[SPOILERS] JR4 tries his luck in PB 37

[JR4]

TURN 195

Here`s the stack I mentioned last turn. Gavagai moved the Galleons out of sight for Dark Savant. They are now 2N NW of our Caravel. Let`s see if all units are still there next turn.
   

We found a resource this turn! Chubei popped an Iron. That`s a very welcome boost to our production there. It`s not like we`re losing control over the tile in the short run.

Our western cities are building infrastructure. Danashri and Mandukhai will both need the happiness from the Markets if we ever swap out of Hereditary Rule. When science is turned on, we`re making over 1500 beakers in a Golden Age. It should be a whole lot more after the Oxford University finishes in 3 turns time.

Nambui is building the NE. It`s our best specialist city and could use the extra GP generation bonus. Nambui could have built Ironworks or any other National Wonder really, but we should take advantage of the GA and get it up and running asap.

We`re making quite a few Grenadiers, they`re the best unit we can build and will have odds against those Oromos. Nothing much changed in the eastern theater. Our island cities have to be defended in case of a surprise attack, but next turn we``ll be at tech parity with DS (Military Science completes).

[JR4]

Graphs and demos: As expected the power of both us and DS took a hit as the fighting finally showed up.

Your summary of the other players is probably about right. We`re still favorites to end up in 5th at worst. That`s not too bad imo. It`s a bit hard to know exactly what Gavagai is up to, though.

Our Great Generals do indeed have some options. One of them could board a Galleon to get out to Mist. The other one could make a Military Academy in Nambui. I think that`s very useful for us, especially as it can make ships in addition to land units.

[RefSteel]

That iron pop will be great as long as we control the tile! And considering how long the culture has been piling up there, it's going to take a long time (short of conquering Chubei) before dtay gains control of that tile - if ever!

Short of Representation, will Nambui have the happiness it needs if we leave HR? That might be pretty important since it's about to become our NE city, but it's definitely a good choice as long as we can keep its happiness intact; it's obviously running a lot of specialists, and with its World Wonder and soon to be two National Wonders, it has some nice "extra" GPP too!

Thinking about it a little, I don't think it's really worth sending a GG out to Mist unless we have a pretty specific plan to use him. We could do something extreme like one-turn Alpha, whip out a spy someplace, transfer it to Dark Savant's land, and check for an opportunity to raze his capital or something, but ... I dunno, I feel like even if we did, and even if the opportunity existed and it worked, it would kind of be a waste of the GG. If anything, Dark Savant would be even less likely to grant us peace if we did something like that, and we'd certainly have nothing to gain. The reason I thought of the trick I mentioned was actually that I wondered where MoM happened to be, and figured that if it was slightly inland and nearly undefended, we might be able to capture it for a turn this way just before starting a Golden Age, knowing Dark Savant would immediately take it back, but not before we traded a single GG for 4 GA turns. Then I realized it would take way too long to set up (we'd need a spy or deleted sentry to check the garrison for the city, even if it isn't one of the heavily-fortified coastal or border ones, plus time to merge the GG and board the ship before the turn of the attack...) especially considering MoM probably is in a heavily-defended city.

If we keep the GG around on our mainland, at least we'd have some options to use him cleverly against any possible attack from dtay. On the other hand, it might be worth just settling them both as first suggested - or maybe building Military Academies in a couple of different cities. There's an argument that with our empire as small as it is, our best hope is to just make each of our few best cities as powerful as we possibly can make them.

[JR4]

Short of Representation, will Nambui have the happiness it needs if we leave HR? 


If we keep the GG around on our mainland, at least we'd have some options to use him cleverly against any possible attack from dtay.  On the other hand, it might be worth just settling them both as first suggested - or maybe building Military Academies in a couple of different cities. There's an argument that with our empire as small as it is, our best hope is to just make each of our few best cities as powerful as we possibly can make them.

I think Nambui is pretty close to the happy cap and will definitely be unhappy if we swap out of Hereditary Rule. Nambui could use a Stupa in order to get more happiness. If Joey accepts our Silk - Spice offer that`s helpful and the Incense Fort +Road will finish next turn. All in all, it`s not too bad I think. D-mishi probably should be left alone for a while in order to let the whip unhappiness cool off a bit. Actually we should have some War Weariness right now as we`ve been fighting in foreign culture (I haven`t checked).

Now, what to do with the Great Generals? It does take a lot of time to set up a Commando raid. I`m leaning on using both GGs for Military Academies. Nambui should get the first and the second could be built in.. a number of cities. Borte, Muqa or Oghul Qaimish perhaps?

[RefSteel]

I think Nambui is pretty close to the happy cap and will definitely be unhappy if we swap out of Hereditary Rule.

That accords with my calculations, yeah. If it's getting a Military Academy, we might even put a Colosseum there for the happiness and the extra xp on Knights/Cuirs/Cavalry. If we do plan to build a Colosseum and Stupa there though, unless it's building more units first, we might want to save the GG untill the infrastructure is done, in case it's needed for a more-pressing emergency.

Actually we should have some War Weariness right now as we`ve been fighting in foreign culture (I haven`t checked).

True, although at this point, the majority of the fighting has been in our own culture, fortunately!

Now, what to do with the Great Generals? It does take a lot of time to set up a Commando raid. I`m leaning on using both GGs for Military Academies. Nambui should get the first and the second could be built in.. a number of cities. Borte, Muqa or Oghul Qaimish perhaps?

If we're looking at two Military Academies, those seem like our candidates, yeah. I think from a straight "which would give us the most hammers" perspective, it's Muqa and Nambui, especially since they're both ports and on ~opposite sides of our empire, but I can see an argument for Oghul Qaimish too. (I don't think I'd put one in Borte since it's not a port and I think it'll always make fewer base hammers (before multipliers) than Muqa and Nambui.

Also, apparently Nambui is a nice city in a golden age. I mean, it's a pretty nice city anyway, but what it's doing right now seems kind of crazy.

[RefSteel]

Meanwhile, writing the prehistory was pretty fun, but it's high time I began the real...

History of the Mardocin Toli Khatunate, Ükhergarts Golyn University Press, Borte

The oldest surviving document from the ancient Khatunate is a small, cracked clay tablet describing the exchange of a certain number of Toregene sable pelts for a certain weight of Muqa silver.  It is believed to be a legal record of a transaction sealed in the Palace of the Eternal Empress by a merchant family from the growing hamlet then developing among the floodplains below.  Other scraps of a similar nature have been discovered in the region as well, but the oldest surviving written description of Khatunate history - older even than Chubei's stele with its account of the Zulu conflict - is "The Manor Vase," recently unearthed in an archaeological dig at what is believed to be an ancient manor house that once belonged to a leading family of ancient Toregene.  The story is inscribed on an enormous porcelain vase baked from clay drawn from the nearby river, and encircled by stylized pictures of the battle and symbols of strength and immortality, with Khatunate verse inscribed along the neck:

Out of the jungles the wildmen came
The Mod Avtdag* they forded
Waving their clubs and their firebrands
And crying out "Barbar! Barbar!"
Death on their tongues and in their eyes
With blood and death they came;
With blood and death they went:
The blood of slaves and craftsmen
Shaped the spearheads bright and strong
That spilled the blood of Barbar
Back to Mod Avtdag and to the sea!
Blinding is the sunlight on the spearheads!
Blinding is the light of Clan Ekh Jad!
The woodsman sings, the city shouts
The victory of our people
The spears of Clan Ekh Jad!

* - "Mod Avtdag" was a local name current in Toregene in early historic times for the eastern stretch of the Urgamlyn Khana river and estuary.



The battle described in the vase poem appears to be an actual event from late prehistoric times:  The so-called "last battle of the wildmen."  As the entire known world came increasingly under the influence of the Nine Ancient Empires, the few remaining unaffiliated mainland tribes were growing ever more peaceful in their habits:  Protected, pacified, and contained to a great extent by the military forces of the Great Empires nearby, most lived quiet lives as foragers, their numbers slowly dwindling as many of their youth migrated to the fabled empires whose borders lay nearby, while the remainder gradually assimilated into imperial cultures in their homes.  A few hold-outs -- notably including the Free City of Angle, whose people fought fiercely for independence from the Zulu before their subjugation catapulted Tokugawa's people back into the ranks of the great world powers -- would survive for a few centuries more, but the world was being carved up by the nine great empires, and even the islanders of the Mardobiusc Sea spoke of visits from many and distant lands, including boats from the self-styled Empire of Might and Magic, whose warlike ruler Shaka Ethiope sought to spread his far-flung cities across the vastness of the world in the name of an immortal spirit known only as the dark savant.



In these times of change and quiet upheaval, a warrior band known as the Jimsnii Khalis, originating near the end of a remote peninsula far southwest of Toregene, tried to take advantage of their increasingly-peaceful neighbors by embarking on a campaign of banditry and coercion that eventually carried them to the very borders of the Khatunate.  There, they appear to have crossed the Urgamlyn Khana river, driving a few small families of Khatunate foragers who lived along the north edge of the river nearby back to the safety of Toregene, while the Jimsnii Khalis warriors set out across the river valley toward Toregene and the sable woods, beating war drums, displaying the crushed skulls of previous victims who hadn't turned over their worldly possessions fast enough, and feasting on whatever food the local families had left behind.  Before they could reach the city or the forest however - perhaps even before they had decided which would offer the greatest opportunity to sate their appetites for stolen food and war - the soldiers of the ancient Ekh Jad clan marched out to meet them, bearing spears whose heads were forged from Borte Bronze.



Different accounts hold that the Jimsnii Khalis were lured in by a ruse, hoping to take a rich treasure from their victims-to-be, or that they merely relished battle and charged to their deaths joyously, but the truth of the matter is lost the mists of pre-history.  Be the cause what it may, the Ekh Jad had little to do but march forward beyond the city, stand fast in the face of the onrushing enemy, set their spears, and receive the charge.  In spite of the Manor Vase's poetic license, the Jimsnii Khalis corpses were not washed away in the river, but buried beneath a cairn in a dry area of the plains well away from both lake and river, discovered some fifty years ago with enough of the bones, cairn stones, and other articles intact to infer some of the details of events that had previously been a matter of Khatunate legend.  Clan Ekh Jad would go on to explore the jungles southwest of the Urgamlyn Khana river - the first Khatunate clan ever to do so - and send written descriptions of what they saw there back to Toregene via messengers from Clan Beldmelüüd, and on to Borte from there along the Sable Road.  They were the first representatives of the Khatunate to crest the hilltop that would one day be the site of Nambui - a city that their descendents would long help to protect from Immortal warriors and pirate raiders alike.



The number of tablets delivered to Borte by the Ekh Jad is unknown; only a handful survive, mostly describing the movements of an Immortal warrior band that had camped in the area but retreated from the combat-hardened Ekh Jad and their gleaming spears while still at such a distance that no parley could be attempted.  

These reports were representative of a virtual explosion of Khatunate literacy:  Even earlier records found not only in Khatunate lands but also at ancient Gobwin Knob and State of Yue archaeological sites apparently represent correspondence between "Izabyelaa Khatun" and ambassadors to the Immortal and Zulu peoples, including flowery descriptions of the world as it was known to each.  Indeed, many scholars believe that the southwestern Khuvaaltssan Orgil Lakes region through which the Ekh Jad blazed a trail for the clans who would settle Nambui was actually known to the Khatunate prior to the Ekh Jad's arrival thanks to information gathered by Khatunate scribes from far-traveling Zulu scouts, and conveyed to Borte from afar on clay tablets.



The earliest known Khatunate narrative dates to this time period as well:  The Saga of the Üneg, recorded across four clay tablets baked in an ancient Muqa kiln, predating the earliest surviving written version of The Rise of the Eternal Empress, though key elements of the latter story are represented in ancient carvings found among the grave goods of ancient udgans, and appeared in paintings at the Palace in Borte itself prior to the invention of writing.  For many in Muqa however, the most compelling of the ancient sagas was the Kokejey:  The Voyages of Kokejin.

Tell me, holy spirits, of the wise bhikkhunī
Who crossed and recrossed the Mardobiusc Sea:
After sacking Troia* at the height of its fame
To many a capital mirror she came
And many imperial cultures she learned -
Brighter than sunlight her prajñā burned
Yet much suffered she from the wide ocean blue,
In her fight to come home with her life and her crew.

* - Though its location is not given in the Kokejey, many scholars have attempted to identify an ancient city of "Troia."  Most of the evidence suggests that it is an entirely mythical city, probably derived from one of the prehistoric myths of the Immortal people of Churchill, with no particular connection to Khatunate tradition except - at a stretch - the prominent appearance in the story of a "wooden horse."  A few scholars have attempted to connect "the sack of Troia" to the destruction of an early Zulu settlement by a band of local warriors gathered to resist Zulu dominion over their homes, but if the Lost Zulu City in fact existed, it certainly didn't bear that name, and there is no reason to believe that the Khatunate was involved with the events in any way.  Speculation that the war band's rise may have been driven or inspired by tales of the dauntless Üneg clan is far-fetched at best, and certainly doesn't relate to the Khatunate itself, which had not had any contact with the Üneg for a millenium by the time the Lost Zulu City is supposed to have fallen.  In any case, the Kokejin of the epic poem is an obviously-mythical figure probably derived from udgans of earlier Khatunate mythology, haphazardly adapted to the titles and tenets of the relatively-recent advent of Buddhist faith and Muqa's rapidly-expanding interest in the sea, where fleets of galleys were plying the waves for the first time in Khatunate history.



Ömer, the putative author of the Kokejey, may have been a mythical figure himself, living - if indeed he lived - at least a century prior to the invention of writing in Borte.  The poems that bear his name were passed down through the generations by clan tuulichs, storytellers in the ancient tradition of the Khatunate, who sang songs and poems and told traditional stories in city squares and on the steps of the Palace in Borte as others long before had done around tribal campfires, before they were finally recorded around the time Clan Ekh Jad first met with far-ranging sailors from the Empire of Might and Magic.  Ömer himself was said to be a great tuulich, born blind, who wandered the Mandukhai Peninsula in prehistoric times, spinning poems and stories for all the local tribes, but modern scholarship suggests that there was likely no single figure on whom these stories were based, and the poems attributed to him, including the Kokejey itself, were certainly developed over multiple generations of refinements, additions, and combinations of existing stories before they were eventually recorded in what thereby became their final forms.

Image credits:

Bronze-Age porcelain vase with inscription:  The British Museum
Spearmen:  Screenshot from the video game, "Total War: Shogun 2"
Ancient canoe with sail:  Herb Kawainui Kāne
Bronze spears:  Spearheads by Neil Burridge; photograph courtesy of Matthew Amt
Cattle by seaside cliffs:  Luisa of TheWednesdayChef.com
Clay tablet with early writing:  Emile Serafis for Encyclopedia Britannica
The sack of Troy: Johann Georg Trautmann, 18th century
Warrior queen at sea:  Mariusz Kozik
Early Eastern ship:  AtreJane of deviantart.com

[JR4]

A couple of turns ago I took these screenshots which I forgot to post. Nambui in a Golden Age is making a lot of hammers and commerce. Also, it`s got an 11 commerce trade route. Muqa is also looking pretty good. I agree that Muqa is a good option for a Military Academy. Having a city that makes a lot of military on both sides of our Empire sounds like a good idea. Nambui should probably build more infrastructure in the coming turns. Once it`s ready it can return to building units. Let`s keep the Great General in reserve for another few turns. Perhaps Borte should take over the Rice from Toregene, that was borrowed away a long time ago. Oghul Qaimish has a part-built Grenadier for an emergency whip.

Last, but not least: As always, the story is very entertaining and a good read.

[RefSteel]

I like those pictures - gorgeous! I agree that Borte should get the rice back if it can do so in place of a specialist who isn't needed to finish Oxford on time. Better to grow onto scientists who show up once Oxford is in play than to get a few Golden Age GPP sooner (in place of post-growth GPP later).

Nambui isn't even close to surviving without HR, by the way. Does it still have whip anger it's working off, or is it all just War Weariness?

And thanks for the compliment on the story! They're a lot of fun to write and research (in spite of their silly nature, I've learned lots of historical facts about Mongolia and some interesting things about a range of Buddhist beliefs, mostly from trying to find good names and contextual stuff for these stories) and though finding images for them takes way too much time (that's the reason I'm so far behind) I do like what they add to the stories.

[JR4]

TURN 196

Joey accepted our Silk for Spice deal! That will improve our happiness situation a bit. Nambui has a grand total of seven unhappy faces from War Weariness right now.. No whip unhappiness iirc. I`m really glad that Joey is trading with us. He`s left a number of his border cities weakly defended so that`s something I guess. Also, this is certainly the last turn of the Carthagian Empire. GG, Couerva and chumchu! Joey`s Knights are wreaking havoc in order to get rid of those cottages before dtay gets them under his control.
   

Bulugan is making 1 turn Grenadiers in the Golden Age. The Greanadiers are on their way to the vulnerable island cities. Cities that we have a lot of. DS making a monster 18 unit Grenadier stack in Lakeside would be problematic for us. At least Radnashiri has 12 defenders now. Breaking them down won`t be cheap.

Borte is finishing up the Oxford University (EDIT: in 2 turns)! That should make us a lot of extra beakers. After turn roll we`re making over 1600 beakers, allowing us to 3 turn Steel. We`ve got an absolutely ridiculous amount of gold. Do we want to swap into Theocracy right away on t197? I`m thinking about keeping Org Religion for another turn.

[JR4]

Graphs and demos: Gavagai is making units in his Golden Age. His stack didn`t move last turn. 8 Galleons and a Galley are still in range of one of Dark Savant`s cities.

Our demos look pretty good in a Golden Age but I must say that the top mfg is scary.