Outnumbering Churchill about 10:1 at Newcastle, I captured the city easily on the next turn:
My first city capture since the early Aztec war, excellent! With my backlines completely filled out with cities, and an economic base strong enough to fuel expansion, I was ready to take it to these AIs for the first time. I also noted that on the very turn that I captured Warwick, I received my first unhappy face in Bibracte from war weariness. Umm, yay. Can't wait to start dealing with that game mechanic again... 
Here's an overview of the English domains that would be the subject of the upcoming campaign:
Churchill's core consists of six cities, one of which (Arretium) he actually flipped from the Romans! I wonder how that happened... Anyway, Warwick was the obvious next target, touching up against my cultural borders for easy access. After that, it would be on to York, London, and then the final three cities in the northwest. Since Churchill was Protective, however, I knew that I had a lot of fighting ahead of me.
Why attack the English instead of the Khmer on the other side of the donut? A couple of things went into the decision. First of all, the English were the stronger civ by a wide margin, which offered an incentive to take them out before they could increase in power. I had nightmares of having to cope with Protective redcoats if I delayed pressing the attack. Secondly, my Forbidden Palace and Heroic Epic cities were on the border with Churchill. Most of my units were coming from that part of my territory; it didn't make a whole lot of sense to walk the new units halfway around the world to fight on the other side. Economically, I would also pay less in maintenance costs by capturing English cities than Khmer ones, due to the nearby FP. Finally, since Suryavarman wasn't providing too much of a threat, I could hold a skeleton military force in the west and commit everything else to advancing in the north, wheeling counterclockwise around the edge of the donut.
That was the plan - time to put it into practice!
Warwick had some pretty decent defense; those Protective longbows and crossbows were no picnic. Of course, you can see the stack that I brought to the battle as well, and 22 units will beat 6 units any day of the week. I had to sacrifice a couple of City Raider maces, but the city fell without much of a struggle.
In an ironic twist, immediately after I gained access to silver at Warwick, a silver resource popped out of a mine at Tolosa. Oh, NOW you show up! 
Newcastle, the first English city I had taken, had lacked any defensive bonuses whatsoever. Warwick possessed 40% cultural defenses, but that was it. My catapults took that out without issue. When I reached York, which was sporting castle walls, I was in for a rude surprise:
Uh, what? Why are my catapults only removing 4% of the defenses with each shot? Here I came across one of the new features in Beyond the Sword for the first time, the massively-increased resistance to defensive bombardment for walls and castles. I like the idea in principle, the problem is that the execution goes WAY TOO FAR in practice. Castles used to be useless, now they're almost ridiculously strong. Even Accuracy catapults only remove 4% with each shot - 4%! That's nothing! Remember, four Accuracy cats used to be able to drop ANY city down to 0% in one shot. Now those same four cats will remove 16% of the defenses, less than 1/6 of the total. Umm, doesn't that seem like a little much? Now sieges take absolutely forever! Argh.
I've learned since then that this kind of silliness can be avoided by using spies to incite revolts in enemy cities. Needless to say, that wasn't even something that I was thinking about at the time. I went with the tried and true solution instead: build a GIANT stack of catapults and trebuchets to bombard city defenses. I actually like most of the combat changes in the expansion, but this is just bad. It was already difficult to capture cities in Civ4, now it's just downright painful - and not fun. 
I had to drop the defenses at York, because it was on a hill, where the longbows received their extra defensive bonus. After several turns of bombardment, it was time to send in the maces:
I emerged victorious after a bloody fight:
York had to be razed because it contained Hinduism, the "poison religion" that would open me up to an Apostolic Palace loss. This is one of the dumbest things I can remember in a Civ game since you had to starve cities to death upon capture (Civ3). Too bad it's not going away. Guess you just have to kill EVERYONE who practices the Apostolic Palace faith in this situation.
When I finished researching Banking, I burned my saved Great Artist on a Golden Age. I really wasn't interested in the GA per se, so much as I wanted to swap civics without waiting through a couple turns of anarchy. I made the swap to Mercantilism... and Vassalage. Yes, Vassalage! With Bureaucracy moving to "High" upkeep cost, it's a much more attractive option, especially in this Always War context. I had enough cities that the capital no longer dominated, I could use the extra experience, AND the extra unit support would help significantly with the bottom line. Always try to pick the best combination of civics for your situation, not simply whatever conventional thinking dictates.
It took a couple of turns to heal my units (the heavy lifting done by a new Medic III chariot), move them to London, and then take out the defenses at the capital. By now I had wised up a bit, and realized that the leading attackers should not be City Raider maces, but City Raider trebuchets:
Another element that's been added to the game in the expansions... Anyway, with the new siege system, these trebuchets are alright. Since they can't kill units outright, you still need to have significant numbers of non-siege units to get the job done. (When Warlords first came out, players were running over the AI with nothing but giant stacks of trebs.) I found that City Raider III trebs were usually able to get favorable odds even against the top AI defenders, plus they would inflict collateral damage! That's a nice combo. I had to use a lot of my attackers, but London was destroyed:
I wanted to keep London; it had a nice location, and probably would have retained some decent infrastructure. However, it had Hinduism present inside, so it had to burn.
While I placed London under siege, Churchill had used a settler to create another city, Oxford, in the vicinity of the old York location. I had my own settler waiting to claim that location, which now was delayed again until I could remove the new blight from the map. Of course, Oxford had no cultural defenses or walls, so it was relatively easy to destroy. Here was the new map with my replacement city:
This new location was even a bit better than London, with five food bonuses and six hills. Of course, size 1 with no infrastructure doesn't make up for a developed size 15 city. I used combat settlers for replacement cities quite a bit - I hate to see empty land on the map, which is why I usually capture rather than raze. Anyway, from here I moved next on Nottingham. Unfortunately, it was another castled city with a 100% defense bonus, so bombarding was going to take a while...
Oddly enough, Churchill capitulated and became a vassal of Augustus in 1500AD. As far as I could tell, this had absolutely no effect on the gameplay whatsoever. Since this was another of the milestone dates, here's a map of the world:
To my eleven core cities, I've added three English acquisitions. Churchill's domains have been sliced in half, and I'm nearing control over half of the donut. While it's been far from easy going, I've been making progress. One of the best comparisons is to look at where the front is now in relation to Tenochtitlan and Tolosa, the extent of my control in the north for centuries. In the west, I'm just holding at Gergovia as usual. Fighting on two fronts (and increasing war weariness on both sides!) didn't make a whole lot of sense.
And, as usual, the Demographics from the same year:
The thing that most surprised me was the continued AI strength in GNP. That was Wang Kon there, who was outpacing me in research (along with some trading help from the other AIs). I had long been dominant in territory, population, and production. Now I was starting to open up a significant lead in soldier count (power) as well. Too bad I couldn't shake my enemies in the economic realm!
When Tenochtitlan (my National Epic city) next produced a Great Person, I was lucky enough to get a Great Engineer! The odds were only about 25%, although since this was the third Great Person produced by the city, that really wasn't all that statistically unlikely. I looked at which wonders were still up for grabs, and one immediately jumped out:
Sistine! 
Although this wonder is usually associated with Cultural victories, it's also extremely useful when pursuing Domination, or simply to help expand borders in recently captured cities. I was running Mercantilism civic, so this meant a free 2 culture/turn in every city. With a whipped theatre and two forced Artist specialists, I could hit the 150 culture mark in about 10 turns even in new cities.
In terms of research, I was finally closing in on Military Tradition. Now in the old versions of Civ4, that would have meant access to the godly power of cavalry (especially if playing as Russia with those old 18 strength Cossacks!) Here in Beyond the Sword, I would get only the lesser upgrade from knights to cuirassiers. Even though that only meant going from strength 10 to strength 12, any boost in attack capability was worth it.
At Nottingham, my knights did much of the heavy lifting:
With the front lines getting further and further away from my core cities, I was switching more production over to fast-moving knights. Their high strength and ability to ignore first strikes also helped make them formidable foes, while leaving open the potential for later upgrades to cuirassiers and cavs. While my melee and siege units were still playing a major role, the relative importance of mounted troops continued to rise.
Arretium to the west was a weak target, falling in 1540AD. And that left only a single English city remaining:
Because the defenses at Canterbury were almost non-existant, I could dispense with the need for a siege and barrel on through. Each longbow killed an attacker or forced a retreat, but I just had way too many units for them to stop. Churchill's reign came to an end in 1555AD:
And then there were three opponents remaining. 
The English campaign occupied the better part of 45 turns, lasting from 1330AD (Turn 286) to 1555AD (Turn 331). With three opponents left to go, I wondered how much longer it would take to finish the map. Clearly by now it had become a question of when, not if, I would win the game.
