Vientiane Throne of Civilization

Chapter 1169 The advantages outweigh the disadvantages
After reaching a consensus with Bale, Shi Lei directly wrote a report and instructed the Giant Eagle Knights to send it to the capital Black Moon City as quickly as possible. Ten days later, the report was delivered to Zhou Xu.

In this era, this was considered highly efficient, but it also made the Giant Eagle Knight very tired.

The giant eagles' endurance is actually quite good, but you also have to consider that they have a wood elf wearing equipment on their backs, so they are flying with a load.

After ordering his men to take the Giant Eagle Knight down to rest, Zhou Xu's attention quickly shifted to the report in Shi Lei's hand.

The report not only mentioned that Copperforge wanted to trade gunpowder with them, but also reported on the battle situation in Copperforge, as well as his thoughts and tactical ideas for this battle.

Zhou Xu expressed his approval of Shi Lei's ideas.

This is indeed an unprofitable war. Moreover, they are facing tough opponents like the greenskins. There is no need for the Great Zhou to waste manpower and money to fight such a war.

Now that they have sent reinforcements to support Copperforge, we are willing to provide them with some support and share the pressure, which is like a timely help.

From the perspective of their Great Zhou, the focus of this battle is on how to reduce their own losses while allowing the dwarves to win the battle.

With this as a premise, their Great Zhou troops were destined not to attack the frontal battlefield where the fighting was the most intense. The protagonists of this battle would be the dwarves of Copperforge Fort, and the greatest losses would also be borne by the dwarves of Copperforge Fort. They would just play an easy supporting role and that would be it.

Following this line of thought, Zhou Xu, who received the news at the time, only symbolically issued a conscription order to recruit 3,000 soldiers in the rear, and did not even launch a large-scale conscription.

After this batch of new recruits were recruited, he used them to make deployments. Currently, he has assembled a garrison of 3,000 troops in the Plain Fortress. If there is a need on the front line, these 3,000 garrison troops can be deployed at any time.

For now, this military action to support Tonglu Fort has little impact on the development within their Great Zhou.

Because apart from the 3,000 newly recruited soldiers, those mobilized to support Tonglu Fort are all ready-made troops from the New North District and New South District military camps, which will not affect the internal labor force.

In comparison, the mobilization of logistical support has a greater impact in this area. After all, this requires a lot of transportation capacity and reserve resources within their Great Zhou.

But generally speaking, the impact is not that big. At least at this moment, their Great Zhou is still peaceful. People's lives and internal prices have not been affected by this military action. Everyone is still doing what they should do.

This situation allows the internal development of their Great Zhou and this military operation to proceed completely synchronously.

During this period, Zhou Xu also came up with a bold idea, which was whether he could use the battle in Tonglu Fort to train his troops!

The dwarf army of Copperforge is holding the front battlefield. In Shi Lei's words, although there is no breakthrough in the battle over there, it is still quite stable to some extent. After all, the greenskins can't attack.

During this peacetime, the soldiers only train but do not fight. Many soldiers have never seen blood since they joined the army and have no battlefield experience at all.

It was a good thing that the days were peaceful, but as the monarch of the Great Zhou, he had to be prepared for danger! It would be a good idea to take this opportunity to rotate the new recruits from the Great Zhou to see blood on the battlefield.

If the dwarves of Copperforge knew Zhou Xu's idea, I wonder if they would be so angry that they would vomit blood.

I'm fighting a life-and-death battle, and you're just training your troops?!
But Zhou Xu obviously doesn't care about this issue. Just tell me whether I support you or not!

The reinforcements are already in place, so what's wrong with doing some training?
Of course, while training is one thing, Zhou Xu was also afraid of a setback if he was not careful. Therefore, when he received Shi Lei's report and learned about the battle situation at Tonglubao and the dispatch of troops to support, he had already ordered Jie Liancheng to follow the Xianzhen Camp headed by Zhou Chongshan to the Tonglubao battlefield for support. It should be almost time.

Combined with the previous experience of fighting with the greenskins, there must be strong greenskins inside the greenskin army besieging Tonglu Fort, and there must be strong greenskins inside Tonglu Fort, but who can guarantee that the strong men of Tonglu Fort will protect their Great Zhou troops at the critical moment? In this way, Xie Liancheng and Zhou Chongshan went there just to give their front-line troops a bottom line.

Normally you don't need to take action, just be on guard against the green-skinned strongman who might appear on the opposite side.

As for the gunpowder deal proposed by the dwarves.

After a little thought, Zhou Xu chose to accept it!
He certainly would not sell the formula for gunpowder, but he could sell the gunpowder. The most important thing was that he learned from the information provided by Shi Lei that the dwarves had sulfur!

Sulfur is not a rare resource, but its distribution is uneven. Simply put, those that are affected by droughts will die, and those that are affected by floods will die.

Take their Great Zhou for example, it is only found on the volcanic island and nowhere else.

It takes a lot of time to transport the sulfur from the volcanic island. All of this increases the cost of using sulfur.

In comparison, if they could obtain sulfur from Copperforge, the overall transportation efficiency would be greatly improved.

What’s more important is that if they can obtain sulfur from Copperforge, then they can use the sulfur from Copperforge first, and keep their own sulfur as a resource reserve for emergency use.

Even though I have it at home, I just don’t use it. I prefer to buy it from other places. This is a common method in national development.

Not to mention that they don’t necessarily need to buy the sulfur from Copperforge this time.

The dwarves wanted gunpowder, and all he had to do was add sulfur to the deal.

Of course, the specific situation will have to wait until the dwarf representatives arrive and then we can discuss it in detail.

When the dwarves obtain gunpowder, they will certainly study it.

However, Zhou Xu was not worried. In this era, technological capabilities were limited, and there were no high-tech testing equipment. They would not be able to figure it out in a short period of time.

Under this premise, the dwarves of Copperforge are now allies of the Great Zhou, and are also the core fighting force in fighting against the greenskin army. Selling gunpowder to the dwarves and enhancing their military strength will also help to better repel the greenskin army.

To put it simply, the dwarves bought gunpowder from him, which greatly increased the lethality against the greenskin army, thereby indirectly reducing the pressure and casualties that their Great Zhou reinforcements had to face, allowing their support troops to do a better job on the front line. Perfect!

As for whether the dwarves who have obtained gunpowder will pose a threat to their Great Zhou in the future?
Of course Zhou Xu had thought about this problem, but to be honest, it would be too far-fetched to dwell on it now.

If we follow this line of thinking, I'm afraid we won't be able to accomplish anything.

At this stage Zhou Xu can only say that as long as the greenskins and the coalition forces are still there, based on the friendship they have established at this stage, their Great Zhou and the dwarves can maintain an alliance relationship. The improvement of Copperforge's military strength will bring more benefits than disadvantages to their Great Zhou.

However, they still had to flex their muscles appropriately to prevent the dwarves from having any unnecessary thoughts.

(End of this chapter)