The only relevant part is wartime coordination and mobility. Their armies are nothing a large realm like Archonian Dominate could not match. All their enemies just lacked dedication.
Hi there, as one of two active Developers, and the Leader of Hawks since the game inception the only realm that has ever given us pause was Rathgar right at the start, and to be honest that was due almost entirely to a single player whom was also once a frequent bay12er. The Archonian Dominate lost to a war party consisting of roughly 50% of Elysium standing army, which coincidentally was much smaller then it is now. A force using elements of Elysiums force and my own small holdings from the main Hawk Island warred against Stonelands, Ascalon and Grand Fate at the same time and won out in the end, though to be fair we supposedly had allies from Renais at the time.
The Imperium at its best would have been a great conflict, but that is hypothetical since I was one of the two main military players in the House of Order. The reality is we have never needed to mobilise Hawks as an empire since large scale conflict appears to bore pretty much anyone that isn't Hawks. Your are correct though activity is everything in warfare in M&F. Hawks consistently beats armies 3 or 4 times the size of the force we commit, simply because we can rely on our entire force to be where it needs to be when it needs to be, thus while our force is smaller in most conflicts we only fight battles where we dominate in numbers.
The problem is/was, they had control of the western islands, huge amounts of metal, and enough peace and time to train stupid amounts of heavy cavalry. In addition, their war-time players were very well coordinated, knew how to game the system, and were on at all hours of the day/night. One on one, the individual Hawks realms were tough to fight. The problem was, once things started going against one, they went sobbing to the rest of the alliance and you were forced to surrender or be swamped.
Before the South and Western lands were open, Hawks had control of a sizeable amount of metal in the game world. But this was way back before Elysium existed, before that land was even available to colonise. While we still have ample metal for our needs, we would no longer be a dominate metal source as we once were.
Pretty sure none of that is really true, Hanzoku. I don't know where that opinion came from, but it is false. For one Hawks doesn't even train heavy cavalry. Horses are way too expensive to maintain. The Western Islands aren't even that rich in metal. They, and mostly everyone else, bruteforces chainmail with population and food. Only Elysium used to be active 24/7. Also, there is just one Hawks, and Elysium. A fight with one means a fight with the other, otherwise they'd be independent Realms. There is no such thing as a 'code of honor' or whatever that binds a large Realm to not send out all it's Subrealms in a war. That'd be just silly from a realism standpoint. And even so, it's not like it matters much. There's plenty of examples where a smaller force could defeat a much larger one.
We have a large cavalry force actually, heavy cavalry and mounted archers, but it is entirely provided by a subset of Elysium. Our roman themed sub realm has been talking about fielding a small heavy cavalry group for some time, but they not particularly renown for offensive military actions, with the exception of their involvement in the Imperium's most recent civil war.
Hawks does have a 'code of honor' regarding things like sub realm conflicts, however it was modeled upon battletech Clan concepts, so I guess in the end might makes right.
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Topic: Might and Fealty (Beyond Battlemaster: Sandbox Strategy-RPG Medieval RP) (Read 138615 times)