ok, in the interest of making this nes more fun for jason (not sure what else he could want). more after update (to give jason incentive to do the update, lol)
and i agree with sheep, there hasnt been much to do other then send orders and get updates becuase its an expansion phase. once everything is settled and some wars start up, then it'll get more interesting. when my orders have been the same for 4 turns (educ, army, expand), there's not much to write a story about.
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The position of "General of the Roddina Armies" had long ago become a family job. One of the sons of the retiring general had taken his job for as long as anyone could remember (though there was official record that stated it wasnt ALWAYS so).
Grisha was General Petrov's youngest son, but he was the only one in the family who had ever shown much interest in the military (to the great disappointment of the general, who though his older sons were waisting their lives outside the military). So when it became clear that the old general needed to retire Grisha assumed that he would get the position without question. But when his father anounced his retirement to the council they made one of their own (a member of the council) his replacement. This confused many people in the higher ranks, as it had long been assumed that members of the council were not elligible for the job. In reality the laws governing the council did not prevent one of their own from becoming the General, it was just that in all of Roddina's history no council member had ever wanted the job.
Grisha, though outraged at the council, kept his post as the second in command of the Army, and soon figured out why the council had denied him his rightfull command. The new General, like most of the council, was a schollar and a lover of peace, and with Roddina's army being the most powerfull in the world, the council did not want a young General to be tempted to take it on a counquering tour of the surrounding nations.
This was ofcourse exactly what Grisha had wanted to do once he became General. He considered it a great failure of his father that he had been unable to convince the council that not using Roddina's army was a mistake. Grisha knewe that none of their neighboring nations could withstand the might of the Roddina Army, especialy now that they had switched to using bronze instead of the copper that the more advanced nations of the rest of the world were still using.
Once the fanfare of the change of Generals was complete, the new General basicaly ignored the military and continued in the council to act as though he didnt even know that he was the general. Running the Army fell to Grisha, which he was all too happy to do. Grisha knew that he had to find a way to convince the council that USING the army was the "peacefull" thing to do. But because he had always though of tackling this problem once he was General, he did not have a plan for doing it from his current position.
Then one winter evening, he visited his father in their home village, and they spent the night talking away about the current situation, and how the council seemed to be trying to wrest control of the military away from the families that had served in it for generations and give it to the schollars who already had control of everything else. By early morning they were both prety drunk but something his father said struck Grisha as such a briliant idea that he sobered up in seconds, thanked his father, promised him that he would get the Army back from the council and quickly left.
The phrase his father had said was "What the council does not see, is that it is Roddina's responsibility not only to educate its own citizens, but to make sure that the peoples of our neighboring nations are educated as well. We are powerfull enough to influence the other governments or use our army to force them to improve their ways."
From that day Grisha had a powerfull purpose. He started to spread this idea of "responsibility to the rest of the world" around the higher circles of society in Moscow. The highly educated and mostly philosopher wannabee of the upper circles quickly picked up the idea as their own. And within a month there was considerable presure on the council to start considering the use of Roddina's power or military to get atleast the neighboring nations to increase their level of spending on education.
The peace loving council resisted for a while, but eventualy caved, and knowing what was comming, gave Grisha his rightfull post of General of Roddina (the council member who's had it for this time went back to just being a council member).