When Incas arrived we were very concerned, but then Incas' failed invasions of Taiwan and Japan showed just how awful those barbarians are at fighting. Japan with just a bit of my help crushed 5 Inca invasions with total size of two times our army, and they really looked like they could have done it by themselves. Together with my cousin, we crushed the army invading Taiwan like it was nothing. Even the puny barbarians of Southern Islands managed to kill a third of Inca Emperor's troops by the time he conquered Java.
So by now Incas outnumbered me only 5:1. Any kind of Inca invasion of China, against forces of me, my cousins, Jin, Chu, and everyone else here, has no chance of succeeding.
I felt confident I could crush them single-handedly if I wanted. But maybe I should just let the locals handle that. Mostly because I wasn't really sure which option would result in less piracy - local barbarians, or foreign barbarians - and fighting piracy was always my key foreign policy concern.
I updated my script to analyze province development (counted by gold value of all buildings), and my 5 province demesne is 2, 4, 14, 21, and 39 richest provinces in the world, out of nearly 2500 provinces. That's some great stewardship, and a lot of money poured into development. Now the "optimal" way to play is of course to not bother invest, just hire every possible mercenary, and go on conquering spree, but I've done that too many times already. Of course this also attracts pirates like crazy.
So I let Incas and island barbarians fight their wars, and I attended to important Chinese matters, like assassinating fake emperors, dealing with Mongol raiders, and helping my cousin crush rebellion against his rule.
Inca Emperor got slain in personal combat by one of the barbarian chiefs, and by their custom his baby son was ruling the empire. Actually I had a thought - I had a spare daughter, why don't two of them marry? Maybe she can teach those barbarians some civilized manners. According to rumors they started wearing silk clothes, drink tea, and watch fireworks, so it's been going great.
And it's really difficult to find respectable enough spouses for my children - especially as Hindus just flat out refuse to marry anyone out of caste. I even had to send envoys to get some French princess, that's how bad it got.
My cousin Khmer emperor died, and one of my vassals turned out to be his son, and he inherited Khmer Empire, and took his duchy with him. It's fine with me, as long as it stays in the family, but my cousin would have none of that, and two cousin-emperors went to war over it.
My third cousin's tiny Tang Empire got forcibly incorporated into my other cousin's Song Empire.
What was left of Han empire collapsed.
I was relentlessly focused on destroying what's left of Chu. 5 Chu Emperors in a row died in extremely suspicious circumstances, and in addition to my wars, anyone else fighting Chu would get my support.
Now it's just Song vs Jin. I don't know if there will be a big showdown, or if Jin somehow gets wrecked, and then we just pick up the pieces.
Meanwhile, crusades have been ongoing, and the Pope declared a crusade on Egypt. The Sunni Caliph responded with a call for Jihad against Aquitaine holdings in Africa, which succeeded, but that was just a few counties.
The new Inca Emperor and my genius daughter (with a French concubine, so looking very European) he'll marry. At rate he's been losing his troops, I doubt he'll even reach the mainland.
Incas and Mongols are doing the right thing, and keeping their distance from China. I'm actually more worried about Lan Xang, as it's led by a liberator revolter with 30k event troops that are actually not trash like the Incas, and conquered he a lot of land between my two cousins' empires.
No comments:
Post a Comment