The Conquests

Can you target Piece of Cross with assassins? I haven't played this in forever, so I've forgotten.

Well, there's an easy way to find that out.

Bah, I'm too much into CiV at the moment to go backwards!

Also post 2,000 for me, hooray. I have posted 2,000 more times here than I should have. More due to Forum Games.

Err, your post count says 1974...

OT spam thread posts can lose postcount.

Yeah, a lot of the series threads there become archived upon reaching 1000 posts in a forum that doesn't count for postcount. 25 is far from the highest drop I've seen as a result- heck, mine has just fallen by about 100 due to several of them reaching 1000 at about the same time.

I made a big celebration post for 1000 and two hours later a thread got moved and it dropped back down to about 960.

I think the same thing happened to me for 4000 and 8000.

Aw, bugger. Looks like your new highest drop is 26, possible more.

Ive suddenly been experiencing post drops by 3 a day almost.

Hey, everyone. Sorry for my lack of updates recently. I actually have the game played out to a bit beyond what I've updated. I could, theoretically, write the update now, but my internet is suffering from major lag and failure to load things right now. This would let me write the update, but it would be a big pain, and adding the pictures in would be nearly impossible, so I'll try to get these problems fixed before I update.

I'll give you a teaser, though:

* The Game has entered the "Random Wars Phase" that so often occurs in games with a lot of AI's, in which the AI's sign MA's against each other for no reason and declare war on others that they just signed peace with, or were semi-allies with, or something. AI Diplomacy makes no sense.
* In the above random wars, the Turks are doing really, really, well, despite being at war with about 7 other AI's at once. They even briefly took the German relic, according to the F4 screen, but proceeded to quickly lose it.
* I'm at war with France now, and took a couple of cities. However, I just ran into an enormous SoD that contains the French Relic. Fighting it won't be easy, but I have one tremendous advantage: They no longer have Iron, and don't have any units in their stack with more than 1 moves, so my 3-move Ansars can just hit the stack and run away endlessly until they run out of units. Assassins will also help, being invisible and capable of hitting any unit in the stack that they want.
* The Byzantines haven't taken Jerusalem yet, but they're right at the gates.

Good luck killing stack of doom. They are really annoying...

Do you still hold Tours? Obviously that is your most important city.

The Turks aren't at war with me.

Good job so far, also giving thread a little

Don't worry, I'll update soon*.

*Definition of "soon" may vary.

Chapter 29: The Great European War

In 1152, most of Europe and Western Asia was relatively war free. Aside from a few conflicts with the Turks and Kievans, the ongoing Byzantine-Abbasid War, and a few conflicts that saw almost no fighting, like the Cordovans and Norwegians, there was almost no war at all.

How quickly that could change.

At the time, there was little news of the war in Cordova, or much awareness of the wars- they didn't have enough embassies to get knowledge of everything that was happening all over the continent. What they did find out that year, just taking a brief check of foreign diplomacy, though, was something interesting. The Turks had managed to take a prized German relic, an object said to be a Piece of the True Cross. Whether or not it was was irrelevant, considering that people saw it to be valuable beyond measure regardless.



How the Germans had managed to lose it was a mystery, as was what the Turks had planned for it and how the Germans planned to get it back.

It seemed that part one of their plan was to declare war on Turkey, probably a good start. Or perhaps it was the product of a military alliance? Well, they declared war on Turkey regardless- and the diplomatic world was generally hot in 1153, as it saw the Abbasids declare war on Kiev, Kiev declare war on the Byzantines, and England declare war on the Abbasids in addition to that.



It didn't seem much visible fighting was going on, although one noticeable thing occurred: A battle between the Byzantines and Abbasids at Antioch finished, with the Abbasids managing to regain control of Antioch and keep the Byzantines away from Jerusalem for a bit longer.

There wasn't much interesting going on in Cordova at the time, as they were mostly just building up and waiting for the right time to declare war on France. In the meantime, stuff happened elsewhere. In 1156, Denmark and Sweden declared war on the Abbasids. Judging from the distance between them, military alliances were likely involved in that. The Kievans also approached Cordova asking for an alliance against the Byzantines, which was promptly refused.

A bit later in the year, the Turks captured the city of Ankara from Kiev. Although Cordova isn't 100% sure, they think Ankara was originally Turkish.

"I bring news," said Al-Mundhir one afternoon in 1158 in Abd Al-Rahman's palace. "Norway says they're open to signing a peace treaty now."

"Interesting," replied Al-Rahman, "Will they give us the Balearic islands?"

"No, but they'll give us their city in Sardinia, the Orkney Islands, or a city on Iceland."

"None of those offers are appealing. Let's stay at war for a bit and see if we can't get more out of it- unless they start showing up with a ton of Longboats, of course."

And so, the Cordovans elected to remain at war with Norway, at least for the time being.

Other countries seemed more willing to fight than make peace, as many more military alliances were signed in 1159. Most interestingly, the Abbasids got Germany to declare war on Burgundy, and France to declare war on England. These countries actually neighbor each other, so there's a good chance that some actual fighting will now break out in Western Europe, for the first time in a while. Much less important was France getting Poland to join the war against the Turks. Poland was close enough to fight them a little, but it's unlikely much fighting will occur. Perhaps Turkey will attack the isolated Polish cities between them and Kiev now, though.



Then arrived the news that was certainly bad, all of it from the Byzantine Empire. First, they captured Antioch again, putting them one step closer to Jerusalem yet again, and then they finished the Domesday Book in Ancyra, beating the Cordovans by just a few years.



The Cordovans decided to have Toledo switch to working on the Bayeux Tapestry, as it could finish that slightly faster than Cordoba could, and Cordoba used the once-Tapestry to build a Hospital.

The diplomacy of the year was relatively quiet for once in 1162- only one new war started. Specifically, Denmark declared war on the Kievan Rus. It didn't look like that would go anywhere, although there might be some fighting in the Baltic Sea, and Kiev would probably capture an isolated Danish city to the Northeast of them.

The situation would repeat itself in 1165, with the only notable event being the Abbasids getting France to declare war on Sweden. For all their war losses, they sure had a lot of money to spend on military alliances. At least this time there was some war news- one of the Polish cities forming the buffer between Turkey and Kiev, Torun, was captured by the Turks.



Although it seemed that the Turks were winning handily, they appear to have lost a great deal at around this point, too: It might not have been right at that time, but somewhere around 1167, the Germans managed to get the Piece of the True Cross back. A great victory for them, and a great loss for Turkey.

In 1168, Norway got bored of waiting for Cordova to ask them for peace, and asked for peace themselves. This time, they added a worker to sweeten the deal, but still were unwilling to give up Skalholt, the city on Majorca. And so there would be no peace.

And soon the situation in Norway would get far worse for them: a military alliance got their neighbors, the Swedes, to declare war on them. The Baltic Sea and the Norwegian navy could protect their homeland from most opponents- but not Sweden, and Sweden could also easily attack their colonies all over Europe. They were now as good as dead.

Also, Poland declared war on Kiev, although both seemed to have their hands too full with Turkey to actually fight.



In other news, the wars in Western Europe were clearly seeing plenty of fighting, as Germany captured the border city of Cologne from Burgundy, and England captured Boulogne from France, a city on France's North coast. Theories as to the connection of these two very similarly named cities have yet to be proven.

As Cordova counted down the time to the end of the French peace treaty, they heard more largely irrelevant news of war. Burgundy and the Abbasids signed peace- nice to see some peace, but they could never actually fight anyway, and England declared war on Kiev, despite being too far away to actually fight them.

1174- a couple of years before the peace treaty ran out. Sweden demanded the knowledge of how to make maps from Cordova, but didn't seem to care when their request was flatly refused. It seems they were too busy fighting Norway to care about Cordova much.



The diplomacy of the year mostly involved the Byzantines. An alliance they signed got them at war with Burgundy, an alliance they signed got Germany against the Abbasids, and an alliance was signed against them by Kiev, getting France to declare war on them.



The increasingly high number of wars got increasingly high amounts of fighting, and it seemed that now people were actually starting to get some success in attacking each other's cities. A Battle at Rostov, the southernmost city in Kievan Russia, resulted in the Turks capturing the city, making it the first city the Turks had taken from Kiev that the Kievans had built. The Norwegian city of Reykjavik, on the west coast of Norway, was destroyed, and Sweden is presumed responsible. Lastly, the Burgundians retook Cologne- but it wasn't much of a victory when the Germans also captured Metz to the south, cutting off the Northern capital region of Burgundy, known generally as The Netherlands, from the southern half of the country.

Finally, the day came in 1176 that Cordova had waited for for so long. The peace treaty with France expired, and they could now restart the war. They hoped that they had built enough to fight against France's endless waves of Swordsmen.

Wanting to benefit from the declaration, they decided to check with others that were at war with France for a military alliance. They knew that the only good ones would come from the moderately wealthy empires of the Byzantines and Turks, so they didn't bother checking with anyone else, like England. They didn't yet have an embassy in Constantinople, so they opened one, first making a trade for maps with Poland to get enough gold to fund the embassy, as they were a little bit short.



They would not regret it, as the Byzantines gave them a better offer than Turkey could afford. Cordova took this offer, declared war on France, and went off to fight.



Almost immediately after war was declared, massive numbers of Ansar Warriors crossed the Pyrenees, with smaller numbers of Infantry, Assassins, and Catapults with them, more slowly.

The Byzantines seemed to want more people at war with France, for some reason, as they later signed Poland to an alliance against them. Why the Byzantines hated France so much was unknown.

In 1177, bad news from France came- they had managed to take Boulogne back from England. That might mean Cordova could take it, but it was unlikely they'd ever get up there if they went through Paris and Orleans first. Also, Germany took Cologne from Burgundy again, furthering theories that Cologne and Boulogne's similar sounding names and constant captures weren't coincidental.

Most of the Ansars still hadn't arrived at their targets in 1179, due to how much the mountains were slowing them down, but the faster army commanded by El Cid had reached its target: Ampurias, the only French city on the Mediterranean coast. Perhaps because of that, it was very well defended, but that didn't stop El Cid from sending 3 units of Spearmen in the city to an early death with little effort.

For the first time in a while, no new wars were declared in 1180, but many were fought. Alexandria, the most important city in Abbasid Egypt, was inexplicably captured by the Byzantines to start the year off. It appears they decided that they couldn't break through the Abbasid frontline near Jerusalem, and figured that attacking Egypt might give them an advantage. It looks like it would, although it was unlikely they'd remain in control of Alexandria for long.

In nowhere near as surprising news, Sweden continued crushing Norway and captured Norway's northernmost city, Oslo, and the Turks took the isolated eastern Polish city of Warna.

The rest of the army not commanded by El Cid finally reached Ampurias and Bordeaux in 1182. They reached Ampurias first, and the half of the army that was there proceeded to lay to waste the remaining two Spearmen units in the city that El Cid hadn't already destroyed. The Battle of Ampurias was over very fast, as the first Cordovan victory in the war. They even captured a settler that had been in Ampurias for who knows how long.



Bordeaux was as heavily defended as Ampurias was, due to it being the regional most important city of the French region known as Aquitaine. Eleanor, one of the most important people in the French government, resided there, and the French would no doubt put a lot of effort into keeping her alive.

Not that that would help at all. Four units of French Spearmen and One unit of French Swordsmen stood between the massive army of Ansar Warriors outside the city and Eleanor. They were no match for Ansar Warriors. The first two went down with no trouble. The third Spearmen unit managed to be more trouble, enough to make the Ansars that attacked them into some rather interesting decorations in a French Palace, but were heavily injured in the process. The final spearmen and the swordsmen again went down easily, and the almost dead spearmen were left to put up a heroic but futile and failed defense against the Ansars. A final Ansar attack greatly shrunk the French government by killing Eleanor of Aquitaine and "relieving" the French of the city of Bordeaux.



Shortly after these two cities fell, a problem immediately presented itself: the nearby Burgundian city of Marseilles controlled all roads to the North of Ampurias, meaning the Cordovans would be slowed down a lot- but that was a simple problem to solve by just asking Burgundy for a Right-of-passage treaty, greatly cutting down the travel time to Clermont. They similarly signed a treaty with Denmark to be allowed to go through Nantes, getting to the city of Angers faster, and were able to capture some workers as a result, although they had to open an embassy in the Danish capital of Hedeby first, as they did not yet have one.



Attacking the region around Clermont and Angers successfully would be huge to winning the war, as all of the sources of French Iron were in this region. Cutting off the French access to Iron would cripple their military. It was also just outside of Paris and Orleans, home of the two remaining French rulers, and presumably the region where they usually kept a very valuable relic called the Crown of Thorns.

It appeared the Danes thought the new embassy meant that they could easily get the Cordovans to join them in a war, specifically against the Abbasids. That, obviously, was not the case.

The only war-starting related news of 1183 involved the Turks. They ended their war with Kiev, but Sweden declared war on them, for a net change of 0 wars. Well, more like -0.99, since the Turks and Kievans were infinitely more likely to fight than the Turks and Swedes.



But maybe the Cordovans shouldn't take faraway wars completely unseriously, as shortly after this, the Magyars captured Godthab. Godthab was a city in Finland, owned by Norway, far to the North of the Magyars. And yet, they'd bothered to send some military north, through several other countries, just to capture one city they wouldn't be able to make much use of. Huh. In news that everyone could have seen coming, the Abbasids retook Alexandria with little effort, in random news, a German Settler pair was spotted near Tours in the far east, and in "we're complete idiots" news, several Cordovan cities were swept up by easily preventable riots.

Thanks to the ability to freely pass through Burgundy, a large Cordovan force reached Clermont in 1185. There, they met some of the few Knights the French had- far stronger than any other soldier they had- defending the city. They fought the unit of Knights to the death, and won, but it was nice to fight more than endless hordes of Spearmen for once. Not that those Spearmen never caused them any trouble- in fact, the Ansars had to retreat, badly injured, from their next two attacks, on the two units of Spearmen defending the city. The fact that it was on a hill certainly helped the Spearmen in their defense. The next attack finished off one of the two troublesome Spearmen units, but the fifth Ansar unit to be used in the Battle of Clermont didn't live to tell the tale, thanks to the final Spearmen in the city being just tough enough to kill them. Luckily, the final Ansar unit put an end into this nonsense, killed the remaining Spearmen and took the city for Cordova. It took away the French's access to one of their two Iron sources- the other would have to wait for the fall of Angers and Orleans to no longer be in French territory.



The Ansars scattered around to the South of Angers took it upon themselves to kill some of the French military units scattered around the area, specifically, a unit of swordsmen and another of archers. Said Swordsmen and Archers never even had a chance. Sadly, there were now only two left to attack Angers, and the spearmen there did a much better job. One of the units defending the city died, but another killed the attacking Ansars effortlessly, and only grew stronger. It would not fall soon.

To make matters worse, it seemed the French finally started to bring some serious strength into the fight- a large number of Swordsmen and Spearmen, and a couple of Archers finally arrived from the North, killing Two Ansar Warrior units in their arrival. Where they'd been all this time was anyone's guess, but now Cordova would have to fight them, and they'd certainly have to retreat from Angers. But, when they did so in 1188, they made sure to position themselves to best fight this large group of French soldiers- and made sure to destroy the French Iron Mine on their way out.

In lesser news, Turkey and Denmark signed a peace treaty, not that they could fight much.

Several members of the Cordovan government met in 1188 to try to figure out a way they might gain control of Majorca. Norway's weakening at the hands of Sweden didn't make them any more willing to give up peace. It was suggested that they send someone to capture the Norwegian city on Sardinia- but they only had one Curragh for a navy, doing that wouldn't be terribly easy. However, it was likely not well-defended. It was suggested that an Assassin be sent to Sardinia to capture the city- it's not like they had any better ideas. Plus, the Assassin's stealth and many abilities would make it much easier for them. And so, shortly after, the Curragh set out from Valencia to deliver the Assassin to Sardinia.

The usual tri-annual barrage of random wars appeared in 1189. In this case, Turkey got England to declare war on Burgundy, and Byzantium got the Celts to declare war on Kiev, bringing the Celts into their first known war. Yawn.



Nydam, the Danish city that was completely isolated, was finally captured by Kiev that year, something that took way later than it should have. Seriously?

Then came the bad news. A couple of the Ansars were unable to get away from the French military, and had to defend themselves from attacks. Luckily, they were in hilly terrain, making this much easier. Although one of them, in the end, died, they managed to bring down an Archer with them, and heavily wound another Archer and a Swordsmen unit.

Then came the horrible news.

"Um... sir," said Al-Muzaffar, "It appears the citizens of Clermont have decided to rise up against us. They killed all of the Ansars healing in the city and it has returned to the control of France."



Al-Rahman swore that they'd pay for that, but not yet, since, sadly, due to the massive French military force, they badly needed that city and the roads around it. But once they didn't need it... well, then they'd pay.

They started with their task of cutting the French military down to size in 1191 with retaking Clermont. Luckily, all they managed to put up in defense was one unit of inexperienced, unfortified Knights, and taking care of that was a piece of cake for Ansars.



They made a point of making their next target the neutral Iron hill to the Northwest, due to the Iron, and to the fact that only French Archers were there. They didn't even send in the Ansars- Swordsmen were more than sufficient to get the job done. Ansars had a similarly easy job dealing with Swordsmen occupying a hill to the Northeast of that one. From this hill, they were able to get a good view of every French unit they knew to be in the area and could easily attack. It would become a massive battlefield.



The Ansars focused most of their efforts on the hill just to the North of Clermont, and the Hill just to the Northwest of that one, where most of the French military was, and were the biggest threats were. The exact order of the attacks has been forgotten, but it is known that the ensuing battle saw the Cordovans victory at almost every point. At the far hill, the one North-Northwest of Clermont, a Spearmen and a Swordsmen unit were killed by Ansars, and another Swordsmen unit was destroyed by the army of El Cid. The remaining units on that hill were considered too weak to attack, so the Ansars from here out just decided to wipe out the French units stationed on the hill just to the North of the city. And wow, were they successful at that. The two Spearmen in the group were killed by Ansar Warriors, the two Swordsmen and the Warrior were killed by El Cid's Army, and an Ansar finished off the stack by killing the Archer unit that remained. The Ansar Warriors finished off the year by killing one of the two Swordsmen units in the grasslands to the South of Orleans. All things said and done, at the end of the battles here in 1191, the Cordovans had eliminated all threat to Clermont, and with no casualties to themselves, killed two units of Archers, one of Warriors, 3 of Spearmen, and 6 of Swordsmen. The French army had been utterly annihilated. It seemed now was a time to throw massive celebrations.



Sadly, they'd soon face a single casualty, when the already injured Ansar Warriors on the Hill between the Iron were finished off by Archers in 1192. But that small bad news was far overshadowed by the amazing news that the Swordsmen on the Iron hill killed 2 units of French Swordsmen that had attacked them. It wasn't particularly important that they defended that hill, but that didn't make it any less awesome.

In news of elsewhere, Kiev got the French to declare war on Denmark- probably out of fear, since despite how good Kiev once looked, they now were weak enough that Denmark was able to capture a random inland city in their West, named Polotsk, on the Kievan-Polish-German border. An inland city. That was attacked by Vikings. Also, Turkey captured Bytom, the last Polish city in the East near them, and Sweden captured the Norwegian city of Orkney, on the Orkney islands near the British Isles.

At the end of the year, Cordovan scientists announced that they had developed new breakthroughs in understanding what Allah was supposedly like.



Over the course of this time, A unit of French Spearmen had managed to get through the Danish territory (presumably before the war was declared) and take position on a hill to the North of Bordeaux- conveniently, right next to a large number of Cordovan Catapults, which proceeded to throw rocks at the Spearmen until they were almost dead. The Assassin in the area charged with defending the Catapults finished the job in 1194.

There wasn't much else for the Cordovan military to do that year, as most of it was too busy healing from the battles of 1191 to fight, but some Ansars killed a unit of Spearmen and a unit of Archers near Clermont. It was now assumed that the French military in the area was almost completely gone.

The date was a bit later in 1195, and some people were talking in Cordoba.

"Okay, that was a very funny joke, now what really happened in Clermont?"

"No, really. THAT many of them. Where the heck did all these French Swordsmen come from, and where were they before?"

"The Ansars took down one of them in defense, but lost one of their own units in the process, and two of them had to retreat."

"Wow, you're not kidding. There really are that many French military units up there. And one of them... one of them had the Crown of Thorns, if I hear correctly."



Far to the East, the Abbasid city of Damascus was burned to the ground by the Byzantines. Nothing stands between them and Jerusalem now. That's almost certainly a bad thing.

There was no way they could fight the French military at this strength, especially with El Cid's Army injured. The larger group contained 23 units- 3 of Archers, 8 of Spearmen, and 12 of Swordsmen, and the smaller Northern one had 2 additional Swordsmen and Spearmen units each. The Ansars received a very clear set of orders to combat them: Whittle them down if they could, then retreat from the city, and destroy it on the way out. It would keep some roads out of French hands, and critically, keep them from regaining control of Iron. Plus, the city revolted against them and hadn't properly paid for it. They killed 1 unit of Swordsmen and 2 of Spearmen, then got the hell out.



It suddenly occurred to Al-Rahman that he had a technology no one else had, and several people had technologies he didn't have, and he hadn't taken advantage of this. So we went to trade Theology to the Byzantines, getting 2 of the 3 he didn't have, a technology of the Divine Right to rule, and a technology of the Middle Class to rise up and get money- seemed a bit randomly contradictory, but whatever. He only bothered to get gold from Turkey, but they had so much of it that he could hardly say no to an offer. Kiev gave him Polearms to improve the defense of his cities from Spearmen to Pikemen.



He also found it to have another use: When given the secrets of the technology, the Burgundians were considerably more open to allying against France, something which would likely absorb a lot of the French military from Cordova and keep France from using Burgundian roads.



Wondering if England had signed peace with France or just wasn't fighting them much, Cordova built an embassy in Chippenham. It seems the second one was the answer: England was still at war with France.



At the end of the year, the Curragh arrived at Sardinia and the Assassin exited the ship, deciding to be on a hill to the North of Thingvellir, the city on the island, for the time being. He was confident that they wouldn't be seen there.

How wrong he was. Through either blind luck or magic powers known only as "The Computer is a Cheating Bastard," named by a random ancient text of mysteriousness, the Assassin were stumbled upon in 1198 by Norwegian... Warriors. And the Warriors won. Sure, the Assassins weren't good at defending, but come on! It was on a hill! And they were flippin Warriors! Ah well, once they had better Boats, they'd try again, with more soldiers this time.

Also, England and France's state of being sort of at war ended, and the Turks convinced Norway to enter a state of being sort of at war with Germany.



Speaking of Germany, they scored a massive victory in their war against Burgundy by capturing Aix-La-Chapelle, the Burgundian Capital. The Burgundian Relic known as the Shroud of Turin wasn't there, but it has greatly weakened them nonetheless. The Government fled by boat to the city of Pisa, Italy.

El Cid and his army decided to poke his head out of Ampurias in 1200, and noticed a curious lack of giant stacks of doom. They managed to get slowed down a bit by forgetting that some roads were now in French territory, but hopefully they're well out of reach of most of the French Army right now, and they're probably too busy fighting Burgundy or something anyway.

Right?

Good update

Wonderful update! What happens if you kill the swordsman holding their relic? Do you get the relic yourself?

Excellent. Only a matter of time before you seize the French relic...

If you are going to go after the Burgunidan Relic, go straight for Venice. In my France game I thought it was in Aix-la-Chappelle, so I ended up having to destroy half their empire before I found their relic.

Verarde said:

Wonderful update! What happens if you kill the swordsman holding their relic? Do you get the relic yourself?

Click to expand...

I believe so.