1.
(General) What if the enemy tries to flank us trough the Rotholz?
An actual flanking trough Rotholz has to leave the hills and jump blindly into medium range of our artillery. Once they leave, we can slaugther them. We gain no major advantage by holding the hills, and keeping our horse artillery on a way where they could only shot a flanking force is a poor choice during the skirmish. So I'm proposing to keep our horse artillery in the flexible centre, where it is guarantueed to shoot units unless the entire army crosses into the Rotholz. A flanking force trough the Rotholz is uncertain, units being in long range of the centre is virtually guarantueed for the sake of screening. Trotha moving units across the centre is the guess with the least assumptions.
1.1 Related: Why do we need to have artillery at Rotholz? We currently don't.
What if the enemy does not attack through Rotholz? Is the horse artillery not badly positioned?
I consider a Rotholz attack something we should prepare for, since the natural barrier created by the hills allow him to approach from there without taking fire from our Field Artillery. This means he can take his time, slowly bringing up his cannons to Rotholz without his screening units being slowly destroyed by our artillery in the process.
Notice how this response fails to address the plausible scenario of Trotha simply not flanking. If we don't flank, we loose damage and experience for our best artillery unit. Current movements indicate no plan for a push across Rotholz, but an initial set-up in the centre.
My major criticism of this the Rotholz Infantry + Artillery from the enemy perspective is the overfixation on avoiding our long ranged fire, while ignoring the resulting vulnerability of placing cannons on a hill side after 15 turns of march. The sheer length of this movement and subsequent retreat alone is an issue, plus the lack of information on our positions across the hill. 15 turns of artillery movement are deeply unnattractive parts of a plan, plus the chance of loosing them during the retreat. Then 3 turns spend on having to screen the guns so we don't kill them by charging over the hill top, time which would kill much of the enemy core from attrition alone. A plan that involves a coinflip of the artillery surviving the set-up. Doing this would be at odds with what Trotha could consider reasonable.
But what if the enemy actually flanks from Rotholz with something more expendable, like a small number of infantry? We are already able to deal with that: Move in reaction forces to melee the enemy once they leave the hills, than use our medium range firepower to kill any forces that cross into the area via artillery fire. Keeping the horse artillery on the hill artillery doesn't add to our ability to defend against it, it just slightly adds to the damage if the enemy flanks, while severly reducing our damage if the enemy plans involve the centre (8.3 with horse artillery -> 5.3 currently). My point is the horse artillery belongs in the centre, dealing damage and gaining artillery experience UNLESS there is a need for them at the side.
2.
(Anticipated) What about enemy cavalry charges?
For one, his cavalry isn't set up for early aggression (no forward scouting). He is said to rarely use his cavalry for things other than screening, so he would likely only commit to a charge when it truly favours him. Here, charges could be intercepted by our own cavalry via ready charge and run into medium range of our artillery. Such an exchange would not be good for his screens. We have more cavalry than him, are better able to intercept and cover the charge location with fairly heavy artillery fire and could still flee, from that position. Overall, charging would be nearly blind and severely damage his cavalry in an unfavourable exchange, making this unlikely.
3. Rotholz as important threat vector(artillery set up on the hills)
I'll get back to you on how I think he could try to threaten us from the Rotholz direction. In general, I think he will bring his artillery to support his attack or even bombard our position. Ideally for him, he would bring his artillery to positions where he can fire at Medium range at us, forcing us to get aggressive or take a lot of artillery fire. In order to counteract that, he must push us back on both flanks, forcing us into a passive position around Kinzberg. Pushing us back from the flanks would also blind us pretty effectively.
Right, that idea. Putting artillery trough takes at least 4+10 = 14 turns of movement once he gets them near the hills, meaning they are lost with absolute certainty in the pursuit phase if the assault goes wrong. That alone would probably be a deterrent for most generals.
This is only where the problems with this assault start. You need to actually put them on the hill (2 turns) and set up (3rd turn), during which time the artillery needs to be shielded against melee and cavalry attacks from our side of the hills. This forces screening infantry in the open for at least 3 turns, during which we deal an
avg of 17 cohesion damage a turn against the open infantry. Meaning he would loose most of his dwarves during the set-up phase (~ 18?, plus damage from cohesion routing and infantry fire/melee, plus running into cavalry ready charges). After these 3 turns of heavy fire he needs to cycle new infantry for screening in, meaning he has 6 infantry -3 screens left for the assault (2 humans, 1 dwarf, 1 nymph and 2 elves), who will be taking melee damage from our fresh units.
All for the big prize of bombarding our infantry at -60 rather than -90 and avoiding some long-ranged shots. Suffice to say, if he tries that he doesn't have a sufficient infantry group left to assault us with.
