chinese front, horses in cities a significant distance away. In 490BC I recruited Egypt into the war against China, the first civ to offer me any kind of a reasonable deal once again. In 410BC, Egypt recruited Rome into the war versus China. Nice! Not like Rome was close enough to make a difference or anything though.

But the Romans were presenting their own problems. They had been sending a decent-sized number of archers and warriors around and in my borders for some time now, and I had 5 vet and elite swords shadowing them to make sure they didn't do anything stupid. I would have asked them to leave, except the last thing I wanted was a two-front war while dealing with China. So my swords danced with the Romans out in the desert, as this picture shows:

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It was an interesting time, to be sure. I certainly could have used those swords in the east against the Chinese, but no way would I let these Roman jerks walk around my cities without some kind of force on hand to stop them. After about 10 turns of this I began to relax. If the Romans were going to sneak-attack me, they would have done so already. They must be heading to the Chinese cities, and so didn't present a threat after all. The Romans were even kind enough to recruit America into the war versus China as well (AI pouncing on a sign of weakness in the leader). Here I was getting all worked up for nothing. Right?

390BC:

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Wow, that blindsided me. Just when I thought the threat was over, the stupid AI goes and attacks me anyway. Any chance of this being a peaceful game was out of the window by now; all of the other civs hated me (because of my "broken deal") and I was getting stabbed in the back left and right. It was time to go out and use that license to kill. Rome was no threat, so I put Nottingham on swords and kept all the other cities focused on the war against China. I would keep a stalemate with Rome in the west while fighting a war of conquest in the east. But Rome's come-uppance was planned out for the future as well.

I guess I should mention at this time that the Zulus killed the Babylonians at this time in 370BC (sorry for those of you who had Bablyon - it didn't happen in this game!) If there had been a balance between the civs in the past, it was surely thrown out of whack now. To be honest, I have no one to blame for the wars but myself. By purchasing so many workers from Bablyon, I weakened them to the point where the Zulus could kill them easily, throwing all balance between the civs out the window and encouraging wars. That doesn't mean I wouldn't still buy those workers again (I would), but it helps explain some of what happened in this game. Oh, and on the very turn that Zululand ended its 2000-year war with Bablyon, it started a new one against China. That tells you all you need to know about the personality of the AI Shaka.

Against China, I spent the first couple turns defending against their invasions with swords and horses while I built up my forces. As usual, the AI left their units badly exposed out in the open where I could pick them off with ease. No stacks of death appeared, probably because it was too early in the game (or maybe because China was at war on all sides of itself). I captured Tsingtao rather quickly as well, bringing all the dyes on the map (I think; not exactly sure) under my control. I'll post another map here from 350BC to demonstrate what the world looked like as a whole at this time:

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Notice all the unclaimed space on the map. The non-stop early warfare had really wrecked havoc with the rampant settling the AI usually does, and the Zulus in particular were pitifully far behind in city development and worker improvements due to their non-stop fighting. As we already know, the AI does very poorly in an always war scenario, and that's practically what Shaka had been doing. Bablyon's death had just left a hole on the map that no civ was really strong enough to step in and take. I was just beginning to pull away from the rest of the pack at this point, though China was still close in terms of power. One thing was certain: this game was pretty messed up.

Once I had built up my forces to a decent striking team of about 7 swords and 5 horses, I began conquering Chinese cities one by one. In each city I would stop for one turn to quell resistance and heal up, then move on to the next. I also starved all of the cities, of course, but my culture was considerably higher than China's as well. I suffered no culture flips at all in this war. My methodical approach wasn't particularly fast, but everything I took was solidly mine and never taken back. I had average combat luck, which meant that my units died at about the same rate that reinforcements replaced them. It was rather strange to be in the ancient age this late in a game though (new patch slowed down tech, and the wars slowed it down even more).

One humorous thing stood out in this war. I get a message saying Hangchow built the Colossus in 290BC - on the very turn my forces are set up to attack and take the city! What a very nice bonus present!

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Even after all this time, the game can still make me laugh. In 250BC, I finally managed to get Rome to sign a peace treaty after killing all the units they sent after me with minimal losses. It was about time to end a war I had no interest in fighting. Caesar remained furious of course - he knew what was coming in the future. By 50AD, China was down to 2 cities remaining. I killed seven defenders in Beijing while taking major losses - only to end up one attacker short while leaving a spearman with 1hp left as the only defender. Grrrrr! And, to make matters worse, an Egyptian SPEARMAN attacked the city and took it on the very next turn. The Pyramids were in Beijing - did I mention I was a little angry? With the Chinese down to their last city (and that about to be destroyed by the Zulus) I made peace with them in 70AD for two techs. In 110AD, the Zulus took that last city and killed the Chinese.

I now stood head and shoulders above the rest of the world in every possible ranking. I had used my license to kill wisely and for the most part justly as well. Japan was the only civ attacked without provocation. Now it was time to spend some time rebuilding and plot how to deal with the treachery of Caesar.