Part Two: Early Battles

I actually decide that since we're into the 11th century, chariots aren't going to cut it. I get horseback riding and archery and start saving up cash to make some upgrades. This takes a couple hundred years.

I'm trying to decide where to attack Toku when he makes my decision for me. One turn he spawns Imhotep, and the next:

Toku builds Notre Dame in Kyoto? It is then that I notice that Kyoto has the Oracle (so what), Angkor Wat (okay), and the Great Library (!) as well. And, it has his metal that I can see. Well, that settles it:

The die is cast.

Our half-mounted force lands near Kyoto. A couple axemen attack out of Kyoto and die to a couple of my keshiks. The hill is soon mine, the mine is razed, Kyoto is besieged, a catikaze withdraws on the first non-siege attack and soon we are checking books out of the Great Library. Nice.

Three chariots move south to assist another attack force assaulting Tokyo. By very nice coincidence, on the turn in which I assault and take the city:

...Cyrus parks his caravel in Tokyo! I can only assume that it sank to the bottom of the port when I took the city. Sweet!

But what was not sweet was the fact that Cyrus had caravels. Oh crap. Now, I'm seriously upset that I haven't focused on getting the circumnavigation bonus. Soon, another Persian caravel tries to pass the Japo-Mongol (soon to be the all-Mongol) strait and a galley is sacrificed to give me a chance to tech up to optics and get my own caravels out there.

Meanwhile, the rest of the Japanese homeland falls to my half-mounts.

Then, in a stroke of bizarreness, Toku strikes back:

Okay, here I am mopping up on his home island. I'm five turns from optics. And he's got what, two other piddly cities on little islands, and he's the first around the globe?! Grrr.

I console myself by noting that at least Toku is now permanently marginalized and that at least none of my other--still strong--rivals has this bonus. Still, I am kicking myself for not jumping to optics before building up my assault force. I have underestimated the tech prowess of tech-trading Prince AIs.

The many wonders in Kyoto pay off pretty quickly and I get my first great scientist there. He ends up building an academy in Karakorum.

I pretty quickly decide that I need to take Toku off the little island (with iron) to the southwest, so I do that. (The forces are overkill, but I'm headed west next.) For some reason, I decide to leave his island NW of my starting continent alone. I don't really know why I did that. In fact, looking back now, I seem to have played a "never kill off any other civ completely" variant. Weird.

Anyway, techwise, I finish up optics because I'll probably want caravels to protect my galleys. Then I grab monarchy on my way to feudalism and the switch to vassalage. Then it's on to guilds so I can bring the age of the keshik to an end.

It is at this point that a strange obsession of the AIs is revealed. Apparently, this icy spot northeast of Kyoto is simply irresistible to the AI's settling algorithms. Why, I cannot fathom. Every competent power for most of the rest of the game tried to put settlers here. This is the first attempt. Of course, I was always able to see it coming and to blast the landed troops before a city could be created. Still, by serving as a focus for the AIs efforts, I think it helped me. I disbanded every worker I acquired in this way.

Finally, I feel I am ready to press the battle against another AI. I choose Peter. Here, you can see me getting lucky as the AI loses a caravel to my escort squad. I have a few more troops than this, but only 5 galleys to transport the troops. The AI caravels--from Qin, Peter, Cyrus and Gandhi!--converge on this location. With proper poprushing and tactical maneuvering, I'm able to keep my losses minimal and theirs high. Several of my boats get promoted.

Rostov fell to me with the loss of a couple cats and maybe a knight. Novgorod was easily taken as well.

...and Moscow too. In fact, I march up Peter's island and only leave him a couple very icy cities on the northern and northeastern tip because I don't think my economy can support them and they look very unproductive. My last russian acquisition is Yekaterinburg:

During the invasion of Russian, however, I see some very scary things:

Holy cr@p! The AI has galleons and frigates and I'm using caravels to protect my galleys! I have *seriously* underestimated the prince tech-trading archipelago AI. I may be in trouble.... As soon as I saw the galleon, I started beelining toward chemistry and the frigate. I hold off on calendar for as long as possible so that my newly acquired russian cities can get a stonehenged obelisk and expand their borders a bit.

It's not until 1766AD that I finally get astronomy, though. Most of my fisheries are in ruins. My mainland's southern cities have been getting bombarded by frigates to 0% for a century or so. The icy spot continues to draw galleons full of would-be settlers from the various AIs, but my knights are there to take care of the many longbows and musketmen who try in vain to protect them.

Finally, in 1772AD, I'm able to go on the offensive in the seas again. Many ships are upgraded and start taking it to the many AI frigates. Many citizens too are whipped leading to great unhappiness. But for the most part, I gain control of the seas.

Also, I decide that something simply has to be done about the AI tech rate. I'm really in no position to capture more cities right now, but I must do something. India is the tech leader, so I decide to try something I don't remember ever doing to an AI:

I decide to go pillaging! I may even be too late: Gandhi's cities have riflemen in them!! Shiva save us!!!

I end up getting two stacks of knights over onto Gandhi's continent and go a-pillaging. With 5 two-move knights in each stack, they can move onto a town and reduce it to an empty grassland (even blasting the road) in a single turn.

The pillaging works out better than I expected. I am counterattacked on one of the early turns a grenadier or rifleman or two, but my knight(s?) win. I reinforce one stack with a hastily rushed grenadier, but I don't think it was actually necessary.

I'm happy with the pillaging plan until I see this:

Oh...My...Holy...We're...gonna.... The Persians are coming, the Persians are coming. Three frigates and 3 fully loaded galleons!

This took me quite by surprise. Now, I have a decent number of frigates nearby because this is where so many settlers have tried to land, but they are not quite in position to take out this assault force before it can land. Not only that, but the Persians are on the coast, so get a defensive bonus against my attacks.

I throw every ship in the region at them. Fortunately, some of my frigates are upgrades from previously successful ships and have combat 2 promotions. That at least makes it an even fight. In all, I manage to sink all three frigates and even one of the galleons. But that still leaves two full galleons whom I can't get.

I poprush troops from every city on the formerly-Japanese continent so they'll be ready next turn. My reserves are very sparse: about one troop per city plus two knights who have been on settler-busting duty. Troops are rushed to the cities on the front, of course, so as to be in position to counterattack the landing force. Troops in Kyoto and Tokyo are upgraded.

Sure enough, he lands the troops. Unprotected by frigates, the galleons are, of course, sent to the bottom of the sea by a couple of my newly promoted frigates.

And at the end of the turn, all of the defenders have been wiped off the continent with minimal losses to me. I think a big factor in my success at warding off this invasion was the fact that the AI had been so keen on settling that northeastern spot. Without that, I probably would have been lighter on defense here.

Also, I have to think that the defeat of that force had to be a huge blow to the Persians. I lost a ship or two attacking his frigates, but promoted others to replace them. He lost a huge number of hammers with no gain at all.

And, if one AI can do it, so can another. So, I send my forces out on recon duty and find this in one of Qin's cities:

Umm. Wow. Cavalry. Oh dear. I really need for that stack not to land on one of my continents. Also, I decide that it's basically now or never for making a move on the AI. But more on that in a bit.

Back on the Indian continent, my pillaging campaign has drawn to a close. I've taken out every cottage-town (and several mines and resources) on the continent and am now getting counterattacked out of his last couple cities. While there has been some benefit to me with the cash earned by the pillaging, I think the biggest benefit has been to slow dow the AI tech leader by severely reducing the commercial productivity of his core cities.

The western theater has gone relatively quiet, while in the east, the curtain is about to rise again.

End of Part 2--Early Battles. Continue on to Part 3.