When Milan was finally at peace again, Manpower was down to… 5,000 men!!! (ignore this first screenshot’s manpower listing – that’s an old screenshot). On a side note (and quite insignificant, compared to all the happenings of the last years), pirates showed up in the East Indies, to feed off our colonies – steps would be taken, in time.
The economy remained weak, held down by the war exhaustion, revolts, and stability issues. Census taxes were down, in the new year (this was months ago, but it seemed a waste to go into it during the war). Interest from all the loans was not helpful. Other indicators were up slightly, in most cases.
Ally Siena, strangely, found the temerity to “warn” Milan against further expansion (after having assisted in building our empire!).
This would muddy the character of relations between Milan and Siena, strengthening the voice of those in the Empire who had always considered Siena an annoyance…
Despite her earlier betrayal, England was considered a valuable enough ally that, when she came knocking…
It was time to begin strengthening Imperial defenses, wherever our outposts were threatened by isolation. A new, stronger, fort was built in Crete, which had long been considered a possible staging area for invasions into the Holy Land, where on a fateful evening nearly 1600 years before, Christ had been born… (what timing, eh?)
The colonies in the Moluccas were still developing, but concerted effort had finally built Cape Colony to sufficient status to became a way station for a small Imperial naval squadron…
The war exhaustion had caused increased risk of revolt (up to 19% in some places), which caught fire in Northern Africa in mid-1579.
The Imperial naval squadron mentioned earlier was actually en-route (with troops!) to the Moluccas. It was quite a stretch, from Cape Colony to Flores Island, in the East Indies, and the ships – a flyte, and a captured pirate ship – barely made it into port! Note the nearby pirate ship, too.
Then, poor France suffered a Badboy war! lol Burgundy, Castille and Lithuania against France and all her vassals…
Not like Castille or Lithuania are likely to get troops into the theatre – we’re kind of in the way! Maybe they’ll ask for military access…
Check out our Badboy! A year-and-a-half after the end of the war, and after seizing 8 provinces in peace negotiations (spread out over several years for some of those…), we’re actually down to only 4.7 over our Badboy threshold! It’s 38.7 versus a threshold of 34 (and that’s Massimiliano’s – many of our previous rulers had a threshold of 37).
The reason, of course, is all those Diplomats we have in our advisor court. By a constant, inexorable reduction in tensions, they’re actually helping keep our Badboy down! We did, also, tend to take provinces in negotiations which we had a Core on. Not all, but some.
By 1580, a better picture of our economy can be seen. Without the distortions of War Taxes, you can see how really depressed our economy is. Taxation and Census Taxes are really down. Production, however, and Gold Income, are steadily increasing, though! More stability will improve things more. We’ll see…
And, of course… Merry Christmas!
p.s. - Among the things that got deleted in my computer crash is something Chief Ragusa reminds me of... I had a long monologue, which I'm not going to attempt to repeat, about the silliness of Siena warning us not to attack any of her neighbors... WE ARE her only neighbor! lol Milan solemnly promised not to attack itself. No such guarantee for Siena, however...
