Actually Grey, I didn't bring him in as he wanted Guilds and I thought to keep the monopoly but as you will see, he stopped trading with him at our request as his relations with us are quite good. As Qin is fighting us with Knights I think that we probably can afford the trade to get him fighting with Qin. I'll leave it in namliaM's capable mouse hand.
Ok. This is my third session for this turnset. I am glad I didn't play it last night as it's taken me hours. I really am slow at this game and writing it up.
Turn 7 -- 1270AD (cont'd)
I upgraded the warrior to a maceman in Frankfurt. Research is droppe to 0% for a little while to get some gold. It doesn't help much.
I send the city garisson 2 longbow to kill the injured Cho-Ko-Nu. No point letting him get away. Our Longbow wins.
Berlin is changed to a Knight and the granary in Essen is whipped.
Turn 8 -- 1280AD
Cologne: Buddhist Monastery -> Knight
Essen: Granary -> Library (science city)
Hamburg: Conf. Missionary -> Catapult
I dial up Alex and ask him to stop trading with Qin as I notice some of Qin's soldiers are coming at us through Alex. To my shock he says ok at no cost... Great, at least we can rest for a while without him coming at us through Alex.
To keep our friendship and just as thanks for that, I get drunk with him. (Actually, I traded wine for 1gpt). We can cancel this later or renegotiate for more money but we need him as friendly as possible as he is keeping our border with Qin to a minimum.
I open borders with Asoka & trade our silk for his sugar. He won't hear about anything to do with Qin. It's all redded out.
I attack a Knight of Qin's that snuck through Alex before I closed the borders. I have 73% odds and lose without scratching him...
. I don't mind that the odds are that I will lose 1 in 4 of those battles but when it doesn't even do any damage, that's frustrating. I send another similar knight at him and he loses again!!!
. At least this time he damaged him down to 3.5/10! I send a third Knight and he cleans him up. Lucky I had so many near by!
I then
the Knight at Cologne,
the Pike in Frankfurt and spread confucianism to Turfan.
Qin is still sending bugger all.
IBT: Spoke to soon. Qin sends some Knights to pillage our horses. 2 Knights, 1 War Elephant and 1 Maceman to be precise.
Turn 9 -- 1290AD
Cologne: Knight -> Pikeman
Frankfurt: Pikeman -> Pikeman. I selected these to deal with the fact that Qin is sending in Knights and these are our cheapest protection against them.
Franfurt should be ok for another turn but Qin's got a few more soldiers heading our way now.
I upgrade the warrior in Hamburg to a Pikeman.
I
the Knight in Berlin and put a Knight in the front of the queue in Munich.
Turn 10 -- 1300AD
Another great scientist is born. We've got 2 of them now, so I use him to learn us Philosophy as we ain't going to be getting it from Qin soon.
Here is the situation at Frankfurt that I am giving to namliaM. Seems to me that we stand a chance but i bet he will sacrifice those two cats without reducing the 60% cultural bonus. If not then it will buy us some time to bring more reinforcements.
Post-turn comments
namliaM, take note that I have troops in the North of Qin's land to go at him up there as well. And there is a french warrior above Frankfurt threatening us too
.
Well. That was fun. I hope we can save ourselves from this. We are a bit thin in defense down the south. If we can hold off the first attack from Qin then I hope we should be ok.
As an aside which was important at the time but other pressing things seemed to take precedence, I set Karakorum (GP city) to max food to get it to grow out as fast as possible to support as many specialists as possilbe. I also converted the hills to windmills to make them food neutral.
Here's the save:
).
. I move the army to the forest to the south which will not get this penalty.
... too bad he can't be brought to war with both. Qin is the power leader, so bring Alex on Qin is a good idea.
