Lord Hamtastic rests in his bed and looks upon the young knight, it is up to you Van Helsing to bring the empire back on track. The young knight answers yes my lord I will do what I can, to do thy bidding Hamtastic lies back and motions to Van Helsing to leave. Van Helsing in his native Dutch says to his squire Wat heb we gedaan? Onze soldaten zijn niet genoeg om de Spanjarden te vechten maar we zullen doen wat we ken.
(translation: What did we do? Our army is too small to take on the Spanish to fight but will do what we can. )
Van Helsing heads to the battlefield and summons more soldiers to join the fight. Moving the soldiers towards Zwolle he sees that Zwolle can be taken but can it be held. The Spanish have a considerable amount of Horse archers which can prove to be a real nuisance. His lordship had left our scientist idle for increase in gold but Van Helsing decides to veto that and begins on guilds and uses the Great Engineer to accelerate that to give us knights which will give us a tactical advantage over the Spanish. In the back of his mind Van Helsing also is looking to acquire the ability to build grocers to increase our wealth and find the method to banking as well. Upon looking to his governors he sees that our workers have finished most of what they need to and feel that we should soon consider caste system to implement multiple merchants in our food rich cities of Visby and Bruges.
Further observations made by Sir Van Helsing.
Our lack of religion really hurts us for lack of experience points and happiness. Considering our goals of wealth, pacifism would have proved beneficial but alas without a religion we are unable to utilize it. Of course staying neutral does offer the benefit of friendship of other civs especially Saladin who if we had chosen a religion would act unfavorably towards us. Our lack of military strength leaves this option out for a while.
Another thing to consider in aiding to building wealth hasnt been initiated known as the great wonder National Epic. By building this we could double our GPP points and of course the best spot for this would be Bruges.
One last thing is instead of building a cottage on the plains near Visby we might have built a farm there to build a chain irrigation to Bruges. Although it wont need that many farms right now as we grow and happiness increases we can use farms there as well.
Turn 1
Lubeck finishes Mace start another Catapult to add to our soldiers converging on Zwolle. Van Helsing very much wants to liberate the Dutch city as it is close to heart and it pains him to have the vile Spanish control it. Decide that we should just burn the GE for Guilds to aid us in our battle since the Spanish Queen in unreasonable in her demands for peace (wants education too no thanks).
Turn 2
Soldiers continue to gather at the border of Zwolle and continue to converge on it. Our standing army isnt that well equipped promotion wise nor do we have enough siege weapons to take the city effectively.
Turn 3
Instruct our workers to start chain irrigation to Bruges. Her highness Queen Isabella has been quiet and hasnt shown up with any additional warriors yet.
Turn 4
Decide we need see what the other AIs are willing to trade and see that Cathy has furs to trade so we trade Bananas for fur to keep our citizens a little happier.
It is also the year we discover guilds so that are horses now can become the great Teutonic Knights.
Turn 5
Bruges starts a knight just in case with Genghis Khan so near by and so unhappy with us.
Horse archer approaching Rostock but no worry since we have upgraded some of our spears to pikes.
Troops are now in position at Zwolle with ample cats and begin bombardment.
Turn 6
Take out Horse Archer which nicely upgrades our pike to a medic which also was badly needed for our troops. Also pump up research for banking so that we can build a few banks to increase our wealth.
Turn 7
We now can attack Zwolle and all cats WD which is a total surprise. We loose no warriors and move our soldiers into Zwolle. Unfortunately in the distance Isabella is converging upon Zwolle with numerous HAs and catapults.
Turn 8
Lubeck starts a knight.
Turn 9
We discover banking and go back to 0% research. Decide this would be a good time to revolt to caste system to put in lots of merchants in Visby and Bruges.
Turn 10
We now have five merchants in Bruges and four in Visby. Upon looking at Kiel I realize we are building a Lighthouse but I think we should have built a workboat for the clams which we could have easily traded. I must admit I overlooked to change this so leave it to finish but queue a workboat to follow.
Ok I decide to take 5 more turns to hand the game over in a complete fashion rather than in the midst of battle. I would prefer not to finish the game for the next player in this manner.
Turn 11
Isabella now has a small stack of Horse Archers and cats outside Zwolle. We manage to take out 4 Horse archers and 3 cats but she has another stack moving in which our weakened troops will be unable to deal with.
Turn 12
Bruges starts National Epic to double GPP points from 15 to 30 which will give us GM much faster although its a crapshoot with artist/engineer/merchants points. Merchants points do dominate in both cities and Visby will pop something soon hopefully a Great Merchant.
After seeing four more horse archers converging on Rostock and stack on Zwolle I feel we need to take a break to heal our weakened troops. We do have an adequate army in Zwolle and once healed should be able to do some damage. We have a mace in Danzig which are there for happiness only . Once we hook up those clams I would suggest trading to Saladin for dyes and build theater in the most unhappy cities.
We make a cease fire with Isabella as knowing her even with a peace treaty it wont be long until she declares again so I suggest getting our maces over to Zwolle and declare on her soon.
Turn 13
Build a workshop at Kiel which speeds up the lighthouse considerably. Done in 3 turns and it will take 6 turns to build a workboat. Another worker is building a road to Zwolle for better troop deployment. One production rich city needs to build some more knights/mace/cats so that we can move on the Spanish once they finish attacking us.
Turn 14
Genghis asks us to cancel deals with GW and oblige since he is right on our borders for whatever good it will do. Hopefully he is working to declare on GW rather than us considering his request.
Lubeck builds a knight start a JT for happy but Soooo if you need to please veto it.
Turn 15
Danzig also finishes knight start a bank there since we are producing 88 gold there at 90% wealth and 10% culture.
This should help us toward our goal and I disagree with needing whipping at this point since we would need to build many commerce buildings to accomplish this amount of GM. The caste system imo should have been implemented some time ago but with some happy resources might be able to stack a few more in these cities. Getting dyes from Saladin adds one happy and for each 10% culture we get one happy too for theatres so making that trade as soon as we have clams hooked up is paramount. (at Kiel)
I do believe it will be difficult to make the variant but of course we wont know unless we try. If Zwolle is to thrive we need to get that Spanish city south of it either raze it if its under cultural influence or take it. I did not revolt to mercantilism mainly because of our trade routes with Russia and Mongolia. Rostock is working a lot of commerce tiles to get us some cash but again veto that if you feel the need. During your turn Soooo we should pop something in 3 turns hopefully a Great Merchant. Our richest city is Danzig right now but he would aid in popping more GM's in Bruges.
Teutonic Knights artefact
letting the computer assign engineers in Lubeck has set us back 2 great merchants, a quarter of our target. I notice there are also engineer odds in both Visby and Bruges. The whole point of this game is money and merchants, yet we don't seem to be concentrating on the latter. We have researched 1/3 of printing press. I start research up again because the tech will give us more money from towns.
