The peace that was granted to the Persian Emperor (=me) only lasted for 200 years. In comparison to the 2000 years of scouting next to nothing, only to end as bear-food, it occured in fact as a very short period to me.
Then, the news reached me in my palace, when I was just having a delicious coup of Danish coffee and a banana cake in my office:
Mighty Egypt, which was on the top of the score list, has entered the Arabic half continent with two bowman, a warrior and a settler. The truth-sayers were upset. I tried to explain to them that Hatschie (I still think she looks nice) may settle anywhere, as long as I can have my well earned coffee with cake but they just refused to leave my bedroom (which I also used as office).
When the General and his leading officers were joining the party, my bedroom was finally bursting with people. To get rid of them, I signed the paper they had prepared and the General left with his 6 riders to meet the Egyptian party.
Later, they explained to me, that nobody can really say who started the initial attack, but the result was that the Egyptian party was completely destroyed and we found ourselves in another war, again with mighty Egypt (and I could throw my plans of dating Hatschi again to the dustbin).
As the General already had to find out in the horrible attack on Mekka (the Arabic capital) he and his riders werent able to take the fortified enemy cities. But on the field, they only had to fear the Egypt chariot.
The truth-sayers told me later on, that the General did a great job in breaking the Egypt military power by taking their horses. He and his men kept together and the more experienced ones managed to fight of 2 chariots, while the others defended them. They conquered the Egyptian horses and pillaged all improvements there. There was only one more chariot, that went after them and sadly, one rider was lost. In their anger, they started to pillage all city improvements, roads, just everything in the Egyptian empire and every bowman or warrior that crossed their path was killed. That brought mighty Egypt finally to his knees.
For almost 300 years, the Persian army patrolled and controlled the Egyptian lands, what brought them way down in the score list and crippled their research. Then it happened. The Arabs did it again. They founded a city in the lands the Persian claimed!
My truth-sayers said, that this time we should ignore that and that it was time to produce another settler and to let him wait in our capital (I will never understand their way of thinking).
Meanwhile, we finished the libraries in Persepolis and Pasargarde and managed to build another one in Susa. In Susa, we immediately switched to barracks and Persepolis and Pasargarde were building as many riders as possible.
Then my truth-sayers told me something that struck me hard:
- I have to pay for my empire!!!!
I really didnt care much where my money came from. The truth-sayers told me then, that the money the scouts could raise (ah, the 2000 years), plunder from the Arabic cities and the money for pillaging the city improvements in Egypt was finally used up. Then they explained me, that our people pay taxes and that the taxes were used to finance our scientific research. Cities that are further away from our capital cost more upkeep for distance, and the more cities we have, the more basic upkeep we have to pay per city. (blabla, come to the point
).
So the result is that we have to lower our research rate from 100% to 50% and we neither can conquer nor found any new city or we would go bankrupt (then, sudden silence was waking me up from my daydream, and as I looked in the expecting faces of my truth-sayers I felt it was right to nod my head slowly and understanding).
Then they continued, that the plan to solve this crisis is, (I was shocked, there really is more input to come and fled back to daydreaming) to trade the newly found technology named alphabet for any technology we can get and to always ad up a little additional payment for us. We should take care of the trading order so we really get every technology that is actually available, and that we should continue trading for 2 or 3 rounds, because we have always to wait one round until we really master a new technology and can advance in the tech-tree (what ever this may be). In this period, we should put the research rate to 0. Then we should bring research up to 100% again and go directly for codes of law, because this would reduce upkeep somehow. Parallel we would adopt the most spread religion, Buddhism, as state religion and spread it with missionaries to all our cities because our people will be even happier then and the other nations with the same religion would even like us more (silence again).
This time, I didnt dare nodding my head and asked timidly if they have some paper for me ready to sign. As I looked in the brightening faces of my truth-sayers I knew it: right answer.
I quickly singed some papers and because I felt that I hade done an important and also a very good job, I took the rest of the week of.
A week later, when I had dinner with the General, he told me in a proud voice, that it was very wise from me, to have all workers work on the newly found resources of copper and iron, that he will begin the production of swordsmen and one or to axmen as backup as soon as possible (I knew it, a very good job
) and that he will lead the rider suicide attack on Theben (the Egyptian capital) himself. On this point, I became a little insecure and ordered him, only to test if he got my plan right, to explain it to me once again.
He said, that we have gathered 10 riders so far, 2 more in production, and when we update our main army to swordsmen, we will only need 4 of them. The rest is too expensive in upkeep. Additionally we are again running out of money, and we will need the money we get when we conquer Theben to keep the research rate up to 100%.
When we attacked Theben, we had even more losses then calculated. Only 3 of 12 riders survived the attack, but we were able to conquer Theben and gained 221 gold peaces. Again the General somehow managed to survive. A new rider got produced in addition to our sword- and axmen, and when we finally managed to advance technologically to cods of law, the settler the truth-sayers had kept in our capital founded the city of Arbela and our troops marched first against the Arabs and then against the Egypt. Because of the ongoing raids of their lands, both werent able to put up a real defence and were overrun completely 100 a.d.
Im not very much into politics, I must admit, but I was told, that there were 2 main political factions:
Europe was mainly siding with Egypt, while Asia was on our side. I was given a detailed list, which could be summarised the following:
Ashoka, Qin
, Kathy, Ludwig:
- friendly
Isabella:
- neutral
Friedrich, Alex, Julius:
- angry
Mansa:
- angry
(I was told, that Mansa is a little bit of a problem, because we still dont know where exactly his cities are)
One day after Memphis had finally fallen to our troops, the whole bunch of truth-sayers again appeared in my office. Nevertheless I finished my cake, and had my bed rearranged, before I would listen to them.
They told me, that they had ongoing visions of the Pasagarde river running red with the blood of dying soldiers and that the fate of the whole Persian people could lie in that river.
I reacted quickly. After having them removed from my bedroom, I had their quarters immediately searched for any drugs or alike.
But when the General also came to me and begged me to give him control of a small handpicked stack of units to be send up to Pasagarde, and to have some city walls build, I just couldnt refuse. So he had the warrior there upgraded to a spearman, and sent there additionally 2 experienced swordsmen, 1 axman and 1 rider with a healing promotion.
see you soon,
Snaaty
Thats pretty funny
