During the days that passed Anatolia had started catching up to Reinhardt, now the only building that they lacked was the war academy. Meanwhile the citizens of Anatolia were also very pleased with Max's rule, after all, they were fed, their lives were not different than before and he did not try to oppress them.
The legends of Max were also spreading very fastly, some people that had been educated from the university had also tried to start a sort of religion based on him, as soon as Max found out he shut them down. It was not because he didn't want a religion around but rather it was because he wanted to be in charge and control of it, after all, he planned to wield religion as a political power.
During this time some small trade routes had also started emerging between the two cities. It was mainly trading in some specialties that were not available in the respective cities but it was a promising start.
Now Max was facing a problem that every successful entity faces which was a lack of manpower and the only solution to this he could see was getting more refugees but due the harsh winter even they had become relatively scarce right now and the not to mention that the fact that it would be very suspicious.
So, until he saw an opportunity or a solution presented itself there was nothing that Max could do. Now, Max was focusing on two main things first coming up with a religion and second coming up with a political structure.
The religion was important because he recognized that there was a growing need for a form of belief and if no centralized belief was constructed and presented, people would just start making up their own beliefs, which would be extremely problematic for the cohesion of the kingdom, since Medival Europe could be seen as the best example for what happens when there isn't a consensus on the basics of religion, due to growing rifts in Christianity, most of the medieval Europe was tearing itself apart, dawning the so-called dark ages.
Max didn't want this to happen, so he decided to make the religion. He took up the good parts that he remembered from the religions of his world and he decided to install a different kind of leadership structure, the leadership structure would go something like this, a council would be created that made the decisions regarding the running of the religion, to enter the council any member of the religion had to take many tests, that tested their willpower, knowledge, reasoning, etc., and unlike a lot of religion, both man and woman were eligible for these roles.
The next decision he faced was the name of the religion. He was having a hard time coming with a name for the religion but ultimately he decided to go with Shinto and now he had to appoint somehow to lead the church now.
He decided that Maya would be the one to lead the church, this was mainly because of how loyal she was to him and he had no worries about her betraying him or get corrupted by power, the next reason was that she had a good personality and he already knew from years of research that people were likely to be persuaded by an attractive female than any other type of people.
During the past weeks he had gotten close to all the maids and had now started treated them like family, he was teaching them but they were already literate so he knows just thought them some basic economics he knew and the stories he knew. He called in Maya in his office and told her about the religion, its ideas, and told her that she would become the head of the office.
At first, she refused saying that she would rather serve Max but then Max persuaded here that she would continue to be his maid and the religious responsibilities would be very less, she would merely serve as the figurehead and would just have to go and preach and convert some people time to time. After which she agreed. He also made Sarena and Nicole the member of the council, any other member, for now, would have to pass all the test that Max had created.
He ordered a small Temple to be built in the city, where the followers could gather and meet. Inside which would be the office for the council.
Then he started on the political structure. The only method that was suitable for him currently a monarchy but he gradually wanted to shift it to a constitutional monarchy with a parliament and a judiciary, but that was a long way away from now and would be possible after his citizens had reached a relatively high degree of development.
So, right now he was focused on writing a constitution, but it would take some time since he could not just copy and paste the laws, he had to adapt them to the given circumstances. So, it would still take some time.
While Max was working, the vegetables had started blooming and had become ready for harvest. The citizens were surprised by how quickly they had grown and had informed the lord about it.
The only conclusion Max could draw from it was that this was because they were the seeds of the system and the seeds derived from it would probably not have this effect. He instructed the citizens to distribute 20% of the produce among themselves and convert the rest into plants that could be planted.
Now due to them utilizing almost the entire production as crops for next planting, the planting area had to be increased by about 10 times. Now Max had a hard decision to make, deciding the role of cities and how they would fit in his kingdom.
After meeting with Chanakya, Max came up with the plan for the kingdom, they decided to make specialized cities to increase efficiency. The capital would serve as the commercial hub, the research center and the governing body of the kingdom, Anatolia would serve as the production center of the kingdom and they would capture 1 more colonies urgently, to serve as the food-growing region.
The colonies were the best for making the production center and the food grower because they were largely immune to outside attack and therefore would work just as much during the times of war and they would not need to be defended that well. But the consequence of that would be that Max would not have any buffer cities between the capital and the enemies. Meaning that Max would lose very easily if the enemy managed to breach his capital and would not have any leeway or time.
The solution to this was making the defense of Reinhardt very strong and placing scouting towers all around the area and having a robust spy network.
While the citizens were busy planting and Max was busy writing, the army was also very busy, by this time Anatolia did not require many resources except the maintenance but the army was still very busy training and gathering resources. Alexander knew that they would eventually conquer another colony and it would also require a ton of resources and he did not want Max to be strapped of resources as he had been before. After all he had seen the worry in Max's eyes and wanted to help as much as they could, so he kept on training a pillaging and the resources they had gathered had grown into a stockpile.
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Some days had passed and now Max was ready to conquer another colony, conquering another colony to serve as the food producer would be enough to fulfill the growing demand of the empire for a while and he would not need to conquer for a little while.
He entered the conqueror's map, the region he entered now was very warm much like the Tuscany region of Italy, and like Tuscany, it would serve as a very good farmland.
Max had his army set camp some distance away from the city but it was still visible from the top of the city due to the region lacking any thick forest to hide in.
Sometime after Max had set up his camp, a rider from the city arrived in his camp, he carried a message, that said that the ruler had heard about Max's behavior and therefore was not interested in meeting him. While at the same time he had also heard of the barbarous nature of Max and therefore he was not going to surrender his city, the only thing he had to tell Max was that the city had stockpiles of food and were ready to defend their city, they had plenty of stock to last them for days and thus it would be wise for Max to leave without any casualty.
After reading Max let the rider go since even he did not anted to shoot the messenger. He told Alexander about what the letter had said and Alexander replied saying that this time they would have to prepare for a long siege.
Max completely agreed with this and told him to start setting up the ballista and preparing for a siege. He was now wishing that he had catapults instead of ballista, then he could have broken the walls of the city so easily but whatever he would have to deal with what they were given.
The army set up the ballista 40 meters far from the city and the army set up a formation defending the ballista. The ballista started firing shots on top of the city walls shooting at the archers and the defensive buildings that had been set up. At first the enemy soldiers started defending and tried to make a counterattack but their arrows would just not hit the ballista and they consciously got slaughtered.
After a little while seeing the defense as useless, the enemy deserted the wall and started the wall, to Max this was the most logical option it seemed that the enemy general was quite competent. This would be a little harder than he thought. While the army continued the siege Max went back and informed Chanakya that he would be unavailable for a little while and he would be managing both the cities.
After Max came back he started devoting his entire focus to the war. The war was now at a stalemate, the ballistas were continuously firing trying to damage the walls as much as they could and the enemy had refused to engage them on any front. It was soon night and the ballista stopped firing deciding to rest for the night.
The enemy commander was waiting for this and after a little while he took a small group of elite soldiers outside of the city through a secret passage. He was attempting to make a night raid, however, he had underestimated Alexander a lot, after all it wasn't Alexanders first war, he was thoroughly prepared for a night raid, the enemy soldiers were sadly slaughtered in front of Alexander but the enemy commander managed to somehow escape.
But Alexander had been a little impressed by the fighting prowess of the enemy commander, not to mention his strategies, he did not even have fire torches equipped to avoid alerting the enemies and the fact that the gates did not pen meant that he had prepared some sort of alternative exit from the city. Alexander noticed this and sent some raiders and infantry to search the region fully to find that secret pathway, after all if it could be used to sneak out why not sneak in.
The next day Alexander told Max about the attack last night, according to Alexander the enemy soldiers were highly inexperienced and he had concluded that this was probably their first or second real war and he told them about the enemy commander, Max was also impressed by the actions of the commander especially given the inexperience. He told Alexander to capture him alive if possible. Alexander agreed.
And thus both Max and his army settles for a long siege on the city.
Notes-
Date- 15th January
Day- 75
City- (Reinhardt Capital), (Anatolia Colony 1)
Resources-:
Food- 1,000 units
Wood- 15,000 units
Gold- 20,000 coins
Daily Maintenance- 800 gold coins (200 Military units, 100 Lord's Staff, 500 Research Budget)
Citizens-80 (30 Reinhardt, 50 Anatolia)
Troops- 31(7 Infantry, 8 Archer,3Raiders,2 Ballista,10 Cavalry and 1 General)