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[evilcherry]

I agree with gerv's plan. His reasoning is good. Be prepared for an early retreat if any important force show up, but if nobody comes early in, they'll never come.
I am reluctant to the idea of slaughtering women and children. Avoid it whenever possible. Burn everything and defend yourself when attacked, but dont be a bloodthirsty butcher, please.
Also no to kissing Alvor. In other circumstances I'll say go with it, but as it stands we have wife and son waiting for us at home.

All's fair in love and war. We are developing an intelligence asset when we kiss her. If you hate your country and want it to lose the war, by all means, refuse to pick up on the signals she's sent. but if you love your country and hate those who came a-ravaging it, then you know we must strengthen her reasons to help us. We can explain to Marna later. If we even need to do so. After all, a kiss is just a kiss.

Attack the settlement. A palisade is not a stone wall. A palisade around the entirety of a large settlement in a few months is highly improbable, actually, but them's the breaks. We'll surmount this, because we must. Perish the man whose mind is backward now.

Let's use Ebbor's idea and portage our ships while underneath them for more protection. Ram a ship against the gates while our archers cover from a nearby ship-mantlet. The gate will break against 20 man ramming with a ship's prow. The militia is a bunch of dregs, the towers are ill built. Glory lasts forever.

It's not an ideal plan any longer, but this is all we have. The Duke is taking a different path and we will not catch him. We become an irrelevant coward the moment we turn tail. Better to die a lion than live a dog.

You are trying to kiss a heathen. Unless the holy religion allows for polygamy and forced conversion, we are more or less leaving a good casus belii for someone else if the war is won.

[Gervassen]

A kiss is just a kiss, you must remember this.

Although, I'd argue that there's never been a religion in which successful men didn't have mistresses and bastards with discreet connivance of the priesthood.

[3man75]

Gerv NO PRISONERS FROM THIS TOWN LEAVE THEM. The morr we leave alive the more mouths they have to feed. An ni jorals people can't be minor nobles. For a fee reasons.

1 They brought us war/maybe plague too
2 They have a history of annoying lords and killing People. Absolutely no ones going to like them ever/unless they have ghandi or martin leuther king jr with them.
3 They no speaki our language so they can't even beg.


It's going to take awhile for them to learn our ways, language, and enough respect for titles.

But males could mine out our materials and females/joral can work the inns/brothels. Gotta look out for that economy fellas.

[Gervassen]

Well, if we leave them, they'll go back to whatever subsistence activities they were engaged in. There'll be starvation and some will die, but others will live and resume food gathering for themselves and the army. If we haul them back with us, more fodder for the fields and mines, and our own people benefit.

Alternatively, we could slaughter most of them and keep them from benefitting either us or the enemy. It may even be more merciful than taking their food away and ensuring that a quantity of them simply starve in our wake, you know.

[3man75]

Well, if we leave them, they'll go back to whatever subsistence activities they were engaged in. There'll be starvation and some will die, but others will live and resume food gathering for themselves and the army. If we haul them back with us, more fodder for the fields and mines, and our own people benefit.

Alternatively, we could slaughter most of them and keep them from benefitting either us or the enemy. It may even be more merciful than taking their food away and ensuring that a quantity of them simply starve in our wake, you know.

They don't strike me as the farming kind so as long as their boats are burned/robbed, stockpiles burned, and a quarter of the town burned they won't be able to trully sustain themselves let alone their troops.

[Gervassen]

Fishers gonna fish. If we burn their boats and nets, they will improvise with less efficient means, rafts and hooks, spears in a stream bed, but not be without a certain level of competence which will be upgraded as they restore their tool-making and skiff-crafting production. It'll be rough, but a good 60%-40% can survive famine long enough to recover.

[3man75]

Fishers gonna fish. If we burn their boats and nets, they will improvise with less efficient means, rafts and hooks, spears in a stream bed, but not be without a certain level of competence which will be upgraded as they restore their tool-making and skiff-crafting production. It'll be rough, but a good 60%-40% can survive famine long enough to recover.

60-40 percent of the town? What about the armies on the feild when will they be fed?

How long for the new tools to come in?

The longer this town takes to recuperate it's losses the less food for the armies and that's our victory. I see what your hinting at though but its a huge risk we don't need to take in my opinion.

[Gervassen]

It's easy to slaughter thousands of disorganised people. There wll be no rabble controlled by a hivemind consciousness. This is not M2TW where blocks of peasants are controlled by a god force that can utilise them with perfect timing. In reality, each civilian does not know when or where to group up with likeminded resistance in large enough crowds to matter. All war is a matter of concentrating strength and applying it to weakness. The civilians are neither strong nor able to concentrate themselves, particularly after we make obvious assembly points like the main square a burning death zone.

If we leave civilians behind, they will eventually resume production for the enemy. they are resource gatherers and will continue to gather at diminished rates. I favour taking a large number prisoner to work our resources, or alternatively eroding the enemy production by killing them all. Leaving them to eventually restore their capacity is a waste of our time.

60-40 percent of the town? What about the armies on the feild when will they be fed?

If the civilians remain to produce any amount of food at all, the big fellows with all the sharp stuff will be extracting their share from the civilians regularly, whatever they can find. If the civilians are all not alive to produce anything at all, the army will have to break apart to feed itself. The longest time to recuperate losses, btw, is when we kill them all.

[3man75]

If what your saying is true then the hell with making them prisoners just kill all of them if jorgan complains tell her "our deal was with you and your group not them".

Then torch their supplies and pray the duke is not without a good plan.

[Gervassen]

Here's an alternative, but unpolished idea ... Feel free to tear that plan asunder.

Duly torn asunder.

[3man75]

New plan

Sink their patrol boats, kill/burn their town, go home and await further news.

I'm serius though let's just keep it this simple pretty please?

[Gervassen]

I'm okay with that plan, or with taking captives. Evenly split, actually, although I insist on trying to grab at least the important civilians as a few prisoners. Others can square the two choices with their own consciences and the urgency of rendering these resource-gatherers inoperable. I don't want to force other suggestors into something that they do not regard as necessary, but this is war and the outcome hangs on the razor's edge. We need to shut this place down hard.

I'll retract that last compromise suggestion since it's just too hard to perform well.

Awaiting further news is one thing that we shouldn't do, though. Inaction like that will do us no good. We either go further inland to reach the Duke, or we row back to Curbiston. Once we hit Curbiston, we drop off the prisoners and row further up river... to find the Duke. We don't stop for more orders until the war stops, because in an age before telecommunications, more orders will not be buzzing through a C3 node toward us. We have to act with initiative in an era of poor communications.

[Gervassen]

It may be useful when planning our fire-setting to point out that convection winds blow inland from the sea during the day, because the water retains its temperature and cools the air above it, while the sun heats the land faster than the water causing the air above the land to rise and be replaced by cooler air from the sea. Any fires that we set will tend to travel away from us, since we come from the shoreline with a wind to our backs. 

Fact-check my science there, btw.

[GreatWyrmGold]

Another thing we might want to consider is getting Joral to turn her tribe to support us rather than Gergal, with a promise that her tribe will be minor nobles inside these lands after the war, in exchange for their cooperation. Leave that tribe relatively unbeaten and unkilled and unimprisoned when we leave. These tribes are said to be easily fractured.

To the other clans, we need to be rather aggressive and unstinting in the number of blows we rain out upon them.

I think the latter might help the former. Let's see, what warrior- or general-type deeds has Sir Stone accomplished that would improve how these people see him? ...There's the bear, for starters, let's tell that story one night and let Joral hear it.

Fishers gonna fish. If we burn their boats and nets, they will improvise with less efficient means, rafts and hooks, spears in a stream bed, but not be without a certain level of competence which will be upgraded as they restore their tool-making and skiff-crafting production. It'll be rough, but a good 60%-40% can survive famine long enough to recover.

They could also have others search the fields and forests for anything edible. Depending on if the soldiers get back, or if they're really desperate/aggressive, they could even raid nearby villages. Starving towns are not good for the surrounding areas. It's a bad idea to just leave them behind.
I'm kinda surprised that Gerv is with me on the prisoner-taking thing, but I won't look a gift hore in the mouth.

60-40 percent of the town? What about the armies on the feild when will they be fed?

Towns don't produce food, they distribute and consume it. Capturing the town would have a greater effect on the supply chain than leaving them there.

The longer this town takes to recuperate it's losses the less food for the armies and that's our victory. I see what your hinting at though but its a huge risk we don't need to take in my opinion.

I agree with the first nine words and the last three or four, but not the stuff in between. We can't really affect that much of the supply chain, just disrupt this one link and maybe destroy/commandeer whatever's in this town.

It's easy to slaughter thousands of disorganised people. There wll be no rabble controlled by a hivemind consciousness. This is not M2TW where blocks of peasants are controlled by a god force that can utilise them with perfect timing. In reality, each civilian does not know when or where to group up with likeminded resistance in large enough crowds to matter. All war is a matter of concentrating strength and applying it to weakness. The civilians are neither strong nor able to concentrate themselves, particularly after we make obvious assembly points like the main square a burning death zone.

They are, however, numerous. A mob of thousands could easily overpower a couple hundred soldiers. The only potential issue is morale, and these are evidently from a "warrior" culture. That means they're likely to fight.

If we leave civilians behind, they will eventually resume production for the enemy. they are resource gatherers and will continue to gather at diminished rates. I favour taking a large number prisoner to work our resources, or alternatively eroding the enemy production by killing them all. Leaving them to eventually restore their capacity is a waste of our time.

Agreed. I think that the hypothetical-best-case-scenario would be to capture as many as we can and kill the rest...although for reasons I noted above, I don't think we're going to get away with wholesale slaughter of the town.
Also note: From the perspective of what the enemy can do, capturing the townsmen has exactly the same effect on their production as killing them.

It may be useful when planning our fire-setting to point out that convection winds blow inland from the sea during the day, because the water retains its temperature and cools the air above it, while the sun heats the land faster than the water causing the air above the land to rise and be replaced by cooler air from the sea. Any fires that we set will tend to travel away from us, since we come from the shoreline with a wind to our backs. 

Fact-check my science there, btw.

I do recall that being the case.


Speaking of cases, in any of them we need to see how the battle progresses before can can definitively state how we're going to deal with the survivors of the town. For all we know, they could all flee or there could be a few thousand fresh soldiers sent here or something, and either of those would screw up our plans.

[Gervassen]

They are, however, numerous. A mob of thousands could easily overpower a couple hundred soldiers. The only potential issue is morale, and these are evidently from a "warrior" culture. That means they're likely to fight.

Who tells them when to attack together? Where do they gather together? If you play M2TW, you get the morale issues, but not the leadership vacuum and the co-ordination issues. In that game, every general is an all-seeing eye that controls troops who automatically accept his authority and only fail to react if they lose moral. In reality, there's much more than simple morale at play in any group setting. Who tells you to go forward, and why do you follow him? How does he get the word to everyone at once with unanimous agreement in his authority. Armies drill this stuff into the troops and make the chain of command explicit. Civilians have non of that. It is not as simple as mere morale, because they are not fighting units with a predetermined a command structure.

Bank robbers often go into a bank with 20 customers and wave a gun with seven rounds, yet they leave unchallenged with the loot. Civilians don't fight with organisation and clear leadership. Last time we fought their main forces, they ran after 30% casualties, so it's not like their regulars are exactly fearless either. Except for those berserkers in animal skins perhaps.

Regardless, 100 longbowmen can put 1000 aimed arrows in flight in a minute. Rabble problems solved.