A monopoly on Electricity got me Nationalism in trade, and I started hiring policemen of course. The only cities that could really use them right now were coastal cities with lots of food that were slow to get hospitals built just yet, but the policemen did help such cities, reducing as many as four shields of corruption to none.

So I'm building merrily along, when suddenly this happens:

Well, THAT is horrible timing. My cities are all in the middle of big factory prebuilds that will take quite some time given shield availability. My entire modern military is five riflemen and one cavalry, and my outdated military is 7 Crusaders, 5 Gallics, and a pile of warriors. I don't have Replaceable Parts - I'd been gambling on saving research time, researching Atomic Theory myself, planning to take Electronics and Radio with ToE while letting some AI research Rep Parts.

Well, one does what one can. First, Cleopatra very stupidly allowed me to "pay" 430 gold/turn for her monopoly on Fascism plus her treasury, then declared war in response to a withdrawal request. (If she hadn't declared war, I would've done so myself.)

I swapped a few build orders to trebuchets, so that I could upgrade to some artillery quick when that tech did arrive. Then I traded Fascism to Carthage for Communism and an alliance, and to England for Saltpeter and an alliance, and also tossed outdated techs to Rome and Portugal to complete the dogpile.

Revolting to Communism was a possibility that would have to be considered later. I can't take even the two turns of anarchy in the middle of this war.

I used a mix of upgrading trebuchets, cash rushing (I did have 2,000 cash from tech sales), and forest chops in the tundra to get some cannons built. Those, the Crusaders, some warriors upgraded to MDI, leftover Gallic Swords, and a couple cash-rushed cavalry held off Egypt's initial attacks. Cleo never really had a SoD, never attacked me with more than about three cavalry on a turn. Must have sent the big armies against Carthage instead.

This picture is noteworthy because of all the scroll-ahead that I'm about to do. First, I'm going to finish research on Industrialization. Richborough is going to complete ToE, and I'll take Electronics and Rep Parts. From Richborough, I'll scroll-ahead to swap Gergovia's prebuild to a factory and Verulamium to the Hoover Dam. Then when Cataractonium builds its barracks, I'll pre-turn-upgrade a bunch of cannons there to artillery. Entremont, Alesia, Lugdunum, and other cities will swap to factories in the normal course of the next turn. You can also see that all the food already has my cities zoomed beyond size 20. Bring on the specialists!

Anyway, the war continued, with me able to fight Egypt to a draw easily enough but not really to attack any territory. I got an elite Crusader, and on his fourth attack, got a Great Leader. He will, as required by law, lead a cavalry army. (Although I only have two cavalry to put in it, heh.)

Then on my very next elite attack (with a rifleman), the embarrassment of Leader riches continued, and I got another. Since cavalry were still pretty slow to get built and available, I decided to make a Crusader army out of this one, so that those units could still have some use for a while longer.

With shields still so scarce, here's another way to get military: draft and promote conscripts.

England reneged out of the dogpile. I didn't buy her back in, and then she turned on me.

And it's becoming clear that really attacking Egypt isn't going to be worth it. England was my saltpeter supplier so I can't build more cavalry. Building enough artillery to actually take cities is going to take forever, and any cities I might take really wouldn't be productive enough soon enough to speed me to space. I did capture two border cities from Egypt, grabbing oil and spices, and then made peace once my alliances expired. From England, I captured their one city on our shared island, then made peace.

During that war, I sometimes tried to build military by setting production to a building and hiring Civil Engineers, then swapping to a unit right before it was due to get built. That level of micromanagement gave me headaches, though, and after the second time I accidentally completed an unwanted Civil Defense prebuild, I abandoned that line of thought.

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PTW Epics: Twenty-Two | Twenty-Three | Twenty-Four | Twenty-Five | Twenty-Six | Twenty-Seven | Twenty-Nine
Epics: Thirty-Four | Thirty-Six | Thirty-Seven | Thirty-Eight | Thirty-Nine
Other Reports: Solo Deity | My Succession Game | Japanese 20k
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