Ok, report with pics ...
First the Scimet deal
Then the
parafernalia of stuff to do with Sal and Temijuin: cap sal, make some deals ( grab wine from sal , since we will lose our wine from Justinian when the war starts ) and give the cities we mentioned in the discussion. Will skip the pics to save in the 20 pics per post
quota
The vassalization of Sal means that we have 10 turns of enforced peace. That is enough for the bizantine baghdad to get out of revolt, but it will surely have no defenses.
I decided to drop the stack lymond gathered for seaborne actions in Egypt:
That will allow us to strike jerusalem and Baghdad at the same time.
RR in, Communism in queue
To be honest, I'm impressed with the help the AI vassals are giving to us. In here, Temijuin blocks Siberia from the Russian hands. Nice job ... it is probably the first thing the Mongol AI does in this game, anyway .
Here is a pic of the troops Peter dropped in the city he captured from Sal. Shooting practice if we can catch them before they get to Infantry.
Meanwhile , in tech terms, I directed Mansa to MS after he finished MT ( I haven't traded for it yet ... mea culpa ) and pulled Sal onto Rifling ( with Pro rifles he can actually be useful against Justinian , that it is in military tech parity with us in the end of the set ), before we got to Communism, the GSpy of it, a GA, and the revolt to SP:
I started Bio ... almost half done in the end of the set.
In the same turn we discovered our target city for the Panama canal
Given that Monty is hands full for quite a while, I would not be surprised to have to take it from Monty.
BTW we got a GE:
Not sure what to do with it.
In the turn before the end of the set we got some troubling news:
Not that we can't handle Justinian and Izzy by ourselfes, but the fact that will be another SoD in the fray will surely delay our plans. More on that on the end thoughts.
Cue useless quest:
16 landmasses ? No thanks ...
I ended the set in the turn we can finally attack Justinian ... civilian aspects taken care of, military units unmoved. First our western stacks, starting with our Russian stack:
This stack was the one that lymond left in the ex-Mongol cap. I positioned it to a war vs Peter, but we will most likely need to move it to the fray with Just.
The Egyptian stack plus Jerusalem garrison:
Definitely more than enough, but it is troubling to not see here the Justinian stack because ...
... it is not in Baghdad as well. This means that we can't finish the Bizantine war ( the spanish affair is a diferent deal ) with just capturing Baghdad and Jerusalem.
We have some units in Turfan as well, and the ones I was preparing to send to America. Those IMHO should also be pulled to the front...
A clean slate of the action area:
And my action plan:
Red- expected borders after the capture of Baghdad ( expected this turn ) and after taking Jerusalem ( in 3 turns: one for the move, one for the bombing and one for the attack ).
Blue - moves of the front stacks. Probably the reinforcing stacks will follow a similar route to the Baghdad one
Green - expected area of contact with the Spanish SoD
Now my musings on the strategic situation:
I'm seeing to much of CG II rifles to be happy. This will be a bloody affair, that will need to be won by pure number strenght and inteligent use of siege ( it is better to sacrifice a rifle than 10 cannons beating on the same CG III rifle ( I expect to see some ) ) to maximize the war sucess score. We will surely need to take either Attalia or Trezibond ( most likely both, and I would not exclude to see us forced to capture Bizantium ) to make Justinian cap.
Now on the Spanish. Stack composition should be some
conquistadores, muskets and cannons/trebs and should strike us in the green area I marked on the map ( depending on if it comes from Barcelona or Santiago ... I expect it from Barcelona ), by my maths.
The more bittersweet scenario is to see them reinforcing Attalia in the turn after we bomb the culture defenses out ( if we don't have delays in our Baghdad stack and the Spanish stack is in Barcelona, that will happen )... we can see ourselfes without units to kill both the Bizantine and Spanish units there in one swoop. With some luck we can bring Spain to the table just by killing it's stack ( if it is big enough, it might be even enough to make Izzy cap ), but if the top defender is Bizantine in the scenario we face the combined stack in a city ( very likely, since the bizantine will have CG II rifles fortified there and the spanish muskets and conqustadores ) we can be drawn to a situation where we have a very low war sucess vs the bizantine ( because our siege losses will be all credited to the bizantine ) and a very high war sucess vs the spanish ( because we will only get to them after munching the bizantine rifles, so most of the battles will be in the 90% and above ) ... the exact oposite scenario of what we want, a rapid cap of Bizantium and a later land engagement with the Spanish. We want a rapid war ...
That bring us to a related issue: what to tech after. Mansa has MS on us and will have MT soonish enough. We should trade with him, especially the second ( to sell to Sal and Genghis ... they surely have a lot of mounted due their UUs ). We can't trade anything with the Europeans because we are the offical badboys of the western powers, so worst enemy tag all along. But in self research... what to do ? I'm for finishing Bio, but what next?
I was expecting a shortish war vs Bizantium ( 4-5 turns ) , but the Spanish meddling might delay a lot things. And that is bad because most of the European powers can tech Ass. Line and I'm pretty sure some are or will be soon enough ( I expect Justinian to start it ASAP after the wardec ... ditto for Spain ). In other words , we need to break Justinian before he gets infantry.
In my calcs that gives us a 10-12 turns window to break Justinian ... IMHO that can be done even in the worst case scenario if we pull atleast the Hanoi stack to the fray. But regardless of if we can pull it or not, the fact is that we will most likely face infantry in the next war. So, what do we tech ?
We have 2 options: Ass. Line for infantry + cannons or Physics + Artilery for rifles + arties ( + the odd MG ) + airships. What do you prefer ? Ass. Line would be more expedite, surely, but infantry vs infantry wars tend to slog ...and rifle + arties + airships are more than competent to dislodge infantry.
Oh and on targets after Bizantium ( and Spain, depending on how the thing goes ), there are only 2 realistical options: Russia or France-HRE ( they have a DP ) and Russia is both the weakest ATM and the one with potential for being a more problematic oponent in the medium term, so the choice is IMHO simple. *CFC needs a bear smiley*
Just 2 final notes: we should pump our vassals, especially Genghis. I've given rifles to Sal so far, but I let Genghis and Mansa out of the loop, to minimize the rifle tech spread. Genghis should have cavs atleast when we strike Peter ( that means Rifling + MT ) and he is currently researching PP ... that means atleast 3 turns of giving techs to Genghis. And we will get our first contact with AP after we capture Jerusalem ... most likely will be a vote to stop the war that we will most likely have to defy.
Save is below. Thy is UP, nocho is on deck.