Oops I mistook your satanic red for Blayne's inept purple. What a difference a shade of red makes...
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Oops I mistook your satanic red for Blayne's inept purple. What a difference a shade of red makes...
Kom's AAR was such a let down. He Jacob and Kuipy organized a surprise massacre. I was busy elsewhere and not paying much attention to Europe, when suddenly Kuipy, KOM, Jacob and our old Baluchistan player DOW blayne and just over run him. My fleet couldn't make it back to Europe in time. Blayne didn't protect his straits and found himself completely occupied with 100k Englishmen routed.
I was making progress in Germany but he had enough forts I couldn't hope to break through with the real forces to prevent the utter destruction of Blayne in that war. KOM also fully sunk blaynes fleet which he had been nursing all game long for no use (having also taken naval and maritime) in glorious fashion.
I was making progress in Germany but he had enough forts I couldn't hope to break through with the real forces to prevent the utter destruction of Blayne in that war. KOM also fully sunk blaynes fleet which he had been nursing all game long for no use (having also taken naval and maritime) in glorious fashion.
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Honestly, if Blayne isn't playing China, he's already feeling left out to dry so there's no cruelty in it.
Yes, well... it didn't go as smoothly when I went back to the well a second time.
Baron said:
Wait, you were actually intending to fight in that war? I thought you were going through the motions.
It was indeed glorious! Blayne said it was the AI that had built all those galleys, and he'd never had the resources to upgrade them; I'm guessing that the 140 Byzantine ships I saw in the Med in this round were built with English money?
Yes, well... it didn't go as smoothly when I went back to the well a second time.
Wait, you were actually intending to fight in that war? I thought you were going through the motions.
It was indeed glorious! Blayne said it was the AI that had built all those galleys, and he'd never had the resources to upgrade them; I'm guessing that the 140 Byzantine ships I saw in the Med in this round were built with English money?
No the second time suffered from execution. Jacob getting a truce was a death sentence. The crucial aspect is to overrun and occupy one player completely so you can maybe focus down me; or turn and focus on fiv.
The first war I was fighting in Baluchistan. Had 150k and was transporting generally more over. Had wiped Yami to a man and was going to give Kuipy some love when Blayne forgot to keep ships blockingng his strait. Which allowed Jacob to pour in en mass. No point fighting that out at that point. Reason I didn't invade you is I don't want you weak for Asian rounds (which will surely come) and I love your pluck. Jacob was suffering some occupation from fiv/myself that war too.
I think I sent Blayne 5kish last session. He was bellyaching about not building men/ships since he didn't have money; and I started yelling at him to take some loans and stop being a fool. My support didn't hit until actual war; so he funded those on his own at least initially. Random note Golle and Clone cost me 40k in Asia before giving up that war against ragatok. Talk about money not well spent.
The Honour of the Fleet
Yes, I was. What's it to you?
Ah, your father, fair enough. Some journeymen nowadays seem to think we could have won if they'd been aboard. What ship was he on?
I wouldn't have known him, then. I was on the Leone d'Oro. It was a big fleet, you know; eighty of the line. A forest of masts in the dawn. I didn't know everyone's face even on board the Leone; though I would have, in time. I'd only been aboard a few months, then.
Well, yes, from the start of the siege.
Sure, I got in on my father's name. Which is now my name. You want to make something of that?
None taken if you're buying.
Yeah, no, he was just out of good options. It was a siege, right? And everyone knew we were going to lose it. When the crazy English came over the walls there was going to be a massacre, and a fat lot of good the family name would do me then. Everyone knew their colonial troops would be first into the breach, because why would you send anybody whose life you valued into a forlorn hope? And yeah, a lot of those martial tribes still literally eat people. The English like it that way because it gives them shock troops everyone is afraid of, and if they accidentally get massacred instead of winning the English can still feel good about it. And they don't speak any civilised language.
What? Well, yes, I suppose many of them do speak English. I don't see what that has to do with anything. The point is, I wasn't going to be able to negotiate a ransom. On a ship of the line, sure, I might have to fight the blockading fleet, but that would be civilised warfare, feed the guns until one side strikes the colours; you have a nine in ten chance of surviving that sort of thing even if your whole fleet is wiped out. There were lots of rich men making that calculation, then. Poor men too, for that matter. Better a landsman on a frigate, than trying to defend the streets when the black savages came howling through the breaches. If they tried to board the ships, well, that's what grapeshot is for. You can pound a lot of grapeshot out through the sixty guns of a ship of the line. They're big bitches, those shipkillers; much bigger than the guns that armies use teams of twenty horses to move around.
Well, no, didn't work out that way. The savages went right for Sant' Andrea. Soon as the catapults were gone and they didn't have to be afraid of the siege hail (*) anymore, the English fleet was coming in. There wasn't any sense in trying to fight them while the savages were boarding us from the docks. We sailed out for sea room.
Yes, of course we knew it was hopeless.
I suppose they thought a few ships might fight their way through, and take refuge in Tunis, or in Egypt. To save at least a remnant of the power and the pride; that was all they hoped for. The siege was lost and the war was lost, and we all knew it; but if we had a few ships left to jump an English merchantman, or threaten to sell to the Indians, perhaps that would be worth some crumbs at the peace table.
No. That's true. There were too many of them. Two ships for every one of ours. We might as well have tried to fight our way across the Alps.
Yes, we knew it. We'd said our goodbyes, prayed our prayers, drunk our wine. We weren't stupid, you know. We knew the odds.
Oh, I see. You're asking why he went. Why we all went, knowing what would happen. Knowing there would be widows and orphans left behind. Well then. Buy me another, and I'll tell you. It's thirsty work, talking.
Thank you.
We went because rats abandon a sinking ship, but men don't. Because the Lion of St Mark flew from our masts. We went because we'd sworn an oath to the Senate and the People, and not to our families and our own skins. Because we were Venetians and free citizens, and when we said "the power and the pride" we meant it, and were proud.
We sailed for the honour of the Fleet.
(*) Siege hail: The mixture of incendiaries and big rocks hoisted into the air by the enormous catapults of the Forte di Sant' Andrea - deadly to wooden ships within their effective range of a kilometer.
Encouraged by my success in getting Ragusa - and egged on by certain field-gray allies who shall remain nameless - I went back to the same well again: I invaded Byzantium at the head of a coalition of me, Germany, Fox, and Egypt. It worked out pretty well until the moment that 100k English troops poured across the French-Italian border and I realised that Baron intended to actually defend his ally this time, as opposed to messing about with subsidies and a few ships. All my troops were down in the Levant, trying to advance through the Lebanese mountains; Germany was invading the Baltics; Egypt was occupying Africa and helping me out in the Levant - so Italy fell in short order. At the end of the war I was out of manpower, out of ships (I literally have exactly zero ships, not even transports, in the save), and my government in exile, if that mechanic had existed in EU4, would have had to set up shop in Madagascar. However, by skilled diplomatic maneuvering (that is, I blamed Germany for starting it), I ended up only losing Ragusa and Oran, not that this is exactly a great comfort. I'll be a generation recovering, again. The heavy ships, at least, were due for upgrading anyway since I'm about to hit Threedeckers, so I'm not out any money that I wouldn't have been spending anyway. I take great consolation from this fact.
The world in 1702.
Yes, I was. What's it to you?
Ah, your father, fair enough. Some journeymen nowadays seem to think we could have won if they'd been aboard. What ship was he on?
I wouldn't have known him, then. I was on the Leone d'Oro. It was a big fleet, you know; eighty of the line. A forest of masts in the dawn. I didn't know everyone's face even on board the Leone; though I would have, in time. I'd only been aboard a few months, then.
Well, yes, from the start of the siege.
Sure, I got in on my father's name. Which is now my name. You want to make something of that?
None taken if you're buying.
Yeah, no, he was just out of good options. It was a siege, right? And everyone knew we were going to lose it. When the crazy English came over the walls there was going to be a massacre, and a fat lot of good the family name would do me then. Everyone knew their colonial troops would be first into the breach, because why would you send anybody whose life you valued into a forlorn hope? And yeah, a lot of those martial tribes still literally eat people. The English like it that way because it gives them shock troops everyone is afraid of, and if they accidentally get massacred instead of winning the English can still feel good about it. And they don't speak any civilised language.
What? Well, yes, I suppose many of them do speak English. I don't see what that has to do with anything. The point is, I wasn't going to be able to negotiate a ransom. On a ship of the line, sure, I might have to fight the blockading fleet, but that would be civilised warfare, feed the guns until one side strikes the colours; you have a nine in ten chance of surviving that sort of thing even if your whole fleet is wiped out. There were lots of rich men making that calculation, then. Poor men too, for that matter. Better a landsman on a frigate, than trying to defend the streets when the black savages came howling through the breaches. If they tried to board the ships, well, that's what grapeshot is for. You can pound a lot of grapeshot out through the sixty guns of a ship of the line. They're big bitches, those shipkillers; much bigger than the guns that armies use teams of twenty horses to move around.
Well, no, didn't work out that way. The savages went right for Sant' Andrea. Soon as the catapults were gone and they didn't have to be afraid of the siege hail (*) anymore, the English fleet was coming in. There wasn't any sense in trying to fight them while the savages were boarding us from the docks. We sailed out for sea room.
Yes, of course we knew it was hopeless.
I suppose they thought a few ships might fight their way through, and take refuge in Tunis, or in Egypt. To save at least a remnant of the power and the pride; that was all they hoped for. The siege was lost and the war was lost, and we all knew it; but if we had a few ships left to jump an English merchantman, or threaten to sell to the Indians, perhaps that would be worth some crumbs at the peace table.
No. That's true. There were too many of them. Two ships for every one of ours. We might as well have tried to fight our way across the Alps.
Yes, we knew it. We'd said our goodbyes, prayed our prayers, drunk our wine. We weren't stupid, you know. We knew the odds.
Oh, I see. You're asking why he went. Why we all went, knowing what would happen. Knowing there would be widows and orphans left behind. Well then. Buy me another, and I'll tell you. It's thirsty work, talking.
Thank you.
We went because rats abandon a sinking ship, but men don't. Because the Lion of St Mark flew from our masts. We went because we'd sworn an oath to the Senate and the People, and not to our families and our own skins. Because we were Venetians and free citizens, and when we said "the power and the pride" we meant it, and were proud.
We sailed for the honour of the Fleet.
(*) Siege hail: The mixture of incendiaries and big rocks hoisted into the air by the enormous catapults of the Forte di Sant' Andrea - deadly to wooden ships within their effective range of a kilometer.
Encouraged by my success in getting Ragusa - and egged on by certain field-gray allies who shall remain nameless - I went back to the same well again: I invaded Byzantium at the head of a coalition of me, Germany, Fox, and Egypt. It worked out pretty well until the moment that 100k English troops poured across the French-Italian border and I realised that Baron intended to actually defend his ally this time, as opposed to messing about with subsidies and a few ships. All my troops were down in the Levant, trying to advance through the Lebanese mountains; Germany was invading the Baltics; Egypt was occupying Africa and helping me out in the Levant - so Italy fell in short order. At the end of the war I was out of manpower, out of ships (I literally have exactly zero ships, not even transports, in the save), and my government in exile, if that mechanic had existed in EU4, would have had to set up shop in Madagascar. However, by skilled diplomatic maneuvering (that is, I blamed Germany for starting it), I ended up only losing Ragusa and Oran, not that this is exactly a great comfort. I'll be a generation recovering, again. The heavy ships, at least, were due for upgrading anyway since I'm about to hit Threedeckers, so I'm not out any money that I wouldn't have been spending anyway. I take great consolation from this fact.
The world in 1702.
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Any chance we could get an update on far asia or the americas? Who owns all the stuff in s.america for example?
Pharaoh hardened his heart
XIV – Makes you think
XIV – Makes you think
1703, on the slopes of Mount Jordan, near Sidon
“Just look at them.” Mercato said.
Captain Jacopo di Pazzi was already looking at them, a hundred bare-chested brown men exercising silently in the still cold morning, under the example of their own captain.
“Makes you think.” He finally said, rather to put an end to the silence than anything else. Even since the Egyptian Army had joined them he kept his word guarded. No use ending up like his grandfather’s uncle. And of course, for all they knew, the Egyptians had saved them from a complete rout. When they'd seen the new army the Greeks had stopped right where they were, two days before.
“Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes. Both objects need not be the same.”
“What’s that?”
“Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes. It’s from the Aneid, something Aeneas says.”
“Yes, I kn… It’s not even Aeneas! It’s Laocoon.”
“Technically it is Aeneas, because it’s a story within a story, so Aeneas says it even if he repeats Laocoon’s words when he tells his tale to Dido.”
“… Ok, fine, what’s your point with both objects?”
“See, the second ‘Danaos’ is implied, so it means ‘I fear the Greeks and even when they bear gifts’, the Greeks, right?”
“Right.”
“That’s the conventional reading. But it might just as well read ‘I fear Greeks, and also those who bear gifts’, meaning not the Greeks. If it was out of context.”
“… I guess.” He turned his gaze again to the magnificent men lined up in silent effort.
“You see who I mean?”
“YES.”
Zealots, in Pazzi’s experience, made poor soldiers. They thought fervor made up for recklessness or disorganization or even worse traits. They did not take well to orders from this world. And they always stuck together, so there was no rooting the weak and the bad from their ranks. Good fighters, sometimes, but as troops, pretty bad. These ones were different, not hot-headed at all, quite the contrary. Stone cold fanatics. Egyptians Jihadi kept themselves and their camp clean and in order. They did not gamble, drink, or brawl, although they did smoke from collective hookahs. They did not leave their camp, except on business, and when an Italian tried to get in theirs and see what was what, they made it clear he was unwelcome. And now that. Lifting weights in the cold of the early morning.
“Could you do that?” Mercato asked. Even from a friend, it was a little unkind.
“I think so,” Captain di Pazzi snapped.
“I mean make your men do that. Every morning, without noise, without complaints.”
“They’d kill me.” Pazzi was the closest thing to a father his men had and, for most, had ever had; but they were still scum from the gutters of Venice. Deepest gutters in the world.
“Me too.”
At this point he could see a rider hurrying toward the camp from one of their advanced positions.
“I’d better take care of that.”
The rider saw an officer coming to meet him and changed his course. When he was near he shouted without dismounting: “The Greeks ! They are moving.”
“Which way?”
“South-east. They are trying to turn the mountain by the East, give us a wide berth. Slowly. A screen of outriders around the main force.”
“I’ll tell the council. Make sure another rider is ready to depart right here with a fresh horse, and then go get some rest.”
He turned and jogged to the General’s tent, through the bestirring camp. Every sentry had seen the rider now, and confused and contradictory rumors would run through the army. As long as they readied themselves.
When he entered the command tent other officers were hurrying in too. It had been a little crowded at the beginning of the campaign, when all sixty captains and majors and colonels gathered to get orders; but now there were four-and-twenty less, and they could almost breathe. General Umadbro was sitting at a table with what few maps they had of the region, on top of which hostile and friendly troops were represented by pieces commandeered from a cheap chess set. At his side a D.R.A.G.O. intelligence office bit his lip nervously. But it was Pharaoh, sitting on the other side, who spoke.
“… So it is good I came here. It means the position of C.U.C.K. forces is untenable without adjustments.”
Pharaoh, whom Captain di Pazzi had seen before, but never so close, was a big dark man in a clean but simple white linen tunic. Only grey hair in his braided beard showed his age. His poise was confident, his naked arms bulged with impressive muscles, and behind his hooked nose fierce black eyes burned with commanding power. Pharaoh was born to lead men; in fact it almost seemed men were born to be lead by him.
Pharaoh coming in the person at the head of his Holy Warriors to crush the Grecian counter-attack
“Greeks move this way,” he said, nudging a black rook. “And this way.” His big black fingers closed on a black pawn.
Captain di Pazzi almost cleared his throat, and then he realized Pharaoh was already giving what information he had. Did the Egyptians have sentries of their own? Outriders, maybe?
“… Screen of cavalry. So, what do we do.”
“As you know,” General Umadbro said, “Our men have yet to recover from the previous clashes. They will fight,” he insisted, “but not as well as fresh troops.” Egyptian troops went unsaid.
“Yes. I have studied Byzantine strategy for a long time. They never truly commit; they always hedge their bets. This is a prodding move. When they meet fierce resistance, such as my men will provide, they will not try to break through but retreat carefully to a more secure position.”
For the first time Captain di Pazzi realized Pharaoh was not only speaking in Italian, but with the nasal lilt of his Trentine mother, the yokel accent he himself had spent ten painful years scouring from his tongue. What was that? An insult?
“We must take advantage of this predictable development. While my shock troops make a stand down in the valley, yours will deploy in a thin line high on the slopes of mount Lebanon, protecting your artillery far to the left, with a full view on the battlefield.” A show. He was giving them a show. “Once they fall back your artillery will start pounding them from the side, denying them the opportunity to make an orderly retreat.”
“Apologies, your Highness, but if we spread that thin, could they not turn and overcome us.”
“If they turn we will take them from behind. This mountain is young, the slopes only increase as you go up. Which means a pursuing army will always catch us with the pursued one.”
This mountain is young? What the hell did that mean? But the General nodded, pretended to hesitate briefly, then hung his head in complete submission.
“Do it.”
They filed out of the tent hurriedly. Mercato touched Captain di Pazzi’s elbow.
“You did not say what the rider was about.”
“He already knew.”
The cannon master smiled with a hundred meanings.
“…Et dona ferentes.”
“Wait, I thought it was at the beginning, before he meets Dido. That’s why everybody quotes that, because it’s at the beginning.”
“Aeneas meets Dido at the beginning. Then he tells her what happened, that’s the point of having a story within a story.”
“You’re sure it’s not the Odyssey?”
“Dido is not in the Odyssey.”
“I KNOW! I mean the story within the story.”
“All stories are within stories. Makes you think.”
Mercato could be really exasperating when he put his heart into it.
“Just get your cannons ready. We’re going to see a show.”
“Beside that one, you mean?”
Below them Egyptian soldiers were filing out, singing hymns of a sort in their strange tongue and perfect harmony. Captain di Pazzi did not understand everything but he could make out some fragments: “One god, in a thousand aspects”; “from the darkness beyond our world” ; “always watching” ; “one faith, one people”; “the blood of the unbeliever”.
“Yes. Beside that one.” It will be a long day.
But at the end of the day, they won. Or did they?
I conquered all of the Hejaz region in former Persia. Now that I’m an empire (oh yes, I’m a n empire now since… two weeks?) Arabic culture group provinces are yum-yum to eat.
I also completed the religious idea group, converted all remaining kafirs quickly and started the slower process of cultural unification.
Then the Cooperative Union of Central Kingdoms (Germany, Venice and Egypt) responded to Byzantium’s provocations by attacking it with Fox’s help. England and Denmark intervened on Byzantium’s side...
... and it became a true world war with multiples fronts:
• On the Syrian front the lack of maneuvering space forced a stalemate at the single province of Sidon. Many times Grecian forces tried to retake the fortress from Italians but the intervention of Pharaoh himself and his elite troops threw back that meek and effete rabble.
• On the Mali, on the contrary, it was the vast distances of immense undeveloped bush that lead to and indecisive campaign. Me, Fox and Baron all tried some half-hearted maneuvering that came to nothing.
• In the Americas, Fox triumphed unopposed. But the struggle was not to be decided there.
• In the Baltic Germany made small progresses but I did not pay much attention.
• In Maghreb, the bulk of the Egyptian army secured Byzantine Lybia and Venitian Atlas. But then English started pushing back, at offs of three to one or more. After a valiant resistance and one successful counter-offensive, Egyptian forces were finally routed when reinforcement from Best Korea sailed half a world to victimized me. Egyptian troops started on a desperate and xenophonic flight home, behind the cover of forts and deserts and mountain.
• Finally, it was in Italy that the back of the Union was broken. England conquered everything and even started breaking through the Alps in Jakob’s backyard. At that point resistance was futile.
So we surrendered. At least lucky Kuipy dodged the bullet, only Germany and Venice had to pay up.
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War to the Knife and Fork
Wars have been decided by logistics, by murthering great battles, and by attrition; wars are sometimes won by the deepest pockets, sometimes by the biggest battalions, sometimes by sheer stubborn refusal to surrender. Revolutionary or religious fervour, better ships and sailors, or a tradition of educating the ruling class for war, have all been known to produce victory. These are the considerations that statesmen weigh, when deciding on peace or war; these are familiar factors in geostrategic analysis, strengths and weaknesses whose effect on war is understood. On the other hand, it is somewhat unusual for wars to be settled in peaceful drawing rooms, by intrigues turning on charm and popularity, within the capital of a single belligerent power. This, nonetheless, is what happened in 1730.
The war began in a fairly ordinary fashion: Byzantium, the Uzbek Khanate, and Denmark, encouraged by their success in retaking Ragusa and Holstein, and longing to reverse the centuries-long Drang nach Osten that had carried the two-headed eagle as far as the Caspian, jointly declared war on Germany. Germany's allies, partly annoyed by the perceived lack of German help in the previous war, and partly feeling that such a large nation could surely take care of itself, stayed out. The entry of England on the anti-German side was the capstone to the arch of Byzantine diplomacy that had preceded the war; there were victory celebrations in the streets of Constantinople, and "Berlin delenda est" was on everyone's lips.
For some time it appeared that such high spirits were well warranted; the initial campaigns in the Ukraine went badly for Germany, and Danish troops advanced as far south as Berlin. But now the internal politics of London became important. A substantial fraction of the ruling class, including several Shrewsburys, felt considerable sympathy for the German "underdog", and agitated for exiting the war and rejoining on the other side, to "punish the perfidious Greeks". They were not able to make this into official policy; but they could and did throw such sand into the warmaking machinery of the British Empire that no redcoat fired a shot at a man in field-grey. Officers refused to command armies that would be sent across the Rhine, or threatened to resign if their regiments were sent to France; orders were "lost", requisitions proved "impossible to fulfil", units were reported "not ready for combat" that a month before had been "prepared down to the last garter button". At one point 3100 pounds were sent to the Senate of Venice, "to do with as they see fit", that had been collected from the better families of London; this was not technically treason, since Venice was at that point neutral, but everyone knew perfectly well that the Senate would send the money straight to their beleaguered ally - which had indeed been the purpose of the collection. A stabler government would have hanged and exiled, but there were too many guilty; any official notice taken of the gift might have led to open rebellion - and if it came to it, the Strafford administration was not by any means gung-ho for the war, which it had entered mainly to maintain the Byzantine alliance, rather than because any real advantage was expected to come of it.
Thwarted in the project of making their own government punish the Greeks, the pro-German Whigs (led by no less a personality than the Prince of Wales) turned to making others do the work; unofficial assurances were sent to Venice and to Egypt that if those governments reconsidered their neutrality and entered the war on the German side - that is, ostensibly against England - there would be no repercussions even if the Greeks won. It is not entirely clear that this was actually within the power of the Whigs, but the Senate appears to have believed it. At any rate they did declare war on Byzantium, and a joint Veneto-Egyptian force took Ragusa and occupied Serbia before bogging down in the Balkan mountains. Ironically enough, this was in large part due to an English expeditionary force; the Tory government, stung by having the opposition effectively routing around its foreign policy, had finally managed to find an officer who would command a fighting army - albeit still on the understanding that it wouldn't enter Germany - and had dispatched just enough troops to the Balkans to keep its ally in the war. The large English forces in Genoa, France, and Morocco remained in their peacetime garrisons.
To such a pass, in the year of Grace 1730, had the nations of Europe come, that wars were decided, not on the Balkan or Baltic battlefields, but in the struggles of London hostesses to make people come to their parties - both kinds of parties. Geoffrey Essex's decision to command the Balkan Expeditionary Force seems to have been made during his attendance at a ball held by Lord Strafford. At this distance in time we will never reconstruct what pressures or incentives were brought to bear, but it does appear that if Essex had instead attended the rival gathering of the Prince of Wales, there would have been (for lack of a noble commander) no English troops holding the Balkan line, the Venetian army would have marched to Constantinople, and the resulting peace would have been a victor's diktat. Instead there was a lengthy stalemate, every peace term proposed by either party was sent to London for approval (since all understood that London had the power to decide the war any way it liked, if its elite could make their collective minds up), and the peace was a compromise. For this reason the war is called the "War to the Knife and Fork", referring to the dinner parties that decided it.
Having seen English troops occupying all of Italy in a few brisk months the last time I fought Byzantium - and having also seen Germany's troops forming a line of battle somewhat north of the Alps, but making no attempt to move south - I was inclined to stay out when Blayne warned me that he was going for Germany again. I had just rebuilt my army and navy and wasn't really in a mood to have them destroyed yet again. But then I saw no serious fighting in France, and Baron sent me money and assurances that even if I lost I wouldn't lose any territory. So I took another stab at it, and while it's not over yet it's looking reasonable:
The Balkan line. Numbers of my reserve troops censored. The visible Byzantine troops appear to account for all the men the ledger reports he has, but there could be some English stacks behind the line.
Two successive Serbian battles. Although we won, and killed as many as we lost, we were unfortunately too battered to take advantage and advance. Still, the English stack arriving just after our victory over the rest of the enemy forces in the Balkans was nice; when Baron said his troops wouldn't fight mine if I joined the war, I don't think this is what he had in mind.
As long as Baron doesn't fight seriously, of course. Byzantium is out of manpower, so is Uzbek, but if Baron decides to invade Italy there's little I can do about it. Of course, I'm not by any means claiming that Kuipy has that under control, since Kuipy is not, in fact, an otherworldly entity hiding behind a human - well, Internet-human - facade and silently infiltrating his mind-control tentacles into the other players. That would be a paranoid delusion. I'm just saying, paranoia is not the only failure mode of human minds; schizophrenia is a thing, too.
World situation, 1730. Note the occupation of Anatolia.
Wars have been decided by logistics, by murthering great battles, and by attrition; wars are sometimes won by the deepest pockets, sometimes by the biggest battalions, sometimes by sheer stubborn refusal to surrender. Revolutionary or religious fervour, better ships and sailors, or a tradition of educating the ruling class for war, have all been known to produce victory. These are the considerations that statesmen weigh, when deciding on peace or war; these are familiar factors in geostrategic analysis, strengths and weaknesses whose effect on war is understood. On the other hand, it is somewhat unusual for wars to be settled in peaceful drawing rooms, by intrigues turning on charm and popularity, within the capital of a single belligerent power. This, nonetheless, is what happened in 1730.
The war began in a fairly ordinary fashion: Byzantium, the Uzbek Khanate, and Denmark, encouraged by their success in retaking Ragusa and Holstein, and longing to reverse the centuries-long Drang nach Osten that had carried the two-headed eagle as far as the Caspian, jointly declared war on Germany. Germany's allies, partly annoyed by the perceived lack of German help in the previous war, and partly feeling that such a large nation could surely take care of itself, stayed out. The entry of England on the anti-German side was the capstone to the arch of Byzantine diplomacy that had preceded the war; there were victory celebrations in the streets of Constantinople, and "Berlin delenda est" was on everyone's lips.
For some time it appeared that such high spirits were well warranted; the initial campaigns in the Ukraine went badly for Germany, and Danish troops advanced as far south as Berlin. But now the internal politics of London became important. A substantial fraction of the ruling class, including several Shrewsburys, felt considerable sympathy for the German "underdog", and agitated for exiting the war and rejoining on the other side, to "punish the perfidious Greeks". They were not able to make this into official policy; but they could and did throw such sand into the warmaking machinery of the British Empire that no redcoat fired a shot at a man in field-grey. Officers refused to command armies that would be sent across the Rhine, or threatened to resign if their regiments were sent to France; orders were "lost", requisitions proved "impossible to fulfil", units were reported "not ready for combat" that a month before had been "prepared down to the last garter button". At one point 3100 pounds were sent to the Senate of Venice, "to do with as they see fit", that had been collected from the better families of London; this was not technically treason, since Venice was at that point neutral, but everyone knew perfectly well that the Senate would send the money straight to their beleaguered ally - which had indeed been the purpose of the collection. A stabler government would have hanged and exiled, but there were too many guilty; any official notice taken of the gift might have led to open rebellion - and if it came to it, the Strafford administration was not by any means gung-ho for the war, which it had entered mainly to maintain the Byzantine alliance, rather than because any real advantage was expected to come of it.
Thwarted in the project of making their own government punish the Greeks, the pro-German Whigs (led by no less a personality than the Prince of Wales) turned to making others do the work; unofficial assurances were sent to Venice and to Egypt that if those governments reconsidered their neutrality and entered the war on the German side - that is, ostensibly against England - there would be no repercussions even if the Greeks won. It is not entirely clear that this was actually within the power of the Whigs, but the Senate appears to have believed it. At any rate they did declare war on Byzantium, and a joint Veneto-Egyptian force took Ragusa and occupied Serbia before bogging down in the Balkan mountains. Ironically enough, this was in large part due to an English expeditionary force; the Tory government, stung by having the opposition effectively routing around its foreign policy, had finally managed to find an officer who would command a fighting army - albeit still on the understanding that it wouldn't enter Germany - and had dispatched just enough troops to the Balkans to keep its ally in the war. The large English forces in Genoa, France, and Morocco remained in their peacetime garrisons.
To such a pass, in the year of Grace 1730, had the nations of Europe come, that wars were decided, not on the Balkan or Baltic battlefields, but in the struggles of London hostesses to make people come to their parties - both kinds of parties. Geoffrey Essex's decision to command the Balkan Expeditionary Force seems to have been made during his attendance at a ball held by Lord Strafford. At this distance in time we will never reconstruct what pressures or incentives were brought to bear, but it does appear that if Essex had instead attended the rival gathering of the Prince of Wales, there would have been (for lack of a noble commander) no English troops holding the Balkan line, the Venetian army would have marched to Constantinople, and the resulting peace would have been a victor's diktat. Instead there was a lengthy stalemate, every peace term proposed by either party was sent to London for approval (since all understood that London had the power to decide the war any way it liked, if its elite could make their collective minds up), and the peace was a compromise. For this reason the war is called the "War to the Knife and Fork", referring to the dinner parties that decided it.
From Albion's Greed: Four British Perfidies,
Davide Pescatore,
(C) Universita Ca' Foscari Venezia, 1989
Davide Pescatore,
(C) Universita Ca' Foscari Venezia, 1989
Having seen English troops occupying all of Italy in a few brisk months the last time I fought Byzantium - and having also seen Germany's troops forming a line of battle somewhat north of the Alps, but making no attempt to move south - I was inclined to stay out when Blayne warned me that he was going for Germany again. I had just rebuilt my army and navy and wasn't really in a mood to have them destroyed yet again. But then I saw no serious fighting in France, and Baron sent me money and assurances that even if I lost I wouldn't lose any territory. So I took another stab at it, and while it's not over yet it's looking reasonable:
The Balkan line. Numbers of my reserve troops censored. The visible Byzantine troops appear to account for all the men the ledger reports he has, but there could be some English stacks behind the line.
Two successive Serbian battles. Although we won, and killed as many as we lost, we were unfortunately too battered to take advantage and advance. Still, the English stack arriving just after our victory over the rest of the enemy forces in the Balkans was nice; when Baron said his troops wouldn't fight mine if I joined the war, I don't think this is what he had in mind.
As long as Baron doesn't fight seriously, of course. Byzantium is out of manpower, so is Uzbek, but if Baron decides to invade Italy there's little I can do about it. Of course, I'm not by any means claiming that Kuipy has that under control, since Kuipy is not, in fact, an otherworldly entity hiding behind a human - well, Internet-human - facade and silently infiltrating his mind-control tentacles into the other players. That would be a paranoid delusion. I'm just saying, paranoia is not the only failure mode of human minds; schizophrenia is a thing, too.
World situation, 1730. Note the occupation of Anatolia.
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Pharaoh hardened his heart
XV - The journey from Europe to Africa
XV - The journey from Europe to Africa
1729
Fall comes early and hard in the Carpathian mountains, and this fall was especially unpleasant for the swallows. Men the birds must tolerate, perforce, because they too are attracted to the houses and barns where swallows like to nest. But the birds prefer them few and far away, and now there were just too many of them, making noise and fire throughout the woods and the fields, having walked and sailed there from the extremities of the earth. The only good part were the great number of flies attracted to the dead, where they would lay eggs later to spawn ugly voracious maggots burrowing through the putrid decaying flesh for the dark grim glory of Death later to spawn into more flies the swallows would eat.
But now an entire company of brown green-clad Egyptian men huddle themselves into the old barn, shouting, smoking, making smelly fires. It is more than the swallows can put up with, and with fall coming anyway they start the Great Journey early this year. The Great Journey their kind has taken for hundreds of generations.
It is a long and arduous one to the verdant plains of Nubia. Swallows glide rather better than most birds their size, but they are still built for low-altitude, muscle-powered flight ; they can't do as the geese and storks, soar to the level of jet streams and let them carry them south. So they fly over disputed forests and disputed sea and undisputed desert, following stars and landmarks and a hereditary instinct, not sleeping, not resting, hardly eating. Flying burns through their fat and their ranks. Raptors takes their toll. The wind buffets them, nicks their beautiful feather, pushes them astray, sprays them with odious seawater and cutting sand. They fight through it all, and, for some, live through it all. Already there are flies and mosquitoes again, swarming around the million-beast herds in the swaying grasslands.
But something is not right. The herds are thinner this year, as they were the previous year. And the hereditary instinct is wrong. They is no great expanse on reeds on the banks of the Great River, no place to nest and rest and feed. They is a city, a brand new city of brand new buildings, smelling of fresh cements and stone shavings and mud bricks drying in the sun. A brand new city of long straight streets and clear discrete quarters and symmetrical layout, drawn before it was built. And throngs and throngs of men, black and brown and white, from every reach of an Empire their bird brain cannot comprehend.
Even those which saw it last year do not understand it. How can the hereditary instinct be wrong? And if it is, what can they trust? They scatter and wander, confused. One perches itself on a clothesline over a smaller street, looking at the pavement at though it might only be a leaves strewn over the promised land, to be blown away sometime soon.
And then a sling-bullet hits it, and it dies.
So I decided I did not feel secure with my capital on the coastline and moved it much farther inland, which meant I had to build up a province almost from scratch.
Pharaoh hardened his heart
XV part II - The journey from Africa to Europe
XV part II - The journey from Africa to Europe
1729
Seasons on the Nubian plateau, this high, this far from the sea, are a mostly human conceit. Spring is no more pleasant or unpleasant than the rest of the year, indeed, not really noticeable. The temperature remains mild, the rainfall scarce, the White Nile does not change in flow or composition as does its Blue counterpart in Ethiopia, even daylight does not fluctuate much. The best method for keeping track of months and years is reading the stars, or studying the birds, or counting the days; all of them priestly tasks in the state of Egypt. Still Spring comes, eventually.
A hundred Egyptian soldiers file out of Sennar, in bright green uniforms. Two black swallow feathers stand on the side of their fez: a company of skirmishers. They file out proudly, a hundred thin-bearded presumptive heroes among thousands of others, under twenty and the cheers of the crowd.
Out of the city they embark on larger feluccas, and sail North. Downstream the raising flood has made the cataracts navigable along a thin, dredged passage. They pass restored temples and bustling towns and sunken orchards that look like the river itself is sprouting branches and leaves. They pass multitudes of men, of boats, of birds nesting in the papyrus reeds. Already they understand how larger the world might be than they ever thought it, and this is still only Egypt, and so far it has been a quiet, easy journey.
Their frail, shallow boats cannot carry them further than Alexandria, though. What few seagoing ships Pharaoh owns patrol the Red Sea, so close and so far. And therefore a flotilla of Italian merchantmen is waiting for them in lake Mariout, ready to take Egyptian armies to Europe for the first time in centuries.
Passing even the tame northern sea is a frightening experience for soldiers born hundreds of miles from the nearest shore. Land disappears beyond the horizon and the whole world becomes unsteady. Their officers keep them together in prayer and what little training they can do, discouraging them from engaging with the weird, pale, unmanly sailors that man the ship. Italians might be allies but they are all kafirs, tainted unbelievers. Not everyone you would die for is to be trusted.
So they keep to themselves, to their sleep and their prayers. They pray to the God without a face, come from the Great Void to own this world, and to his hundred faces, animal and human faces, Pharaoh ever-reborn, Mohammed his herald, Jesus the trickster. It is about that time the first of them die; those with less strength or less luck or less faith. The priests sew them in plain shrouds and throw them overboard after a short ceremony. The survivors repeat their names and the names of their parents, that they may tell them afterwards. Since Jihad, the great battle against doubt and freedom, never ceases, it would not be a lie to tell them their son died in battle.
And finally the ships dock in ten small Adriatic ports, and it is time to march again. Europe is as unpleasant as they've been told. The land is cold, the nature weird and unfamiliar, the places small and filthy. Locals are ugly, slovenly, dishonest. Even the food, even the bread tastes bad. But their officers command, and so they walk. They march through forest and mountain and burnt farmland. They trudge through mud and snow and dead men. They lose fat and comrades, a few at first, then more, to disease and battle and exhaustion. Comrades are easier to replace, they ship more over all the time.
Our boys peacekeeping force in the Balkans, their numbers depleted by kafir microaggressions
And so they start to forget the men who died on the ships, and then the ones who died in the first battles, and finally they forget the name of the new man standing beside them before they learn it. It's easier this way.
And then it's winter, and the skirmisher company huddles in an abandoned barn on the northern side of the Carpthians. Only one of them is a survivor of that splendid hundred who marched out of Sennar on a Spring morning. By now he knows there is no going home; even if he survives the winter, veterans only receive their stipend if they settle in a different province from the one whence they came, as the vanguard of another fight, against religious and cultural deviancy throughout the empire. But still, what home is that? He dreams of his true home, Sennar, his father's voice and mother's treats, of the long sunny streets where it is never cold. As he smokes his pipe he dreams of all that, and he looks longingly at the swallows nesting beneath the barn rafters, wishing he too could soar and fly to sunny Sudan.
And the morning after, he dies.
So also in the meantime I went to Europe and helped King of Men fight his war, and started an age of much greater cultural and religious homogenization.
The spread of Egyptian Kultur throughout the Empire
Some things happened this session too but it's still in the air so.
- 1
Secret Faiths
How does one keep a secret for generations?
The Aiello have changed their rituals in the service of secrecy; they no longer circumsize their boys, no longer refuse pork and shellfish, and no Aiello would dream, now, of saying the Shema in public even for a brother. But they still meet, on the night different from other nights, to eat unleavened bread and ask four questions; their boys still study - in addition to the broad curriculum expected of a Venetian gentilhuomo - texts in a language they never speak outside the Aiello mansion. Over half a millennium, perhaps three thousand Aiello have passed through the Hidden Gate behind Salomone's study, and held the clandestine rites in the Inmost Chamber. They clean it with their own hands; the mosaics and tapestries that show scenes of Exodus, of exotic Eastern cities, of two boys fishing, are the work of the Aiello women, not of hired artists. Three thousand men and women, over five hundred years; not all of great intelligence, some embittered drunkards. Yet not one has broken faith.
Surely it is an accomplishment, a long silence worthy of a great family; it was not, after all, by luck alone that Salomone parleyed his stroke of fortune into a position among the rulers of Venice. Fortuna e virtu are the two great requisites for power; if the Aiello have had their share of luck, still, luck alone will not maintain a family among the mighty for centuries. And if another demonstration of that virtu were required, the discipline and self-control required to guard against drunken slips of the tongue, against confessions to a beloved mistress, and against deliberate betrayal for gain, for hundreds of years - the Long Silence, if it were broken, would in itself justify the Aiello claim to be the pre-eminent family of the Serene Republic.
Twelve generations have kept the faith; and if the Long Silence is breached, it will not be the fault of the young men and women who have recently asked the four questions in this year of Grace 1745. But if it takes one to know one, it follows that one can know another. Sometimes, now, there are hints that the Inmost Chamber is not the only well-kept secret in Venice. It is not apparent to the casual eye; but to one born in a mansion with a Hidden Gate leading to rooms whose dread secret must be kept, the signs are there: In mismatches between the areas of a house that have a known use, and its outside dimensions; in weaving calluses and mortar traces on the fingers of women not known as artists; in the tiny flickering of eyes as a slightly drunk guest suddenly sobers, and checks whether you have been paying attention and perhaps heard too much in his careless words.
Every sword cuts two ways; if the Aiello can see the signs in others, and if those signs indeed indicate that there are other Inmost Chambers in which secret rites are held... then will not the celebrants of those rites be able to see the signs in the Aiello? It takes one to know one; and one can know another. Sometimes it seems that there is a conspiracy of silence in Venice; that all the patrician families have a secret, and all know that the others have the same secret, and all know that the others know... but they are not quite sure whether everyone knows that they know that they know, and so they keep their silences, and communicate in little flickering hints and subtle signs, and say without words "I am one of you, you are one of us".
But if they say so, there is this question to be asked: What is the 'us' in which they, by accident, include the Aiello? If all the great families of Venice have secret chambers in which they hold hidden rites, still it does not seem likely that they all eat unleavened bread and ask four questions. But it may well be that their nights are different from other nights.
What secret faiths are hidden, in the Inmost Chambers of Venice?
The Byzantine war ended in a compromise peace imposed by England: Ragusa is back in Venetian hands, and that was roughly the only result except for three countries exhausting their manpower reserves. I do not think this outcome pleased anyone except the English player; the people attacking Byzantium wanted much more loot, and Byzantium wanted to actually fight to the last Englishman (to be fair, he had already fought to the last Greek and Uzbek) and get some loot himself. However, England had the ships, the money, and the men, and wanted to fight in India; so he called off the shots.
We then descended like locusts on Persia, which has lost its player and is out of the protected period; unfortunately I did not come well out of this ghoulish feasting, which instead strengthened Byzantium very considerably. Due to a series of mistakes, and a divinely-inspired Persian general beating up my stacks instead of other peoples' stacks, I got only some coastal provinces in the Persian Gulf.
Seriously, check this guy out.
Eurasia, 1745.
How does one keep a secret for generations?
The Aiello have changed their rituals in the service of secrecy; they no longer circumsize their boys, no longer refuse pork and shellfish, and no Aiello would dream, now, of saying the Shema in public even for a brother. But they still meet, on the night different from other nights, to eat unleavened bread and ask four questions; their boys still study - in addition to the broad curriculum expected of a Venetian gentilhuomo - texts in a language they never speak outside the Aiello mansion. Over half a millennium, perhaps three thousand Aiello have passed through the Hidden Gate behind Salomone's study, and held the clandestine rites in the Inmost Chamber. They clean it with their own hands; the mosaics and tapestries that show scenes of Exodus, of exotic Eastern cities, of two boys fishing, are the work of the Aiello women, not of hired artists. Three thousand men and women, over five hundred years; not all of great intelligence, some embittered drunkards. Yet not one has broken faith.
Surely it is an accomplishment, a long silence worthy of a great family; it was not, after all, by luck alone that Salomone parleyed his stroke of fortune into a position among the rulers of Venice. Fortuna e virtu are the two great requisites for power; if the Aiello have had their share of luck, still, luck alone will not maintain a family among the mighty for centuries. And if another demonstration of that virtu were required, the discipline and self-control required to guard against drunken slips of the tongue, against confessions to a beloved mistress, and against deliberate betrayal for gain, for hundreds of years - the Long Silence, if it were broken, would in itself justify the Aiello claim to be the pre-eminent family of the Serene Republic.
Twelve generations have kept the faith; and if the Long Silence is breached, it will not be the fault of the young men and women who have recently asked the four questions in this year of Grace 1745. But if it takes one to know one, it follows that one can know another. Sometimes, now, there are hints that the Inmost Chamber is not the only well-kept secret in Venice. It is not apparent to the casual eye; but to one born in a mansion with a Hidden Gate leading to rooms whose dread secret must be kept, the signs are there: In mismatches between the areas of a house that have a known use, and its outside dimensions; in weaving calluses and mortar traces on the fingers of women not known as artists; in the tiny flickering of eyes as a slightly drunk guest suddenly sobers, and checks whether you have been paying attention and perhaps heard too much in his careless words.
Every sword cuts two ways; if the Aiello can see the signs in others, and if those signs indeed indicate that there are other Inmost Chambers in which secret rites are held... then will not the celebrants of those rites be able to see the signs in the Aiello? It takes one to know one; and one can know another. Sometimes it seems that there is a conspiracy of silence in Venice; that all the patrician families have a secret, and all know that the others have the same secret, and all know that the others know... but they are not quite sure whether everyone knows that they know that they know, and so they keep their silences, and communicate in little flickering hints and subtle signs, and say without words "I am one of you, you are one of us".
But if they say so, there is this question to be asked: What is the 'us' in which they, by accident, include the Aiello? If all the great families of Venice have secret chambers in which they hold hidden rites, still it does not seem likely that they all eat unleavened bread and ask four questions. But it may well be that their nights are different from other nights.
What secret faiths are hidden, in the Inmost Chambers of Venice?
The Byzantine war ended in a compromise peace imposed by England: Ragusa is back in Venetian hands, and that was roughly the only result except for three countries exhausting their manpower reserves. I do not think this outcome pleased anyone except the English player; the people attacking Byzantium wanted much more loot, and Byzantium wanted to actually fight to the last Englishman (to be fair, he had already fought to the last Greek and Uzbek) and get some loot himself. However, England had the ships, the money, and the men, and wanted to fight in India; so he called off the shots.
We then descended like locusts on Persia, which has lost its player and is out of the protected period; unfortunately I did not come well out of this ghoulish feasting, which instead strengthened Byzantium very considerably. Due to a series of mistakes, and a divinely-inspired Persian general beating up my stacks instead of other peoples' stacks, I got only some coastal provinces in the Persian Gulf.
Seriously, check this guy out.
Eurasia, 1745.
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Are you guys going to convert to EU4? And do you already have a converter? I forgot if you played the last mega campaign in EU3 or EU4 ...
Err.. oops of course you are
Sorry I shouldn't post after nights with too little sleep
Thanks for answering the question I meant to ask, instead of the nonsensical question I did ask.
Is anyone going to do anything about Britain? I mean no hate against the general, but damn. You guys have had hundreds of years.
Mark and Reprisal
Four artifacts of the late eighteenth century:
Sometimes people declare war on me and I lose some territory; that's life. Sometimes they refuse to form a coalition against the obvious near-hegemon who is threatening to win the game; that's diplomacy. Sometimes they don't comment on my AARs; that's art. I sometimes experience mild annoyance at these events, but there's no question of losing my temper. But when they interfere with my money-making... then I go to war. In particular, the Korean player, Mark, had apparently acquired his Mediterranean ports expressly for the purpose of sending privateers to Venice; at any rate it's hard to imagine what other earthly use he could have for them, unless of course it was to privateer Genoa, which would be entirely different and praiseworthy. Also foolhardy, since Baron has 300 heavy ships and 600 light. At any rate, as soon as I became aware, I threatened war; Mark at first gave in, but shortly after the privateers were back. So I sank them (I mean, come on, 30 light ships? Venice is not the foremost naval power in the world, but that's ridiculous) and occupied the privateer ports, and demanded they be handed over as surety that there would be no further incidents.
This put me nominally at war with Byzantium, Japan, and England, which would be moderately beyond my strength; however, these Powers proved to be amenable to the argument "he's attacking my trade" and entered the war only pro-forma, except that England would not countenance any loss of Asian territories by Korea. That was fine, since all I wanted was the Med ports and peaceful trade in my own damn ocean. However, Mark was able to bribe the North American power, Fox, to enter the war; currently the Foxy Fleet is twice the size of mine, so this was a bit of a blow. The counter-demand was now Madagascar and some African provinces; but England was no more willing to tolerate Venetian losses than Korean ones, and promised to enter the war on my side. Which would have flipped the fleet proportions again; Venice+England would be 400 big ships, twice the Foxy Fleet of 200. However, it would take a while to improve relations enough to ally; meanwhile my colonies all over were being occupied, and there was the distinct possibility that I would be forced into a fleet engagement and lose my whole navy, again. We therefore compromised: Madagascar to Fox, compensated by four Persian provinces to Venice; nothing to Korea; no more privateers in the Adriatic. I actually came out ahead in terms of development, although Madagascar does make an important naval base for Fox that enables them to project power into the Indian Ocean.
I was able to swap some provinces with Egypt and connect Venezia-oltre-il-Mare to my new Persian Gulf possessions; I also started the Suez Canal, partly (very stingily, actually) financed by English and American money. Venice retains a controlling interest in the Canal company, but the minority shareholders have the right to traverse the Canal at all times except when actively at war with Venice.
Nothing to see here; move right along. I triple-guarantee you, there are zero strange cults in Venice; none!
Eurasia, 1779. Note Japan in Ceylon, Byzantium spreading into Mesopotamia, Venezia-oltre-il-Mare connected to the Persian Gulf.
It's been tried. It's difficult to coordinate enough players to effectively fight so dominant a power; give him just one ally, and you need every other naval power in the game to match them on the sea. And since it would be a global war, you need sea superiority to get anywhere; without it he can defeat a coalition in detail by landing on one opponent, crushing it while it's isolated, and moving on to the next.
Four artifacts of the late eighteenth century:
- A parchment document authorising Giampiero Contarini, commanding the brig San Marco Grande, to seize ships out of, or bound for, the two 'Pirate Ports', Oran and Gabes, and to raid their hinterlands. It is issued in the name of the Senate of Venice, and bears the Great Seal of the Doge. It is one of many such letters of marque and reprisal issued in retaliation for privateering against Venetian trade in the Mediterranean by the Hermit Kingdom. Later, the Senate and the People grew sufficiently annoyed to declare war over the issue. The privateer captain would have stored the letter among his private effects on shipboard, as is attested by the creases and stains on the parchment; the gilt frame with cherubs blowing trumpets is a nineteenth-century addition.
- An oil painting signed 'Giovanni', depicting a sea battle between a brig flying the Lion of St Mark, and a lateen-rigged vessel with raked masts, characteristic of the Oran corsairs. The brig is firing a broadside; the rendering of the dramatic flashes of light through the rolling banks of powder smoke is masterful and immensely realistic, possibly indicating that the scene is painted from memory. Some of the fine details, however, are clearly imaginary, presumably the artist's idea of a joke; one of the corsairs appears to be wearing an octopus on his shoulder, where a parrot might be expected. Another is shown jumping into the sea, but it is unclear whether he intends to escape from the brig's broadside or to join the sirens, big-breasted and sharp-toothed, that wave invitingly from the water. The overall effect of the piece, when examined closely, is somewhat disturbing; it is in the private collection of the Contarini family, and may be viewed only by appointment.
- A silver salt-and-pepper shaker in the shape of a ship. The condiments are stored in two compartments running the length of the ship, loaded through functional cargo hatches in the deck. The salt (or pepper) exits through two decks of broadside guns, presumably giving rise to much merriment and cries of "Run out the guns! Fire as you bear!" when the flavouring is applied to the food; at least if the guests are sufficiently drunk. The ship is heavy enough to be awkward to lift with one hand; it is perhaps more of a conversation piece than a serious appliance for getting salt onto food. The ship's figurehead is a bare-chested, heavily muscled man with a beard apparently made of octopus tentacles.
- A bloodstained rope, about the thickness of a man's thumb, looped thirteen times around itself to form a noose. It is said to be the noose in which Eliezer Aiello, then captain of the San Nicolo (later Grand Admiral), hanged a hundred corsairs in a single day. Legend has it that the thrifty Captain refused to authorise the release of more than three yards of rope from the ship's store, reasoning that "hemp costs money, and there's no hurry". That was a cruel jest, since the shortness of the rope caused the corsairs' deaths to be drawn-out choking affairs rather than quick snaps of the neck; thus "no hurry" refers both to the length of each execution, and to the whole day consumed in the affair. One can only imagine the state of mind of the last corsair to be hanged from the rope, sometime around sunset. The rope is in the characteristic four-strand braid of the Venetian Arsenal.
Sometimes people declare war on me and I lose some territory; that's life. Sometimes they refuse to form a coalition against the obvious near-hegemon who is threatening to win the game; that's diplomacy. Sometimes they don't comment on my AARs; that's art. I sometimes experience mild annoyance at these events, but there's no question of losing my temper. But when they interfere with my money-making... then I go to war. In particular, the Korean player, Mark, had apparently acquired his Mediterranean ports expressly for the purpose of sending privateers to Venice; at any rate it's hard to imagine what other earthly use he could have for them, unless of course it was to privateer Genoa, which would be entirely different and praiseworthy. Also foolhardy, since Baron has 300 heavy ships and 600 light. At any rate, as soon as I became aware, I threatened war; Mark at first gave in, but shortly after the privateers were back. So I sank them (I mean, come on, 30 light ships? Venice is not the foremost naval power in the world, but that's ridiculous) and occupied the privateer ports, and demanded they be handed over as surety that there would be no further incidents.
This put me nominally at war with Byzantium, Japan, and England, which would be moderately beyond my strength; however, these Powers proved to be amenable to the argument "he's attacking my trade" and entered the war only pro-forma, except that England would not countenance any loss of Asian territories by Korea. That was fine, since all I wanted was the Med ports and peaceful trade in my own damn ocean. However, Mark was able to bribe the North American power, Fox, to enter the war; currently the Foxy Fleet is twice the size of mine, so this was a bit of a blow. The counter-demand was now Madagascar and some African provinces; but England was no more willing to tolerate Venetian losses than Korean ones, and promised to enter the war on my side. Which would have flipped the fleet proportions again; Venice+England would be 400 big ships, twice the Foxy Fleet of 200. However, it would take a while to improve relations enough to ally; meanwhile my colonies all over were being occupied, and there was the distinct possibility that I would be forced into a fleet engagement and lose my whole navy, again. We therefore compromised: Madagascar to Fox, compensated by four Persian provinces to Venice; nothing to Korea; no more privateers in the Adriatic. I actually came out ahead in terms of development, although Madagascar does make an important naval base for Fox that enables them to project power into the Indian Ocean.
I was able to swap some provinces with Egypt and connect Venezia-oltre-il-Mare to my new Persian Gulf possessions; I also started the Suez Canal, partly (very stingily, actually) financed by English and American money. Venice retains a controlling interest in the Canal company, but the minority shareholders have the right to traverse the Canal at all times except when actively at war with Venice.
Nothing to see here; move right along. I triple-guarantee you, there are zero strange cults in Venice; none!
Eurasia, 1779. Note Japan in Ceylon, Byzantium spreading into Mesopotamia, Venezia-oltre-il-Mare connected to the Persian Gulf.
It's been tried. It's difficult to coordinate enough players to effectively fight so dominant a power; give him just one ally, and you need every other naval power in the game to match them on the sea. And since it would be a global war, you need sea superiority to get anywhere; without it he can defeat a coalition in detail by landing on one opponent, crushing it while it's isolated, and moving on to the next.
- 1
Shocking that a nation like Korea should be tolerated having ports in the Mediterranean Sea.
Is Fox going to suck all of the world empty through immigration when you convert to Vic2?
And how many player slots are you going to have assigned when the Vic2 phase starts? It seems to me like you guys have a lot more players in this stage of the EU4 phase, than can reasonably take part in a Vic2 multiplayer game! Or did Paradox patch the MP part of Vic2 to a higher level of stability and performance in the past 2 years?
Is Fox going to suck all of the world empty through immigration when you convert to Vic2?
And how many player slots are you going to have assigned when the Vic2 phase starts? It seems to me like you guys have a lot more players in this stage of the EU4 phase, than can reasonably take part in a Vic2 multiplayer game! Or did Paradox patch the MP part of Vic2 to a higher level of stability and performance in the past 2 years?
Why, how many players can V2 support? Currently we have 12.
Could it laugh? The mere question would have appeared monstrous to my parents' generation, and absurd to my grandparents'. How could I try to, what? To humanize it? After all that happened?
But we accept readily that It could feel some human emotions, not pity, not love obviously (but will it be obvious in another century?), but anger for example, and of course fear. So can at least some animals. But humor, we generally assume, is inherently human. Its vessels, of course, could perform the physical act of laughing, though they seldom did; but we consider it a purely manipulative act, to effect human reactions around It according to Its obscure designs, or an entirely inhuman behavior, like the hyena's unsettling "laughter".
And yet. I have studied volumes of stories about Anubids, Kathkudas and al-Baraks. Who knows how many are false? But hey cannot all be. And throughout them we see him joking. It was not apparent at the time, maybe, but It was both living and laughing at our expense. All along It was mocking us. Dropping hints of Its true nature seemed like a game to It (U. Fukozaka has suggested that It, or some part of It, was self-sabotaging; that It or part of It was wanting humankind to unmask and destroy It – interesting though the theory might be, there is little evidence to it) and its frequent misanthropic observations take a different meaning once we know It was and considered Itself no part of the mankind he so derided.
No piece of evidence is perhaps more conclusive than two of the letters displayed in the gilded Hall of Diplomats in Sennar, where Egyptian bureaucrats and foreign envoys were encouraged to ponder respectfully the history of Egyptian diplomacy. Both were redacted in 1744 in the personal hand of Pharaoh Fath Ali, Its vessel during the final partition of Persia. In one, addressed to the Greek Emperor, Pharaoh accepts not to expand in the crumbling Empire West of the Tigris, which the Greek had lain claim to, in exchange for retrocession of the Cyrenaican cities. In the other, Pharaoh calls the Sultan of Adal Haqq al-Din Yagoub "his younger brother", "a true believer" and "to other men as the dog is to the Jackal"; he also guarantees his independence in perpetuity.
Adal in the Caucasus (not to be confused with the minor Egyptian port in the Horn of Africa) was a century-old march of the Persian Empire, with a tradition of purveying great warriors to the Empire. Haqq al-Din himself had fought Pharaoh's armies in Samawah and impressed him with his military skills. By supporting Adalese independence, Pharaoh was showing magnanimity in victory, dealing a killing blow to its old Persian rival and creating an independent, strong regional power West of Tigris.
Possibly this is not what the Greek Emperor had in mind.
There is more, I think, to this display of contempt than mere cynicism, or hope to bait a reaction from the Greeks. As It was mocking mankind so too Pharaoh was mocking the Basileus, a twisted, mirthless version of what we would call humor, maybe, but humor nonetheless. In Its cruel mind the Greek's pompous claim to rulership was but a grotesque parody of the true dominion he meant to exert on Man. And he responded in kind, with a grotesque, naked parody of a treaty that had the form of an agreement but none of the substance.
William al-Nasr, the Djinn's laugh, 2016? (unpublished)
So this is the unfinished business I alluded to that happened the week before last. Nothing much happened last week except I developed my land.
Pharaoh hardened his heart
XVI -Respecting the Letter
XVI -Respecting the Letter
Could it laugh? The mere question would have appeared monstrous to my parents' generation, and absurd to my grandparents'. How could I try to, what? To humanize it? After all that happened?
But we accept readily that It could feel some human emotions, not pity, not love obviously (but will it be obvious in another century?), but anger for example, and of course fear. So can at least some animals. But humor, we generally assume, is inherently human. Its vessels, of course, could perform the physical act of laughing, though they seldom did; but we consider it a purely manipulative act, to effect human reactions around It according to Its obscure designs, or an entirely inhuman behavior, like the hyena's unsettling "laughter".
And yet. I have studied volumes of stories about Anubids, Kathkudas and al-Baraks. Who knows how many are false? But hey cannot all be. And throughout them we see him joking. It was not apparent at the time, maybe, but It was both living and laughing at our expense. All along It was mocking us. Dropping hints of Its true nature seemed like a game to It (U. Fukozaka has suggested that It, or some part of It, was self-sabotaging; that It or part of It was wanting humankind to unmask and destroy It – interesting though the theory might be, there is little evidence to it) and its frequent misanthropic observations take a different meaning once we know It was and considered Itself no part of the mankind he so derided.
No piece of evidence is perhaps more conclusive than two of the letters displayed in the gilded Hall of Diplomats in Sennar, where Egyptian bureaucrats and foreign envoys were encouraged to ponder respectfully the history of Egyptian diplomacy. Both were redacted in 1744 in the personal hand of Pharaoh Fath Ali, Its vessel during the final partition of Persia. In one, addressed to the Greek Emperor, Pharaoh accepts not to expand in the crumbling Empire West of the Tigris, which the Greek had lain claim to, in exchange for retrocession of the Cyrenaican cities. In the other, Pharaoh calls the Sultan of Adal Haqq al-Din Yagoub "his younger brother", "a true believer" and "to other men as the dog is to the Jackal"; he also guarantees his independence in perpetuity.
Adal in the Caucasus (not to be confused with the minor Egyptian port in the Horn of Africa) was a century-old march of the Persian Empire, with a tradition of purveying great warriors to the Empire. Haqq al-Din himself had fought Pharaoh's armies in Samawah and impressed him with his military skills. By supporting Adalese independence, Pharaoh was showing magnanimity in victory, dealing a killing blow to its old Persian rival and creating an independent, strong regional power West of Tigris.
Possibly this is not what the Greek Emperor had in mind.
There is more, I think, to this display of contempt than mere cynicism, or hope to bait a reaction from the Greeks. As It was mocking mankind so too Pharaoh was mocking the Basileus, a twisted, mirthless version of what we would call humor, maybe, but humor nonetheless. In Its cruel mind the Greek's pompous claim to rulership was but a grotesque parody of the true dominion he meant to exert on Man. And he responded in kind, with a grotesque, naked parody of a treaty that had the form of an agreement but none of the substance.
William al-Nasr, the Djinn's laugh, 2016? (unpublished)
So this is the unfinished business I alluded to that happened the week before last. Nothing much happened last week except I developed my land.
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