19 Colony Development

The next day Max went to Andor and started taking care of the matters.

First he gathered all the public and made all the council members and the ruler stand in the front. The citizens were already displeased the ruler because their lives had been getting worse and worse and while the council members had been getting richer day by day. It didn't take much to convince the crowd and all the council members along with their families and the ruler were executed in public.

He then recreated the units that he had lost in the battle and told Alexander to get their levels back to the rest of the soldiers as fast as possible.

Then he started building the structure as he had done in Anatolia, but like Anatolia his first focus in Andor was defense so he focused on defensive structures first. He upgraded all the walls, build archer towers, garrisons, etc. in the city, now the city could resist an assault of a much greater degree. He also placed a portal connecting it to the other two cities and vice verse.

Meanwhile Sara's wounds had healed and she joined Max's army as Alexander's second in command. Although the soldiers had resisted a little about accepting someone who was their enemy just days ago in there, they accepted it after both Max and Alexander had ordered them to accept it.

She also began training in with Alexander, after all even if she was very good in their battle, she still lacked experience severely and since now she was one of Max's soldiers she could also go to the training map. Therefore she begin her training under Alexander. Also, Max had noticed that she had changed her look somewhat, she had cut her hair very short, had adopted the mannerisms of all the other troops, now nobody could even tell that she was a female if she was not naked in front of them.

Max also did not make a point of announcing her as a female commander in front of the troops, after all to him both men and women were equal and just as he would not announce someone as a man, he would not announce someone as a woman, he would deal with this if it became a problem in the future. Also, he wanted other women in his kingdom to learn from her, to the extent that he had devoted a significant number of chapters of the book of his religion about equality.

He did not see much resistance to it in Reinhardt but that may just have been because of their blind worship towards him, he would see it by the result that would be produced in Andor and Anatolia.

By this time many students had also completed the courses in the university and he now had a population literacy of 80% in Anatolia and Reinhardt, and the citizens of Andor were already almost fully literate. Citizens had also graduated from the courses they were currently at and had begun taking 2nd level classes, he ordered some governance class students to come to Andor and got back the political order back to the way it was, meanwhile he send the people who knew governance in Andor to Anatolia and Reinhardt to reduce their power.

Now all the structures had been established, citizens had gotten back to farming in Andor, blacksmith were hard at making many tools in Anatolia and the citizens of Reinhardt were hard at education and conducting more research.

Now, he was waiting for the response from the neighboring regions whose food supplies had been cut. Two days after he had taken over the city he had received messages from all the three kingdoms about what he intended to do about the food trade between their kingdoms, Max had written them a response, for the two kingdoms he had written a diplomatic response saying that their city was in chaos now and he would come and meet with them once everything was back in order.

But to Blackmoor he was much more direct he had straightaway written that they were harboring the son of the ruler who had been declared a traitor to the city and therefore as long as they were still harboring him Andor had no choice but cut any trade between them.

Three days later he received the responses from the kingdoms, the two other kingdoms had given him a time of 10 days to get the city in order after which he would come in a meeting between all the rulers of the three kingdoms. But Blackmoor had sent them a message that they would not be willing to return the son of the ruler under any circumstances and they considered him a barbarous man and demanded that he return the daughter of the ruler to them after which they could discuss further in the joined meeting.

Max knew what this was, it was a tactic of plausible deniability. By giving him this message they would single that there was a possibility for a peaceful solution but he was sure they would have manipulated that idiotic son of the former ruler and sent him with the kingdoms army disguised as mercenaries. After all, why would they give up on a chance to control a strategic partner given that they must be thinking that Andor must be very weak after the battle, and they had a legitimate successor to the city meaning they would have the peoples support behind them too. But unlucky for them Max was all too prepared for this strategy after all the extremely common use of this tactic by Americans had practically made it a cliche.

He had deployed raiders and infantry around the city to act as scouts.

After some days they reported that they spotted an army setting up camp some distance far from the city. After Max received this message he instantly called Alexander and the army back and told them about the anemone army, Sara was also in the war room and heard what the situation was. It seemed that she truly did felt nothing about his brother because she did not react at all no matter what Max proposed.

Max Alexander to rest for today and then tomorrow launch a surprise attack on them with their full force crushing them in one blow. He also gave Alexander a secret instruction to capture Sara's brother alive no matter what and then transfer him to his castle's cellar in Reinhardt.

Alexander agreed.

The next they launched a surprise attack on the enemy army, the enemy's number was not much about 20 to 30, but they seemed decently trained, Alexander massacred them one by one and was able to kill the soldiers relatively easily and without any loss. The leader Sara's brother was personally captured by Alexander and was transported to Reinhardt without anyone knowing. Alexander told everybody that he had been instructed to kill him in the woods and burn his corpse.

After the battle was over he was preparing for the meeting, he didn't want to maintain any sort of close relations with the neighboring kingdoms, to him the only good neighbor was a dead neighbor. Therefore he formed the policies according to that.

Max with Sara, Alexander, and 10 troops went to the meeting.

There he could see that the ruler of Blackmoor was making a very ashen blackface indeed, after all, he had lost 20 of his soldiers without any reasoning and had also the big bargaining chip in the form of the ruler's son.

The meeting lasted for 4 hours, at first they tried to persuade him to continue trading food and were even willing to increase the price by a little bit, Max, however, did not agree to this he had his citizens to feed after all. When offers did not work they turned to threatening him with attacks against him, Max had a very simple response to this he just pointed out that even if they wanted they could not afford a war right now, after all there food supplies must be depleting fast even if they had maintained a large emergency stock and if they moved their forces at this time their citizens may revolt against them.

Meanwhile, Max had a lot of grain, and if he wanted he could just hide in the city and starve out their forces. And as far as the military might goes he just told them about what had happened to a pathetic group of rebel that had tried to attack them.

In the end, both parties could not come to any agreement, but Max did not want to drive the rulers to the point of desperation and therefore agreed to supple them a very limited amount of grain at very inflated prices.

The rulers were not pleased about this but they did not have any other option. They ultimately agreed but the anger was evident on their faces. Some might say that Max had done them good, after all, they had learned the lesson of what happens when you are overly dependent on someone for something, and as they say, a lesson is priceless, he had just taken some gold as his compensation.

As they were returning to Andor, Sara approached Max and started talking to him, she told him that the cities were not to be taken lightly, combined their army stood at 1,000 troops and as superior as Max's troops may be in terms of combat and strategy they would still be severely outmatched. The only they hadn't attacked Andor directly was just what Max had said, they couldn't afford to, but soon there will find some other source of food and will manage to get supplies, after that she was sure that they would attack.

Max agreed with her conclusion, and he realized the fatal weakness of his kingdom, he had too few soldiers, he barely had 35 soldiers, whereas the enemy had 1,000 troops combined and who knows what they might have hidden and don't forget that this was just the pocket dimension, what about Westeros, the kingdoms there must have armies in the hundreds of thousands. His troops although highly trained were too small to even worry them.

During the last few weeks, his focus had been fixed on the colonies and he did not pay much attention to the development of his army. He had reached level 20 by now and some new buildings must have been unlocked by now, he decided that now he had a production center and a food producer, now he could focus on growing the cities.

After he reached Andor he made sure that the governance structure was established and was working probably. The citizens of Andor had accepted his rule and as far he could see they were even looked happy. He announced made as many citizens enter the university as the could and made all the other citizens began aggressively on land reclamation for farming. He gave a goal of 1,000 acres, meanwhile, they were to keep growing the crops that were already planted.

He was also expecting that he would receive many refugees from the three kingdoms due to food shortages for some time.

After this he went to Reinhardt. He saw that he could now upgrade all the buildings and unlocked two new buildings, an embassy and a storehouse. The embassy buildings would work just like real life embassies, the communications to foreign powers, trades, information etc could be easily organized and maintained in the embassy. The building was currently empty but as the host would form relations with other kingdoms a department will be built for that embassy and it would be responsible for that kingdom.

The storehouse was a trade centered building, the player could place every uniques resources he had in the storehouse, it's capacity was unlimited and if he wanted to he could select the option to sell them after which the system would pay the host a fair price according to the market. The player could also use the storehouse to buy various goods that were put up for sale.

Max then focused on upgrading the buildings of Reinhardt and the colonies, during this time, the army was busy every single day and was pushed to the limit gathering resources.

But first during these 5 days, he received a very urgent message when he went Winterfell for a day. Catelyn informed him Ned had sent Rickon and told them that a marriage had been arranged between Joeferry and Sansa and therefore had asked her to come to the capital along with Sansa and Arya as soon as she could. Rickon was to become the regent and would rule Winterfell till they came back.

Max was not entirely surprised by these events, it seemed that the events in the book were coming true, so he knew what was coming next, he also realized his position in Winterfell after all they chose Rickon who had zero experience to run Winterfell, instead of him. Therefore he did not even bother about warning her of the events that would follow, however, he was concerned about Arya and tried to persuade Catelyn to leave Arya in Winterfell, but alas she did not budge and told him that Ned had demanded that they were to come under any circumstances and she agreed, after all, how could she miss the wedding of her sister.

There was nothing more he could do, he would have tried to do more but he knew that she would be fine, in fact she would just grow from this experience and would be transformed into a fierce warrior. Now all he could do was pray had she would follow the path he had predicted.

They departed the very next day, now Max was feeling like he had been unleashed from his leash, he now started recruiting refugees very aggressively in the city for his kingdoms, the only people who would be threatened by this were now gone and Rickon acted as only the figurehead, with the experienced bureaucrats taking the lead.

After 5 days all the cities in his kingdom were now truly equal and he had upgraded all the buildings to tier allowable extent and his citizen population had increased by a lot.

Notes-

Date- 10th February

Day- 100

City- (Reinhardt Capital), (Anatolia Colony 1), (Andor Colony 2)

Resources-:

Food- 400 units

Wood- 1,000 units

Gold- 2,000 coins

Daily Maintenance- 800 gold coins (200 Military units, 100 Lord's Staff, 500 Research Budget)

Citizens-180 (30 Reinhardt, 50 Anatolia, 100 Andor)

Troops- 32(8 Infantry, 7 Archer,3Raiders,2 Ballista,10 Cavalry and 2 General)