MTL - Aztec Eternals-Chapter 15 Siege

"This city is not easy to fight." Outside the east gate of Hilotepec City, after carefully observing the width, thickness, and material of the city wall, Shurott in the army said seriously. After the last talk, Shulot felt a lot more comfortable in his heart, and he seemed to be a lot closer to Avet Soter.

"Of course, if Hilotepec was easy to fight and it was so close to us, it would have been wiped out decades ago, and it won't wait until today." Avet Soter said with a smile.

He likes to spend time with Shulot, who has no sense of danger, which makes him feel a rare relaxation. "After all these years of fighting, what the north has left are hard stones."

"Avit, have you noticed the section of the city wall?" Sherault continued to study it seriously, "It's a polymer of stones and clay, and it didn't loosen at all under the scouring of the rain."

"It should be a binder mixed with corn mortar and lime." Avite also became more serious, "I remember when I was supervising the craftsmen 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 Sanhe soil. It is impossible to excavate the foundation of the city."

"What is glutinous rice? Digging the city's foundation?" Avit asked with a smile, "Why do you have such an interesting idea, Shulot? Do you want to use a stone axe to dig a city wall that is nearly ten paces wide?"

Shulot was at a loss for words, and realized that the Aztecs had neither iron picks nor copper picks, and only had easily wearable stone and wooden tools on hand.

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

"If the city wall was not high, the warriors would let the levies pile up dirt under the city, and then charge directly up. The small town of the Miztecs in the south was easy to hit," recalled Avit.

"As for the current situation, the city wall is too high and too thick. We usually don't fight it directly. It's good to besiege the city. If the water, grain and salt are cut off, the city will surrender after a few months of siege."

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

"Using a ladder to storm the loss is too great. The village soldiers are almost useless in the storm, and the morale is too low to climb up. If you use a samurai, the casualties will be too great. In front of a stone or a javelin falling from the city head, an eagle samurai can also It's almost as fragile as the village soldiers. And the civilians of the other side can also help defend the city and can be used as half of the conscripts."

"Don't we have a senior soldier group? Two thousand jaguar soldiers and six thousand senior soldiers are attached to the city together, and the militia in the city will definitely not be able to resist. At most, thousands of people can die in battle to break the city."

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

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

Shilot continued to look at the city wall. The surrounding warriors began to howl loudly, terrorizing the enemies of the city. They beat the shield with their battle clubs, making a loud thud. The levies in the rear also began to shout loudly. Not far away, the city head was flustered for a while at first, and then stabilized under the pressure of the noble warriors and priests.

On this medieval battlefield, where there were no artillery, no return cannons, no catapults, or even long-range suppression by excellent archers, the siegeists needed to unilaterally endure the unbridled fire from the city head. Attacking a fortified city has become an extremely difficult task.

It is impossible to storm a large city-state guarded by tens of thousands of people with low morale and poorly trained village warriors. 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?" Avette asked curiously.

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

"Dig a tunnel? You mean dig a road underground and go over the city wall, right? It sounds feasible." Avet simulated the excavation scene in his mind. "How deep should you dig? How wide should the channel be? How to determine the direction underground? How long can you dig with a stone shovel a day? How to avoid being discovered by the other party?"

"Hmm..." Sherlot thought for a while and made sure that he hadn't read a book that gave specific instructions on how to dig tunnels. "We can try the specific details. We can also ask a miner."

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

"Perhaps we can design a simple catapult, as long as the range exceeds the bow and arrow at the head of the city, it can throw several kilograms of stones and hit the city wall." Sherlot thought of the classic shapes in countless games.

"I know about throwing rocks. What is a car?"

"..." Sherlot was a little hard to describe for a while, "It's something that has two or four wheels that can be pushed or pulled."

"What is a wheel?"

"..." Shirotte was a little mad, and even explained the shape and purpose of the wheel with gestures.

Soon, Avit reacted first: "It turned out to be a toy made by the Mayans. I have seen it in the market in the capital. You can push and play in the square under the Great Temple, but out of the city, there are everywhere. Mountains and trees, how can a wheel match the speed of a man?"

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

"It's a very good idea. Roads can indeed expand the territory of a country's rule. But with a wheeled car pushed by hand, no one should be able to run fast except to carry more things."

Indeed, there are still no camels in Central America. Maybe we can go to North America to domesticate bison, or get alpacas to pull carts from South America? Shilot radiated out of bounds thinking.

"Then how should the catapult be designed?" Avit is an extremely pragmatic person. The topic of com is back to siege.

"Let me try to draw a picture." Seirot found a branch and squatted on the wet soil to write and draw, while Avette stood by and watched. One was wearing a Tengu priest robe, and the other was wearing a sunstone commander's cape. The two high-ranking nobles were studying on their own, and the samurai walking back and forth didn't bother.

"It's definitely impossible to get a complicated return cannon. The Romans seem to have a torque trebuchet? Torsion, torque, it sounds like beef tendons or elastic ropes. We don't have it, and we can't get it."

"Looking for the original point, uh, the original point, Cao Cao's trebuchet of the Three Kingdoms, I remember seeing it in the Old Romance of the Three Kingdoms. It should be a central bracket with a rotating lever on it, and the short-headed man uses a rope to pull it, Throwing stones at the top of the long head."

Shirault struggled to think about it for a long time, and finally drew a simple rickshaw trolley. Unfortunately, he had read so many time-travel books before, but never really studied the structure of the trebuchet.

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

"Shirot, it takes several years of training for a sling to ensure the accurate launch. How can your catapult ensure the accurate launch?"

"It should have a fixed shape, and then use a fixed configuration." Sherlot recalled the simple description in the novel. "But we still have to try the details. Why don't we ask a carpenter?"

The two were discussing enthusiastically when they saw the city gate in front suddenly open. A priest wearing a feather crown and a rare black and white cloak walked slowly towards the camp from the city of Hilotepec with a scepter raised under the gaze of tens of thousands of city-state warriors.