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General Exalted Thread

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Jarovan said:
ACOUP's great and reading those posts was actually a part of what got me thinking about this. Equipment of the Realm's legions as described seems pretty different from the Roman legions, though, so I would imagine that their tactics differ, too. There's still definitely a lot in that blog in general and those posts in particular that helps with picturing and narrating warfare in Creation.
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I personally drew on different historical armies to characterize how each Great House fights in the field - my current campaign features House Tepet, whose tactics (and some foreign policy) I explicitly drew from the Roman legions, but you may want to instead look at Imperial China and their pike + crossbow tactics. After all, the Realm has always been Roman China. Small units of skirmishing ranged troops wielding javelins or crossbows can act to "deliver" a heavy infantry force into close combat (as you're aware having read the articles) due to the low lethality of indirect missile fire against heavy infantry. You could also characterize a Realm force with really good cavalry with DB leaders using their Charms to enhance their troops, drawing on how steppe nomads (like the Mongols) fought.
 
eagle_II said:
I personally drew on different historical armies to characterize how each Great House fights in the field - my current campaign features House Tepet, whose tactics (and some foreign policy) I explicitly drew from the Roman legions, but you may want to instead look at Imperial China and their pike + crossbow tactics. After all, the Realm has always been Roman China. Small units of skirmishing ranged troops wielding javelins or crossbows can act to "deliver" a heavy infantry force into close combat (as you're aware having read the articles) due to the low lethality of indirect missile fire against heavy infantry. You could also characterize a Realm force with really good cavalry with DB leaders using their Charms to enhance their troops, drawing on how steppe nomads (like the Mongols) fought.
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Imperial China might be something to look at. I have to confess I don't know much about ancient or medieval Chinese warfare, aside from there being some pretty huge armies involved. Using different inspirations for different Houses is a good idea, and I find distinct tactics for the various Houses actually easier to picture than the tactics of a sort of 'pure', orthodox Imperial legion. Maybe dropping the idea of a typical legion and focusing on the idiosyncrasies of different legions would be the way to go, now that I think about it. The way Heirs to the Shogunate describes Lookshy's field forces makes it seem like the Imperial legions, as opposed to field forces with their own specialties, are supposed to be pretty similar to each other. It'd make just as much sense for the individual preferences and talents of a Dragon-Blooded general to shape his or her legion more than a mortal commander might, though, especially as a Dragon-Blooded general can presumably remain in command of that legion for a long, long time. Maybe I'll try approaching this from the perspective of "how does this general fight" rather than "how does the Realm fight".
 
Jarovan said:
Using different inspirations for different Houses is a good idea, and I find distinct tactics for the various Houses actually easier to picture than the tactics of a sort of 'pure', orthodox Imperial legion. Maybe dropping the idea of a typical legion and focusing on the idiosyncrasies of different legions would be the way to go, now that I think about it.
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Here was what I did with the houses that feature in my campaign, as inspiration:
House Tepet: Rome. Tepet is characterized as one of the primary "military" houses before their disastrous defeat in the North, so giving them a military system that worked really well for a really long time made sense to me. I also took cues from Roman foreign policy and have them demand tribute in the form of soldiers, who return with gold and glory to their homelands and often form the backbone of imperial support in those places.
House Peleps: Carthage. Carthage was a naval power, like Peleps, and the description of their scions as often going off on military "adventures" makes me think of Hannibal. Carthage also used huge numbers of mercenaries, which fits Peleps's wide access to Creation and makes use of the wealth they gain from running the West.
House Ragara: Imperial China. Ragara's deep pockets allow it to finance materiel-intensive warfare, which makes the legions that they furnish very dangerous. I used Ragara's legions as the "shield" of the Realm's military, frequently deploying their troops as part of loan agreements they used to draw the other houses into their orbit.

For Lookshy, I instead drew on Greek and Macedonian warfare, given that their servants are called helots, a Greek term. I don't have a high opinion on Lookshy because as written they have a lot of Sparta in them, and if you follow ACOUP you know how bad the Spartans were. It also plays into the sense of "Lookshy is doomed" that canon seems to project sometimes by giving them a military system that ultimately faltered under the Romans in the same way Lookshy might falter when war comes with the Realm.
 
eagle_II said:
Here was what I did with the houses that feature in my campaign, as inspiration:

For Lookshy, I instead drew on Greek and Macedonian warfare, given that their servants are called helots, a Greek term. I don't have a high opinion on Lookshy because as written they have a lot of Sparta in them, and if you follow ACOUP you know how bad the Spartans were. It also plays into the sense of "Lookshy is doomed" that canon seems to project sometimes by giving them a military system that ultimately faltered under the Romans in the same way Lookshy might falter when war comes with the Realm.
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Don't they also relay on a lot of Magi-teck to augment their existing forces?
 
The way Lookshy is currently written about has their first age arsenal be significant, but like, ageing and something that they guard really jealously and use conservatively. Lookshy's primary strength is having a huge number of Dragon-Blooded and a really big, professional army. There's nothing in the current material to suggest that they're doomed.
 
eagle_II said:
Here was what I did with the houses that feature in my campaign, as inspiration:
House Tepet: Rome. Tepet is characterized as one of the primary "military" houses before their disastrous defeat in the North, so giving them a military system that worked really well for a really long time made sense to me. I also took cues from Roman foreign policy and have them demand tribute in the form of soldiers, who return with gold and glory to their homelands and often form the backbone of imperial support in those places.
House Peleps: Carthage. Carthage was a naval power, like Peleps, and the description of their scions as often going off on military "adventures" makes me think of Hannibal. Carthage also used huge numbers of mercenaries, which fits Peleps's wide access to Creation and makes use of the wealth they gain from running the West.
House Ragara: Imperial China. Ragara's deep pockets allow it to finance materiel-intensive warfare, which makes the legions that they furnish very dangerous. I used Ragara's legions as the "shield" of the Realm's military, frequently deploying their troops as part of loan agreements they used to draw the other houses into their orbit.

For Lookshy, I instead drew on Greek and Macedonian warfare, given that their servants are called helots, a Greek term. I don't have a high opinion on Lookshy because as written they have a lot of Sparta in them, and if you follow ACOUP you know how bad the Spartans were. It also plays into the sense of "Lookshy is doomed" that canon seems to project sometimes by giving them a military system that ultimately faltered under the Romans in the same way Lookshy might falter when war comes with the Realm.
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Lookshy being doomed is a bit of 2e lore. I think 1e might have had it in Savant & Sorcerer. But yeah, not something in 3e mostly. Though 3e does emphasize the deterioration of the arsenal a bit more than 1e (which talks on it) and 2e (which doesn't present it as being as on the ropes).
 
Even with the deteriorated arsenal, it's not as though anyone else in the Scavenger Lands, or much of anywhere else in the setting for that matter, has the capacity to field a warstrider or anything like a fang of gunzosha unless you're squaring directly up with the Realm, and they're pretty conservative about it too.
 
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