I was now teching along strongly, well ahead of the AIs. I got to Steam Power, only to discover that despite the size of my empire, I had no coal.
A quick glance around showed two sources in Rome's territory. Nominally #2 in power, Julius was still garrisoning his cities with Praetorians. So I headed for Assembly Line while building up cash and a fleet of frigates and galleons. I figured I'd declare on him once I'd upgraded all my CR2 Maces to infantry.
Julius had other plans:
Which saved me any diplo hit from the declaration, at least, thought I think it would have been minor.
Not sure what prompted the declaration. Think it may have been close borders with Huayna, as they shared an island off the SW coast of Rome's main landmass. Certainly that's where he attacked: I never saw a unit headed my way at all.
Thus I stuck with my plan, though I mass-upgraded my mace stack imemdiately as a protective measure.
As I continued teching, and kickstarted the military machine that was Bremen (an infantry every turn, without fail), I attended to other matters:
I'd had an engineer waiting to found Mining Inc for some time. I dropped it in Essen because of the nearly complete Wall Street, and queued up some executives to follow. The first one went to Bremen, of course
Two turns later, Sci Meth came in. Did I haved oil? Yep: in the desert near Hamburg (as I'd suspected many centuries earlier) and:
Turns out that ice junker for silver was an even better idea that I realised.
I upgraded all my island city garrisons to Infantry, you notice. I wanted to make it at least a little difficult for JC if he did come after them. As it was, the only sign of the war was his capturing the Incan city that I suspect started the whole war.
A few turns after that, I used another GE to give a boost to the military production that was slowly gearing up in all my cities:
You'll notice from the inset minimap that I'd started my assault into Roman lands. I hit his NW city - which was closest to me, and incidentally had coal, though that mattered less now I had oil - amphibiously, after using my destroyers to bombard. I lost one Infantry (at 74% odds), but otherwise captured the city painlessly.
Rome's landmass was kind of a large circle at its core, with peninsulas and islands jutting off to the north and west. I therefore swept onwards with this first stack, landing them on the NW edge of the core region. I stripped that city of defences with my fleet, then sailed back to start home, leaving a stack of inf and cannon to deal with his core.
As I was doing this, Kublai Khan came to me with an unusual request:
Mansa does this a lot. The Khan? Not so much. I said yes. A foothold on the other continent couldn't hurt, in the circumstances.
It's unusual for the AI to ask protection of someone as distant as I was, but Mongolia ended up settling that island to the NW of Berlin (I never bothered, since it lacked resources) so we shared a border and had good relations.
The corporatisation of Germany continued:
Mining Inc + Sushi is very powerful. I'll show the impacts in the summary at the end. Essen's build queue now became alternating executives, as did Munich's, a short time later.
I checked the tech situation:
Yeah. Not much to worry about there
The rest of the 17th century was occupied with the war on Rome. There would be no quarter for the man who dared declare on me. My main stack did a circuit around his core. I'd blast his city defenses with cannon, then air strike with airships - they have good range, so I could hit any of his core cities from the first core city I took - then sweep the defenders with CR Infantry before finishing the last guy with an unpromoted Infantry. After I had the city, the unpromoted guy got CG2 (or CG3, after I settled 2 GGs in Bremen).
Rome's outlying cities fell to small battle groups. I'd fill a single transport with Inf and a Machinegun, then take it and two destroyers to the city. Bombard once, unload troops. Bombard a second time. Air Strike if if was a turn the main stack was moving between targets. Storm the city.
While this as going on, I got flight and started building airports and carriers. I used the airports to airlift executives to the Roman cities. The hammer boost from Mining Inc gave me the Forbidden Palace over there in very short order, and the border pops from Sid's Sushi rapidly claimed the land.
When I captured the Incan city that started all this, I kept it. If Huayna can't look after his things, he doesn't deserve to have them.
By 1828 AD, I had a fleet of 2 battleships, 10 destroyers, 10 fully-laden transports (mostly Inf and Marines) and 6 fully-laden carriers.
Stalin, meanwhile, had 4 island cities garrisoned with longbows.
The equation was simple.
(Notice that Rome is solidly white - go Sushi!)
I blitzed his 4 cities in 3 turns, and the Russian decided to be reasonable:
The fleet swept on toward the other continent, while panzers were airlifted to Russian cities, and bombers droned across the ocean to join them.
My fleet arrived in Portugal:
Four cities later (three coastal ones stormed by Marines, and one inland city taken by airlifted panzers):
Which meant:
So, a runaway win, capping four civs (one voluntarily, and the last two within 10 turns), and annihilating a fifth. Only Boudica has her freedom as the game ends. It wouldn't last
Some notable cities I wanted to mention:
My capital was a production monster. 338 hammers, even including some overflow from the turn before, is enormous. Oh, and the HE was here (probably redundantly), so I was regularly seeing over 400 hammers when building units.
My corporate HQ, still churning out executives (as you can see in the bottom left). A financial monster, and not too shabby on the old production, either. The 260 hammers shown here includes overflow, but it was strong enough to give me an executive every turn, without fail, which is really all you need from your Wall Street city.
Now, a couple of cities that show the power of Corporations:
This city was the one that started the war with Rome. It was 97% Incan and 3% Roman when I captured it in the late 1700s. In 1840 AD, it is already 45% German. Give it a couple more turns, and German culture will be in the majority. That's the cultural and growth power of Sid's Sushi at work.
Here's another example:
A junker ice city I founded solely for silver (though I lucked out and got oil, too). Drop both Sushi and Mining Inc in there, and you've got56
a turn. That's partly due to the raw hammers of Mining Inc, and partly due to the food from Sushi allowing you to work the hammer tiles and still grow. This city could ultimately get to 24 pop, assuming no change in Sushi resources, and a couple more health and happiness buildings. So it would be working every tile available, and running 6 specialists.
OK, enough city tour. Here are a few other quick stats:
Kills, showing the dominant tech level of my enemies was medieval. Less than 20 gunpowder units, compared to well over 100 melee, archery and pre-cannon siege.
My score:
Which is the 3rd highest I've ever achieved and
easily the highest Noble score I've ever got.
The final tech situation:
And finally, a look at the raw numbers that the corps were pulling in:
16
, 19
and 62
per turn for having both corps. That's an enormous boost. Sure, there's a cost: 25-30
per city. But if you look at the gold coming into Essen, above, you'll quickly see how much that cost can be offset by founding your corporate HQs in your Wall Street city.
I hope this has been useful for Noble / Prince players. I shall now go back to seeing if I can eke out my first win on Emperor in TES2
and a net 13 
