Memphis Blues, History of the World Part 2
Part 1 Review
In the ancient past the Great Memphis lead the Egyptian people from a backward nomadic tribe to the sole power on their continent. The first part of our history ended with Russia a distant memory and Persia about to follow. The Egyptian people had the knowledge to sail caravels to distant lands to scout out our future enemies and were working diligently toward astronomy to be able to sail troops there.
The fall of Persia
The war with Persia has reached a point where it's really just a formality. In 1286 his capital falls and Cyrus barely even puts up a token resistance from that point onward.
Persepolis falls!
As you can see from that picture we have pretty much explored the world at this point. A big chunk of that exploration though was via a map trade with Roosevelt which gave us the circumnavigation bonus. With an overseas domination in the offing that extra move on our galleons might be huge.
During this time period our economy is still really struggling. We have never fully recovered from the strain of our early war with Russia. We are now "pre-building" a lot of troops and ships by inserting something else in front of them in the queue when they get to 1 turn completed. This should let us pop out a pretty big army just a turn or two after learning Astronomy, which will happen 17 turns from the fall of the Persian capital. The construction of the Forbidden Palace in ex-Persia did help our economy a lot but the maintenance from all those Persian cities (Cyrus wasn't nice enough to build us courthouses) is really taking a toll. War weariness is also becoming a major problem, Police State (yay for the Pyramids) helps a lot but we still have some angry people refusing to work.
In 1382 the Persian Empire is officially put to rest. They will exist now only in the memories of the newest Egyptian citizens.
Egypt takes to the Sea
In 1364 as the Egyptian scientists finally learn to navigate by the stars and galleons become possible the Great Memphis makes a momentous decision. All of the scientists in the empire are handed maces or sent to work on warships and we go to a full at war footing for the rest of history with a 0% science rate. We can now take our army across the seas, and the first target is Inca.
The Great Memphis contemplates at length the best way to begin the war for the liberation of Inca. In the end he decides to land troops on the southern Incan coast kind of in the middle and work outward from there. The idea is to start on his capital early to cripple him, but also to prioritize his 2 holy cites...especially the one with the shrine.
The fall of Inca
The opening shots of the true Incan war come in 1412 when we start bombarding the first of the holy cities. The two holy cities and the capital fall very quickly and in a mere 50 or so years, Inca becomes a non-threat just awaiting cleanup. After centuries of hating Incans as a national pastime, the actual war itself is rather disappointing. They are quickly squashed down to 1 city and we turn our attention to the south east and Arabia.
The last night for Arabia
With a large fleet of very full transports sitting off his coast I doubt Saladin was surprised when we declared war in 1508. At least he seemed well prepared for his defense and put up an admirable fight. In the end it didn't do him much good, but he can go down in history as the toughest opponent Egypt crushed. His catapult and camel archer combinations caused a higher death toll on our troops than expected. By this time though our army was simply massive and our large fleet of galleons was able to move them from continent to continent swiftly and en-mass.
The war started on his northern coast with the capture of two cities, but we also sent an expeditionary force to one of the cities on his southern coast to harass him. This worked wonders as he pulled forces out of Mecca and the surrounding area in both directions to counter-attack. The troops left the area of Mecca just in time for our largest group of soldiers to land on his coast 3 turns from Mecca and march on the capital. The fall of Mecca pretty much finished any real resistance.
It ends up taking less than 60 years to completely eliminate Arabia, leaving just 2 other empires on our world. Some time during the Arabian war the final crappy Incan city also was captured officially eliminating them and greatly reducing our war weariness for a while, but only for a while as there are still people left to conquer.
The monkey wrench
The fall of Arabia leaves us in an interesting situation and the Great Memphis is confused. The gods have decreed that we can not declare war on India, but India and America have a defensive pact now and we need some American land to complete our domination of the world. The Great Memphis is not sure what will happen when we declare war on America, which is a worry since we have depended on the peaceful Indian nature and have barely any defense on our shared borders in ex-Persia.
The Great Memphis consults one of our scientist-macemen (we run some tests in a world-builder game) and determines that India will declare war on us if we attack America. In the end though that knowledge doesn't matter since we have no choice but to attack America and no time to wait to build up a defense in Persia.
The final push
In the final push to victory the Great Memphis pulled out all the stops and did anything and everything he could to gain more land. The theme of the day in the final war against America and India was to defend our Persian holdings against the Indian cavalry and to raze as many American cities as possible and send in our own settlers into the ruins. Those new cities are then allowed to starve while the lone citizen works as an artist to expand our culture. India kills a few of our troops, but our Pikemen really go above and beyond and keep him from taking any cities. Our macemen encounter muskets and stiff resistance in America but manage to raze the cities we need in a swift manner anyway. The final result is America and India finally acknowledging our dominance in 1613 AD, about 10 or so turns from when we would have gone bankrupt.
