Part 31: The end, my friend.

The people have spoken! Time to see how gloriously our East Roman empire can fight against the deadly Corsican and his hordes!



Mombasa's going. Forgive me, Mombasa, I swear to avenge you and your delicious piles of aluminum and oil!



Great War Bombers aren't so hot against Modern Infantry, and even worse against this guy because of the ridiculous ton of bonuses he's got. Perhaps more modern Bombers will do better. That bonus outside friendly lands is because this Infantry got upgraded from France's second unique soldier, the Foreign Legion, who do better in foreign lands than they do in France's.

Since France also has Himeji Castle, fighting them in their own territory will be just as annoying. He's spent a lot of time making his army much harder than normal.



Wow, you just plain old want everything don't you?

You're going to have to earn it.



I've actually done a pretty good job of pushing back the initial wave of attackers here. My goal is not to conquer all of France at the moment. That is way beyond my capability. If, however….



I could liberate these two city-states, they would be extremely grateful, locking them in as our city-state allies for a long time to come. I might be able to push forward just long enough to do that.

The only trouble at the moment is our happiness is in the toilet and we can't support any more conquests unless we take the time to burn every city we capture, one at a time (city-states excluded)

On Turn 333, a bunch of things happen:


Which puts us into the Atomic age...



France has conquered the last Polynesian city. Darius decides he doesn't like France and denounces him. Darius also finishes Patronage which causes our City-State Alliance Meters to drop rapidly. I'm not sure if they go back to normal if we kill him off completely or not, but the matter is, he's competing with us for the attention of city-states and so he probably needs to die as well.

As you can see here we also have a source of Uranium next to London and another next to Silk Wedge! I'm glad I got those cities when I did.

I'm setting Cotton Cutoff to finish researching the Manhatten Project. It'll be a few more techs before we can actually build the nukes, but this will help.

I'm saving up a ton of gold so I can upgrade our bombers when the time comes, too.



He's moving in the Ironclads to attack Canterbury. He must have a bigger navy than I feared. Soon as I can I need to make Salt Coast start putting out battleships.



Fortunately my bombers and artillery blow the crap out of one of them, while an infantryman kills one of the artillery moving in from the west.

If Napoleon was capable of moving his entire army against us in one stroke, we'd be finished, but if we can keep destroying his forces piecemeal we may actually stand a chance.



Napoleon's moved his Stack of Death aircraft to Dijon, but I'm moving to counter this as well. I've got a fighter (just a triplane, but still) in Canterbury and putting it on Interception badly damaged one enemy bomber that tried to bomb one of my troops.

New Policy!



This will make our country harder to invade. Let's see him beat down our door now!



Oh, dear. Oh, dear, oh dear, oh, dear.

Most of my would-be invading army got toasted by Napoleon's air fleet in Dijon, but my intercepting fighters blew the shit out of his air fleet. He's only got four airplanes left in that city. That is not what alarms me. Take a look at the right side of the screen.

Napoleon and I have completed the Manhatten Project at the same time.

What are the odds!?

I still haven't gotten the ballistics technology to build nukes, yet. Soon, very soon, I will, but I fear it won't be soon enough.



HAH! NEVAARRRRRRR!



Ahhh, shit, here comes wave 2. The good news is I seem to have intercepted and shot down almost all of his air fleet, I can't see any more numbers over Dijon. Once my own bombers heal up I can use them to blow the hell out of this invading army.



And here comes Wave 3 right on the heels of Wave 2! Goddamn! I just researched the Good Airplanes tech, nothing left to research but Nuclear Fission so I get those A-bombs, but I'm very worried I'll lose Canterbury. That is a shitload of troops.



Blew up more of his troops, he blew up more of mine… You can see here in Djon he's got a SAM launcher! That automatically attacks any bombers or fighters that attack near it. CRAP. And if he has the tech to build that, he has the tech to build rocket artillery!



SHIT he blew up Canterbury and most of my air fleet with it. I've got replacement bombers coming online to defend London, and London's got huge walls so it'll be very hard to take but this is disturbing.



Great scientist purchase. I want nukes now. Not tomorrow, not next week, not next year when we're all speaking French. NOW.



Next turn, I get…a stolen tech from my spy! First time I've needed one all LP!



NUKES of course. NUKES.



I could seriously use a little destroyer of worlds at this point.

I burn our Great Scientist on learning Rocketry so we can hopefully get some rocket artillery of our own.



Awww, hell, he's not attacking us first, he's attacking Geneva, one of our few remaining city-state allies.



That's a mobile SAM he's got. Those things are like flak cannons but worse. I just tried to bomb one artillery unit near Geneva and the SAM caused 62 damage to my bomber. FUCK. I guess it's back to conventional land attacks for now until I can kill those SAMs.



There goes our Geneva! Shit. Nukes will be built SO soon. Yes, I am building two in two cities. C'mon, c'mon…



YES. Nuke built, and this is its range. Holy crap. But I need to rebase it just slightly closer to the field of action in order for it to be of use. Oh, so close, can I use it to wipe out that huge invading army (and possibly Canterbury too) ?

We also got a free Great Scientist from Cahokia. Thanks! Burning him on a tech boost NOW.



I get notified that Napoleon has completed the Apollo Program. If he makes it to space he'll win even if he can't crush us militarily!

Okay. Nuke is online at Hastings. Time to light this fucker up!

…


...


Everything goes red for a few turns.



Oh. What? You declared war on me and then I nuked you? You're sorry it ever happened? Okay. I'll take that.



Hazily, I recall the fact that I spent a hell of a lot of time and a ton of nukes defending London. Then I lost London and nuked it, too, so they wouldn't get much out of it.



And here's the devastation wrought upon Egypt. One good nuke was enough to make them reconsider despite having a more numerous army.



I'm desperately trying to get Globalization so I can build the UN. I have a feeling it's too late, though. You see:



Napoleon is quite close to finishing his rocket. It'll take ten turns to build the UN, and ten turns after that for the final vote to commence. That's on top of research time. I don't know if I can possibly swing it… I don't have enough faith points to buy another Great Scientist.



In preparation for the vote I am using every spy I have to rig everything. EVERYTHING. I also just managed to build the National Spy Agency so all my spies are ranked up and I have an additional spy. Good.



New policy too. This'll shave off some of our business expenses.



We must be doing something right because he's no longer asking for every city we've got, just most of them.



Shit, there goes Hastings, conquered by being softened up by a ton of bombers. I just don't have the production capacity to build enough army units at this rate.



Hastings, you served me well, but it's time for you to die in nuclear fire to deter our enemies from moving forward!



That ought to make 'em think twice!



Something I've only rarely seen happens next. Monaco took over Hastings! City-states burn other cities they conquer (unless it's unburnable, like a capital). Nice to know at least one country is on our side.

Napoleon has completed two wonders at once: Great Firewall which makes spies useless in his capital, and Hubble Space Telescope, which pretty much clinches the science ending, as I told you. EEEK.



Napoleon has completed the SS chamber. Only one component left and he blasts off for outer space.



Aww, shit, is that an atom bomb I see in Canterbury?! He's gonna nuke me!



YOU BASTARD! Awww, FUUUUUCK!

Then he nukes it AGAIN. There's almost no city left.



UNCLE! UNCLE! TIME OUT! You can have Silk Wedge now, the irradiated piece of shit. You can have all the piece of shit colonies I got from Polynesia too! I just need time to finish the UN.

Shit. What else will happen when I hit the Next Turn button?



…

I need to lay down for a bit.

New policy.



Very handy for building stuff. Will it help at this late stage in the game? I dunno.



*exasperated scream*

Next turn? Next turn Napoleon puts the cherry on top and finishes his rocket ship, leaving us stranded on this irradiated hellhole about to be wiped out by both India and Egypt. Butch and Sundance had a better chance of surviving than me.



Well.

What I'd have done Different: Built a bigger standing army. At every stage of this game, we were plagued by the fact that we didn't have a big enough standing army to keep our neighbors honest. The trouble is, I kept trying to go back to building infrastructure buildings because I felt I needed them, but that took turns away from building units. After originally conquering London, we should have pressed west until we cracked Napoleon in half. Napoleon, for the record, only built two wonders of his own until the end game. Everything else he did was on his own merits, with no special bonuses. We were too caught up in building our infrastructure buildings and not enough on the boomsticks.

Our Religion Strategy, however, was quite sound. We were making quite a lot of money from it throughout the game, even to the very last turn. Instead of going Papal Primacy, though, I might have chosen a different Founder belief. Either Church Property for even more money, or something else.





If it's any consolation, this is what our UN Poll would have looked like if we had just had one more turn to build the UN:



Not quite enough to score a win with 10 votes, but nonetheless, we were the most popular people on the planet, with Gandhi second-best. If we had just had a stronger army to liberate all those destroyed city-states...

Once Napoleon ate Polynesia, there was no stopping him. I should never have let him get that far.

Next time: I figure out what the hell to do next.