A Report on the General Course of the War in Persia
First Phase: Persian attacks in Egypt simultaneous with Ethiopian attacks in Arabia. Egypt (suffering from both severe lag and Mayi's excellent generals) is forced from the war. Persia, most of its army busy fighting the Egyptians, scorches its part of Arabia and withdraws in the face of Ethiopian advances. Ethiopia wins battles in Al Hasa and Qatar, Bahrain, Al Hasa and Jabal Shammar are captured from the Persians in Arabia before Ike bows out.
Second Phase: Military advantage in Arabia swings to Persia, which turns its attacks south to knock Ethiopia out of the war as Tripoli was. Ethiopian troops quickly withdraw from northern Arabia, anticipating the coming superior numbers of Persians. A defensive line is established anchored in Qatar in the East and mountainous Mecca in the West, and undefended provinces are scorched. This involves conceding a number of provinces to Persia without fighting, but better to retreat before losing a battle than after.
Third Phase: The Eastern line is left unmolested, but Persia attacks strongly in the West, and between superior numbers, superior morale, and 5 shock generals, breaks the defense in Mecca, mountains be damned, and drives Ethiopian troops southward. Enough soldiers are in place to cover the retreats, and a second Western defense is established anchored around Mocha, another mountainous province in southern Arabia. Persia advances swiftly, reaching San'aa deep in southern Arabia, but does not attempt to break sixty regiments guarding a mountain province - since Mocha is adjacent to a strait, there was no need to reserve troops to guard lines of defense in this case. Battles were fought in Mecca and Asir, both won by Persia. Once again neither I nor Mayi wiped any regiments.
Fourth Phase: In order to relieve pressure in Arabia, an offensive is begun in Persia proper, attacking from the east and amphibiously. All the land in Eastern Persia is mountainous and extremely defensible, but none of it was defended as Mayi had preferred to send all available forces to Arabia. This is the main theatre of Kongolese involvement, and also 24 Ethiopian regiments are committed (initially); once it became clear just how undefended Eastern Persia was, 24 grew to 60 very quickly thanks to the wonders of naval transport. Quick hop across the Persian Gulf is much faster than marching around by land. No battles at all were fought during the Eastern attack, despite advancing nearly to Baghdad.
Fifth Phase: Mayi withdraws almost his entire army from Arabia to protect Persia itself. The African advance in eastern Persia moves west until we run out of mountains, overlooking Mesopotamia from Laristan and Fars; no way, though, that we would come down out of the mountains to risk engaging the vastly superior Persian armies finally arriving in Mesopotamia on the plains. Instead, Ethiopian armies dig in in the East and counterattack in the West, swiftly retaking Ethiopian Arabia and pressing forward into Persia against nearly no opposition. During this counterattack I got the first wipe of nearly five years of combined fighting between Persia and Ethiopia (finally! Mayi is a tough fight!).
Sixth Phase: Mayi's main armies organize in Mesopotamia and begin a strong counterattack, looking to push us out of the mountains. The first Persian attack is defeated, but Mayi once again commits most of his army to a single front, guaranteeing him eventual success but leaving other areas undefended. Counterattack direction Arabia to Anatolia, even as subsequent Eastern attacks of crack Persian stormtroopers led by veteran generals break my mountain defenses. Mayi wipes an Ethiopian stack in the East during this time, leaving our honors equal, but loses three or four times as much territory in the West as he regains in the East.
At the end of the war Africa had an obvious advantage but had not won decisively; Persian WE was significantly higher and a number of provinces were occupied, whilst my manpower pool remained at 75% of max and Kongo's was likely higher. However Persia still had its main armies in the field, and had not yet run out of manpower (I don't know how much was left). Ultimately the war was decided, like the previous, when Persia's alliance leader, Bavaria, surrendered. Persia, though losing, had a lot of fight left in it.
After the exit of Tripoli our forces were pretty evenly matched on land, perhaps even with a slight advantage to Persia (inferior in overall numbers to what Kongo and Ethiopia together had in the fighting, but significantly superior in quality); the reason the war was slightly to the advantage of Africa, then, is because the Africans were largely able to outmaneuver the superior Persian armies. Shouldn't have gone with necromancy, Foels; the zombies may not die to anything but a headshot, but they're just too slow.
Of course, when you can ship armies across the Persian Gulf in two weeks and it takes the Persian armies six months to march around by land to the new front line, that helps outmaneuver them. But even so, Persia was consistently forced to make attacks into mountain provinces. That it won many of them is a testament to its superior army, but Ethiopia only fought one defensive battle outside of the mountains in the entire war, while Persia, IIRC, fought none of its defensive battles against me with the advantage of any terrain modifiers at all. I am willing to admit that if all the major Persian-Ethiopian fighting had not happened on ground of Ethiopian choosing, I would have been crushed.
Overall, I suspect that fighting Persia with morale and leadership-inferior soldiers of mine was probably a lot like fighting my soldiers as tech-inferior Punjab or Mongolia must have been, but in this case maneuver and control of the sea helped offset the advantages. It would have been very difficult to get a decisive victory by maneuver alone, though; outmaneuvering the Persian armies led to Persian provinces being occupied and Persian WE being racked up, but you can't crush their armies unless you can crush their armies.