Hey, GG man, you were truly tough as nails on the defense. Sorry that it came to blows, but then again, this map was designed to be a powderkeg from the start. 
IIRC, if you're interested, I checked last turn on my losses for our war, and, not counting that earlier razing and taking that island, the totals were: 21 Knights, two pikes, two longbows, 18 Jans, and 49 (!) catapults. That's 6000 lost hammers and 433k power! More than half of that was JUST ON SUSA, due to barely failing the first time only to find the city reinforced with that horrible CG3G2C1 Great General musket. God, that thing gave me nightmares. War weariness is also completely rocking me right now, by the way; I'm paying 40gpt for luxuries overseas to try dampening its effect, but am still drowning. My two biggest cities, Zoo and Stony Point, actually need a couple extra HR garrisons to keep mollified with a 30 happy cap, as I have 10 WW unhappy faces in each of them.
I think, after experiencing quite a few battles with them both - and I shudder to even say this, as if I'm opening Pandora's box with purposeful intent to let out great evil into the world - that protective longbows, for defending cities on hills, might have been even a better choice than Muskets even after you had gunpowder. A CG2 Longbow defends with almost as good odds but costs only 60% the price, with +150% defense modifier for a fully-fortified CG2 longbow in a hill city even with 0% cultural defenses (plus a first strike!), while a Musket gets only +100% in the same situation. On top of that, 6 longbows compared to 4 muskets absorbs collateral far more effectively. That's not to say that getting some muskets wasn't good too, as that forced me to take pinch instead of cover on my Jans... man, I'm thinking about this and I actually had the most effective medieval unit possible to go against a Protective civ and still barely made it through!
I've also been thinking - I guess here's the "Hope" of my Pandora analogy - that a good way to effectively engage in war vs a protective civ in the medieval era, hell, perhaps the *only* good way, would be to stock up millions of swords before getting the techs (CS/Machinery) that obsolete them.... so, something like, you start a GA before you hit CS, with the aim to hit Bureaucracy by the end of it. You switch into Vassalage at the start of the GA, produce swords everywhere, then switch to Bureau at the end. Masses of swords shouldn't show too much on the power charts at this point, I think.
Agg Swords, at only 40 hammers for 6.6 str +100% city attack, are actually extremely efficient attackers on both Pro longbows and Pro muskets... better odds than a Jan at half the cost! However, they're glass cannons, unable to defend by themselves against pretty much any medieval unit, so you need to stash them until you have Knights, Pikes, and maybe even a Mace or two to back them up. The idea here is that, with effective defenders able to cover them, Macemen and Crossbowmen become rendered irrelevant for the defender against swords (non-Agg Macemen don't counter swords on the defense... you're spending 70 hammers for a unit that doesn't even get odds defending on a hill w/ CG1, and crossbows are even worse) and the sheer masses of cheap units (you'll have more units for the same hammers) will dilute a defender's ability to attack out with cats. Finally, at 40 hammers per sword vs 50 for a longbow, you can actually attrition a defender down, at equal losses, rather than the other way around. Anyways, it might be awkward to pull off in a real game, but... its a thought.
IIRC, if you're interested, I checked last turn on my losses for our war, and, not counting that earlier razing and taking that island, the totals were: 21 Knights, two pikes, two longbows, 18 Jans, and 49 (!) catapults. That's 6000 lost hammers and 433k power! More than half of that was JUST ON SUSA, due to barely failing the first time only to find the city reinforced with that horrible CG3G2C1 Great General musket. God, that thing gave me nightmares. War weariness is also completely rocking me right now, by the way; I'm paying 40gpt for luxuries overseas to try dampening its effect, but am still drowning. My two biggest cities, Zoo and Stony Point, actually need a couple extra HR garrisons to keep mollified with a 30 happy cap, as I have 10 WW unhappy faces in each of them.
I think, after experiencing quite a few battles with them both - and I shudder to even say this, as if I'm opening Pandora's box with purposeful intent to let out great evil into the world - that protective longbows, for defending cities on hills, might have been even a better choice than Muskets even after you had gunpowder. A CG2 Longbow defends with almost as good odds but costs only 60% the price, with +150% defense modifier for a fully-fortified CG2 longbow in a hill city even with 0% cultural defenses (plus a first strike!), while a Musket gets only +100% in the same situation. On top of that, 6 longbows compared to 4 muskets absorbs collateral far more effectively. That's not to say that getting some muskets wasn't good too, as that forced me to take pinch instead of cover on my Jans... man, I'm thinking about this and I actually had the most effective medieval unit possible to go against a Protective civ and still barely made it through!
I've also been thinking - I guess here's the "Hope" of my Pandora analogy - that a good way to effectively engage in war vs a protective civ in the medieval era, hell, perhaps the *only* good way, would be to stock up millions of swords before getting the techs (CS/Machinery) that obsolete them.... so, something like, you start a GA before you hit CS, with the aim to hit Bureaucracy by the end of it. You switch into Vassalage at the start of the GA, produce swords everywhere, then switch to Bureau at the end. Masses of swords shouldn't show too much on the power charts at this point, I think.
Agg Swords, at only 40 hammers for 6.6 str +100% city attack, are actually extremely efficient attackers on both Pro longbows and Pro muskets... better odds than a Jan at half the cost! However, they're glass cannons, unable to defend by themselves against pretty much any medieval unit, so you need to stash them until you have Knights, Pikes, and maybe even a Mace or two to back them up. The idea here is that, with effective defenders able to cover them, Macemen and Crossbowmen become rendered irrelevant for the defender against swords (non-Agg Macemen don't counter swords on the defense... you're spending 70 hammers for a unit that doesn't even get odds defending on a hill w/ CG1, and crossbows are even worse) and the sheer masses of cheap units (you'll have more units for the same hammers) will dilute a defender's ability to attack out with cats. Finally, at 40 hammers per sword vs 50 for a longbow, you can actually attrition a defender down, at equal losses, rather than the other way around. Anyways, it might be awkward to pull off in a real game, but... its a thought.
