750AD     Grinding Forward on All Fronts

Having established a solid bulwark of territory in the center of the continent, I was now ready to push forward in both the north and the west. With fewer civs and cities to deal with in the north, I expected to make much largers gains there, but hoped to make some progress against the western civs as well. Here was the map at the beginning of the 750AD campaign:

This was certainly a significant improvement over the map from 25 turns earlier! I now had two separate fronts and my enemies distinctly divided into two groups. A couple of my cities are working on universities, but the majority of them are simply producing Riders, the uber-unit of the early Middle Ages. With my civ finally in a good position to pretty much go all-military for the rest of the game, how far do you think I can go before reaching the next checkpoint at 1000AD? I'll be taking all bets right now, up front. No refunds though if you guess incorrectly. :)

Resuming the narrative, Cholybalsam was captured on the northern frontier in 760AD, bringing me well and truly into the festering Mongol jungles. On the same turn, my Riders surged forward in the west and took St. Regis away from the Iroquois. That city would form the northern extension of what I hoped would in time become a new defensive line, stretching to the south through Cattaraugus, Salamanca, and Oil Springs. For the moment though, all those cities remained in heavily-defended enemy hands. I also noted after this 760AD that I lost three exposed Riders to AI counterattacks. Such is the cost of pushing forward; you inevitably incur greater losses when taking cities than when simply trying to defend them. With my whole civ now gearing towards the offensive, I wouldn't be able to maintain those pristine 10:1 kill ratios anymore - but this was a welcome tradeoff if it allowed me to take more enemy cities.

I popped yet another leader on the next turn in 770AD, should I even post the picture? Yeah, why not, here's leader #14 overall:

That should also provide a good indication of the sort of action St. Regis is seeing on a turn-to-turn basis. The presence of AI knights from America and Babylon was certainly making things more difficult; my Riders were about 5 times more likely to die against a knight compared to a MDI. At the time of this picture, I was desperately pushing more catapults up to the western front to help out against these knights.

While things were somewhat dicey in the heavily-contested west, I was doing much better in the underdeveloped north. Almarikh was taken in 780AD from the Mongols, another city choked badly by jungle. I popped another leader (#15) in the fighting around this city in 790AD, and used him on a library to save me the cost of rushing it with cash. The capturing of Almarikh opened up enough territory in the Mongol heartland for me to leapfrog forward to Karakorum, which I captured in a major victory in 810AD:

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The fall of the Mongol capital was a blow that they would never be able to recover from. Temujin's civ was poorly developed and quite a bit behind in technology; lacking iron, he could put nothing better than spears in the path of my Riders, which clearly was not enough to stop the fearful mounted men. Temujin's jungle/desert start certainly didn't do him any favors either; carving up his weak civ was little more than child's play. The weaknesses in his civ became painfully obvious during the dramatic turn of 840AD. On that single turn, I sent two Riders out to capture Mandalgovi... which turned out to be defended by a single spear. OK, that was easy, what's next? With plenty of Riders left, I turned and attacked Kazan (size 8) on the same turn, again finding the city defended by a single spear. Errm, this was going even better than I could have hoped, so I turned and targeted Ta-Tu (size 10) as well. It was a little stronger, with TWO whole spears in it, but was also easily taken. On one turn, I had jumped an entire LINE of cities forward in the north. While the Mongols had been fairly good at attacking me earlier in the game, their defense was nothing less than pathetic. With the 3 movement points of Riders, Temujin didn't even know I was coming as I blitzed through his cities. Just the way I like it, ha ha.

Things weren't going so well in the west, where everything was a struggle and advancing forward was a serious grind. For example, I managed to take Cattaraugus from the Iroquois in 820AD, but I lost several Riders in the attack and as a result that front was dangerously exposed for the next several turns. I had to rush some extra reinforcements to the west to keep the situation from breaking down completely; I had a tile or two pillaged on me, but all of my cities remained secure. Things remained dicey at best in the west though, simply due to the sheer number of units that those six AI civs were throwing at me. Fortunately by 850AD I had managed to get the situation under control again, thanks to a turn of very good bombardment luck with my catapults. Here was the interturn map from 850AD, showing the progress on both fronts:

I can just barely fit the two fronts onto one screenshot; from this point on, I'll have to post separate ones of the northern and western fronts. The big loser to this point has been the Mongols, who have lost half of their entire core, and that pattern was only going to continue as I kept playing. I should point out that my researching of Music Theory was pure weed though; with no happiness issues, there was no reason to research that tech. I would have been better served by pushing forward to Military Tradition at this point so that I could get cavs. But I was just trying to follow the AI civs in tech at this point, not to get ahead of them, and so I guess that explains my choice of tech research. It was still not a good decision though, with no fewer than 5 luxuries now sustaining my citizens.

In any case, I discovered Music Theory in 890AD and awaited only a leader to rush the wonder. I hadn't seen a leader in a while after the insane flurry I had been getting earlier; I just hoped that the drought wouldn't last long enough to have a serious effect on the wonder cascade. I captured Tabriz on the same turn from the Mongols; it was their third capital in almost as many turns, and was again defended only by spears. Where's the Temujin of Epic 21? This was just a sad showing for the proud warriors I remembered from the winter tileset potluck game. The greatest news from the 890AD turn though was the sacking of the Iroquois capital. That's right, I finally tracked down the lair of my oldest foe and forced Hiawatha to turn and run with his tail between his legs!

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The fall of the Iroquois capital really broke the back of their civ, which had been beaten pretty badly already. From this point on I pretty much saw zero units out of their civ; they were more or less waiting around to be killed by me. Unfortunately the need to preserve my defensive lines and not expose my position prevented my armies from rushing forward and finishing the job, but they were done for all practical purposes. At the moment though, I had my hands full dealing with Persian, American, and Ottoman knights. I shudder to think what the defensive situation would have been like if I hadn't been able to advance forward enough to cripple the Iroquois; if I had still been stuck just defending my cities, things could have gotten ugly at this point.

My steady advance continued in the north against the ill-equipped Mongol forces. It was the Japanese who were putting up all the fight there, as I was still seeing next to nothing from the Indians (and the Mongols were all but on death's doorstep by now). Darhan was captured from the Mongols in 920AD, and Ulaanbaator followed in 940AD. On the same turn I snapped up my first Indian city (Kolhapur). I also noted here just how amazingly different the two fronts were; the northern front was a wide-open race from city to city where territory rapidly changed hands and my workers could barely keep up with my Riders. The western front was a warzone, with both sides holed up behind strong lines of defense and any gains coming at a high price in lives lost. The Great War parallels were obvious, and I certainly didn't have any trouble imagining my situation as a Germany stuck in a two-front war against multiple foes.

Historical allusions aside, I had grown bored with the Mongols by 950AD and decided to wipe them off the face of the earth. With the capture of Erdenet on that date, the Mongols were dead for all time to come:

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Ha! Good riddance. Before 1000AD I had already eliminated one of the AI civs; not sure how that will compare to the results of others, but it should be pretty good. This could only make things easier for me as I continued to carve my way up the northeast penninsula of the continent. I captured Madras from the Indians in 980AD, who even for all of their weaknesses managed to have a couple of pikes in the city. Oil Springs was captured from the Iroquois in 990AD to finally stabilize a new defensive line in the west. If the Iroquois had been in trouble before, they were practically entoumbed now. Finally, Karachi was taken in 1000AD to close out the first millenium of the AD era. I had ground out a single line of cities forward in the west over the last 25 turns, but the real progress had been in the poorly defended north. You might well be asking "Oh my God, what happened to the Mongols?" at this point, as they lost all of their core cities in a span of under 20 turns. Take a look at the next page to see pictures of the overall progress made on both fronts.

So how far do you think I can get before reaching the next checkpoint at 1250AD? I warn you, don't underestimate my Riders. :)

The biggest difference here is that my losses have gone up quite a bit compared to what I had been experiencing in the past. This was entirely to be expected, since I was aggressively attacking on all fronts rather than holing up behind strong defenses. As mentioned elsewhere, I also took higher losses because I was seeing more AI knights and fewer of the easy to kill MDIs and longbows. That's why my losses compared to the AI stand only at 45 to 202, or a rate of less than 4:1. Hey, you've got to accept losses when you push forward, and the results of the combat table bear that out. Also note the pathetic numbers coming from my former rivals the Iroquois, as they are all but finished at this point.