Empire: Total War -- Part 2 (Killing Minors)

In this part of the Empire: Total War series, Paul the God of the Ottomans talks about killing off those pesky minor nations.

After realizing my nation was crap, I spent most of the next years not being destroyed by my neighbors. There were no threats to the south, since I owned it, but to the north there were the Russians, and to the north west there were the Austrians, and to the east there were these minor nations who actually thought they could "declare war" on me and "attempt to conquer my provinces." Then they marched into two of my provinces and conquered them.

First I lost Iraq to a mysterious minor nation called "Persia." For some reason I auto-resolved the battle for Baghdad (you can auto-resolve any battle). It set me back a bad five years!

So I made my # 1 conquering goal to unconquerify Iraq. I built barracks-ez with the anemic Ottoman treasury, and trained up some Peasants with Guns. It turned out this was a bad idea, because they died. And then the Venetians, from Sparta of all places, attacked Athens. I built some of my finest warriors in response (swordsmen) and, after five years, took Sparta. And this resulted in a rebellion in which I lost Sparta to a the Greek army; I ended up fighting with them for four years (eight turns on the campaign map).

Also the war at sea was bad. The Russians conquered a province held by one of my few allied minor nations, and they started building ships in that conquered province at the northern part of the Black Sea. Said ships easily conquered my portion of the Black sea guarded by my non-existent navy, which had already been destroyed by the Venetian navy. And yes, the Venitians are a minor nation.

But for the most part, the bigger nations of France, Russia, Austria, and Poland, although they declared war on me, didn't really attack me, unless you count Russia and Austria taking all my provinces north of Istanbul. This is why I talk now again about Persia and Georgia.

The nice thing about Persia (for me) is that their army was composed of what look like thousands of Lawrences of Arabia, with their white cloaks and their British accents. I'm just kidding, of course. I don't remember what their army was like; I should have written this right after I played. And now that I think of it I was the one with a clone army of the Lawrence of Arabia! I also had camels! These were mounted by men. Anywho, I, in ten years, took back Baghdad, and then marched an army into Iran and took Iraniville or Tehran or whatever. And it seemed easy (despite taking ten years). Many of their armies had pikemen! Pikemen in the 18th century!

And then the Georgians came down and took Baghdad.

Long story short, I defeated the Persian armies roaming around Iran, expelled the Georgians from Baghdad with a new, mostly gun-toting army (almost putting me into bankruptcy). And then weird stuff happened. Although it was nice seeing the Persian armies all die after I took their last province northeast of Iraq.

The weird stuff: By the year 1735 I had formed a military alliance with the Maharatmahal...The India! And shortly after that, with the amazing amount of money they had, they bought one of the two Georgian provinces. I'm going to repeat this to show you how much money they had: The Georgians were their enemies; India had so much cash that they bought one of the two provinces of one of their enemies! Even more annoying, the province that India bought was a province I had previously owned -- and defended many times in long real-time battles!

After India bought half of Georgia, I sent an army of chainmail musketmen and conquered the filthy rich remaining half. It was so rich that, before I took the province, they managed to build one of the best universities in the world! And now it is mine! And I use it to research things, like the square formation! That's right, your brilliant scientists study things like "how to get musket-troops to make a square." The research takes years!