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Army of Liberty: a Fantasy Revolutionary Warfare Quest

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Red Rationalist said:
But taking a forward position to defend gives us one vital thing, space. It forces any enemy army to win 2 battles (Daurstein and Martelnac), rather than 1. If we weren't extremly lucky, taking Daurstein would have been another battle against the western army. Space can be traded for time, and occupied land undermines the willingness of Norn to continue fighting, eventually forcing a capitulation.
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Trading the city for time is at most going to buy us 2-3 days, which might end up being useful, but is not enough to give us a march action for example. Martelnac has a militia and trading it would only buy us about that long.

Having a fallback position is useful, but we already have a fortified fallback position in Antreville. Sitting at Daurstein for any significant period would be a mistake when we could be linking up with 6th army instead. If we can link up and we don't run into coordination or command issues we'd have enough force to decisively defeat Von Trotha. If we do run into command (Guillory refusing any kind of offensive) or coordination (6th having critically low drill) issues we'll probably need to spend march actions sorting that out.

I also don't think Daurstein is going to have a significant impact on the willingness of Norn to continue fighting either way. These little boarder cities trade hands frequently in war, the defeat of the Army of the West is likely to have a larger impact for example.

The Laurent said:
Like my vote doesn't actually rule out an assault, even if it might slow it down by a tiny bit. Nor does writing to the Assembly slow us down at all, because we're writing and then doing it anyway.
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I'm not against asking them to surrender, I'm against any commitments that would leave us in Daurstein for any significant period of time.
 
WGDragoon said:
Trading the city for time is at most going to buy us 2-3 days, which might end up being useful, but is not enough to give us a march action for example. Martelnac has a militia and trading it would only buy us about that long.

Having a fallback position is useful, but we already have a fortified fallback position in Antreville. Sitting at Daurstein for any significant period would be a mistake when we could be linking up with 6th army instead. If we can link up and we don't run into coordination or command issues we'd have enough force to decisively defeat Von Trotha. If we do run into command (Guillory refusing any kind of offensive) or coordination (6th having critically low drill) issues we'll probably need to spend march actions sorting that out.

I also don't think Daurstein is going to have a significant impact on the willingness of Norn to continue fighting either way. These little boarder cities trade hands frequently in war, the defeat of the Army of the West is likely to have a larger impact for example.



I'm not against asking them to surrender, I'm against any commitments that would leave us in Daurstein for any significant period of time.
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I actually went and checked, because if you were marching to Antreville I wouldn't have much other to say than, "I disagree with your reasoning, but respectable."

But... you're worried about committing to Daurstein and want to link up with VI, and so you want to instead... immediately assault Daurstein? Obviously if we seize Daurstein we can make all sorts of choices, up to and including abandoning it to rendezvous with VI army headed in our direction? I don't know how not telling them to get closer makes it so that they're more likely to link up with us.

I feel like you've made a valid argument for marching to Antreville, tbh, as opposed to assaulting Daurstein.
 
WGDragoon said:
Trading the city for time is at most going to buy us 2-3 days, which might end up being useful, but is not enough to give us a march action for example. Martelnac has a militia and trading it would only buy us about that long.
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I'm working with the assumption that going to Martelnac and marching on Daurstein would give us the same number of army actions. From what I can tell, army actions are largely based on how much the army needs to move, with time for training used for movement instead if we moved far. There is some argument to be had that the siege could make us loose an action, but it would also prevent the rests of the western army for seriously organizing.
WGDragoon said:
Having a fallback position is useful, but we already have a fortified fallback position in Antreville.
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Those are not comparable. Falling back from Martelnac to Antreville takes 5 days, probably more if we had issues of disorder. Falling back to Martelnac from Daurstein takes a day, which grants a much better readiness after the retreat, especially if Trotha needs to lick his wounds first. Plus the option of trying to regroup near the river crossing, forcing Trotha into a incredibly hard battle if we need to move.
WGDragoon said:
Sitting at Daurstein for any significant period would be a mistake when we could be linking up with 6th army instead. If we can link up and we don't run into coordination or command issues we'd have enough force to decisively defeat Von Trotha. If we do run into command (Guillory refusing any kind of offensive) or coordination (6th having critically low drill) issues we'll probably need to spend march actions sorting that out.
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Linking up means marching backwards, so spending time moving away from the front we are defending instead of army actions. I'm not sure I see the advantage here. Presumably Guillory will send us a response, and this response will arrive in 4 days. We can spend the last 3 days finding the most defensible position available.
 
However, I am once again asking @Photomajig whether there's anything procedure-breaking about writing directly to the Assembly, etc, etc. I don't think there'd be some official procedure/way things are done, but it's always best to check.
 
The Laurent said:
Obviously if we seize Daurstein we can make all sorts of choices, up to and including abandoning it to rendezvous with VI army headed in our direction?
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Both letters we'd be sending imply we intend to hold Daurstein against the Army of the Center. It puts potential political importance on whether we can hold it when before this particular border city just didn't matter to the assembly. It'd commit us to sitting in the city at least until we get a response letter from 6th army, which hopefully shouldn't take too long (3-4 days I'd guess), but an inexperienced officer might well spend a few days deliberating on whether or not to move to reinforce us.
 
WGDragoon said:
Both letters we'd be sending imply we intend to hold Daurstein against the Army of the Center. It puts potential political importance on whether we can hold it when before this particular border city just didn't matter to the assembly. It'd commit us to sitting in the city at least until we get a response letter from 6th army, which hopefully shouldn't take too long (3-4 days I'd guess), but an inexperienced officer might well spend a few days deliberating on whether or not to move to reinforce us.
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The thing is, we're going to need that time anyway, and we can evaluate the situation as we go. The goal of the letter isn't to have a five-step plan, but state our next step. If needs drive, and we have to do something different... then we do something different? Personally, do you feel eager for an offensive against the Army of the Center without those reinforcements?

And obviously if we're going to Daurstein, unless we're just there to raid it, reinforcements will have to head that way anyway.
 
The Laurent said:
And obviously if we're going to Daurstein, unless we're just there to raid it, reinforcements will have to head that way anyway.
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Just raiding Daurstein to steal or destroy the guns and scatter the Army of the West remnants is specifically what I'm advocating for.

I'm not eager for a fight with the Army of the Center as things stand, It's a fair fight when we don't really need to give them one.
 
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The Laurent said:
However, I am once again asking @Photomajig whether there's anything procedure-breaking about writing directly to the Assembly, etc, etc. I don't think there'd be some official procedure/way things are done, but it's always best to check.
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While I appreciate the carefulness about our comunication style, I also think the cat is out of the bag here. We did decide to share our opinion of what should be done with king umprompted after Mauvais, something that certainly ruffled some feathers. Sharing military information about an unexpected gain that is very relevant to the overall strategy the assembly is supposed to plan should be uncontroversial enough. I would probably appreciate it if field commanders that deviated from my initial plan informed me why they did so.
WGDragoon said:
Both letters we'd be sending imply we intend to hold Daurstein against the Army of the Center. It puts potential political importance on whether we can hold the city when before this particular border city just didn't matter to the assembly. It'd commit us to sitting in the city at least until we get a response letter from 6th army, which hopefully shouldn't take too long (3-4 days I'd guess), but an inexperienced officer might well spend a few days deliberating on whether or not to move to reinforce us.
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Fair enough. We are working with a lot of unknowns here, especially including where the centre army even is and what they are moving towards. A lot of our further information is going to depend on us waiting for more information.

I wouldn't say the letter puts political importance on holding Daurstein. It mentions that our goal is "to prevent enemy armies from setting foot on Arnesé soil", not that "thanks to our personal brilliance, we will definitively prevent invaders from even setting foot". We are not attaching political weight to an outcome, just explaining that the seizure of Daurstein could enable an excellent forward defense.
 
Red Rationalist said:
While I appreciate the carefulness about our comunication style, I also think the cat is out of the bag here. We did decide to share our opinion of what should be done with king umprompted after Mauvais, something that certainly ruffled some feathers. Sharing military information about an unexpected gain that is very relevant to the overall strategy the assembly is supposed to plan should be uncontroversial enough. I would probably appreciate it if field commanders that deviated from my initial plan informed me why they did so.
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Sorry, I'm just nervous because write-ins can be fraught in Quests. It's why I like getting confirmation that there's never anything obvious that the CHARACTER would know is obviously a bad idea that the voters wouldn't. Because you're coloring outside the lines.
 
The Laurent said:
Sorry, I'm just nervous because write-ins can be fraught in Quests. It's why I like getting confirmation that there's never anything obvious that the CHARACTER would know is obviously a bad idea that the voters wouldn't. Because you're coloring outside the lines.
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That is also fair. I'm personally not that worried about this aspect, considering that I asked yesterday about writing the republic and just got the confirmation: You can, but it's going to take quite some time.
Photomajig said:
Yes, but keep in mind that it will take a while for your message to reach Loutharc, be considered by the Convention (which lacks an executive body that could make that decision immediately, do note), and the end result relayed back to you and the VI. That's not ideal for a fast campaign.
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If writing to the Convention would be a faux paus as far as Duarand knows, this would have been brought up as a drawback. It's possible Durand is violating an unspoken social rule because she never went to the parliament in person after taking proper command, but that is a risk we have to take if we want to seize the chance for a decisisve end of the campaign against Norn.
 
NSchwerte said:
If we spend 2 actions on more artillery we could match Trotha in quantity and outmatch him in Quality.

It's very unfortunate that all of our regular humans were committed to reinforcements so we will likely have to have the new artillery start at +0 bonus
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Well, we could have 5 if we didn't get another field artillery as equipment. If we capture one or buy horse artillery, we can outmatch him.

Looking at the bright side, trained human artillery will catch up extremely quickly.
 
Red Rationalist said:
Well, we could have 5 if we didn't get another field artillery as equipment. If we capture one or buy horse artillery, we can outmatch him.

Looking at the bright side, trained human artillery will catch up extremely quickly.
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I'm not sure if I understand what you are saying.

I think that we could found 2 more field artillery regiments using our captured equipment, making us equal to Von Trotha with both of us having 5 Field and 1 horse artillery.
 
NSchwerte said:
I'm not sure if I understand what you are saying.

I think that we could found 2 more field artillery regiments using our captured equipment, making us equal to Von Trotha with both of us having 5 Field and 1 horse artillery.
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Hang on, you're correct. I though we had no field artillery in reserve, but apparently we had one left. This does make fighting him on our own far easier, provided we get the army actions for licking our wounds.
 
The Laurent said:
I assumed it could be read-in by one of the people who like us even if there was no official mechanic to receive letters, and that at least some of them might appreciate a reasonably respectful address to them? @Photomajig ?

Raka Durand is not a diplomatic genius, but she'd at least know if it was unprecedented or likely to--by its very existence--be an irritant or insult to the Assembly or whatever. I've not asking for specific feedback involving exact phrasing, just "can we write the assembly and it's normal and/or acceptable?"
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The Laurent said:
However, I am once again asking @Photomajig whether there's anything procedure-breaking about writing directly to the Assembly, etc, etc. I don't think there'd be some official procedure/way things are done, but it's always best to check.
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This is perfectly normal and you'd send it to a sympathetic delegate, someone you could trust to present it positively before the Convention. Generally I'd warn you if a write-in went blatantly against a character's knowledge.
 
Photomajig said:
This is perfectly normal and you'd send it to a sympathetic delegate, someone you could trust to present it positively before the Convention. Generally I'd warn you if a write-in went blatantly against a character's knowledge.
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Out of curiousity, how long would it take for the message to physically arrive in the capital? We got our orders to defend against the invasion of Norn in time, but I'm unsure if the courier would take a week and a bit or close to a month.
 
Red Rationalist said:
Out of curiousity, how long would it take for the message to physically arrive in the capital? We got our orders to defend against the invasion of Norn in time, but I'm unsure if the courier would take a week and a bit or close to a month.
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Couriers with rested horses waiting at regular relay stations can move fast. It would take 2 days in ideal conditions, probably a couple more if the roads are in bad condition from the rains.
 
Photomajig said:
Couriers with rested horses waiting at regular relay stations can move fast. It would take 2 days in ideal conditions, probably a couple more if the roads are in bad condition from the rains.
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I see. The message is important enough to warrant it, so the limiting factor is going to be how fast the assembly can come to a decision. Well, that's faster than I expected.
 
To be clear, I at least don't think we're going to wait for the Assembly's decision, just that we're going to keep the fact that we've presented things to them in mind as we move forward, and try to exist within the strategic space we've outlined. If that distinction makes sense. Obviously if they actively order us to retreat, then depending on the circumstances we'll kind of be forced to... but, yes?
 
The Laurent said:
To be clear, I at least don't think we're going to wait for the Assembly's decision, just that we're going to keep the fact that we've presented things to them in mind as we move forward, and try to exist within the strategic space we've outlined. If that distinction makes sense. Obviously if they actively order us to retreat, then depending on the circumstances we'll kind of be forced to... but, yes?
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Yeah, it would be a good idea to not break with our outlined interpretation of "stay on the defense" after we made a show of not deciding strategy. The way I see it, we will be forced to wait a week, if not more, anyways. We need the 6th around, plus Trotha will likely be forced to retake Daurstein in order to secure the Kriegspfad-Waldpfad connection. Once that battle happens, we can decide on our next move once the situation is more clear. It's possible we get a good opportunity to occupy Engelsburg after that, which could mean victory in the campaign.
The assembly also doesn't need to reach a final decision regarding the start of offensive operations, they could tell us a simple "Stay at the border and don't move further" or "Operate as you see best" until they have figured their stance on the offensive into Norn out. We've indirectly asked for new orders by announcing our decision and explaining the changing situation, which means they had the option to chastise us if they found our decision objectionable. Right now, we can only wait and see.
 
[X] Go on the offensive.
-[x] Besiege Daurstein. Half a day. An offensive is smart, but Daurstein is somewhat fortified and a direct assault will get a lot of your men killed. It's better to surround the city and demand its surrender. If they choose to hold out, you might be stuck here for a while, though.
 
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