Looks good everywhere, as we are spinning gold out of the air at a wonderful rate, running research towards the UN. But somebody has to deal with the bad boy on the continent, teach him a little lesson, though it looks like the Malinese and the Indians are in fact holding their own.
I am tempted to merely extort everyone into peaceful relations, but then I and reminded that I need to have some skin in the game if I am going to so this with honor.....so the troops start the long march across Mali to Osaka.
While that is going on I get command of our errant caravels and send two galleons up the Indian Mail coast line. To pick up the survivors of the battle of Osaka and move them forward to Tokyo should that become necessary.
During the march Huyana coems along and demands Education. I comply for the diplomatic benefit (keep your friends close and your enemies closer being the operative principle here), then cut him this deal for Constitution as it is a precursor to Corporation (surely a desired knowledge) and the Emancipation and Universal Suffrage techs (also desired I believe), if only for Statue of Liberty.
Once all is in place on the north border of Mali I cancel the deals with Toku and declare war.
Facing off against a light opposition, in numbers anyway,
with heavy attackong forces but rather thin on the seige engines,
so it takes a couple rounds of bombardment to get the job done, but done it is, soon enough, and the losses rather light
Asoka comes seeking our help with this empire development so of course I comply
And from then forward it is but a waiting game, waiting for the army to heal and the seige engine reinforcement to arrive, for the Golden Age to begin with the completion of theTaj,
And for Toku to come to his senses and agree to a cessation of hostilities.
While negotiating with Mansa on another subject
I notice this
He is a vassal of Asoka.
Now this presents an interesting possibility. He can get out of the deal if his population or territory grow, so what if we gift him Osaka, which is surrounded by his culture anyway even with its poor to fledgling border expansion (I set it to build culture during the resistance period so that when the resistance ended it would almost immediately get its first expansion - I really wanted to take back those dyes from Mansa. It did but not enough.) Anyway, I whipped in a granary, so why not give the town to Mali and it may grow fast enough to six, allowing Mansa to opt out of the vassalage deal with Asoka? As it currently stands the town brings nothing to the Viking trade empire.
So now along comes Quin, demanding that we cancel deals with India.
I had to think on this one long and hard. He has the potential to become the UN opponent so how far do I want conciliate him? Not far enough
The only deal we have going wiht Asoka is Open Borders, and Asoka has gone mercantilist so his value to us as a trading partner is nil, but....His agreement with Mansa makes him potentially more powerful and may in fact put him back in the running as a significant UN voter. And since we have put our relationship with Toku on the same footing as our relationships with Mansa and Asoka I don't want to risk fracturing the Buddhist bloc any further by embargoing Asoka, and Qin will never be a co-religionist anyway.
The other counterweight to Huyana of course is Shaka. We are going to need his support. So maybe a concerted effort to bring him into the Buddhist bloc? This is all long drawn out musing as to why I didn't comply with the Chinese demand.
I have been pushing the specialists to get us a Great Merchant as a Trade Mission to China will be very very lucrative and certainly in keeping with the flavor of the game.
The last university finally finished and Oxford is queued in Nidaros after a cavalryman (I finally realized I could train them after I had slog marched zerks and seige to Osaka
Three or four cavalry would have made short work of both Osaka and Tokyo and maybe brought Toku to the table)
Research is pointed to Democracy in 6 or so. Uppsala is training military, everyone else is working banks (for Wall Street) or markets or some other form of retail establishment.
Once the GA is over we could do a major civics change if we wanted to.
If everybody is so bothered by my screwup regarding the variant, just replay the turns already or move on.
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