Part 14: Boudicca Kills Everybody!

Well, Carthage is ours, but we're in trouble…

Our final target is too far away.



Assuming my army marched straight through what's left of Carthage's empire, it'd take 14 turns just to get to the Chinese continent. The same would happen if I went east to where Sweden used to be and swam off the eastern side. Additionally, the trouble would be simply getting my army close enough to attack because they'd all be exposed in their rowboats as they approached. Embarked land units are destroyed quite easily.

So how about a naval attack?



All of my proper naval facilities except for Honolulu (which I'd need to annex) are on the inside of the continent and there's only one way out for the entire navy to get to the rest of the world.

ADDITIONALLY!



Beijing can only be conquered by a melee attack, by a melee-type ship (and right now, that's ironclads for me). There's only one hex that Beijing can be attacked from this way. The preferred way to take a city is to bombard them with long-ranged attacks first, but at this point in the game the only ships I have that can do that are Renaissance-era Frigates which might not be strong enough to bust up Beijing's walls unless I had tons of them.

So, upgrade my navy, right?



Long-range battleships would take 17 turns to research. Melee destroyers would take 12 turns to research. This is on top of production time, and also travel time.

So I'm going to make a deal with Carthage. I'm going to see if they can sell me one of their west-coastal cities as an olive branch to finish the war.



She's on the ropes and she knows it. When they start saying stuff like "The end is near" they'll sell you almost anything except their current capital. She's only willing to sell us Medina, though. Needs a little more persuasion.



On the next turn, she hits me with everything she's got and miraculously manages to re-take Carthage. That won't last long. I still have my mega-artillery next to it, so I take it again.

This time, Dido is sufficiently cowed into submission and gives me Hippo Regius.



Haha. "Friendly." Planning on strangling us in our sleep, huh? I don't care.



Not a bad acquisition, actually, as it has pearls. In ten turns, I can have direct control of this city once it stops resisting me, and I can gold-buy a bunch of ships. Speaking of gold-buying, I need to annex another city and force it to build a bunch of happiness upgrades.



Stockholm is ideal. Now, there is one big downside to annexing every city you can--it'll drive up the cost of our next social policy and make Great People harder to form.

I DON'T CARE at this point. The point is forcing this empire to give me what I want…now.

Annexing Stockholm makes our unhappiness jump up to 10! Building the courthouse makes it jump back down to 1. I love these upgraded Courthouses.

To keep us from cheesing the game, there's a limit on how much an improvement we get from building happiness improvers in one turn. They also cannot improve happiness over the total population of the city (so you can't build a colosseum and theater in a 1-pop city to get more happiness out of it than you ought to)

I am also annexing Palenque and doing the same to them. Happiness now at 6. 9 with purchase of a Theater in Palenque. Good.

Time to wait for a few turns to research new stuff and wait for Hippo Regius to calm down.



Huh. Guess I'm growing well.



Radio! Good. Time to build that Eiffel tower! Which will be done in…15 turns.

I'm also annexing Honolulu and having them build regular frigates. When I finally research battleship technology, I can spend gold to upgrade them into battleships (so long as they're in friendly territory).



I'm just gonna go ahead and burn both of those Great Artists on consecutive golden ages. It'll make construction go faster.



See how much extra culture per turn I'm getting because of the Golden Age? That's why.



Alright, one of my artillery pieces has finally swam all the way to China's continent, and sees possibly the last barbarian outpost on the planet. I'll get some good points with Rio de Janero if I blow them away. FIRE FOR EFFECT!

Also, Carthage and Rome are fighting each other. AGAIN. Jeez, I'm glad I bought Hippo Regius while I could.



Wu, I haven't done shit to you (yet) and you're a hundred and fifty turns too late.



Alright! Great War infantry have a combat strength of 50. I could also research Plastics after this to get Modern Infantry which are at 70, pretty damn impressive. But first things first.

POLICY TIME.



This will finish off Autocracy. For the next 50 turns, our units will do extra damage to all enemies. Can I mobilize my "Kill China Navy" before the 50 turns are up? Here's hoping.





Hey, rifle guys! Time to upgrade to semiautomatic bolt-action rifles!



I like how their icon is the Don Quixote helmet.



Hmm…attacking us or attacking Carthage? I wonder… maybe she's just attacking a city-state.



Bombers and fighters are not normal units. You have to park them inside a city and they strike out at other nearby targets, taking damage each turn they do (more damage if there's an enemy fighter on an air patrol in the area). Essentially they're a way to make your cities able to attack more targets. You can also park airplanes inside aircraft carriers, which we don't have yet.



Ba-damn, now that's a happiness boost. Obviously, a cultural civ will get the most out of this one, but we're doing well too.



Now that's just pathetic. China is so desperate for fresh land they're putting out lousy cities all along every single unclaimed speck on their continent.



She doesn't like that I snuck a few artillery guns onto her island. This time, I'm gonna lie, because I'm not quite in a position to blow the shit out of China just yet. Once I take over China, who cares if I have a reputation of lying?

It's nothing, Wu Zentian!





FINALLY. I have spent many empty turns preparing for this. Now I'm going to research Plastics, because that gives us the Research Lab, the final science building. Everything will go much faster after that.



Look at that baby. More than twice the damage of a frigate, stronger on defense than even an ironclad, range-3 attack. Get a few destroyers to help them take Budapest and it's game over!



All of our EXP upgrades for units we're building now let our new ships get Supply, which is super-important because ordinarily ships cannot heal themselves if not docked in friendly territory. We could also get Range, increasing the range of our attack to *4*.

Time for a new policy. Let's do something different, shall we?



I'm going to show off what happens when we take a policy that's incompatible with another policy.



Oof, stiff. We'd do better to finish off Patronage, just to potentially get Great People in the near future.



I'm making enough money that I can just buy a battleship a turn, now. With the reduced gold cost of purchasing thanks to Autocracy and Big Ben, this is easy. One battleship nearly equals our GPT. I just need some melee ships to help finish off Beijing and I'm golden!



If we were going Freedom, this would be even better, since it'd make every specialist eat half food. Still pretty awesome.



Damn! We have a lot of wonders. Note that a lot of them were built by other people, we just have control of them now because we conquered them. Dido's one wonder is in Mecca, which she conquered, it's the Statue of Zeus.



Awesome! I can upgrade my troops to guys with automatic rifles who do 70 damage.

Right now our science is 726, gold-purchasing a bunch of science labs makes our science 885. It'll be even better when our puppets build them. Skipping ahead...



This will take our workers some time to work on, it's a good thing that at this point I've set them all to automatic improvements.



My infantry dudes, look like World War II GI Joes. Basic infantry tactics and equipment didn't change all that much for the rest of the 20th century, so we need to wait until we hit 21st Century technology to give them our final upgrade, Mobile Infantry, which puts them all into cool-looking Infantry Fighting Vehicles.



FINALLY. This lets us transform all our cavalrymen into TANKS. Tanks cost oil instead of horses, but unlike horsemen, they do not have a disadvantage in attacking cities. We finally have fast-moving city-hitters! And of course, we can now build destroyers, which I'm going to gold-buy several of out of Hippo Regius.



Jesus, look at all that oil. This is because we have a ton of city-state friends, and also because of that policy in Autocracy that doubles our strategic resources.



Yes, this is the same type of tank you saw in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. They're stronger than Great War infantry but weaker than modern infantry. That's what modern tanks are for.



I think that's enough to blow away China's capital, don't you?



We have enough culture for a final policy in Patronage. Finishing Patronage makes every other civ lose influence with city-states at a rapid rate. Very, very handy if you're going for a diplomatic ending.



She just has a bunch of Galleys and Frigates. I am going to blow her away.

Hey, Wu Zentian! Imma declare war on you!





Boom, most of her navy, GONE in one hit with only slight scratches on my units.



This reveals uranium, the final strategic resource. It's not as vital as aluminum is…but it's more fun. It lets us build nuclear reactors, nuclear missiles, and Giant Death Robots.



The second half of the 20th century! Horrible nuclear paranoia, growing distrust of our own governments, hippies, electronics, rock and roll, the rise and fall of the Berlin Wall and all sort of other cool stuff. This gives us a new spy.



We've got quite a lot of techs left to discover. The Military Victory is theoretically achievable at any time, so it's usually the fastest if you pursue it ruthlessly. Which we have.




Beijing is hanging on by a thread. One more turn.



Ahhh. At last.



As you can see here, we got an advantage somewhere around the middle ages, and never let it go. Finally we wiped out Polynesia and the Maya and Sweden in rapid succession. The rest of the Civs never had a chance after that.

At the end of each game you can also see an instant replay of everyone's cities and territories growing! I love this thing.












We were, in a word, relentless. King difficulty is harder than normal and does not guarantee victory for me, but I managed to play it smart and pressed every single advantage I got. China was desperately crapping out cities by the end there, wasn't she? Even snuck one just north of Dublin that I never noticed.

Things I'd have done different: Piety didn't pay off as much as I expected it to because the gross influx of volunteer soldiers every turn made it superfluous to also use Holy Warriors. Choosing Autocracy meant that we had nothing to spend our Faith on in later eras. On the other hand, Patronage was just awesome and I should have finished it off sooner. My happiness was really tanking badly. I should also have gone down the right side of Commerce first before pursuing Autocracy, because that would have alleviated almost all of our happiness issues. And for some reason, despite having a huge militaristic society, I never put a single point into Honor!

Well… I am too tired to draw Boudicca dressed as Modern She-Rambo…maybe later. Thanks, everyone. Next time, Mayans In Space!