From the Hidden City (Warhammer Lizardmen Temple-City Quest)

Simon_Jester said:

[nods]

My other big concerns (main points of difference between our plans) are:

1) "Cleaning House" doesn't finish clearing the Temple of Xokha inside the city. Since Xokha is the Old One associated with stone, duty, and strength, I strongly suspect we get a Stewardship-related bonus out of that, much as the Temple of Chotec gave us d5 less lethargy and thus more actions per decade/century.

2) "Cleaning House" makes no effort to spread our outreach to other tribes of humans. This is problematic because the humans are not a unified society; they are hunter-gatherers who presumably travel in bands or loosely affiliated clan/tribal groupings. If we want influence over what humans as a whole do, we will need to work on Reaching Out to More.

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I can move a dice and Gif'Ghab to the temple if people want it.

But I'm more interested in focusing on what we have right now than opening up more contacts with humans. Especially with conflict in the near future.

Meanwhile, I consider a venom or poison a waste of Wik'keer'mal's time. What we need is to get our shit together, than crush the Greenskins with overwhelming force. Not assassinate and put it off, letting them build up more and more from infighting instigated by us. Moreover, you're missing the point of establishing a relationship. You need something lasting, not something humans will forget about, is a single event, or involves relocating them (which didn't work out last time)

[X] Plan Double The Geomancy

[X] Plan Double The Geomancy

[X] Plan Cleaning House

Question: I can move Gif'a-Gahb , and 1 dice from Widespread Roosts to the Temple of Xokha, or I can move one dice from Widespread Roosts and one from Tracking to Setting to Rights. Either way at least two will be on Tracking.

Or I can keep it as is. What would people prefer?

EVA-Saiyajin said:

Question: I can move Gif'a-Gahb , and 1 dice from Widespread Roosts to the Temple of Xokha, or I can move one dice from Widespread Roosts and one from Tracking to Setting to Rights. Either way at least two will be on Tracking.

Or I can keep it as is. What would people prefer?

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I would pull from Roosts and move Gif to the Temple better to finish another temple action as I imagine there will be a boost for getting all the web powering buildings up and running. So keep progression on those seems good.

EVA-Saiyajin said:

But I'm more interested in focusing on what we have right now than opening up more contacts with humans. Especially with conflict in the near future.

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I don't think I see the logic. "What we have right now" is one group of humans who are willing to listen to us, but who have very little material capacity to benefit us.

If the Prophecy of the Grass refers, as we've suspected, to local humans turning to Chaos to fend off an orc incursion, then we need to be able to check in on ALL the humans, not just the one tribe we happened to encounter first. Even if we don't, having a close relationship with one tribe while all the other tribes are neglected is likely to cause problems.

And thanks to Zille'mi's bonus (+2 dice on Diplomacy on a single action), it doesn't even wind up costing much extra.

Moreover, you're missing the point of establishing a relationship. You need something lasting, not something humans will forget about, is a single event, or involves relocating them (which didn't work out last time)

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Relocating them didn't work because we were trying to change their lifestyle, so of course it didn't work. The problem wasn't that we were inviting them to move, it was that we were inviting them to change over to an agricultural way of life that they have no experience of.

Warning them "yo, rampaging horde of barbarians gonna come through, you might want to be ready to move out of the way" is going to have a very different effect. Nomadic hunter-gatherer societies like this move out of the way of hostile groups they can't defend their territory against all the time.

Meanwhile, I consider a venom or poison a waste of Wik'keer'mal's time. What we need is to get our shit together, than crush the Greenskins with overwhelming force. Not assassinate and put it off, letting them build up more and more from infighting instigated by us.

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Your plan doesn't really do more in concrete terms to make us more able to "crush the orcs with overwhelming force" than mine does, though. We don't really have much in the way of special "prepare an army" actions available to us besides the Martial forces already labeled. And we'll be taking those anyway.

At least having a good way to covertly take out a warboss gives us more options for actions we can take in support of the main force of the army. A plan of moving in with a strong force immediately after assassinating the warboss is straightforward and likely to work well. By contrast, if the warboss is there to provide coordination, their sheer numbers are a major threat to us- we can't field anything close to three hundred thousand warriors unless I am greatly underestimating the population of Zlatlan as @CuttleFish2.0 sees it.

Given that we're probably fielding at most something like 10,000 or 20,000 reasonably effective combatants, we really, really need all the force multipliers we can get.

[X] Plan Double The Geomancy

[X] Plan Double The Geomancy
This one is closer to what I want. I do really like the idea of Loqtli and the War Chief working together to guerilla the shit out of the orcs, but needs must. @Simon_Jester Any chance you'd be willing to take that action next turn, or is your preference a straight up Expedition down south?

Karnax626 said:

[] Plan Double The Geomancy
This one is closer to what I want. I do really like the idea of Loqtli and the War Chief working together to guerilla the shit out of the orcs, but needs must. @Simon_Jester Any chance you'd be willing to take that action next turn, or is your preference a straight up Expedition down south?

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I'm agnostic on the subject. My natural preference is for the "guerilla the shit" option, but if we want to deal with the orcs in a lasting manner we may have to use the "big badass shield wall" option.

Let me do some binomial theorem juggling:


Now, if we use A Wall of Scaled Flesh and make a maximum-effort commitment, we have a DC 20 skill check, we need eight successes, and we'd have to commit ten dice plus three Martial hero units. Rolling 13 dice (partly from the heroes), we'd have about a 97% chance of success. On the other hand, we'd have to commit ten dice to the operation; we're down to 83.9% if we only commit, say, eight dice.

If we use Into the Soft Bits with a maximum-effort commitment, we have a DC 40 skill check, we need four successes, and we'd be committing six dice plus two Martial hero units. Rolling eight dice, you'd have an 82.6% chance of success, at least naively speaking. Loqtli has the "When leading cavalry forces, maneuvering and ambushing are significantly easier" trait, which would probably tip the odds to make them more favorable, but it's hard to say how much. A -5 to the DC would give us an 89.4% chance of success; a -10 to the DC would give a 94.2% chance of success.

EVA-Saiyajin said:

Meanwhile, I consider a venom or poison a waste of Wik'keer'mal's time. What we need is to get our shit together, than crush the Greenskins with overwhelming force. Not assassinate and put it off, letting them build up more and more from infighting instigated by us.

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The way I look at it, we simply don't have the lizard power for direct conflict with the orcs right now. We need to keep them south and bleed them slowly. Infighting between the orcs does both. I'm not sure how orcs killing each other would result in more orcs.

EVA-Saiyajin said:

I can move Gif'a-Gahb , and 1 dice from Widespread Roosts to the Temple of Xokha,

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I approve of this.

BelligerentGnu said:

The way I look at it, we simply don't have the lizard power for direct conflict with the orcs right now. We need to keep them south and bleed them slowly. Infighting between the orcs does both. I'm not sure how orcs killing each other would result in more orcs.

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Canonically, Warhammer orcs (or 40k orks) are masculine-gendered (and hypermasculine-coded, obviously), but biologically sexless. They reproduce by spores. Spores that all orcs slowly shed, and which grow in the ground.

A dead orc sheds a lot of spores a after death.

Therefore, when a lot of orcs die in battle, if no one burns the bodies, then you will see large numbers of new orcs (who may be on the scrawny side but are functionally adult) literally springing up out of the ground of the battlefield a while later. This tends to create vicious cycles wherein the orcs fight and seize territory, fight over that territory constantly, and yet continue to spawn in large numbers because dying in battle actually increases their chances of reproducing.

Thus, whereas a population of "barbarian" humans simply cannot sustain aggressive, high-casualty models of warfare, and MUST retreat to their homeland to raise the next generation of warriors if they are devastated by a military disaster... orcs have a much shorter recovery cycle. Furthermore, their life cycle does not include large numbers of pregnant and juvenile noncombatants who must be protected and fed for extended periods of time, further encouraging reckless and warlike behavior.

This is the root cause of the trope in-setting that orcs thrive on military conflict to a greater degree than humans, elves, or dwarves. The numerical losses suffered in battle don't weaken them as much as they would weaken another species, except in the short term.

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Now, @CuttleFish2.0 may be planning to do things differently in some way. But the underlying point, which is that orcs CAN thrive under conditions of internecine warfare that would greatly weaken a society of humans, elves, or lizardmen? That point is probably still valid.

Simon_Jester said:

Now, @CuttleFish2.0 may be planning to do things differently in some way. But the underlying point, which is that orcs CAN thrive under conditions of internecine warfare that would greatly weaken a society of humans, elves, or lizardmen? That point is probably still valid.

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Hmm. I did not know about that spores-on-death thing. @CuttleFish2.0 did say they were taking the orcs in a new direction - specifically, away from spores - but this is something that definitely needs clarification. How internecine fighting affects their numbers and whether the battlefields need to be burned afterwards has huge implications on strategy.

QM, if you could weigh in?

Well, just dropping specifically the part about "spores on death" would change the dynamics tremendously, because it would mean the orcs no longer actively thrive on warfare. Nor does the rest of the "greenskin" ecosystem, which includes the goblins and also creatures such as squigs and certain crops the orcs often cultivate.

On the other hand, this would make orcs' extreme military recklessness as shown in gameplay rather... counterproductive for the survival of the species. Without the spore burst on death, each dead orc just plain means fewer spores in the future. So battle tactics that result in a lot of casualties, on the assumption that "meh, 'dere'z more boyz where dey come from" become more self-destructive to the orcs.

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For instance, we just saw a dozen or so orcs attack a bull elephant, with clubs and axes, in the full expectation that most if not all of them would die. A group of human hunters would never do something like that, and a human tribe in the habit of doing such a thing would soon collapse for lack of able-bodied hunters and warriors. Humans would either trap the elephant, hit it with poisoned arrows and let it die, or (very likely) just leave it the hell alone and seek easier prey.

To be sure, Stone Age humans engage in plenty of violent conflict and interpersonal violence can be a leading cause of death in their societies. But very little of this violence is high risk for the attacking side. The decision to initiate violence, or to go on a hunt, is heavily informed by casualty-aversion.

The underlying reason orcs get away with being as aggressive as they are in-setting is that "spore burst on death" decouples reproductive fitness from personal survival. Without that, the orcs would probably evolve very quickly towards a much more 'Mork' and much less 'Gork' way of living.

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Going all the way over to a mammalian life cycle* has an even further effect on changing the orcs, and even further complicates the picture. Because it means that orcs are now effectively just brawny green humans, and have large noncombatant populations instead of being a monogender species of war-bioforms. At which point the entire dynamic of cyclic WAAAGH!s being a threat to the surrounding cultures becomes if anything more problematic, not less.
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*(Note that this is, so far as I know, extremely rare as a modification to Warhammer orcs. However, it is seen in, for instance, Warcraft orcs that superficially resemble Warhammer's orcs. Warcraft's orcs are vastly more civilized and humanized than Warhammer's. Their humanized lifecycle of having two sexes and having new orcs born helpless and needing to be raised from infancy is not coincidental to that.)

BelligerentGnu said:

Hmm. I did not know about that spores-on-death thing. @CuttleFish2.0 did say they were taking the orcs in a new direction - specifically, away from spores - but this is something that definitely needs clarification. How internecine fighting affects their numbers and whether the battlefields need to be burned afterwards has huge implications on strategy.

QM, if you could weigh in?

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I won't give you full details because that would be spoilers and frankly the slann don't actually know the specifics of greenskin reproduction; but their numbers do tend to swell in the aftermath of conflicts in which a greenskin victor emerges; depending on the scale, geographic spread, and environments it has been observed to take several months, but it is an observed pattern.

CuttleFish2.0 said:

I won't give you full details because that would be spoilers and frankly the slann don't actually know the specifics of greenskin reproduction; but their numbers do tend to swell in the aftermath of conflicts in which a greenskin victor emerges; depending on the scale, geographic spread, and environments it has been observed to take several months, but it is an observed pattern.

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Drat. Well, that certainly makes things a great deal more complicated. So, on the basis of this info, if we use our skinks to keep the infighting going, we're going to grow the orcish host. If we don't, then we have to deal with a smaller number sooner - but probably still more than we can handle.

On the plus side, the Murder-Cav campaign still looks like it would work.

CuttleFish2.0 said:

I won't give you full details because that would be spoilers and frankly the slann don't actually know the specifics of greenskin reproduction; but their numbers do tend to swell in the aftermath of conflicts in which a greenskin victor emerges; depending on the scale, geographic spread, and environments it has been observed to take several months, but it is an observed pattern.

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Does this include green-on-green conflicts among the orcs themselves?

Or is the pattern more mixed in such cases, with the orcs sometimes declining in numbers and sometimes increasing after an intense round of civil warfare?

Or, hypothetically, I can imagine it being irrelevant- orcs might well resolve all inter-group conflicts among themselves with single combats between small groups of champions, with the winner taking command of the loser's followers.

BelligerentGnu said:

Drat. Well, that certainly makes things a great deal more complicated. So, on the basis of this info, if we use our skinks to keep the infighting going, we're going to grow the orcish host.

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Maybe. That's what happened over in Xantalos' quest. But those were 40k orks, not Fantasy orcs, and Xantalos and Cuttlefish probably don't have exactly identical ideas about how orcs/orks work.

Personally I envision us assassinating the warboss contender most dangerous to ourselves (e.g. one who is prophesied to be a problem), while not trying to prolong the internecine conflict as such. It's not about keeping the orcs from uniting under a single leader. It's about keeping the orcs from uniting under the leader we least want to have to deal with. It may also be about causing temporary confusion (e.g. confusion that lasts less than literally a decade) that we can exploit with a military campaign that hits the orcs while they are still divided.

If we don't, then we have to deal with a smaller number sooner - but probably still more than we can handle.

On the plus side, the Murder-Cav campaign still looks like it would work.

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The problem is that the Murder-Cav campaign would damage the orcs while causing fewer casualties than the Wall of Scales campaign. It'll disrupt hings and cause damage, but not necessarily enough to trim them back.

Simon_Jester said:

Personally I envision us assassinating the warboss contender most dangerous to ourselves (e.g. one who is prophesied to be a problem), while not trying to prolong the internecine conflict as such. It's not about keeping the orcs from uniting under a single leader. It's about keeping the orcs from uniting under the leader we least want to have to deal with. It may also be about causing temporary confusion (e.g. confusion that lasts less than literally a decade) that we can exploit with a military campaign that hits the orcs while they are still divided.

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I could certainly work with that.

Simon_Jester said:

The problem is that the Murder-Cav campaign would damage the orcs while causing fewer casualties than the Wall of Scales campaign. It'll disrupt hings and cause damage, but not necessarily enough to trim them back.

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I mean, the idea is also that the Murder-Cav lead the orcs around in circles by the nose, keeping them in the south - I'm hopeful that we can keep them from marching towards us.

Also, maybe we could have Wik autopsy an orc corpse to figure out the mechanism that lets orc numbers swell post-victory? Might give us tactics to make losses less painful.

Simon_Jester said:

Does this include green-on-green conflicts among the orcs themselves?

Or is the pattern more mixed in such cases, with the orcs sometimes declining in numbers and sometimes increasing after an intense round of civil warfare?

Or, hypothetically, I can imagine it being irrelevant- orcs might well resolve all inter-group conflicts among themselves with single combats between small groups of champions, with the winner taking command of the loser's followers.

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You don't know. For a very long time Lizardmen were not big on giving a shit on what they did between themselves because they pretty much always enjoyed local numerical supremacy due to being able to teleport in huge numbers basically for free whenever they wanted. The few times greenskins enjoyed brief victories their numbers swelled out of proportion to what could have come from minor tribes and such flocking to a victorious figure.

Your chameleon skinks did observe a fair amount of duels. Sometimes victory resulted in the winner absorbing the losers tribe and themselves, other times it just kicked off a bigger fight. Unfortunately with how frequently they have to move around to gather intelligence on the most prominent candidates to generate a full-fledged Waaagh they weren't able to generate any reliable data on average population growth and what factors might be at work.

BelligerentGnu said:

I mean, the idea is also that the Murder-Cav lead the orcs around in circles by the nose, keeping them in the south - I'm hopeful that we can keep them from marching towards us.

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Maybe, but it's going to be tough. The orcs only need a general notion of our direction ("north") to screw us over in that respect.

Honestly, a lot will depend on how many dice we get next turn. We won't have anywhere near fifteen, but if we're lucky we might have nine or ten. That's enough to make the "shield wall" campaign tenable, in which case we really, really ought to consider doing it.

@CuttleFish2.0 , can Lord Wik lend a personal support die to such an operation in the form of periodically dropping remote magical bombardment on the orcs from Zlatlan, working through the priests accompanying the army? Or would that involve Lord Wik going out onto the field in person?

Also, maybe we could have Wik autopsy an orc corpse to figure out the mechanism that lets orc numbers swell post-victory? Might give us tactics to make losses less painful.

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Distinctly possible, but we'd have to capture the bodies and preserve them first.

Simon_Jester said:

@CuttleFish2.0 , can Lord Wik lend a personal support die to such an operation in the form of periodically dropping remote magical bombardment on the orcs from Zlatlan, working through the priests accompanying the army? Or would that involve Lord Wik going out onto the field in person?

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He could certainly do it in person. To do it from Zlatlan would required at least 4 other slann and one of his personal attendants be accompanying the army.

On his own it would be about the equivalent of another howdah with a greatbow.

CuttleFish2.0 said:

He could certainly do it in person. To do it from Zlatlan would required at least 4 other slann and one of his personal attendants be accompanying the army.

On his own it would be about the equivalent of another howdah with a greatbow.

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That's...pretty tame for a Slann of all things. Nevermind a 3rd gen

EVA-Saiyajin said:

That's...pretty tame for a Slann of all things. Nevermind a 3rd gen

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Without the support of the larger Geomantic Web he has to spend a lot more effort on precision aiming, taking into account the curvature of the planet, the local Winds in both locations, and making sure that at no point in that process does anything induce a miscast which doesn't leave a lot for raw power. Even just two more would let you handily turn a small scale battle, but for a full up army vs army conflict four is the minimum. Especially because the greenskins have casters of their own who will take notice and start trying to fuck with you at some point.

CuttleFish2.0 said:

He could certainly do it in person. To do it from Zlatlan would required at least 4 other slann and one of his personal attendants be accompanying the army.

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That's actually a reasonable possibility and I'd be interested to try it in my plans.

To be clear, are you saying "if you want to add firepower equal to another greatbow howdah, while keeping the slann responsible parked in Zlatlan, then you would need Wik personally plus at least four other slann and a personal attendant with the army?"

Or are you saying "if you want more punch than one greatbow howdah could provide, enough to have a reasonable hope of being decisive on the relevant scale, you'll need Wik to have the support of four other slann, and a personal attendant with the army."

EVA-Saiyajin said:

That's...pretty tame for a Slann of all things. Nevermind a 3rd gen

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To be fair, that's what Lord Wik can do from a thousand miles away while being extremly fucking careful to not accidentally nuke their own army.

Oh yeah, didn't notice the "from Zlatlan" thing.

On a side note, only two people responded over the last half a day, but regardless I've switched the relevant actions towards the Temple.