Hawke's War Stories: My center is giving way, my right is in retreat...

So, I had my support dash out from cover to cover, searching for the last Muton so the sniper could finish it off, while my other men searched for the Outsider that is on every ship.  The Heavy found it in the ruined hull, and the Assault killed it. My Support soldier found and shot the muton, bringing it one HP away from death, as my sniper finished it with a shot through the brain.

This battle easily stands as my favorite battle in EU, I've never had another that came close to matching the tension of this one, due in part to the fact that the enemies seemed to be actively chasing me. Beating the game on Impossible was hellish to say the least, but not quite as hellish as my means of victory in the next story. 

Now, my magnum opus - the story of my nuclear Gaiacide and victory in Sid Meiers Alpha Centauri.

I was playing as the militant Spartan faction, focused on strength and with my eventual goal being victory though world conquest. I began scouting the area immediately and expanding my little patch of territory, and before long I encountered the Morganites - an extreme capitalist faction, led by CEO Morgan. We agreed to write a treaty, and respected each others borders for the most part. I began building a navy, and encountered the environmentalist Gaians, who called home a large island continent to the East, held only by them. By paying their leader Lady Deirdre, I managed to get the radio frequencies for the other factions in due time - The Believers, The Hive, The Peacekeepers, and The University.

This new planet had three continents. With the Morganites and I sharing our continent and the Gaians having their own, the other four were crammed together. Not only were they crammed together but there was a war between all four of them, with three against one. I know not the details, just the conclusion. The Westboro Bapt- er, Believers had nearly wiped out the communist Hive, and were holding their ground against a Peacekeeper/University alliance. I knew that to achieve my ultimate goal I'd need to move across the sea sometime, and I was prepared with naval transports, Colony Pods to build bases that would anchor my beachheads, and a large force of my elite troops.

We made landfall just south of the University base, and immediately seized one of them, earning a declaration of war from their ally. They were hard pressed against the Believers, and split against two forces they fell like a stack of cards. The Believer military technology was nothing impressive, and my soldiers outclassed their's by far. That said, their rapid conquest of even weaker factions gave them a great capacity for production because of their bases, making them a military power on par with my own.

But I'll never know if I would've beaten them in an all out fight, because my 'ally' sent spies to steal technology from my base near our border. This breach of treaty couldn't stand - I declared war on the weakling immediately, diverting a large force away to deal with him. Although my soldiers were better, the terrain slowed my forces to a crawl and the battle dragged on longer than it would have if they had spent any time building a network of roads, rather than counting gold coins. But he drew enough troops away in my effort to crush him beneath my heel that my amphibious invasion was doomed to failure. With assistance from my new air force, I inflicted losses of over seven to one, but my few soldiers were overwhelmed by the flood of their inferior foes.

After those two battles drains on my military strength, I fell to second place in terms of military power. I still had undisputed control of the air and sea, but prepared to fight a defensive battle if necessary - I began modernizing my conquered territory with roads and sonar to allow rapid transportation and detection of enemies. I had a small, elite group  within immediate striking distance of every inch of territory, and could bring my entire army anywhere in three days time. Any invasion wouldn't have had a chance. But before any invasion came, I began planning my next attack.

It was going to hit the same area as the prior invasion, using new amphibious soldiers that had been developed. I would precede it with naval artillery on the beaches, and air strikes  anywhere my fleet couldn't hit. Ultimately, it failed - I took three bases almost immediately, but the entire army of the Believers hit my beachhead. I managed to drag out the battle for some time, and inflict an eight to one casualty rate, but the enemy attack didn't stop until my troops had been pushed back the last base, when my foe agreed to a truce. But it was hardly in place before it was broken by an enemy attack, with my remaining forces swarmed and an enemy navy appearing, defeating my own. This failure consolidated my place as a third rate power, and while Miriam and I were fighting, Deirdre had become a superpower, exceeding both of us in all areas. However, all wasn't lost - in that brief pause during the war, my scientists had made a breakthrough - the Planet Buster Missile, the ultimate weapon of mass destruction.

I turned my entire economy towards producing them, as well as troops to clean up whatever remained. I disregarded things like a starving populace or my technology that was rapidly becoming obsolete. All that mattered was that I build as many nukes as possible, and had an army that could take advantage of that. They destroy terrain and anything in a large radius, including cities and the surrounding area. However, using one causes every nation to declare war on you.

By the time I launched my attack, the Believers had a significantly superior military, and a population twice my size. The Gaians were over six times as powerful as my faction, and had several cities with over a hundred thousand people - my greatest had 90.000. The Believers had their population spread out more through many small bases, so I sent the bulk of my nukes towards the cities of the Gaians - I primarily used nukes sent towards the Believers against their army. When I took one of their bases in the attack, I nerve stapled the populace to keep them from revolting and ensuring I could use them to build more units for my attack against their compatriots.

After some time, when the rising sea levels had cut the world into a dozen islands, I nuked the final Gaian base. That is the story of how I killed and enslaved millions, defeated enemies with strength exceeding seven times my own, and became the despotic dictator of a ruined world who reached his position on a road paved with watery graves.