Darkness Rising v2.0 - 'Tenebris Unleashed' Campaign

[Nnelg]

Well, I think both Exate's plan and mine agreed on using all our current forces for missions other than the Mercenaries, so the only Gobwins we'd be sending would be the 8 UP's worth we could pop on Turn 14. I suggested 2 standard units because that would fill out the stack quite nicely, but I suppose we could switch to 8 zed spearmen instead, if it will net us more bounty.

[Exate]

Just curious why are you sending Rudy with the zerg rush group? He is an archer warlord, so I would be suspect of a plan were he has no other ranged attack units...
As oposed to the other group with 12 archers and no archer leadership. Admittedly the +2 isn't much, but I would think it would be good to at least use it.

Because as an archer warlord I wanted to powerlevel him so that he could evolve into an archer trainer ASAP. That was exceedingly practical when the Logan's Run group had only a few units which could gain XP but became much less relevant when I threw XP-soaking backup units in there. I hadn't really re-evaluated his position in the proposed order of battle.

Couple of points to note.

1./ We only have 3 brickbat swarms available as Creperum has requested one, I believe.
2./ Why are we taking wandreus ( our regent) out of Dis ? shouldn't we be garrisoning him there ? ( to provide leadership to garrison units and 10% production boost that's 1920 schmuckers in the time it takes to get to Logans Run and back - EVEN MORE IF WE DO NOT HAVE A MANAGER TO REPLACE HIM we lose an additional 4800 schmuckers ...thats 6720 in total !)

Didn't know that on the Brickabats. Hmm. Are you sure?

Wandereus has to come with us because we need him to level and get the Comptroller and Logistician abilities. That means gaining XP. We have a garrisonned warlord in Dis City who can handle basic management in his absence, even if losing the Regent bonus will hurt a bit.

We must not let them take control of the strategic initiative! Because once they do, this war is lost. They will be able to overwhelm us with superior numbers, eventually battering us into submission.

On this we agree.

The raid on Rainbow Springs is not just a probe, but the start of a siege. A real siege, not what we've been erroneously calling a "siege" (which is really a storm). The elves will naturally send the bulk of their reinforcements to defend it, but we shall turn that city into a meat grinder.

On this we do not. In my opinion, attempting a real-world type siege in Erfworld is just asking to get mauled. Cities don't need supplies, and they constantly generate new units so you can't whittle them down. While we're busy constantly reinforcing our siege group remotely, the elves will be able to reinforce it even faster from more cities than we have (Rainbow Springs is, as we have observed previously, a natural rallying point for the enemy) AND reinforce their defending troops directly by popping reinforcements. Croakamancy will help make up the difference, but it won't be enough. By the time your proposed relief force from Logan's Run arrives there will in all likelihood be nothing left of our siege force to relieve and being able to simply overwhelm the defenders will be nothing more than a dream.

Erfworld isn't a land of cautious skirmishes- because the defending side can never retreat, if at any point you are in a position of having units within striking distance of enemy forces substantially stronger than they are, those units can and will suffer 100% casualties. By turn 23-24, will the Breatheairians have been able to pop or import enough forces to crush our siege group in this scenario? I think yes. That's another 80 UP of popped units from the city itself alone.

I can see where you're coming from with this, because having an assault group double as a defense group is a great advantage- it minimizes the risk inherent in launching two attacks. But I think your endgame for this is wildly optimistic, and it will end with having our field force croaked.

As for the Escort mission, I think sending an escort would actually be a bad thing. Remember, the elves currently have a truce with the Ixians. But if they see Tenebrisians with an Ixian envoy, they'll immediately attack. So the Ixians would actually be in more danger if we send them an armed escort.

Besides, it would be better to lose face with the Ixians than to lose Yuri. As long as we retain the latter, we can deal with the former. But if we send Yuri in an escort, but the mission fails and he is croaked... Then we can pretty much kiss that alliance opportunity goodbye (for a while, at least).

If the elves attack the Ixians, they break their truce and pay the penalty, which I believe is fairly substantial. That shouldn't be an issue. The rest of your concerns are valid, but I can't help but think- do we really expect the Breatheairians to have a force substantial enough to crush our escort group wandering around well outside the usual routes of travel? Why would they be out there? If they've got something like Lookamancy tracking the envoy group then any escort is likely pointless in any case; they'll croak them or not entirely at their option.

I'm still inclined to say "the Queen asked for an escort, we give her one", but... we do have good reasons to stage it down, and I suppose it would only take one Thinkagram to make some excuses and drop it entirely aside from leaving the imps already assigned as scouts/guides. We could feasibly eliminate this assigned from the list and use those units more productively.

We risk a lot. We risk the elves charging directly from Rainbow Springs to Dis City, we risk Armolad rallying the defence of Logan's Run, and wiping out the assault force there, we risk Yuri to an ambush. And what do we gain from it? Not much. We'd gain Scarlet Hills, but is that worth losing Dis City?

This is a risk, yes. The more cautious play- which I think is less rewarding, but which also minimizes the possibility of the devastating error of either a successful attack by Armolad (that being the weakness in my plan) or of having our siege group crushed (that being the weakness in yours) would be to just send an extremely large attack group at Logan's Run and a substantial garrison at Dis City, perhaps having the Dis City group bluff by making threatening moves toward Rainbow Springs- partial benefits of actually attempting the siege with only a fraction of the risk.

I'd be willing to use a less high risk/reward plan strategically, but the fact that we need high rewards in order to win this war is pushing me to be bold.

Also, the forces he presents aren't balanced. It appears as if he's just throwing units at each task, with little concern for what they'll do or how they'll stack. If we do go with his plan, we'd have to rebalance everything first.

I am not "just throwing units at each task, with little concern for what they'll do". While I did specifically request proposed tweaks to my unit order precisely because it could probably use some optimization, the idea that I'm what, randomly copy/pasting lines from the overall troop listing and then calling it fine- which is the picture that your comments present- is ridiculous, all the more so because I have brief strategic outlines and concerns on strengths and weaknesses with each force.

Since you seem to hold to the paradigm that stacking into squads is the essence of planning warfare in this game, I will clarify that in my perception carefully arranging units by stack is largely a waste of time. Based upon our past experiences, positioning, casualties, and immediate objectives during battle will necessitate frequent restacking in order to get our bonuses to where they need to be. Stacking considerations are primarily relevant in planning to ensure that units with restricted-bonus type abilities (dance fighting, paragon, etc.) have appropriate units in place to make full use of them. Aside from that, concerns like "do our most valuable units have mounts/bodyguards", "do we have a way to eliminate enemy high-defense targets", "do we have a way to deal with enemy archery", and so forth are of far greater importance than arranging preplanned stacks neatly.

Since Exate's already posted a unit distribution, I'll go ahead and make one up too:

I would very much appreciate it if your proposed order of battle included full unit stats, and since you're shuffling everything around into stacking plans instead of leaving them grouped by unit type and build, a summary of what you're sending to each location in those terms wouldn't hurt either.

[MarbitChow]

Rules Notes
Since it's somewhat related to the current discussion: in case it was missed, please note that in the 2.0 rules, you don't get the free restack each round:

At the beginning of the combat, Stacks and Combat modifiers are declared and applied. Once combat begins, restacking and changing Combat Modifiers requires spending an action to Regroup.

Also, the Rules thread contains a discussion regarding Support / Coordinate as it applies to Fire actions, so archers especially should review the discussion and contribute their thoughts.

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1./ We only have 3 brickbat swarms available as Creperum has requested one, I believe.

Didn't know that on the Brickabats. Hmm. Are you sure?

I'll confirm that Creperum has recalled the Royal Guards (Bert & Ernie) and requested at least 1 Brickabat stack for his personal protection.

[0beron]

How does Leadership affect that? is it still a free action to change on their round like before?

[MarbitChow]

How does Leadership affect that? is it still a free action to change on their round like before?

No, changing stacks requires spending an Action. There are no 'free restacks' any more. Units (including the squad leader) can drop from a stack for free. A unit with Leadership can select up to 7 other unstacked units to create a stack by spending an action. Dollamancers & Croakamancers with the appropriate ability behave similarly, although only golems / uncroaked can be part of their squads.

[0beron]

wow, I know we wanted to cut down on the micromanaging, but I didn't realize our tactical capacities got hit with the banhammer THAT hard -_-

[MarbitChow]

wow, I know we wanted to cut down on the micromanaging, but I didn't realize our tactical capacities got hit with the banhammer THAT hard -_-

It's not really a nerf. You can still swap Tod's bonuses back and forth pretty easily; you'll just need a PC or other command-level unit in each stack he's swapping between, although you might need to get a little creative with delaying squad actions if you want the bonuses to apply to both stacks each round. Most stacks are going to remain as-is through most of the combat anyway.

[ETheBoyce]

Depending on how Support/Coordinate is ruled upon we may want to rethink our current plan.

Question: Is there any way for our Scouts to tell us the stats of the Defenders? Also am I correct in surmising that Logan's Run does not currently have a tower?

[MarbitChow]

Question: Is there any way for our Scouts to tell us the stats of the Defenders? Also am I correct in surmising that Logan's Run does not currently have a tower?

Scouts do not have leadership, so they can't see stats.
Logan Run doesn't have a tower.

[Nnelg]

Exate, I think you're vastly overestimating the risk involved with my plan. If the elves have a large enough army to overrun ours, then we've already lost this war.

By the time your proposed relief force from Logan's Run arrives there will in all likelihood be nothing left of our siege force to relieve and being able to simply overwhelm the defenders will be nothing more than a dream.

We don't have to engage, if it costs us too many casualties. We can just camp outside the city.


So, here's a modified proposal:

We dispatch the two Task Forces I layed out to their destinations, as planned. The Logan's Run Task Force (Group Alpha) would take the city, while the Rainbow Springs Task Force (Group Beta) would attack, but retreat before sustaining significant casualties. We would also deploy multiple imps behind the lines, to watch the routes leading to Rainbow Springs.

Then, based on the results of Beta's Recon-by-Fire, we would determine what to do next. If the garrison there is weak enough, and no significant inbound reinforcements are detected, then Alpha would move directly to the city, and we'd take it. If not, and we are unable to sustain an effective siege, then Beta will disengage and head towards Scarlet Hills.

Does that seem like a good balance between risk and reward? We'd only be exposing our army for one turn, so it isn't in any real danger. The elves won't be expecting it either, so victory at Scarlet Hills is practically assured. And in the meantime, we'll have the time needed to build up our garrison at Dis City.

[ETheBoyce]

Any turn that ends with us outside a major enemy city is a TERRIBLE idea. We can win against a larger force if we have Defences and towers and ballistae, out in an open field, we'll be sitting ducks! I our forces aren't enough to take a city and we retreat, then the Elves will just follow and crush our forces in the open field. Having Imps won;t matter because we won't have an army.

[Nnelg]

Any turn that ends with us outside a major enemy city is a TERRIBLE idea. We can win against a larger force if we have Defences and towers and ballistae, out in an open field, we'll be sitting ducks!

But we won't be facing a larger force.

At least, we won't if there was ever really a chance for us to win this war...

I our forces aren't enough to take a city and we retreat, then the Elves will just follow and crush our forces in the open field.

They'll have to leave their infantry behind if they want to catch us!

[WaterMonkey314]

Any turn that ends with us outside a major enemy city is a TERRIBLE idea. We can win against a larger force if we have Defences and towers and ballistae, out in an open field, we'll be sitting ducks!

But we won't be facing a larger force.

At least, we won't if there was ever really a chance for us to win this war...

I our forces aren't enough to take a city and we retreat, then the Elves will just follow and crush our forces in the open field.

They'll have to leave their infantry behind if they want to catch us!

I don't understand your former point - we can win the war asymmetrically with our superior casters if we manage our resources well, but there is no specific scenario I can think of where defending outside a city is better for us than attacking the city. (Well, there is one - if it's a level 5 capital spelled up with tons of AA and we have an all-flying army...)

I also don't get your second point - why can't they catch us right after we've turned around (and presumably ended up parked within 1 turn's move of RS)?

I hate to do this, but Triage has a responsibility to the side. If you persist in proposing impractical plans to assault Rainbow Springs, Triage will stay behind and advise Junetta and the Altruist Elves to do the same, or at least go to another, less futile engagement.

[WhirdCheese]

The more units we send the more schmuckers we get.

[bob the 6th]

Well, facing a larger force were they have both initiative, walls, and garrison troupes... does not sound a significantly better then taking them were we have the initiative, and they don't have defensive positions or garrison troops.

Note that casualty rates when storming a wall tend to be massive...

[Nnelg]

I don't understand your former point - we can win the war asymmetrically with our superior casters if we manage our resources well, but there is no specific scenario I can think of where defending outside a city is better for us than attacking the city. (Well, there is one - if it's a level 5 capital spelled up with tons of AA and we have an all-flying army...)

I mean to say that if the elves have managed to piece together a large enough army to wipe ours out in such a short time, then their production outstrips ours so much that there was never really a hope of us beating them, to begin with.

Besides, if you count up the UP in the army I'm proposing to send, you'll find that it's far greater than what Rainbow Springs will have produced in the 8 Turns since the Battle of Dis City.

(In fact, after adjusting for level it's about as much as all production from Breatharia entire known empire over that time period. There's no way we're going to be overwhelmed.)

I also don't get your second point - why can't they catch us right after we've turned around (and presumably ended up parked within 1 turn's move of RS)?

That's our one turn of vulnerability. But at that point, it wouldn't be obvious yet that we're headed towards Scarlet Hills. By the time the elves realize what we're up to, it will be too late to catch us.

I hate to do this, but Triage has a responsibility to the side. If you persist in proposing impractical plans to assault Rainbow Springs, Triage will stay behind and advise Junetta and the Altruist Elves to do the same, or at least go to another, less futile engagement.

Which is why I'm not proposing plans that are either impractical, or to assault Rainbow Springs (unless it turns out to be vulnerable, and ripe for the pickings).

What I'm proposing is first and foremost a distraction. By faking an assault on the city, we trick the elves into popping garrison units instead of field troops, and diverting reinforcements away from our real targets (Logan's Run and Scarlet Hills).


At this point, anything other than Logan's Run and Scarlet Hills is just a bonus. But it's a bonus we'll be in a good position to exploit, should the opportunity present itself.


EDIT:
But if you're still worried, we can just travel to Scarlet Hills via Rainbow Springs. We don't even have to pass within 8 hexes of of the City if we don't want to. It would still have the desired effect. (Although not quite as beneficial.)

[ETheBoyce]

How do you not understand how movement works!? The force you suggest sending to Rainbow Springs contains a lot of infantry, all infantry have 8 move. If any infantry accompanies the mounted units/flyers on your little trial run it will be within striking distance of all the units in Rainbow Springs if we have to retreat. Further you UP calculations could be way off, we don't know what kind of managers the elves have, all their cities could have more UP than you think, not to mention all the unit the elves already have. You also don't take into account that Rainbow Springs ha been popping units since before they failed to take Dis City, and have likely been receiving reinforcements since Tod's epic diplomatic failure. T. Coil will also not be going along with your suicidal plan, and can only hope he becomes Chief Caster to make sure none of the other casters do either.

[Nnelg]

I calculated effective UP of the Task Force as (UP to pop)x(Level). It turned about to be like ~270, give or take 20.

If every unit popped since Turn 1 in Logan Run, Rainbow Springs, Scarlet Hills, Tyrone, and Longoria were gathered together, that would be 180 UP (maybe 216, if the Elves have a level 4 unit with Logistician in Rainbow Springs.)


The Elves have no reason to leave their fortress to attack us unless they outnumbered us so significantly that they would curb stomp us. I hope I've shown that this will certainly not be the case.

(And if it was, then leaving Dis City open would doom us with even more certainty than losing our army would.)



Why are you so vehemently opposed to ending Turn within striking range of an enemy city? We'd have to do that the Turn before we assaulted it for real, anyways.

Besides, as Exate pointed out: the elves can reinforce faster than we can. Our odds of taking Rainbow Springs are only going to get worse the longer we wait.

So why wait?

[ETheBoyce]

And why would there only be units popped since Turn 1? The Elves were around for a long time before Tenebris and so they have the units they've been popping IN ADDITION to any units the already had stationed there or nearby, which is an unknown amount, your calculations don't matter because they are based on poor assumptions. Even if we assume they only have units they've popped since Turn 1, you are still wrong because they have Natural Allies which means they could have popped between 360 and 432 UP worth of units.

I'm not opposed to ending turn within striking distance of a city, I'm opposed to your "attack Rainbow Springs except not really" plan of suicide.

[0beron]

*Vinny begins to ponder whether he actually would have been better off leaving in search of Dwagons....*