Civil War, Spies, and a happy medium

[Grond]

While playing the Danes this weekend, I was happily creating an army of guys with gold swords and shields (+4 all the way around). CMAA with those bonuses vs. anyone's cavalry is a beautiful thing: they chew through them leaving lots of little horse bodies.

But I digress.

My King and some of his worthless lackluster sons were residing in Stockholm, and with them were several stacks of armies sent there to retool with the new, better +4 swords (Sweden has iron). It seems that a few of those stacks had generals with 0-2 shields of loyalty. And I’m sure that most of you know what happened next. Alack! In one fell swoop, Flanders, Wessex, and Sweden rose in rebellion against the most puissant liege, King Snorri. I’d brought in ten archer units for retraining, and every one of them rebelled. So it was that I had two outdated spear units and three royal horse vs. 1200 archers and a couple of miserable bastard sons. My king probably would have been better off not spawning the little whelps. Ungrateful little pups!

Everyone knows horses can kill archers. And boy, did they kill a lot of them, but it was for naught, because when there’s 1200 arrows in the air, and only 60 horses to shoot at (they were ignoring the spearmen), that’s 200 arrows per horse.

Slaughter ensued, and King Snorri, to his everlasting discredit, fled the field. Worse yet, the empire was divided and dissolved into fractious civil war, upon which the Spanish (those disloyal allies), who I had carefully set up to successfully beat down the overly fattened French empire astride the former HRE, then jumped on.

After a few minutes of this, I decided that it was time to use Snorri’s savior, the time machine (also known as save game). I pulled up the game from half a dozen years before, and then I examined the different stacks. Who were the disloyal cads? The good news, I can identify each one of the guys, look at their weasily faces and their beady eyes and beardless faces and bad page-boy haircuts, and lousy taste in hats. Oh yes. Unfortunately, all the loyal guys look like that, too, but such are the fashions of the time.

I recalled that you can use spies to frame generals for treason. Mind you, I’d never had or needed opportunity to try such a thing, because it seemed so nefarious and wrong. These are my people, if I’ve got treasonous generals, I can just drop them into Livonia for a vacation and refuse to ransom them back. Now, in my mind, the treason had already happened, so it wasn’t really framing. These guys had acted as they had, I just knew it beforehand. C’mere, Ulf, sayeth I, I have a cell for you where you can sit and think about the treason you would have committed.

So I grabbed Ole the Spy, who had previously been doing nothing in Stockholm, and said, “Ole, get your law books together, we’re going to have some trials. And grab some of your buddies, and put on your pin-striped fur robes because there’s going to be a lot of trials.”

I lined them up, those disloyal generals, and under each I assigned a spy. Each turn, I’d drop a spy onto a general of 3 or less shields. It took 9 executions in one of the bow units to find a man with a drop of loyalty. And then, HIS was around eight shields. Perhaps he was inspired by the previous nine executions? The trials probably sounded like this:
"Do you like lutefisk?"
“Ja!"
"Is the sky blue?"
"Ja!"
"Is that why you secretly hate King Snorri?"

I executed left and right, and it was a bloody time, although the number of generals executed is still probably under 30, if history recorded it right (and you bet they did record it right, since I can execute the historian who displeases me, too). Every single one of the generals in every province was loyal to the core. Not a one ever had a disharmonious thought about the king. Each one would drink several drunken healths to his majesty at least twice a day. Each had a portrait of King Snorri they would gaze at with the love that a subject can bestow upon his monarch, knowing that his monarch cared for him, loved his subjects, and would never let any harm befall any of them.

It was all a lie, of course, King Snorri didn’t give a flying cow turd about any of them, but those rebellions were quite disconcerting to the royal liver, and a King has to think about these things. He cared, alright, just about their loyalty. That, and not having a fractious mob of rebels descend on Gamla Stan (“Old Island” in Swedish, or “Tourist Trap” in cruise-shipese) and steal all the priceless relics that belonged to Snorri through the careful looting of his predecessors of other cultures and countries.

For those generals with a few stars and combat experience, there were the ever-present Useless Royal Daughters. After doing some matchmaking with some of the ruffians who head up the armies, I soon managed to have a good set of states where each army, loyal and hardy, was serviceable and didn’t even know how to spell rebellion. (Looking at those low acumens, I believe it, too.) Snorri was safe.

The side benefit? Spies. Oh yes, those spies who’d gotten fat gluttoning themselves on the rotted corpses of disloyal generals were all raised up to 4-5 stars of valor. Some of them went on to become criminal defense lawyers for Hagrid the Horrible, accused of the horrible crime amongst Vikings of failing to raping, pillaging, and burning in the wrong order, thus making it impossible to do the other two. Burn last, they say, always burn last.

And those super-spies were then ripe for being dropped into high traffic provinces where they could do the real work of unearthing all the miserable worms of other factions who chose to go through my states, as if I’d let them do that. French spies, Hungarians, Italians, and, oh, the spies of my ally, my ally Spain. Oh, Spain. Why? We could have been friends, up to the very end, where in my conquest of the world naturally your little Spanish yellow colored provinces would have been cut down like wheat before the scythe. But I would have at least felt a small pang of conscience before I unleashed the great horde of Danish unstoppable armies marching down the Iberian peninsula to the greater glory of King Snorri. Instead, it had to end this way, without the opportunity for glory in warfare. I’ll just buy your rotten country, with your corrupt generals and your stupid sounding Spanish horsemen units (Jinettes? Who could be proud of being in such a unit? Light horsemen just don’t get the cool names, like Khatophraktoi!). I’ll buy your country, and then I’ll disband the Jinettes because I don’t like their name, and I’ll put in armies of really loyal peasants to run things. Yes, PEASANTS can run Spain for all I care.

So, now, things progress well; the generals are each purchasing much stemware to replace the ones they smash throwing in the fireplaces all around the fine properties of the Kingdom of Snorri the Magnificent. With Snorri’s excellent trade network, there’s a war chest of some half-million florins. Each of the armies is +4 all, and pretty much unstoppable. Barring rebellion, Snorri will be unstoppable. I hope that inbred midget Khan is quaking in his fur lined boots. I hear it can sometimes be pleasant in Mongolia this time of year, living on the steppes in little hide walled huts, and that’s where he’s headed if I have any say in it.

So, thus, it was written, this year of 1331 in the year of our Lord.

[NodachiSam]

Lol! Hilarious and well written! I actually want to thank you for posting this

I've never really given spies too much thought about using spies either but now I will have to investigate further. The spanish have been unwilling allies in my HRE game too. They just don't get it. Ahwell. Will you post any pictures?

[ajaxfetish]

This takes me back to the good old days when Yoyoma posted more regularly. It's a wonderful thing to have people with an irrepressible sense of humor on the .org. Much appreciation for your insidious anecdote.

Ajax

[yesdachi]

Excellent storytelling! I toast King Snorri.

Dimmit, I just threw my cup of coffee into the fax machine. Where’s a fireplace when you need one!

[Grond]

This takes me back to the good old days when Yoyoma posted more regularly. It's a wonderful thing to have people with an irrepressible sense of humor on the .org. Much appreciation for your insidious anecdote.

Ajax

Insidious!? You wrong me! After all, Snorri was a good monarch, benevolent and good to the poor. Sometimes he'd ratchet the tax rate down to just "high" instead of "outrageously like California." His yoke was light, the burden small. The peasants were all sweet, smiling bucolic red-cheeked nords who ate their fish and prayed their prayers, and lived nasty, brutish, short lives under the finest monarch ever to grace all of Christendom.

And then, for his sons, the fruit of his loins, to rise up in rebellious dishonor! You can see why it was necessary for Snorri to have a few trials. No matter that the trials might have seemed trumped up. No matter that the men in question were innocent of the crimes. No matter that the fellows conducting the trials were stooges, dupes, and bullies. It was quite enough that Snorri could make windows into men's souls, unlike Elizabeth Tudor, and determine who might have leanings toward putting another, false, monarch upon the throne rightfully held by Snorri. It was quite enough, indeed, that he could spot these traitors as they arose from their windwracked hovels where they plotted their plots, day by day, and consumed prodigious amounts of lutefisk and sang songs about the good ol' days when a kid could still be a kid, and McDonald's meant something belonging to hairy wild-eyed scotsman with a burning hatred of, well, everyone, not just the people who'd buy his food.

Think of it as an inquisition without the religious trappings or the burning of several thousand of the population.

Besides, I obtained some great spies out of it. I had a thought, though. I hadn't ever successfully used a spy against a high level foreign general to expose their weaknesses. But I'll bet Ole could come out of his 6 star semi-retirement in the golfside vacation home he built in Saxonia and find out who, in the strange world of Snorri the Magnificent, is buggering whom (that would be the WBW Report: Whom is buggering Whom). You didn't think all those pageboys were just for show, did you?

Inquiring minds want to know. Tomorrow, perhaps, I'll have an answer for you.

[ajaxfetish]

Insidious!? You wrong me! After all, Snorri was a good monarch, benevolent and good to the poor.

A thousand apologies. I was referring to the insidiousness of the good King Snorri's sons and other leading subjects. Of course I would never use such a term to describe such a one as Snorri the Great, especially considering his . . . . . erm . . . . . reputation.

Ajax

[Grond]

A thousand apologies. I was referring to the insidiousness of the good King Snorri's sons and other leading subjects. Of course I would never use such a term to describe such a one as Snorri the Great, especially considering his . . . . . erm . . . . . reputation.

Ajax

No problemo, Ajax. They were evil sons, but Snorri, through the use of save-game, overcame 'em. More on the legend of Snorri coming soon.

[Grond]

Ah, no pictures, but if you can visualize my pale little states: England (sans Northumberland), Wales, Scotland, Ireland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Saxonia, Flanders, and those two southernmost french coastland provences, and Sicily. Spain has, well, Spain, and north africa, and Egypt seems to be all over the south east, into Hungary. French fragmented states to either side of the HRE and traditional France, and throw in some Spanish in France in a mockery of what'll happen 300 years hence, in King Phillip's unhappy attempts to make the lowlands reCatholisize themselves.

The pope is doing pope things, excommunicating, communicating, and every so often doing robber baron stuff when he thinks everyone else isn't looking. The Italians used to be something, until they were chased off by France onto some miserable island. They've been rumbling about making prosciutto out of the French, but with no ships and no trade, they're pazzino.

Sicily! Wherefore, you ask, Sicily? It was in rebellion, so I bought it at a used-province sale where citibank (who owns everything) was letting it go for pence on the florin. It was a good deal, and it is the shipbuilding capitol of all of Europe. Dozens of Caravels are sent out for purposes of Pax Danum.

Lately, I've been eyeing Finland. Not too fast, they advise Snorri, don't spread yourself too thin, as if a Monarch's reach could be compared to some Napoleanic fake butter being applied to a piece of blackened bread. (Don't eat the crusts, they're unhealthy, you know.) But I think, with some of these loyal archers, Finland, and that happy vacation spot Livenia (it's in all the brochures circulating around the palace these days) might be in the assets column for Snorri pretty soon. "Hides," said old Gaffer Svenbjotm, to Snorri, when he was just a little viking and his horns had barely budded from his forehead, "there's always a future in animal hides. When the Khan comes, he'll need boots, so you'll want the animal hides futures, my boy." God bless Svenbjotm, he was right. And Snorri needs to make sure the Italian boot makers have lots of hides. Right now, Finland is a mess, with lots of cheap peasant armies sitting about distilling vodka and playing Russian Pictionary. Have you ever seen Russian Pictionary?

And the good part of all this, the disloyal son, Prince Sven? He's turning out okay. After a battle or three, beating up peasants in some disloyal French former possesion, he's showing signs of becoming a good leader. With Snorri's raise in influence amongst the autocrats of old Europe, it may be I can get Sven married off to someone who won't mind that he wants to bugger little boys all the time. (And you know, maybe with a princess who has an open mind about these things, he could just, um, vary his position a little and get the same results. Really, all he has to do is get the girl pregnant every 10 months and bugger the rest of the time. This could be the dawning of a new wave of thought in Europe if we could get the priesthood on board with it.) In the New Snorri Timeline, he isn't the snotty rebellious little miserable spoiled traitorous sod that he was in the Old Snorri Timeline. Even if he can't marry a foreign girl, maybe he can (shudder) have one of those useless princesses. Incest, O the humanity, indeed.

No screenshots were taken, nor do I have access to the internet from home, where my window to King Snorri resides, so no screenshots to bask in the great glory of Daneland 4ever, etc. I apologize that this may be disappointing.