Alright, it's taken a while, but here's the biggest update yet!
First, we begin recalling the various Neanderthal Warriors sent out to explore. This takes a long while because both the Neanderthals and the ships can only move one tile per turn. As it turns out, travel delay is probably the most significant factor in this war.
Two of our Neanderthals had been sent to explore the east, so they simply go north and scout out the Celts. Man, they have a lot of resources.
Lee Jacob is unique in that I'm going to have him try to go to Bibracte by land rather than sea.
We research some more stuff on our way to tribalism. Atlatlists are actually very powerful. They're strength 4 archery units and have a bonus when defending cities.
Meanwhile, Lee Jacob fights off a hippopotamus.
Alright, my plan is to disembark the Neanderthals at the Disembarkation Point, and then march them in the safe and defensible hills towards the city.
The immorality and laziness of our youth reaches new depths of depravity.
Lee Jacob versus angry wildlife! What a haul! That's three more myths to our growing collection.
Unfortunately, overconfidence of the player and the RNG conspire against him.
Fighting is not unknown to the Jivaro, but this is not a mere brawl. This is war.
And we're going to need all the help we can get to defeat the Celts on their home turf.
At this point, I come to a realization: It's quicker to just delete the rafts and build new ones. Early boats, ie rafts and canoes, are limited in number, so you have to lose some before you can make more of them. The first victim of this new policy is, sadly, Aqizzar's Raft. Don't worry, we'll build you a much nicer boat someday!
This... Is not good. We don't even show up on the list.
Oh, and by the way, our intelligence agency has infiltrated Celt society to the point where we can see what they're researching. Right now, they're researching boat building.
Caveman2Cosmos: A work in progress.
I decide to build a healer. This fight may last longer than a single turn, after all, and he might be useful.
Oh look at that. The Celts had stationed two units on the hill north of Bibracte to block our progress. Last turn, there was a barbarian Neanderthal on the hill to the north of the north hill.
Alright, let's try to get rid of this annoying hill garrison. The Neanderthals move south, next to Bibracte.
Predictably, the Celts pull everything back to protect their sole city. Who's king of the hill now, bitch?
Technically nobody is king of the hill because monarchy hasn't been invented yet.
We keep sending more and more troops to the siege. Bibracte is gonna be a tough nut to crack.
Meanwhile, we figure stone makes for excellent hut material.
Looks like the Celts are researching Atlatl making, since they've finished boat building. Hopefully they won't build a navy and sink all our ships. I doubt they will, they're probably too preoccupied with building more land units to defend the city from our army. Plus they don't know we're stuck on an island; they don't know where we're from period.
The wind spirits show they favor us!
We've brought our log ram to bear to batter down their defenses. Since they don't have any defenses built, we simply use it to make insinuations about the size of certain organs and how the Celts cannot pleasure their wives.
It only damages defenses by 5%. I just forgot to take a picture the first time around.
And finally, after all that hard thinking, we develop Tribalism. Sweet.
We still haven't killed the Celts though. I decide to tech towards slavery, since it's currently winning the vote. And if it loses to barter, well, barter is the prerequisite tech to slavery anyway.
Another feature of this mod: Surround and Destroy gives you bonuses for surrounding the enemy. I'm not exactly sure how they work, so here I just put a Neanderthal Warrior in each tile around the city. I did check whether ships would help the bonus, and it turned out it didn't. At least, not for rafts. I wonder if it'd have been better to have more units in the surrounding tiles?
A long and epic struggle ensues. In fact, I'm so absorbed into it that I forget to take pictures. Well, it's just two dudes whacking each other with their weapons until one of them falls down, anyway. This update is big enough already, it doesn't need even more pictures.
The necessity of counting how many mens you have left and how many mens your opponent has leads to the discovery of, well, counting.
After that big fight, it's clear that we have the advantage. It's just a matter of mopping up now.
We stop just short of killing all of them. Not out of any kind of mercy, but because we didn't have any more units to attack with. We only had four surviving Neanderthal Warriors after that big fight. Incidentally, you can see how that Log Ram has enough experience to level up, but it can't be promoted because we haven't unlocked any promotions it could get.
Well, we can just kill them on the next turn. And we do.
However, when we stormed the city, there was one last warrior who opposed us. His name was Abraham Lincoln, and he towered over all of our troops. His skill with the axe was incredible, and he cut down many of our troops. It seemed he would turn the tide of the battle by himself, when something unexpected happened! De Gaulle himself arrived, screaming "There can only be one!". Their fight was fierce, and none of our troops dared intervene, for they could barely see the axes the two wielded, such was their speed. Eventually, de Gaulle broke Lincoln's axe, and with a mighty swing he clove Lincoln's head clean off his shoulders. But Lincoln's power was such that even in his death, he struck down many of the dumbstruck warriors who had simply been watching the fight. Still, that was the last of Lincoln, and as such it was also the last of the Celts. Bibracte was ours.
Bibracte is kind of a stupid name though. We should rename it something better.
Finally, have an updated world map:
Only took us a little under three millenia.