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Conquer Planetos with Dragons or a Terracotta Army?

Dragons or Terracotta Army?

  • Total voters
    27
Zor

Zor

More of a Zor than You
In this scenario you are sent to Essos (specifically 300 km south of Norvos) in the year 285 by ROB and have been given orders to conquer it and bring about an empire that would rival the Valayrian Freehold. As a start you have a fortress with 6 meter tall stone walls as well as a force of 400 Samurai and 1,600 Ashigaru armed with non-gunpowder weapons (katana, washazaki, naginata, yumi, yari, japanese plate armor, etc), all of which are loyal to you and can speak the langauges of westeros and western essos quite well. This is not a bad fighting force by ASIOF standards, but it's not up to the task of worldconquering. As such ROB offers you one of two options.

The first Option is Dragons. You have a dozen adult Dragons, a dozen six year old juveniles, a dozen year old hatchlings and a dozen eggs six months into their gestation. Each Adult Dragon is 30 meter wingspan and able to fly (up to 100km/h) and expel 30 meter long lances of fire from their mouths. They're not quite as invunerable as the great dragons of Valyria, but they their hides can take crossbow fire. They are strong enough to bare a human rider, with several of your samurai being trained to do. These dragons are also not finicky breeders. Female dragons lay an egg every two to three years, said egg needs to be kept warm (40-50 degrees Celsius ideally) during an year long incubation before hatching. Said hatching grow to adulthood in 12 years time. Since Dragons have a certain cultural association with the populations of this region having them gives you an advantage beyond their simple military applications, namely they're will be people who'll follow you simply because you have dragons and they have none.

The second force you get is one more removed from the Zeitgeist of the established civilizations, but one that has advantages of it's own. Basically in addition to your Samurai Squads, you got a force of 16,000 Terracotta soldiers...

...only these ones are able to move. Each Terracotta soldier stands 1.8 meter tall, has four times the strength of a man, can march steadily day and night at a steady 5 km/h and charge at 12km/h over distances of up to 1 km (afterwards it will take 20 minutes for them to be able to charge again) and will follow the orders of the following people...
  1. You
  2. Your Samurai and Ashigaru, unless their orders contradict your orders
  3. People that you tell one or more of said Terracotta soldiers to obey, unless their orders contradict your orders or your Samurai's/Ashigaru's orders.
Each of them has inside their a small bronze chem about 10cm long which contains the spell which animates them. If that is removed or destroyed they become inert. If limbs are severed from the body they'll become still and if their hears are removed they'll become blind. Even so, as long as their chem remains intact they'll still attempt to carry out their orders. Damaged teracotta warriors can be repaired as long as their chem is intact. As for weapons, they're armed with Jian Swords, circular shields, Halberds and Crossbows. Their combat forms are, as mentioned, powerful but fairly basic in it's operation, limited to a few moves which they do automatically towards targets. Their crossbow marksmenship is alright if not exceptional. They need constant oversight and can't do much on their own besides defend themselves from attack or repeat basic orders. Even so they can do some basic tasks with oversight such as stacking boxes, digging holes and moving objects from point a to point b. Without orders they'll either form up into neat squares and stand at attention and wait for orders or, if a year passes, will return to your castle. They can not speak, but they can point, bow and clap their hands to make noise as an alert signal, though this is not good for their hands. However one of the most notable things about these guys is the fact that you can make more of them. You have four enchanted kiln in your fortress in which can each make sixteen terracotta warriors at a time, though it takes a fair bit of fuel and three days to properly bake them. You also have enough (highly specialized) mages to keep chem production up and potters to make soldiers for said kilns. Weapons production is another matter. You have artisans which can produce about two swords, two shields, two crossbows and four halberds a day along with a few dozen bolts, but if you want to have your armies armed with weapons beyond what you have so far you'll need to get more weaponsmiths.

Which is the superior asset for conquering Planetos?

Also the Faceless men have been paid off and won't assassinate you either way.

Zor
 
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Dragons. Flying messengers would be tremendously more valuable in pre-modern warfare than just having more soldiers.
 
Dragons. It worked for Aegon the Comqueror because there is just about nothing in Westeros that can do shit against them. Terracotta Warriors could get stopped easily by a well-done Moat or a Castle.
 
GhostKaiju said:
Dragons. It worked for Aegon the Comqueror because there is just about nothing in Westeros that can do shit against them.
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Dorne chased Aegon away with fucking spears. Dorne kingdom best kingdom! :p

The thing about dragons is that half their use is from the sheer shock and awe. That's why Aegon conquered most of Westeros in just a few years. That's why the North surrendered without a fight. But eventually, people will get used to dragons, the same way they got used to war elephants IRL. And of course you can't split up a dragon; it can only be at one point at a time.

Still, it should be noted that even the Targaryens never had as many dragons at once as Zor gives to use here. Plus, more reproductive dragons as well. That would circumvent many of their drawbacks. And OTOH, 16,000 people is not a large army by Westerosi standards. That's less than what the North, one of the poorer Kingdoms, could muster. Okay, in this case it's 16k supersoldiers, but still...

Yet again... the 16k people may be dumb, but at least you have a force for garrisons etc. You can't do regular garissioning with dragons. And yes, they're fast couriers, but a bit too important to waste on such duties. Hm, on the other hand again, if you can win over men by dragon propaganda, they can also do such services, and the golems are really dumb and ineffective outside direct combat indeed.

Let's say so: The golems are probably the safe but grinding method. The dragons are the risky but potentially more rewarding method.
 
I gotta go with terracota army. Being able to make more with them, more or less nigh unkillable, move at a constant rate, never tire; essentially an army of robots.

Dragons would be nice, but creating an empire is one thing, keeping it together is another. Empires can be made quickly, but to make it last long you will need reliable soldiers. Boring sure, but I'd take boring over absolutely high risk and little reward options.
 
Hykal94 said:
Dragons would be nice, but creating an empire is one thing, keeping it together is another. Empires can be made quickly, but to make it last long you will need reliable soldiers. Boring sure, but I'd take boring over absolutely high risk and little reward options.
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Actually, I think post-conquest the dragons will in fact be more useful. After all, once you already have your empire, you can simply recruit a large conventional army. And the golems really have no other use than soldiers. But with dragons - given the circumstances Zor gave us, those dragons can be reliably bred, and then you can indeed have an air courier network.
 
Susano said:
Actually, I think post-conquest the dragons will in fact be more useful. After all, once you already have your empire, you can simply recruit a large conventional army. And the golems really have no other use than soldiers. But with dragons - given the circumstances Zor gave us, those dragons can be reliably bred, and then you can indeed have an air courier network.
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I thought about that too, and the air courier network is extremely attractive. But just like when Suleiman was fighting the Safavids, doesn't matter how good your armies are, people will simply choose to run and hide. It's why it took forever for Ottomans to subjugate Persia again. If Dorne can learn how to not allow the Targaryens to win (killing one dragon was absolutely lucky, no doubt about it) then so people can find ways to hide and take dragons down either way.

A Terracota army on the other hand, post-conquest, can be used as reliable strike teams. Something like Almogovars if you will. Being able to send them over incredibly rough terrains or into dangerous bunkers without sacrificing less reliable soldiers. I guess depends on which method one thinks is best, and neither of them are bad, both useful in their own ways.
 
But that's the thing. I would agree that purely militarily, the terracotta army is the more reliable method. But military is indeed all they can do, and once you have your empire, you will have enough conventional military anyway. With dragons, you can apply dragons to all sorts of other uses as well.
 
Susano said:
But that's the thing. I would agree that purely militarily, the terracotta army is the more reliable method. But military is indeed all they can do, and once you have your empire, you will have enough conventional military anyway. With dragons, you can apply dragons to all sorts of other uses as well.
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"I have an army!"

"I have a golem army."

I think you can do totes use them the same way (save for air courier). I don't think dragons would make good bodyguards. :V

Anyway, what did you have in mind.
 
Well, at the moment I can indeed only come up with air courier, air reconnaissance and representation/prestige. I mean, coming riding in on a dragon will probably be way more "Imperial" than a terracotta bodyguard.

But for the conquest... it really depends on how well you can raise conventional troops with your "I have dragons!" card. If you can do it quickly, then dragons are probably the better alternative. But that is risky and far from certain. So yeah, for the conquest, supersoldiers golems made out of terracotta are probably the better idea.
 
If you think that a Terracotta Army is un-imperial, Qin Shi Huang and One Sun Mirror are waiting out back for you. Votes for Golems are votes for terrifyingly smiling soldiers walking to victory who fear not arrows or swords.
 
Performing a rough calculation, dragons require on the order of 651,000 kcal per day. Since they are apex predators, this means they require 362,000 kg of meat from large herbivores like cattle, 841,000 kg of animals. Each square kilometer of grass can support 74,000 kg of cattle, an average of 82 cows. Each dragon requires 11.4 square kilometers dedicated to nothing but feeding it. For our current set of dragons, we will need to have 550 square kilometers solely dedicated to their upkeep, which actually will be greater in practice due to overgrazing and the likelihood of having to feed them on less efficient animals. These 550 square kilometers, or roughly half the total area of Hong Kong, will have to have their total products seized as taxes.

In Alfred the Great's England, taxes were assessed at 2 shillings per hide. Since a hide was defined as a unit of land which produced one pound of income yearly, this was thus intended as a 10% income tax rate (though obviously not assessed on incomes directly). Ignoring the needs of our own survival and assuming we only need to tax to pay for the dragons, we would thus need 5500 square kilometers of land (comparable to the land areas of the West Bank and Gaza under Palestinian control), at an absolute minimum (we are after all not considering the breeding population of milch cows and stud bulls which are needed to produce the meat cows for the dragons).

If we assume that the dragon taxland is split equally, on average we will have about 585 villages of 300 people (giving us 176,000 peasants to conjure up when we have 1,600. Not to mention 585 local lords or bureaucrats when we only have 400...) each taking up about 9.4 square kilometers of land. All this is assuming perfectly fertile land, and we should potentially double or triple the land areas required.

Since this area doesn't appear to be settled much if at all, we will need to round up the scattered settlements and resettle the people. We will thus actually need to conquer roughly thrice the area of land we wish to establish ourselves on, and our serfmaking expeditions, or really slaving expeditions, will need to get us about halfway to Norvos, inviting retaliations. And this will only get worse if we don't cull the dragons. After 24 years we will need about 5 times our initial area of conquest. After 100 years, we would have on the order of 9000 dragons, needing 102,000 square kilometers of pastureland, 8.4 million cows (by comparison there are 30 million meat cows in the US today) slain every year to feed the dragons.

EDIT: Whoops, lost the train of thought there. That's per day, not per year. Multiply all the numbers by 365.

So we need 4161 square kilometers per dragon, 1,997,000 square kilometers total, 212,500 villages, 64 million people, and after 100 years we would need 37,500,000 square kilometers of pasture, 3.1 billion cows every year.
 
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Given the figures involves and that we can only make 2000 new terracotta soldiers per year, I have to say dragons: the shock and awe factor and instant line-shattering potential of OHGODSDRAGON is too much in the face of fairly small numbers of terracotta soldiers. Yes, they might be four times stronger than a human, but they are dumb as the literal bricks they're made of and are average combatants at best... and there's not many of them.

To be honest if we'd had Terracotta Hoplites given terrifyingly inhuman strength, unbreakable morale, perfect discipline and endless endurance, maybe that'd be different, but they're not really suited to fighting lots of impact cavalry (which can and will literally shatter their bodies into uselessness).
 
Cornuthaum said:
Given the figures involves and that we can only make 2000 new terracotta soldiers per year,
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You have four kilns which can each make 16 Terracotta Soldiers at once and it takes three days to make a batch. You can make 64 terracotta soldiers every three days. 64x365÷3=7,786.66666667 terracotta soldiers per annum.

Zor
 
Zor said:
You have four kilns which can each make 16 Terracotta Soldiers at once and it takes three days to make a batch. You can make 64 terracotta soldiers every three days. 64x365÷3=7,786.66666667 terracotta soldiers per annum.

Zor
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Oh.

I thought it was 16 in total, i.e. 4 per kiln, not 16 per kiln.

That, admittedly, does improve things quite significantly.
 
Are we limited in what shapes we make the terracotta army?

Like, could we make terracotta horses?

resize said:
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Or maybe get more creative, like a terracotta bathtub with legs, and filled with supplies, or even plants that can march along side my samurai so they can give orders to my Terracotta soldiers?

The dead load of Terra Cotta, voids not filled, is 72 pounds per cubic foot1​. That's far less than graphite or copper.

Now, I'm not asking if we can make terracotta dragons, but can we make terra cotta dragons messenger birds of thin terracotta shells and fabric, like self directing kites?

And of course, after Planetos is conquered, can my terracotta soldiers farm? And how susceptible to the cold are they?
 
As @Bakustra rather comprehensively demonstrated, taking dragons is suicide. Your attempts at conquest will end when you and your forces are eaten by dragons.

Meanwhile, the Terracotta Army is far less flashy, but far more efficient. An army marches on its stomach. The vast majority of this army doesn't have stomachs.

A word on strength. This site suggests that an untrained man can squat lift 125 pounds, bench press 135 pounds, and deadlift 155 pounds. Using this bare minimum strength, each Terracotta Warrior can bench press over a quarter ton. We're talking about 16,000 Mountains That Ride who never tire, never hunger, never question orders, and never commit random atrocities due to boredom.
 
No, no. What you do is you make a set of Terracotta Dragons, to go along with your Terracotta Army. Now you have the best of both worlds!
 
Some things to keep in mind: Being 285, this is ~13 years before the (modern / non-flashback) events of the GoT books. Yes, a total army of ~66,000 soldiers (I'm assuming the Kilns can only operate one out of every two possible minutes, which in itself is being generous) is still small by Planetos standards… but it's more than enough to hold a realm. To wage a war, even, during periods of Fall (when many soldiers are required for harvest) and Winter (when the weather is unfavorable and even more campaigners will be confined to their homelands).

The second thing to keep in mind is we're talking about trying to keep 36 (and, soon, 48) dragons cared for in a manner that doesn't involve them burning townsfolk, eating livestock, etcetera. Daenerys had trouble rearing three with great swathes of Essos as her playground, we're apparently going to try and nurture twelve to sixteen times that. About the only clear / real advantage of this force is that - if you bother to take it North Beyond the Wall - you could probably absolutely wreck the Night King with it. There'll be nothing to eat besides Wildlings so you're pretty much going to have to commit genocide as you do this, but if you wanted you should theoretically be able to nip the White Walker threat right in the bud. It's also, probably, a good way to dispose of unwanted dragons too.

Lastly, Dragons are going to lead to Robert's head being offered to you on a pike. Like, full-stop: If you cross the Sea towards Westeros with thirty six dragons (twelve of them fully grown!) only two or three years after the costly rebellion, you can bet that nobody is going to bother to tell you and whatever soldiers you brought with you "Go back to Essos". And while Robert wasn't exactly a good King, I wouldn't say he's a bad enough one to justify another rebellion. Especially only two years into his reign.
 
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