Reconquista This!- A Moorish AAR

[Fondor_Yards]

In 1075, a new man has become the Caliph of the Moors. Young AbuZayyan ibn Ali leads the fleding Kingdom. To the north in Spain he is being pushed to the south. In Africa, he is surrounded by rouge tribes.


As his first act, he levies an army and marchs north into Spain, to retake it for Kingdom. In 1077 he reached Lissabon. The pitiful army there walls quickly, and with it, the city.


A Castilian raiding party is beaten off at Murcia, but not without loss.


In 1079 AbuZayyan attacks a large Valencian army hanging around Murcia.


The small army is quickly defeated and routed, all Valencian hopes of conquoring the lightly defended Murcia are out of the question. In punisment of their 'invasion', AbuZayyan lays seige to Valencia itself.



1080 The Valencian's allies, the Catalonianes, try to releive the seige of their friends. Seeing as the city garrison is sallying to join the fight, AbuZayyan is all to happy to provide the battle.


Several waves of light cavalry attacking from the front and flanks are beaten off with a combation of bolts, javaliens, and swordwork. The moor suffer relativly little loss of life, while most attackers died to a man.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v1...s/Moors/m7.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v1...s/Moors/m8.jpg

Finnally, the main body of the enemy infantry move foward. They are crashed into by the Moorish spearmen and black guard, who begin tearing into the christian spearmen. Then suddenly, the islamic heavy cavalry charges. Being slowly beaten back, with their cavalry gone, and now facing a cavalry charge, they run for their lives.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v1...s/Moors/m9.jpg

Too late, the Valencian reinforcements arrive to the battlefield. Dismayed to see what remains of their allies fleeing, they form a last line of defense. They are quickly surrounded on all sides by infantry and cavalry. None of their infantry make it out of their alive.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v1.../Moors/m10.jpg



Unfortunly, the cowardly general escaped the battle, and back to his city. He shut the gates behind him, so the seige must go on for now.

But his freedom does not last long. In 1081, his gates are battered down, and the last few hoursemen and city milita defending the city are ridden down by the heavy muslim cavalry.


Lissabon and Murcia are both subject to Castilian raiding parties again. AbuZayyan grows tired of these raids on his lands, and turns his eyes towards the mighty Kingdom of Castile. Up to this point, he had been warry to attack the most powerful christian force in Iberia. But now they had left him with no chose in the matter.


He takes the fight to them. He enters central Iberia, and drives back the several small forces arrayed before him. He follows them back, to their base of operations, Toledo. AbuZayyan lays seige to the famous spanish fortress, eager to take it and push the christian onto the defensive. While he outnumbers the enemy, their walls are high and it will take many men to storm them. Will he take the castle, or will the young Caliph's ambitions die with him there?
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v1.../Moors/m14.jpg

[DaVinci]

I knew, there would be something nice and new in the forum ... will add it to the AAR-overview.

[Fondor_Yards]

You can take down my other one from that list*or move it to an 'old/retired' aar list*, since it is closed and no longer active now.

[DaVinci]

You can take down my other one from that list*or move it to an 'old/retired' aar list*, since it is closed and no longer active now.

No i just edited the title of the thread to simply "AAR threads", and not longer "Currently running ...", so those older but great AAR's will be available for interested people also, if they are not longer active.

[Gaias]

A good start to your Moorish AAR. Waiting to see the outcome of the siege.

This actually give me a bit of inspiration to restart my AAR after the meltdown of my harddrive. Good thing that I haven't gotten to far into the game, otherwise I might have been really discouraged.

I have a request if you will, though it's your AAR to do as you please. Could you crop out the UI of your battle shots, as they do deter from the action of the screenshot. And added it straight to the post, instead of as a link, as having all the screenshots on one page gives a better panoramic of the action IMO. Though like I said it just a suggestion, and your AAR to do as you please. :wink:

[Fondor_Yards]

Well I left the bigger images linked so the page wouldn't take forever loading. I remember when I had a really bad internet access, so didn't want to make the page impossable to load for them. About the UI left in.....your right, I'll leave them out for my next update.

[Gaias]

Yeah I suppose you are right about the loading, as I have been with broadband so long I forget what it feels like to be on dialup. Well whatever format you decide to use I will be waiting for the next installment of you AAR.

[Fondor_Yards]

In 1084, AbuZayyan fights off a relief army and the garrsion at once, but he take too many losses to his infantry. He is forced to return to his homelands, in order to retrain his troops.


After finnaly getting it retrained, he heads north again. But this time he avoids the fortress of Toledo, and attacks the much weaker Guimaraes. In 1090 he fights a battle outside the city walls. He drives all the spaniards before him, forcing the remaining few to take shelter inside the city.


One year later, in 1091, the city itself falls. The few remaining exhasted defenders are quickly crushed and driven away.


Marching south, he heads back towards Toledo. In 1093, he reachs the city and lays seige to her, yet again. This time he takes up a defensive position on the bridge north of the city, so if he was attacked he would be able to defeat them with ease.


Later that year, he eagerly launches the attack. No other armies have come up, so it is only the few men trapped inside he needs to kill.


The walls are only lightly defended, just a few of the knights stationed there dismount and fight the moors on the walls hand to hand. The are surrounded and cut to pieces by the black guard.


With the walls now taken, AbuZayyan installs his crossbowmen on the city walls. The mounted knights, now seeing their folly, try to flee. But now there is nowhere for them to run, and they are cut down by the crossbowmen's bolts.



Finnally the great fortress of Toledo falls into the hands of Moors. As he revenge for the literaly countless raids on his lands, he plunders the city, killing and enslaving most of the population. The fraction of remaining people eagerly join the true faith.


After retraining his army and adding new divisions to his ranks, AbuZayyan takes his royal army and marches north, to the castle and kingdom of Leon. In 1097, he reaches one of the 2 last Castilian castles in Iberia. He is eager to soon reduce that number to one. In 1098, he assaults the city by storm.


Here the Castilians try an interesting new tatic, using artillery from inside the city to target the incoming forces. But the failed to measure the height of the walls, and they could not fire without destorying both each other and the walls. Since they invested more in artillery then infantry, AbuZayyan's plows throughs it.


Later, but too late, the artillery commander fires on a seige tower already at the wall. Part of a crossbow unit was inside, and all of those died. AbuZayyan then killed 100 christians for every one of his men that died.



In 1100 Castile in a desperate attempt to turn the tide of the war, lays seige to Toledo. They even try to assault the the city itself.


One traitor opened the city gate, and blocked the channels for boiling oil. Abu ibn Nazar quickly sets up his crossbowmen on the city walls and himself at the city enterance. Right on que, the enemy troops come rushing in. I they expected to caught the moors off guard becaue of the gate, they thought wrong. They are quickly cut down by either crossbow bolts or cavalry lances.


To the south in africa, Nazar ibn Khalid has been laying seige to Marrakush. He hopes that they will give up and join the growing kingdom, but decide to fight instead. They sally forth, very low on supplies and if they don't win now, it's all over.


Nazar gives them no quarter. As soon as they leave the city's walls, he pelts them with arrows and javaliens, cutting down many before they even enage them. Disorganized, Nazar then charges his vast camel cavalry force. The odd looking animals send the enemy flying through the air and flying back to their city. The camels are followed by Nazar's infantry, which run into the city with the defenders, taking advanage of the open city gates. What troops were left there were cut down to size.





Campain map update.


As you can see, the normans are now new the Byzantium Empire. Good luck to them on holding back the turkish storm. I'm also going to end up fighting with Eygpt for North Africa probably. Maybe I'll get luck and they'll get stuck in a huge and very long war with the turks and ignore me*There's no harm in wiseful thinking*. Everything so far seems standard, except maybe Bohemia and Denmark doing better then normal.

[thoscme]

oh how i love reding your AAR!!
it is very geniously, haven't tried any non christian factions yet, but i think egypt will be my next campaign
good luck fighting those egyptians, if they come

[Gaul]

Toledo is ransacked?! What about all the pretty ladies inside?? Christ, if it wasn't for the 1 or 2 attractive Arab women I've seen, I'd start a campaign as Castille. Then again, in my whole life, I've only SEEN 2 Arab women!


DUDE: Spain is and was Spain. Moors are north African. Spain just wanted their land back in the same way (Very VERY understandable, even being pro-Jewish) the Palestinians want theirs back. You want to push Israel into the sea? BE MY GUEST. They haven't lived there in 2000 years, and have no right to live there now. The differences between Biblical times and the Space Age are quite obvious. And you know? In any WWI or pre WWI scenario for any game I play I always cheat for the Ottoman Empire Give em lots of money & technology and ****. The 1000 year old Sultanate dies with me! (or the end of cheat codes). But anyway, take care, and looking forward to other AAR's by you

[Grand Master of the Order]

DUDE: Spain is and was Spain. Moors are north African. Spain just wanted their land back in the same way (Very VERY understandable, even being pro-Jewish) the Palestinians want theirs back. You want to push Israel into the sea? BE MY GUEST. They haven't lived there in 2000 years, and have no right to live there now. The differences between Biblical times and the Space Age are quite obvious.

Dude: This is an AAR of a medieval mod, including the views from the position of the factions leader!
There is no need to compare anything here with the presence reality and it is neither wanted by us. We don't want any anti-.../pro-... comments or discussions about actual politics or peoples in this subforum! Thank you!

[Tzif]

Nice AAR, some of the pictures don't work though?

Tzif

[Grand Master of the Order]

Cannot confirm that, all pictures and links do actually work for me at least.

[Gaul]

Sorry. But I do like that title - Reconquer this! (if it's possible for ai castille ) I like Arabs - always saw things from their view point as well. I didn't mean any harm by it. The world is my focal point - peoples are branches of the big huge tree known as Earth. I am but one leaf... To hear, is to obey (Played a few games as Carthage as well )