Neal glanced around, quickly. He smelled crisp mountain air, and saw Longbowmen standing at the ready at the gates. The distant ocean seen through the windows also supported the King of the World's suspicions. And the Aztec emissary, ticking off the resource gifts that were being rescinded, cinched it.
"Inca. Damn."
Neal was getting tired of being behind the technological curve. He wanted air conditioning, dammit! He wanted the opportunity to crack open a cold beer that hadn't been chilled in a glacier or whatever, but in an honest refrigerator. He wanted to kick back on a sofa and watch some ESPN. At the very least, he wanted an army that he could do some genuine damage with. This stretch of bumpkins was getting old.
Not much could be done, though. He went to roll up his sleeves, realized that he wasn't wearing any, sighed, and went to work. His first task was trying to clamber back to tech parity. The Aztecs, once their own Scientific Revolution got rolling, quickly left the primitive Inca discoveries in the dust. If Neal was going to command some respect, he would need Rifling. But no-one that had it was willing to trade it. Not even the big Aztec cheese himself. Neal made do swapping with Roosevelt for Scientific Method:
Short-term, it would hurt. But short-term, the Inca were screwed, anyway. May as well do what we can to set them up for the long term.
Then it was time to start trimming the empire's fat. For as disadvantaged an emperor as Huayna Capac was, he sure wasted a lot of resources. Neal immediately slashed the budget. Ollantaytambo, for instance, a minor settlement on a tiny island in the south Pacific, was equipped with a Worker!
What was he going to do? Go swimming? Needless to say, he was given the rest of the game off. Neal also disbanded a number of the useless Caravels puttering about the seven seas. Exploration is done, and that, really, is all Caravels are good for.
As Neal did what he could to turn around the map's most unfortunate people, his previous failures met bad ends:
Maybe siding with Rome wasn't the best move there, Genghis.
Neal slept fitfully that night, terrified at the prospect of a "failed incarnate's" death triggering the end of the world. In the morning, the Cuzco sun glinted in through the windows and the now-familiar scent of quinoa and sweet potato wafted in from the kitchen. It was just another day. What the hell, Scott Bakula? Of course, it wasn't completely without news. China had assimilated all of Mongolia, and had acquired a massive boost to its Musketmen, besides. Old Qin will be a tough, tough nut to crack in this game.
Neal did his best to establish a mainland South American presence with Punta Arenas:
The city, with its hills and access to Whale migration routes, would be a profitable city in the short term. It may not account for much in the long term, but it will never be a drag on the empire, and that's about all that we can ask right now.
In 1798, after years of slowly re-establishing his gifts to the Inca people (why does the AI do that, anyway? And does it do it when the vassal isn't a player?), Monty stepped up with a big present:
Rifling would have been more helpful, but any tech (except maybe Divine Right) was worth accepting.
The new ideas flowing through Inca society brought with them the winds of revolution:
Free Religion and Free Market. Hopefully those would balance the loss of Monastery science and, perhaps, win us a bit of international good will.
Of course, the kind and benificent Montezuma wasn't always necessarily kind or benificent:
We were getting enough resources in return that Neal decided to acquiesce. I actually tried war with Monty. It didn't work out so well. The Aztecs apparently had a few boats' worth of troops headed overseas that the big kahuna was more than willing to turn around and land in our supposedly impenetrable cocoon. I think I was able to take Puerto Aisen before our military was utterly exhausted, at which point the losses began.
Anyway, you can also see in that screenshot that Montezuma succeeded in driving Caesar from the New World. At the same time, Rome's central Asian colonies were being stripped away by China. Julie had a good run, but it looks like he's back to Fortress Europa. And he doesn't even have all of that.
So, long story short, it was worth keeping the Aztecs happy:
We got Rifling a bit later than I would have liked it, but, hey. Six turns of free research is six turns of free research. It may have been entirely due to the charity of our betters, but we were clambering back into the tech race.
We even made a few trades:
Of course, for Persia to go this long without the ability to build Cavalry is unconscionable. But who am I to judge?
Resistencia was founded to fill in Monty's South American gaps before he could beat us to them:
At this point, it's a better city than we could found elsewhere.
As you can see, the American bloc had made peace with Rome and was now doing battle with the British. Seeing an opportunity, Neal sent a Galleon of Riflemen off to take Iceland. Or Greenland. Or whatever that weird protrusion from the Arctic Ice is:
As you can probably see, the expedition was doomed from the start. Apparently, the Age of Rifles was over in Europe before it even really began in the New World.
As reports filed in of the massacre against the English, Neal moved his Palace from Cuzco:
If we're going to be running Bureaucracy, I'd rather it beef up a city that can profit from it.
Monty had one more gift before we said sayonara to South America:
Yeah. The fact that we're accepting gifts like that from the
Aztecs means that, well, we're still not exactly titans on the global scene. Ah, well. You can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear. Especially if you don't have Pigs
or Silk in your borders.
Here's a look at the empire as I wrapped up:
The process of relocation had become old hat by now. Neal took one last walk around his capitol, shook hands with his closest advisors, had a few drinks, and went to bed early.
The next morning he woke up to the sounds of horse-drawn carriages clopping down cobblestone streets. He awoke among sumptuous sheets with tea and scones on a silver beside tray. And the lamp next to him... It held an honest-to-God lightbulb! Neal leapt out of bed and raced out of the room, nodding to the mortified Infantrymen outside his door (
Very nice, he thought). Upon seeing the soldier's embarassment, Neal stopped, noticing for the first time that he was wearing little more than a sheer nightgown. And, for the first time since he roamed the desert sands as the Jackal Queen, he had boobs. Life was good, indeed.
As the English, we have a small empire, but a defensible one. All of our cities are on the Island of Great Britain and that weird little Arctic spur. We are scientifically advanced:
But we lack Oil to make full use of our technological advantages. So, what do we do? After a boring few rounds as the Mongols, Mali, Aztecs, and Incas, I'm in the mood for a war. We can definitely take out the French Irish (and spare us the indignity of that particular round), but I was thinking about maybe being a bit more bold. Paris looks awfully juicy, there, doesn't it? Rome is already reeling after its war with China. Perhaps we could do our part to complete the fall of Rome and enact the coming of Pax Brittanica. And now that we know that Civs can be completely wiped out...
The save:
