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Thread: A world in flames- a Civ AAR

  1. #1

    Default A world in flames- a Civ AAR

    Silence had fallen over the field. The artillery had ceased firing, leaving an eery silence to descend over the battlefield. Other artillery could be heard firing in the distance, on other fronts. All about the trench, men dressed in drab khaki of the Peoples Army of Mongolia were putting on gas masks and checking their equipment. Then the order came to fix bayonets. With trembling hands the men complied, fixing the long thin pieces of metal to the ends of their assault rifles. They all knew what came next. They were ordered to take a pace forward. Then the whistles blew all along the line. Men climbed over ladders out into the blasted hellscape between their trenches and those of their enemies. Many were gunned down before they even took a step off the ladder and fell back into the mass of their comrades waiting their turn to climb the ladder. Still they came on, still the enemy guns roared. They charged towards the enemy lines and were mown down like targets on a firing range. Those of the wounded who could dragged themselves back tp their trenches. Those who couldn't were quickly silenced by enemy gunfire or their own artillery which began rake across the battlefield once more. And then silence fell again.

    So, I was in history class when, as my teacher was talking about the Russian revolution, I remembered a civ game I played and believe I have somewhere amongst the vast mess of saved games. It's so far one of the longest(and bloodiest) civ IV revolution games I have ever played, so I thought that it might make an amusing AAR for you guys.

    Right, now that the intro is out of the way I can get on with describing what the world is like. At the moment, the year is 2294 on Earth and my civ, Mongolia, has been locked in a war with the Aztecs and the Greeks for the past 3-400 years(I've lost count) and recently the demands on my military have increased as the Americans and Russians both joined the war against me in the past 100 years. As the Mongols, I'm a Communist state and have by far the largest population in the world(nearly 1 billion people). However, the war has so far proved to be a deadlock, with my armour, artillery and massive amounts of infantry being unable to make any headway against my enemies and vice versa(and even when I do make gains in a sector, my gains take up so much of my army that it weakens my front enough for the enemy to break through somewhere else). However, my army has come under increasing pressure in recent years as more nations declare war on me and I need to crank out more men and material for the war effort and by this point my entire nation is focussed on producing units to keep the front going. Because of this, I imagine that the whole world is very backwards for the time, with the nations focussing on producing equipment that works rather than pioneering new tech. While I haven't done much since I resumed play, I can tell you that I'm building up for a large offensive against the Greeks

  2. #2
    Alwyn's Avatar Frothy Goodness
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    Default Re: A world in flames- a Civ AAR

    This sounds like a good campaign for writing about. Will the story continue from 2294 onwards or will you tell the story of the 3-400 year war which led to it? I imagine that being at war for that many generations would lead to some significant changes in the societies affected.

  3. #3

    Default Re: A world in flames- a Civ AAR

    Operation Hydra

    In planning for months, Operation Hydra was to be the Mongol's winter offensive of the year 2294. It was hoped that the offensive could lead to an advance of 6km or possibly even more and if the Mongols managed to force the Greeks to cede ground, their superior manpower would allow them to simply throw more and more men into the meat grinder and force the Greeks to sue for peace through a manpower shortage. Based on estimates of Greek manpower and production capacity from spies in the Greek capital, the Mongolian High Command estimated that they would be able to trade infantrymen at a rate of 2,908-1 and tanks at a rate of 365-1. To achieve victory over Greece, one of their most long-standing adversaries, it was a price they were willing to pay. In preparation for the offensive, the Greek front was reinforced with thousands of tanks, tens of thousands of aircraft, including some of the new jet fighters that were beginning to come off the production line of Khanablyk, tens of thousands of artillery pieces and, of course, millions of infantrymen, their weapons fresh off the production line, many who had just turned 16, graduating from school and entering the army. While all of these forces flooding onto the front ought to have turned the Mongol army into an unstoppable tide of flesh and steel, however, Greek reconnaissance aircraft had been photographing train loads of artillery, tanks and infantry arriving on the front for weeks. The Greek High command had been able to guess what was coming and where from, and tell troops in those area's to dig in. Unlike the Mongol army, the Greeks had been on the defensive for decades, leading to a significantly greater number of battle hardened troops. Given that Operation Hydra relied on two subsidiary assaults to draw troops away from the main armoured thrust, this would prove a telling factor.

    On September 16th 2294, the Hydra strategic operation opened up along the banks of the river Achelous. The bombardment that preceded the subsidiary attacks lasted 3 days, and consisted of a near constant shelling of Greek positions by almost 25,000 artillery pieces, aided by near 6000 aircraft. The bombardment was constant, flattening entire dugouts. Some Greek troops were driven mad by the shelling, others shot themselves rather than endure more. However, when the Mongol assault finally came, the majority of the Greek defences had yet to be destroyed and their machine guns and assault rifles exacted a heavy toll on the advancing Mongolian infantry. While in some area's, the Mongols pushed through and captured their objectives, in the majority they were scythed down by Greek machine gun and assault rifle fire before they even got close. However, the Mongols kept up a relentless routine of several hours bombardment and then an assault, bombardment and assault, bombardment and assault, exhausting the Greek soldiers both physically and mentally. Eventually, the Greek troopers began to drop dead of exhaustion or needed to be taken away from the front line as they had become mentally unstable due to the slaughter they were called upon to enact every day. While the butchers bill was horrendous, the Mongols did gain ground, inch by inch, Km by Km, paying in blood every step of the way. However, the Greek high command saw these attacks for the diversions they were and refused to send extra troops to shore up the front, being happy to allow the Mongols to bleed themselves along the river. When the Mongols had advanced 8Km, the Greek retreat finally stopped and they halted the Mongol advance with artillery and gun fire. Seeing that the attack had stalled, the Mongols threw the forces earmarked for the main assault into the subsidiary attacks. However, it was too late and the fresh forces were unable to gain any more ground. Operation Hydra had lasted near 3 months and the casualties numbered 702,000 men wounded, 389,000 killed and 149,000 missing.

  4. #4
    Alwyn's Avatar Frothy Goodness
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    Default Re: A world in flames- a Civ AAR

    This sounds like a horrific war, in which rival countries have dedicated themselves entirely to producing soldiers and weaponry. The casualties are horrendous indeed, they remind me of major First World War battles.

  5. #5

    Default Re: A world in flames- a Civ AAR

    The Winter of 2294

    Following the failure of Operation Hydra, the Mongolian armies settled in for another winter along the front line. While Operation Hydra had officially been called off after three months of slaughter, sporadic fighting had continued along the Greek front for several weeks afterwards and the eventual death toll for the Mongols came to just over 1 million. However, the Mongolian High Command declared the operation to have been a success, even if not the knockout blow they had been hoping for. Just over 9Km of ground had been seized along the flanks of the Khanablyk river, creating a distinctive bulge in the Greek frontline which was to be the focus of the next Mongolian summer offensive, codenamed Operation Bull’s Horns.

    However, Operation Hydra had incurred such heavy losses that the Mongolian army had been forced to transfer troops from several fronts, notably the Russian front, in order to give the Operation enough manpower to continue. Most of these units had been withdrawn in small groups by night in the hope that this would hide their withdrawal from the Russians. However, this had not hidden their withdrawal so the Russian High Command was well aware of the weakened state of the Mongolian front line facing them. So it was that, in November all along the front line in the Ural Mountains, they launched Operation Winter Storm. This operation’s objective was to retake the Russian territory captured by the Mongolians in the opening months of the war 8 years ago. However, the offensive also had symbolic meaning as it was in along this mountain range that the Russians had halted the Mongolian communist invasion centuries ago and so it had special spiritual significance for the Russian people.

    Upon the ninth day of November, the Russians attacked, their guns causing vast avalanches to come down and crush the Mongolian troops unlucky enough to be beneath them. Lasting four hours, the barrage almost completely destroyed the Mongolian front line, burying it beneath falling rocks and snow and leaving only a few small sections of the line able to resist. However, as the Russians surged forwards along other sections of the front, these small areas of resistance held out for many weeks, inflicting heavy casualties on the advancing Russians and forcing them to slow their advance in order to not overextend their supply lines. While the brave soldiers who held these sections of the front were killed to a man, their actions gave the Mongolian High Command time to react to the Russian offensive.

    When they heard of this vast Russian offensive to the north, the Mongolian High Command reacted rapidly. Mustering every infantry and artillery division they could from the reserve and other fronts, they put them on trains and sent them speeding towards the Ural front along with entire battle groups of aircraft. Within a few weeks of the offensive beginning, the first of these fresh units were reaching the front and being thrown into the fray in order to slow the Russian advance. By the time a full month had passed, masses of Mongolian troops were flooding into the region. For several weeks the fighting sees sawed with the Mongolian officers reminding their men of how upon this battlefield they faced the ancient enemy, the monarchy of Russia while on the Russian side the Tsarina herself made an appearance, blessing her soldiers and reminding them of the heroic efforts of their ancestors to hold this pass against the barbarian Mongols. However, in the end the fighting drew to a bloody stalemate as the fierce Mongolian defence swallowed one attack after another and the Russian offensive ran out of steam. The Mongolians now went on the offensive.

    Advancing with enormous amounts of air support and covered by an artillery barrage, the Mongolians drove the Russians back almost all the way across the Urals in just a few weeks, stopped at the gates of Novgorod only by a desperate counter attack made by the Novgorod Workers Militia. When the guns fell silent on the Ural front, the Mongolians had lost a staggering 912,000 men killed in action, 2,400,000 wounded in action and over 1,340,000 missing in action. However, the Russian losses were also severe, with estimates placing them at 1,290,000 killed in action, 3,688,000 wounded in action and nearly 4 million missing in action.

    Where once the snow of these mountains glittered a beautiful white in the early morning sun, now the shells and tread of a million men’s feet have turned it to a black slush into which a man can fall up to his neck. I have even seen men drown in it, going down gurgling into the pools of hideous darkness. The clouds of dirt, gun smoke and poisoned gas are so thick you can barely see 5 metres in front of you and everywhere you place your foot, it sinks into a dead man’s entrails or hits against a frozen body, its eyes still wide open in horror. If a man is wounded, then within a matter of days if he isn’t evacuated from the front then his flesh starts to go gangrenous. The sound of the gunfire is so constant and loud that you can’t hear the voice of the man next to you, let alone sleep. Men who have served here for more than a few days become aimless, their faces thin and gaunt, their eyes bright red and they go about their tasks like machines until they drop dead from exhaustion. Even on those rare occasions when we can sleep, our dreams are plagued by dead bodies and shell fire or men coughing up their lungs as the gas takes them or even men who are burning alive from the fires of flamethrowers. All suffer and die the same, be they Mongol, Russian, Cossack or anyone else. If there is truly a hell, then we are living in its manifestation on earth”
    Extract from the diary of an unknown Russian soldier.

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