| Riders on the Storm |
| Being an account of my attempt at some form of
warmongering game, preferably involving continual or semi-continual
warfare throughout the game. We'll see where that gets me.
Master of the lightnings, rider on the storm,
|
| Welcome to the, er, Jungle |
| And lo, it was 250 BC, and I was Tokugawa of the Japanese. A
militaristic and religious people, and a sort of reddish color that
reminds one of dried blood. This is appropriate. And the map was a
standard one, with max random opponents. Random generation.
This is, yes, the middle of the story. But first, a map.
You'll note that my original lands are harsh ones. This seems to be common to almost every Japanese start I've played, and in the leadup to this game, I played a lot of Japanese starts. You'll also know Entremont there. It's been mine for about a turn now. Its story goes like this. My original scouts, way back in 3500 BC or whatever, noted fairly quickly that I was smack on top of the Celts. On the one hand, this means I need to compete for land. On the other hand, I'm perfectly placed for some thrashing. My having 2 warrior scouts handy, and 2 Celt workers being right handy made the decision. I captured the both of them, and got the hell out of Dodge. Barbarians got the one worker, but I got one of them back. The result of that war was merely a good deal on Bronze Working/Warrior Code. Warrior Code, though, meant archers. And so I built archers. 20 turns later, 6 or so archers went sauntering up to Entremont, and lost a lot, but put fear into Brennus' heart, and he gave me more tech deals. Meanwhile, I had been slowly building up a little infrastructure, and founding cities. Osaka came from a hut settler almost immediately off the bat, which I'm sure helped enormously to compete with the Emperor AI. Tokyo was my only other city at that point, though Edo was founded somewhere in here. Among other things, I picked up Horseback Riding, and a couple of horses made the end of that war. I soon built quite a few more, to the point at which a 10 horse SOD was waiting outside Entremont for the next war. Brennus soon got cute, demanded my territory map, and I came riding down, squashing one of those ruined cities there, and doing some fighting outside Entremont which I didn't quite win. I retreated, and just sat there for a while on the roaded hill. Built a few more horses, laughed while Brennus ran off to destroy Korea. Then I came back, just in time for England to land a settler on the second of those ruins. Uh, no. So I rode down Oxford, and then I rode down Entremont with my mini-SOD, capturing it with a mere two 1 hp horses to spare. But it went down, and with it, the Oracle. I immediately made peace. I sat around for a while, consolidating my gains, such as they were. Infrastructure was built, and preparations for the next war made. They were derailed in 110 AD when Elizabeth got all pissy about something or another, demanded my map, and I told her no. So she declared war. Oh, the horror. The horror.
Thanks, Liz! The war predictably lasts for a few more turns, until Liz is persuaded to give me Fuedalism at a substantial discount. The only problem is that I have no iron for pikes. Everyone else does. What does this mean? Yup, you guessed it. Suicide run on the Celtic iron city. Thusly it comes to pass that I build up 10 horses or so, and in 310 AD I declare on Brennus. Again. The nice thing about the Celtic iron source is that it's on a mountain near the city, right next to my border. So my 10-horse stack is reasonably well protected despite itself. Just for good measure, though, I drop a spear on it as well. More luck - no pikes!
That effectively spells the end of the Celts. Now it's just a matter of time. |
