Civ5 game log: Empires of the Smoky Skies

Clinton Alderdice of the Dalmace Empire

Alright, so I finally got my copy of Gods and Kings from Play.com and decided to first give a try to the Empires of the Smoky Skies steampunk scenario. I selected a random leader and ended up playing as Clinton Dalmace and Warlord difficulty due to the fact that I haven't actually played the game for a long time.

My civilization starts on a nice area of rivers, plains and grasslands somewhere south, judging by the nearby tundra areas. I quickly meet two other civs: Cyrus Rotherdam of Eruch (neutral attitude) and Ignace Curnow of Orlin (friendly). I establish three cities until the Eruch Empire comes close in the east and Orlin Empire in the north. There's also a city state to the west. Given the small map, this seems to be a normal number of cities, as it's the same number that the other two empires have. There are also the Pulias and Vedria Empires, but they are on another continent together and I don't have any coastal cities to produce ships to protect my embarked units, so I don't have much to do with them.

The world without Cyrus Rotherdam.

Somewhere in the 1840s I catch Cyrus Rotherdam's spy trying to steal my technologies. Coincidentally Ignace Curnow had also just denounced Rotherdam, so I declare a war against Eruch. Their cities are no match for my Landships and artilleries which surround them and bombard them, and by 1856 the Eruch Empire had been assimilated to mine. I didn't like Rotherdam's attitude anyway...

Some years go nice and quietly in a state of peace, but then Curnow's attitude towards me suddenly changes and he denounces me in 1871! I wonder if that's because he realized that I would win the game quite soon? In Empires of the Smoky Skies the player who holds most of the Titles for five consecutive turns wins. The titles are Defender of Progress, Grand Philanthropist, Captain of Industry, Lord of Refinement and Master of Wealth, and they are unlocked once certain technologies are researched by any player. In 1879 I check the status of the victory process and find that it's actually exactly five turns until my victory, since I'm holding the three first ones of the aforementioned titles: I've got the highest number of latest landships, the highest number of wonders and the highest production city. The other two titles haven't even been unlocked yet.

Victory!

So anyway, I'm not happy about Curnow denouncing me, so naturally I start moving my units towards the Orlin border. I see that he's also doing the same and he actually then declares a war against me. Being a better strategist I quickly take the upper hand and then his first city, Yakutsk, in 1879. At the end of the year I then achieve the victory, getting the highest possible rank of Augustus Caesar and 11657 points. :)

Wait! Just... one... more... turn...

I was doing so fine in my war against the Orlin Empire, so I couldn't just leave it there. ;) I roll my units onwards, while Orlin actually has half of his army bullying the poor city-state of Manila to the north of his own cities! I take the final original Orlin city of Yekaterinburg in 1885 and then go on to liberate Manila in 1889, that marking the end of the Orlin Empire.

Then what? I start to get annoyed at Octavius Cutler of Pulias: there he is, peacefully in his own little continent, far away from the Vedria Empire at the other end of the continent! Why isn't he expanding? Doesn't the guy have any ambition? And most importantly, could I get the Sky Admiral Steam achievement (Destroy an enemy unit with a Flyer based at a Sky Fortress in the Empires of the Smoky Skies scenario.) by going into war against him? ;)

Hello there, Octavius! Mind if we come for a visit? We promise, we won't pillage too much!

I captured and annexed some coastal city from Curnow, so now I can finally build Battleships and Destroyers. I create a couple and sail my land units across the pond to the other continent, starting a war in the first half of the decade of 1900. And man, that becomes just like Pearl Harbor! Cutler has a huge amount of Flyers and they bombard my Battleship like crazy! The poor ship escapes with just one single hitpoint out of 100 left! When one of my Landships capture the capital city of Pulias in 1906, it destroys no less than seven Flyers there!

The other two cities are still hidden in the fog of war, but I find them and take the third and final city of Pulias in 1914. And yes, I managed to get that achievement, although it wasn't because of the war against the Pulias Empire but because the Flyer destroyed a Luddite unit on its way to the war. (Luddites replace Barbarians in this scenario, you know!)

OK, well, then what? Well, I had come too far to quit now, so now I had to capture the cities of Vedria as well. I notice that the distance from my continent to the other is not too long if my units would go east, so I start building lots of Sky Fortresses and Flyers in order to take Vedria by surprise from the west. Meanwhile, my land-based units approach from the east, from the former lands of Pulias.

The final war.

Building and moving the army takes a while, so it isn't until 1931 when I declare a war against Luther Griggs. In 1932 already I annex the captured city-state of Milan from Griggs. Four or five Battleships bombarding the city makes it trivial. :) Simultaneously almost a dozen of my Sky Fortresses attack the city of Turku in the west. They are backed by a single Land Leviathan whose task is to conquer the city once the Sky Fortresses have softened it up enough. The fortresses aren't too strong against the city, but the sole number of them allows the Land Leviathan to capture the city in 1934. My land-based troops then take the final two cities in 1935, leaving nothing more for me to achieve -- or, I could conquer all the city-states, but that wouldn't be as funny. Instead, I'm happy with the situation that they are all my allies. :)