1620 (5): Our southern exploring caravel meets the Turks. They have 31K in gold and theyre ahead of us by all the techs we can see, though they have a relatively modest twelve cities.
We set up our attacks on Athens, Thessalonica, and Knossos, building the necessary garrisons in the former two cases.
Byzantion and Corinth both flip. We have recapture forces next to both, but they could fail, and more seriously Corinths flip wipes out the garrison meant to support our attack on Athens.
to me for selling the walls in those cities, anyway.
1625 (6): Fortunately were able to replace the garrison for our attack on Athens with other foreign workers in the area.
We re-take Byzantion (one Hoplite) and Corinth (two Hoplites) easily enough, though we lose a knight at Byzantion (40-17).
Thessalonica has a completely inaccessible garrison, so our new hussars had better make an impressive debut there. They do superbly, and we storm the town without loss, putting three arqs and a Hoplite to the sword (44-17). We capture a supply shipment.
Another hussar clears away Athenss garrison, held by a Hoplite (45-17).
At Athens our hussars dont make much impression, mostly redline/retreating, and the knights that follow them have the same problem. But we have too big a stack to fail, and eventually we seize the city for the loss of three knights (held by four arqs and a longbowman; 50-20). We capture a worker.