In the beginning was a city; Vienna, flower of the desert as she would come to be known. Around the area people had lived for longer back in time than their memories stretched, but around 4000BC a metropolis coalesced at the site of a river crossing in the fertile Hungarian Basin, watched over by the shifting sands of the Austrian Desert. More and more influence the city exerted on the land around it, until it began to have a genuine cultural influence over the little pockets of desert nomads and nascent farming lands, and had attracted a great number of both wise and productive people.
Shameless pandering to the city states in the surrounding area enabled some early friendships for the budding nation, even an alliance or two, all this without even the application of the vast power of the gold in the Austrians treasury, amassed from policing the river crossing. A couple of minor barbarian groups hiding in the woods offered our bored newly-budded military a chance to freshen up their skills and loot some plunder, as well as butter up the beleaguered minor settlements around them.
The Austrians expanded vigorously to the South-East and West, coming upon the lands of the Indian and English peoples, a nation in union, marching in step with the faint beginnings of the rat-a-tat martial drum in the back of their minds. The wave of settlement was driven forwards, right to the borders of the English nation, a woody, hilly land of not much use, the Austrians, being lucky fellows, managed to stumble upon rich diamond mines, and silk worms to the West however. The exploration of the world was not yet what it will be in the future, if the plans of a new and powerful naval presence, becomes a reality, but the respectful and friendly nation of the Japanese were duly greeted and provided with a Schwarzwald kirsche torte.
Seeing the aggressive English trying to expand their settlements into Austrian territory already reserved for lebensraum, we blocked the pass with archers, a tense stand-off ensued, culminating in the short "War Over Whether Rich Teas Are Better than Bourbons Succession." Unfortunately, the poor betrayed Austrian people to the West were set upon by the upstart barbarian Indians, a miniscule army attacking on Elephants would you believe it! The favoured general Charles Martell, began to set out on a long journey, in secret, to stab at the Indian usurpers heart, Delhi, as the brave spearmen and archers the nation had pain-stakingly trained in the newest techniques held the borders, and even began to push back.
The English were out-manouvered in their woodland home, the glorious Austrian Master-race aggressively exploited the forest around them, finding a source of Iron, which would soon be channelled as our secret weapon back West. Excitedly, the diplomats sued for an advanageous peace with the English, even as the Japanese began their own assault against them. The year 75 BC saw the beginning of the end of what was later known as "The War Over Who Left the Iron On" for the prosperous Austro-Hungarian Empire. They were about to sue for peace with the foolishly aggressive Indian people, and would soon begin some much needed downtime, with a coffee and a nice sausage or something.
Notes: Further plans will be to head north to hit that whale lux with one last settler, then begin to marry off all the CSes around me, which I think should provide the space for a nice big power capital in Vienna (which of course has Petra)
I will go for a domination-type strategy I think, trying to reduce the number of civs and CSes to make it simpler to bribe the last few, I just need to keep enough to absolutely out-weigh the AIs. I wouldn't be averse to Japan taking out Englands capital, allowing me to sneak round and cap him, before, resurrecting England in one city for another guaranteed vote.
. It probably will have cost me some extra turns, but I could not ignore these insults to my dignity. During the war my cannons became artillary and knights became hussars. The artillary can shoot at a city from outside the city's bombard range, but the city has to be in view. So I needed a spotter. I happened to place a hussar next to an artillary unit and noticed that the city became visible, because of the extra sight promotion of the hussar. So it seems artillary and hussars are a good combination to use from three tiles away. Both can not be hit by the city under siege. The hussar can be used to counter unit attacks from the city too.
when each City first converts to this Religion) instead. It got me a lot of early money because of having so much desert faith to spread around the world. I wonder if I should have picked Tithe too. Probably in the end you will have gotten more money out of Tithe, but it seemed to me that Inition Rites has an early advantage.
