OK so we left off with two good things: capping hannibal, and winning lib on 1010AD (not by much! see below); and one bad thing: monte declared on us!
As I mentioned, even if I revolted to nationhood, I could only draft axemen, so I made this trade
Music is to head to cuirassiers ASAP. I'm pretty sure the only way I can get Monte off me is to get some offense going.
Then I revolt to nationhood, slavery, and FR as planned. I thought about trying to stay in one of caste/bureau for a long while, but I ultimately decided it would be best to defend my border cities like this:
aggressively. I know I'll lose at least one where he sends his SOD, but I don't want to give him any free war success against me. My other rule for defense was never to upgrade units (like my skirmisher above). I needed all my gold to deficit tech to Mili Trad.
I thought I might as well tell Hannibal to attack somewhere:
but he basically never sent any troops
Here is a trade which gives an indication of how close I was to losing lib:
Note how close I am to GP! He wouldn't give anything more than his gold.
Unfortunately this put him in WFYABTA, but I need to do anything I can to shave off turns to MT.
Meanwhile, up where my stack of 21 phants and 1 pult is, I keep using the 2 movement general to check on things in Teotihuacan:
surprisingly, Monte's stack is still here from the Hannibal war. This gave me hope that Hannibal was the real target, but it wasn't to be. It seems like my stack was creating a diversion that kept these guys from heading to my territory though, which wasn't a bad thing at all!
Another trade with the ol' lapdog:
Engineering was crucial for the extra movement point. Also, a possible theocracy revolt when I get the cuirs pumping could be good.
I keep whipping units and drafting in the most exposed cities. Despite my best efforts, after the first true concentrated SOD shows up and takes chicago:
I was happy to get this close to MT before any losses. One thing that was questionable: I whipped walls in chicago, but he had several trebs, so at best I made him bombard for one more turn. I probably should have whipped another LB instead if possible (I think a musket would have cost too much, and I was below drafting size).
Sure enough, that stack came mainly from Teotihuacan:
I had been pillaging some stuff for gold in the meantime, which you can see from this screenshot.
I debated for a while, and ultimately decided to take this city. Those LBs with walls+castle (100% cultural defense!) were more brutal than I expected, but I still got it:
I lost something like 10-15 phants, and I think he had 3 LBs and an axeman and 2 knights or some such in the city. This ended up being diversionary as well, because I was forced to abandon the city a few turns later.
Also note that I told Hannibal to research chemistry. I think astronomy would have been better here.
Meanwhile I have been aggressively whipping out a cuirassier army. Even with deity AI bonuses, I hope that Monte will have trouble keeping up with a 16 city empire. I have two smallish stacks, one of which is facing off against his stack in Chicago:
which has been a stalemate so far. I was pretty desperate at this point--for a while I couldn't see how long the list of guys there was (how do you fix the enemy stack display so it doesn't fly off the top of the screen??? That drives me crazy!) and I assumed he was about to do a massive upgrade into cuirassiers (note that Monte is only a couple turns from gunpowder himself, and already got MT, so I really had a sense of urgency here). On top of that, my empire was getting pretty whipped-down and sad:
Note the city sizes! On the upside, my other stack starts going on the offensive:
This was a very easy take--only 3 defenders there or so.
After sending several more cuirassiers up to Chicago (my one fallen city), and bashing them into at worst veteran knights I was able to take back the city:
It was effectively an open field battle, since there were no cultural defenses up yet. The bad news here: Monte would still not talk. The good: I have a power advantage on him, and more than that, look at his city garrisons!
I have noticed this about warmongers--they seem to have huge mobile armies comparatively, but much smaller garrisons. So if you can survive the initial onslaught in a war, you can sometimes just roll over them afterward. That is just what I started to do:
I took city after city with garrisons like 1 jaguar, 1axe, 1pikeman, and soon enough:
He certainly has a lot to cry about, cause it's not gonna happen. I can see the light at the end of the tunnel here, and it's a world without the crazy in the headdress. Soon after he offers capitulation, I arrive at the capital.
This battle was pretty bloody, but I took the city nonetheless.
The cost was a few more whips, but the benefit was this last stand
The spy couldn't do anything cause he had just moved, but I had already used up most of my EP from a revolt for a city on a hill earlier. I took the city with a couple more irrelevant (pretty much) losses. I now have the continent to myself
This turnset seemed like an eternity, but it was really only 27 turns since monte DOWed me. Just glad he's wiped out. My losses in the 3 wars total to 40 phants, 21 catas, 19 cuirs, 9 muskets, and a smattering of other guys. What with all the whips, I really need to go wash some blood off my hands...
Here is land and tech status:
OK, so I have almost twice the cities of anyone else, so I think we can be pretty confident in a win here. One thing to notice is that no one has even RP yet, let alone rifling! I think probably the best course of action is to tech to rifling while I have hannibal tech astro, build a fleet while shuttling over Cavs, and declare on probably HRE/HC.
I'm a bit worried about
-izzy is in GA and has quadruple my GNP right now
-someone (prob izzy) has almost triple my power
-the diplo situation sucks
-both HRE and Spain have been in WHEOOHRN for like 1k years, and they both have astro now.
I think it should be OK for a cav domination win, just a little nerve-wracking (gettin' used to deity). I have only 35% land area now but I think I should go above 50% when I come out of revolt. The biggest potential road block could be machine guns, which stop cavs cold, but ppl are at least 2 techs away, and will probably go democracy, SP and such first.
Any comments/questions/tips? (can't attach save atm)
I'm not very confident get cavs in time at all, but the thing is I'm worried about getting declared on soon by one or both of HRE and spain anyway. My thought was to tech rifling for that reason anyway, and then might as well try to close the game asap before things get out of hand. Also, rather than have my whole army on one fleet, I thought I'd have a few ships start shuttling guys across the ocean, since it's a really short journey in places, and attack HRE from spain or vice versa. That should save a bit on time and hammers.
), const, demo, etc. He didn't beeline railroad or AL which is all I care about.
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