This is where it ends

[HistoryDude]

Honestly, AI-Muscovy should've vassalized Ryazan. That would make more sense.

The simulation is just lines of code - it could have alternate events and more specialization, but that would require more coding, and, well, only so many hours in a day, but, hey, that's what mods are for!

 

[filcat]

Honestly, AI-Muscovy should've vassalized Ryazan. That would make more sense.

Sense, but only if the code has determined to go for forming the russia-tag. From that a story can be created.
In the mechanics-wise, of course there are multiple routes: The code could go for Smolensk instead of Ryazan province OR could get the pu over ryazan-tag, which is fairly frequent OR better, if determined, then could break the alliance then go for conquest. The code does not do it, since it does not effectively recalculate for varying circumstances.
In the other possibility of the sense, yes maybe the run will not favour the muscovy-tag; all right, it will fall in this or any run, so another variation. From that, another story can be created.
But then why does the great-horde-tag not go for it, or the kazan-tag, or even the lithuania-tag? They do not, as they have no such design, as the game is running for either muscovy-russia or poland-lithuania-commonwealth to bulldoze the region. Else denmark-tag. Rare cases even the england-britain-tag, because, of course it will. Sigh.
And when they fail, the game stands still, since the others do not have any incentive, other than the generic-objective of destroy-the-neighbour-or-rival.

The simulation is just lines of code - it could have alternate events and more specialization, but that would require more coding, and, well, only so many hours in a day, but, hey, that's what mods are for!

Disregarding the mods - they are cool, and the contribution of the modders is respectable, but the base code is the focus in this story of the narrator.
More events, more specialisation, more coding; yes, when the much damaging effects of those not considered, the improvements on the code have been remarkable, still acceptable, it has to be admitted.
Agreeing with you and to some extent, with the narrator, but the character of the AAR has a different story.

From Chapter V

(...) But they do not receive such similar events, so no advantages, yet the others that do receive are always the same. The allegedly popular ones. In time, many of the tags have received more events in design, and the game improved over herself. That was still hopeful, yet the patience was already gone forever. There had been, were, and are more problems; inherent to the design.

Yes, the narrator of the story. Since you have come very, very close, a slight-spoiler can be given, only to concur.
Despite own views on the game coinciding with it, it is the story of the narrator, not for self.
Yes, personally have never written anything other than stories. Neither this is an exception.
And it is actually a story of a narrator. Threadmarks already reveal it.



It has been only Book I so far.

 

[filcat]

And the rain does not stop, and the clouds do not seem to disperse any time soon, and the grey colour will remain at the top, for the eyes looking from the ground. But there is no direction of above nor below in the coordinates of the real, and the gravitational field plays the game of illusion on the perception, and the beings feel trapped on the surface of the earth, yet they are both floating in the space, bound to rotate around the sun, and the system around the barycentre, and the galaxies around their galactic centres, and the universe…


And you are looking at the key. You try it in the lock of your questions.

And it fits. You turn the key inside the lock.

And it opens. You push the door.

And the answers pour, and they are many, and they are uncontrollable.

System Warning

You are looking at the key inside the lock on the door that is open, as you are playing the game that is simulated on the map proceeding in time. The illusion of it was seen through, and the real lets itself be known in the awareness of your mind, bringing the new information you devised to yourself that you are playing it.

The game reaches the equilibrium point but the balance in it is regularly disrupted with the varying inputs. The events of the random nature try to enrich the illusion, but the events of the predetermined nature provide the arbitrary inputs, of which the code is unaware how to react against. In the end they become only enormous bonuses, for the tags the code is designed.

And it could still be interpreted as a greater challenge for the player to overcome, in the case of such advantages accumulating on the one side. The human-player can strive for dealing with such situations, seeing it as a difficulty to fight against, proceeding with the ambition to defeat the larger entity with a smaller one while having lesser advantages, else even with disadvantages.

So the abrupt inputs, which do create the unfair circumstances for the simulated process, even these can be regarded acceptable for the perspective of the human-player. But the code is not able to cope with this situation, and naturally it does not have the capability to fail against itself, thus it heavily depends on the existence of such scripted-events.

All such can be accepted, either through rigorously convoluted explanations or by grudging sneer of exhaustion under the encumbrance caused by them.

But you are still looking at the map, which is holding the key, that is simulating the history, over a certain period of time.

You are giving commands to the military units that are called armies, and they move from one waypoint to another accordingly, but over the map. You are seeing the map. You are above the map. You are looking at the earth in the simulation. In fact, you are looking down on the earth from the skies above.

System Warning – Failure – The Sentry is invalidated

And the code does not see the map, yet it does have the adjacency matrix to compute, calculating its equations through the system of functions, and giving the same commands. The same ones to the military units that are called armies it has also, and they move from one vertex to the another.

At this, the human-player and the code are similar. And the intention of the design for the code is to imitate the behaviour of the human. It fails. And your reason to play this game…?

System Warning – Unidentified breaches detected

It fails, but not due to the problems you recited over within the infinite-loops of the mind-jumps by the lucid-streaming of the subjects.

System Warning – Unrecognised commands

It fails, and that is applicable for the both. The human-player and the code fail together in the struggle of mimicking the life of the populations over the map within a certain period of time. The history might have happened differently, else it happened exactly as the simulation achieves at the very limited points of time with enormous assumptions, gross simplifications, extraordinary abstractions by the predetermined events embedded into it, yet neither the history nor the fiction has ever been the problem. The inputs change, so the outputs should be different. The coinciding points are there only as flavours for the story or advantages for the game-mechanics, but the flow of the commands through the lines of the code does have the fundamental assumption that simplifies the very concept you are seeing as the key of the problem that is bringing the incomprehensible abstraction to the simulation.

And even at this situation, the scripted-events; they can be regarded as the basis of the problem, to question why you are even playing this game. But no, they can still be accepted as challenges in advantages and disadvantages against the human-player. So they are not the main issues.

They are tied to every other aspect, as the map is, and as the design of simulation is formed through them. The arcade-absurdities are born out of it.



The warfare is the design of the simulation.


You think that the answer is so close to reach, but it is still a great distance you have to cover. To breathe for a moment of rest, you look at the icon.

It has been already clicked.

---

CHAPTER XIV​

Hello ottos.


You do know how this will proceed. Even the ottos know it.

The newest rival does not give any thrill, as the muscovy-tag is too far, too isolated, too insignificant for the player-ottos. It has not formed the russia-tag yet, it has not overcome its neighbours, and it will probably fall and rise again being eligible rival just as the others.

Even the code tries to mitigate the problem by giving a Craven trait to the ruler of the player-ottos, meaning -5% morale for the armies. Besides the detached nature of this random-event, since the ruler under the control of the player has been fighting from the beginning of his reign still getting the Craven trait, such does not matter even a bit. It can only prolong the inevitable, but by only slightly.


More monarch points accumulate, and the tech-level 13 is there; but before that, develop some of the provinces by a couple of points. Provinces have limited building slots, but increasing at multiples of 10, thus increasing the 9- or 19-dev provinces by 1 point suffices. Otherwise, invest the mil-points on hiring generals, the admin-points on either stability or for reducing the inflation, and the diplo-points on Mercantilism. Who knows what it means in the terms of the game, the mercantilism, but you do know that it has only an oblique relation to the actual terminology of the concept in economics. In the end, it increases the trade value of provinces, so the trade income increases, without actually increasing the production, nor upgrading any other infrastructure, nor improving the conditions of the population, but the game has none such concepts, except manufactories.

More ducats accumulate, so… build more manufactories.

It has been a while since the last war actually initiated by the player-ottos, and the piety scale can benefit from a bit more mysticism, and the mamluks-tag is still struggling in its long period of falling. One voice tells not to do it. The other overcomes the first. The collapse of the code is imminent, and there is no more ways to prevent it but it is time to accelerate that; the mamluks-tag is currently in the rival-phase in the cycle of valid-invalid-rivalry for the player, so, good for some more power projection. Hang on.

Spoiler: The clash of the voices

[*]​

With the conquest of the entire coast of Egypt from Sharqiya to Bingazi, the mamluks-tag is effectively out of the Mediterranean competition for the trade flow. The provinces of and around Alexandria, now Iskenderiye, can be assigned to trade company charter. This will hyper-boost the trade income, as well as the total trade value of the home node in the city. Therefore the player-ottos has a significant chance to spawn Global Trade in the future. That is, if only the run can be sustained until that time.


During the war, the date hit 1550, and another institution was announced: the Printing Press has arrived.

Funny concept that is, the printing press as a new institution. The idea of mass production of literary works, colloquially called books (wooow filcat, you are a true comedian), is regarded as a revolutionary concept. Funny side is that it had been already in practice since the Han dynasty around third century on the other side of the world. Other side, as when viewing the world with a distorted perspective from the pseudo-continent of Europa. First samples of printing on paper can be found dating back to Tang dynasty around ninth century. Even the first movable type printing and the birth of typography is dated back to eleventh century during Song dynasty.

But the nineteenth century historiography pompously claims all the aspects of civilisation comes from a certain part of the world, called Europa, so there it is, the Printing Press, as an institution, in the game. Not complaining that much though, as the game before the institutions did have the ludicrous mechanics of westernisation. Thinking about those times is still eerily terrifying. Westernisation. For faqs sake.

Whatever. During the run, the Printing Press has arrived in… Groningen. Of course.


And what does this mean to the player-ottos?

None. It will spread out quickly around the europa-subcontinent, and the code-tags will embrace it sooner than the player. This still gives a hope, but it is almost gone at this point. Besides, among the six marches, the bosnia-tag will embrace it earlier, and it will again propose to propagate in the capital state of the player-ottos. There is not even a need to force-spawn it. If that was not the case, then the usual candidates would be Selanik or Izmir provinces to develop and wait for its spread. But now, the situation is fine. Let the code gain power against the player. At this point it turns into begging from hope.

But the date of 1550 means another event, too. The nervous waiting continues. Carry on.


Invest in the trade company infrastructure of the Egyptian Charter, and upgrade the trade centres. It will provide another merchant, the fourth, in due time. Of course the mamluks-tag is not a valid rival any more, as the news arrives after the war.

The tension of waiting intensifies. Recruit a couple of more cannons. Now the military is comprised of 96k troops. The excitement of the suspense is exceeding the hopes, which means the disappointment will be severe, but whatever. Just in case. Build a couple of more forts; yes, forts, even while playing a turbo-tag. They are generally disregarded, as a drain in economy, or due to their ineffectiveness. This is a gross mistake, dismissing the forts. The code runs over its functions to calculate the destinations it can reach. When there is a fort it cannot pass over, then it will recalculate another route. If the player does not cover up the realm with enough forts, the code will target the one province that is left out of the fort-zones. If covered, then it will struggle to find a target, and head on to the farthest castle to siege down. That is the modus operandi of the code. Deleting the fortifications will cause the player to chase down the code-units forever. The game is already operating at such conditions, there is no need to facilitate this delirious-process.


Anyway. Anxious of waiting; checking for neighbouring realms to pass the time. Yes, passing the time, as the illusion of the simulation has been broken into innumerable pieces, and it is sorrowing to see the moon of the nights shattering in front of the eyes. Bordering the ajam-tag in Mesopotamia. Then it is time to conquer Baghdad. Call the oman-tag too, your only ally, so it will also fight the enemy-ally the hormuz-tag, barring it from further conquests, so it can stay small to be vassalised soon.

Spoiler: Yes, code; you were the moon of my nights

[**]​

Well it took 17 months, but now reaching the gulf, and this means being very close to the last ally, the oman-tag. Still it has too much distance modifier for a vassalisation, but it will get there. In the meantime, the 12-monarch süleyman died, and the 12-monarch selim the second assumed the reign. Payment to janissaries tanked the treasury into debt, but it is recovered and paid off in no time. Carry on.


Carry on, however;

Yes, however. During the war, the event popped-up.


The event.


The name of the waiting with the slight hope. It will not be as expected, with very high probability, but the hope is still there.


The last hope for the code, to be a viable force against the player-ottos.

​

[*] Voices Within of the album An Elixir of Existence by Sirenia (2004)
[**] Moon of My Nights of the album Swampsong by Kalmah (2003)

Edit 07.07.2023: Corrected grammatical, semantic mistakes.

 

[HistoryDude]

It seems like our narrator is getting bored. The game is becoming too easy.

Nice jab at the Eurocentrism of both Paradox and mainstream historians.

 

[filcat]

The game is becoming too easy.

When it is a turbo-tag, it is certain that the run reaches the saturation point faster than with other tags; different objectives of the play-style certainly remedy this, as well as the random- and scripted-events help, but only sometimes. On the other hand, the game is not easy, not even close to it, as others may claim for eu4 or for the other pdx games.

One has to have enormous patience to play any run with these games, though.

It seems like our narrator is getting bored.

Alas, the narrator of the Book I has other problems, but boredom is not one of them. Being lost in the stream of unawareness is a detrimental issue when the perception is increasingly distant than the reality, that is certain for the narrator.

Yeah, can give that spoiler now, as it is about time.

Edit: Corrected grammatical mistakes.

 

[filcat]

As the perception had developed prior to the advanced tests and calculations, the primordial observations provided the context. From the surface to the clouds at the top, and beyond them to the stars over to the universe, the eyes are looking from the below. The definitions did not reduce the charm of the words, on the contrary, they provided the beauty of the clarity. The gravitational field is the weakest among all four known fundamental forces of the universe, as the strong interactions between the quarks, as the weak interactions by the bosons, the force-carriers, as the electromagnetic forces within the atoms; they are all far greater in their effect than the force of the gravity. In this frame, it has no significance in the subatomic scale, yet it is the driving force forming the field giving the curvature shape making all the macroscale materials follow the routes over geodesic lines. The poetry of the explanation outpaces the identity of the beauty in the words, and the raw observations become obsolete.

Yet it is faster to say, the sun has risen, the clouds have covered the skies, they have become grey, then has fallen the rain.


The key was already there, the lock it opened was already defined, the door you opened showed already what you feared to tell. The arcade-absurdities of the code are now beheld upon you, with all their ugliness smirking at you, the delirium of the moves drives the mind into insanity never to recover and forever cursing you.

When the simulation aspects of the code lose their enchantment to further construct the illusion, the design of it remains naked on the screen. The warfare is the name, and the player shall chase the code-units everywhere.

That is the reason you spitefully accused the code for not being a simulation, even though it has all the beauty in its lines to create the reality. It has the potential, despite the dreaded dependency on the random- or predetermined-scripted-events, it is capable to proceed more or less. But the attempts to explain and accept and move on shatter under the heavy blows of the convoluted definitions, whereas it leaves behind the amorphous shape of a game.

The player clicks, and the command is forwarded, and the army units move.

The code computes, and the command is forwarded, and the army units move.

Or the navy units.

It does not matter. None would be possible. None of it is plausible. None is real.

One army unit is forwarded from one vertex to another.

One army unit is lead by a general from southern France to northern India. On the land they travel, by the foot they march, with the swords and the muskets and the cannons they fight.

That manoeuvre is impossible.


The distance certainly hyper-increases the unreality of the situation. The impossibility. The implausibility. The never-to-be-happened, the forever-to-be-non-real, the ever-to-be-fantasy. When it is surreal, the limits of the language are also breached. No word can survive the onslaught of the hysteria once it defeats the reality.

No, the dragons, the full-plate armours, the pyromancy of the mages, the divine spells of the priests of the Forgotten Realms, they are closer to their own reality than this situation, the key you held to open the door to the arcade-absurdities of this code you are facing now.

There has never been such a manoeuvre in the history, and that is because of the laws of nature, however explained in the disciplines of physics, chemistry, biology, anthropology, geology, cosmology, mathematics, none can save it to bring a simplification, nor an abstraction, not even an assumption.

There has been no army, no population, no human being to manage such manoeuvres.


The supply system comes to aid, with all the misery it carries, one cannot hold the tears and cries upon the pitiful mechanics of it. Crying, yes, tears now falling upon the words, the sorrow is immense, as if the supply system is there, some concept of food-crates maybe lying upon the fields to be collected over the course of the marching armies.

The map. Then comes the map, unsheathing its dagger, stabbing in the back of the hopes that are the dreams for the simulation of reality. The map, and you are looking at it from the skies. The map, and the code is calculating the shortest distance between possible vertices. Both the player and the code, betraying the pillars of the reality. The map. Without it, no human being, let alone thousands, can march from one place to another, with an obscure intention of conquering the enemies.

That intention is called mobilisation in the current times. Consolidation of power is another aspect to define the phenomena. The ideology came very late, so that is an anachronism for the time period of the history the code tries to simulate, yet applicable for the contemporary studies. But no, none of them exist in the code, as there is none but only weak essences of such mechanisms.

There has never been such a manoeuvre in the history, for it was impossible without the maps, without the intention, without the core necessities of the humans provided.

The supply system can be assumed with eyes wide open as a gross assumption for the basic requirements the humans have to be provided.

The intention is non-existent in the code as it is dead-locked on fighting, devouring, destroying every other tag. There is no system of mobilisation, and every command of every leader is obeyed by not even blind-followers, but by bits of graphics, through the lines of the code.

The map. The betrayal is immense. No manoeuvre as such in history, because of the simple fact: No one would know the place of the destination. None.

---

And then comes the counter-attack of examples. Oh yes, there had been such. Truly, the most naïve you are.

*​

Yes, the armies of the Emperor Muwatalli the Second of the Hittite Empire clashed with the armies of the Pharaoh Ramesses the Second of the Kingdom of Egypt in approximately thirteenth century before the common era on the banks of Orontes near Kadesh. For those two civilisations from Anatolia and Egypt, that distance to the battlefield was immense, yet the pitched-battle was decided by the so-called noble and divine leaders of those populations they ruled, bringing the doom upon those populations again. The battle was so severe that both belligerents claimed their own victory, continued to write their own story for the history. But that is not even applicable to the case of arcade-absurdities this game is cursed by. However, even in this semi-related example, the nobility, or the monarchs, or the rulers, the virus of the humanity, found their way to rule thousands, deciding to clash with each other. Why, the weaker tool to find the answers, is also applicable for this fundamental problem. Why human beings do follow the leaders, is a valid question to research in that matter. How, in this case, is deduced from the records of those days. Yet, none is applicable for the code. All tags of the code, and the tag of the player, assume absolute control. Very weak depiction of rebellions is available, yet there is no power that is distributed among the many. Essence of estates is there, yet their vague mechanics are only to be clicked on. There are only singular identities, and even they are ambiguous in their existence within the code.

*​

Yes, the famous example. Alexander conquered the known world. By himself, apparently, when such insane attributes are given to such miserable concepts as warfare. It is the result of romanticism, to see a young human-being leading others as if only to explore beyond their myths. In reality one individual with the power amassed by another group of individuals managed to persuade thousands to march into another realm to invade, to massacre, to conquer, along their way. And yes, in the case of the Kingdom of Macedons, they travelled great distances in their invasion. The supply needed was provided through their conquests, therefore essentially forcefully taking the output of other populations to proceed. This is not available in the code, the game does not have such a system, but a shell of a name, that is called the supply system, therefore the spain-tag can reinforce from the manpower provided in Iberia even when its troops are on the islands of Japan.

*​

Yes, there is the other famous example. When the armies of Timur of the Barlas entered the lands of Anatolia, Bayezid of the sons of Osman, the Lightning, was actually besieging the Constantinople of the Roman Empire during the days of the year 1402. Timur was a cunning leader, with extraordinary diplomatic finesse, he calculated that the sons of Osman were no longer supported by the Khanate of the Golden Horde, nor by the Mamluks of the Egypt. He gathered his entire army, from Persia, from Mesopotamia, from India, then he made his move. Bayezid the Lightning was a hot-headed ruler, an incredible rider, but unable to see the changing circumstances around himself. Yet he would never give up his self-proclaimed right to rule, nor would Timur. Unfortunately for the former, Timur was a more capable commander. He led his army from one water-source to another in Anatolia until the summer, while the armies of Bayezid the Lightning chased him down, effectively exhausted by the time they were confronted on the plains of Ankara. In fact, Timur was leading his army in the footsteps of the armies of Bayezid, unknown to him. In the end, Bayezid was taken as captive, brought to the court of Timur in Persia, and the realm of sons of Osman collapsed into interregnum. The four sons of Bayezid would fight to the end with each other, along with occasional alliances with the Roman Empire; after eleven years, Mehmed the first would succeed in defeating and killing all three of his brothers Isa, Musa, and Süleyman. And yes, that is a classic example of such land based-manoeuvres, yet what happens in the code is far from this reality. The manoeuvring-battle between Timur and Bayezid was exclusively fought on the lands of Anatolia. Granted, it is a relatively large piece of landmass on the Earth, but it is not comparable to the size of continents. Under no circumstances can armies travel around entire Asia, nor Africa, not from Patagonia to Mesoamerica and back again to the southern tip of America, and this is only a regular war-course for this game.

From the simple fact that lack of maps; however they are numerous and available and known, can never be complete for a field commander, and the warfare in this case is not fought by the army corps of the contemporary times with field radars, global positioning systems, satellite images, and what other possibilities there can be. No, by the simple fact of the fear for going into an unknown territory, no leader should, would, could command such a population into such madness. Only when the terrain is known, the territory is open, the surroundings are explored by the spies, the scouts, the local guides, such warfare will bring the victory, naturally. These specific counter-examples are not enough to redeem this situation of the code, for there is no such need when moving the armies around the map for this code, nor for the player. The map is ever existent, provided the fog of the map is dispersed through discovery.

*​

And yes, there is the example. The, is there for the particular meaning, as there is only one example in the history for such a warfare manoeuvre of armies.

Yes, that one.

Chinggis Khan Temujin of the Borjigins, after unifying the various tribes from Mongolia to Manchuria, from Mongolia to Central Asia, neighboured the Empire of the Khwarazm. He sent a delegation of merchants for amicable relations, but one of the Sultan Ala ad-din Muhammad the second’s governors, Inalchuq, refused to comply. The merchants were slain by him in Otrar. The Sultan approved, and retreated to his heavily fortified cities. Nomadic barbarians of the steppes could not conquer such a powerful empire, which brought down the Seljuk Empire, he thought.

Whether it was actually planned by him or not, this was used as the basis to mobilise the tümens by Chinggis Khan. It was the year of the Tiger, and the Mongols descended upon Khwarazm. By 1220 of the Julian calendar, in the year of the Rabbit, the great cities of Samarkand, Bukhara, Khorasan perished, a vile destruction that was never seen before. In the aftermath, Otrar was no more than ruins to be abandoned. The misery, the bloodshed, the horror brought by the Mongols shook the Empire of the Khwarazm into its collapse, and the world that was known changed entirely.

The Kuman-Kipchak tribes were roaming from the north of the Central Asia to the inner Pontic Steppes down to south Hungary, and they were resisting the Mongols. Two of the generals in Chinggis Khan’s tümens, while looting the Khwarazm heartlands from Nishapur to Azerbaijan during the winter of 1219, devised a plan. A plan of expedition. As if it is a casual check-around-the-surroundings. Before the answer of Chinggis Khan came, the two generals led two tümens to plunder Kingdom of Georgia and explore the ways through Caucasus. They rode around the entire Caspian Sea to the south, entered the realm of Georgia, defeated the forces of King Lasha Giorgi the fourth of the Bagrationi, which resulted in the Kingdom of Georgia failing to provide support for the Fifth Crusade.

The answer of Chinggis Khan came afterwards, ordering the two generals to proceed. The tümens passed through the Caucasus Mountains, but with heavy losses due to winter; they would always go for campaign in winter, and that time was not an exception. They sacked the surrounding cities, including Astrakhan. Even the Venetians entered an alliance with the tümens of the two generals, then urged them to target other trade cities, thus the Mongols sacked the Genoese possessions in Crimea. Koten Khan of the Kuman-Kipchaks fled after the initial battles; Kiev principality heard the news; Kuman-Rus alliance was formed, and they gathered an army to face the two Mongol tümens.

The belligerents confronted each other over the Kalka River.

After the feigned retreats and heavy volleys of horse-archers, but together with heavy cavalry charges, while using smoke-producing grenades for diversion, and owing to the help of the river-crossing, the allied forces of the Kuman-Kipchaks and Rus were defeated. The Mongol tümens proceeded to cross the Volga river, into Volga Bulgaria, then back to north around Ural Mountains, fought until there were no more resistance.

The two generals, Jebe Noyan and Sübe'etai Noyan, then returned to east back to the ordo of Chinggis Khan, in 1223, during the year of the Horse.

*​

Yes, that is the example that can be used, but it is a singular sample, and there has not been any other such warfare in the period of the history the game simulates. The code does not have the details of what a supply system is, what a reconnaissance is, what the map is, what mobility of forces is. These specific examples incorporate the political situation of their entities, otherwise the skills of their generals, else the ferocity of the rulers for claiming supremacy over another. It was therefore a significant point in the Hundred Years’ War when the castle of Caen fell against the forces of Edward the third in 1346, later culminating in the Battle of Crecy and the capture of Calais. It was therefore a devastating shock when Lajos the second of the Kingdom of Hungary was killed in the Battle of Mohacs in 1526 after they were defeated by the sons of Osman. It was therefore an important event when the port of Den Briel was captured by William van der Marck with his captains, increasing the momentum of the rebellion of the Low Countries against the Habsburgs. None is available in the code, as it is limited in its depiction as a simulation of history.

---

None is available, and none is doable, and none can be expected from the code of this game, as the design of the simulation is only warfare in the style of an arcade, and it cannot handle itself, it cannot provide details but overrides all with enormous assumptions, and its survival depends on not unique decision capability but lump coefficients of advantages.

What there is that the mighty city of Ulm sending her 10k-stack from Bavaria to Indonesia for glorious victories. By foot. On land. Over entire Asia.



…and in all such problems you lost yourself, and the main one as the key you defined; all can be at one instance or another, accepted. Assumptions, simplifications, abstractions. All are fine, after all the delirium of analysing, identifying, defining them.

…but why. Why?

Why would you play this game, after all the heavy losses a questioning mind suffers, at the side of the answers, you realise only the reason for asking the question. You could not even reach the actual answer of the question.

…and the key unlocking the door holding the truth behind the code, as it loses its reality, then comes the real of you in front of your eyes.

The bleeding wound indicates a dire situation in the survival, but –

System Warning – Medic-System is compromised
Run auxiliary batches
System Warning – Runtime error – Repair batches are invalidated

But you do know the answer, do you not? Do you not see the answer, as it is simple, while obvious, yet the reality you are in is holding all the aspects of ugliness, but –

System Warning – Alert – Breach on the mainframe is detected

Your eyes are blinking from the real to the dream.

System Warning

No. The dream continues, even if the code is insufficient, yet the answer ever escaped you. You needed to re-examine, and there it is.

But you do know the answer. Out of the mess of the beauty of the code this game has, yes, the beauty, with all its hideous sides, out of it you search for it, and –

System Warning – System Warning – System Warning



Click.

---

CHAPTER XV - Part I​

Hello ottos.


Yes, the event has arrived. The last hope, and it will not be pretty, you do know deep behind your hopes.

Tick.

But whether it could, else never, you proceeded with the run, as the tag was chosen even for that, a relaxed procedure, a serene course, a soothing wind, playing the ottos is. Yet, you hoped for it.

Tock.

Spoiler: The Prelude

[*]​

As the provinces up to the gulf were conquered, another trade company can be established: Mashriqi company, and the game still has the double-naming error. Both the Basra and the Persia nodes produce the trade company with the same name. Together with the otto-tag having a starting-ruler as king, these were the initial indicators that some lines of the code went seriously wrong when the emperor expansion first came around. How many such additions drenched in complete errors there had been, you lost the count. The one you play, it must be a couple patch-fixes after the emperor. Then it was enough, after all those years, your patience was exhausted; leviathan had never a chance in your eyes.

Still, with the expansion of this run, you are able to get a couple of good moments, especially with the trade company mechanics. Name-localisation errors, even though they indicated greater ones in the code, once the critical ones were cleared out; well, name-errors can be disregarded. Whatever.

Back to the trade companies of the player-ottos; Mashriqi Company of Mesopotamia-Iraq serves well for the purposes of increased trade. Now with five merchants, greater portion of the world trade from asia-continent through india- and china-subcontinents flow and the control is in the choke point of the city, belonging to the player-ottos.

When the trade nodes are compared, yes, with the 48,1 ducats of total value, by 1555 the node of the city is the richest among the other candidates. The choke-point of Sevilla and the end-node of the Channel, they are far behind. Though situation may change in 45 years, as Sevilla node shows 41,8 ducats. Therefore keep the otto-specific mission leg of Crimea node until that time, which will give additional trade power at the node.

But of course, if the run survives until that time, the year of the Global Trade institution, 1600. It does not seem so.

It does not, as the ticking gains its momentum under the tension of the event.

Government reform tier 6 is reached, L’etat c’est moi, 250 more governing capacity. The code cannot recover after this power of the player-ottos. Yet, still letting the austria-hungary-tag continue to live; otherwise the perma-claims on the Hungarian Plains were already there, waiting to be enacted in the mission leg, but no. No, there is no need; the scraps of the hope are for the austria-hungary to be an eligible rival, but due to the event.

​

Of course with the leader bohemia-tag as emperor, opens the event. Among the other tags, burgundy and aragon join the catholic-side. Danzig, one of the new electors, joins right away. Nassau, livonian order, bologna – catholics do not have that much power by 1556.

Time is ticking.

The event informed the formation of the Schmalkalden League, but thuringia-tag does not seem to bother at all. Probably this time it is actually the Salzburg League, as that is the only elector-tag converted from catholics; when no electors are converted, then the league will not happen at all. Even if it forms, they may never initiate the offensive. Yes, the code still has it by the emperor-addition: A gigantic france-tag can join the protestant-side, while taking the mantle of Defender of the Faith, for the catholic-side. Oh yes, crazy-fun.

This time though, even if the salzburg-tag is of lutheran denomination, it cannot lead the league due to its small size, which is calculated through a military-rank equation among the league participants. Brunswick-tag apparently is the leader, owing to its size. The usual bunch have already joined the protestant-side: Tags from dithmarschen to stettin, augsburg to memmingen, würzburg to regensburg and paderborn, but of course, the mighty ulm-tag is there too. Sigh. Its might comes not from its advantages, as there is none, but from a comedy-sketch by John Cleese, in case not known by now, after years of meme-runs produced about it. A one-province-minor, with generic missions, a run equivalent to ryukyu. Or mzab. Whatever.

As the religious differences are in the background, the rivalries play the major role for the code to decide. Unfortunately, it is not always sufficient. And for this run, the fail-scenario is in effect. The emperor is the bohemia-tag. Therefore the poland-lithuania has joined the… protestant-side. Eh.

Then comes the england-tag, still lingering around the isles. On protestant-side. Cool, but freezing that is, as the insignificance of it is insurmountable, since it can with almost nought-chance ever provide any credible help on the mainland belligerents.

Days are ticking.

Increase the galleys from 30 to 40. Mediterranean is a dangerous place, never to be underestimated. Suddenly the combined forces of Iberia can gang-upon with hundreds of ships, so be vigilant.

It is the end of 1556, and the france-tag is now an eligible rival for the player-ottos. The strategy of not-embracing the institute seems to work. Unfortunately, even this rivalry does not trigger the france-tag to join on any sides, but as the player you have not made a decision yet.

But the problem is there, predicted long ago, as eons have passed it feels now. The emperor is not austria-hungary-tag, thus there is only a rivalry between them but under the waters silent it flows. The austria-hungary does not make a choice, it does not join any side, thus the france-tag will not.

The code has fallen.

Your hopes are gone.


Then what has remained? What could possibly make the run proceed? None. No amount of help can save the code from its demise.

Only… waiting. Even if it has failed this time, it is still running, and you will get the most out of it, as the hopes disintegrate, there is only the slight joy that can be squeezed out of this mess. It is not the satisfactory challenge, not even a bit, and you certainly do not have any patience against the ludicrous choices or the incomprehensible events of the code, and it falls miserably, therefore you will accelerate this, to bring the code to its destination in its fall.

Army tradition, about 96; check. Army professionalism, 100; check. Recruit more troops, now 124k; check. The current ruler, 12-monarch selim the second, still young, and the heir event is prompted, giving a 13-monarch, named… murad; whatever, check.

Catholic-side is joined by the-knights-tag, then come the castile and the goslar-tags. Protestant-side is joined by the passau-, the wolgast-, the lübeck-, the bremen-, and the hamburg-tags. All minor powers, most are irrelevant for the run by now. Oh yes, the return of the-knights-of-the-rhodes, but now of-the-malta, as that tag can re-emerge on the island, provided the tag owning the province chooses so; obviously the aragon-tag allowed it. Nevertheless, no france-tag, no-austria-tag; the castile-tag is too weak, no thanks to the player-ottos, and the aragon-tag is not to be mentioned; the england-tag has been by default a running-joke; the portugal-tag, how that is still alive, who knows, but it refrains. Oh, the austria-hungary tag becomes an eligible rival for the player-ottos, again.

All right, code.


Hello protestant-side, here comes the player-ottos.

The flow of time,
silent it becomes,
thundering in the mind.​

Spoiler: Thundering

[**]

Yes, the muscovy-tag joins on the catholic-side. It is followed by the riga, then the sweden-tag. Unfortunately the newest rivalries of the france or the austria-hungary for the player-ottos are unsuccessful in pushing them to enter the league of the catholic-side, or any side. In the last minute, ally of the emperor-bohemia joins, as the brandenburg-tag. To counter the sweden-tag, the denmark-tag comes to the protestant-side, and the thuringia-tag, and... that is it. Disappointment. When the run fails, then go with a bang.

Yeah yeah, mamluks is no longer a valid rival, whatever. Suddenly the young 12-monarch dies after ruling for only 4 years, and the player-ottos is now in regency. Yes, the code cannot make any efficient strategies, but it will fight the human-player through events. All right code, as you wish.

The march-bosnia sends the proposal; now the Printing Press is spreading around the capital provinces. It does not matter. The otto-tag is coming for you, code.

Jafari scholars, +10% shock damage. Diplo-tech level 14, now the galleass type galleys have arrived. Quickly upgrade the navy. Economy shows 53 ducats in net by the hyper-boost of trade, even after the increased army force. You never had a chance, code.

Ming-tag has announced the player-ottos as rivals. And ming, please do explain, why would the player-ottos care about you? Can you embargo the tag and efficiently kill the economy of the player-ottos? Can you attack the player-ottos? Do you even have any province of interest for the ottos-tag? No, but it can only provide ally-block, so making crazy alliances with the colonisers, but Council of Trent! It can reach the player-ottos, after all there is no map, there are only military accesses and supply system does not affect the code-tags, as an advantage. But can you beat the player-ottos while being two-techs behind, ming? The code does not have any notion of strategy, but only enormous advantages; still, it has infinite amount of patience, that is remarkable, and of course, natural, as that is not a part of the simulation.

Order 10 more galleasses; the navy is going to be 50-galleys strong. Also, check the Create a Grand Navy generic mission, giving additional navy morale, just in case.

Rising among the Greek population event, -2 unrest, increased production efficiency, for some of the provinces. Nice, yet only another random-event.


Months are ticking.

Pity, as the months are ticking, it would be nice to resume the discussion about the ideas. The Return of the Ideas? Naah, the Revenge of the Ideas? Eh, no. The remaining side of the ideas to discuss would be the concept of policies, which are not that much. Base strategy generally seems to be Eco-Quality and another +5% discipline for the armies. Inno-Off for siege-pip generals, if the Aristo-set is not chosen or not available; crucial for merchant republics, which have Plutocratic-set. Pluto-set, the best non-military set of the military ideas. It is only for fun, yet very beneficial for the economy, and good for army morale. Oh, no policies of Admin-set are relevant, so once again, never Admin-set. A couple more by Influence-Humanist, very good as providing +1 diplo-slot. Do not overlook Expansion-Aristo, giving reduced building-costs, very useful for the portugal-tag. Any tag to oppose the england-great britain requires the Maritime and its turbo-policies for incredible navy morale bonus and such. And the list goes on. They cost monarch points when enacted more than one, with some of the tags being able to have more free policies, but for turbo-tags or dynamic-tags as the player after about the mid-run, +5-advisers are affordable, then there will be no concern on the monarch points.

At the moment, as the music intensifies, your idea sets are looking at you, while you are looking back at the ideas tab. Diplo-set; check. Aristo-set; check. Inno-set; pour the admin-points. If the run were to be sustained, then the fourth would be Maritime. Of course, for the high navy tradition and large navy limit together. Then perhaps Eco-set? Probably for the sixth finally an actual mil-set, yeah, the Offensive, to improve the general-leader pips. Otherwise Defensive. Off- or Def-set, but then seventh and eighth ideas… what does remain? Oh right, Humanist or Religious, one is mandatory. For the last, whatever, even Naval would suit. Quality would be a better one though. But heey, that is a rich optimism, getting the run up to that date to choose fifth or sixth, let alone the last two. Nope, it is 1562, the run has saturated, the code has fallen, and the fourth set has not even arrived yet. Not even embraced the Printing Press. The hopes are gone. Then remains only the warfare.

Why would the player-ottos embrace the institution, while still ahead of the tech, even with enormous tech-cost penalties? One more institution, then the result is obvious, no valid targets for rivalry. Therefo –






[*] Mountains; [**] No Time for Caution; both from the soundtrack of Interstellar by Hans Zimmer (2014)

Edit 22.10.2023: Corrected formatting, grammatical, typographical, lexical mistakes.

 

[filcat]

---

CHAPTER XV - Part II


...but then suddenly starts,
ceases the silence in the music,
of the words primal they are.
​

Spoiler: Choose your destiny - Flawless victory

[*]

RELIGIOUS
KOMBAT!
​

[*] Techno Syndrome, hard trance techno remix of Techno Syndrome (Mortal Kombat) of the soundtrack for the game (Mortal Kombat, Midway, 1992), unknown origin; soundtrack by The Immortals, written by Olivier Adams (1994)

 

[Midnite Duke]

Thank you. Why did you choose a turbo-tag instead of a small nation? I hate EU trade system.

 

[filcat]

Thank you. Why did you choose a turbo-tag instead of a small nation?

Cheers mate!

About the chosen tag; the narrator began with the usual dismissal of the reality; so locked in for the game to play, the reasoning was given for choosing a turbo-tag, and out of them, the ottos;

From Prologue

Have no patience, only to blow off some stress. That is why you exist in the game in anyway, ottos. To not have a need to worry about the run.

Have gone with it personally too for the sake of the story, as it is a relatively calm-run; could have started with the others, but reasons for not choosing them were also given in Prologue by the narrator, who has no patience.

About the patience, though, that is the story itself.

---

I hate EU trade system.

Yeah, despite its admirable mathematical model, the static flow of it is frustrating. Trade companies were also scandalous before, and only by the emperor-update they became tolerable. Nevertheless the system makes any run an unpleasant experience regarding its unchangeable design. The Channel node always wins the big ducats, if necessary measures are not taken to prevent this. For the player with a tag around that node, the code is utterly doomed, that is certain of course.

 

[filcat]

---

CHAPTER XV - Part III


And the instincts follow,
into the melody they conform,
impossible to avoid the colour of the twilight
​

Spoiler: The Twilight

[*]

WHOOOW!
​

[*] Twilight Zone (rap version) of the album Get Ready! by 2 Unlimited (1992)
This is the original that Oliver Adams of The Immortals made the remix Techno Syndrome; though the similarity was claimed as a coincidence.

Edit: Corrected typographical mistake.

 

[filcat]

---

CHAPTER XV - Part IV


As the melody envelops the calm,
Terrified the light in the never,
For what is seen out of the existence,
Ever shining in the screams forever.
​

Spoiler: FINISH IT!

[*]


​

[*] Metal cover for Techno Syndrome, by LittleVMills (2019)

 

[filcat]

EPILOGUE​

Hello ottos.


Yes, that was the conclusion to the conflict, in the event announced, for the years waited, in the minutes played.

---

The War of the League ends, in the victory for the side the player-ottos decides. On the other hand, that is not exactly a guaranteed result; the cases can be broken down to two scenarios at first. The strong-league is the one with enormous number of participants for the sides. A general observation can be claimed that the catholic-side is the usual winner in such situations. For that type of religious league war, the human-player can be irrelevant, and occasionally even be bested by the code, if the chosen side is opposing the crowded-league. This happens due to the coloniser-participants.

In rare occurrences, when the ottos join, while a strong-mamluks-tag are still running, the latter can join the war, with two possibilities: Either enforce a peace, therefore auto-catholic-side, as the war is declared by the protestant-side; or by the uneven distribution of great powers between the belligerent-sides. Yes, any great power can join any other war that is fought between great powers but uneven in the numbers. Attacking the france-tag as the austria with an ally-england, provided that they are all great powers during the war, so 1 great power attacked by 2, can incur a surprise party to defend the attacked great power of the france. In that example, the tag as the fourth great power is an unpredictable chance of the pseudo-random number generator. Rivals of the attacker party austria- and england-tags will certainly have an increased weight to join the fight. However, there can be truly random participants among the great powers, with the reasons only known to the calculation of the code. As such, a relatively healthy mamluks-tag can join the league war, based on its rivalries during the conflict. A player-ming, or any other tag under the control of the human-player that has become a great power, can rush to discover the map over the europa-subcontinent, and can manage to join either side based on the availability of the options. Such a forced-attempt will not be pretty, and requires strenuous power of the patience from the human-player. In any case, all these can wildly change the outcome of the War of the League of the strong-type.

The other scenario is the weak-league. Average and below number of participants for the sides of the conflict will be observed. This generally occurs as the austria-tag loses the imperial election. The chain reaction of fallen rivalries, or the opposite effect of dead-locked rivalries prevent the code-tags to join any side. The austria-tag is not central in this role; occasionally the Burgundian Inheritance happens in the favour of the emperor, causing a horrific austria to annihilate the france-tag early in the run; or a france-tag going berserk on both the castile-spain and the england, then casually sides with the protesant-league, then takes the decision to be the defender of the catholic-faith. In the last example, despite the code-protestant-tags gain an enormous advantage in the form of the france, they become silent when it comes to declare the league war, as again the france-tag will be calculated on the defender side of the conflict. Yes, that is still the case, with the expansion of the emperor, and who knows what has changed in the iteration that came afterwards, named the leviathan.

Otherwise, in the scenario of the weak-league, as there are not enough belligerents, the war is declared as a regular procedure, and it runs its usual course.

*​

In this run, the player is the ottos. The code never had a chance. Choosing the side of the protestants was not a decision of need, nor of wanting, else never been a concern. Only hope was to draw the attention of the austria-hungary, but it refrained. The muscovy-tag was lingering around, the emperor-bohemia tag was silent, the england-tag was ineffective, the denmark-tag was not seen at all; the france-tag did not bother. The tags of the holy roman empire, even if there is a turbo-strasbourg, a hyper-successful trent-tag, and a well-doing liege-tag, they did not join. Besides, since they seem to be running larger than their usual scenarios, it means they devoured other tags of the empire or their neighbourhoods. So in any case there were not many tags left to get into the conflict.

Out of the empire, there is the mega-milan, which has not made any moves since decades, let alone participating the league. There is the papal-tag of this run, alive, healthy, powerful, and it does not say a word on the situation of the war, as that tag does not join the league-business at all for most of the times, and only does so when it allies the emperor-tag during the conflict.

Then comes the situation of the coloniser iberian-tags. The portugal-tag was beaten down by the player-ottos, so its dormant status is understandable. But the castile-tag joined, yet it did nothing. It has 73k troops, yet kept them somewhere either on indonesian-islands or in mesoamericas, even if its entire realm was ravaged under siege, even if it could change the course of the war a bit, even if its potential power would be a deciding factor for most of the others, even when this was curtailed by its own choices already. None shows up, and the silence is evermore.

*​

And the conclusion of the War of the League. The date shows 1566, the protestant-side has won, while ultimately losing. No realm remains as a powerful protestant-tag, in any case there has not been any before the war. Based on the incredible chances of the calculation, the first emperor to be elected is… the landshut-tag. Not the leader of the league, not even joined; the randomness of the situation is acceptable, yet its election is still incomprehensible. Probably the decision of the code depends on the relations with the pre-war electors, but that is only a claim. The amount of time spent looking at the lines of the code drives the one insane, eradicating all the patience one can have, and thus it is more than enough to say, that it is a random choice of the code. After the war, the new emperor-landshut will have many problems, as all neighbours will bite pieces off the empire, and it cannot prevent it, not with its semi-generic agendas. Even though the bavarian-tags have more specific missions than many others, none is sufficient to make the code run those tags in any efficient manner. The game is not designed for them; it is either austria, or spain, or poland, or england, or france, or ming, or… Eh.

And the other tags of the protestant-side? Poland now has a pu over lithuania with 100% liberty desire. It already lost in the victory. The denmark-tag was on the winning side of the war, and it will be devoured by either the sweden-tag or the lübeck-tag. Cool that would be, an interesting scenario but there is no patience to wait and see what happens, since you do know how it proceeds even with such scenarios. They fight each other, one prevails, then it remains silent as there are no more rivals in the vicinity. Or they will rival the ottos, the one that the human-player controls, and they will wait from the other side of the europa-subcontinent, regularly Slander Merchants, or Sow Discontent, and nothing else will they ever do. Except conquest. Just as any generic code-agenda.

*​

And the side that lost the war? The castile was on the lost-side of the league, but it still has its 73k-army somewhere on the earth. It will not be attacked by the france-tag, nor it will attack back; they will continue in their path of conquest but on others owing to their bonkers-level-crazy perma-claims in all over the world. Although, as the human-player, you managed to force it to give up some of those claims on the philippines-islands, but such tags have more of those than any other in the game. They will not stop in that regard, nor they should be.

But when they fight the human-player, they will still besiege the farthest fort, the most distant province, the least valuable area for the war-goal, while waiting to be conquered, keeping their 100k troops hidden somewhere else, otherwise running around to avoid any battles. Understandable, to struggle for avoiding any loss. The problematic side is that the chase occurs on a war-theatre roughly covering an entire continent. Roughly, is not there for indicating an exaggeration; it is there to show the average experience, since it is well possible to watch the code run from other code-tags or from the human-player over not single, but multiple continents. Such wars are not fought against a greater threat, nor against a weaker realm, not even against time, nor for any gain. They are fought against the patience of the human-player.

---

The date shows 1568, and the poland-tag converts to reformed-faith. While having a pu over lithuania-tag with 100% liberty desire. Brilliant move, code. On the other hand, an interesting story, seeing the demise of a realm. What could lie in its future, a war for independence, further defensive wars against its neighbour the bohemia-tag, or an attack on the muscovy-tag? Who knows, you do not need to care any more.

But yes, the story. That is all what remains, and the only possibility to play the game. Unfortunately the game makes every possible move to hinder itself for such stories to happen, as it still calculates that the poland-tag too powerful for the lithuania-tag to declare independence. This is also the reason for the colonies rarely declaring war against their overlord-tags. There can be a two-province-left portugal-tag, and the code-colonies over entire america-continents will wait for decades to make a move. Then, they can with very high probability still lose their independence wars. The code will always require the human-player to disrupt this design that has the heavy inertia.

Oh yes, it is 1568, and the player-ottos still has not embraced the Printing Press institution. Why, as already 13 years ahead of time in the diplo- and the mil-techs, while waiting for the admin-tech to drop under the condition of behind-the-time, in addition to behind-the-neighbours' tech, providing another 5% tech-cost. Moreover, another method to reduce the tech-costs is… the spy network on the technologically advanced tags. Yes, why do you think that Diplo-set is so important? To increase relations so the coalitions can be avoided, to have vassals instead of crazy-code-allies, again to increase relations of the enemies of the allies so the player will not be called to surprise-and-irrelevant-wars of the allies, and of course for spy networks, which give tech-cost reductions. And after all these advantages, why would anyone choose Admin-set for an opener instead of the Diplo-set? Who knows, maybe such runs also involve a story. Now that would be interesting, otherwise, never the Admin-set.

And your choice for the fourth set will be of course Maritime, and it will be unlocked once the admin-tech 14 arrives. Checking the neighbourhood. Casually declare war on the mamluks-tag. War ends around 1570, and the provinces along the Red Sea coast and the Persian Gulf coast are conquered. Leave the city of Qahira again. It does not matter at this point. In any regard, you have not touched the perma-claims on the hungary-tag since decades, in case the austria-hungary tag could rise. But now, it is pointless, as the hopes are gone.

Embrace the Printing Press by 1570 after the war, and get the admin-tech 14. Maritime-set. After that; even, yes even the Admin-set can be chosen as fifth, since none matters any more. The safe, the sane, the reasonable route would be to take the Humanist-set as the fifth, then either the Trade- or the Off-set as the sixth; therefore the choice of the sixth determines the seventh. For the last one, by then the code would be screaming, yet one can pull out the Quality, or the Eco-set, even maybe the Naval, because well beyond the over-killing limit the run is, at tech-level 29, so no idea set would matter in any significant way for any turbo-tag, let alone the otto-tag.

Despite the heavy conquest, yes, as the admin-tech costs about only 371 admin-points, about 60% reduction the player-ottos has by then: With the innovativeness at 66,6, meaning 6,6% reduction on all monarch-point actions; with the occasional Dhimmi estate when they have high loyalty and influence; with the Inno-set; added to 2% reduction on the according category each time an idea is enabled; not to mention 10% reductions by Diplo- and Aristo-sets; but ultimately owing to the turbo-monarchs, technology can be kept always ahead of time. Always keep the tech ahead of time, particularly useful for economy by the admin- and the diplo-techs, and there is never a need to unlock a tech while ahead of time if it does not provide innovativeness by being the first. The exception is the mil-tech; a sudden change in the political parameters can force one to unlock the next tech-level. Political situation is a generous label, naturally, as it is only the warfare. Just as the austria-hungary war you endured by your own mistake, it only depends on the warfare status.


Current ruler is murad the first, a 13-monarch, 5-3-5, ascended the throne during the league war, following the regency due to his predecessor dying only after four years into his reign; funny, as it should have been named as murad the third, but that is a small detail as an error by the history-files, and it does not matter after all the delirium the code vomits on the player.

Austria is no more a valid target for the ottos. How many times it has been on and off by now, you do not know.

Oh, your only ally, the oman-tag, calls you to its war on the yemen-tag. You apparently have missed to increase the relations with the yemen-tag up to 50, and have forgotten to manually set the Attitude towards the tag as Friendly. Now as the player you have to suffer the war that is declared by the code as an ally. The war lingers about three years, despite your attempts to finish it quicker. Fortunately your ally the oman-tag conquers not that many provinces; but this is enough, the vassalisation cannot wait any more. There is still too much distance preventing its vassalisation, and there are only a couple of provinces between the two of you.

Declare war on the hormuz-tag, by 1573, and make the war as fast as possible. By 1 January 1574, the provinces on the gulf-coast are conquered, now the player-ottos is neighbouring the oman-tag. Hello oman, the newest and the last vassal. Make her a march, send the officers, take any debts off.

Now having seven vassals, and in the month of February, the muscovy-tag is no more a valid target; within the end of the same month, it will be again eligible for rivalry. The cycle for the muscovy-tag has started. The other two are the france- and the ming-tags. Once the hungarian provinces are conquered, in addition to a couple of provincial-purchases from the vijayanagar- and the sindh-tags for trade companies on the india-subcontinent, they will also enter their cyclic-rivalry status. Once; when this would be done.

But you have no more hope.

The charter-company purchases will turbo-increase the trade even more; by 1577, the trade node on the city is about 51,2 ducats of total value. It is closely followed by the Sevilla node with 48,6 ducats, its rate of increase is far greater than the player-ottos’ node; the Channel node seems to be failing, only at 41,6 ducats. However, with the trade directed from the india-subcontinent, and when the otto-specific mission on the Crimea node is enacted once the time is right, it is highly possible to spawn the Global Trade by having the richest node on one of the provinces around it.

Yet there is no more need.

The army shows 144k troops, and the net income is about 55 ducats. You can disband the entire army and re-recruit, since the manpower potential can meet the demand; you can mercenary-spam even with 20 consecutive debts, and the economy is at the level of self-recovery from that loss. No tag can oppose, so the coalitions remain as the only option, and that is an artificial method to trigger a challenge. Yet, the economy shows at least three coalitions can be managed, and that is an optimistic estimate, since the code can never manage to declare even a single Punitive War on the player under these circumstances. The human-player has to self-sabotage the run at this stage, which is a pointless exercise.

For you have no more patience.

It would have been interesting, yes. Had the possibilities within the distribution functions made it, had the random-events on the code aligned on a different angle, had the code used its predetermined-events more efficiently, were the dice rolled differently, it could be different. The name of your hope was if only it could be.



But now, the date shows 1578, and it ticks, the never-vector, ever-confusing scalar with single direction, the time, it runs, its sound clings, resonating in the depths of the mind.


The tags are silent.

The run reached the saturation level.

The code collapsed.




Goodbye, ottos.

---

Of course the sun rises as it should be. But the light is blocked while the clouds thicken as ever can be. And comes the rain, cleaning the pain away, but it is only blurring the vision, for it is the blissful serenity you are lost into.

It is the linguistic assumption due to the earth-bound perspective, and the obvious is assumed by the knowledge consistently observed by multiple independent sources through the time.


You do know the reason for why you are playing this game, as the blood hastens in its flow out of the wound. But the chase after the reason was intriguing, you admit to yourself, for it was not required to test it, yet it had to be determined, out of the complex mess in the simplest abyss you have been to.

System Warning – Back-up systems activated

The arcade-absurdities, for however horrendous they are, inherent to the design, unchangeable at this point, follow the path of the vile hatred in the frustration of yours. Identifying the most terrifying surreal aspect, the only that is, in the simulation it obliterates the reality, with a smooth touch of the gentle wind in the summer. As much incorporated into the lines of the loops within the conditionals by the equations the code runs through, the inescapable desperation hits with the awareness that how hard it is to distinguish over the others. You were not prepared, you did not know, you would not have an idea what it could bring once you have reached it.

Yes, it has been difficult to reach the conclusion, for all the elements of the code you accused fought back in their vigorous battle for existence.

System Warning – The Sentry is unresponsive

Yes, the simulation, however it is dominated by the events of the random and scripted types; it is the simulation that survives, because the events are there for the simulation to thrive, and not specifically for the human-player. The string functions coloured by the stylish graphical outputs are there for the story to enrich the imagination, yet the advantages and the disadvantages are there for the code, to disrupt its own equilibrium point. Obvious that is, as the code cannot calculate to defeat itself. Yet with its own lines, the equilibrium point of itself is unbalanced, and then it proceeds with another part of its own lines. Thus the illusion is formed, and the tags fight each other. For the player, though, that is the genesis of the challenge. The fight against the heavily advantageous code, or the survival against the incidents triggered by random or pulse-events.

System Warning – Routing available resources to Medic-System

Yes, even they can be accepted.

The code being a simulation; that is accepted by you, since it was the furious reaction of yours to accuse the code for being an arcade-game. Then the infinite-loop starts all over again. But lucid-streaming in the infinite-loops revealed the key. The army or navy units going to one province from another; the commands moving the units to one vertex from another. That is the knot, the key of the accusation, the code floats between the two worlds, being a simulation while growling as an arcade.

Yet it is not the hatred towards the design of the code you have. You do love the maps. You do love the choices you have to make. You do love the actions you have to take. You do love the music you hear. Mind-jumping is unavoidable under the impact of the music.

System Warning – Invalid commands

Yes, the music.

Spoiler: The Voyage

[*]​

The silence is announced by the deepest violins. A single percussion gongs the beginning. The cellos join, painting the history of this game together with her predecessors, as it all started with humble goals. The second of the title was the one remembered most, yet all of them had the same ambition: A grand strategy by their strong simulation elements. The flute enters, ushering in the new age, as the fourth iteration arrives. The harp supports all the tone, carrying the entire structure, showing that the fourth is the one to create the generational impact. They harmonise together, the drums roll, the brass makes its way, repeating the grandiose birth of the game. The woodwind takes over, telling the flow of the beauty, the direction of the art, the name of the game. Violins rise, cellos brood, yet they agree upon the lead, and the harmonisation repeats three times. At 2’27’’, it soars. The journey of the beauty, the way of the art, the name is roared as the percussion explodes, along the way the faint choir backs it. It truly is the voyage.

System Warning – Invalid commands

Yes, you do love the voyage you incessantly undertake in this game, a grand strategy, by her strong simulation elements.

But this game? Do you…? You…? You are not able to exit the infinite-loop, but enter another mind-jump.

---

You do know it, despite its incredible problems, unprecedented flaws, innumerable errors, not within the illusion, but beyond the disillusionment you see them, the pillars of the art, the essence of the code for this game rise in the mind, stand strong, defend its existence.

The casus belli. No code before this series of games, along with her cousins, managed to bring the concept into an acceptable form. The first step for the players to make an understandable interaction with the code. The curse of all games, being in the wetlands of warfare, designed for conquering other entities, yet this game along with her cousins made the revolution. The casus belli, so the player and the code can communicate with each other, beyond a careless, a mindless, a relentless onslaught against each other, provided the concept of generating the pretext for the warfare of each other in its run.

The truce, the length of war, the call for peace. All three changed the perception of the games for the players, as it has become possible to make any reasonable interaction with the code by these elements. With the truce concept, it became a definite period for what is going to happen after a war. The player is allowed to break it, yet the code is limited in its choice, to allow the player to resume the illusion of the interaction. Yes, otherwise additional reasoning has to be disclosed to the player in order to distinguish what the code may do: Does it behave as a sequential procedure to eliminate, or does it imitate a hesitating entity, are the questions answered with the truce time. Whether the code will be allowed to break by its own decision matrices or not in its design, the concept crushed the barriers of the games they are limited to. Instead of constant war-status, with the truce concept the players, both code and human, are expected to abide the treaty. The length of war; that is the defining factor for controlling the power of the code; the unlimited might of its infinite-patience, as no human can oppose it. Despite its flaws, it is the necessary aspect of the design; then comes the call for peace. Otherwise the code can resume forever against the human.

The numbers and their breakdown. With the fourth iteration it has reached its peak so far; without the listed numbers, the ledger information, the breakdown of the reasons, one cannot comprehend the actions of the code, otherwise there would be no illusion for an effective contact between the code and the human-player to start with, the simulation would not even exist. In the before times the old-school had to crawl through the never-disclosed commands of the game-codes, and they were all generic, aimed to eliminate the others. It is therefore an instinctive-habit of old-school players to consider that any code is determined to eliminate the opponent, the human. It was truly the dark ages of the simulations, however they were actually so or not. But with the numbers that are displayed in lists, showing the reasons of the choices made by the code; this changed every aspect of the games forever. In the times of this new-age, now the players can take further steps to comprehend the code in its actions, to consider their options against it, based on the observations they can make, as given by the design of the number-breakdowns.

And the last pillar, the most important, the core essence of the game. Pause.

Yes, the pause.

No, any objection against the concept of pause is baseless, untenable, and unthinkable. The usual counter-argument is that the life does not have a pause, as the time flow is continuous, so the simulation should be too, etc. No. In the case of the entropy increase, yes, the universe does not stop, and disregarding the singularities as black holes for the sake of the argument. The carbon-based life as a simplified definition, and narrowed down to the life of a human-being, the biological clock is always ticking too. There is no pause in either case, yes, but the metabolisms take their break. In fact, the life of the human being, an organism of carbon-based cycle, strives for the moments of rest, and that is not a behaviour exclusive to homo sapiens. You do take your time to rest and to control your own life, and it is the pause you can ever approach. So the baseless counter-argument can be overcome only by such basic defence, yet return to the case of the game.

The pause feature of the pseudo-real time flow in this game is the element that makes it unique, it is what makes this game and her cousins, the game. Turn-based strategies do not have such concerns; the insanity called real-time strategies do not have any remorse nor shame, as none is an actual strategy, but just highly sophisticated arcade-games of click-hysteria. Thus enter the realms of the Go and the Chess. They are the true strategies, and they are more than games, without any need of graphical nor string functions to enrich their outputs. They are the purest forms of the conceptual design of simulating the life and the strategy, even if being of turn-based nature.

But this game is none of them, as it has the pseudo-real time flow, with controllable flowspeed, and providing the function of a pause. This game cannot be itself, it cannot be anything, it will cease to exist when its pause feature is discarded. Take it out of the design, and this game will remain as dead as a generic reaction-tester, just as any -allegedly- strategy game with real-time flow. A test of human-reaction speed against the hundreds of the code-tags with its near-infinite processing speed it would become. Besides the futility of such a miserable design, it is, yes, doable to beat the speed of a processor, as millions are already trained themselves to do it, yet the amount of time spent on such games is a waste, as the opportunity is lost in that case, for what otherwise can be invested for a Basketball match, an infinitely superior type of game as opposed to -supposedly- strategy of the digital type with real-time flow.

---

And yes, despite all its admirable beauty, remarkable style, and extraordinary concepts of its four pillars, the arcade-absurdities are over there.

System Warning – Alert – The Mainframe is breached

Not the flaws due to assumptions, simplifications, abstractions, but the arcade-elements of the code, forcing the player to chase down the code-units, for the warfare the name of the game is, falls on top of the grand strategy, by her strong simulation elements, with a mighty crash.

Even though you are ready, you are willing, you are able to accept, grudgingly or reasonably, all the arguments for its assumptions, simplifications, abstractions for the various aspects of its design, the arcade-absurdity of the code creates the stain, and you are not able to clean it once observed. Even though the supply system and the military access and the absurd decision matrices of the code are ultimately agreeable judging by the available resources, the inherent design devours all the light by creating its own event horizon.

System Warning – Critical Alert – Unauthorised access to bay doors is detected

The simulation of the populations over the map through a certain period of time. Every concept of this can be explained, and that was your voyage, but one out of them; that does not exist.

Yes, that is your voyage. To catch the moment of the decision of the code at the critical time that it makes against the variation of any input. Sometimes it fails, yet rarely, if not sometimes, it does roll the dice, makes its calculation, determines its goal, follows its ambition, struggles against the challenge. At least it tries, as it is determined to reach the equilibrium-solutions of its functions.

That is why you are playing this game, and you do know it, and you are chasing that probability in the system of functions limited by the conditionals in the loops of the lines.

System Warning – Critical Alert – Unauthorised exit – Initiating system fail-safe

But that concept remains in the dark. The one that does not even exist, beyond being a failure. The simulation of the history of the populations over the map through a certain period of time, and you search for the interaction with the code in this endeavour. Your voyage is doomed to fail if you consider it, as there is no human being in the simulation of the game.

System Warning – Critical Alert – Sequence Failure

The cousin of this game, crusader kings, is many steps far beyond it, despite her own limits, as it jumps into the level of its characters, instead of running over obscure lines of borders as entities called realms. Not sufficient as considering the populations by only the ruler class, but still far beyond this game. And this game has no character in it, the role of the player is an abstraction of a colour within a black border-line, it is depicted on a vague map. The events of random or scripted nature ultimately collapse under this analysis, as they are completely detached even from the story of the only characters given in the game, called the monarchs, and even they do not exist.


There is only one human being in the game.


It is you, the only one in this game.


That is how you saw it through the illusion, as it implodes into the darkening singularity of the void, with its astronomical scale gravitational field, attracting the mass so severely that the light is entrapped, never to escape, ever to scream in silence.


It would be you. But you are not.

System Error – Critical Alert

Your eyes blink, your wound is bleeding, your breathing races with your heartbeats. It would be you playing the game, whether knowing why this game else unaware, but you are not even there.

As the sorrowing fear began, you did tell yourself the reasons before. Careful, the why is the linguistic tool of the weaker kind, only applicable to explain your behaviour to you, not the tool of the stronger kind, the how. You do not remember it how you have arrived here, but that is entirely exclusive to your predicament. Your real, to answer the why, not for this game, but for you, for what you do now.

In fact, you were able to dive into the mind-jumps through the lucid-streamings of infinite-loops, and you did so willingly. It is unfinished, and the need you have ever had you do know it, yet the pain is there, and this is the diversion. The vectors of the space are to be discovered, as you closed your eyes from the reality, while the time is running in its direction, yet the scalar it is.


Return to your visible question of why this game, and it is now known by you, as you do your voyage through its run-time. Yet that question is born out of the contradiction you become aware of, as there is no population in this simulation of the history of populations over the map through a certain period of time. There is only you.

Unfortunately you are mistaken in your perception, but it is not about the game.

System Error – Critical Alert

The problem you ignored. The game is still played, before even hitting the play. Even if a life is left devoid of it, the play will resume in the mind. Do not worry, but they are called dreams, the art exclusive to the person they belong to.

System Error – Critical Alert

And do not worry, as this is not a dream. The reality of you in the surreal voyage of yours is dismissed by you, that was the error in your senses. Do not worry, you are the real, yet you dismissed the perception in exchange of the illusion of the simulation.

Wait. But you said, you acknowledged, you knew that the illusion was broken. It is broken, and you look at the real now, as you have to tend the wound of yours. Mind-jumps certainly helped, lucid-streaming obscured the process, in the infinite-loops you lost the concept of the time. Now you see the real with your eyes.

But.

System Error – System Error –

You asked all the questions possible, while knowing the remaining others in the void. The critical one, though, you completely disregarded it.

System Error – System Error – System Error – System Error – System Error – System Error – System Error – System Error – System Error – System Error – System Error – System Error – System Error – System Error – System Error – System Error – System Error – System Error – System Error – System Error – System Error –


How?



What year is this?



Who are you???

Spoiler: The shape

[**]​

-THIS IS WHERE IT ENDS-​

---

[*] The Voyage, composed by Andreas Waldetoft, performed by Brandenburgisches Staatsorchester, conducted by Bernd Ruf (2013)
[**] Shape of My Heart of the album Ten Summoner's Tales by Sting (1993). Minor appropriation on the lyrics.

Edit 07.07.2023: Corrected formatting, grammatical, factual mistakes. Corrected images.

 

[HistoryDude]

Pyrrhic victories can sometimes be won. The Ottomans look to be in a great position.

The descriptions of military leaders and success were interesting. I'm not certain that I agree with your narrator's position - I don't think that Alexander was less of a great conqueror than Temujin, for example. Also, Temujin relied a lot on his generals. Still, the great leaders often rely on charisma - as Alexander said, "I am not afraid of an army of lions led by a sheep, I am afraid of an army of sheep led by a lion". Still, everyone has different views on history.

Will we switch narrators for Book 2?

 

[filcat]

The descriptions of military leaders and success were interesting. I'm not certain that I agree with your narrator's position -

Cheers mate.

I don't think that Alexander was less of a great conqueror than Temujin, for example. Also, Temujin relied a lot on his generals. Still, the great leaders often rely on charisma - as Alexander said, "I am not afraid of an army of lions led by a sheep, I am afraid of an army of sheep led by a lion". Still, everyone has different views on history.

Have to briefly exit the constraints of the story in order to reply to this part;

---

It is certain that Alexander was not a less of great conqueror than Temujin, that is agreed.

Re-checked to confirm if there has been a mistake in the parts involving the examples, since they were not given as comparative cases as in your deduction.
Rather, they were given as a consecutive series of cases, and the subject was about the samples of military manoeuvres but of extraordinary ones.

In the case of the Kingdom of Macedons, Alexander managed to mobilise populations to march into Achaemenid Empire to fight Darayavaus the third. As such, Alexander and his armies managed to traverse great distances in their path of conquest, from Kingdom of Macedon into Mesopotamia, and thereafter into Persia to the north of India.
For the case of Mongol Empire, Temujin managed to mobilise populations to march into Khwarazmian Empire to fight Ala ad-Din Muhammad the second. As such, Temujin and his
armies managed to traverse great distances in their path of conquest, from Mongolia into Central Asia, and thereafter into east of Europe.

If a comparison has to be made, than the only difference between the cases is in the importance of the conquests, but considering the social and the cultural anthropology. In this regard, the importance in the conquests of Alexander, fought between populations of agrarian societies, is immense. Leading, managing, forcing a settled-population through the dynamics of the according era was an incredible incident for the case of Alexander, judging by the distance made by the military.

For the case of Temujin, the second era conquests were fought primarily against the agrarian populations, but again by the nomadic Mongols, along with various others. It was only a Wednesday for the tümens fighting at the battle of Kalka River, judging by the distance made by them, but that distance is incredible, and without any equal. In this regard, the importance in the conquests of Temujin comes from the overtly-great distances traversed by the military.

If the impact of the conquests is to be compared, then both have extraordinary impacts on the lives and the history of the human kind. Alexander's conquests affected a certain portion of the human population, yet its generational legacy reached far beyond in the following millennium, so much that even religions incorporated those wars into their narratives. Temujin's conquests affected a larger portion of the human population judging by the landmass they fought over, and thus its generational legacy reached far beyond afterwards.


Back to your deduction; the examples were not given as comparative cases, but consecutive samples regarding the mobilisation of populations by the so-called leaders, and the distance traversed in the military-manoeuvres. Moreover, analysing history by great conquerors is inherently a flawed concept, and entirely misleading. Temujin conquered Persia, Alexander conquered Babylon, etc these are not accurate descriptions but rather gross simplifications due to romanticism (and due to other reasons that will not be mentioned here for the sake of sanity; else this discussion will go on a lot more, to unwanted places).

---

Returning to the story of the narrator in Book I;

The illusion was broken in the narrator's eyes, since in the game army units casually run from one continent to another, are reinforced from one hemisphere to another, fight in thousands of kilometers away from their home, as there are mostly agrarian societies, and, such manoeuvres are impossible.

Only a handful examples there are, as observed in the history, according to the records available. There are certainly more examples regarding the manoeuvres covering such very large distances, but all of them are extremum points of the problem at hand. In the game, it is a simple click-fest, thus one sees the armies of portugal-tag pouring into India, by traveling over Europe, Africa, Mesopotamia; sometimes over Anatolia towards Caucasus Mountains, then around the Caspian Sea; eventually to Hindu Kush Mountains, then into India. On average; otherwise those units can sometimes pull an around-the-Tibet-run too.

While looking for answers of the why, the narrator realised the reason for the collapsed-illusion by this.

---

Will we switch narrators for Book 2?

Would have given another frustrating reply to this, as not keen of spoilers, but already exposed it in the farewell-epilogue of the story, and by the entry in the library-list of eu4AAR forum (no idea if that list is still an active part of the eu4AAR forum, but @DensleyBlair is still active, so assuming it is still on, and for once, wanted to register an AAR), so;

Oh yes


Edit: Corrected typographical mistake.

 

[filcat]

THE MAINFRAME​

Book I	BİR		This is where it ends​
Book II	DUE		From the eyes escapes the light​
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[filcat]

Wild colours are dancing in the fiery light, as thunderous blazes are spewed into the sky of the incoming night. Despite their screaming nature, their sounds are none but an illusion, a repetition of the mind had it been observed outside. Through the window all but the mist of the headlights are falling under the blanket of the impending dark, and the amount of the hastily moving sky-rides is enough to suppress the illumination spread from the giant light-boards, invading the sight, terrifying the view, yet unforgiving, never-yielding, ever-shining in their holo-neons. After hours.

More could be seen, had it been slightly darker inside. More could be seen, had it been a cleaner sky. More could be seen, had it been less crowded in the horizon. But now, the room is crawling under the desk-glow, and the bureau is busier than the usual, and the horizon is almost extinguished as the night rises in its ever darkness. The waiting continues, the thousands of room-glows begin their dance across the sight to fight off the darkening sky bereft of the last rays of the evening. The blazes, the headlights, the light-boards are becoming powerful enough now to break the sovereignty of the night. Their savage flow is reflected in her eyes, while she is looking through the window, and taking another round off her cigarette.


Breathing out, she walks back to the desk, puts it off in the ashtray. Waiting for another moment, only to slow down the time, but she admits defeat, and sits on the chair. She finds out the speak-terminal, buried under the papers, and pushes it while giving another breath out. “Send the next one. Thank you.”

The woman enters the room, seeing only the dense smoke floating over the desk, lucid by the desk-glow, yet capable of overcoming the ceiling-glow. The woman looks at the officer, her dark-blue suit ruined by the work of the day, yet still keeping the dignity with the touch of the tie around the neck. The red hair of the officer gets the attention of the woman, then the eyes are met: The lost battle of the blue against the grey, but the age does not hold up to any story beyond this guess. “Please have a seat.”

The woman listens to the request of the officer, even though it is clear to the both that there would be no other choice. As the woman sits, the smile of the officer prevails through the clash in her own mind. She pushes one of the tens of buttons on the arch-terminal. “Yelena Razuvaev, Captain, Bureau de l’Est 14, Xin Valley. Night shift, auxiliary support, LA Off-port. Check seventy four.”

The woman looks at the officer with uncomfortable feelings seen in her eyes, whereas the officer collects all papers off her desk, without sorting, and leaves them on the shelf beside her. Once done, the desk reveals its forgotten beauty in the doleful mediocrity. Only the terminals and the half-opened rack, with an ashtray almost full, now remain on the desk between the woman and the officer. “It has been a long day. I should have sorted the papers for the previous checks in thirty-stacks, but there is no time, so you see. Heavily crowded; understaffed. I apologise for the mess.” The smile, victorious against the burden of the day, finalises the words of the officer.

“What kind of test is this?” the words of the woman are hesitating as they form in the sound waves travelling through the smoke-infused air lighted by the desk-glow. The ceiling-glow seems to retreat in utter collapse while the time is riding towards the deep of the night, and it has not been more than a couple of minutes since the woman has entered the room.

“Standard-check applied on the random passengers per regulations, madam. You do not need to worry. In periods determined by the district-sync. On random selections among the arrivals we have to apply the check. I must apologise for making you wait for so long time, but today has been busier, as I said. If you’d like to make a complaint, you should see to the Off-port Citizen Centre to register.”

“I do not understand the reason. I’ve given all my papers before the off-cruise,” now they are regaining the confidence, for the words of the woman speak the frustration in the certain moment. The officer keeps her smile, but she reaches to the pack in the meantime.

“I should smoke less. Would you like one, madam?” the officer is handing the pack as she pulls out the lighter. The woman is still confused on the check, overwhelmed by the long wait, speaks indifferent to the courtesy, “No, I do not smoke.”

“Would you mind if I smoke?”

“No, go ahead. I am already late in any case, you can take your time.”

The officer lights her new cigarette, smokes a quick breath out of it, yet still keeping her smile despite the bitter words she is targeted with, “I understand your situation. Just a couple of questions, and we will be done in no-time. First, I need your name. Please lean on the record-terminal, madam. It has to be recited by the check-person.”

“Eimear Conolly. You do not even have a coordination between departments, do you?” the words of the anger are visible through the newly created smoke of the officer under the cloud of the old, floating in the room. The smile of the officer is defiant against the aggressive question of the woman.

“I understand your frustration, madam. This is not that kind of a test. As I said, it had to be declared by the check-person,” giving a quick look on the monitor, the officer releases the breath of relief that the name has been registered correctly by the record-terminal.

“I should not even be here.”
“Madam, it is a random selection and –”
“No. I mean LA. Our vessel was redirected to this port.”
“What was your intended destination?”

The silence of the round remains on the eyes of the woman. Her angered breaths reveal the extent of the discomfort she is in, “Nyerere Off-port. That was the closest. All vessels for Johannesburg were sold out before I could book one.”

The smile of the officer stretches considering the dire situation of the woman, “I will facilitate the procedure as much as I can. From LA there are plenty of connections you can travel with after this is done.”

“I do not need you to plan my travel. I want this to be over soon.”
“Do you have an appointment to catch at your destination?”
“Yes, I will meet my family. They have just moved in there and – wait, is this the test?”

The comfort of the officer is seen on her relaxed smile. She takes another breath off her cigarette, and directly proceeds to set the rack on the desk, “We are only having a conversation madam.”

“Wait – I do know this. Is this…? I thought it is a –”
“A trick-scheme? No madam. Contrary to the tabloid-streams, it is a well-proven procedure, validated by multiple organisations, universities, research centres. This and off-world. I can assure you, it is not a conspiracy, nor a treacherous plot.”
“But I am not – you said this was a standard test!”
“Madam, do not worry. It is a standard test, and you have been singled out of the arrivals, just as tens of other random passengers. It does not insinuate any other meaning, and has to be applied as per regulations. Even I and other officers are tested periodically.”
“I do not approve this. I have waited for hours at an off-port that is not even my destination, after a very long off-cruise, and now you are going to apply this… whatever test it is?”
“I presume you were allowed to get out of the off-port for the duration of your waiting.”
“Yes but there is nothing to do in the vicinity except to wait my turn to be called upon!”

Once the eye-visor is set up, the officer enters the information for the check-procedure. On the screen the lists are prompted, and she scrolls through the questions while the sync-terminal is showing the progress. The last approval pops up on the screen, and she clicks on it to initiate the record. The smile is still preserved, but the cigarette is put on the ashtray.

“It is still much more fortunate than what other passengers have to endure, madam. Some vessels are redirected to the New Goa Off-port, if I have to give an example. They are still trying to arrange off-cruise tickets back to the earth for them.” The meaning of the words makes it clear. The frustrated look of the woman now retreats into a confused panic. The officer notices only now, the red hair of the woman, but brighter than her own. The eyes of jade differ too; and they are faintly shaking under the brows.

“I do not understand.”
“Relax, madam.”

The silence continues for a couple of more seconds yet stretches into maddening eternity in the mind of the woman. The officer proceeds, breaking the accursed temporal abyss.

“You were allowed to remain in the vicinity of the off-port –”
“I told you, yes but that doesn’t mean anything, we had to wait for h–”

“Please madam, only answer when I ask you a question,” the smile of the officer rises victorious, but the woman is now frozen in her eyes, completely in the panic of the moment. “You get out. You walk until you see a jungle. Into the jungle you proceed. Through the trees remaining behind you, you hear the cheeps of a bird. What do you do?”

“I do not – Jungle? What bird? What is this? Is this the test?”
“Yes. They are only hypothetical questions for the check. Just answer them as quickly as you can, madam.”
“What bird? I – I – I walk towards the sounds?”
“You turn back, and walk towards the sounds. You see the bird on the ground.”
“I do not understand. What is this? Does it not fly? Why does it not fly?!”

The smile of the officer is diminishing during her own words, but her eyes are, even though they lost their battle against the grey, now they are beaming the infinite blue, dazzling the seriousness of the moment. “Answer only the questions. You see the bird on the ground. Its wings are broken, and it is cheeping in pain.”

“I – the wings of the bird –”
“Only the questions, madam. You see the tree next to the bird. There is a nest on one of the branches. The bird is cheeping in pain. What do you do?”
“I – is it a real bird?”
“Synthetic or real, simulation or actual, the bird is shrieking now. It is in pain. What do you do?”
“I – the bird – is it – what is – ?”
“The sound of a predator you hear. It is approaching. The bird on the ground is now screaming in pain and panic and fear. What do you do?”
“What is – I – the bird – I want – I look at the nest!”
“The nest is empty but rests high on the tree. The bird is in utter terror. The growling predator is approaching. What do you do?”
“What I can?! – What is?! – WHAT I?! – HOW?!?”

The scream of the woman ends the assault of the questions. The eyes of jade are moving from one corner to another with an irritation that seems aimless. The smile of the officer returns, in the eyes of blue lost to grey now a bright sparkle resides. The officer leans back on her chair, takes her cigarette, and breathes off it one more time.

“You can relax, madam. It is only a standard check. Hypothetical questions.”

The woman is silent, but now she is able to control her eyes of jade, focused on the officer. The officer cuts the pause of the looks short.

“Would you mind telling me about your family, madam?”
“My family?”
“Yes, family. Your mother? Your father?”

The woman remains silent. The officer takes another breath off the cigarette.

“What about siblings; do you have any, madam?”

The woman hesitates, then leans forward. “My siblings? Yes, there are. I can tell you about them.”

“Please, do go on. I would li–”




The blast of the gun is heard for the first time when it crushes through the desk, hitting the officer on her chest. The second blast comes immediately just as the officer jolts in her chair, but it hits her throat, throwing her head back on her chair.


The blood spurting out of the veins splashes on the wall behind the officer. The woman stands up, firing the gun for the third time. The blast throws the officer with her chair onto the wall.[*]

---

-DUE-​

As the waves are hitting the coast, the stream of air is also carried with the soothing sound up to the balcony. Kind as a summer breeze it would be, yet the days of the sun are left far in the past months. He would enjoy the final moments of the gentle weather by the mercy of the sea, but his eyes are locked on the horizon. The ships he would have seen, the people working at the docks he would have heard, and the lingering winds he would have enjoyed.

None. He does know that it is not the horizon his eyes are onto, but what is there to be, what is about to be, what the day of the beyond will bring.


The last of the light retreats as he is looking at the opposite direction, while the others are murmuring in their shy voices behind him in the hall.

The steps are hastening, and they multiply as they get closer, and they become distinguishable just before two men enter the large hall. The one with the long cape of red and purple moves forward to pass beyond the table, aiming to address the figure on the balcony, yet he is promptly interrupted.

“I am here to report to him, Lorenzo.”

Both look at the figure on the balcony, but he does not move, still looking at the faraway lands beyond the sea, as the last lights of the day dwindle from the west. Once admitted, the two turn their heads back to each other, with the interrupter lifting his brows.

“I am afraid this is as far as you can see him.”

The older of the two at the table speaks softly to enlighten the situation, “Noble Achille, he has been silent since the dawn. Please proceed and introduce this nobleman to us instead.”

“I understand,” his voice remains calm, his demeanour stays proud. “Teodoro of Blazio, Patriarch of Venice; Francesco Mestre, Councillor for the Sea State; and…,” but he hesitates how to address the interrupter. Patriarch saves the awkward moment.

“Lorenzo Bardolino, Councillor for the Palace. Please do continue.”

Achille hesitates at the title he hears, but he does not prolong the moment: “I present you Friedrich of Frontenhausen, Captain of the Swiss Guards.”

Lorenzo smiles, while the two at the table share their looks at each other with a relief. Friedrich greets by bowing his head, and Teodoro stands up, walking towards the captain.

“We have met before, Noble Friedrich; if my memory does not play a trick, it was about two winters in the past.”
“That would be correct… Your Excellency, but you were – ”
“Yes, I have been appointed as the Patriarch quite recently. Please join us at the table, we shall proceed. I presume you have already met with Noble Alvise Casanova and Noble Enzo Valieri on your way here?”
“Yes… yes, we have. I was expecting to see the –”

Teodoro quickly looks at the figure on the balcony, then turns back to the soldier, armed with sword, walking able even under the heavy armour: “Unfortunately he is not accepting anyone currently, but I should repeat my invitation. We have much to talk. Noble Achille, you too, please have your seat at the table.”


The figure on the balcony stands still, watching the far corners of the horizon meeting the lands with the sea, disregarding the breeze, while hearing the others in the hall talking.

***​

The march of the guards hasten as the leader of the band gets faster in his steps. Quickly he enters the hall, then almost runs towards the large door, with increasing desire to crash it, hoping to find and face all of them. It has been weeks since the trial has been concluded, months since the Signoria has been notified for the existence of the plot, and almost two years since the battle.

But the doors open in calm anticipation of the marching guards, and yet Sebastiano Rovereto enters with the utmost certainty in his eyes to find them all. They are there, at the table, looking at him. Except one, all of them, in the hall they are.

“Noble Sebastiano, I assume this is not a visit of cordial intentions,” the soft voice of Teodoro soothes the clings of the armours and the blades. Enzo is standing next to the table, while Francesco Mestre and Achille are sitting without making any move. Alvise is taking slow steps, with a carafe in his hands, pouring wine to the glass he holds on his own. There seems to be no servants in the hall, but them, and the one Sebastiano wants is not there. He orders the guards to stand down, and they retreat.

“Where is he?”

“I do not think this would help your cause,” finishes his words before sitting on the chair, Alvise joins the others at the table, while holding his wine. He looks to the door of the balcony, just as Lorenzo walks out, looking at Sebastiano.

“To what do we owe this pleasure, Nobl–”
“Shut your mouth, imbecile. I will see him. Now!”

The posture of Sebastiano would intimidate the meek figure of Lorenzo, but surprising to the former, he simply stops, takes a step to the side, and shows the doorway: “By all means, Noble Sebastiano. He is waiting for you.”

Hesitating, confused, trying to comprehend the situation, Sebastiano looks at the ones sitting next to the table: “What you are doing can be used as a proof for treason. I would not have expected from–”

“You should talk to him, instead of making unsubstantiated claims on us,” Teodoro brings an end to the confusion of the man. Frustrated, impatient, heavily breathing, Sebastiano walks past by Lorenzo, through the doorway enters the balcony. He stops, and turns his head to the left of him.

He is there, sitting on a chair, looking at the view of the new day, as if listening to the melody of the winds clashing with waves dancing with the indistinct voices from the docks, shaped into an amorphous yet calming sound.

“Your son has been found guilty of bribery, and now exiled. You have been accused of not fulfilling your duties regarding the Mainland Domains, you have not expanded the borders since two years per your tasks. Incredible. You are just… sitting idle. Patriarch Domenico Michiel has been relieved from his position, before he could even start on his duties, then suddenly we hear about this… Teodoro of Blazio. You have not informed the Ducal Council, nor consulted the Council of Forty. The Signoria has informed the Council of Ten. You were suspected of establishing your own inner-circle out of the Ducal Councillors, out of the Sages of the Council. And I see that these accusations are holding the truth in them. Your actions from now on will be under the scrutiny of – ”

“Proceed as your duty requires.”

The words hit the accuser, and Sebastiano, now completely baffled, unable to take his eyes off from looking at the sitting figure.

“You…? What are you plotting?”

The figure is looking at the horizon, the new day is bright, the weather is calm. Sebastiano notices the scrolls he is holding.

“Sebastiano, had you had waited at your office, you would have received the notes of the morning. I have already dispatched them to the Signoria. Even the Great Council members have been informed. The ships are getting ready. I will tell you, and you will return to the Palace, to reiterate what I have already informed. It will be better to hear them again but from you.”

“What – what is the meaning of this?”

“Eugenius was planning to merge the see of Grado and Castello in any regard, so I facilitated it. You already know it, do not use this as an excuse to accuse me. If you do, then proceed as you wish. It does not matter. With or without me, Signoria will live. The Republic will live. Accept the fact that Teodoro of Blazio is the Patriarch. What I managed, what the Republic achieved by this, is the fact that the Papacy is now in our circle. So do the Knights of the Rhodes. The Circle of Adriatic, led by the Republic.”

“You did not have permission to establish such agreements!”

“On the contrary, I have all the permission I need. And you all in your petty councils and houses and manors, you have been urging the Republic to resume war with the Sforza, expecting the help of Florence. No. It is futile. Do you see all those merchant ships?”

Sebastiano looks at the docks, the busy corners of the city, the crowded centres of the island: “What are you saying?”

“Those you see, those you have been seeing, watching, even knowing deep down in your mind; those ships, delegations, envoys from the Cities of Ragusa and Bologna, from the Duchies of Mantua and Cilli, from the Bishopric of Trent; they are now, we are now, part of the League. Our League. And yes, I called our envoys back from the Kingdom of Albania too; Skanderbeg can take care of himself.”

“This is… You did not!… He expects our protection against the Serbian king!”

“You are embroiled so much in your own ambitions, you have blinded yourself. Since May, Lazar of the Brankovic, the king of the Serbs is. A fool, poor Lazar is. He has been boasting about attacking Skanderbeg.”

“And you abandoned him!”

“No, Sebastiano. You and the Signoria abandoned him, by forcing the Republic into wars from Lombardy to Varna. Wars for no gain but only loss.”

“Treason! You will be charged with secretly plotting against the interests of the Republic! You tarnished the reputation of the office you hold! Now you are truly done! You –”

“Proceed as you wish, Sebastiano. And yes, all this secrecy was to achieve these documents. The League has approved. The Grand Master has approved. But more importantly, the Pope has approved.” The figure holds the scrolls now to Sebastiano, yet still without looking at him. Trembling out of anger, Sebastiano leans and grabs them, opens and peeks through the words in the lines through the paragraphs. The figure continues without any remorse, without any excitement, without any doubt.

“Yes, from the Great Council I invited Alvise Casanova to lead the army of Treviso; Enzo Valieri to lead the fleet. They will leave for Negroponte today. I hired the Swiss mercenaries, and paid them from my own treasury; Friedrich of Frontenhausen is sent to Cattaro to lead them.”

“Mother of God! Does this mean…?”

“I remember Varna; do you? I sent those ships. You, the Ducal Councillors, the Council of Forty, all of you approved. What did we achieve? The ones that could, they returned in shame, as if they drowned in the sea they were sent to blockade. We achieved nothing but only an insult from Ioannes. We are laughed and ridiculed and humiliated at the palace of the Palaiologos. Allies of the holy league? A dead king, leaving three realms without one, and out of those realms, now that Hunyadi is spurting furious lies about us. He is hunting and persecuting and punishing our merchants as much as he would do had they been Turks. And the emperor in Vienna? It took months and numerous envoys to establish at least an understanding between us and the empire, despite the attempts of the Signoria. Fortunately, the Habsburg emperor is not as dense in the head as you are.”

Sebastiano, too horrified by what he reads, does not even hear the insult he just receives. His world is revolving around him, he feels the ground is melting underneath him, he fears the sky is falling upon him, upon the city, upon everyone he knows, else never seen. His faith is tested, but he fails to recover his calm, as every letter of every word in every line within every paragraph on the scroll devours him, and only Apocalypse resonates in his mind.

“I was tasked with expanding the Mainland Domains. Yet I was given a mediocre army, a couple of ships, a group of councils chasing after every move of mine, and on top of that, a general but out of all nobles, that dreadful Pietro Loredan, to wage war against the Sforza, a war we could not win. The campaigns in Lombardy almost cost the entire earnings of the Republic. I suggested to resign. The Signoria refused. Then Varna happened. Weeks, months, years passed. And you are here to question what I am doing, when my only son is exiled.”

“You… This… I will not allow this!”

“Proceed as your duties dictate, Sebastiano. If you are going to advocate for that Malipiero to the Signoria, go ahead. Tell them whatever you want. You still expect from me to expand the Mainland Domains; no, no more of these futile wars. The Republic depends on the sea, first and foremost. You may think otherwise and proceed as you wish. However, I have just told you, I already sent the heralds to the Councils about my agenda, and how I have already achieved them. I highly suggest you to reconsider your position before making any hasty decisions.”

Suddenly Sebastiano realises, and turns back to look at the guards he marched with. He sees Teodoro, speaking to the captain, smiling, and the soldiers are relieving, leaving the entrance before the door of the hall. Sebastiano realises; he is too far away, in distance and in power, too ineffective to order them to stand. He turns back to the scrolls he has been reading in horror.

“You have been planning this – to – ”

“Yes, Sebastiano. I was, the Republic was, all of us were distracted by these petty tasks and incomprehensible plans and irrelevant ambitions. No more. I wasted enough time, the Republic wasted enough blood, the patricians wasted enough ducats for no gain. I have already started, and now it has to be announced. I will be boarding the ship at night, leaving for Cattaro. The army of Venice has encamped there, waiting for me to lead.”

“You are – your age – ?”

“I may be no more, but the Signoria, the Republic will be ever more, Sebastiano. Of all people, you should know it better.”

“You are mad. No – you are fallen!”

“Careful, you are speaking not only to the Doge of the Republic. I am the head of the League. I am the leader of the Circle. Otherwise you can talk to the Papal Legate, to the detriment of your… well-being.”

“This is impossible! What you plan to do is impossible! I will make sure you are stopped! You are going to bring the doom upon us! The Signoria will not accept this! The Serbian King! The Habsburg Emperor! I will send heralds! I will even go to address personally the Palaiologos for his forgiveness! You cannot do this!”

“You never pay any attention, do you?”


The words end as the figure stands up finally. Sebastiano is holding the scrolls, trembling in anger, looking furious at him, while the docks are getting crowded. He realises the gathering ships, the marching marines, the hastening people. Tens become hundreds, hundreds become thousands, they board the ships. Sebastiano, his eyes shaking, turns to look at the figure.


The Doge is looking at him.


His eyes are growing in the flash of the darkness, reaching and spreading, covering and surrounding, enveloping and devouring, all the thoughts, all the memories, all the hopes of Sebastiano. His gasp is silent, and one, single, full, sole tear drops from his right eye, as he is frozen by looking at the Doge in the eyes.



“Inform the Signoria, Sebastiano. They will not believe what they have received by the morning heralds. They need to hear about my agenda once again but from you. But also tell them this: His Serenity Francesco Foscari has decided. The Republic is going to fight them all.”

Spoiler: The War for The City

[**]

[*] Adapted from Blade Runner, d. Ridley Scott, 1982
[**] Seven Nation Army, from the album Elephant by The White Stripes (2003). Appropriated lyrics on the images.

Edit 22.06.2023: Corrected punctuation, lexical, formatting, typographical, grammatical mistakes.

 

[HistoryDude]

Wait, is Venice attacking the Ottomans right now?

It seems as if this Doge is very ambitious...

 

[filcat]

Wait, is Venice attacking the Ottomans right now?

Just the Roman Empire; time for the Ottomans is not there yet.
Again the standard start 10 November 1444; by 1449, the empire is no more than a vassal of the Republic as Despotate of Morea.

But taking the city certainly makes the relations between the venice and the ottos... hostile.

It seems as if this Doge is very ambitious...

That is certain.
In the case of the Doge Francesco Foscari; well, that is the beginning of the story of Book II.

 

[jak7139]

Glad I was able to finish book One just in time for the Book Two.

We have an ambitious Doge and what looks to be a sci-fi, semi-dystopian story going on as well. Certainly interesting.

 

[Specialist290]

Filcat, I've finally got around to getting a start on this AAR. I've only finished the first chapter, but I have to say now: You certainly have an incredible way with words. Those first few opening paragraphs are pure poetry; in a lot of ways they sum up my own personal experiences and evolving feelings with Paradox and its flagship series -- the initial spark of joy; the highs and lows of new releases, patches and DLCs; the exhaustion; the frustration; the occasional rage and exasperation; and, over and through it all, the siren song that always calls you back for just one more minute... just one more hour... just one more game.

Bravo, sir. I'll definitely be looking forward to the Ottomans' unfolding ahistory, and your unique narration of it, with considerable interest