After the coastal raid we reorganized the units in the western theater. Two vultures and 2 galleys went south along ATs west coast to tie down troops in his coastal cities there (including the capital).
The other surviving units, 3 vultures and a chariot, joined up with reinforcements to assault the (future) canal city uppercut.
We got lucky and took the city without losses.
Units arriving by sea from the eastern theater increased our invasion force to just south of 20 units. With the naval force operating in the west we went for the eastern cities. This is Witchdoctor one turn before the attack.
AT whipped walls and withdrew his chariots before the assault. With no spears or opposing chariots present our chariots could operate without check. They killed one axe and redlined a second.
After that the fight went well again and we traded the chariot and 2 shock vultures for 5 axes. (Though, The C2 shock vulture actually had odds iirc.)
AT hit our galleys with two of his own.
Both galleys survived but I made a mistake in unloading the vultures from the heavily damaged galley, thus exposing them to the chariots. On the forested hill they had odds but one of the chariots won anyway (one winning was about expected) which gave AT his first general.
The starting scout reported the defenses of the capital before dispersing in enemy land.
The combat simulator prediction indicated that these forces were too much to take on with our current strength.
So we decided to research Construction while the army liberates the southern cities. The location of Tombstone could be inferred by the culture spread.
AT only managed to get 3 axes and 1 spear into the city. The abundant rivers everywhere do have some downside. This time the presence of the spear meant we had to take the city the hard way. Combat luck was fair yet again. We traded the 4 units in the city for 2 shock vultures and unlocked a 10 EXP vulture for the Heroic Epic.
Without ATs culture the two captured cities can support each other and the hill the attacking force is standing on provides fantastic vision. I expect the two southern cities to fall easily.
The sailors of the naval force found an unhabitated jungle island to lick their wounds on, probably confusing the crews of assorted foreign ships sailing by.
Civillian matters are going less swimmingly than the warmaking. We finished Currency with assistance from excess overflow gold (about 200 gold from a couple chopped + whipped AGG barracks) and a small loan from Cornflakes (20 gold for 3pt). A lot of our cities are severly handicapped by happiness either due to whipping or just size. Without the war, we would have had Calendar by now. On the other hand, if we get to settle all of ATs land we will be able to reach 30ish cities which should be competitive for a while. This means that we need to whip yet more settlers and workers. Three settlers are already on the way. But we need to clear the barbarian axes in ATs former east first.
The southern cities were a bit tougher than expected.
AT did not manage to finish city walls in his newish city of Yeti. We took the city without losses, winning all battles at 60-70% odds.
Whiplash, however, was a tough nut to crack with city walls and fully fortified axes and archers.
It would likely have been possible to charge the walls with shock vultures. The losses would have been very painful though and bad combat rolls could have jeopardized the entire war.
So we decided to wait for the catapults. The capital was first.
AT spread the experience from his general over everything. In this way, he did not have to move his fortified units but on the flip side he was unable to create any particular tough defenders. Five catapults died, none of the hitters did.
AT also evacuated a settler he had left over defended by an archer and an axe.
Since so many catapults died I had to bring up reinforcements (visible in the north). Thankfully I had whipped two more. My paranoia is good for something. I definitely did not expect so many losses among the ranks of the field artillery.
Waiting for reinforcements slows down the attack on Whiplash by a turn which means that AT's island retreat does not actually postpone the end of the war after all.
Behind the bloodthirsty vultures came the settlers.
Just as the north west, we settled the east while the war was still ongoing. The fall of WitchDoctor and Tombstone made the colonization effort safe.
Badly constructed and overly wordy ramblings on the war (spoilered so as not to scar unwary readers):
I expect the war to end on turn 116 which is nearly 30 turns after the initial naval raid. It was obvious the war was won when we burned down 4 cities in the initial 3 turns. Winning the won war turned out to be a very slow process. The limitations of vulture warfare are a part of the reason, of course. But I do wonder if the war could have been played better. The plan was to tie down troops with two galleys on the west coast, conquer/raze AT's eastern cities and expand behind the army yet further east. This succeeded almost perfectly but it was very slow and AT hid behind walled cities and let his axes get killed piecemeal which means any other approach would have worked also.
Advancing to the capital was an option after the initial raid. There is a chance we could have taken it right then. We would have had to contend with the whipping potential of his size 7 ,+13 food surplus capital. AT also had substantial forest reserves left near his capital. Several of the axes defending his cities were made from wood. We would have been able to fortify in the forests and deny him some of them. The risk would have been higher. One reason I rejected going for the capital was that the strike forces had no spears for cover. C1/C2 vultures do get odds against unpromoted chariots and we had C1 chariots of our own.
Resettling the burned cities sooner would have given us additional profit from the war. With the exception of LockJaw in the far east, the prospects of such a move were dubious. We would have been forced to spread out our forces and also simply lacked vision (could not build sentry chariots). AT had total cultural control and there were roads everywhere. Keeping the island city as suggested by Suite (and Lewwyn) would have been a mistake. In total we encountered 3 enemy galleys. It would have tied down two elite vultures and been susceptible to chariots (no spears with the strike force as mentioned before). The city only had a 4 yield food resource available which does not justify the commitment. (With a grasland pigs or the like it would have been able to whip its own defenders.)
On the first turn of the attack I tried to estimate AT's left over military. He had a bunch of power unaccounted for but I never saw any of it. It is possible that he had units off near DZ that I only saw when they were making their last stand defending the southern and eastern cities. But I may very well have simply goofed up. Next to that we should have kept LockJaw or refounded it much sooner on the hill where New LockJaw is now located. The city was easy to support from several whipping posts only 1-2 turns away by galley. It's possible it was a good idea to have the initial strikeforce be disruptive in the forests/hills north of AT's capital. I remain doubtful. You do not need to have odds if you have enough units to trade. Ultimately, it seems even in this overwhelming success with a devastating first strike and an opponent merely going through the motions you can see why axe warfare is frowned upon usually.
Demo:
We have unsurprisingly reached top position in food. (During the expansion phase we were were first for a turn or two as well.) The distance (to TBS, we think) is fairly small though. Miguelito/Rusten also are pretty close to us. On the screenshot above the demo you can see empty land in DZ's biome. (Er no, actually you can't. There is an unclaimed wet rice resource on a narrow peninsula east of the island with the x on it in said screenshot.) Elkad also expanded slowly and Miguelito/Rusten have taken advantage pushing cities into the shared border areas and a little beyond. They reached 18 cities which is more than the starting area would ordinarily have room for.
MfG is above average which is solely a consequence of the many cities. RB players tend to focus more on hammers than is typical at civforum.de. One reason is the lower difficulty setting used here. RtR influence could be another. I did whip a lot though. So maybe we will break into the top group there as well when cities are growing.
During the war we picked up cheap and useful techs like Iron Working, Calendar and Metal Casting helped along by capture gold. GdP ranges from above average (100% research turns) to abysmal (all other turns). Nevertheless, it does not seem we are significantly behind. I expected to see a little 5 or 6 below Machinery on the tech tree after researching Metal Casting. Actually, none of our contacts knows it. Two known civs have Code of Laws and Cornflakes is in Bureaucracy. (Cornflakes appears to be another neighbour who is in a strong position.) The GdP graph/demo does not account for capture gold. We have very little culture and dispensed with such niceties as Mysticism and Archery. Still, it is a bit puzzling.
Confusingly, AT left two workers behind his mainland city.
He had deleted the rest. If not for his island city it would have been impossible to get them. Again, two catapults died while there were almost no losses among the hitters.
The two workers are useful. While we were hardly short on workers resettling AT's land placed an enormous additional demand on worker labor.
I tried to be clever and attacked the archer and axe defending the island city with chariots. Two died which is probably about the expected hammer loss if attacking the city with shock vultures. The chariots are less useful I suppose. The city got autorazed. We had the replacement settler already on the boat.
The 8 turns since the end of the war have been very slow. I have been saving money but we only make 30-40% of the income of the economic powerhouses of the world. Building forges in the old cities and developing the new ones also feels like it takes forever.
The first ziggurat and forge were constructed in Adab.
The city does not have many good tiles and so much food it is hard to whip it down properly.
In the mean time I have amused myself by settling ill-advised cities near Cornflakes' borders.
This one set us back 10gpt. It may have been better to delay it or let Cornflakes have it. I'm not sure. One more city will follow.
Foreign affairs were more interesting. We met an lot of new players including TBS, mackoti, Frozen, Picadilly and GKC.
The first three names are among the strongest players in this PB and I look forward to getting their graphs.
Techs:
Unsurprisingly, we are significantly behind but it is intriguing how few people know Machinery.
Demo:
Strong food and production. Behind everyone who is not currently dying in GdP (presumably).
Miguelito/Rusten's power has been steadily rising.
They are probably close to knights too. If they are going for knights that is. That is just speculation. They probably are though. Both of their neighbors are weak and they should be able to easily roll over one of them, maybe even both. Unfortuantely, I'm in no position to affect events right now. I wonder if I should have simply kept making units (elephants in particular) and postponed the buildery stuff to later. The current predicament was easy to predict for ages.
As I mentioned above, M/R settled on Donovan Zoi's land so he is the more likely target. On the other hand, he is stronger than Elkad. DZ is the founder of Confucianism and has Machinery.
Another interesting development is Picadilly/Flunky declaring war on Jowy. They had been at war previously.
Their stack is quite impressive and surprisingly RB-esque in its composition. Judging from Jowy's power graph he is very dead. With horse archers Picadilly may even be able to end the war pretty quickly.
Lots of horse archers. Picadilly and Flunky are players from Civforum.de. In their meta, a classical era stack like this would more ordinarily contain elephants/cats/axes with few or no horse archers.
catapults are generally considered a pretty important unit here too but you're right that the classic wellie/cat/axe stack is pretty rare in our meta. historically, we've played a lot of games here under RtR mod; there, you'd either build a sword/axe/cat stack for an offensive war that wanted to use 1-movers (swords are particularly good for naval invasions in RtR mod), and horse archers otherwise. war elephants + catapults would be thought of more for a defensive stack intended to ward off an invasion from knights. that may be coloring your impression of RB meta somewhat.
either way though, it's pretty rare to see a successful ancient-era invasion like you did. it was fun to read - thanks for the reporting! any chance we could get a few overview shots? I haven't been following this game from the beginning and so I don't have a good understanding of what your map situation looks like.