1360AD     Into the Teeth of the Norse Storm


At the end of the last section, I had just been sneak-attacked by the Scandanavians and lost one of my island colonies. That had settled the question of who to attack next; Ragnar had made himself the top target of my next aggression. This was going to be a more difficult undertaking than my campaign against Korea, Germany, and the Iroquois. For one thing, Scandanavia was simply further away, and it would take a lot of time to send my forces over there in a world without airports. The Vikings also had rifles for defenders, which would present a more formidable (but not unstoppable) obstacle for my cavalry. In any case, the great invasion fleets began assembling on my east coast right away.

The first task was to gain control of the seas and capture the Scandanavian overseas colonies before moving in force on the Viking homeland. Ereen was easily recaptured in 1380AD from the warrior that they had defending it. Alesun, another island colony, became the first Scandanavian city to fall in 1395AD. All this time, I was rushing galleons out of cities with harbors to provide transportation for my cavalry. I also traded for Steam Power with France in the same year, getting it for no more than 4 luxuries and saltpeter. Now I could rush out ironclads as well to sink the Scandanavian frigates bombarding my shores; I had already resolved that as part of the "roleplaying" aspect of the Mongols I would never use any bombardment units. That meant that my cavalry would have to charge into the teeth of the enemy cities, and that my ships could not use their bombardment capabilities to attack; only full speed front assaults on the high seas would be allowed. As I got more and more ironclads into the water, the naval battles increasingly swung in my favor.

Ungrateful Alesun flipped back to Scandanavia in 1405AD (oops, I guess I did have another one) and now had a rifle for a defender - it had been guarded by a spear when I first attacked! It was taken back the next year. Down in Korea, the Vikings shocked me by using a naval assault with a berserker in a galleon to take the city of Hyangsan away from me (!) This was something I had never seen before, and it was worth losing a city just to see the AI actually doing a naval assault. I found out from the replay that this also triggered a Viking golden age, heh. My defenses in Korea consisted of mostly pikes in cities and several cavalry on rails who would kill any invaders when they landed but before they could attack. I hadn't expected to see berserkers attack from the sea! Hyangsan was taken back without any problem in 1415AD, but it had been quite a showing from the PTW AI nonetheless. On that same turn, I landed 18 cavalry on mainland Scandanavia.

The first target was the city of Reykjavik, which was quite large but had only a musket as its top defender. It was razed to the ground with only minor losses in 1420AD:

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To the south of Reykjavik's ruins, the city of Oslo was a location that could potentially be captured at only size 6. I guess that Ragnar had never built an aqueduct there. My cavalry fought their way there past some heavy counterattackers (including quite a few berserks) and took the heavily defended city with severe losses. Almost half my forces were dead and the rest wounded, but I had plenty of reinforcements on the way and now a solid foothold on the Viking continent. By 1435AD, the resistance had been quelled in Alesun and Oslo and more cavalry had arrived in Scandanavia to take up the next attack with the survivors of the previous one. War weariness also went to stage two at this time, which I had problems dealing with. The Vikings, still in a democratic government and having to make due with two luxuries to my six, were far worse off in that department.

Bergen, the city that contained the Colossus, was taken and razed into the ground in 1445AD. I noticed at this time that the Viking cities were starving left and right from the war weariness and need for entertainers that the war forced on them. It was the same thing that had happened to the Iroquois, going on all over their continent. For example Copenhagen, which had been size nine at the start of the war, shrunk to size six and was thus captured much more easily when I attacked it in 1455AD. At this point, I noted that the Vikings as a civ appeared to be gassed. Birka was captured in 1460AD as I waited for Trondheim to shrink under size seven and its defensive bonus to go down. Well, I got tired of waiting soon enough, and the great capital was taken and razed to the ground in 1465AD:

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In 1470AD I noticed that Joanie had researched Industrialization, so I was able to pick it up from Elizabeth on the cheap for a few more luxuries. Factories were started across Mongolia in large cities that could afford to build them quickly. Aarhum was captured in 1475AD as the colonization of Scandanavia continued; more and more Mongol settlers founded new cities in the open land where razed cities had formerly sat. All of the remaining Viking cities were fortunately small enough so that they could be captured instead of getting razed to the ground. In that spirit, Stockholm was captured in 1485AD and then the territory that that capture opened up was used to leapfrog to Stavenger as well in the same year. Suddenly, the Scandanavians were kicked off of their native continent and had only three remaining cities on an island to the north. I had four galleons loaded up and ready to go the next turn, about to invade Ragnar's last refuge. But before I could do that, Bismarck's fugitive galley sailed into my territory!

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Who was sailing that thing? I was happy to oblige though; a war declaration immediately followed and Bismarck soon joined the rest of his vanished civ. As soon as my cavs could move on the island to the north of Scandanavia they took two more cities, Odense and Molde, in 1495AD. I also decided that Wang Kon had had it too easy of late, and moved to occupy his final few cities. War was redeclared on Korea for the third and final time. This same turn also saw war weariness hit level three; I had to finish off Ragnar quickly. I would have killed Korea on the next turn, except that two vet cavs lost to regular spears at Manp'o (?!) Suwon was taken in 1500AD though, and in 1510AD I returned with reinforcements to Manp'o and mercifully finished the job. Ragnar did not long outlive Wang Kon, dying on the next turn in 1515AD:

At the end of my turn in 1515AD, I was NOT at war for the first time since 860AD, and really the first time at peace since 570AD except for five turns of peace between 810-860AD. All my war weariness disappeared, and my approval rating went from 60% (at 30% luxuries) to 98% with 0% luxuries. Not too shabby! We love the Ghengis Khan days were celebrated everywhere. But I still hadn't won the game, so I needed to initiate another war. It's your turn next Joanie; before the 1520AD turn had ended, I was once again at war with one of the final two civs remaining in the game.

Sorry, no fictional episode here! The story concludes with its final segment on the next page.