Civilization 5 - LAN

A Typical Friday night for the last couple of months has seen my gaming group mostly play Warhammer 40k and soon some Iron Kingdoms, but this past Friday we played Civ5. We played with 3 teams of 4 and of course we were all on the same team. I ran a random leader and received Maria the 1st of Portugal. With Maria i typically look for a lot of trade in the early game and then buy a Diplomatic Victory in the end. This wasn't going to be the case this game though. We ended the game at Turn 199 with a world at total war. The game is saved in case we get a chance to go back and finish it. Hopefully we will. Next comes a brief description of time Friday in Civ5.

George (Bismark) and myself started off within about 20 hexes of each other in the far south of our Huge Continents map. Scott (Napoleon) started in the dead center and Austin (Gajah Mada) started in the far north. For the first 20 -30 turns all was quite and while we ran into some scouts on our little continent (George and myself) nothing really happened until I built my second city. Oh Hello Mister Genghis Khan! Yeah there he was not 2 hexes north of my new city which is almost never a good sign. So i had a dialog with the man and all was good. No hostility, open to trade, and 3 turns later he appeared as Friendly. Go me for not pissing that warmonger off. Given another couple of turns all this would change. George and myself had to stop and have a think though, see we had a plan to connect our nations and work towards a yet undetermined goal (really though who knows what they are going to do in the first 50 turns). We were going to have to build at least a small military due to the barbarians harassing us both from the South.
 

So their I was building a small military (more to keep GK thinking then dealing with the barbarians) and trying to get some money coming in when all of a sudden Catherine the Great builds a city the minimum number of hexes from me. Damn it not again! So lets go talk to her, well apparently Maria did something very bad to her in the past because she was down right hostile to me. If I had sent a messenger to her I would have had his head returned in a box. Thankfully we had already discovered iron! OK so who can give me Iron for Dyes? 4 Iron for my dyes, sure i will take it. 5 turns later I have enough of an army to take out the Russian village on my border but I need catapults and we were still a couple of turns out so I figured I would see who else didn't like Catherine besides me. So I take a look and nobody hates her..... Denounce Catherine, wait 2 turns. Hey my buddy GK denouced her too. "So GK, you want to go attack Russia in Winter with me?" "To WAR!" he says and the First World War begins.

My Buddy GK

See when i asked this question of GK, I didn't really expect him to say yes. In the 700+ hours playing Civ5 I have NEVER had another Civ EVER say yes to going to war with me. So when it happened and all my buddies were going "What the Hell" I was stunned and then found it extremely funny.


The entirety of WWI, went like this. My army of Swordsmen and Catapults along with George's Single Archer (who I must say was an amazing help for no other reason than granting LoS for my Catapults) walked over Catherine's City and then the next one and after a 2 turn rest and consolidation period Moscow. So we took out Catherine's Capital but she still had St. Petersburg and since Catherine was still being a pain it too would fall in the next 10 turns. So after about 20 turns of combat the annoyance that was Catherine is now gone and everyone on entirety of the map except for GK hated me for being a Warmonger. GK was still friends with me. Unfortunately, it wouldn't always be that way.

Soon after the destruction of Catherine, we entered a time of peace (mostly because everyone was probably scared of me - I think George was and he was on my team). I was in serious need of playing catchup due to my mass militarization. So we all settled back into the early game run for resources (mine being money, I was netting -48 gold a turn at this point). This went on for a long time and I got caught up, we had trade, Austin had mass barbarian problems, Scott took a nap since Shaka never even came by to have tea with him, and George and I completed the road from Munich to St Petersburg (50 to 100 Hexes long). And then stuff started to get interesting again. It started with a jump of about 100 points for Nebuchadnezzar, and GK and Caesar going to war with some local City-States. Now this wouldn't normally bother me but Neb was on Catherine's Team along with Ashurbanipal, both of which are only about 12 hexes to my North West. Also GK and Caesar started amassing a very large number of troops on my northern border. Now GK is still a firend of mine but Caesar was not and while they are on the same team all it would take is a denouncement to put GK at war with me. So began the build up to WWII.

I start making a technology run for Muskets and Cannons. Since I already had long swordsmen and Catapults (which were already being upgraded to Trebs) the cost to get these to Muskets and Cannons would be light. This is also when a decision I made very early in the game was going to come in handy.

I told George of my plan to deal with GK and Caesar at some point and Austin decided he wanted to expand south and take Theadora. Our only problem is that I still needed time to get some cannons. I saw more and more Pikemen on my northern borders, Austin was waiting on ships, I was waiting on Cannons, and George was sipping Tea while waiting for both of us. Scott was simply enjoying the quiet of his little continent. Other than some barbarians, Scott hadn't seen a single combat all game. Shaka who shared the same lands left Scott alone this entire time.

All of a sudden everything happened at once, WWII started with the sound of cannons being fired from the waters off the coast of Theadora's Capital. This would become a long and bloody battle (Seriously, it took way to long for Austin to take the city). It took so long that i don't even remember if he even took the city. I think he did but in truth I was busy. For the next 20 or so turns I marched my armies north into Mongolian and then Roman territory conquering everything in my path. The plan was actually pretty sound. I moved up and engaged two of GK's cities while George blitzed his Capital. So in about 8 turns GK was out of the pictures and I walked away with 2 cities while George walked away with 1. We then split Caesar's Cities in half George taking the more southern 2 and myself taking the northern 2 which included Rome. By this point Caesar didn't really have an army left as I had destroyed it while it tried to help GK defend his lands. The high defense of the cities did slow us down a little bit though.

While all this was going on, Scott decided that he wanted in on the fun and began a war against Shaka. While I believe Scott had a technologically superior army, Shake had the numbers. I believe that by the time of Turn 199 the great French Zulu war was at a stalemate. As for the rest of WWII, both GK and Caesar was conquered. We left the battle at that point, still at war and awaiting our return. Neb had gained a good number of points during the war and since he didn't participate in it didn't lose anything. My Diplomat in his capital had nothing to say to me and no information on troops and only a small bit on information of the city defenses (32 defense, Rome was int he low to mid 20s).

I believe when we get back to it I will probably go about ending the war. Then will begin another era of technological growth as both George and myself need to consolidate the 4 to 6 cities we gained and get troops back into position. In truth I should have let George take Rome as well so that we both had a city exposed to the next war front. As it is, I think i have 6 cities now facing Neb and his partner all of which I need to build up defenses in and move troops too. I do believe a 3rd World War will happen sooner rather than later though i do not know if I will initiated it or Neb. We will just have to wait and see.

Turn 199... Next Turn!