Aztec Eternals

"This city is not easy to fight." Outside the east gate of Xilotepec City, carefully observing the width, thickness, and materials of the city wall, Xiulot in the army said seriously. After the last confidant, Shulot felt a lot more comfortable in his heart, and the distance with Avit Sotel seemed to be much closer.

"Of course, if Xilotepec is easy to fight and is so close to us, it will be crusade and wiped out decades ago, and it won't wait until today." Avit Sotel said with a smile.

He likes to stay with Shulot who has no sense of danger, which makes him feel rare relaxation. "After these years of fighting, all that is left in the north are hard-handed stones."

"Avit, have you noticed the section of the city wall?" Shulot continued to study it seriously, "The inside is a polymer of stones and clay, and it hasn't loosened at all after being washed by the rain."

"It should be a mixture of corn mortar and lime." Avitt also became more serious. "I remember when I supervised the artisans to add to the pyramid, I saw that they used it, and the cost was very high."

"If this is the case, it is similar to glutinous rice mortar, and its hardness is much stronger than that of triadic clay. It is impossible to dig the foundation of the city."

"What is glutinous rice? Digging the foundation of the city?" Avit asked with a smile, "Why do you have such an interesting idea, Shulot? You want to use a stone ax to dig through the city wall that is nearly ten steps wide?"

Xiulot was at a loss for words for a moment, he realized that the Aztecs had neither iron picks nor copper picks, but only perishable stone and wooden tools on hand.

"Then how do we usually attack the city?" Shulot asked the senior officer beside him.

"If the city wall was not high, the warriors would let the conscripts pile up soil under the city, and then charge directly up. The small cities of the Miztecs in the south were easy to fight." Avit recalled.

"As for the current situation, the city wall is too high and too thick. We generally don't directly attack the city. Just besiege the city. If there is no water, food or salt, the city will surrender after a few months of siege."

"Our army is ten times larger than that in the city. We can directly take a ladder and climb up like ants to attack the city."

"Using a ladder to attack the losses is too great. The village militia is almost useless in a storm. The morale is too low to climb up. If you use a warrior, the casualties will be too great. In front of the stones or javelins falling from the top of the city, an eagle warrior They are almost as weak as village soldiers. And the civilians of the opponent can also help defend the city, and can be used as half of the conscripts."

"Didn't we have a group of senior fighters? Two thousand jaguar fighters and six thousand senior fighters went to the city together, and the militia on the city would definitely not be able to resist it. At most, thousands of people can be killed to break the city."

Avit turned his head and looked at Shulot with incredible eyes: "Are you crazy? Use jaguars and eagle fighters to attack the city? They are all military nobles, the core of the alliance to suppress the states. This is not Hete The national war of Lascala or Tarasco. If hundreds of military nobles die in this kind of city-state crusade, then the king will stop fighting and prepare to go back to suppress the rebellion."

Shulot thought about it by analogy. If the Polish king killed five hundred noble knights in a battle against the Crimean Tatars, well, I didn't think about it.

Shulot continued to look at the city wall. The surrounding warriors started howling loudly, threatening the enemies in the city. They struck the shield with their clubs, making a violent thud. The conscripts in the rear also started shouting loudly. The city not far away panicked for a while at first, and then stabilized under the pressure of noble warriors and priests.

On this medieval battlefield without artillery, return cannon, catapults, or even long-range suppression by excellent archers, the besiegers had to bear the unscrupulous firepower from the top of the city unilaterally. Attacking a strong city has become an extremely difficult task.

It is impossible to storm a large city-state guarded by tens of thousands of people by relying on village warriors with low morale and insufficient training. The elite city-state warriors are the core of the city-state's power and cannot be consumed at will.

So the most common way is to besiege the city.

"What other ideas do you have?" Avit asked curiously.

"The land here is not rocky, maybe we can dig a tunnel and break into the city directly."

"Digging a tunnel? It means digging a road underground and crossing the city wall. It sounds feasible." Avet simulated the digging scene in his mind. "How deep should I dig? How wide should the passage be? How to determine the direction underground? How long can I dig with a stone shovel in a day? How can I avoid being discovered by the other party?"

"Hmm..." Xiulot thought for a while, and made sure that he hadn't read a book that specifically instructed how to dig a tunnel. "We can try the specific details. You can also ask a miner."

Avitt temporarily hid this suggestion in his mind. He started to get serious, "Is there any other way?"

"Maybe we can design a simple catapult, as long as the range exceeds the bow and arrow at the top of the city, it can throw a few kilograms of stones and hit the city wall." Xiu Luote thought of the classic shapes in countless games.

"I know about throwing stones, but what is a car?"

"." Xiulot was a little hard to describe for a while, "it has two or four wheels and can be pushed or pulled."

"What is a wheel?"

"." Xiulot was a little crazy, explaining the shape and purpose of the wheel even with gestures.

Soon, it was Avit who realized it first: "So it was a toy made by the Mayans. I saw it in the market in the capital city. You can push it to play in the square under the Great Temple, but when you go out of the city, there are toys everywhere." Mountains and trees, how can wheels compare with the speed of people?"

"If there are enough metal tools, we can cut down the trees, and then build stone roads between the mountains and forests, and then rely on wheeled carts, the city-states can travel quickly, and the frontiers of the alliance's effective rule can be expanded to Vastec, Miztek, and even further Zapotec."

"It's a good idea. Roads can indeed expand the territory of a country's rule. But pushing a wheeled cart by hand, in addition to being able to transport more things, no one should run faster."

Indeed, there are no camels in Central America. Maybe we can go to North America to domesticate bison, or get alpacas from South America to pull carts? Xiulot's thoughts spread out.

"Then how should the catapult be designed?" Avit was an extremely pragmatic person, and the topic returned to siege.

"Let me try to draw." Xiulot found a branch, squatted on the wet soil to write and draw, and Avit stood by and watched. One was wearing a tengu priest's robe, and the other was wearing a sunstone commander's cloak. The two high-ranking nobles were studying on their own, and the samurai walking back and forth beside them didn't bother them at all.

"Complicated return guns are definitely not available. The Romans seem to have a torsion trebuchet? Torsion, torsion, it sounds like beef tendons or elastic ropes. We don't have it, and we can't get it."

"I'm looking for the original one, um, the original one, the trebuchet of Cao Cao of the Three Kingdoms, I remember seeing it in the old Romance of the Three Kingdoms. It should be a central bracket with a rotatable lever on it. The short-headed man uses a rope to pull it. Throwing stones at the top of the long head."

Xiulot struggled to think back for a long time, and finally drew the simplest human cannon cart. Unfortunately, he had read so many travel books before, and never really studied the structure of the trebuchet.

Avet looked at the abstract figure on the ground, pondered it carefully, and simulated it in his mind. "The short head drives the long head, and the long head shoots stones. It seems to be feasible. This process is a bit like a sling, which is also spinning and throwing stones."

"Sholot, it takes several years of training for the catapult to ensure the accuracy of the launch. How can you ensure the accuracy of your catapult?"

"The shape should be fixed, and then a fixed configuration should be used." Xiulot recalled the simple description in the novel. "But we still have to try how to do the details. How about asking a carpenter?"

The two were discussing enthusiastically, but saw the city gate in front of them suddenly open. A priest wearing a feather crown and a rare black and white cloak, under the watchful eyes of tens of thousands of city-state warriors, held a scepter aloft, and walked slowly from the city of Xilotepec to the camp.