This session's AAR: is a true after-action report: the War of the African League!
It's not that exciting though, because I didn't take any screenshots. In future wars I will try to take some screenshots for AAR purposes; in this war, I was too occupied with other things. You will have to imagine the battles. Or skip the wall of text. Whichever suits you.
Diplomatic things during the war (innumerable Gujarati surrenders and unsurrenders, Qin reportedly continuing to attack allies after peace was agreed on for *real* real, peace terms, and such) not covered. Gujarat stayed in the fight for a good three or four years after it was lost, and we had to grind it out and occupy much of his country; not sure that was beneficial to him, since it has caused him to have no army and tons of WE and rebels.
The War of the African League
So, of old (several sessions ago) there were friendly relations between Gujarat and Punjab on the one hand, and Ethiopia on the other. I helped Gujarat expand in South India, we both helped Punjab control his rebels when he was being overrun by tens of thousands of rebels and the player was semi-ghosted. We didn't talk all that much and Gujarat and Ethiopia signed no NAPs or other such formal agreements, but things were cordial.
Things soured on my end due to Bengal. Ethiopia had publically guaranteed the independence of Bengal; during session, Bengal also sought protection from Croatia, an ally of the Ethiopian state. However Gujarat and Punjab took offense, warning Croatia to withdraw its protection over Bengal or else. I publically stated my alliance with Croatia and that in case of "or else" I would honor it; they ignored this and maintained their demands. Wasn't happy about that at all. I wanted to preserve Bengal and it didn't look like they were on board with that; I also didn't like them threatening my ally. So, plotting time. And once I started plotting against Gujarat, I also started thinking how nicely their Tamil provinces would complement a few Tamil-culture islands I'd picked up from the wreck of Ceylon, the former South Indian player slot which lost most of its lands to Gujarat.
Plotting involved getting my two African neighbors on board, as well as Catalunya, which owed me a couple favors. I suppose they still do, assuming they make it out with the agreed-on provs, since they will end up gaining pretty well from this war. Spain brought in England, something I didn't know was happening until mid-session. Malaya and Qin were the major naval powers of Asia at that point (it is currently Malaya and Japan). I already had NAP with Malaya for other reasons, and I got one with Qin for the purpose of keeping him out of the Indian war, since I intended to be warleader. The Bengali player was absent, and getting mil-access from an AI'd player to attack another would have been cheesy - even though he might well have wanted to join the party were he around, and get back the land Gujarat took from Bengal in their last war. So, naval supremacy in order to launch an amphibious assault was necessary. Thus NAP with Qin.
We waited about ten years into the session to DOW; Ethiopian troops would have been ready a bit earlier, since I maintain a pretty large peacetime army due to security needs (at least by ROTW standards; I'm sure vR and his quarter-million screaming Russians would disagree), but allies needed some time and money to build up sufficient armies and the fleets to move them. Ethiopia currently has a much larger census tax than the other Africans, so we spread some gifts around to Kongo and Tripoli to help cover costs. Once D-day approached 66 Ethiopian regiments were moved to the islands off the Indian coast and 22 regiments were sent to the Punjabi border in Arabia in case they intervened (which they did). 82 Ethiopian regiments in all were committed to the war. I believe the commitments of the other powers averaged about 40 regiments, some higher, some lower. We were facing about 70 Gujarati regiments, 70-80 Punjabi regiments, and 50-60 Mongol regiments by my best guess, for a total of about 250 regiments against 200 regiments. Qin later joined on Gujarat's side and Persia attacked Punjab, which was a net gain in numbers for us, but I don't know by how much.
Immediately after DOW Ethiopian troops landed in Malabar and were quickly joined by allied forces; there were several very large battles in South India in the first year or so, vs the major Gujarati and Punjabi armies, that basically decided the war. These are only battles Ethiopian soldiers was involved in (except for the battles in Ahmadnagar, which are included by virtue of being very large); others can write their own army reports if they like. We largely fought together in the big early battles, then in separate smaller battles later. I try to note when there are more regiments than the numbers would indicate and they get stackwiped, since usually stackwiped regiments were pretty attrited.
Also, Spanish and English combats are not represented, because they were in a separate war and I don't want to look through the save anymore. They are present as allies in some of the initial battles though, IIRC. I was in most of the battles because I had the most stacks in India; 5 stacks of 12. So, this is a reasonably complete picture of the major battles of the war.
Malabar (ETH+allied 50k -2k vs GUJ 50k -9k) <-decisive battle
Madurai (ETH 20k vs GUJ 11k (half of attrited Malabar survivors) stackwipe)
Madras (ETH 20k -2k vs GUJ+PUN 40k -6k)
Madras II (ETH+allied 57k -11k vs GUJ+PUN 62k -23k) <-decisive battle
Bangalore (ETH+allied 84k -4k vs GUJ +PUNJ (retreated from Madras) 30k -12k)
Mysore (TRP + (iirc) ETH 30k vs GUJ 4k (GUJ's part of the Madras->Bangalore survivors) stackwipe)
After this point there was little left by way of big, reinforced Gujarati and Punjabi stacks in India; the biggest battles I fought in were against KOM. Which I kicked off by losing a stack to KOM when I pursued some attrited Gujaratis carelessly and ran into a lot of Mongols without a properly guarded line of retreat. My allies gave them a bloody nose in return though.
Later I joined the bloodying with larger armies, but he managed to avoid losing any full stacks. Kept his lines of retreat covered, that cheeky bastard.
Nagpur (ETH 9k -5k vs KHA 32k -3k)
Khandesh ETH 3.5k stackwipe (Nagpur remnants) vs GUJ 1k)
Ahmadnagar (KON+TRP 75k -6.5k vs KHA 27k -15.5k)
Ahmadnagar II (KON+TRP 60k - 1.5k vs KHA 10k -5k)
Nagpur II (ETH 35k-3k vs GUJ+KHA 22k-13k)
Mandla (ETH 30k -.5k vs KHA 5k -2.5k)
Malwa (ETH 21k -1.3k vs KHA+GUJ 12k -1k) <-Alas, cover forces prevent stackwiping
After this however KOM had to withdraw his armies to fight Persia. The rest is mostly minor fighting, the largest battles are in the range of 10k vs 10k. Notable is the stackwipe of the last decent size Gujarati force by an Ethiopian army half its size:
Khandesh (ETH 8.5k -3k vs GUJ 15,5k -4k)
Maharastra (ETH 5.5k vs GUJ 11.5k stackwipe)
Simultaneously to the Indian battles were a series of battles in Arabia, where Punjab and Ethiopia share a border. Punjab got 25k troops into Arabia, led by the king. Wasn't expecting that, so I lost a couple battles. Having most of my attention on India didn't help, nor having all my generals busy in the same while his king was tearing it up in Arabia, but hey - India was the decisive theater, so it was OK to fight a back and forth sideshow against his king in Arabia for a while. Later I turned my attention fully to Arabia and killed his army there, but the earlier fighting cost me a fair number of casualties. My soldiers were in 2 stacks, and when I lost, was able to cover retreats; he had one stack, and therefore got stackwiped once he lost badly enough.
Nizwa (ETH 10k-4k vs PUN 22k-2k)
Dhofar (ETH 17k -6k vs PUN 20k -6k)
Dhofar (ETH 22k -3k vs PUN 13k -4k)
Muscat (ETH 11k -1k vs PUN 24k -1.5k)
Dhofar (ETH 20k -5k vs PUN 24k -6k)
Dhofar (ETH 22k -3k vs PUN 23k -11k) (here, I borrowed a general from India to combat his king)
Nizwa (ETH 27k -1.5k vs PUN 10k - 3k (and shipped in a spare 6k rebel control stack to join the party)
Suhar (ETH 28k -2k vs PUN 11k -3k)
Nizwa (ETH 25k -.5k vs PUN 7.5k - 5k)
Dhofar (ETH 10k vs PUN 2k stackwipe, finally)
After Punjabi armies in Arabia were destroyed, the land was occupied without incident.
That's the war from my side of the screen. The fighting I did inland in North India, which is tropical and has low support limits, wasn't kind to attrition and WE, but it didn't get too bad. I had some minor revoltrisk from WE, but nothing big, and there were police and reserve stacks left home that took swift care of the few lonely particularists that popped up.
So... yeah, I know it's boring without pictures, but it's my first MP war and I was too busy to take screenshots. Enjoy the wall of text with some big numbers.