These people went to war... they have a great something don't they?
If they did, I'd have expected them to deploy in that last ambush, because
that was the critical moment. If they'd deployed a Great Hunter there we could effectively have been defanged for two-three generations.
I don't know if I outright called this, but I think I called it. Brushcrest has buddied up with a lot of their neighbors. They'll either have mercenaries/volunteers fighting to contain us in the field alongside their hunters, or they'll pull back behind their walls and rely on food aid from their friends to recover after we burn everything. Either way, our warriors are probably going to have to settle in for a long, uncomfortable siege. We'll manage...maybe.
Put the shoe on the other foot. If we were attacked, even if we did have a mutual defense pact with the Antler Clans and some of the White Clans, it wouldn't do us any good. They're too far away to be useful in a defensive battle
unless it becomes a siege. Even then, it's not like communications is a thing because smoke signals only work short distances. If reinforcements come in ones and twos, the Brushcrestians are still fucked.
Basically, the goal of this assault isn't necessarily to sack Brushcrest itself. That may or may not be beyond our power, depending on our luck this turn. No, the goal is to burn all the fields (remember, it takes a season or two to grow and harvest wheat, especially with early agriculture), the grains, and all the outlying villages. That'll destroy so much infrastructure that they'll starve even if the palisade and the main settlement are intact. Starving, angry pops = civil instability, maybe even civil war.
And do remember that just as they have allies to the west, they have enemies too. If the river raiders scent weakness, then they will pounce, and poach at least a few of those Brushcrestian allies, at which point delivering the deathblow to the starved, isolated, and weakened Pinata peoples will be a mere formality.
