It's still not Vicky. Tokugawa declared war on me, coming back for revenge from that worker steal so long ago. With a stack that wasn't much trouble to handle, since I've got macemen and spears.
I bought Monty in against Japan by flipping him Music. Monty's a really good guy to keep occupied!
And while I was easily fending off Japan's weak offensive, Satsuma decided to come over to my side without even being held at macepoint.
Skipping ahead a bit:
I captured Kyoto with maces, losing several. Now I had to choose between teching up to another level of military units, or consolidating and building. I'll go for building at least in the short term, with research to Philosophy and Liberalism. I want Free Speech for the economy, quite naturally.
So with war weariness now in effect, I intended to sign peace and finish the job later with a proper technological advantage. But Tokugawa wouldn't speak!
OK, so I'd have to finish this now. Presently, a Great Scientist popped from my capital, which I used to lightbulb most of Chemistry. I spent two turns' income on upgrading macemen to Grenadiers (Grenadiers with City Raider are still a silly little loophole), and used them to roll over the rest of Japan without a single loss. Any time you get military a generation ahead of your targets, troop losses become exceedingly rare. This happens for macemen or muskets against archers, grenadiers or cavalry against longbows, riflemen against muskets, tanks against infantry. And once the superior units get a couple of promotions (which help them even more since they modify a higher base strength), it's all over.
Now Japan's last mainland city, Tokyo, presented a problem Both of those Arabian cities had very strong culture (you can see Damascus already over the 500 mark and it has been for some time), so Tokyo will have no influence in the area, and would also be in grave danger of flipping away.
So to keep this city, I would need to burn my Great Artist in a culture bomb, which will definitely give me control of the dyes. But that would cause close-borders tension with Saladin, who's currently at +12 relations, so might drop him down from Friendly. Or I could raze the city and concede the dyes to Saladin. Finally I decided I'd be damned if I'll back down from that, and burned the Artist.
