108th Hussar can be a good choice as the fifth flanker. Their alternative the 55th with defensive genius force perseverance will be indispensable on pitched main line melee. While 108th unknown can be quickly tested with a direct flank charge with risk of having weak trait mitigated by facing exposed flank and higher XP rank.
Well, I suppose this means we have good quality casualty replenishment for them in our manpower reserves for long-term.
Do we want to get ride of our trained infantry though? The bulk of reinforcements over our career will come in the form of trained recruits via basic recruiting, since we can't perpetually requisition the most experienced recruits. I think using our professional elven infantry for the formation also makes a lot of sense, as this would give us a unit that is going to level up soon. The xp drain from trained recruits is honestly pretty managable with their 70% base recovery. Taking the losses of the units seeing heavy fighting Daurstein as a baseline, we can expect around 60-70 casulties for them, with the elves recovering 40-50 units and reinforcements draining about 2 XP. With the battle getting us +4 XP now, this is pretty managable. I think we should keep the trained recruits around for now, elves have a very easy time maintaing their experience level.
[ ] Plan Draft
Army Actions
-[ ] Intense Drill
-[ ] Found New Regiment (Elven Infantry, 329 Trained, 356 Regular, 315 Professional; Cabot Muskets)
-[ ] Found New Regiment (Human Infantry, 555 Trained Infantry, 445 Regular Infantry; Cabot Muskets)
Influence Actions
-[ ] Acquire Intel on Enemy Forces x3 (-30 Influence)
Okay, so here's a quick plan draft on actions we're probably going to take (assuming we have at least 3 Army Actions). Founding two new Infantry Regiments to bulk out our battlelines, and another Intense Drill to make up for the loss of Drill. Influence we're basically guaranteed to put x3 on getting Intel on the enemy, but the question is if we want to do anything else. Counterintelligence is a possibility, but also looking at our numbers, we might want to hire some additional Human Infantry for replacements, or a couple of Hobgoblin artillerykin since it seems that Drill can take from Artillery units and we want to enter the next battle at full strength.
Notes for Starting XP Level of Elven Infantry Regiment
Starting at a base of Trained for the Elven Regiment of 300 Trained, 350 Regulars, 350 Professionals. 350 Regulars means 35% of the way from Trained to Regular for 3.5 out of the required 10 XP.
35% of the way from Trained to Professional is 35% of 30 XP, which is 10.5. So in total, 14 XP. That is 14/10 required from Trained to Regular, bringing the formation up to Regular and 4/20 XP to Professional.
Going up to 329 Trained (to get rid of all our Trained Elves) adding a few more Regulars in exchange for Professionals is 31.5% of 30 XP + 35.6% of 10 XP for 13.01 XP, so a Regular Regiment with 3/20 XP for the way to Professional.
Aaaaand, I think I might have hired on too much good quality Elven Infantry in my plan...
I would be generally supportive of buying 4 levels of intel just in case, but I think we also need to keep in mind that any influence spent before the battle means we effectively get a lesser reward, meaning our army gets fewer experienced recruits and slower upgrades. In regards to counter-intelligence, I don't see how it's worth it.
To be clear, Page's bonus just applies to getting intel (acquire intel action reduced to 10 influence), strengthen counter-intelligence still costs 25 influence. In terms of spending, is 2 levels of counter-intel worth 1 thousand regular soldiers? I don't think there is a practical need at the moment, especially with our operations centered on defending the bridge. But we will see how it looks once we have actual knowledge of the enemy forces. I am leaning towards counter-espionage mainly becoming relevant in the eventuality where we transition towards offence. I don't think we are in dire need of saving our influence considering we will probably get a heap sum after the end of our campaign (a city and enemy general are sizeable prices), but I would be careful about spending a quarter of our next battle gain.
Yeah, I get that. Though he might eventually reduce the costs of counter-espionage as he gains more experience, right now he just has experience with scouting. We will manage in either case, we are not in great danger of running out of influence or have a critical weakspot I would expect scouts to be able to figure out.
Depends. If we want to max out the skill level of our new Elven Regiment, we can get it up to 11/20 XP by using all our Professional recruits and most of our Regulars, but that leaves us with so few regulars we probably lose XP from Intense Drill. That'd be a gain of around 7-8 XP (if we give ourselves a bit of a reserve), which is about as much as we can expect from a standard battle. Unless we feel a need to surge our new Elven unit so it reaches Professional ASAP, I think keeping a sizeable reserve of Professionals is better in the long run, and I'd rather use up a good chunk of our Trained reserves here when the amount of XP "loss" from is it comparatively low. A 3/20 XP Regular Elven unit performs just as well in combat as an 11/20 XP one, and this way means what casualties don't recover will get filled in by higher quality troops and further boost XP instead of degrading it. So I think as early as immediately post-battle, preserving our Professionals as reserves will have a better outcome.
If you didn't want a plan about training two regiments this turn, the time to complain about it this much was last March, when I structured its entire plan around training two regiments on March 5.
I am not opposed to buying a couple more regular elves to compensate for the drill, those are pretty cheap. I think trying to get specific units into a higher rank is going to be more beneficial than general reserve of professionals that trickles in. Concentrating our efforts to level a specific unit up gives us one that can defend better against melee attacks, which would probably be more useful than a random trickle of xp across the board.
Keeping the recruits in reserve for now is also not a big deal if you ask me. I mean, I would probably prefer 2 infantry but we can spare the 1 or 2 additional units of supply those potentially cost. We will have to take some time later to regenerate to supply to decent amounts, but I think it's only really drained once we move to fast past offensive operations. The current supply situation isn't necessarily great, but it's manageable for now. It's probably not normal to lug around 200 stock of supply for months in the field.
Fortification building was done by default last turn, we got fortification points by staying in place. Guillory would presumable drill with his own actions as he presumably knows how to do it in principle, he just refused to actually do it given the Arnése brainworms.
Hrm. I suppose a part of me still doesn't quite want to give up on using the glut of veteran soldiers to set up a high-veterancy Elven unit, but that idea was structured around Professional base and using Experienced + Veterans to bulk them up enough they'd get up to Experienced in a normal amount of time (faster due to not needing replenishment as much) and from then on could continue levelling up through the big Elven XP demands simply because they wouldn't lose skill manpower as fast. Though that would depend on us wanting to get a 4th Elven Infantry regiment at some point.
Unsteady really isn't as bad as it seems. In terms of impact, it's something like a -2 or -3 to morale modifiers. Not great in terms of durability, but it doesn't make the units break at the first sign of trouble. And considering our plan is essentially to feign retreat until an all-out melee, this isn't all that necessary. We can spend available actions on mentoring virtually any time as well.
It's -3 on average, yes, but I would say that is very significant on a d20 system. The average also does not tell the whole story, disadvantage also makes a catastrophically low roll much more likely. The way Stress works with an initial bad roll having a disproportionate impact, I actually think the effect of that trait may be much worse than it seems based on averages. That said, I would need to run some simulations to confirm that.
It is bad for the individual unit, but I would say that morale checks are also generally rare if we maintain battlefield control. If the unit isn't exposed to artillery or put in a position to be flanked, you would get maybe 1 or 2 morale checks per turn (meleed + casulties), which the unit can hold out. In terms of what I think our battleplan should be (skirmish -> feigned retreat -> pin the enemy down in melee until the strike force secures the bridge with the element of surprise) a singular regular unit being routed really doesn't matter. We really need combat mass more than we need to improve individual units
So, raw statistical analysis for the 42nd in terms of impact: I am going to assume the unit is a defensible position in melee, against units with an equivalent combat modifier (woods specifically) facing a single enemy opponent. Unless we make the mistake of putting the unsteady unit in the center, that is plausible. Under these conditions any attack focused on them will have a 66% of causing 50+ causulties, which I will round up to having 2 morale checks a turn. I will also give the 42nd a +1 without their advantage, since we would gain drill.
I want our plans to center around it not mattering if one unit breaks. With the 42nd in particular only giving -1 momentum, them breaking should really not matter in the plan, especially since I want us to use elves to take the initial blow anyway. Sure, them routing right after tanking a check probably feels pretty bad, but that's really not a significant factor when we try to calculate a way of breaking the enemy bridgehead. The key question there is how to make enough attacks to soften the bridgehead up for an encirclement on our side, for which more units are just more helpful than morale modifiers.