[Discuss] Strategies with Small Army Groups

[Anthony Cerqueira]

On 5/16/07, Alex Davies <the1exile at hotmail.co.uk> wrote:
>
> >Or when
> >your trying to break a TO, if you can do it with X CS would you wait to
> >gather an extra 1000 CS and risk having the TO completed while that is
> >happening. There are definite disadvantages to waiting and gathering a
> >force
> >much larger then your enemies before you attack, its just a matter of if
> >your enemies can take advantage of the situation.
>
> You'll probably not know if you can win with X CS. Most strategic
> decisions
> take place by thinking "How much CS am I likely to *not* have turning up
> to
> a battle, due to inactivity and/or human error?", not "Right, I have X CS,
> that's enough to win, lets attack."
>
>
I'd like to point out how accurate this statement here is. Every time an
army marches you always lose men for every region you pass through, from
human error or not logging on if not infiltrator action. I know this because
my infiltrator has been following armies for three years now and has relied
on this fact, (among others) to spread out an invasion force across both
kingdoms. The exception to this is the elite armies formed of people who can
consistantly log on. Those armies prove how you can do a lot with a little,
but there's one important part: it requires effort.

Plain and simple, the small army that can move carefully can run circles
around the large mobs doing all sorts of damage, but mobs don't take any
thought. If I'm the general with an uncertain number of forces at my control
which will only be fixed when the enemy comes to me, I'm not going to be
able to make a clever plan. Under those circomstances the best that can be
done is try to hedge your gamble and pile more men into the hammer in the
hopes that enough will follow your orders that things get done.

Now if this were the army the easiest way for a general to get the level of
dicipline to make small armies work would be to threaten and punish people
for not doing what they were ordered to. However nobles are not in the army
and if the general were to tell the Duke of Blah to do twenty laps for not
arriving at the battle on time, the duke will give him a pointed glare and
ruin the upity bastard.

So now for my points:

Small forces are used either because: 1) it's difficult to gather a large
force 2) the commander is trying to do what a large force can't.
Other then those cases most commanders would love to have more soldiers (if
they can feed and equip them, more below)

There are lots of realms that have small forces for the second purpose, but
the first point is not really a problem. As of right now there is no reason
not to grab the biggest hammer you can, because the detrimental effects
don't outweigh the benifits. Example:
1) Feeding an army isn't easy, in BM it's automatic. You only have to bring
your own food when the enemy regions are starving. Possible Change: Make
foraging in enemy territory less certain, so if you want to invade you'd
best bring your own food. Now food stocks determine army size not gold
reserves.
2) Equiping an army took time, again BM handles that automatically. Possible
Change: no ideas so far.
3) Armies are peasants, if you want the harvest collected best make sure you
send the army home at the right time. Possible Change: no idea how to do
this one effectivly. I guess you could thrown in seasons and make it so if
you don't disband during autum you get less food?
4) Winter wars are a bad plan. Fighting in winter is a no, and while we're
at it spring is for planting. War flowes with the ebb of the seasons.
Possible Change: put in a season clock of some form (like on FE) and make it
so most troop types, with the exception of the super elite, are not
available during winter (or whatever season you want) That way if people
want to keep fighting the biggest hammer is now small. (Possible Problems:
climate types, not all places have four seasons of equal length)
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