Consensus seems to be to declare on Pacal immediately. Damn the torpedos and full-speed ahead and all that. Who am I to argue? (Well, the current player, so I can do whatever I want...but I think the plan has merit.)
Cuirs really are pretty strong. Things start well.
I also take Banteay Kdei further east, but manage to not capture a screenie of that. Whoops. Suffice to say, it was a meaningless hole in the wall that I left undefended a reasonably significant portion of my turnset, while units were needed elsewhere. It was also en route to bigger and better things. I also cleaned up a couple troops out in the open, "guarding" workers or whatnot.
Pacal's counter-attack forces, which were in his west, all moved north to deal with the forces around Isvar.... So, I took the troops which were on counterattack duty and
while the healing troops near Isvar were designated as clean-up troops.
About that time, our enforced peace with Pacal wore off. He didn't delay in declaring a new war.
Hmmm....guess it'll be a race, then. At least our troops move 2!
Also notice that I'm researching Representationism. Rifling is a LONG ways out. Rep gives us a fantastic building -- jails. I'm also quite happy with cuirs against longbows/muskets and a bit less enamored with racing to rifling and having cavalry face rifles. I'm in no real hurry to speed the tech pace. I would probably even go Corporation after Rep, though with minimal money invested, and try to steal our way to riches.
Pacal's other city in the west, Raja..., is being a pain. My spies can't revolt it, it has 60% culture defense, and 3 pikes plus longbows. Oy. Gotta bypass for now.
Attention is turned east, since that's nearest De Gaulle. You can see he was coming this way already (though if I'd've had one more cuir 2 turns ago, I'd be past here -- a common enough refrain on my turns. I sent 7 where 8 were needed or 11 where 3 were needed. Though in this case I'd lost a cuir to a treb, so I can hardly be blamed.)
Back in the north, I cleaned up Pacal's main stack pretty easily, got pulted a couple times and healed (making another medic II unit to speed things along). Spies finally arrived and troops were ready. SO....
The troops that were supposed to be dealing with Pacal's west witnessed another spy fail in Raja and moved further in. They were in a position to hit a number of cities. Angkor Wat was the least defended.
Operative word there is "was". Notice how isolated Angkor Wat is from the rest of our empire (check the mini-map). Taking this city basically committed me/us to taking out all of Pacal -- no vassalization will stop us. If De Gaulle is too successful too quickly, we'll just continue on with the war. We at least need Raja...
But it's still a nightmare to take. I'm trying to lure out some troops, but.....
In the meantime, Angkor is the theme.
Save file
here, though the report continues next post.
Arathorn
I'm glad Qin is gone.
. Looks like some more effective turns. I would try to scout out Pacal, if he is soft, rip 'em up. Otherwise, I would see if we can get him to close borders with de Gaulle, then take on de Gaulle. I always like killing the stronger because a war in the short term makes you fall further behind.
(had 10 turns left).
