We're playing the turboneurodivergent Dawn of Civilization mod for Civilization IV that replicates world history. !g*mers

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Last time, on LPC4DoCF, the Roman Empire had started to fracture. It's 624AD and after a barbarian onslaught, the Kingdom of France declared itself independent. We reconquered Clermont and spared them. Egypt and the Levant have seceded and joined the rising Abbasid Caliphate. Not on our watch

First and foremost. Per @Ubie request I am starving the Irish to death. They get one cow pasture as a food source until I build a mine for them to toil in and the rest are to work directly on building boats until they perish.

Our stability is now Shaky now that the Golden Age is over and done with. Expansion and Economy is not negative, but not good. Foreign is bad of course (it always is) and Military is suffering a little because of our barbarian wars. Domestic is our only saving grace as we have compatible, modern civics and Catholic religious unity.

We have room to expand. Obviously. We just lost most of our eastern territories

Most of my army in this territory got evacuated to Knossos in Crete. I don't have means to transport them yet so they're on a little island vacation for now.

A long time ago I conquered the Kingdom of Nubia, rivals of Aksum. Aksum were pretty ungrateful little b-words about it, but it's been good land and it's now really paying off for me. Nubia did not secede, so some of my troops were able to evacuate there. This gives me an opportunity to quickly retake Egypt from the south.

First turn and with our cavalry we've already retaken Waset, the holy city of Islam. Easy! Muslims btfo

Oh wait

Oh holy mother of Christ

I now know what it feels like to be on the other end of a "Stack of Doom"

Our reinforcements land, but it's not enough. I'm going to die

But suddenly they pull back. I send my spies to take a look.

All the beautiful Roman Roads we built are being used by the enemy, and apparently they got distracted by Persia. Thank the Lord. This will give us time to retake Egypt and regroup our army.

One of our missions to the Mande finally succeeds, so we have another Catholic civilization along with us and the French.

St. Peter's Basilica in Roma serves as the Apostolic Palace from the base game, which is basically the religious medieval U.N. We control the Pope basically, so we have influence over diplomacy in the Catholic world. Since there's actually a Catholic presence in the world now, we can put something to a vote. We call for a crusade against the Abbasid.

Neither of them want this, but with our control over the religion they don't actually get a say. The crusade is on.

We can even team up with our ancient frenemies of Persia. We've always been in something of a cold war with them, but Turkey is a bulwark to Greece, so helping reinforce their cities is in our interest. Plus our espionage network in Dorylaion has been pretty valuable

Our espionage reveals that after some butting of heads their military strength is about equally matched with Persia, overall. And we are way stronger than them in totality They just have their army consolidated.

FINALLY the lazy butt Persians research Civil Service and cause us to fail the third Historic condition. Reminder this is intentional, I want a Space victory.

Civil Service was the only technology I had available to research at this point so it's about time.

We've helped them out so much that they're now pretty advanced, technologically ahead of schedule and researching stuff we don't have. With our spies in Dorylaion we can just steal anything they discover thoughbeit

By the time the Arabs return with a host of Ghazi we're ready for them, we've retaken Egypt and reinforced the army. They have a slight terrain advantage but we can soften them up with our gunpowder artillery

We're victorious With a Great General too

After having researched Commune we can now have this guy build an "Armory" as well to speed up production. Roma is still benefiting from the Flavian Ampitheater so we're going to build on there and churn out superbombards and supercavalry

^^^lol he's clipping into the background

Harun al-Rashi is now willing to sue for peace. He's willing to offer us Jerusalem unharmed or even convert to Catholicism. Some intriguing options here but no We're conquering these frickers and taking Mesopotamia.

We're going to have more problems to deal with though

The Moors are about to spawn in Iberia as well.

I haven't seen one of these unique civ spawning warning messages yet, I think they only show for civilizations in your vicinity (maybe I missed the French one?). It doesn't really make sense here if the Arabs hadn't conquered North Africa and the Umayyad Dynasty don't exist. but whatevs the messages are really cool

Regardless, we're about to be beset on both sides by muslims

As well as Christians

Again... Muslim control? but again

I have an army in the west ready to fight these both the Spaniards and the Moors, but... I'm going to let them go

In fact...

France is mechanically capable of becoming a vassal now, but capitulation is tricky. You need to batter an enemy into submission in a war until they feel it is hopeless. Unfortunately we don't have much room if France has two cities - if we conquer Bordeaux and besiege Paris and they refuse to capitulate, we're kinda stuck.

Right now they won't voluntarily swear fealty because we're "too powerful". Pretty sure they will still capitulate if forced.

Spain is still in the "Rise of the Spanish" and can develop for now. When the "Rise of the Spanish" event is over I might invade and try to get them to capitulate. If they go to war with the Moors first I'll join them. The Moors usually build an Islam specific wonder in Cordoba, if we can capture it it would rule.

So for now I'm going to let western Europe secede and develop independently, and the Catholic world are now all my friends

I liked Tarragona but the Silver mine it had is now exhausted so it's less valuable anyway. The one thing that sucks is that muslims now control the Strait of Gibraltar and west Mediterranean, so our mobility is reduced.

I'm focused on eastward expansion instead anyway.

We liberate Ohrmazd-Ardashir from Arab control for our Persiabros.

Gets us some brownie points, and the city was outside of our expansion zone and not really that desirable. If the map is coherent at all, yellow is a "Contested Zone" while red is strictly foreign. Agarum is the furthest south in our contested zone. The Abbasids are willing to surrender it peacefully at this point.

England is about to split. We'll gonna let them go too.

We're back to Stable. The economy has been a rollercoaster with our conquests but this has been offset by trade route buildings that start becoming available around medieval times. Most notably we now actually have Good Relations and positive foreign stability I didn't know such a thing was possible. I guess all the liberation has worked out

Before there are more European powers on the map, we may as well invade France now. The only other European nation is Spain and they don't like them that much, so they won't be annoyed.

Charlemagne probably thinks we're schizo

Success! France will now capitulate.

The Kingdom of France is now the "Province of Gaul". They are our semi-independent b-word, we can direct their research, they join our wars, and we can sometimes demand resources. With Bordeaux they will still be able to colonize. We'll just have to help them out in technology a little.

The Mali Empire will voluntarily vassalize as well, but unfortunately for our Malibros we don't really want them. There's only room for five vassal civilizations. We do want to maintain good relations though when the slave trade starts tho.

Spain has declared war on the Moors, so we'll take our army from France and join them to retake our western territory. They didn't get a chance to build any wonders, oh well.

We might as well make this into another crusade

IT'S ON

Reconquista time

As we retake land we start to get overextended. Time to whip neighbors and enact population control

Cordoba is defended by a Great General, Abd al-Mu'min. This is the first time we've actually gotten to fight one in combat.

Morocco goes down

And frick it, let's go take Hungary too, there's a nice gold mine

Right after Morocco's defeat this crazy b-word declares war on me

Apparently Spain is dead set on completing the Reconquista and Catholic Roman controlled Cordoba isn't good enough.

She's very stubborn and refuses negotiations even after I retake Tarragona and pillage the heck out of her land.

Only after taking her capital and forcing her to relocate her palace to Santiago does she surrender.

I was going to liberate Cordoba anyway She is now a vassal with France as the "Province of Hispania".

Islam has been thoroughly BTFO. There are no more muslim states in the world. The Moors are dead and the Arabians collapsed when Turks took Mecca. We now control from the Strait of Gibraltar to the Sudan and Iraq, with two vassal provinces.

We're Solid stability but getting a little too big for our britches and risking a correction. Fortunately I have a couple Great People I've been sitting on who can trigger another Golden Age should it be necessary.

Other rising threats are coming - I think the northern Italian city states are going to attempt to split off around 1100AD, and the Ottoman Empire is going to reconquer all my middle eastern gainz around the 1200s.

We already have technology to start exploring the New World but the Aztecs haven't even been born yet. That will have to wait until 1300~. I want Roman conquistadors

Part 6