Timewalking Archive Trap: Battle-Civ Beta: Episode #9 The Breaking of Two Tides

As you might be aware, I've recently redownloaded Civilization 2, one of the top three most addicting games ever created (the others being Minecraft and WoW). It brought up a lot of old memories and a quick search through my downloaded Xanga blog revealed that I'd already blogged about a game of Civilization 2. So enjoy this Timewalking Archive Trap from May of 2007.

The first tide that broke was against the city of Byblos, gateway to Egypt and main front of The Pride War. Once the dogged scores of Jade Falcon Timberwolves (all lesser units had been ground to dust by now, dashed to pieces on the iron walls and under the merciless bombs of Byblos and its defenders) had wracked the city and torn it to pieces. Byblos had lost a fifth of its population and could boast very little in the way of being a great city any longer, but as the smoke cleared, it was Timberwolves decked in the Jade Falcon signature green that walked the streets cobbled now with armored plates of thousands dead, both attacker and defender.

The verdant pain train's next stops were in elAmara, Aremetsium, Argos; and a list of other cities apparently designed to accommodate insatiable armies, this one suffering through attrition even as it pulsed with new life from a pure, strong artery that flowed straight from Sudeten.

The second tide was the tide of might from the Persians and Germans. The Jade Falcon commanders quickly learned that the difference between surrounding an enemy and having a foe in the heart of your forces was merely a matter of aggression; aggression the Germans had in spades. Striking steadily with bombers, the Germans and their Persian allies had pounded the defenseless Jade Falcon forces which bordered them. It took years for the Jade Falcons to build their own air forces up, with frequent setbacks from German destruction of factories in Hellas, rookie pilots, constant German aerial victories, decimation of whole divisions under Persian air strikes on remote fortifications, and a German foothold in Hallas gained as part of their "Abstand Luftbase" plan.

The Roman People's Movement continued to exhaust themselves with every ill-prepared assault on each new Roman city they attacked. The effort called-upon--and sapped--their reserves to succeed (and they did succeed), and each time they found themselves 4,000 miles from the nearest allied reinforcements and sandwiched beteween an anvil of Romans on the ground and a hammer of Persians in the sky. Pisae, which had been the birthing place of the RPM and held against the full might of the Old Roman Republic, was crushed utterly, becoming a see-saw city passed between the Persians and Roman People's Movement. By the time The Clans were formed it had become little more than a series of bombed-out wonders inhabited by refugees and Persian troops. Even then, decades passed before it regained it former glory.

The German half of the second tide saw an utter assault on the Greek and New Greek Colony regions of the Jade Falcon holdings. Germans touted their ancient kinship with the Greeks of old, believing they would be welcomed by their former cousins across the Teutonic Sea. Perhaps it was the bombings they used to soften the cities up or maybe it was the 500 years of the Jade Falcons citizenship, immigration, integration, and breeding, but the first German troops who set foot on the tarmac of Jade Falcon's Air Base One as part of Abstand Luftblase were thrown onto the same pyre as the traitors who supported their regime. That is, once local garrison forces united to form The Falcon Guard and came to take the city back.

The effect of the second tide--though blunted and eventually turned--was unavoidable; the Greek Province and the New Greek Colonies were pulled from The Pride War. They were now devoted to countering the Germans' ability to strike within their countryside at will. They were also the recipent of the Jade Falcon Navy--a destroyer and battleship, the remnants of the Jade Falcon effort to counter the implaccable Eygptian maritime forces.

The 'offspring' of the "Irror" Province, the first new city to be created there since Dirror and Pirror, was demolished by Persians, as was the far-flung, independant colony of John. Along most of the Jade Falcon holdings, lone, unfortified units out of cities were simply not safe, and suffered causalties in excess of 50%. Outside of Egypt (where rebels were still being put down), it was satistically safer to be a front-line unit in The Pride War than to be an engineer in Jade Falcon territory.