We Come In Peace - An Ashanti AAR

blsteen said:

Ooh smacking the pope around, nice BB.

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Indeed, we get about -60 yearly relations from our reputation

Malurous said:

Well done, slowly but surely creeping up the Boot

By the way, it's interesting how perilous Italy can be for the AI if you have naval superiority. You don't see it used in AARs nearly as much as blockading the Bosporus or the Danish straits, but both the northern and the southern parts of Italy have these opportunities in Venice and Sicily.

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Indeed, the fleet is an enormous help in all wars, being able to control who is allowed to go where, driving up enemy WE and of course a few free points of warscore don't hurt either.
And almost every big country has some obscure corner that you can isolate from the rest with your fleet.

Enewald said:

Thats quite a low amount of manpower considering the size of your realm.

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Indeed it is. But most of the colonizable parts of Africa are near zero manpower, and just 9 provinces in all of Africa have more than 1000 manpower.

Chapter 36: Get the Vogons, we're building

Aug 1652: Ming declaring war on Persia would be a fantastic opportunity for us, if we hadn't trapped most of the Persian army in the western half of their territory.


Sep 1652: Still, now's as good a time as any to declare war on Persia. Our aim is to finally expand our land connection to India to make it a bit more redundant.


Oct 1652: Timbuktu switches culture from Mali to Ashanti, but since Mali culture was accepted anyway, this doesn't change anything.

Nov 1652: That takes care of the second French colony. That only leaves the third colony which unfortunately is garrisoned.


A bit later, our Generals complain about our unmanly tactics. If only they knew what was still to come...


Dec 1652: Mantua warns us, thus giving us a nice opportunity to relieve them of their ducats without having to deal with the current Emperor, Castile.

Jan 1653: Yet another coloniser mission. Hopefully this one will work on the first attempt.


Feb 1653: Hungary accepts peace with Castile, releasing TPM Teutonic Order, and OPMs Friesland and Ragusa.


Mar 1653: In eastern Persia, it's a chaotic two and a half way war, with the Persians focussing mostly on us.


Apr 1653: Good, now we've got the CB we only need some free stability to declare war.


May 1653: While the war is still quite a mess, we've got enough warscore to achieve what we wanted. Our corridor to India is now two provinces wide, greatly reducing our vulnerability to rebels.


Aug 1653: Speaking of corridors, Portugal is another great opportunity to connect two parts of our empire (and to get some cash from Mantua)


Three days later, France reminds us to keep that buffer between our Italian conquests and them. This war will be fought entirely in their few remaining colonies.


Thanks to their artillery, the French invasion into Yaqui will take a little while.


Mantua joins the ranks of our donors.


Oct 1653: We replaced our Adm 6 Stadtholder with another Adm 6 Stadtholder. At least we got a small morale boost out of it.


After two and a half months, we've made great inroads into Portugal. But now the real war with enemy contact starts.


Nov 1653: After a hardwon battle, we seize Cochimi, the last of the three French colonies.


In South America things turn out a lot worse. With our army in South America close to annihilation and reinforcements still months away, we're forced to take desperate measures. Tierra del Fuego will have to wait.


Dec 1653: And once again, our mission colonist fails. We really need to start some special training program...


Jan 1654: Who let Shawnee off suicide watch? They declare war on Portugal once again and for the last time.


Sep 1654: With all their southern provinces occupied and three extra battles to drive up warscore a bit further, Portugal is forced to part with enough provinces to connect Mexico to Florida. On top of that we get the coastal CoT in Muskogee.


Up next: The Blitz

Didaa said:

Europeans are no match for Ashanti alien army

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Unfortunately it's turning more and more into a Starship Troopers scenario, as far as required troop numbers are concerned :;

Enewald said:

It's good that the Italian city states pay the wages of the Ashantian army.

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Indeed. This way the Ashanti taxpayers can concentrate on building tons and tons of forts, workshops, marketplaces, constables and the likes.

Tmac said:

Strange how expensive those portuguese colonies are. In my vij game i grabed all spanish colonies for 2% each. Have portugal chnaged their capital to new world?

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Yes, they changed capital to North America shortly after our second war in 1591. They had already lost half their mainland provinces so it probably made a lot of sense economically.
Of course, them moving their capital is what even made getting a foothold in Iberia possible.

Chapter 37: Seven Weeks in Spain

Oct 1654: Our spies infiltrate the Castilian administration, revealing their troop positions to prepare our attack. We currently have 7 armies of 11,000 men placed in Alentejo and Lisboa, as much as force limits allow.


Nov 1654: The electors have elected. We couldn't have said it any better. This allows us to attack European minors without having to face Castile.


Our brickstackers have already started to miss the spotlight among all those colonization missions.


Jan 1655: Time to take advantage of the new Emperor. We attack OPM Siena


Feb 1655: Shawnee doesn't survive its second attack on Portugal and is annexed.


May 1655: We're having some manpower problems in Italy since we need 2/3 of our Italian army to keep out the Papal troops. They've upgraded their infantry to Reformed Tercios which are almost impossible to hurt without good dice rolls. Good thing the election of Corsica kept us from our planned attack on Castille...


Jul 1655: Gondwana sends us a bouquet of Forget-me-not's, or as it's known in gameplay terms, a warning.


Aug 1655: Couldn't they have elected a somewhat richer Emperor? Still, we don't annex so we can keep a weak Emperor.


Sep 1655: Ming takes quite a bite out of Persia.


Nov 1655: There's still a big back and forth over Ferrara, and Rajputana decides to join Gondwana in our next war.


After that short construction break, we're colonizing another Indonesian island.


Jan 1656: Sardinia and Naxos become our first European cores. Upper Africa is starting to take shape!

Polite as they are, Siena had a decent sum saved up for us. And Naples finally returns the stolen province of Beirut (along with the rest of their territory)


After we've taken his Greek provinces, the Pope is also willing to agree to a decent peace.


Mar 1656: This opportunity is just too good to let go. Castile has moved its entire army east, leaving our common border wide open. We don't have nearly enough forces to win an Iberian war, but we'll try to rack up as much warscore as possible in our window of opportunity to expand our foothold (and our supply limit) on the peninsula for future wars.


May 1656: After 40 days we've stormed 3 level 3 forts in Castile and are close to the fourth one. In Northern Brazil it's a toss up, in Central Brazil we've seized a colony but due to the low speed we won't be able to reach anything else before the May 9 deadline.


That's another valuable point of warscore for the upcoming peace.


And here's what we got in 49 days of war (all the while avoiding anything even resembling a fair fight). About a third of our warscore came from India. We take Andalucia and Beira, giving us a connection to the last Portugese province and our 10th coastal CoT and allowing us to place another 66'000 soldiers in Iberia.


Jun 1656: Time for another overview. Running a 44,000 and a 33,000 stack across Castile has had quite an impact on war exhaustion, despite no major battles. We've also broken the 1000 income barrier by quite a bit.


And that's territorial changes over the last two updates. The beige powers (Golden Horde and Persia) took quite a beating.


Up next: The Indian problem

blsteen said:

Seven week war indeed!

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Should have called it the Spanish Flyby

Murmurandus said:

Mmm, time to learn alien...

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Don't worry. Your overlords will post work assignments in all human languages.

Malurous said:

Wow, that was one gutsy war! You should consider thanking the spirits that the AI wasn't stubborn in peace negotiations

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Yeah, I'm always fascinated by how reasonable the AI is once you have half a million soldiers

Johan11 said:

Hmmmm. Time to go for Russia, i think

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Hmm, seems like an ambitious target for an amphibious invasion...

Chapter 38: We'll always have Parlakimidi

Jul 1656: The Pope opens a new CoT in Athens. Too bad it borders the Hungarians, so we won't take it for a while.


Sep 1656: Continuing our tradition of failed mission colonizers, Sumbawa also requires a second attempt.


Nov 1656: To remove the final remaining chokepoint in our land connection to India, we declare war on Gakwar and Rajputana.


Dec 1656: We annex Gakwar and leave Rajputana as a TPM, to avoid getting a border with Ming.


Jan 1657: While we're at it, we might just as well collect some ducats from Delhi as well.


Sep 1657: Our second colonist arrives in Sumbawa and we get (with a slight detour) the mission to conquer Siena.


Oct 1657: Election time! We finally get another 9 Adm Stadtholder, to help keep war exhaustion down.


Dec 1657: To finish our Indian campaign, we also have to deal with the Scandinavian problem. And what better way to deal with problems than declaring war on them?


Looking at the Gustavians, we're starting to wonder if more enemy cavalry would actually be better for us...


Feb 1658: We trade in 8 Galleons for 1 Wargalleon in the Battle of the Skagerrack. At least it's the better deal than the Scandinavians got.


Apr 1658: The Scandinavian fleet is mostly destroyed and we've started our blockade of the Scandinavian coastline. In India, we've destroyed all but two of their armies, with one of those two having a very grim future.


May 1658: Andalucia is converted to Animism, which will raise income by an estimated 5 ducats. The Algarve is occupied by Portugese rebels, so if the AI is inept enough we'll get one more cheap province from Portugal soon enough.


Our mighty fleet is busily building warscore.


Jun 1658: How exactly was it possible not to destroy this army in five days?


Dec 1658: Right as we are wrapping up our Indian campaign, France decides to change the path of our next chapter.


Although our Indian conquests only amount to a grand total of 2.9 warscore, we can still kick Scandinavia out of India.


We also bought the release of Mecklenburg, close enough to the Kattegat to serve as a good stepping stone for future operations against Scandinavia.


And finally, Orissa ruins our plan to take Madurai for ourselves.


Up next: Gary the Hun joins the game