Part 43: 1660-1679, The Empire Strikes Back.

The vote to westernise fails by one. We shall continue with our traditional ways. Little Karoo is finished, and we move up to Natal. Aragon is also expanding down here.







We secure an alliance with Aragon, we can now hold Portugal in check.



We then declare war on Norway.



We take the land quickly, but it will be some time before we can win this war.



While we wait, we learn how to mass refine things.



Lancaster and Ireland, Norway's allies, finally send troops, but they are pitiful in number.







We begin to creep towards victory in the Norwegian war, our manpower increasing all the time. Then Gascoigne calls us to arms. We need to keep our allies, so we agree – the Norwegian war is not taking much of our troops.



The war soon spirals. (Before anyone asks, I have massively reduced the amount of Cav I have, so most of those are not mine.)







Norway surrenders, and we have expanded Ghana once more. This unfortunately leaves us with four colonies at the go at once, and we are soon paying through the nose for this.



The Gascoigne war is over, the Portugease have steamrollered over them as well.



We give Aquitaine the land they want and some money – money we can get easily, and its not our land. We have to break our alliances with them and Aragon as well, but that is not a major problem.







France offers us an Alliance, and the vote for Westernisation swings back to keeping up with the Europeans.







We assimilate the Danish-Ghanans. Its is now getting hard to pick a racial stereotype as a Ghanan, having Black, White and Arabic skin tones in this multicultural Empire.



In fact, a bunch of Freedom Fighters take Tlemcem, which is fine until they start to march over the border.



We smash them just in time for Portugal to launch their latest Crusade against us!



France immediately come to our aid.



The Portuguese land a huge army, we form a larger one and wait for them.



The French win a series of stunning battles, and we are soon at 17% war score. Then 40% warscore!



Aragon have switched sides to the Portuguese alliance, and France invades them.



Aragon meanwhile take the opportunity to seize Netal! This war is like nothing we have seen before!



Then the twisted web of alliances brings Italy into the war on the side of Portugal....





All of France's gains are undone by the powerful Italian war machine.



The Rebels defect to the Abbasids and we destroy a Portuguese army.



All the Aragonise colonies at the tip of Africa are now ours.



Our men are showing a will to fight that cannot be matched, it is a shame that Portugal has the better guns!







France is forced to accept a peace treaty. This leaves us alone in the war. We are currently fighting a major battle that could go either way.



We win, and soon force the Portuguese and their lap dogs to surrender – kicking them out of Africa!



In south Africa, we take back our lands and then one of Aragon's Colonies.



We are then forced to pay a huge amount of money to Great Britain as France loses her other war.







Djenly I is our new Empress, long may she live, although Nuh is not that bad either, maybe our string of terrible rulers is over!



Mighty Ghana is looking stronger now, although the latest war with the Portuguese has sapped our manpower once more, so the Abbasids must wait. The reclamation of the lands the Christians had is a good step towards growing the nation, but we still have a long way to go.