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Paths of Civilization

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PrimalShadow said:
...fine. I'll approval vote for leaving the lowlands to suffer, then.

But you have to admit that if this was the case it would be doubly true for raising our levies, right?

[X] [War] They're on their own(-1 Stability, -1 Legitimacy, ???)
[X] [War] Scramble what warriors are available (Sends a Sec War Mission and Mercenary Companies to the east)
[X] [React] The economy, fools! (Sec Expand Econ, cannot be taken with Mass Levy active)
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Them dying in droves? Oh, absolutely. It's basically Plan Drown Them In Bodies.
Problem is, without cavalry parity every plan is Drown Them In Bodies because they can choose the engagement at their leisure. The problem is, thus, that we may lack bodies to drown them in.

@Academia Nut , what does the Martial Advisor say about our army's/levy's chances against full horde's worth of light cavalry on the plains?

PrimalShadow said:
The Nomads are LITERALLY three entire civilizations worth away from us. Can people not panic and decide to let in the plague quite yet?
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And there we have another problem with nomads touched upon.
Remember how we struggled with attacking Trelli because they fucked with our supplies?

Nomads do not have a supply chain. So them being 3 civs away is irrelevant.
Which is a big part of what makes them so terrifying: strategic mobility.
 
Against the [War] Scramble everyone, because it gives +3 illnesses and the hero is not military. Heroes should be used for their intended purpose. 3 hired companies and our main army should keep the front before resolving one of the problems - illness or hunger.
 
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Redium said:
All it would take is for the Heroic Martial to decide to go scorched earth on our army and we'd have no way to respond. They could cut our extremely long and vulnerable supply lines and wait for the army to dwindle away after they've eaten up all of the available supplies. Combined with being vulnerable as a result of the plague and they'll be eaten up.

Alternatively, the Heroic Martial may try to move his army around ours. Once he's bypassed the army (using his superior scouts), he could hit our unprotected core. Our cities are the nomad Khan's first priority and they would be extremely vulnerable to raids with literally everyone and everything that could be used to fight sent elsewhere.

I simply don't trust our Poor Martial King, even if he hands things off to a warchief, to be able to devise a strategy that will allow him to defeat a Heroic Martial Nomad Khan with an extreme advantage in terrain and cavalry. The lowlands are where nomads were born to operate and give cavalry a definitive advantage, that's not something we can contest.
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The problem being if we just let them do so.

They are already enacting scorched earth policies. They are leaving nothing behind except mines for weapons

He would still attack Xohyr first since it is a city and his first priority. We have a target for him right there and thus a battlefield we can work with.

Winning is not part of the plan. Winning is impossible against the Nomads. But we can stop them in their tracks.

Once they stop, they start losing as well.
Rakuhn said:
Xohyr is hundreds of miles south of Valleyhome. How does it defend our core? What guarantee do we have that the cavalry force will attack it at all?
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It is our last defense because there is nothing but plains between here and there. For horse riding nomads, that distance is nothing.

The guarantee we have is that the Nomad Hero is a fanatic that wants to burn every sign of civilization to the ground.
 
ctulhuslp said:
And there we have another problem with nomads touched upon.
Remember how we struggled with attacking Trelli because they fucked with our supplies?

Nomads do not have a supply chain. So them being 3 civs away is irrelevant.
Which is a big part of what makes them so terrifying: strategic mobility.
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They also don't teleport.
It took them half a turn to sweep through the Mountain Horse, and those put up a double-crit-failure worth of defenses. They aren't going to be on our doorstep until they've fought past the lowlands, at least.
 
Sivantic said:
It is our last defense because there is nothing but plains between here and there. For horse riding nomads, that distance is nothing.
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The cataracts sound like a much better point to hold them at for that very reason - if we try and confront them on the plains without cavalry parity, which there's no way to obtain (even with More Spiritbonded we'll be at below half their Light Cavalry stat), they can quite possibly just go around us. We need a chokepoint, and less favorable terrain for horses, both of which our natural hills offer.
 
Kiba said:
Can people think strategically and logistically? Please?
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As I've said above; logistics do not apply to nomads. That's why we fear them, more or less: they can just....go across distances which would leave us overstretched without giving a damn. We cannot hide behind long distances.

SpeckofStardust said:
If we could salt and burn the earth we could stop them, they need graze lands for their armies after all.
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Scorched earth again nomads of all people?
Mmm. We cannot evacuate locals (source of food for humans in horde, as opposed to horses), so it'd mean burning down our own villages.

I am not sure. Maybe?

PrimalShadow said:
They also don't teleport.
It took them half a turn to sweep through the Mountain Horse, and those put up a double-crit-failure worth of defenses. They aren't going to be on our doorstep until they've fought past the lowlands, at least.
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Mountain Horse are, well, in mountains. Nomads in plains are entirely different beast from them in mountains, especially in terms of strategic speed.
 
We've seen that we can lose full-strength mercenary companies (8 martial) in war off of a single bad roll against infantry against a non-heroic leader. It is very likely that we can lose all three of our mercenary companies and our martial score in a single phase against a heroic nomad leader wielding a cavalry force.

And if he destroys our army, we will lose our ability to train and field blackbirds.
 
[X] [War] Scramble everyone (Sends warriors east, Switches to Mass Levy policy and removes Isolated Economy status)
[X] [React] We need more fast scouts to counter the nomads! (Sec More Spiritbonded)
 
[X] [War] Scramble what warriors are available (Sends a Sec War Mission and Mercenary Companies to the east)

So it seems to me that we can make a decent case that the nomads are the reason why the plague started and focus the rage of our people in an appropriate direction.

If the nomads are lucky, we might even take a few of them alive so they can teach us how to horse.

We may also want to consider finding some sort of anti-horse weed and then planting it all over the nomad approach route. This link should help find an appropriate one.
 
Wiadi said:
No, but we can hide behind forests and hills, in the finest traditions of Ymaryn past.
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Then we shouldn't have gotten vassals. Nobody asked us to expand, nobody asked to elect Phygrif and so on.

Like, there is a reason I consider Western Wall as "they are going to all die"-territory. I did not, however, think that nomads would come from the east. Guess we must get not!Iran to secure that flank sometime in future.
 
Also, another thing to note.
Going against nomads with Mass Levy is explicitly Rome vs Hannibal, where we are Rome: we are going to suffer a lot of defeats and we are going to have a hell of hard time even forcing him to fight...but he will run out of dudes way faster than us. We can trade two or three of our soldiers per each of his and still win; we probably will too.
 
Voting is going bloody FAST.
I hope SOME analysis can be done before it's completely runaway.

[] [War] They're on their own(-1 Stability, -1 Legitimacy, ???)

Negative Stability triggers, which will lead to panic and generally the quarantine breaking.
Then territory loss triggers next turn.

[] [War] Scramble what warriors are available (Sends a Sec War Mission and Mercenary Companies to the east)

I'm not very sure this is enough. Might just end up breaking the Banners.

[] [War] Scramble everyone (Sends warriors east, Switches to Mass Levy policy and removes Isolated Economy status)
Myranyn Reforms Result: Mass Levy Active Policy
Mass Levy - While this policy is active, the sum of Econ + Wealth + (Sum of Ironworks Levels) x2 added to Temp Martial Score one combat phase after policy activated, but Expand Econ and most Wealth generating actions disabled while this policy active. Otherwise acts as the Offensive Policy

This will be EXPENSIVE...but most of the costs of breaking quarantine hit stats we (currently) have a surplus of.



[] [React] We need more fast scouts to counter the nomads! (Sec More Spiritbonded)

We need this regardless. Fighting horse nomads with 1 cavalry is suicide.

[] [React] Forest and hill scouts are what we need! (Sec More Blackbirds)

Wrong problem.

[] [React] The armies need to not get sick! (Sec More Carrion Eaters)

Wrong problem.

[] [React] More effort! (Extra Sec War Mission, cannot be taken if east abandoned)

Not enough dudes to send.

[] [React] Keep looking for a cure! (Sec Study Health)

Pending re-analysis of the symptoms.

[] [React] The economy, fools! (Sec Expand Econ, cannot be taken with Mass Levy active)

Counters the temp econ damage.

[] [React] Stamp down on those tearing the kingdom apart! (Sec Restore Order)
Give us a stability threshold to tank things. Will immediately lose it to running out of temp econ though.

So combos:
[] [War] Scramble everyone (Sends warriors east, Switches to Mass Levy policy and removes Isolated Economy status)
[] [React] We need more fast scouts to counter the nomads! (Sec More Spiritbonded)
Wealth 16-12 = 4 next turn.

We can only do this for ONE turn and if the plague AND invasion isn't over, we'd probably burn. But it has the best chance of breaking the Khan's momentum because the two lowland rivers are the best thresholds to stop.

If we get lucky, the Khan bounces off and goes looking for the Hamurri for targets. If we don't we burn.

[] [War] Scramble what warriors are available (Sends a Sec War Mission and Mercenary Companies to the east)
[] [React] We need more fast scouts to counter the nomads! (Sec More Spiritbonded)

Delaying maneuver, we'd basically trade our Martial and possibly the Companies to try to ride out the plague first so we can activate Mass Levy next turn for them.

[] [War] Scramble what warriors are available (Sends a Sec War Mission and Mercenary Companies to the east)
[] [React] The economy, fools! (Sec Expand Econ, cannot be taken with Mass Levy active)

This PROBABLY has a risk of killing the Banners, and losing Martial, but will prevent losing further Stability to the plague(and then we lose it to the Nomads taking clay).


[X] [War] Scramble everyone (Sends warriors east, Switches to Mass Levy policy and removes Isolated Economy status)
[X] [React] We need more fast scouts to counter the nomads! (Sec More Spiritbonded)

You know what, Wealth 4 and 1d4 damage to basically everything but Martial is a problem a Heroic Admin can cope with.
This gives us a Martial of 19+11+6+2+15=53 and a Cavalry score of 2, which makes up for poorer Martial skill with sheer logistics.
 
ctulhuslp said:
Then we shouldn't have gotten vassals. Nobody asked us to expand, nobody asked to elect Phygrif and so on.
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Personally I'd be just as happy if we hadn't gotten vassals, and ditching them here seems a perfectly acceptable price to pay for survival. The Legitimacy hit can be essentially ignored, the Stability loss is unfortunate but seems less costly to remedy than the losses we'll take to a war mission - we can regain the lost Stab with a single action, whereas I fully expect to need to commit several war actions to the lowland fighting which could otherwise have been saved until the horde reached more favorable terrain, not to mention the need to recover lost Martial.
 
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