Don Deity was sitting in his throne room, nervously drumming the sides of his throne with his fingers, when suddenly the door burst open and a messenger from the mayor in London stumbled into the room:
Don Deity (long break for heavy breathing) I have (another long break for heavy breathing) just run all the way up from the mayors house (another long break ) to your palace (break) only to find the front door completely blocked by statues (break) so I ran back all the way to the city (break) and have taken the road up to your palace back door then (break) and I have important news from the mayor (break)
Three seconds later, in the mayors house:
Hello Don Deity, what brings you here? I had just sent a messenger to your palace to
I know, I have met him, and we had an a-stone-ishing informative talk so I decided to drop down myself and ask you directly what news you have to save some time (and because your messenger somehow decided to stop talking forever before I could tell me anything usefull and joined the palace decorations)
I just have received very bad news from one of our spies in India it seems that Ash not only has managed to discover the secret of Nationalism, but also to build the Taj Mahal only a few turns thereafter
And ?
Our spy said that the Taj Mahal is such an impressive building, that it might inspire the whole Indian nation
Which means for us ?
India is about to enter another Golden Age and this might bear some negative consequences for our invasion into India, you know.
Ok, now I see your point and I agree with you. Thats really bad, but there is nothing we can do about it. Please let me know immediately, when you receive word from our troops about the impact this might have on our warfare Oh, and please send the next messenger directly to the back door of my palace
Meanwhile
Around the time Don Deity and his generals were busy worrying about the influence Ashs Golden Age might have on their little war, the English brave sailors continued to use the Chinese maps to their advantage and managed to make contact with the Zulu and the Mongolian civilisations. It turned out, that Zulu was quite weak and underdeveloped technologically (everything else would have been a wonder Shaka is one of the most efficient leaders when it comes to wrecking his economy, research, expansion and more or less everything else by building heaps and heaps of troops right from 4000 BC on, which tend to be outdated around 1000 BC, when there is no peaceful neighbour around to stomp early ) but with Mongolia as only neighbour in direct reach, Shakes stagnation was no wonder. Although Kublai, the Mongolian leader, had quite a reputation as warmonger himself, he usually was very much more efficient then most of the other warmongers (= Shaka ), because he also knew how to write the word cottage and therefore was able to tech and develop his empire during peacetimes very well
Considering all this, it was no wonder, that it turned out that Kublai was the second superpower, only a notch behind Ash score-wise, but with a much larger empire and WAY more troops...
Since there was only very little left of what seemed to have been the Korean civilisation around the time Don Deitys sailors reached Kublais continent, this only was another indicator that it would only be a matter of time, until Mongolia would claim control over their whole continent and Shaka wouldnt be able to slow them down very much, once Kublai decided to add the Zulu cities to his empire. Concerning Korea a closer observation even revealed, that they already had capitulated to Mongolia and were vassalized some while ago
...
Still Kublai was nice enough to sell his maps for only a little gold to the English sailors, and so the final picture of the world was revealed. After having considered it long and carefully, English historians decided to name the various continents and, after some discussion, came up with some nice, descriptive and proper names:
The starting continent of Don Deity and his neighbours was named: Continent France
The continent inhabited by Germany and Persian was named: Continent Wrongplacedandthereforewestillhavenocontactwiththem
The continent inhabited by the Chinese and the Malines was named: Continent New Constantinople
And the continent inhabited by the Korean, the Zulu and the Mongols finally was named: Continent Bompf
And the other two:
Since most of the English cities had switched back to builder mode some time ago and the English workers had run out of forests to chop down and roads to build, Don Deity decided, that this was a good time to switch the English economy from Food Economy (FE) to Cottage Economy (CE) to bring up the English research again, at least a little. From the English core cities, only Hastings, Coventry and Canterbury would be spared from this economical change and would be allowed to continue working mainly farms and mines, with the goal of turning them into Englands main production centres. Starting with London, city by city now got spammed with cottages and ALL of them had to be worked as soon as possible, to allow the best economical growth.
In parallel, the English army got bored of waiting for the somehow missing massive Indian counterattacks and was finally ordered by Don Deity to advance on Madras with the goal of taking this city and then to march directly towards Delhi, the Indian capital. Since Ash didnt seem too interested in mustering any bigger counterattacks and not even bothered in strengthening his city defences, Don Deity spontaneously had decided to change his initial attacking plans (again) there wasnt much sense in blocking Indian reinforcements, coming down from the North, when there simply were almost NO Indian reinforcements coming down from the North and so a smaller contingent of the AGN, consisting mainly of Trebuchets even was ordered to march north, towards the city of Bangalore, which seemed to be the main Indian production site (indicated by a knight moving out of this city every two turns) and to start bombarding the city. The rest of the AGN would be ordered to meet with the AGE in the outskirts of Delhi and to assist them in their efforts to capture the Indian capital after Madras would have been taken. Since time was so important now, due to the extremely fast teching of India and Greece, Don Deitys new plan now was to push for the Indian capital immediately, before Ash had a chance to upgrade all the units stationed there.
Since Don Deity had already learned hiss lesion during the siege of Karachi, he wasnt too optimistic and expected quite some losses capturing Madras and Delhi. Therefore it was quite a pleasant surprise, that Madras fell in 410 AD quite easily after some bombarding and without too much fighting so Don Deity kept to his new plan and had the AGN split in two groups, as planned.
One pressed on towards the Indian capital with the goal of meeting the AGE there although approaching Ashs capital now directly all Don Deitys arm had been facing so far in this war were 12 knights, mostly sent to suicide pillage missions into English territory, 3 horse archers, 5 catapults and a small number of trebs, maces and crossbows which basically meant nothing to really worry about, so Don Deity had his men rush on
It was a quite big surprise to Don Deitys leading general, that Delhi fell only after a short fight in 455 AD already, with the bulk of the English army still gathering there, directly after the English siege engines had taken out the Indian fortifications surrounding the city:
Genius Ash, winner of the Continental Knitting Games from 48 AD to 396 AD but apparently only a hobby warmonger, and a quite bad one by the way, had really managed to use the production bonus from his golden age to build the Spiral Minaret in his capital, despite the war. And apparently he had finished it just in time, like one or two turns before Delhi finally had fallen. (Knitting first became popular in the Greek rural regions between Thebes and Corinth around 350 BC, but was considered as a poor people sport at first. Only around 200 BC, when the aristocracy in Corinth incorporated knitting in their society, by combining dinner parties with big knitting events, it was slowly becoming more and more popular also among the other cities in the Greek empire. In 134 BC finally, when Alex family also turned towards knitting, it became clear that knitting as a sport and as an event had finally made its way up to the royal Greek court and only some years later, knitting was THE number one sport in Greece. From 100 BC on, knitting was also adopted more and more in the neighbourhood countries, first only in the Indian, English and Celt borderlands with Greece, but later also in their bigger cities. In 63 BC finally, when knitting was also incorporated in the religious customs all over France (Don Deitys continent, home of the English, remember?) no Hindu temple could be imagined any more without a knitting chamber and regular knitting events. But only in 12 BC knitting gained the glory it really deserved, with the building of the Knitropolis, a huge area of temples, commerce and sport, mainly dedicated to knitting, situated on a hill in the outskirts of the Greek capital Athens. And in 4 BC finally Athens featured the first Continental Knitting Games there, which, from then on, should take place every 4 years to symbolize the friendship and peace among the nations in France. Only the best knitters would go there and represent their country. In the beginning, knitting was only allowed nude in the Knitropolis, but when Ash and the Indian royal family became more and more successful (and nobody REALLY wanted to see Ash nude), this was changed and knitting during the Continental Knitting Games was allowed with long white robes in the Knitropolis also. All of this wasnt mentioned before, because it had absolutely nothing to do with the storyline so far. It still has absolutely nothing, really nothing at all, to do with the storyline, but hey, who cares )
At least, Don Deity had to admit, that Ash had positioned the Spiral Minaret quite nicely, directly besides the Ankor Wat
The following screenshot shows the battlefield in central India, with Don Deitys eastern and northern force already united and Delhi captured. As you can see, all units were concentrated in the attack on Delhi, only some flank guards were left and the mentioned division of the AGN was guiding the rest of the English siege weapons towards Bangalore.
Oh, and by the way, the funniest thing in this screenshot was the fact, that there were absolutely NO Indian units on it, except a group of crossbows guarding a mine which only showed HOW effective Ash really was in avoiding to build ANY troops at all
Despite the lack of real resistance, the big success of the English army inspired the retired English General Barca Hamilca to found a war academy in Coventry. Not much later it turned out that this greatly helped in educating new officers for the English army and therefore sped up the army production in Coventry by almost 50%, enabling them to replace any cavalry lost within 4 turns (London, the second English city producing troops, needed still 5 turns per cavalry around that time). Thanks to this great achievement, Barca Hamilca was remembered and referred from then on in the English history books as the first Great General ever (and immortalized by Don Deity by turning him into a very beautiful statue, which still can be seen in the entry hall of the war academy in Coventry).
But here the good news stopped a look at the scientific advisor revealed, that Ash had in fact managed to get a quite depressing tech-lead on the English up to 455 AD:
Ash had Constitution, Printing Press, Economics and very likely also Corporations and Replaceable Parts on Don Deity.
So far, it had been a very strange (and very lucky) war for the English. Ash really seemed more interested in building some additional wonders he could gift Don Deity along with his cities instead of raising a decent defensive force, or at least ANY defensive force.
But there still had to be some mayor Indian stacks out there, indicated by the power graph. So the big question was, why Ash refrained for some reasons from sending them to face the English army maybe Ash REALLY was very close to rifling already and wanted to upgrade his main army first to riflemen, before sending them to face the English cavalry this might also explain why he kept lots of gold in his treasury, despite the fact that he was in a war and soon this could become a quite big problem
...
Im happy for any feedback, suggestions, tips and hints concerning this game...
IMPORTANT NOTE:
If you want to play along or ahead feel free to pick any save you like. Only thing you REALLY should do is to use spoiler tags for anything AHEAD of the actual story.
The saves for this game can be found here (scroll to the end of the page)
YOU WILL NEED THE WARLORDS 2.13 PATCH TO OPEN THE LAST SAVES
...
See you Soon
Snaaty
Don Deity (long break for heavy breathing) I have (another long break for heavy breathing) just run all the way up from the mayors house (another long break ) to your palace (break) only to find the front door completely blocked by statues (break) so I ran back all the way to the city (break) and have taken the road up to your palace back door then (break) and I have important news from the mayor (break)
Three seconds later, in the mayors house:
Hello Don Deity, what brings you here? I had just sent a messenger to your palace to
I know, I have met him, and we had an a-stone-ishing informative talk so I decided to drop down myself and ask you directly what news you have to save some time (and because your messenger somehow decided to stop talking forever before I could tell me anything usefull and joined the palace decorations)
I just have received very bad news from one of our spies in India it seems that Ash not only has managed to discover the secret of Nationalism, but also to build the Taj Mahal only a few turns thereafter
And ?
Our spy said that the Taj Mahal is such an impressive building, that it might inspire the whole Indian nation
Which means for us ?
India is about to enter another Golden Age and this might bear some negative consequences for our invasion into India, you know.
Ok, now I see your point and I agree with you. Thats really bad, but there is nothing we can do about it. Please let me know immediately, when you receive word from our troops about the impact this might have on our warfare Oh, and please send the next messenger directly to the back door of my palace
Meanwhile
Around the time Don Deity and his generals were busy worrying about the influence Ashs Golden Age might have on their little war, the English brave sailors continued to use the Chinese maps to their advantage and managed to make contact with the Zulu and the Mongolian civilisations. It turned out, that Zulu was quite weak and underdeveloped technologically (everything else would have been a wonder Shaka is one of the most efficient leaders when it comes to wrecking his economy, research, expansion and more or less everything else by building heaps and heaps of troops right from 4000 BC on, which tend to be outdated around 1000 BC, when there is no peaceful neighbour around to stomp early ) but with Mongolia as only neighbour in direct reach, Shakes stagnation was no wonder. Although Kublai, the Mongolian leader, had quite a reputation as warmonger himself, he usually was very much more efficient then most of the other warmongers (= Shaka ), because he also knew how to write the word cottage and therefore was able to tech and develop his empire during peacetimes very well
Considering all this, it was no wonder, that it turned out that Kublai was the second superpower, only a notch behind Ash score-wise, but with a much larger empire and WAY more troops...
Since there was only very little left of what seemed to have been the Korean civilisation around the time Don Deitys sailors reached Kublais continent, this only was another indicator that it would only be a matter of time, until Mongolia would claim control over their whole continent and Shaka wouldnt be able to slow them down very much, once Kublai decided to add the Zulu cities to his empire. Concerning Korea a closer observation even revealed, that they already had capitulated to Mongolia and were vassalized some while ago
...
Still Kublai was nice enough to sell his maps for only a little gold to the English sailors, and so the final picture of the world was revealed. After having considered it long and carefully, English historians decided to name the various continents and, after some discussion, came up with some nice, descriptive and proper names:
The starting continent of Don Deity and his neighbours was named: Continent France
The continent inhabited by Germany and Persian was named: Continent Wrongplacedandthereforewestillhavenocontactwiththem
The continent inhabited by the Chinese and the Malines was named: Continent New Constantinople
And the continent inhabited by the Korean, the Zulu and the Mongols finally was named: Continent Bompf
And the other two:
Since most of the English cities had switched back to builder mode some time ago and the English workers had run out of forests to chop down and roads to build, Don Deity decided, that this was a good time to switch the English economy from Food Economy (FE) to Cottage Economy (CE) to bring up the English research again, at least a little. From the English core cities, only Hastings, Coventry and Canterbury would be spared from this economical change and would be allowed to continue working mainly farms and mines, with the goal of turning them into Englands main production centres. Starting with London, city by city now got spammed with cottages and ALL of them had to be worked as soon as possible, to allow the best economical growth.
In parallel, the English army got bored of waiting for the somehow missing massive Indian counterattacks and was finally ordered by Don Deity to advance on Madras with the goal of taking this city and then to march directly towards Delhi, the Indian capital. Since Ash didnt seem too interested in mustering any bigger counterattacks and not even bothered in strengthening his city defences, Don Deity spontaneously had decided to change his initial attacking plans (again) there wasnt much sense in blocking Indian reinforcements, coming down from the North, when there simply were almost NO Indian reinforcements coming down from the North and so a smaller contingent of the AGN, consisting mainly of Trebuchets even was ordered to march north, towards the city of Bangalore, which seemed to be the main Indian production site (indicated by a knight moving out of this city every two turns) and to start bombarding the city. The rest of the AGN would be ordered to meet with the AGE in the outskirts of Delhi and to assist them in their efforts to capture the Indian capital after Madras would have been taken. Since time was so important now, due to the extremely fast teching of India and Greece, Don Deitys new plan now was to push for the Indian capital immediately, before Ash had a chance to upgrade all the units stationed there.
Since Don Deity had already learned hiss lesion during the siege of Karachi, he wasnt too optimistic and expected quite some losses capturing Madras and Delhi. Therefore it was quite a pleasant surprise, that Madras fell in 410 AD quite easily after some bombarding and without too much fighting so Don Deity kept to his new plan and had the AGN split in two groups, as planned.
One pressed on towards the Indian capital with the goal of meeting the AGE there although approaching Ashs capital now directly all Don Deitys arm had been facing so far in this war were 12 knights, mostly sent to suicide pillage missions into English territory, 3 horse archers, 5 catapults and a small number of trebs, maces and crossbows which basically meant nothing to really worry about, so Don Deity had his men rush on
It was a quite big surprise to Don Deitys leading general, that Delhi fell only after a short fight in 455 AD already, with the bulk of the English army still gathering there, directly after the English siege engines had taken out the Indian fortifications surrounding the city:
Genius Ash, winner of the Continental Knitting Games from 48 AD to 396 AD but apparently only a hobby warmonger, and a quite bad one by the way, had really managed to use the production bonus from his golden age to build the Spiral Minaret in his capital, despite the war. And apparently he had finished it just in time, like one or two turns before Delhi finally had fallen. (Knitting first became popular in the Greek rural regions between Thebes and Corinth around 350 BC, but was considered as a poor people sport at first. Only around 200 BC, when the aristocracy in Corinth incorporated knitting in their society, by combining dinner parties with big knitting events, it was slowly becoming more and more popular also among the other cities in the Greek empire. In 134 BC finally, when Alex family also turned towards knitting, it became clear that knitting as a sport and as an event had finally made its way up to the royal Greek court and only some years later, knitting was THE number one sport in Greece. From 100 BC on, knitting was also adopted more and more in the neighbourhood countries, first only in the Indian, English and Celt borderlands with Greece, but later also in their bigger cities. In 63 BC finally, when knitting was also incorporated in the religious customs all over France (Don Deitys continent, home of the English, remember?) no Hindu temple could be imagined any more without a knitting chamber and regular knitting events. But only in 12 BC knitting gained the glory it really deserved, with the building of the Knitropolis, a huge area of temples, commerce and sport, mainly dedicated to knitting, situated on a hill in the outskirts of the Greek capital Athens. And in 4 BC finally Athens featured the first Continental Knitting Games there, which, from then on, should take place every 4 years to symbolize the friendship and peace among the nations in France. Only the best knitters would go there and represent their country. In the beginning, knitting was only allowed nude in the Knitropolis, but when Ash and the Indian royal family became more and more successful (and nobody REALLY wanted to see Ash nude), this was changed and knitting during the Continental Knitting Games was allowed with long white robes in the Knitropolis also. All of this wasnt mentioned before, because it had absolutely nothing to do with the storyline so far. It still has absolutely nothing, really nothing at all, to do with the storyline, but hey, who cares )
At least, Don Deity had to admit, that Ash had positioned the Spiral Minaret quite nicely, directly besides the Ankor Wat
The following screenshot shows the battlefield in central India, with Don Deitys eastern and northern force already united and Delhi captured. As you can see, all units were concentrated in the attack on Delhi, only some flank guards were left and the mentioned division of the AGN was guiding the rest of the English siege weapons towards Bangalore.
Oh, and by the way, the funniest thing in this screenshot was the fact, that there were absolutely NO Indian units on it, except a group of crossbows guarding a mine which only showed HOW effective Ash really was in avoiding to build ANY troops at all
Despite the lack of real resistance, the big success of the English army inspired the retired English General Barca Hamilca to found a war academy in Coventry. Not much later it turned out that this greatly helped in educating new officers for the English army and therefore sped up the army production in Coventry by almost 50%, enabling them to replace any cavalry lost within 4 turns (London, the second English city producing troops, needed still 5 turns per cavalry around that time). Thanks to this great achievement, Barca Hamilca was remembered and referred from then on in the English history books as the first Great General ever (and immortalized by Don Deity by turning him into a very beautiful statue, which still can be seen in the entry hall of the war academy in Coventry).
But here the good news stopped a look at the scientific advisor revealed, that Ash had in fact managed to get a quite depressing tech-lead on the English up to 455 AD:
Ash had Constitution, Printing Press, Economics and very likely also Corporations and Replaceable Parts on Don Deity.
So far, it had been a very strange (and very lucky) war for the English. Ash really seemed more interested in building some additional wonders he could gift Don Deity along with his cities instead of raising a decent defensive force, or at least ANY defensive force.
But there still had to be some mayor Indian stacks out there, indicated by the power graph. So the big question was, why Ash refrained for some reasons from sending them to face the English army maybe Ash REALLY was very close to rifling already and wanted to upgrade his main army first to riflemen, before sending them to face the English cavalry this might also explain why he kept lots of gold in his treasury, despite the fact that he was in a war and soon this could become a quite big problem
...
Im happy for any feedback, suggestions, tips and hints concerning this game...
IMPORTANT NOTE:
If you want to play along or ahead feel free to pick any save you like. Only thing you REALLY should do is to use spoiler tags for anything AHEAD of the actual story.
The saves for this game can be found here (scroll to the end of the page)
YOU WILL NEED THE WARLORDS 2.13 PATCH TO OPEN THE LAST SAVES
...
See you Soon
Snaaty
) needed.
