Again I had a very unpleasant sleep. I kept dreaming of revolutions and a guy with a big whip. In addition, I could see the Persian people rise and help in this war. When I woke up, I went to talk immediately with my domestic advisor:
Well, you know, I have an idea
Yea, dear emperor, what idea?
I think we should turn back to the good old times where we could speed up works by using a whip
A whip???...
You mean slavery
You know that we are deep into the 18th century, dont you?
Umh, yes, I know, but WOULD it be possible?
Well, THEORETICAL, it should be possible
And do you have an idea how we could draft some citizen into our army?
Hm, THAT would be a better plan, we could use nationalism for example and draft some citizen every year
I have mad up my mid. Then I want slavery and nationalism incorporated into our governmental system ASAP (mental note: wow, that sounded great). Do you understand me?
Yes
umh
well, but slavery
Do it, and do it NOW.
Youre the boss (dear emperor)
Later that day, I also made an appointment with our head scientist. I felt that we would need some better troops to stand against the Chinese and therefore I needed his advice (but still I hated meeting him, because of my aversion against any scientists (and wise men)).
He told me, that they actually worked on a program, to improve the overall usefulness of our tanks. It would involve something he called computer. This should be a sort of thinking device which should help a lot. In addition, they were experimenting with mixing some metals and other things to make their armor stronger. They called these materials composites.
Well, to be honest, I didnt understand half of what he said (maybe I even understood a little less then half of it), but it at least sounded like a plan to me. So I granted them every penny I could spare and ordered to speed up research. The bad news came last:
They told me, that it would still be something like 40 to 50 years more (= 18 turns) until they expected any results I could use in the war.
Next day, next meeting:
I met the Persian defence minister to discuss what our spies had revealed, concerning the overall power of our enemies
the news werent good:
We managed to come closer in military power to Monty and Qin, but the losses we could deal them were marginal. So we were unable to close the power gab although we tried now for almost 60 years. We had slowed their growth some while back, but since they started to upgrade their units recently, they ran away again. We had to face the fact, that we would never stand a chance against them as long as our units were outdated.
So we fought on.
We held our ground (more or less, some more Central Asian and African cities were burned down) for almost 20 years. Our research meanwhile dropped down to 40%, because our people were growing more and more restless. The result was that we were running out of money, because we had to raise our culture efforts more and more, to keep our people at least pleased. But the nationalism/slavery combo proved quite useful in this respect
it helped to keep the size of our big cities under control and therefore prevented riots and we were able to produce units much faster. So what we couldnt win with technique, we fought with sheer numbers now and were able to take out 2 major Chinese stacks with 25 units altogether and one Russian with 12 units in Central Asia.
In addition, Montys advance in Asia came also to a halt. 27 more years (=9 turns) and we would reach composites and finally would be able to upgrade our tanks modern armor. If nothing went wrong within the next years, this could be the time for us to finally strike back.
Well, but it seemed that the coalition also knew this fact because they started to spread their attacks wider again:
Island finally fell to Monty who seemed to have decided now to open a second front on us in Europe. So we had to send some units to Paris and London, to prevent Aztecs raids in our mainlands.
Our troop situation was now better, but still we couldnt afford a war on to many fronts with heavy fighting, so we had to try to keep Monty from getting a foothold in Europe by all means immediately.
Then, another 12 years later, Japan suddenly joined the active fighting. Up to that day, they had only supported the coalition with supplies and logistic devices, but suddenly, 2 massive Japanese fleets were spotted. One was heading for India and contained 6 transports and 4 cruisers and another one, containing 4 transports and 3 cruisers passed India direction Africa. Again I had to make a dire decision:
Where should we fight and were should we retreat and sacrifice land and cities???
In the end, I decided to hold India and to give up Africa completely. Only the Egypt mainland would be defended, the rest would have to be given up. All citizen there were advised to leave their cities, because the Japanese were known to burn everything down and to make no prisoners.
In India on the other hand, we mustered a heavy defensive force. The bulk of our army was formed by 18 tanks. This proved to be very effective against the Japanese invading force, because they landed mainly with infantry (about 20 infantry and some artillery). With 3 artillery softening the enemy stack up a little, we lost only 2 tanks and managed to destroy this landing force completely in the first attack already.
But the price for this was that we had to leave the choke point towards China, the city of Bombey very lightly defended, so we only could hope that China wouldnt take this chance to launch a surprise attack using their mechanized infanry
Well, the Japanese raiding party in Africa was a little luckier. With no defences there, two cities were burned down very quick and they proceeded inland with impressive speed. There they met with Montys forces and regrouped. Again our secret service was right, because they warned us about Monty preparing to resettle Southern and Western Africa, covered by the Japanese forces. Still, we were unable to hinder him, but since our scientists would have finished our own upgraded tank (=modern armor) very soon (2 turns left) we saw hope again.
But hope and fear seemed to be close friends these days
China suddenly moved more troops in for India just when I started to feel save again, and they contained mainly of mechanized infantry and artillery.
...
see you soon,
Snaaty