In this round, we did what we set out to do and had a new challenge thrust upon us.
We started out by cutting Louis a deal and bringing him into the religious fold:
But that's just diplomatic maintenance, not what you're here to see.
It was time to wipe Spain off the map. I checked Isabella's technological progress first, and liked what I saw:
She doesn't even have Feudalism for Longbows.
Nice.
Honestly, with a technological advantage like that, I didn't even think it was worth taking the time to replace my lost catapults. Those extra couple of collateral damagers wouldn't be worth the possibility of Spain upgrading her Archers.
I let the Paris stack finish healing up, and sent it headlong across the Pyrenees:
Unfortunately, that stack was all that was standing between the former French capitol and utter anarchy. I rushed a theater and made a civics change to give some replacement troops to get there from Hamburg:
We ended up losing one population from unrest-induced starvation (and two population points died setting up the stage), but that's the price of doing business.
The Spanish sent a frankly pathetic offensive force at us:
I can kind of see Isabella's thinking here. She was making a push for Rome, which was defended by a lone Archer. Sadly for her, this meant passing by Lyons, staffed with three Macemen:
We can also see the defenses of Madrid. Wow. Those Archers aren't even promoted.
I sent the Macemen out from Lyons to strike at Izzy's attack stack, leaving only a single Chariot:
I then moved Rome's Archer to the Marble hill and upgraded him to protect the Workers (silly me for leaving the workers exposed like that, though, honestly, they don't have a heck of a lot to do anymore).
Our offensive force, meanwhile, was hit by a couple of Catapults. We killed one, but the other bum managed to withdraw. I upgraded a Maceman to an anti-Archer special forces guy and sent him after Spain's source of Iron:
Somehow, he survived the turn and managed to eliminate Spain's only metals. She can rush Archers all day long, but I'd rather not see Axemen (Okay, so maybe she can't make anything that can really hurt me at this point. I'm just trying to foment good habits).
Our Macemen submitted themselves and their Catapult wounds to the tender ministrations of Dr. Scout while our own siege weapons focused on taking down Madrid's walls:
You can see that we're researching Guilds rather than Liberalism. Yeah. Hatty beat us to that particular prize, and, with our targets starting to get farther afield, I figured it was time for Knights to become part of our arsenal.
Around this time, Berlin was getting ready to spit out another Great Person. I was (Saints preserve us) hoping for a Great Artist. Madrid was bound to have a long rebellion time:
Sadly, it was not to be. I got a GS, which I settled in Berlin.
We built a Caravel in Rome and sent it out to find out what was going on in the Americas. England had a Caribbean city set up, and we sold the secrets of Monotheism and Drama to the Roosevelt and Monty for all the gold they had in the whole wide world (90 in all, I think). Talk about backwaters. Sadly, neither would part with their maps.
With Madrid's walls finally fallen (at least as far as I felt was necessary) after two turns of barrage, I made one final screenshot before the assault:
After round one of combat proper, we had lost both catapults, but nothing else. Spain's forces did not fare so well:
The next turn, we finally saw China's stack of Doom:
Not much, but with most of my forces in Spain, the elephant, especially, was inconvenient. I accepted the loss of the Workers (again, not like there's much for them to do right now) and made peace with Qin (he wanted 180 gold, but took Philosophy instead- if I can get him to go Pacifist, so much the better). Once we were friends again, trade quickly resumed (Wine and Stone for Silk and Bananas).
Spain, obviously, fell early in 1090:
With all my attention on Spain (and normalizing relations with the Chinese), I had forgotten about our shadow war with the Dread Khan. I sent a messenger asking for Mongolia's price for peace, fully expecting to get my messenger's head back in a basket.
I was sorely disappointed:
Poor old Genghis. Like Spain and the Inca, Mongolia really is screwed on this map, unless a human player REXes or conquers aggressively early on. They joined in China's war, hoping for some easy territory, and were sorely outclassed.
So, anyway... Spain is no more. Rome has been relegated to Africa, and the Nordic French are Pleased to be our Vassal. Our next move is to set up a navy for the arduous war on Elizabeth and... oh:
