We already know what happened when quality 0 militia got hit by a mass of disciplined troops...
Now it's being posited that they can somehow contain a force where the only advantage this mass of militia has is in numbers. These militia have neither the war material that their regular counterparts would've had, they have none of the training or fanaticism that made them push beyond their limitations, and to cap it off they have inferior mobility on a good sunny day, nevermind how the weather would severely worsen both their logistical tail and tactical mobility. Given their subpar performance on the defense in one of the better conditions available, such an attempt at sieging would result in rout and effective destruction due to dispersed elements being rolled up by concentrated Commonwealth forces.
Fair. Outright encirclement may be beyond their capabilities; I keep expecting to see partly-trained 1/5 units out of Blackwell sooner or later but they may not exist or be totally unavailable for this theater. As for armament, Victoria almost certainly had the reserve
infantry weapons, specifically, to arm
some of its militia (but far from all) before the war. However, the capacity to up-arm militia may be getting left for the forces fighting the Crusaders.
All this being the case, the main function of the militias is just to make it prohibitively unsafe to try deep penetration raids or break up into small penny packet forces. In
that role the weather is broadly speaking an ally of theirs.
we have taken options that have the possibility of negative outcomes, but every option presented to us in the last few choices had the possibility of negative outcomes. If you stretch the definition of reckless risk-taking to include that sort of measured approach every option is a being reckless, which admittedly does create a worrying pattern of reckless risk-taking stretching back to the start of the quest.
The part that threatens to tip things over into recklessness is the combination of
periodically taking aggressive chances, doing so for relatively modest prizes, and
refusing to recognize the times or opportunities to retreat. And, importantly, starting to treat it as a matter of moral principle that aggressive chances be taken and that retreat not be considered.
umm, yes? that was the risk I was talking about. Using a new DC modifier to try for a coin flip treaty that would have crippled victoray. That is, in fact, the ong big high-risk high reward action we have taken. I don't really see why you brought this up? We both agreed that was a high risk high reward choice. I don't really see how this in any real way touches on anything, other than taking a chance to slip in a dig at the people who voted to flip that coin.
The problem I'm presenting here is that not only was the coin flip risky, the enthusiasm with which the coin flip was embraced kind of makes a mockery of the
earlier plan, which was deviated from the moment the coin flip became available.
I'm worried about what that says about our approach to brinksmanship and pushing things in pursuit of "just one more shiny." I want us to remember this and go "let's NOT get so greedy to get the maximum amount this time"
A bit less generally, for me, the problem isn't so much "how likely further setbacks are," it's "how likely this is to work if the plan unfolds as hoped AND how likely further setbacks are." There is a moderate likelihood Blackwell has nasty surprises for us somewhere in this general region of New York, but the really big issue is that even winning a big battle here doesn't automatically guarantee that Blackwell will make or accept another treaty offer. He still doesn't
have to.
The fear that "he'll think he won and that we're soft" or whatever only counts so much in the face of that. If Blackwell can just keep refusing to offer us a treaty except when he thinks he's done something that dented our resolve, sooner or later he wins by default.
