Dominion over Palm and Pine: MP Megacampaign

[dragoon9105]

Pretty much just converter weirdness. I wouldn't worry to long though those AI nations should cease to exist in the future.

Chapter 3: Into the Dark​

The Kongo, a pit of disease and death Rodrigo thought. Some semblance of a town was arrayed before him below, though there were no real buildings, only grass huts, fire pits and a single statue. The Native Kongolese had fought him for weeks in the jungle taking his men with spears, traps and poison. Now their 'great city' stood before him, a collection of but hovels. Rodrigo was the Brother of one of the most powerful men alive, the Grand Consul Tomas de Lara, sent to put down savages in the frontier regions of the empire. No wonder Ceasar returned to claim rome after gaul he mused to himself, lighting a pipe.

"Lord General, What shall we do" spoke one of his officers. A Younger man, Enrico de Valencia a half Berber of the New Templar generation.

Without thinking Rodrigo uttered a command, one he had been waiting to say for nearly a month "Burn it all"

He watched his Officers walk off, back to their men, and now he was left alone on the hillside, about to watch a slaughter.

The biggest offense Rodrigo took with this assignment was he could be in the North, fighting the Byzantines, actually protecting the realm. The Byzantines knew honor, they knew battle and knew mercy. The natives south of the Niger had been hardened by the English conquests years before and were openly hostile to all White Men. White relations with the english were cool for the moment, the headache they had caused him was an understatement.

'

The Kongolese would have been left alone if not for their attack on the colony of Luanda. Experience with the English had led them to believe that what was a peaceful colony was a military base. The Natives fell Upon luanda en-masse and slaughtered almost two hundred men before the Templar War-Galleon "The Eminence" arrived outside the settlement and began to fire its guns. The Sound had scattered the natives but the damage had been done and Tomas who was looking for relection had spun the attack as a declaration of war. Hence Rodrigo's presence here now.

In the village he could see the Red trimmed uniforms of his templar surrounding the 'city' in the bush. If he hadn't have already killed much of the Kongolese on campaign they'd have been easily spotted. There must be nothing left but the Weak, young and the old

He exhaled, letting a cloud of smoke flow up out of his mouth and into the air. It would be followed by the smoke of an entire village and the sound would fill with the sounds of musket fire and screaming. Though it was not the first. The Templar had done this before, in West Africa and then again in this very war, if it could truly be called a war. Kongolese settlements in Ndongo were put to the torch as well and one of his subcommands in Mbwila had received orders to do the same. This Jungle was now a Templar province whether the natives believed this or not.

When this last 'city' was removed Rodrigo would do as he was instructed. Find a local tribal leader and make him the new 'King of the Kongo' subservient to the Grand Consulate. He would allow Templar missionaries into his borders, allow Templar settlement and be made to bow to the cross. The last thought brought a smirk to Rodrigo's face Which Cross?

There was now four crosses in Templar Lands he mused. the Traditional catholic one, the same used by the Pope in Rome. The 'Official' cross of the Kingdom, representing the 'official' faith.

​

Then there was the Templar, and Santiago crosses, Crusader crosses in use for nearly hundreds of years. When these were used they represented loyalty to the Templar primarily and back home the crosses had found its way on the doors of many buildings, announcing allegiance to a particular faction within the Government. Loyalty to the Templar, or the Republic.

The was of course the fourth. The Horned cross. The mere thought of it had made Rodrigo frown. A Cross with a crescent turned upwards at the top arm. The Cross of the Goat Rodrigo remembered it being called by some of his Templar. Such things were heretical even with Tomas de Lara's religious reforms. It had not been popularized by some ambitious priest however, but by the formerly pagan tribes in Africa, and the Templar. The Goat's cross had power, Rodrigo knew this. The men who wore it were said to grow horns and be overcome by bloodlust in battle. Others were said to turn feral and behave as animals eventually becoming them.

Rodrigo had known enough those legends were more than true. He had started this campaign with nearly ten thousand Templar, almost a third of them wore the cross. The men who wore the Goat's cross survived through poison, disease and wounds, but with each battle lost more of their minds. He had begun to isolate them from the main camp, as at night some of them had begun to howl like wolves. Why Tomas allowed this Pagan magic to exist would have been beyond Rodrigo's understanding if he did not see their combat effectiveness first hand. In Africa, where the prying eyes of the European powers could not see they were used and were brutally effective if not unwieldy to control.

The Fires at started. Within minutes the Village had turned to an inferno and he could hear the chanting. From his position on the hill he could see it. The Fires had formed a shape, a Pentagram and as the village burned he saw his templar gather the population into the center.

Rodrigo tosses his cigar down into the dirt and stepped on it. Then turned and walked away, after all he knew too well what he would see if he stayed.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Byzantium got fed up with me Pirating their trade so I agreed to stop and pay some reparations rather than waste all my Manpower and income for literally no gain (I don't want any of Byzantium's land and a Humiliate wont give me enough PP for that delicious .01 RT gain)

Elsewhere in the world. England continues to gobble up coastline everywhere, and nobody particularly minds except the Japanese and Aztecs who have recently found themselves being thoroughly trashed for trying to threaten the #1 power in the world. The Pope has since seen fit to declare a crusade against Japan becuase well, I wanted to call a crusade before they became disabled.

Meanwhile Germany and Russia continue to fight like children. Denmark makes landfall in North America and I make landfall in South America (Finally) and Venice has finally reached Africa, where I'm sure nobody will take offense to their presence at all. The Indian powers have almost completely made Indian AI extinct and the mighty Fox Empire is starting to spread over Canada and the great plains at an explosive rate.

Will Germany's momentum in Europe be stopped? Will Mongolia and Persia suffer economic collapse from overspending? Will Byzantium Backstab someone else? Will the English Empire fall into the grips of AI control and go completely berserk? Find out next time on!

Palm, and Pine!

 

[King of Men]

What's up with the weird little countries in places where they have no reason to be? Lorraine in Mesopotamia, Riga in the Arabian desert, Tyrone in Egypt? Converter weirdness?

Converter, yes. The larger CK vassals convert, and there's only so many tags to go around.

 

[Kuipy]

Pharaoh hardened his heart
III - Trading bodies​

Pate, 1471

They made their way uneasily through the maze of banks and mangroves around Pate, all the way to the main beach, but there was no quay there so they had to lower a boat. Yussef helped old captain Venkat down, with the bundle he always kept by him; the contact of his callused, bony hand felt weird, unsettling.

"The captain made me strip in front of him," one burly sailor had told him the day before.
"Did he touch you?"
"No, he just looked me all over."

Maybe it was something people did in India, but there certainly was something strange about captain Venkat. Once, years before during a gale, Yussef had witnessed him getting his hand caught between two ropes hard enough to yank half a fingernail off, without so much as a wince until he noticed his man staring. Afterwards he had found, paying attention, that all his boss's expressions were artificial, practiced like a politician's, like so many mask he used.
But on the other hand, the captain was rich from those islands he had found, with a fleet of his own. He was old and without children, and now Yussef thought he knew why, and when he died whoever took over the business would want someone trusty and knowledgeable to take over, like for example the captain's right-hand man. Yussef liked his chances.

When they reached shore the captain said: "We're going to my old friend Umar's. You Venkat, and you boy, and I. The rest of you, start unloading the boat. Ole, go see the harbormaster, arrange for an auction tomorrow."

On their way, they met a column of dark slaves from the mainland, gaunt, sullen, chained by the neck, their backs scarred, their heads down or bobbing in ghastly stupor. Pate's main import and export.


"Glad I'm not a slave like those," the sailor with them said somberly.
For a fleeting moment Yussef thought he thought the flicker of a genuine, mocking smile on the captain's lips, and just as fast it was gone.

When they came to Umar's coral stone house the captain walked in uninvited and unannounced.
"I am afraid I must ask for hospitality, or sleep outside in the street with only my coat to keep me warm. I am homeless for now, Umar. The Butcher has burnt my house in Mogadishu, and your D.R.A.G.O. friends have confiscated the ones in Zanzibar and Kilwa."
"Venitians are not my friends, old man," said a solid stout merchant, rising to feet. "But you, you still are, I dare hope. Welcome under my roof, Venkat."

"And yet you throw your lot with them openly." They all sat on the sumptuous carpets; slaves hurried with cushions and plate of fruits for the visitors.

"Not openly, no. Not everyone around here is as discerning as you are. But as of now, yes, D.R.A.G.O. interests are mine, and Pate's. Did you come to change my mind?"

Yussef noticed a slender young man at master Umar's side, looking very much like him and hanging on his every word. Venkat chuckled, not quite in the right tone. Did nobody notice?

"Change your mind, my mule-headed friend? I'm an old man, Umar. I'll be dead before I convince you. Maybe If I could make days last forever... But, please, enlighten me: why Venice?"

"Because the Ocean is crowded now, and Pate cannot hope to stand on its own, the smallest sultanate of the coast. Only a fool like wali Jalil cannot see that. Trust me, I wish we in Pate could remain independent, but we can't. Sooner or later a greater power will take over. Better the one we chose, and on our terms."


The situation in 1470

"And that's Venice?"

"Venice over the butcher of Mogadishu, yes. For me; others think differently. Master Khaled is so blinded by the profits from his coffee monopoly that he already sees himself as an Egyptian servant. But what they don't see is that, if we need a master, Venice is far. Too far to tread on us like the Emperor would. See what they did in Kilwa. The Kilwan have kept their own sheikhs, and keep the Sunni faith."

"For now."

"For now, yes. Have you heard what Emperor Ali's men are doing in Somalia, for now? It's ugly. And there is one more thing. Even if we were entirely under the Venetian heel, even if we were annexed and a D.A.G.O. man was in charge here… That D.A.G.O. man would understand us. We would be able to reason with him, to negotiate. These Italians, they understand us. They are merchants, like us, they speak our language, so to speak. They're our kin."

"Sometimes I think I am the last of my kin in these parts."

"Me too, old friend. Me too. And it's getting worse. My grandchildren will never know a free Pate. They'll grow up as subjects of a kafir half a world away. And still, I do it for them."


Venkat died peacefully in his sleep, under his friend's roof. And then the strangest thing happened: during the night master Umar had changed his mind, and now thought Egypt was the better option for Pate. Yussef was too busy to wonder; in the absence of other serious claims, he took over captain's Venkat's business, but he could never find the mysterious bundle his weird boss had always kept at hand. Somehow, after a while, he came to think it was for the best.

So what does fabricating a claim entail, exactly? What does your diplomat do over there? I figure they maneuver the local elites, try to get a plurality of them to go along with the new rule or at least consider the option. Of, the "Hound" can take a shortcut there.

As said in the AAR, I overtook most of Somalia, which turned out to be a touchier affair than I thought. Big revolts ensued including a whole claimant war, plenty of occasions for my guy to earn the nickname "The Butcher".

And then I found out KoM was coastblocking me in the South, having vassalized the long, narrow land strip of Kilwa, right in my natural venue of expansion. Why, King of Men, why? I never tried to sabotage your trade or anything, it was the others!

And I unlocked my first national idea :

Trade Follows the Flag

Moving further upstream we come to the Gulf of Aden. There's not that much to say about this node; I have one province in it (plus upstream transfers from Alexandria), and what I want it to do is send trade to Alexandria where I can boot it up to Venice. Unfortunately, there's a lot of local powers with other ideas; only tiny Alodia is helping me out by steering to Alexandria - most of my trade power is being wasted helping Asians pull the trade up to Basra! That's what happens when you don't have a merchant present to look after your interests. However, my power here is presently so small that it doesn't matter much. When I've built a trade post and a marketplace, gotten some serious upstream-transfer from Zimbabwe, and perhaps added some light ships, I'll consider sending a merchant here to fix the issue. Meanwhile, notice Egypt getting only half trade power because he's trying to collect outside his main trade area; he would likely be better off steering to Alexandria. Merchants that transfer trade increase its value slightly; more trade would get into Alexandria than would leave Aden, and Egypt has quite a few provinces here and could affect the steering powerfully. True, I would siphon off a third of it, but that's better than losing half to the foreign-collection penalty. Egypt, work with me here!

I've already tried it last week and it's false. I make more money by collecting in Aden.

 

[King of Men]

More for Viciousness than Valour

June 24th, 1480
A pass in the Pyrenees, Iberia
Afternoon

They weren't mercenaries.

Salomone rode along the line, where the broken bodies lay strewn and intermingled, and the single thought tolled in his head. They were not mercenaries, these men he had led to Iberia for an ally's call; not Slavs or Germans or Bulgarians. And in its way that was well: This army had given him a victory to bring home for the next election, a victory that he could not have won with men who fought for gold; for such men would not have held this ground. A mercenary army was well enough in flank attack and grinding siege. But when ten thousand howling black savages came up the hill to kill you as though they were running towards their bridal beds; when a dozen stolid tercios of Iberian infantry tried to push their pikes into your gut; when a swarm of Berber horse swirled around your flanks and the arrows flew in sun-darkening clouds - then you wanted men who fought for their country and for the comrade at their shoulder, not for gold.

And yet; was it victory, when one-third of the men who sailed from Venice were going to stay in Iberia? They had held the hill, true, and even now an endless column of English troops marched through the narrow pass towards Tarragon, no more than a day late for Salomone's battle. (And had they come as fast as they possibly could? Had their officers really pushed the men as hard for an ally, whose future weakness might be convenient, as they would have done if their own comrades had been holding an important pass and desperately in need of reinforcements?) To keep the strategic pass your enemy had to have, that was victory by any military definition; but in a Venetian election, it was the political definition that mattered. Salomone's enemies could say, certainly would say, that he had squandered Venetian lives for English ambitions; that he had needed a victory and was trying to climb to high office on a river of backstreet blood. And they would have a point, even with the mixed metaphor. Salomone swallowed in sudden self-doubt; holding the pass had undoubtedly shortened the war, perhaps by as much as a year... but it was an English war, fought for English interests. England was an ally, and an ally that wasn't supported might return the favour when you needed their aid; but there was a difference between support, and bleeding your army white for a strategic advantage.

"Strategos Aiello?" A sharp voice broke into Salomone's thoughts, speaking Greek - the common tongue of the alliance - with a sibilant English accent.

"I am he," Salomone agreed, looking up. The speaker was an English officer, a high noble by his silken tabard embroidered with the Shrewsbury arms.

"Excellent. I am James of Shrewsbury, Viscount Oxford. I am come to order you to march south to Tarragon, to support our army against the African counterattack."

Salomone raised his brows, looking pointedly at the immense column still flowing by the hill, then at his exhausted men. "That is interesting," he said. "I am compelled, however, to point out that I command the independent army of a sovereign ally, and do not, in fact, take orders from your king."

The Englishman flushed red, either with anger or embarrassment. "I apologise," he said with somewhat strained courtesy, clearly holding his feelings in a tight rein. "My words were ill chosen. I meant to say that I request that you march to the push of the pike. The Africans have brought up their Senegalese, and we are hard pressed."

"I see," Salomone said, somewhat dryly. "So naturally, your thoughts turn to your allies, who have proven they can hold off twice their number of Africans; and whose dead need not be accounted for to your burgesses and squires."

"Our thoughts turn to concentrating all available forces to fight the enemy where he is!" James snapped. "That is how you win wars."

Salomone nodded. "Do you see these men?" he asked, the sweep of his hand indicating not the living Venetians who sat or lay on the trampled grass, but the heaps of dead in front of them. "They are the Milice di Venezia; and Venice is only one city. We have only so many people in it. And they are our people, free citizens. Not conquered subjects like your French and Scots and Irish, to be conscripted by thousands and driven like sheep to die on African pikes. They are not expendable; and still I have expended them, today, for your war. Because I thought of how to win wars, and not of how to advance my country's interests; and not of how to be chary of my countrymen's lives. Fifty years from now there will still be gaps in the ranks, where the grandsons of the men who fell today ought to be standing. So go on, James of Shrewsbury, Viscount Oxford. Tell me again how best to win this English war with Venetian troops."

The veneer of courtesy dropped from James's face as he realised he wouldn't get what he wanted; the controlled expression was replaced by a sneer of contempt. Even before he opened his mouth, Salomone knew what he would say - not the words, but the intent - and marvelled at the colossal arrogance that would let a man offer insult while standing alone in the middle of a victorious army.

"I should have expected that," James said. "The Venetian state at war was always noted-" but before he could complete his quote, Salomone had whipped out the stiletto that every Venetian gentilhuomo carried in his sleeve, grabbed the man's right arm, and punched the knife through the hand.

"There's some viciousness for you," he snarled. "Now shall we see who is the more valorous?" James was gasping for breath and trying to pull the stiletto out of his hand; the angle was awkward and the steel grated on bone with every movement, making him grit his teeth against the pain.

"Easy to talk about valour and when it's not your own hands in the line." Salomone regarded the struggling Englishman for a long moment. Probably he would have to be killed, close relatives of allied kings had all sorts of tools for vengeance, but there was no hurry. "As for me, I'm taking my army and going home."

I opened this session with a major metagame fail: Arriving to TeamSpeak just in time (I am the most westerly player in this game, and it starts at the ungodly hour of nine in the morning for me), I downloaded the wrong save. This delayed me sufficiently that the game began without me (after some long waits in earlier sessions, we are now enforcing a five-minute rule) and the AI ran Venice for the first thirty minutes. Well, I say AI; it seems probable that the corrupting influence of the Hound has reached our host's computer, because whatever processor cycles it devoted to Venice were evidently more malicious than incompetent. Starting with tech superiority, naval superiority, occupying two fortresses, and 20k manpower in reserve, the "AI" somehow managed to get kicked out of Mutapa and reduce my manpower to zero. I was eventually able to restore my position, but not so quickly as to prevent Egypt from jumping in (presumably using its free CB from full Expansion ideas) to reap what I had sown; I ended up with the northern third of Mutapa, Egypt with the southern two-thirds. Though, of course, you can hardly blame Egypt for jumping on a weakened AI minor when it gets the chance; it has yet to win a war against a player, to my recollection. I did get enough land to get a free merchant from giving some of it to a trade company, so I'm now collecting from Zanzibar.

While all this was going on, I also got dragged into a war with Africa. The Wicked Wardenate of the West (also known as England) is apparently unsatisfied with having most of the African coast, and wants Iberia as well. On the sea this was trivial; on land, the Africans put up a surprisingly effective fight in the Pyrenees, including an attack at Girona that led England to squeal piteously for Venetian troops. These arrived just in the nick of time, and saw the Africans off, but with sufficient casualties that when the English then peremptorily demanded help, in similar circumstances, for Tarragona, I laughed in his face. (For values of 'laughing' and 'face' that include "told him no in the ingame chat".) My 18 regiments had been reduced to 3000 men, and were going exactly nowhere, thanks. (He later told me that his laptop hadn't updated, and he was seeing my army at full strength; no doubt this misinformation accounts for some of the Viscount's arrogance.) It is admittedly possible that a Venetian officer, acting on misplaced zeal, may have ordered an assault on the fortress at Girona, which could in principle have contributed more to the casualty list than the African attack. But in his defense, that fortress was just then blocking considerable forces from moving south. That was the end of my contribution to that war, except for some looting.

To the east, Russia seized this as its final opportunity to recover some of its lost lands, and declared war on Byzantium (also allied to England and therefore with its armies in Iberia and Africa); although formally belligerent I sent no troops to this conflict. (Neither did England, that I noticed.) Byzantium managed to fend off the attack, albeit at a ruinous cost in loans and manpower; this leaves both of England's allies exhausted for the next generation of game time, while England itself made territorial gains. The Iberian distraction did prevent England from sending its navy to uphol Malaysia, as it has done before; Malaysia is now half absorbed into Japan, prompting a major reshuffle of player positions. Russia and the Mongols quit; Gollevainen, playing Malaysia, moves to take over the Mongols. Malaysia will presumably be fully absorbed by Japan; Russia will be split among all its neighbours, and it is unclear who will get the larger share; probably this will be the source of the next set of European conflicts. Not that I care, all I want to do is run my trade mpire in peace and quiet.

Europe at the dawn of the sixteenth century. Note the enormous German gains in Russia.

Competing African expansions. The absent gods alone know what the Hound may do with all these new subjects, hidden away in obscure corners of the world where few white men go and even fewer care what happens.​

 

[Kuipy]

Pharaoh hardened his heart
IV - Does not pass the Bechdel test, two out of five stars​

First published in 1512, The fortunes and misfortunes of the wise and vaillant Chivere or A very indiscreet hero by Hassan Abed is the earliest example of so-called saqi novels, an Egyptian literary form that contrasted with earlier epic or religious narratives by focusing on lower-class, trickster protagonists.

Set against the complicated backdrop of the wars for Zimbabwe, it chronicles the rise of the eponymous Chivere, a seemingly naïve and hapless peasant from Greater Zimbabwe that serve at some point in each six armies vying for the control of the region: the Mutapa Royal Host, the rebel forces of usurper Obama, the Italian expeditionary force, the Kilwa militia and the Great Southern Jihad under Crown Prince Abdul Fath Anubid. A running gag is that every war leader ends up confiding important information on Chivere, later allowing him to defect, rising in rank and keeping out of a fight every time until he ends up as the right-hand man of Abdul Fath Anubid.

Volumes have been written on Chivere, and whether both his uncanny luck and earnest, down-to-earth personality are genuine or just a façade for his trickery and arrivism. Certainly Abed's vision of the war is deeply cynical and critical of the atrocities and hypocrisies of all camps. In the words of Obama confiding to Chivere, "Ain't no damn much fighting going around. Me and cuz Nechisake avoid fighting each other, lest the foreigners overrun us both, but at the same time we dodge the foreigners and try to get the other in their way. The masvavembasvi wops and the Gyptians be both so chicken for a mapambano, so they just pretend not to notice each other, like two men shitting in the same bush. And the Kilwan of course are only here on Italian orders, but at the first chance they get out of dodge. I tell you, shamwari Chivere, I seems only you want to fight of us all, am I right?"

One of the few actual battles

Hassan Abed, himself a veteran of the Great Southern Jihad, drew extensively on his own experiences to describe events such as the bloody battle of Manikya, and places like the rickety, disease-ridden advance post of Inhambane in the Sabi river delta. the novel features many actual historical characters, most notably prince Abdul Fath. Chivere himself was a composite of several characters, including Mambrino, the "Italian sheik" and the trader and diplomat Nyambu Mutota.

Famous for its and vivid language drawing for Egyptian vernacular, Swahili trade pidgin and Zimbabwean dialects, its often crass humor and irreverent outlook, Chivere enjoyed an immediate and lasting success. Schondorf (1979) called it the first true modern novel, and Hassan Abed has been called a precursor of nineteenth-century class analysis.

So remember how that kafir King of Men passive-aggressively restrained my righteous expansion down the east coast by gulping it all?

Well two can play that game.

As his troops got bogged down in Mutapa I started to wonder, should I not have a bite of that too, as my manifest destiny intended, especially now that he has weakened the Africans, and they're fighting rebels all over the place, and is himself busy elsewhere?
Why yes of course I should!
The great problem was getting a CB. I did not yet have the expansion casus belli, I don't have the wrong religion casus belli, so I had to fabricate a claim. The interesting thing about claims is you can only fabricate them on places adjacent to one of your own provinces. Not one of your core, do note. Not even one of your fully-developped cities. A colony will do.

From then the solution was fairly straightforward. At no small expense I popped a colony just south of Mutapa, in jungle-ridden Inhambane, fabricated a claim from them and got to work. Even when he was back from his photoshoot for Valleywag, King of Men was apparently still going for slow and steady in Mutapa, with his AI protectorate Kilwa doing most of the work. The whole plan, of course, relied on nobody noticing and snitching to him so he'd start being proactive and get to places before me. At least two people asked what I was doing right now and my answer was "not much, what are YOU doing?" I think he finally noticed when my claim was done and I moved into actual Mutapa, because then his troops started getting a move on, a bit too late.
A so I got my fair share of Zimbabwe, at no small cost in AE and diplopoints. Roughly, Venice got the Zambeze basin and I got the Savi river basin.

And then I noticed that my genius plan was one of my classic false good ideas. You see, you only need an adjacent province to fabricate a claim, but you need an adjacent core to make it a core. Or a coast. And the only coast I had was, once again, my slow-growing colony Inhambane in a malarial jungle mangrove thing delta place. So I could not make it a core for now. So I could not make the rest of it a core either. And now I was getting mad overextension, and my army, far from being able to retreat and decrease its upkeep, had to remain in place as a peacekeeping force in noncored territory. I could almost hear King of Men laughing.
But now everything is getting better! Sort of. Live and learn.

And I unlocked my second national idea :

Plots That Span Centuries
Pharaoh and his servants play a very long game and can outmaneuver merchants who focus on shorter-term gain.
+5% trade efficiency

 

[King of Men]

King of Men was apparently still going for slow and steady in Mutapa

And so would you, if your AI had pissed away all your manpower and you were fighting with your last army. Incidentally, I noticed you are also taking it slow and steady with resisting my not-so-passive aggression in the Nile Delta.

1) you can't go around killing Shrewsburys. It will get noticed!!

That's why it didn't happen on-screen. It's very unfortunate if your Viscount didn't maintain good situational awareness and got jumped by some African holdouts, but after all it was a warzone and there were any number of defeated and dazed enemy soldiers wandering around, trying to get back to their own lines. Not a good place to go walking alone.

2) I rolled clone mark and Zilcho and by the time english forces had caught off Germany (timelines man) Blayne didn't have an army in existence.

Indeed. Somehow English aggression seems to lead to very high allied casualties.

3) lol never assault into mountains. They will mess you up!

I noticed, thanks.

 

[Kuipy]

And so would you, if your AI had pissed away all your manpower and you were fighting with your last army. Incidentally, I noticed you are also taking it slow and steady with resisting my not-so-passive aggression in the Nile Delta.

PLOTS THAT SPAN CENTURIES

 

[King of Men]

PLOTS THAT SPAN CENTURIES

Right. Does your plotting give you cause to roll over and wave your paws in the air if I demand Rosetta as well? I admit that at one province per five years you can survive until the end of EU4.

 

[Kuipy]

 

[King of Men]

Done with Hope and Honour

"Damietta," they said, "and damnation; who's to know the difference?" And for the generations of soldiers that went out to garrison Venezia oltre-il-Mare - conscript, mercenary, "volunteer" two steps ahead of the gallows as fortune and custom changed - it did indeed seem that Damietta was the last stop, the penultimate destination in a career's - or a life's - downward slide. No state sends its best and brightest to garrison muggy fortresses in sullen cities; but of the many distant places that Venice acquired for stashing failures and broken men, and of the many drunkards, rapists, and disgraced officers it sent to hold them, Damietta was always accounted the worst, and got the worst accordingly.

And yet, when the Caliph negligently signed over this minor Nile port in reply to a Venetian ultimatum plainly intended as a provocation to war, it had no such ripe reputation. Like any port city it had its bars and its brothels; what it did not have was a vast undercity in which, year after year, one in twenty of its assigned garrison would vanish. Nonetheless, that is what the plain numbers of the garrison reports show, decade after decade, like clockwork; and while it's true that commanders of backwaters garrisons unlikely to be attacked have sometimes over-reported their muster strength, to draw the pay of men dead or deserted for their own pockets, the famous one in twenty are those officially reported dead, crippled, or (most commonly, and most disquietingly) Missing, Not Accounted For. Any tricks in the paperwork should increase, not decrease, our estimate of the numbers lost. And, looking through the centuries of muster-out payments in the archives at Venice, it is noteworthy that almost none of the men discharged by this regular channel had served in Damietta, and those few, not for long. The longest-serving Damietta veteran had been in the garrison seven years, apparently assigned there as an alternative to being hanged for cowardice in some now-forgotten border skirmish in East Africa. In the end, he did not escape the city; he died shortly after being discharged, in a multiple murder-suicide (himself, and no less than three expensive courtesans who had presumably cost him all his mustering-out pay) that was the talk of Venice for a year afterwards.

That was Venice; in Damietta, such an event would have provided gossip for a week at most. Of those soldiers who were not reported simply Missing - and knowing what we do about the catacombs under this ancient city, we can only shudder for their probable fate - most were suicides; the opium and hashish grown in the fertile back-alley gardens (and of which there is no trace in the records before the handover in 1512) seems to have been both more addictive than the regular varieties, and more given to inducing despair. The women of Damietta, too, are famous for their ability to cause murderous jealous rages; but this is based on a few highly-publicised incidents. For the most part the exotic dancers, the back-alley courtesans, and the negotiable masseurs seem to have used their dark allure to draw soldiers into the bars, the hashish houses, and the opium dens - generally in that order. There was no need for risky dramas of passion, when drugs would do the job just as well.

The officers did a little better, perhaps mainly because the stronger drugs were seriously declasse for them; it's a rare man who can overcome the disapproval of his social peers in his choice of vices. Most of them did hit the bottle very heavily, as the mess accounts for the garrison show; but alcohol is a slower poison than Damietta opium. Rather than dying, most of them acquired the characteristic stigmata of the decadent upper classes of an empire much older than Venice's: Petty corruption and peculation, jaded sexual appetites craving ever-more-exotic acts, utter indifference to the problems of anyone not of their own class. It is to these gentlemen that we are indebted for our accounts of the infamous dancing-houses of the back alleys; and to be fair, many of these stories are still serviceable as erotica, centuries after they were written. The intolerable muggy heat of the city seems, even now, to rise from the dry paper, where wide-hipped women writhe dangerously on crowded stages; even aged scholars reading in well-lit libraries, for publication in academic journals, occasionally feel their cheeks flush with fever, and a longing for strong drink or sweat-damp sheets. The effect of the actual dances, on ill-educated young men seeing it with their own eyes, must have been something like being hit between the eyes with a large hammer - as is done to cattle before they are slaughtered.

In hindsight, of course, it is all too obvious: The quiet (and unprecedented) handing-over of a city for the mere demand of it, without a shot fired - and the garrison become a running sore into which generations of Venetian soldiery drained, its returning officers little corpuscles of corruption in the fabric of Venetian society. Just so does the Hound work, always, gnawing at the supports of its enemies' states so they are half-rotted by the time anyone puts weight on them. The Caliph's remark about "plots spanning centuries" was exactly to the point.

Men, alas, are rarely able to think in terms even of decades. Most people at the time thought the Caliph was referring to the Crusades; and, in the imperialist fervour of the Indian War, the Venetian war party even took up the phrase as a political slogan for themselves. The Hound's reaction to this piece of cultural appropriation is nowhere recorded; but if that alien entity is able to laugh, we may take it that the rafters of Hell shook with its humour.

Kilwa has been annexed to Venice, or more accurately to the Compagnia Africa dell'Est di Veneta; as a result, my trade income has shot up since I am now collecting considerable sums from Zanzibar. Which is not to say that I appreciate Egypt trying to join the action; interfering in another state's comfy monopoly? It wouldn't happen in libertarian utopia. Which is why I got myself some claims and threatened war if I didn't get Damietta; much to my surprise, Egypt handed it over without a word. Very sad, for I was all fired up for a nice 1vs1 war with no Great-Power interference; just me, the Jackal's pawn, and shots of the Long War fired at last. Instead we get this intrigue-and-diplomacy stuff, very thematic to be sure. "PLOTS THAT SPAN CENTURIES", quoth he.

I was glad, therefore, to find Persia wanting help to invade India and get a couple of border provinces back. Tracing the trade, we find that Aden, which feeds both Alexandria and Zanzibar, gets money from Ceylon; having trade power in Ceylon, therefore, is my next logical step in building up my trade network in Asia, and the island is easily defensible for a naval power. It turned out that when Persia said 'help', he meant "actually show up with serious armies on the main fighting front" rather than, for example, "snipe some islands around the edges and blockade", which is always my first inclination in war. But since I do in fact have an army, I marched it to the sound of the guns and helped win some battles:

Battles of the Indian War.
​

From there we could surely have gone on to invade the Ganges River valley itself and bring Peshawar to its knees; but it turned out that Byzantium had pledged to defend the Indians, presumably on the principle of neighbours of neighbours being friends. Which was a bit embarrassing, because Byzantium has a largish army and is also my ally. He pointed out to me that he hadn't been consulted on the Indian project; I pointed out to him that he hadn't mentioned being an Indian ally. We compromised on both of us remaining formally in the war but not actively fighting. Unfortunately, Persia then walked his victorious army into an ambush at Thatta and got perhaps a fifth of it back. After various threats of intervention by powers from Siberia to the British Isles, a compromise peace was eventually hammered out by which Persia loses Delhi, which is hardly crippling. The causes of the war remain as before: The Indians hold territory that Persia considers rightfully his, and are not powerful enough that Persia cannot possibly do anything about it. It follows that a rematch will certainly occur.

Some ingame statistics, presented without comment.

Europe and the Middle East, 1524. Note the English occupation of Iberia.

The Indian Ocean, 1524.
​

 

[Kuipy]

Pharaoh hardened his heart
V - Saif a User's Manual​

1515, across the Egyptian nomes

Damietta, nome of Lower Egypt
A windowless room in Damietta's old fort, the new office of signora Ludovica Aiello, "la donna immobile", a high-ranking D.R.A.G.O. operative. Servants bring in stacks of crates yet unpacked, full of letters and reports. She sits on the bespoke, cushioned armchair that supports her crippled legs, looking at a saif, an Arabian sword conspicuously left behind by the Egyptians when they abandoned the fort. The blade bears an inscription in Latin characters, "Plots that span centuries".

In wastebasket at her deformed feet she had thrown a crumpled paper, to be burned later. "So much for the Anubid Witch-Kings…" it reads.


Wadjet, nome of Upper Egypt
The sun-drenched courtyard of an ancient pagan temple. Ranks of grim soldiers look on as a rebel magistrate, begging and sniveling, is forced to kneel before Caliph Abbas I, the Beast of the South, Dethroner of the Anubids, a severe giant in full pharaonic regalia. Besides lie a pile of beheaded rebel corpses, and a small pyre of the century-old charters that gave the lords of Egypt proper greater rights and autonomy than the rest of the Empire. The place smells of dust, smoke and blood. Abbas is done listening; he raises his great saif with a magnificently muscular arm.

the lower Nile valley, again under Pharaoh's direct control

Gojjam, nome of Ethiopia
On the parapets of his immense prison, Child-King Joneid Anubid sips at a cup of coffee, watching the new soldiers training in the courtyard below. The recruits are salty, they slash shrieking at bags of chaff with old training saif. The officers are new, too young to have sworn their oath to Joneid rather than Abbas. Words only go so far anyway.

Three years ago, when general Abbas Katkhuda deposed him, he said he would not kill the child. But with every passing day young Joneid is less of a child, and now he waits. He waits for the saif.

Garooye, nome of Somalia
A low, dark cabin, but it does not matter. Dayax can no longer stand straight anyway, nor trust his dimmed eyes. His notched saif rusts on the wall. The old man is busy making a king. Having lathed the general form from a chunk of ivory, he now shapes the crown with a file, adroitly. Old men got to earn their keep somehow. All the while, he sings a Somali song from his youth, about warriors and sailors.

On the doorstep a small child stands silently, his granddaughter. She gapes at her grandfather singing in a tongue she does not understand.

The south African highlands, nome of Mozambique
Standing in the long grass, on the crest of a hill with no name, a Xhosa boy looks at a hundred Egyptians in the valley below. A dozen soldiers stand watch, their naked saif shining in the sun. The rest are workmen, unloading great notched beams from oxen carts and assembling them into several-stories frames, to be filled latter with wattle and daub. From their quick, assured gests it is clear they have done this before.

A few laborers have stopped their work briefly to gawk at the boy, but neither they nor the guards seem alarmed by his presence.

Ramped up the last step of my colonial project during a regency council. Then a cool new guy stepped in and founded the new Katkhuda dynasty. My personal union with Alodia, which stands roughly for Egypt proper, was proper, but I still had cores there so I just went and conquered it anyway. Alodia had been useful in the past but morte land will be useful too and it's a bit silly to be Egypt when you don't control most of Egypt.

At the worst possible moment King of Men extorted a province from me in the Delta. What a kafir.

I also unlocked two new great ideas:

Embrace My Diabolical Vision
Under Pharaoh there is only one way: His Way.
culture conversion costs -10%

A Display of My Dark Power
Lesser nations cower before the armies of Pharaoh.
manpower recovery speed +10%

And I got to work on kultural conversion now that it's cheaper.

Also this.

 

[King of Men]

Powers, Thrones, and Dominions

"Cities and Thrones and Powers," Kipling claims, "last, in Time's eye / almost as long as flowers, which daily die"; and this may be true. But men cannot see with the eyes of Time; we see with the eyes of mortals, and the Powers and Dominions of the world look, to us, long-lived indeed. And because this is so, it is occasionally useful to step back and consider them with a fresh eye, to reintroduce their concerns and positions as though we had not met before. A fresh perspective is valuable, and sometimes - it's hard to remember this - there may be people who haven't, for reasons now surpassing the understanding, closely followed history since 1204 and are lost amid the jargon of Wicked Wardenates, valorous (or vicious) Venetians, and Zombie Cossacks. Herewith, therefore, a look at a few of the Powers of the world in this year 1539.

Powers of the former English Empire, now at odds - thieves falling out over the loot, in one interpretation, or nations growing apart and realising they now longer have anything in common, in another. Except three hundred years of inbreeding, of course; but really, those particular kids are not a good reason to stay married, er, allied.
​

First, the Wardenate of the West, also known as England; the adjective 'Wicked' is customarily left off by vassal-allies, whose duties include courteous speech along with good advice and service in war. Still the foremost power in the world, as it has been since Bob 'the Builder' of Shrewsbury united the Isles under his rule in the thirteenth century. Exploration plus Expansion as the first two idea groups enabled the English to leap south along the African and South-American coasts, establishing trade posts that drive two continents'-worth of flow to the English Channel, where it is monopolised. This gives England a trade income over twice that of their nearest competitor. I don't see a strong focus in its custom national ideas, but they are all reasonably powerful ones. Its current ambitions appear to be the conquest of Iberia, maintaining the alliances with Venice, Denmark, Byzantium, and Fox that keep its rule of the seas unthreatened, and mastering that supercilious lift of the aristocratic eyebrow that conveys without words that the Shrewsburys were sleeping their way to the top when your ancestors were still bending over just for a place to sleep out of the wind.

England's main enemy, at present, is the Templar Republic, also known as Africa - a former vassal and ally which is now, no doubt, greatly regretting having helped the Shrewsburys rise to power. For, if they are still practicing getting those eyebrows just right, the Wardens of the West have most certainly mastered the noble art of the backstab; lands long promised to the Africans are currently painted English red, and there is no sign that this is going to change. The lucrative trade route around the African coast, solidly in the Templar sphere of interest, is firmly under the muscular thumbs of the English garrisons that guard it. The Templars have been poorly advised in their ideas; Exploration and Expansion are not very useful when a former ally turns around and takes away anything you explore and expand into. Defensive, on the other hand, seems like a fine choice for a state coming under such heavy and sustained attack. The custom national ideas are a curious hodgepodge; and really, diplomatic annexation cost? An ability that might be used three or four times in the whole game? Africa's current ambition is to find some allies, any allies will do, to help it hold back the English.

Germany is another former ally of England's that has become an enemy, though in this case the enmity goes back into CK days. Again with the diplo-annexation cost? True, Germany converted with many vassals, so it's a little more defensible than in Africa's case; but still a curious choice. Germany has been feeding its largish vassal Holstein, though, so perhaps there's some deep-laid plan at work. If so, Influence is no doubt part of it. Administrative (and Patriotic Propaganda) goes with Germany's vast expansion into Russia, which seems to have halted in recent sessions, perhaps due to Byzantine and Uzbek opposition - it's certainly nothing to do with the Russian armies, which have declined drastically in effectiveness since everyone figured out that Zombie Cossacks cannot approach a crucifix held by an honest priest. Notice how everybody has latched on to Infantry Combat Ability as a substitute for Discipline, which we house-ruled into being much more expensive than usual. Germany's ambition is to absorb its conquests in Russia and to master the trade system, for which purpose it recently became a republic.

A couple of months ago Blayne (playing Byzantium) suggested that I ought to make my converters multithreaded for added performance. This session demonstrated the wisdom of remaining single-threaded and concentrating on features instead of thread management: I got into three concurrent wars and lost all of them. Sequential execution for the win!

Counterattacking into mountains. There weren't all those Indians there when the battle started, I swear.

The Indian Swarm tactic in progress. We attack what looks like a weak sieging army, but can't defeat them before all their friends arrive to help. Then we end up fighting a humongous battle in bad terrain.
​

The wars were, in order of declaration, the Indochina War, the Indian Ocean War, and the Nile Delta War. In the first, I attempted (along with Uzbek) to defend Vietnam from invasion by the Indian alliance; unfortunately the Indians have had the infernal gall to have built a navy since I last fought them. They also managed to keep their various stacks within supporting distance of each other and in good terrain, so that every counterattack we made, even when the odds were initially favourable, was eventually fighting equal or superior numbers in jungle, hill, or mountain. Excellent army management there, I salute the Indian player. I am rather less pleased with my Vietnamese ally, who appears to have ragequit over the loss of five provinces.

Victory, but too late. Note the Pope's army adorably besieging Rosetta for me!​

The other two wars were opportunistic attacks by people who saw me get into a Vietnamese quagmire and decided to help themselves to some of my stuff; Japan took four islands and also burned some colonies, a war crime for which I will surely retaliate once I have nukes. Since I didn't have a fighting navy left after that little miscalculation with the Indians, there was nothing I could do, so there wasn't any actual combat; I just signed the peace treaty. Then Egypt decided that his dignity as "Ruler of Upper, Lower, Outer, and TransJordanese Egypt" required him to at least be seen to make an attempt to throw the foreigners out of the Nile Delta, and invaded accordingly. By this time I'd brought my army back from Vietnam, so there was some fighting, and I believe that in the long run my superior resources could have won; unfortunately Egypt had overrun Venezia-oltre-il-Mare by the time I had a stack together, and got enough ticking warscore to stab-hit and then to force-peace me for the Nile Delta and Sinai.

Europe, 1539. Note the largish bit of African coast now occupied by Byzantium, which is where Egypt paid him off when he declared a separate war to help me. I do have to admit that the borders look nicer with Egypt controlling the Nile Delta.​

 

[Kuipy]

Pharaoh hardened his heart
VI - I die, I live, I die again!​

1534, on the slopes of the Jabal al-Lawz

By instinct and experience he knew this was the crux of battler, the moment the coin stood on its edge, ready to fall either way.
He wiped his bloody sword on one of the dead Arabs' clothes and surveyed the battlefield. In the distance both backup armies were finally fighting it out after hours of unsuccessful attempts maneuver past each other. Up the bloody slopes of the Jabal al-Lawz the Egyptian army was still selling every inch of ground dearly. Nonetheless, they were falling back now that the marines under general Labia had fallen on their flank. Their front was shrinking and isolated pockets split from the main army, like the one they had just dealt with. He looked with a bit of pride at his bastard squad, the cream of Venice's gutters. The city's gutters ran deep indeed. What now? The fighting seemed the hardest by a rocky spur at a distance. Presumably a group of Egyptians separated from the rest had put their backs to it and were making a stand.



He whistled for the rest of his squad and they hurried toward there. "Their king!" someone shouted as he got closer. "Their king is surrounded."
And then he saw him, a brown giant, bare-chested, one sword in each hand, striking with uncommon speed and strength and precision, dodging every bullet. The rumours had at least a bit of truth in them : the Egyptian Pharaoh was no ordinary man.

But neither were Frederico and his bastards. That was the job of the Bellicosa Nostra special forces, winning fights where just a regular guy would'nt do. They slipped through the ranks of lesser soldiers, attacked as one. The pharaoh jumped and killed good Abramo, thirty year Frederico's brother in arms; so it ended. But then they were all on him with sword and dagger instead of the rank-and-file 's more cumbersome pikes, using every back alley trick. Even so their king did no go down easily, as Egypt as a whole would not. He killed three bastards before Giovanni could grapple him, and then Frederico stabbed him through the chest and the eye with two quick thrusts.

"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO"
The General-King threw his head back and shrieked a shriek to rend the world, so disturbingly true men actually stopped fighting to look.
"NOOOOOOOOOO
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
I SHALL NOT DIE
YOU ARE NOTHING
TOOLS
SLAVES
VESSELS"

Then he collapsed, bleeding from everywhere on the thirsty dust. One last jerk and he was still. Frederico chuckled uneasily and slapped Giovanni on the back. The battle was about to turn.
"I guess we're never paying for a drink again, brother."

He knelt by the warm body and pocketed every ring and necklace expertly, then unfurled the linen bundle by the dying monarch's side. In it was a short scepter of solid gold; when it glimmered in the line the broken body twitched, feeble fingers reached for the rod.
With the short-sighted greed of his kind, Frederico grabbed the scepter by the other end, the loop.

Do you want the eternal life y/n

The first Italian Frederico cut down did not even have time to react, the second could only manage a surprised yelp that ended in a gurgle. Giovanni looked wide-eyed at his brother.
"Betrayed! We are betrayed!" Frederico bellowed. "Kill the traitors."
And then everything turned to chaos.

So, the war with Venice. Let's look first at the situation at the start.

I consolidated vassals for clarity.

Seeing King of Men was busy in Asia, I did exactly what he had done to me the previous week, ask nicely for a province in Venice-occupied Egypt, Cairo. He answered like a rude boy and so war it was.

At this point there was a brief diversion in the form of Blayne attacking under the pretense of helping King of Men. That was a pretty transparent lies since he just grabbed the Alexandrian coast and then left him to hang with a not-significantly weakened adversary furious and determined to at least recoup his loss. No honor among kafirs, I guess.
Another ally of his King of Men was counting on was England, the hegemon of this game. He did not know that he and I had been on the periphery of a pseudo-war a couple years before (or had failed to fully understand the implication). That meant I still had a five-year truce window during which to pummel Venice without English interference.

There was, two theaters to the war: the east African War and the Sinaic War.

As I expected, King of Men did not attempt at all to defend his East African colonies, so the war consisted of a single stack, with ancillary 1-regiment splinters, rolling up, seizing everything and staying behind in case he tried to do something funny. I figure overall it was worth it since it gave me the lion's share of trade in the Zanzibar node and denied it to KoM. How much this actually impacted his bottom line I cannot tell, but if he went through all the trouble of settling this node it cannot be insignificant.



The fighting proper took place in the Delta, the Sinai and Happy Arabia. It's mostly mountain and desert, and because I had the jump on him I was able to overrun the place and then fight mostly defensively. We both tried to do cute things with maneuvering, but the small number of provinces meant it was a knife fight in a phone booth, with gritty-grindy combat and stack wipes on both sides. At some point my king died.



Eventually both our war enthusiasms were in the dumpster, but I was winning on points, and so was able to force a lenient peace just as Baron's England was rolling in.


stabby stabby

And so it ended.

As I said the peace was very lenient, especially when you consider what I lost to Blayne.
I took the Italian-controled Delta, including Cairo, and Damietta which he'd previously taken from me, and a single east African province that was danziging my possessions.
I figure we might not have seen the end of it.


The big increase in southern Africa is just a wasteland

 

[King of Men]

Looks like you double posted?

About Baron: I did panic at the start and call him in; he was going to fabricate a claim and join separately. After I got my breath I decided that bringing in All the Englands to beat up on Egypt was a bit overkill (and besides, I'd won some battles and things were looking up), so I told him I'd fight one-on-one. And it would have worked, too, if not for the Jackal's influence on the Senate forcing me to accept peace in a war that could have been won. I'll get you next time, though, and your little dog too!

 

[Kuipy]

woops, deleted it.

 

[King of Men]

Plots that Span Years

It is not the case, as is sometimes claimed, that Egypt has no army, or that its rulers - human and otherwise - expect to make their way in the world without armed force. Although it is true that unarmed governments are despised, not all despicable governments are unarmed; in the case of Egypt, it is the nature of their arms, not the lack of them, that makes them universally hated.

Still, although the charge is exaggerated, it is true that Egypt's human soldiers are not impressive, being neither well armed, nor well trained, nor vastly numerous. In this (as in so many other things) the modern state takes after the pharaonic Kingdoms: The soldiers of Egypt had never seen a horse when the Hyksos invaded with chariots, and still went to war in loincloths when the Medes and Persians wore corselets and helmets of bronze. A country with only one narrow entry point and immense strategic depth can afford to invest its energy and capital elsewhere than in its military; but that is not the calculation at work. Rather, the rulers of Egypt neglect material weaponry because they have better ones: The defense (and expansion) of Egypt is done by spiritual means.

It was not by force of arms that Egypt conquered Persia and ruled it as the satrapy of Trans-Jordanian Egypt for three generations. It was not by the number of its soldiers that Egypt convinced the elites of the African coast to surrender their sovereignty. And it was not by the threat of vast navies and a hundred regiments that Egypt pulled all its enemies into the Tapestry of Wars.

To cause the Templar Republic to look for allies in its doomed struggle against England, of course, cannot have been difficult. Likewise, for Germany, perpetually worried about its French border, and Venice, annoyed at the omnipresence of subsidised English merchants, to promise support for a counteroffensive in Spain, is by no means out of the ordinary course of European power-politics. But in the actions of the Byzantine empire the dark power of the Hound found room for expression; for the Byzantine navy would be crucial to any attempt at overthrowing English hegemony. And the Byzantines proved willing enough to discuss the rescue of the Templars; willing enough to suggest that this or that concession would prove the Germans were committed to the project; and willing enough to report all that was said to the English, and reap the rewards of successful spies.

Would they have done so, without the influence of the Jackal? Perhaps; the dictionary does not define the adjective 'Byzantine' as 'straightforward', 'honest', or 'trustworthy'. But then again, 'Machiavellian' and 'Bismarckian' are also adjectives, of Italian and German origin respectively, and if the truth were told most nations could furnish some similar word. But there is a difference between the ordinary secrecies and subtleties of diplomacy, and a bald-faced backstab, a simple lie told to one ostensible ally while the troops are mustered for an entirely different front. Such deception is rare, and rare for good reason: For who will trust the perpetrator again? When humans ignore their own long-term interest, and trample their given word in the mud for fleeting tactical advantage - that is the time to look for outside influence; that is the spoor of the Hound.

The consequences are well known: Instead of a single anti-hegemonic crusade, fought after years of preparation and mobilisation, the would-be crusaders got a series of separate wars, a tapestry of ill-coordinated threads. England, forewarned, struck first, pouring troops across the Italian border while most of the Venetian army was still in the Middle East. The Templar Republic joined on Venice's side, and was promptly invaded in turn; Germany vacillated, at first refusing to aid its ally, then declaring a separate war - and finding that it had two fronts, as Russia unleashed the Zombie Cossacks on its eastern border. Byzantium briefly entered the war, on England's side, then made peace before blood had been shed; minds warped by the Hound's influence are prone to such indecisiveness. But it hardly mattered; the disarray of the anti-English coalition was complete, and the peace treaty gave England entire control of the Iberian coast.

It was here, perhaps, that the Hound made its only mistake: The rapidity of the coalition collapse meant that it had no opportunity to enter the war itself, and feast unopposed on the remaining Venetian possessions in the Middle East. Beings whose plots span centuries may sometimes find it difficult to react on timespans of months. So when Japan attacked Venice to prevent the latter annexing the island of Java, and Egypt declared a separate war for the Venetian possessions in East Africa, it may be that the Hound had miscalculated, and thought the Venetian armies would be fighting to save Italy from English occupation. Instead, they were free to throw back the Egyptian army that marched on Al Karak; the material branch, intended only to occupy what the spiritual attack had already won, was the weakest link in the chain of the Hound's strategy, and promptly snapped. Thus, in the end, does the sword cut through the most finely-woven web of intrigue.

Defeated in open battle, the Egyptians fell back on attrition and logistics; the fortified Nile valley was no place for swift counterattack or decisive marches. In a grinding, attritional campaign, all the well-known tricks could have their full effect: The outsized rats that eat only one army's grain, the unseasonal storms that sink supply convoys, the poisoned wells and miasmic diseases that, at one point, had the Venetian army's muster at less than a third of its ration strength. Here, perhaps, the Tapestry of Wars worked against the Egyptians; for the Venetians, defeated in four successive conflicts, gritted their teeth and refused to give in. This one, we may read between the lines of their letters, we are by God not going to lose! Even when Japan invaded the undefended Italian mainland in a miracle of power-projection, the Venetians merely emptied their treasury to hire mercenaries, and decisively sank the expeditionary fleet in the Laguna di Venezia itself. The disaster of the Italian invasion crippled the Japanese army for a generation; and meanwhile the siege lines crept, mile by mile and fortress by fortress, up the valley of the Nile.

From Early Skirmishes in the Long War,
Dr William Wilcox,
Miskatonic University Press, (C) 1989.​

So I'm reasonably sure it wasn't the Hound that influenced me into plotting against England. He's the strongest power in the game, he's hogging all the good trade provinces, all the cool kids were doing it, why wouldn't you plot against him? It has to be admitted that the war did not develop entirely to my advantage, however. Having a mole in your plot room will do that. And no, I'm by no means sure Kuipy wasn't behind Blayne's betrayal; as I've noted in the past, if Kuipy were, in fact, an alien entity bent on world conquest through subtle domination of the weak-minded, how would you tell?

I soothed my feelings by annexing most of Java from the weak sultanate that held it. Japan, apparently, had been patiently waiting for me to finish those sieges so they could take the land I just got - they had a truce with Majapahit, for which "let Venice take it, then DOW Venice" was a workaround. At the time I had 14 heavy ships against Japan's 29, and both army and navy were trapped on Java. I did actually get most of the navy out; when they finally had to leave the port into teeth of the blockading Japanese navy, they managed to fight their way through and escape with the loss of only three ships, inflicting the same loss on Japan. Apparently the Japanese navy hadn't been upgraded to Carracks, while mine were all modern. Still, the loss of thirty regiments was a bit of a disaster; the Japanese war would be a naval affair mainly, but Egypt also declared war and that was clearly going to be decided on land.

Since the Egyptian army was three tech levels behind, however, there was no great difficulty in throwing it back with just what I had left plus some Persian help. Then it turned out that Kuipy had built a humongous number of fortresses, and we were forced to siege our way up the valley of the Nile one province at a time. Against a power with full Defensive and a custom idea called "Mortal Flesh is Weak". 48-day siege cycles and 4% attrition. I'm kind of impressed with how Kuipy is making gameplay match story, here; when I invented those grain-eating rats back in CK, I had no idea they could actually be implemented in EU4. Also impressed with the way the fortress model in EU4 is able to force an attritional style of warfare, very different from the maneuver campaigns in Germany and Iberia. In EU3, if Kuipy's army couldn't beat mine in battle, I would have just occupied his whole country in a year or so; here, he was able to retreat behind his fortresses, maintain a doomstack-in-being that forced me to concentrate my forces likewise, and generally trade space for time. Admittedly the Japanese invasion he was presumably counting on proved a weak reed (I don't know what Khan was thinking to send only half his fleet to the Med - a more delightful setup for defeat in detail it's hard to imagine), but Kuipy's strategy (given the three tech levels and no combat-ability or discipline ideas) cannot be faulted.

Battles of the Gulf of Venice. I really don't understand why Khan sent only half his heavy ships to the Med.

The Nile Front. Fortresses everywhere. Three sieges to complete just to get to the Berber Line; against +25% defensiveness and +4.5% attrition.

The Heart of Darkness. I don't know how Kuipy is affording all these damn fortresses. Clearly, we face a long campaign.

Europe, 1563. Notice the English occupation of the Iberian coast.

World map, 1563. Kilwa has made a rebellion stick - obviously I will retrieve this as soon as Egypt and Japan are defeated. Notice that the German-Uzbek Demilitarised Zone, also known as Russia, has finally annexed its vassal Novgorod and is looking a bit more formidable.

​

 

[FrozenWall]

Why are the fortresses in the Nubian interior being manned? Those shouldn't be necessary to pay for until the exterior line looks like it's going down, or am I misremembering EU IV mechanics?

I don't know how Kuipy is affording all these damn fortresses.

Surely you're not implying someone has been slipping him money?

 

[King of Men]

Why are the fortresses in the Nubian interior being manned?

PLOTS THAT SPAN CENTURIES? Maybe he's getting so much in subsidies that he just can't be bothered with these minor details? He hasn't found the mothball button yet? (Seriously, it's pretty well hidden).

 

[FrozenWall]

PLOTS THAT SPAN CENTURIES? Maybe he's getting so much in subsidies that he just can't be bothered with these minor details? He hasn't found the mothball button yet? (Seriously, it's pretty well hidden).

I hope said plots have taken into account that even mothballed forts cost moneys, lest he go broke once the sugardaddy money dries up.

As for yourself, is Egypt worth all the mp and gold? I know the canal is important later and there's some peasants to enserf and tourist income in it, but would you be able to hold the sinai once it becomes valuable anyway? I would have expected more unified plotting against the soon-to-be reborn WRE. What with your natural borders being heavily compromised and all.

 

[JodelDiplom]

Yeah TBH King your interior position in the Med sucks big time. Wouldn't you be better off biding your time and investing your country's power into expansion closer to home? Alongside one of your blobby neighbour players? Instead of trying to conquer pieces of Egypt.