Civilization VI, War (3/3)

The story so far (part 1, part 2), recapitulated: My powerful neighbor Brazil declared war upon me, and at a point when I wouldn’t have been able to stave him off. Mysteriously and anticlimactically he never got around to actually execute the attack.

Luckily, as that gave me time to build my own long overdue army. Used to have the second worst military in the world (out of eight competing powers), and now I have the strongest. And more importantly, now I’m going after him.

In order to build that army I had to neglect everything else, but if my invasion succeeds, I will get a valuable prize — everything he’s got, including his big cities and many wonders (building wonders were an obsession of his.)

So I built the army and started marching toward his nearest city, one of his big three. Got nearly all the way before any sign of resistance, but then he made a long range attack from a unit stationed in that city. Fair enough. My unit got wounded, but survived, I ordered it to retreat to get some medical attention and heal.

Then began a dance of mutual sequential attacks with long range units, a cadence of stepping forward to fire a shot, then getting shot at and getting wounded, then pulling back to heal while simultaneously stepping forward and attacking with another unit. Rinse and repeat, more or less (though I threw in some additional experimental action on the side, pillaging and the like.)

It’s my first real war, but that seemed like the way to go given these circumstances.

It’s a slow process, a war of attrition and a siege of sorts, but it was not an impasse — there was progress. Eventually his defense wore down (while I kept my units alive through the maneuver described above), and I moved in and conquered the city.

Next in line was his capitol, his biggest city. Same tactic, same victory. Took a while, but no surprises. Resistance is futile.

By now he had offered peace several times over, with really good treatises too, but to his dismay I declined every one of them. We both knew I would benefit even more from continuing the campaign.

Eventually I realized that declining treatises probably came with a certain cost I hadn’t previously considered — that of increasing warmongering status among the other powers of the world, which is a pretty bad side effect since it probably increases the risk of getting subjected to a joint attack. No single power is a challenge to me at this point, but combined they do pose a threat. But I’ll take my chances.

As I was putting my units into position to assail his third and last big city, he offered peace once again. This time I decided to look into it. We negotiated, and it turned out that he was willing to part with his two small cities as part of the treaty, as long as he got to keep that big city, his very last city.

I thought it over and decided to agree, seemed like the fastest way to bring him down, since I wouldn’t need to bother to acquire those distant small cities militarily.

The only drawback is that it would eventually require me to declare war in order to acquire the one remaining city, which is bad for that warmongering reputation, but at least the would be over quickly once started, if I make good preparations. (Plus, continuing the current war and keep declining the proposed treatises might raise warmongering status even more for all I know. I don’t know these mechanics yet.)

But, taking my chances and all that, what’s life but a series a calculated risks.

So we signed the peace-treaty, I consolidated my gains, made preparations, and declared war, took the city right and ended Brazil, though not before I had sent the ruler a sardonic mess about his mom.

Saw warmongering reputation get worse, but not to the point of getting the remaining powers to attack me (yet, anyway, who knows what they’re planning behind my back.)

That was indeed the end of Brazil. I now have what he had — save for what might have been destroyed during the war — and my score is through the roof.

So the plan right now is to step back a bit, consolidate, let tension and unfortunate perceptions cool down a bit, and build an even bigger machinery of war using my new resources and power — and then take on the rest of the world, either all at once or stepwise. I’m clearly on the right track here.

(All of this actually happened some time ago, but I’m behind on my blogging, and behind on actually executing the plan as well — currently playing the remastered Bioshock trilogy.)