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[Glass]

>:-D

Don't worry, I'll do it at night, and only teleport when far away.

Also, unfortunately no inhuman strength. Just ungodly agility and the ability to see your next move possibly as soon as you start to think about it (probably not actually that quickly, but really high perception in addition to the agility).

And: What do you mean, "late"? If they even reach their a destination, they should be up in Russia or down in Africa somewhere!
Madagascar should work nicely.

Preferably with very few supplies, no more than the amount that they'd themselves need to use up to even get to where they were going.

[Madman198237]

Glass, we need an army.

You've been working in the Americas. I think we ought to work on making a more interesting army than we have---if we include some proper lancers and heavy cavalry in our horse archers and add a dragoon pikemen unit (ride to battles, dismount and make use of the pike square/Macedonian phalanx) we'll be flexible, fast, and capable of beating any army the Cisharni can field, except for Spartans...probably. Depends on how rapidly they can make use of Blink while getting shot in the legs.

[Glass]

I'll work on further harnessing of the Mongols next turn. I can get 630 skill 10 Mongol horsemen (probably any variety you want) per year. How many do you think we'll need?

Six of every ten Mongol troopers were light cavalry horse archers; the remaining four were more heavily armored and armed lancers.

[Smoke Mirrors]

I say Russia, I could use the supplies.

[Madman198237]

Hm, probably 8/10s horse archers, 2/10s lancers, and we could worry about the phalangites later.

That is, of course, assuming you actually would want to follow my hypothetical army composition...which relies on us getting a lot done before finishing the game...Heh, anyway, I'm just an armchair general now, I can't raise or lead the army as a mage...though seeing into the future might be a bit beneficial for army operations.

[Glass]

Hm, probably 8/10s horse archers, 2/10s lancers, and we could worry about the phalangites later.

Why not the 6-4 composition the Mongols used? Any specific reason?

[Madman198237]

We aren't reliant on lancers to be our "infantry" force, for one thing. For another, we can't afford to close with the Spartans---we'll need more arrows than we do lances. What we really need, and what I want to get...eventually... is going to be full-blown cataphracts or full-armored knights. Those things almost rival elephants in raw impact---lancers can't deliver the same charge. That, of course, requires specially trained and bred horses...so you see why we'll need light lancers to fill the gap for now.

[Glass]

Ah, ok. Fair enough.
A note, Mongolian horses are smaller and slower than "normal" horses; it's just that they've got a lot of stamina, and the Mongols take very good care of them.
What kind of horses do we need for cataphracts and knights? And how, exactly, do knights on horseback - however armored they and their mounts are - reach "military elephant" in power?

[Madman198237]

Well, the standard European heavy cavalry horse was tall, big, and lumbering. The things have to be TOUGH above all---the rider and his lance don't do nearly as much as the raw impact of the somewhat-armored horse smashing into the lines. They need to have the mass and strength to physically smash a line of infantry, potentially armored infantry, and the footing to then actually get away from the dead bodies. Basically, their long legs give them speed, but they don't get up to speed fast...and they're not much good in rough terrain or soggy ground, because they also weigh a lot. An armored rider might have up to 25kg of armor in addition to his own body mass, and generally the person riding the horse is fairly muscular as well, and the horse needs to be able to carry that.

Our horse archer horses should definitely have stamina to use standard Mongolian tactics, or something sufficiently similar. Same with the horses the dragoon phalangites will be riding.

You can't kill everyone with horse archers, though. Armor is effective, especially against arrows shot from a safe distance (barring the gemlocks and any bowmen among the Atlanteans' armies). Hence the phalanx. It exists to give you a way to hold the enemy in place. It makes heavy cavalry FAR more effective if the enemy isn't free to maneuver and do whatever he wants. If you've got him squished up against a pike square, he's not doing much but fighting the pike square. To paraphrase George S. Patton, the standard Macedonian tactic is to "hold him by the nose" with the phalanx, and "kick him in the [rear]" with the heavy cavalry.

[Glass]

they're not much good in rough terrain or soggy ground

It exists to give you a way to hold the enemy in place. It makes heavy cavalry FAR more effective if the enemy isn't free to maneuver and do whatever he wants.

Hmn...
Ideas. What if we got some guys trained to be battlemages that specialized in stuff that makes the terrain absolutely terrible for our opponents? Stuff like mud, tangles of vines and webs, covering the area in slippery ice, etc.

[Smoke Mirrors]

This conversation shows what I love most about this game. We have a collection of geeks who make strategies concerning military tactics, history, weapon knowledge, and tactics. We aren't just trying to kill the enemy, we are realllynthinking this through as much as possible, and it is amazing.

[Madman198237]

Well, it is primarily useful against cavalry forces when you're an infantry force, you want to protect an infantry force, or you're the lucky suckers on the other side of the impediment and you've got bows.

If you use it against infantry (most Atlanteans seem to be infantry), your infantry have to deal with it and you can't charge them with cavalry.

The way the pikes work is by forcing them to attack. You either push into the pikes, or they skewer you from afar. If you're attacking, you can't readily make a defensive formation with the rear of your army, you can't run away, and you can't seek a better position (i.e., trees or a stream or any of the previously-mentioned things cavalry do not like).

While obstacles are a fun thing to use (Especially if they suddenly appear and make the rear ranks temporarily unable to support the front ranks), they don't allow for that crucial step of heavy cavalry breaking the enemy's formation. It's important to remember that battles are NOT battles of annihilation. Most armies throughout history suffered less than 30% casualties on the field. The trick is to break the enemy army, send them running, or at least force them to make an ordered withdrawal. And while they're broken and running, light lancers and horse archers can run them down and make a small mess, you can pursue them back to their camps, etc.

[Glass]

Fair enough.

Last thing before I go to sleep: one of the specialties of the Mongols was using their sturdier horses to get through areas faster than their opponents thought possible (they could go through difficult terrain rather than needing to go around), as well as to attack from locations where it was thought it was impossible to attack from.

[Sir Elventide]

This conversation shows what I love most about this game. We have a collection of geeks who make strategies concerning military tactics, history, weapon knowledge, and tactics. We aren't just trying to kill the enemy, we are realllynthinking this through as much as possible, and it is amazing.

Makes sense. Unlike our fictional and ancient friends and enemies, we armchair commanders have a nearly limitless and virtual treasure trove of information and the hindsight that history provides at our disposal to attempt to think circles around them. If we had the resources, the industrial capabilities, and the technological level, we could theoretically make use of modern-era tactics to devastate our ancient enemies.

On a side-note, summoning even a regular blizzard can inflict heavy attrition on the enemy forces, especially if they're not prepared for cold weather. Combine that with the fact that they burned whatever shelter they could've used to brave the weather when they first invaded and you got an enemy who now understand the meaning of the phrase "an act of God" as they die by the thousands from hypothermia. It worked for Russia against the real life, more modern armies of Napoleon Bonaparte and Adolf Hitler, after all.

[Madman198237]

Mongolian horses were, as I recall, smaller than the European horses. In addition, they're probably more surefooted than battlehorses, and the Europeans or whoever else they fought would NOT be prepared for the Mongols' REMOUNTS. Horses tire slow, but don't recover fast at all, so a man marching versus somebody solely using a horse are going to reach a distant destination at about the same time. If, however, you can just keep swapping horses and don't care about making one lame as a result of injury going through difficult terrain...


Yeah. The Mongols' approach to warfare was terrifyingly effective...against the masses of peasant levies common in armies of the time. They'd've fared MUCH poorer against late-medieval mercenary companies in munition plate (three-quarters plate, doesn't protect the legs to save weight and money). And, of course, you run into the ultimate problem of medieval Europe:

20000 castles. In France. Just in France. That's 20,000 sets of walls you must batter down or build siege towers to get across. While you do so, 19,999 armored men on horses (The knights or lords of the castles you AREN'T presently besieging...) with their retinues (some of whom will be armored knights in their own right) and levies are making your life one continuous, slowly starving hell, because they don't want you in their country either.

And that fun is just if you reach France. First you've got to get past the Holy Roman Empire, which is neither Holy, nor Roman, but that's neither here, nor there. The HRE has plenty of castles all its own. Which means that if you reach France, your army is worn down, you have no supply lines (you can't hold all those castles without running out of army), and, again, everyone in the area hates you and wants you dead, and they've had several thousand years of practice at killing people, because Europe is just such a lovely place like that, after all.

By the way, the Mongols never successfully made it past Russia. They might've lost to the Russians, too, had the Russian princes not dissolved and headed home after the Mongols faked a retreat.