So far, things had gone well, he considered. His people had managed to ward off the barbarian tribes, rewarding the empire with peace and prosperity. His workforce had tripled, building improvements everywhere and bringing many resources under his control.
And the people adored him, respecting him as their greatest leader in every city: he had assumed almost cult status with every city with more than 1000 people having a shrine to the great Qin. He smiled as he listened to the sounds of the streets, albeit muffled by the curtains of his vehicle: the people were cheering for him and the glory of the kingdom. They were happy as the capital had received many of his pioneering improvements over the years: just now a new granary was about to be completed.
Yet still, there was potential for more, and more, and more. Qin Shi Huang looked at the other areas of his map greedily - The Kingdom of Qin had many neighbours and nearly all of them had proved troublesome to deal with. Only the kingdom of Qi had really welcomed him.
The other kingdoms would pay with their necks.
Qin folded up the map carefully. He had taken to carrying it around with him all the time to remind himself of his destiny:
Emperor of China
The next 20 turns went comparatively smoothly since everything turned out well in the end. But as you shall see, I had quite a few close shaves:
In 429BC, two things happened. The first war broke out between
Wei (purple) and
Zhao (light blue). I also had to deal with my first real barbarian threat:
I was afraid that they would start pillaging since I had nothing that could beat them while they were in the forest. Also, I did not want to waste any units in the attempt to fend them off. I was therefore extremely happy when I survived the attack by fortifying an archer in a nearby forest:
Meanwhile, (I skipped ahead a bit there) I finished researching Bronze Working, my first technology, taking 23 turns. Considering that the game only lasts 200 turns, this seemed to be quite a long time, but my subsequent researches sped up a bit so this is OK.
As a result of Bronze Working, I discovered Iron just outside Qin. (Don't ask me why!) You can also see the barbarian stack of two:
You can see that I started researching
Rule of Heaven - this is for the
Great Classical Library and also for the civic
Bureaucracy which should do much to boost my research. On Emperor difficulty, the AI can literally run away with the research since this is a scenario with
1) a very flat tech tree where each tech is almost essential and also
2) where technology trading is not allowed.
I also made an important civics change: from
Primitism and
Despotism to
Vassalage and
Barter Economy.
If you look back at a few of the above screenshots, you'll see that the change not only helped the economy (look at the research times and the change in treasury per turn), but gave me nice bonuses in culture and exp. points for units.
This screenshot (below) in 424BC shows that the research time has come down from 22 turns to 13 turns in a space of 3 turns. This shows the effectiveness of the civic swap. It also shows my first chariot and helpfully an archer that is presenting itself as bait:
Then along came the next barbarian threat:
It wasn't too bad, but then:
My fogbuster died!
He succumbed to the barbarian horsemen at what surely must have been over 80% odds (A fortified, full health: (3) archer with +25% on hill plus another 20% or so for guerrilla 1 vs. an unpromoted asiatic horseman at stength 4)
Oh well, I had to bring troops in from the other cities but in the end, the barbarians decided to throw themselves at my city walls instead of pillaging, allowing me to pick them off one by one:
In the same year that the last of the barbarian wave had been repulsed, my tribute to Qi had come to fruition; ten years of tribute had earned me a +1 merit making Open Borders available!
This meant that instead of having only domestic trade routes, I had foreign ones, boosting my economy and bringing down research times. Although the next screenshot shows my capital, the research details can still be seen at the top of the picture.
The capital is the best commerce city, with the jade mine and also the
shamanism (+25% commerce) civic. After the library had been finished, I planned to work the river tiles for the two commerce while my other cities (specifically Hao) concentrated on production.
Then, as expected, one of the fighting powers asked me to join the war:
I refused of course, the Wei were going to be one of my next targets and can become extremely powerful because of their excellent tiles and the traits (
Aggressive and Protective) that, combined, make the Wei extremely resilient. Also, I simply couldn't afford a war and definitely did not need anything that could slow down my growth.
Here is the demographics screen at 420BC: (I am going to post the demographics screen every 10 turns for the rest of the story)
The rankings don't look very good but obviously, taking Bronze Working as the first technology is going to mean that my (Calendar) Filial Piety commerce resources take longer to get established. However, I will research Filial Piety after Rule of Heaven.
But later that turn, good and bad news:
I stumbled upon a barbarian city. This is good since it is not there at the start of the scenario meaning that in the long term, it amounts to a free city, saving you the 200 hammers needed for a settler. However, in the short term, that also means more barbarian soldiers to deal with. And the first of those was threatening my first ever chariot!
In between turns, I recieved an offer from Qi:
I accepted straight away! It is an essential to remain on good terms with Qi. We can vassalise him later, he is the most inaccessible and therefore of least value as an enemy. Meanwhile, Open Borders and trades will benefit our economy.
The chariot survived by the way, but another Barbarian threat approached:
A stack of 3!
I hastily moved my recuperating chariot back into the city and moved an archer onto the hill to prevent the pillaging of the mine. I had a stroke of luck here. I survived the attack with minimal losses:
Firstly, the barbarians moved one archer unit closer to the city and then used the remaining two to attack my archer. My archer survived and earned a promotion meaning he could stay safely on the hill, preventing a possible pillaging of the mine. Another archer had arrived to reinforce the city meaning that I had basically survived the attack with no losses. The last archer ended up being killed by my healed chariot in a last-ditch attempt to pillage my pasture in Hao.
In 414BC, I was invited to join the war again but on the side of Zhao. This was slightly more tempting so I checked the foreign advisor to make sure that I could indeed join the war without receiving any diplomatic demerits from friends. My diplomatic tweaking at the start had been very effective and Wei's enemies and friends were indeed what I had pre-determined they should be; their friends were my enemies:
Continued below (becasue of the 20 image limit)
![[party]](/images/smilies/partytime.gif "Party [party]")
