France was the obvious next target. They were the weakest civ on the island, whose early expansion had been blocked by England, Russia, and the tundra near their starting position. They had compensated for this by building some very choice wonders though, namely the Pyramids and Sun Tzu's, both of which would be extremely powerful on this Pangea-like starting continent. To make matters even better, France (and England too) had NO saltpeter. Knights do a lot better against pikes than muskets, afer all. Here was prewar France in 710AD:
That stack of knights outside St. Petersburg isn't too subtle, is it? Somehow I think a human player would have been able to see this one coming. Unfortunately I had some deals going on at the time when I declared war on Joan and thus I can't claim to have played an honorable game; in this case, the benefit from attacking immediately was too great to wait 5 more turns for my trade deals to run out. I usually do not attack with deals going on though, as it ruins your reputation.
Unlike Russia, France put up a good fight. They had knights of their own, although not many, and put up some decent counterattacks. France also had some very large cultural borders that made it harder to jump from one city to the next. I finally had some battlefield luck in 760AD when this guy popped up:
Barbarossa went back to former Russia to rush the Forbidden Palace in Moscow, which was completed in 790AD. That was a good site since it already had a core of cities around it, and although I probably could have found a more "perfect" location for the FP, the advantage to getting it out early greatly outweighed a better later location.
Paris fell to my attackers in 770AD, giving me control over most of central France (and netting me the Pyramids). Shortly thereafter, I had another stroke of luck:
Richtoffen was sent back to a secure city where he created a knight army so that I could build the Heroic Epic. Although France was essentially dead by 810AD, it took a while to reach the cities that were located in the tundra recesses of southern France. While mopping up these cities in 860AD, I got yet another leader:
Hengest rushed the Heroic Epic in another secure city. If I had gotten 3 leaders without the Epic, just imagine how many I would be able to get with it working its sway for me. Although I don't think that Militaristic is one of the best civ traits, it sure does help with generating leaders sometimes.
After I cleaned out France in its core cities, I signed peace with them in 900AD for some of their island cities and the techs that I had gotten behind on. I posted the pre-war map of France at the top of this page, so here is the post-war one:
Interestingly enough, I made contact with the other three Asian civs on the same turn (900AD) by purchasing it from England. Those other civs were behind my continent in tech, partly due to the fact that the civs on my continent had rushed through the ancient age with goody hut techs. They would catch up shortly, of course. With Joan banished to the northern tundra islands, it was time to turn on the last opponent on my island: the English.
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War with France: 710AD - 900AD Total Turns: 19 Result: Peace Treaty |
