The insane stalemate had me (left pocket), Ian (left edge), Preemptive_strike (right pocket), and Allen (right edge) on one team and Mokon, MrFurious, RS_Gollum, and aRtificialiNtel on the other team; I don't recall the map type but it was probably something like Continental, it was mostly land with some water on the edges. Allen took the newbie handicap so we had to rely on him to take the brunt of their attacks while Ian and I slowly built up under the effects of the handicap. He did a nice job of it, didn't require much assistance from us. As the game progressed and Ian and I started to actually get a running war and economic machine, we began to rapidly expand until we were adjacent to our enemies' territories.
There's the Mad Doctor himself, probably just about to crush me horribly in that first game
The focus of the fighting for much of the time took place smack dab in the center of the map at a territory with a killer forest choke point at the top of it. Most of the rest of their territories were protected by bodies of watere or similar chokepoints, so we threw our forces at that choke point for a good hour. We'd send a massive force of ground troops and air support (mostly Zeros which I recently discovered, bloody nice planes) and get halfway into the next territory only to get beaten back because many of our troops were picked off one by one as they struggled to get through the choke point. Then they'd mount an offensive, pummeling us halfway through our middle territory before we were able to send enough troops to stop the tide.
This was getting absolutely nowhere and the opposing team was starting to raid Allen and Ian's bases, so we decided to try to try and have Allen's troops, Preemptive's troops, and part of mine hold the middle territory while Ian and I tried to take this 3-territory peninsula just north of Ian's original base which was connected to his by a 4-tile thick peninsula. While Ian was sending his troops up, I sent most of my air force (which was my entire military for the rest of the game) and bombed the hell out of the closest territory; I guess I overestimated the power of WW2 bombers, because it took forever to take out most of the buildings in the first territory and they started to get picked off by AA guns in the next one, I had to pull back and rebuild my forces while Ian built a base in that bombed territory.
Endgame line graph of army size (psst, I'm Sergio)
The enemy attacks kept ramping up as the game went on, as they kept hitting the middle territory with tanks and nukes, and Ian's, Preemptive's, and Allen's bases with huge numbers of fighters; my Zeros were all over the place trying to keep things under control while Ian tried to establish himself in the recently-bombed territtory on the peninsula. This kept going on for another 30 minutes, Ian was never able to hold any of the other peninsular territories because of chokepoints and we kept repulsing the opposing team's offensives. At this point, Allen's schedule required him to grab Ian and interview him, so we ended the game at a draw and I just messed around with the singleplayer for another 45 minutes before we left for Medieval Times.
And here's TheGoodEvil's writeup of his game:
"Game settings were quick start, starting in epochs 10-15 (epochs in every age), I chose Aztecs for use of my “Super awesome Aztec bad weather assault” strategy. Aztec have no movement penalties in poor weather so you are granted a HUGE advantage over other civs in the game when bad weather begins. Aztecs also enjoy a boost in gaining tech points from temples so you don’t need as many citizens to populate universities (meaning you can use more citizens to build your economy and still have tech points to epoch up).
Shortly before the trip to LA is when my clan made me formulate an early strategy so they could have an advantage when they got the game, not being one to upset my mates I devised a strategy to heavy raid with ground troops in bad weather while using my airforce in clear weather to keep the enemy fighting all the time. That way I could retreat my troops so they could heal before the next round of bad weather.
That strategy worked great and on my first enemy, I used it to such a degree as to stop him from expanding completely, there was nothing he could do but fight me. I wanted to take out his airbase quickly so he couldn't attack my planes when clear weather came unless he built antiaircraft guns. I sent in my army very quickly as there was a sand storm going strong within the first few minutes of the game. I followed my attack plans making some small changes as I advanced, I realized that I need to attack his university and temple to stop the production of tech points so there was no way he would surpass me economically. Then I selected the option in the advanced settings to target his citizens (there is an option to choose the best target unit for your troops to attack, I chose his citizens to stop his economy). During a sand storm planes are grounded so I knew I only had to watch out for ground fire all the while I continued to build my airforce up for the inevitable clear weather that was soon to come.
After I targeted his citizens I started to work on the military units that he sent to stop my onslaught, I killed dozens of citizens with my initial raid but my troops were over run and nearly wiped out, the good news is now the sand storm was over! I sent in the planes to finish the job. After a couple runs I had him down to bare minimums in terms of economy, though he still had a small force in his territory making use of the house moral (the more houses you have in your territory the harder you are to kill) the only option I had was to make him chase me into neutral lands which I did. Forcing him out in to neutral ground I was granted the honor of a fair fight where micro and larger forces won the battle, shortly there after he was destroyed and I moved on to prepare my attack on the other player next to me.
I launched a full blown attack on the purple player using 3 airbases full of bombers, fighters, and fighter bombers (each base hold 10 planes) and a combined ground force of artillery, armor, and infantry, needless to say the game was over for poor purple before he had a chance to maneuver his army from the far end of his territory to where I attacked him.
That game was a good lesson for me in the multiplayer aspects though I didn’t exploit some things to their full potential."
