5065 AD and the war still drags on! Save-game corruption remains a slight problem, but yearly saves and back-tracking works wonders.
House Hawkwood has grown nicely, extending its multi-headed influence to roughly a third of the Known Worlds. After many a decade of bitter fightan and lootan I made peace with the Merchant League, mainly to purchase metal from their surviving agoras. The Church has been purged from all Hawkwood worlds save Shaprut, Criticorum and Tethys. Meanwhile, I have launched an assault against Church-controlled Aylon that is going remarkably well (seems like the Church and Al Malik largely wiped each other out there). Also, after several failed and costly invaishun attempts, Urth is now finally starting to crack!
Having just finished bringing ITZ to Australia, the time has come to initiate Operation Anchorage! The Church is naturally going berserk, sending wave after wave of Brother Battle, Avestite and armour stacks to take back their holy Kwanza clay.
Whereas earlier and more reckless attempts to conquer 'Murrica ended miserably, Alaska is the perfect spot for invaishun since it lacks proper PST defences. Fresh troops from Delphi can thus be safely funneled to the frontier to supplement the losses, and the captured energy well makes an excellent refueling base for air units!
The first of many shipments of replacement troopahs is already in orbit. The plan is to hold ground in Alaska for a couple of years to fend off the first waves of Church grunts, and then start fightan all the way down south, using engineers to build roads for the invading soldiers. Once South America is penetrated, everything will be thrown at the palace in Rio Brasilia, which houses the much-coveted Church Sceptres.
The battle for Shaprut, however, is not going quite so well. The planet may be officially ruled by House Hawkwood on the jump-web map, but the Al Malik have rallied and retaken pretty much everything they had lost save the palace, which will likely fall in a year or two. While their space navy could be smashed with a battleship-heavy task force, their ground units are another matter entirely.
The problem is that the bastards have built loads of PST Missile Launchers to discourage planetary bombardment, and since they achieved relative technological parity a while back, they have been busily churnig out stuff like Xyll Warbeasts, Brother Battle and Avestite Troops. Heck, they even had a couple of Cyber-Warrior Legions when I first invaded, a far cry from the usual rabble the AI tends to sport. They will still fall, of course, but the planet will not be cleansed for quite some time yet.
Years of intense battles ahead, in other words, which will give Li Halan even more time to bolster their own forces.
