031. The Pikeman rush kicks off! After upgrading five teams of Immortal Pikeman, I actually have a little leftover. In addition, I still have one tile of easy Cotton not harvested yet. So theoretically I can afford a larger army, but I didn't... anyway. Here they go!
032. After selling Ramey the next Cotton, he wants to declare friend. Normally this is an automatic no-no since Egypt is usually weak and hates warmongers. However, I happen to notice that Egypt is building a strong army from InfoAddict (next picture).
Indeed, it turned out that if I don't declare friendship with Egypt, Ramey is going to declare war on me and send 7-8 units to my home several turns later. That's not very nice! So here my friendship goes to Ramey... and he gladly picked another target to invade (and as usual, failed to accomplish anything).
033. The reason that I included the InfoAddict MOD in the game is more of a personal preference in walkthrough making, so the readers know exactly what happened even if the story didn't mention. Indeed, this MOD provides very valuable information to players that can't be obtained by the game, such as the military strength for everyone. Personally I think this MOD makes the game so much more fun (as we have a lot more data to look at to figure out the best strategy).
I lost the initial data because I switched from InfoAddict V13 to V14 at Turn 15 or so. And afterwards when I resume a save while entering the game fresh, I have to load that save twice in order for V14 to load correctly.
The largest army at the time was Spain, while Egypt recently experienced some rapid growth in military. The mass upgarde of the Persian Immortal army didn't really make a big difference in terms of the game's military strength calculation. And indeed they is not that much different than Immortals... (Strength from 8 to 10).
034. Even though I have a Pikeman army, which is independent of Iron, I still need some Iron to make Catapults and preferrably some Swordsman for home defense. From what I have explored, I know that there are two rich (+6) deposits of Iron far southwest of Persia. I also know from my pervious run that Hanoi also has a rich deposit of Iron.
p.s. At the moment, I didn't know that there is actually the fourth rich deposit just west of Persia. Somehow I skipped that critical area! After realizing my negligence, I adapted a completely diferent approach later.
So, at the moment, my bet went to Hanoi. I will occupy it for its Ivory and Incense. In order to avoid declaring war on City States twice and make my relations with City States drop twice as fast, I did not make peace with Hanoi after robbing its worker 40 turns ago. It was all planned from the beginning.
035. What are AI friends good for? Nothing. And they come begging for money at their earliest convenience (when their cash goes lower than a certain degree). In order to keep Ramey's cash from dropping below that begging line, I rented his Iron for home defense.
036. The invasion of Hanoi begins! Since it is a military City State, I expect a stronger resistance. And indeed it already had 5 units. The two Spearman units came out and attempted to block me off. But I have Archers to weaken them to a certain degree before my Pikeman finish them off with flanking bonuses. And the Pikeman recovers quickly due to their double-healing trait carried from Immortals.
037. Hanoi soon send over more units, one Archer and one Pikeman. My tactics remain the same - wearing down them with ranged attack before the melee untis finish them up with minimal damage. I also need to stay outside of the city's densive fire.
038. The Spearmans are gone, and the Pikeman will be history, too. Time to close in to the city!
039. I have five groups of Pikeman, so it should be easy... but the ever-present barbarian warrior arrives! Another group of Pikeman had to focus on healing or it will be killed (I was reluctant to waste promotion on Instant Healing, although I can and it will make this fight very easy).
040. The barbarians are handled promptly, and Hanoi is now a candidate of liberation (hopefully it will never come true)! A shameless barbarian camp is established just south of Hanoi, with a poor CS worker captured in there.
041. Persia still ranked very low on the demograph. But of course, it is only the beginning of the military campaign. If I can deal some serious damage to Spain with this army... or can I?
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