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Who Needs Harmony?: An MLP Empire Quest

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Raptor580 said:
Maybe God willing after we win this fight we send our spies in to destroy his breeding pens and whatever farms he may have to just cut him off from his resources.
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Trust me, if he's anything like the demonic RTS player he seems to be those areas are going to be some of the most heavily defended. If he loses those he loses his population growth and maintenance.

The loss of one is a setback, the loss of both is a disaster. He's going to do everything in his power to make sure that does not happen.

The only place that would be more heavily defended would be his citadel itself.
 
Evaunit02mark1 said:
Trust me, if he's anything like the demonic RTS player he seems to be those areas are going to be some of the most heavily defended. If he loses those he loses his population growth and maintenance.

The loss of one is a setback, the loss of both is a disaster. He's going to do everything in his power to make sure that does not happen.

The only place that would be more heavily defended would be his citadel itself.
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Then we send in kaboom then to blow them sky high from underneath. I know we would want to save those from the breeding pens but atleast we know they prefer death then that.
 
I do imagine these soldiers are not going to be malnourished like the fodder. Although we're the hell he is getting food i have no clue.
 
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Once we invade, we should probably do a coordinated strike, blowing up all heavily defended areas and sending in a taskforce to free all isolated/undefended crystal ponies they can find while Sombra rallies elsewhere.

As harsh as it sounds, the ponies from his breeding pens are probably too traumatized to ever recover and might prefer the oblivion of death to freedom. Though if there are separate nurseries, they'd be a priority for rescue.
 
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Seriously sucks though that we done even have our militia let alone our two allies. I think should we win this fight our allies are gonna have to take more of the brunt of the invasion we send after if we decided to.
 
Evaunit02mark1 said:
If he hasn't already slapped something like the helmets on the little tykes and turned them into adorable little suicide bombers because he knows that's the first place someone would go to try and save survivors.
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The only reason he is not using child soldiers is because there not as effective as they are in modern times were a random person with a gun could kill a Knight.
 
Revan4221X said:
The only reason he is not using child soldiers is because there not as effective as they are in modern times were a random person with a gun could kill a Knight.
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Not soldiers, traps.

The fat little maggots can eat gruel and grow into strong slaves for the empire, but the minute someone gets the brilliant idea of trying to take one out of the empire to save it, boom goes the magical dynamite.

One less easily replaceable slave, one dead irritation.
 
So our current army not counting anyone stationed at the wall is 29,062 verses what we approximate to be roughly around 100,000 again so they roughly out number us 3-1 this time as opposed to last time where it was 2-1 although hopefully the wall can make up for this but we shall see.
 
Evaunit02mark1 said:
If he hasn't already slapped something like the helmets on the little tykes and turned them into adorable little suicide bombers because he knows that's the first place someone would go to try and save survivors.
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He has no idea that we have anti-magic and can disable his regular helmets, and he doesn't have explosives. He has no reason to expect anyone to go after the nurseries as there's no way to save slaves without anti-magic, since anything else would trigger the kill-switch. If he could make the helmets explode upon death, he'd do it for his army, not the children.
 
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Raptor580 said:
So our current army not counting anyone stationed at the wall is 29,062 verses what we approximate to be roughly around 100,000 again so they roughly out number us 3-1 this time as opposed to last time where it was 2-1 although hopefully the wall can make up for this but we shall see.
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Remember, Sombre's splitting his army unequally to divide our attention as well as attempt to take multiple bases. We have no idea how he will divide his forces nor what those forces are.
 
Nachtigall said:
Once we invade, we should probably do a coordinated strike, blowing up all heavily defended areas and sending in a taskforce to free all isolated/undefended crystal ponies they can find while Sombra rallies elsewhere.

As harsh as it sounds, the ponies from his breeding pens are probably too traumatized to ever recover and might prefer the oblivion of death to freedom. Though if there are separate nurseries, they'd be a priority for rescue.
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That is not a smart move splitting your forces in enemy territory while you are invading is an easy way to lose them in detail. When we invade we need to go straight for the capital that is where the orb is and the catacombs under the city hold something he is afraid of as well. Sending out forces to safe others is not the priority stopping Sombra is. Once he is dealt with then we can start saving the ponies until then they are concerns only after the wellbeing of our troops, our allies, and stopping Sombra.
 
Adventwolf said:
Once he is dealt with then we can start saving the ponies until then they are concerns only after the wellbeing of our troops, our allies, and stopping Sombra.
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Except we can't, as the kill-switch in the helmets will kill every crystal pony if he suffers perma-death. Anyone we want to save, we have to free before his death.

Besides, I think you overestimate the size of said task force. We don't have enough Orichalcum to equip more than maybe a hundred agents with a lump, and even if they spread out to get isolated workers/couriers and each take four soldiers as protection detail, that's merely a few hundred men that can't participate in the main assault.

We're not splitting our forces, we're just sending out a detachment that's negligible in the grand conflict of ten-thousands but can save several times its own size in ponies.

Think of it as "Ravensburg does this in the background", not as a major military effort.
 
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Nachtigall said:
Except we can't, as the kill-switch in the helmets will kill every crystal pony if he suffers perma-death. Anyone we want to save, we have to free before his death.

Besides, I think you overestimate the size of said task force. We don't have enough Orichalcum to equip more than maybe a hundred agents with a lump, and even if they spread out to get isolated workers/couriers and each take four soldiers as protection detail, that's merely a few hundred men that can't participate in the main assault.
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The kill switch only is on his soldiers and most likely has a range limit. Because if it was the other way then the ponies are doomed to die out because to save enough would need a lot more than what we can spare during an invasion.
 
i wonder if him retreating will also set off the kill switch because if it doesn't we might be able to save some of the pony's after the battle. sure they may be injured or crippled but at least they won't be slaves anymore
 
Adventwolf said:
The kill switch only is on his soldiers
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:Citation Needed:

We know that every single slave has a mind control helmet:
Questor said:
The enslaved workers, mindless drones that they were, did nothing to impede or resist such an action. Once away from the roads and back at their hidden camp, they'd removed the mind control spell from their captives by simply pressing a lump of Orichalcum against their helmeted heads.
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Additionally, the reason for the kill-switch was to
Questor said:
prevent someone else from removing or overwhelming his mind control
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which applies just as well for regular slaves. So unless you have any evidence that workers don't have a kill-switch, we have to assume that everyone dies with him.


slavezero said:
i wonder if him retreating will also set off the kill switch because if it doesn't we might be able to save some of the pony's after the battle. sure they may be injured or crippled but at least they won't be slaves anymore
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Even if the kill-switch doesn't trigger, which I strongly doubt... We don't have any Orichalcum ready, and revealing its existence here would ruin one of our biggest advantages.
 
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slavezero said:
I wonder if him retreating will also set off the kill switch because if it doesn't we might be able to save some of the pony's after the battle. sure they may be injured or crippled, but at least they won't be slaves anymore
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If he retreats on his own, it will take a choice by Sombra to kill them off most likely. He might on the other hand just make them charge a fight blindly till they are killed instead as a cover for his retreat. He might also retreat with some or all his remaining forces after awhile. If with some then the same options apply if all then probably not going to kill them. It comes down to Sombra's choice.
 
I'm thinking:
[ ] Stronger Flanks
[ ] One Wall, One Order
[ ] Command and Control
[ ] Separated by War
-[ ] In the center, with orders to retreat before being overwhelmed.

Basically: be somewhat even, but get ready to let the center collapse and then pincer attack. We coordinate since we're better at that, our warrior wife fights in the weakened center and has authority to get the center to start retreating before too many die.
 
Nachtigall said:
We know that every single slave has a mind control helmet:
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The kill switch is on his soldiers it might be on the rest of the slaves we do not know we have no way to know. Because there is no way in character for us to know. We have some helmets from the ones we saved but that is it. And most of the slaves are running on autopilot instead of direct control. If there wasn't a range limit then we might as well be okay with letting the ponies all die because we don't have enough of the metal to equip teams to go out and save ponies when we are fighting they certainly won't be able to save as many as our spy teams were able to. The logistics and food needed would take that from our army when they need everything to win.
 
So... Sombra is splitting his army.

THAT'S (mostly) A GOOD THING!

After all, every single points he attacks is filled with artillery, so if he attacks more points at once it means we can actually USE more fixed artillery at once, reducing the relevance of the number disadvantage.

Now, if he believes we only have the little artillery of last time it would make sense for him to split.

After all we'd have to choose where to put them, if we even had the time to move them, and last time we had too few of them to defend multiple points.

Shame for him, but we..expanded a bit.

Questor said:
5 Mobile Ballistae
24 Cannons
10 Flame Projectors
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Yes, indeed we did. And this ^ is not counting fixed artillery!

Compared to his last attacks

Advantages

  1. We have TRUE fortifications, not improvised like last time. This is a considerable advantage.
  2. We have A LOT more ballistas and cannons (they come free with the fortresses :D ), and the walls will allow us to take true advantage of them, buying us a lot of time.
  3. This time we also had YEARS to stockpile ammunitions, and the fortresses should be full of them.
  4. We have a slightly better idea of what to expect
  5. Sombra himself will probably be weaker, if he can even fight in person so far from his phylactery (and if he can he might very well have more limited reserves/power
Disadvantages

  1. No traps
  2. No avalanche (though we MIGHT try to cause some with cannons)
  3. Multiple fronts means it will be harder to coordinate, especially in the blizzard
  4. Sombra knows at least SOME of what we have in store for him (though he might have not realized we can mass produce artillery, maybe thinking they were some kind of ancient artifact).
  5. Giant crystal monsters
  6. No militia
  7. No yaks
I'm mostly of the idea of splitting both our hero units (Garrick, Gabriella and KINGSLAYER KONRAD) and the knight orders between the three battle fronts to keep up morale.

I agree with the idea of having the dogs be the fast response unit thanks to the tunnels if possible.

I'd also add a write-in to start preparing the militia and have it move to what we believe would be his next stop if he won at the fortresses. 3 days are not enough to have them in THIS battle, but they could be ready in case we fail, just as a precaution.
Somebodynobody10 said:
Sigh
And this is why I thought people would pick the anti-magic swords posthaste.
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I still think it might not matter much. It was swords for 5 warriors, and we're against an army. We don't even know if Sombra will fight himself, or if oricalchum would work on him despite him being all smoky

I will admit it would raise the chance of survival of our elites a bit, but hopefully they should stay behind the walls.
 
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Timewinders said:
How the heck did he manage to turn up another army as big as the last one? Even after his magic was weakened by the loss of his horn?
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The numbers are the easy part since he mind controls his subjects and makes them fight beyond what they would normally do so he can skip training and recruiting. His main issue would have been equipment since we blew up his mines so presumably his soldiers would be of the lightly armored kind but it seems like he decided to just send magic monsters as his elite units instead of magic monsters plus heavy infantry.
 
As I already stated,
  1. Questor said:
    they'd removed the mind control spell from their captives by simply pressing a lump of Orichalcum against their helmeted heads.
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    Sombra uses mind control helmets on all his slaves.
    Questor said:
    prevent someone else from removing or overwhelming his mind control
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    His motivation to include a kill-switch ("they're mine any nobody will take them from me") applies to all his slaves.
    The logical conclusion is that he included the kill switch in the helmets of every crystal pony.

  2. Since freeing an unresisting target is nearly instantaneous (see first quote), a task-force of maybe 100 agents with Orichalcum lumps + a few hundred soldiers protection detail can free several times their number in workers and thus get the 5000 crystal ponies for a stable gene pool.
    Diverting about 1% of our invading army of ten-thousands to gain an inherently magical race with 1/3 spellcasters? Definitely worth it even from a purely pragmatic standpoint.
You dismissed both of my arguments because
  1. Adventwolf said:
    The kill switch is on his soldiers it might be on the rest of the slaves we do not know we have no way to know.
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    Apparently, evidence towards it isn't enough, you demand absolute proof? Rather ironic as you didn't provide a single scrap of evidence for your own position that workers don't have a kill-switch.

  2. Adventwolf said:
    we don't have enough of the metal to equip teams to go out and save ponies when we are fighting
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    Lack of Orichalcum? We mined our Orichalcum vein for five years (turns 12, 13, 14, 15, 16) and stockpiled all of it. We don't have the time to forge more than a few weapons of it, but we certainly should have more than 100 pieces.

  3. Adventwolf said:
    The logistics and food needed would take that from our army when they need everything to win.
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    Lack of food? Despite half of our country being frozen over, the agricultural improvements mean that the other half exactly makes up for it. Before the blizzard, our farming income was 1325, now it's back to 1325. Thanks @Marlin for keeping track of that, BTW.
 
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