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[Nirur Torir]

At this point, I'm fine with skirmishers as a revision, and I mostly want Piercing Darkfire as a cheap research that our enemies are forced to react to, and to spend more resources than we've spent doing so.
A revision-equivalent reaction would likely only ward their most important buildings and parts of fortifications.
A design-equivalent reaction would likely ward everywhere important. We come out ahead in resource expenditure, but still have an AOE combat spell for our semi-skilled casters, and an easy answer to spread out partially built or light fortifications.

[TricMagic]

(pick two)
Legion Auxiliaries (tier 1): (5) Madman, Glass, Sudorandom, m1895, Spin
Disguise Sounds: (0)
Darkfire Bolt: (0)
Piercing Darkfire: (4) Nirur, King Zultan, Rockeater, TricMagic
Orcish Officer Corps: ( 9 ) Madman, Nirur, King Zultan, Glass, TricMagic, Rockeater, Sudorandom, m1895, Spin
Dark Lightningbolt: (0)

Not sure what some of you have against an emergency ranged corps. It's not like we can't supersede it later.

The fact it is emergency. Scavenged/revised bows for scattered/revised training. Swinging a weapon and firing a bow are two very different things. And rather it be a design.

I'd be fine imporving something about the base troops though.

[Rockeater]

Not sure what some of you have against an emergency ranged corps. It's not like we can't supersede it later.

That the thing, we gonna do a proper job on it soon enough, so why half ass this instead of half assing something specific for our current situation

[Madman198237]

We don't need particularly need a scouting branch for a surprise assault on a castle. If you want to put forth the effort to protect the flanks from ambush, I think we'll be able to use trained officers and order the strategy to send patrols to trip any ambushes. Even if not, our current force superiority, with officers to harden morale, should suffice to prevent ambushes from majorly hindering us.
[snip]
Skirmishers are not especially effective siege archers, and against unprepared defenders, we don't especially need archers to provide cover fire. If we take long enough for the defenders to rally, then we've taken too long to reach the dark lord, and skirmishers wouldn't especially help against those numbers.

Surprise assault is when you need scouts the most, so that you can avoid stumbling into ENEMY scouts and alerting them before you even really get going. Note that these auxiliaries are also better in melee than the rabble simply due to their standardization and greater level of training (read: ANY training at all). After battle is joined we need scouts to alert us to coming threats like, I dunno, Heroes, and slow them down via skirmishing. We were expressly told back in the post telling us what this first battle would be like that we are NOT a match for their forces yet, and will have to rely on the element of surprise. Might as well make the most of that by actually keeping it as long as possible. Good morale and officers present throughout our forces are in fact not enough to deal with being outflanked while pressed up against enemy fortifications. That way lies a quick death for all our forces. And good leadership might sometimes avoid ambushes but once you're ambushed it can only help you recover from it, you're already majorly hindered.

All archers are skirmishers since they all take parts in skirmishing before battle...and I'm not sure why you think a different form of archer exists for sieges, because they don't. You DO realize that making this T1 unit will vastly increase the number of trained troops we've got, thereby offsetting enemy numerical advantages much more than any other option right now?

[TricMagic]

Not sure what some of you have against an emergency ranged corps. It's not like we can't supersede it later.

That the thing, we gonna do a proper job on it soon enough, so why half ass this instead of half assung something specific for our current situation

If it's going to swing that way anyway, might as well do disguise sounds for our minor champion and hands to make use of.

As for scouts, why not revise from the hand?

The Right Hand/Disguising Air

The Right Hand are groups picked from the Silent Hand who didn't quite make the cut. While not as good as the Silent Hand at their specialty, they have gained some skill in moving about. To aid this, the Cunning Disguise Spell has been slightly modified to give one the appearance of surrounding objects instead of people, letting them act as forward scouts despite their size. Looking at them upon a grassy hill, all one can see is grass and sky, as the spell shifts from their viewing. Though this application does require they know where the most likely viewing spots are. However, this is a very extreme case likely to fail, within forests and crowded areas, they make effective use of the camouflage to scout unhindered.


Using those who don't quite make the cut makes them T3 or 2(They already exist as well), and a slight alteration to the Disguise spell means it can be used to hide rather than just blend in with the populace. The Silent Hand can make use of it too of course, but this should give us good scouts. And a base for assassin/ranger units

[Nirur Torir]

We were expressly told back in the post telling us what this first battle would be like that we are NOT a match for their forces yet

While your army is currently not really up to strength in a fair fight against Iserria, this is not a fair fight. You will have at least double their numbers, and they won't be expecting you. Don't expect to be able to kill them all in their sleep, however. The Three will make sure you are discovered at some point.

It's a surprise attack, and we have two points of getting through their walls at a walking speed.

Good morale and officers present throughout our forces are in fact not enough to deal with being outflanked while pressed up against enemy fortifications. That way lies a quick death for all our forces. And good leadership might sometimes avoid ambushes but once you're ambushed it can only help you recover from it, you're already majorly hindered.

If our officers get a good roll, they'll be good enough to send out regular units as scouts.
If we get flanked against fortifications that we haven't already broken through, then the battle's already either already gone horribly wrong, or we've caught inferior foes in a field battle instead of their castle.

All archers are skirmishers since they all take parts in skirmishing before battle...and I'm not sure why you think a different form of archer exists for sieges, because they don't. You DO realize that making this T1 unit will vastly increase the number of trained troops we've got, thereby offsetting enemy numerical advantages much more than any other option right now?

We have the numerical advantage.
You have the skirmishers equipped with a mix of slings, javelins, and arrows, not just arrows. Further, time spent training skirmishers to act semi-independently in a net around the army and scouting, is time spent not training more archers, or better marksmen.

[Madman198237]

Regular line units with heavy armor or a literal rabble are not good scouts. And there's no point in allowing a battle gone wrong to go MORE wrong, especially since a battle gone wrong in that situation can be saved by our avatar and/or champion hitting the enemy from behind...so we might as well try to avoid getting caught hilariously flatfooted when the inevitable hero(es)/cavalry/everything else arrive to try and save the day.

Now you figure we'll have the numerical advantage? In your last post you noted something along the lines of "skirmishers wouldn't help against those numbers" should the enemy rally themselves. So do you think we will, or won't? As for the multiple different weapons, yes. This is for a reason: our rabble already use a variety of ranged weapons, so we want to use that same variety in our large skirmishing element so that we can use every orc who's already practiced with a ranged weapon.

Time spent training skirmishers to act independently is straight up necessary regardless since that's one of their principal roles both in and out of battle, especially before we start fielding any cavalry or cavalry-equivalent units.

[Nirur Torir]

Now you figure we'll have the numerical advantage? In your last post you noted something along the lines of "skirmishers wouldn't help against those numbers" should the enemy rally themselves. So do you think we will, or won't?

I meant skirmishers wouldn't help if we took long enough for the enemies to get a large number of dedicated archers on the walls.

I think you're over-hyping your expectations for how much good a revise action will do for getting useful skirmishers from rabble, and that you seem to want to fill out the troop roster before going after shinies.
I think that since our enemies already have a filled out troop roster, we should get something they have to react to, to hit them off balance, instead of trying to rush to fill admittedly important army roles with anything we can, before we actually need them.

[Madman198237]

They don't have TIME to "waste actions" reacting to a spell improvement, not that a spell improvement is a good idea right now regardless. The way they'll react to a shortfall of archers is picking off every single guy trying to climb a ladder with impunity because there's nothing to keep their heads down, hostiles coming in to save the day will be completely not slowed down since we can't force them to raise shields and cover up, we can't even threaten a group who might be, say, riding horses and decide to literally just ride in circles around us killing anyone who breaks formation.

The new spell is not going to seriously increase our combat capability in or out of sieges due to its casting requirements. So I insist, find me a better gap-filler or capability-granter than a skirmisher unit that universally increases our combat capability in and out of melee (again, better armored and equipped and trained therefore better in melee than most of the rabble).

[Nirur Torir]

We spent the entire design phase ensuring we won't be needing to climb ropes to cross the walls, and got some pretty good rolls. We're fine there.

They lack light cavalry, and only our wall breaking champion can meaningfully threaten their T3 and T5 heavy cavalry in a field battle. Heavy cavalry which we shouldn't see much of before breaching the walls, and which can feasibly be countered by our T2 infantry in a street-to-street brawl.

[Madman198237]

We didn't really spend the entire design phase doing things about walls, the Wall-Breaker can only make one hole at a time and we (very obviously, to anyone who knows anything about sieges) need to attack multiple places at once if we want to, y'know, not die to the massed defenders, and our spies are there to make their forces generally less capable. I don't expect them to succeed so incredibly as to actually open a gate for us.

And the Wall-Breaker will not be able to just keep bashing holes, because he exists for a reason that is not encapsulated in his name. Specifically, I wrote a Champion literally made of brute force and just-won't-die because he's meant to tie down any and all Heroes that attack us right now. His name is just a cooler title than "Meat Shield With Hammer". We won't always be facing walls but we will, from the sound of it, almost always be fighting Heroes, and somebody who is capable of preventing them from doing anything other than facing him for a really long time is super, super useful.

And none of this still actually deals with the fact that ranged combat is important, scouting is important, even in a siege battle, ESPECIALLY when the enemy is literally divinely guaranteed to get reinforcements, and our present forces are not up to the task for it. Once we're in the streets, heavy infantry trumps cavalry. But if something goes wrong (and please for the love of all that is good evil morally neutral and interested in crafting and making the Orcs into a real civilization remember that this game is built around literal divine mandates about things going wrong for us) we might end up facing their forces on the field, with our Champion tied down doing other things.

Actually we might be able to get the Shadow-Walker to actually get a gate open/prevent one from getting closed when we begin our attack...but that's something for the strategy phase.

[TricMagic]

Rather than make sub-par archers, why not turn the disguise spell towards disguising a scouting force with camo? And eventually a far-whisper spell too.

Literally just a tweak to emulate the surroundings, and instant camo against detection out in the field.

[Nirur Torir]

I like the idea, but we don't have enough mages. We might be able to design a magic university in the future to lower mage tiers by 1, increasing their numbers enough for it to work.

[TricMagic]

What else are they going to be doing? Darkbolt can't pierce armor, and while it's well and good to deal with a bunch of rabble, if scouting is so important why not dedicate a spell to help.

Maybe be a bit more ambitious and make a spell that can cloak our forces.

Disguising Air

The Cunning Disguise Spell has been modified to give one the appearance of surrounding environment instead of people. Furthermore, the spell structure can be spread to affect the air, disguising those within the magical lattice from outside view. When many mages come together, it's possible to hide much larger groups from view, showcasing an empty hill instead of the army marching forward. Useful for forward scouting, hiding in plain sight, small raiding parties, and sneaking the Wallbreaker up to the Wall in question unnoticed.


Something for before the battle, and during if we want to pull off more complicated tactics like flanking maneuvers. Also, we should turn the Silent Hand into a spellcasting group for these particular spells.. A number of cantrips can go a long way to getting into places you shouldn't be, or killing without notice.

[Madman198237]

Rather than make sub-par archers, why not turn the disguise spell towards disguising a scouting force with camo? And eventually a far-whisper spell too.

Literally just a tweak to emulate the surroundings, and instant camo against detection out in the field.

Tier 1, not sub-par. I intend to make a Tier 2 ranged unit of some variety in a design to stick with the legion theming and capabilities and this will likely remain the basis for our T1 ranged unit since, well, there's only so much you can do without leaving T1 and ending up in T2 anyway.

Why not use more spells? For the same blasted reason I'm against revising spells this turn---we don't have NEARLY enough spellcasters.