After a while in fighting with India, I figured that that gains of land and resources didn't outweight the current conditions of my cities and the general losses of my civilization. I decided to end the war with India and focus on improving my cities' health and happy conditions. I think a major reason why I wasn't able to defeat India was because I hadn't scouted enough of their territory to see where every city was. Apparently, there were about 3 cities that I hadn't accounted for and by the time I found them all they had strong defenses and a lot of military units. It just wasn't worth it, I already gained many cities and a lot of Indian territory that would really help in advancing my civilization to becoming the strongest empire in the world.

With the new territory I gained, I was introduced to a whole new civilization that looked very profitable to fight : the Milanese. This civilization had many resources that I hadn't even discovered yet like fur. They had plentiful fresh water, lots of spices and plantations, and plenty of mining locations. Even with all these obvious resource advantages, I was still about a thousand years more advanced than them. They had spearmen and archers while I had riflemen and cannons and even ironclad ships. However, although these were the bulk of my army, I never underestimated the importance of my knights and horse archers. Both units ride horses which were vital to winning this war and probably any war I fight from here on out. Like Diamond said on page 91, "Still later, after the invention of saddles and stirrups, horses allowed the Huns and successive waves of other peoples from the Asian steppes to terrorize the Roman Empire and its successor states, culminating in the Mongol conquests of much of Asia and Russia in the 13th and 14th centuries A.D." Horse riding units can move twice as much as other units, making them important back up units in case I'm losing units fast while trying to conquer cities. I can quickly build them in a city and send them over as reinforcements twice as fast as anyone else.

India also had only 6 cities, it was a perfect empire to conquer and use to benefit mine. I went to war with them immediately and defeated them in less than an hour. Aside from the obvious technological advantages, the geography played a very important role that I used to my full advantage. The entire Milanese empire was a peninsula connected to the continent I was on by a tiny strip of land. This made it a very easy war because all I had to do was block off that strip and all my cities would be safe while I was busy taking over their cities. It was a short war but an important one. Even though it was a small empire, the Milanese had a huge amount of valuable resources, which were vital to me. Aside from the new ones like fur and coal that I encountered. I found more spices and dye. After reading Colander, I know the full importance of avoiding scarcity so it doesn't become high demand. I only had about 2 spice and dye plantations, so finding these new ones are really going to make my people happy and easy to deal with. I am going to continue to take improve the land in this peninsula and make full use of its geography and plentiful resources in the future, as well as see if I can find any other opportunities to gain more land whether it be by settlement or war.