A History of LT44, by Hans Lemurson

[Hans_Lemurson]

LT44 was the very first Longturn Game that I have played, and the first multiplayer game of Civ I've played in a long time. It was an amazing and intense experience with many highs and lows. More highs than lows though, since I was on the winning team.

About that...
LT44 will also go down in the records as a controversial game. There was a large deficit of experienced players on Blue team, and a veteran (Haken, Austria) player they were hoping would counterbalance this never showed up, and in the meantime an absent Red player (Vodot, Inuit) got substituted for a veteran of some renown (Arkan). This resulted in a situation that many Blue players regarded the game as rigged, illegitimate, and unfair from the beginning, and came to a head in a dramatic resignation of one of Blue team's most fearsome players.

However, history is written by the victors, and being on the winning side and participating in numerous conquests, I ended up quite enjoying myself, and so I will endeavor here to recount the history of this conflict.

The events listed here will be mostly chronological, and will focus on one area of the world at a time.

1. Geography (Maps are Fun!)
2. Early Success (Seizure of Helsinki)
3. Assault on Ukraine (Repelled)
4. Slavic Pressure (Chumash in danger)
5. Collapse of the Slavs (Drama!)
6. Kashmiri Foothold (Seeds of doom)
7. Viking Raids (Guard your Rivers!)
8. The Gates of Kiev (Chimu Strike Back)
9. Aleut Reconquista (Lands Reclaimed?)
10. Hansa Set Sail (Landings in the West)
11. Germany Overrun (Chumash success?)
12. Fall of West Rome (Noose tightens)
13. Naval Supremacy (Harrowing of the Coasts)
14. Ukrainian Conquests (Foothold expands)
15. Suicide of Jamaica (Leave nothing for the Enemy)
16. Invasion of Austria (Joint Offensives)
17. Palatine Incursion (Lake Attacks)
18. Fall of Ryukyu (Collapse of the East)
19. Conquest of Florence (East Overrun)
20. Saxon Defense (Competent Opposition)
21. Slovakian Marines (Inner Coast Seized)
22. The Deluge (Things heat up)
23. Crowbar Tactics (Artillery vs. Fanatics)
24. Technological Superiority (Tanks for the Memories)
25. Bombs Away (Final Collapse)

Wow, that's a lot longer than I thought it would be! I think I'll do the chapters one at a time.

[Hans_Lemurson]

[h]Chapter 1: Geography[/h]
The world of LT44 presented us with a bit of an enigma. Our Team was clearly scattered into several sections, but every place registered as the same continent. I later realized that this was typical of this map generator, but at the time I marvelled at the snaky landmass, and tried to come to grips with it.
Around t44 of LT44 I produced a nice World Map which nicely oriented the world for me and gave a nice record of the status of the world before the nations of Blue were one by one wiped off of the face of the earth. (Spoiler Alert: Red Team won.)

I produced two large labelled maps for the game and posted them in this thread. But for the sake of a complete narrative here, I will show them again.

The World as We Knew It:

The world can be imagined as two great Worms curled around an Inner Sea, but joined back to back by a strange umbilicus.
I re-centered the map to create this image, since it looked much better this way than the default. The location of 0,0 is marked by the label "Original Corner"
This map clearly shows some territorial changes, but this was the earliest complete record I could find, and has all the nations labelled as they originally stood.

[h]In the Beginning...[/h]
Contact between the teams occurred at 3 narrow location which I referred to as "The Neck", "The Foothold", and "Panama".

The Neck:
This long strip of land was primarily inhabited by the Kievan Rus who faced the Finns and the Chimu on the other side. We made plans that in the event of disaster we could fortify here and prevent Red from spilling through. I liked the name "The Neck" but my team preferred to just call it "The Russian Front". This is where we anticipated the bulk of the fighting would occur.

The Foothold:
Poor Ukraine was left all alone here surrounded by enemies. Can Dim survive long enough to be reinforced from the sea? (Yes he could. See chapter 3)

Panama:
One of the more oddly named areas, it was named after the Isthmus that the Ottomans controlled. The Chumash controlled a middle section of land connecting the Belarussians with the Ottomans, but we feared the worst since Nirti, the Chumash player, was quite new and was facing off against the legendary "Zoltan" of the Slavs. We made plans to hold chokepoints at the Ottoman Isthmus and the Belarussian Straits and accept the fact that our ring around the world would be broken.

Balance
On the whole, the map seemed to favor Red Team, with them being granted a larger land mass and no isolated players. However, as Blue Team had predicted, this did not turn out to be the deciding factor...

[Hans_Lemurson]

[h]Chapter 2: Early Success[/h]
The first few turns were characterized by the standard scouting and settling and coming to grips with the situation. Enemy contact occurred at the three fronts listed last chapter, but was the usual harassment, landgrabbing, and jockying for strategic mountains. The Kievan Rus started in the middle of The Neck, and as we were planning where to draw the defensive line, Louis94 got ambitious and decided he would charge north and claim land against the enemy. (vlad8597 never showed up, so the Rus were delegated to Louis94 who was also the native ruler of the Ottomans.)
We were pretty worried at this point. Had his reach exceeded his grasp?

But yet there were opportunities...

The Chimu and the Finns looked complacent, not even defending their cities which were CLEARLY out of reach!
So we gave him Horseback Riding, fed him a bunch of gold, and he let loose a horseman surprise.
Carefully maneuvering his horsemen along rivers and around zones of control, he was able to reach the Finnish heartland, and with a feast of options on the table, he chose to take the capital of Helsinki.

The Chimu city of Enemy was similarly reached, and was burned to the ground. It was never rebuilt and its ruins stood testament to this early border war for the rest of the game.

Two Blue cities lost in a single turn!!! Suddenly the Russian front went from "Pressed on all sides" to "wide open". Blue was on the back foot here, and it would be a long time before they could regain control of the situation. Needless to say, our plans to "Fall back and guard the Isthmus" were scrapped. We were taking the fight to the enemy.

The Finns, to their credit, attempted to retake Helsinki and laid it under a heavy siege for many turns:

But the experimental "Bombarding Archers" of LT44 were ineffective at softening up the city enough to deliver a killing blow.

Helsinki became a powerful base of operations, effectively taking the Finns out of the game.

The land facing the Chimu was a wide open frontier:


Red team had won great victories and stormed through the Isthmus and was now firmly rooted on the other side. The tide of battle was in our favor for now. But what about the other side of the world?

[Corbeau]

Wow! Just... Wow!

Do you think anyone would object if this was placed on Freeciv Wiki?

[Hans_Lemurson]

Yeah, that would be fine. It's a good way to show what a Longturn game is all about.

[Hans_Lemurson]

[h]Chapter 3: Assault on Ukraine[/h]
Ukraine was situated in the "Foothold" region, disconnected from the rest of the team and bordering 3 enemy nations: Spain, Silesia, and the Ohlone. We feared the worst, that Dim's nation would be attacked early and taken out of the game.
Dim was not part of the Discord Server that Red Team set up to coordinate activities, so the photographic record of his battles is limited to the pictures that the rest of the team took and posted.

This is a picture of the earliest photo I could find, and it's not looking good:

My noobish self was quickly informed that although workers are capturable in the open field, they defend like warriors when in a city.
Also, cities provide an inherent defense bonus, and this one is on a hill! That worker could probably take on all three warriors and survive.
But this picture is emblematic of what the Foothold War entailed. Large swarms of enemies infiltrating and surrounding Dim's fortified islands.

The situation eventually turned even more serious, as the Spanish warriors army arrived in force:

Would this outpost be overrun? Would it hold? How did the Spanish get SO MANY WARRIORS??!!!
Clearly Spain went all-in on this war, and was intent on nipping Ukraine in the bud.

But this was a mistake. Warriors can occupy strategic terrain and block units, but they have no real offensive power, and once serious attackers like chariots come into play, they are just target practice.

Ukraine hunkered down, fortified cities with Phalanxes and Walls, and built up a counter-attacking army. One by one, the warriors were picked off by Horses and then Chariots, and Ukrainian territory was cleansed of invaders. Just one week later, Dim was able to catch his opponents off-guard and seize two cities!



The invasion had turned into a total rout, and Dim went from "victim" to conqueror. Ukraine would never again face an existential threat, and its opponents would be on the back-foot from here on.

Ukraine could even send a horseman scouting an enemy Capital with impunity:

The capital wasn't captured, of course, but this highlights the extent to which the Blue Team nations had lost control of the field.

Although Barcelona held against Dim's siege (and would remain an unconquered island for a long time), Spain never recovered. Going all-in on warriors at the beginning cost them a lot of early growth, and all they got out of it was death and the loss of a city. Spain lingered on as a minor power for some time, but never again did anything of note.

Silesia fared better and later that month conquered Opole back with a chariot attack of their own, leaving Poltava as a vulnerable salient:

You can also see here that Ukraine has now been receiving aid from across the seas. The Palatine navy has sailed its ships up-river to attempt to retake the city, or at least prevent the Silesians from consolidating their position uncontested. The Silesian army outside the city did not survive.

But while the fortunes of war swing in Red's favor in the Foothold...what of the Panama Front?