Speculations

One on one, absolutely. A whole big line just jabbing at folks? Much more easily done.

 

I think you are underestimating the value of experience and skill. Mastering formation fighting is a very good starting point for a medieval army on earth, but even here welltrained greenhorns almost always lose badly against welltrained experienced troops.

I have not gotten the impression most land armies use packed formations. Given aoe spells its a good way to lose a lot of men. It would make sense to use looser formations, possibly warbands, that aren't as vulnerable to lucky strikes. It would cost some damage dealing capability once combat is joined, but it would spare lower the casualties from closing with the enemy. Marching in tight formation when fireballs are a thing seems impractical.

 

All that said… there is a reason why they say ‘quantity is a quality of its own’. Massively out numbered troops will inevitably lose. The better trained the larger the butchers bill, but they will still lose.

 

Indeed. Though if the welltrained troops are holding a position where numbers can't be brought to bear against them, the butchers bill from grinding them down can be considerable.

 

Very true but then we get into fatigue attrition, disease from the bodies and a host of other factors. So let’s just say that there are very few situations that a small, well trained force can win, in those situations it is easier to just starve them out

 

Same as marching then into cannon fire.

 

Small Well trained forces can be used to great effect if they have good intel such as having eyes from above. Those forces are very limited in size of action unless teamed with other units working in tandem. Those types of forces are best used independently from the main body of an army. If those troops are all you have gorilla type of fighting is your only salvation.

 

leaning a bit towards the Napoleon army structure are we? Not a lot of other options tho..

 

Well i figure building up company strength units would make a lot of sense. Richter has some 100-200 troops. If he divided them into two companies of a hundred each and divide those companies into warbands/platoons of 20-25 warriors, you'd have something decent.

Larger armies are a possibility. You just can't do the diciplined, tight formations that made professional earth armies so devestating. In effect Richter needs warriors rather than soldiers.

 

No way! Maybe colonials fighting the English. Sharp shooting from a creek bed or from behind a tree. Napoleons men were trained to run at the ranks and formations like ants in single file formation. I would wait like spider until they crossed into my web.

 

Same as I told Pokey!!

NO WAY!

Ricthers men will all fall into the smaller five man squads. Not saying that those squads won’t work together in larger groups but they will all be based on the dungeon party Ricther has already worked out. I do believe that Ricther will use his dungeon trained squads as platoons eventually if not sooner then later. They will be a rag tag lot looking much like gladiators. The only commonly equipped and uniformed will be the Sprites wearing their leather and light armor.

 

I mean Napoleons army being formed form Independent unit groups, not relying on Main Armies supplies and logistics, thus these separate battalions could move much faster than entire army and had their own supplies.

 

hmm Vietcong pretty much, with a ton of traps would be very effective

 

The British were beaten on the field of battle. Skirmishers were mostly for harassment.

I think looking at native Americans will give us a more nuanced view of nations that relied primarily on skirmishers rather than traditional armies and how they were defeated in nearly every war. The Indians were very adept at using their knowledge of the terrain to their advantage and they were generally much better at stealth than the settlers.

This allowed them to extract a heavy toll from the settlers through raids, but in most of their raids they suffered significant casualties as well, due to settlers in Indian country normally being well-armed and prepared to fight back. Sometimes they suffered greater casualties.

Often such attrition was enough to force the Indian irregulars/skirmishers to back off. When it was not, the settlers or more likely the US army would often move to destroy the Indian settlements as a way of forcing the indians to face them. The warriors would then be either fight or see their loved ones murdered. The outcome of virtually all the indian wars saw the indians suffer heavy casualities if not outright destruction, thereas the settlers paid a much smaller price.

Relying on skirmishers can work for a while if you can sustain the attrition, have a highly mobile force and no hard points you need to protect at all costs. Those things are not true for the village, they have a tiny manpower pool, forces that are in no way trained or prepared to fight as irregulars let alone highly mobile ones, and a critical hardpoint that they must hold no matter what in the village. As the kingdom grows Richter will gain more hard points that he has to defend, such as the kindir village.

Richter needs a well rounded army to do that, an army trained to operate in the land, meaning looser formations, mixed arms, etc. A few skirmishers/ scouts would be a useful addition, but they will end up playing second fiddle to the regulars just as they did historically.

 

Hmm it seems small groups harrasment is effective if enemy can't counter attack. Thus in this warfare MV either has to be sacrificable or abandonable or what ever... now probably we will have a mix of bouth gorilla and standart strainght line army.

 

The enemy can always counterattack. Even if you perfectly spring an ambush you will sometimes suffer casualties and few ambushes are perfect. In universe we know there has been some fighting in the area around the HT, where the sprites have repelled all bugbear probes but not without suffering significant casualties of their own. Despite this being on the sprites home turf, where they have all the advantages, they pay a price for attacking the bugbears.

Its a very, very effective way of harrassing the enemy and lowering their morale. Softening the enemy up before the battle is worth the cost in skirmishers/raiders. Especially if you can burn down some of their supply tents, free their horses, that sort of thing. But its not how you win.

 

Drag, I know you are well read and knowledgeable but you need to study up on General Nathanael Greene and his exploits against General Cornwallis. General Greene defeated a much larger and well supplied professional army. General Greene used river boats and calvary to his advantage keeping the enemy at bay and to hit them unsuspectingly. He was also known for splitting up his army using it tandemly to confuse the enemy as to their where abouts.

 

I agree totally! As I have argued the same point. Ranged hit and run tactics is what Ricther will have to use. Some limited surprise attacks might be effective at temporarily taking positions but Ricther likely would not be capable of holding on to those places. So he would need to deprive the enemy of as much as he possibly can. He should be capable of inflicting large numbers of casualties with taking few on his side. In time Ricther will gather enough allies and troops to make a stand. Until then he will need to use his troops like special forces in gorilla warfare.

 

I would argue enemies can’t always counter attack. They key is surprising the enemy and bringing as much force to bare as fast as possible. Then to with draw as quickly as you hit with surprise. Depriving the enemy a target or the access to reach a target is also just as critical.

 

The classic raid.

The vikings were masters of it. They regularly chipped apart countries well above their own weightclass. Surprise and mobility is as you say especially important. It can be a devastatingly effective tactic, which was proven beyond reasonable doubt during the invasions of england.

But as we've discussed the Vikings were ultimately beaten in England by king Alfred the Great of Wessex, after the fall of the other english kingdoms. He relocated much of the populace to heavily fortified trade towns, thereby preventing the vikings from easily raiding deep into the countryside unless they gathered in fairly large numbers, effectively a small army in its own right. The viking raiders, perhaps the most mobile force in the north, fared badly against the english fortifications. This was also key to the eventual wessian reconquest.


Now for me to say that you can always counter attack when ambushed was just plain wrong, no excuse. What I should have said is that the enemy can always resist, which can be costly. Sometimes they can counterattack to devestating effect. That's one reason I don't think Richter should be raiding fortresses unless he has sufficient force to sack it, its not worth the potential loss in men to harrass the bugbears a little. Temporary millitary camps are often much more vulnerable, so going for supply stores could make sense. Supply caravans are another vulnerable targetand if Richter could get to the bugbear homelands, sacking their villages would be a relatively low cost way of hurting them back. None of it will win the war, but it might slow down the bugbears.

But all of those options require Richter to have manpower. At the moment he cannot raise a sufficient garrison for the village, let alone spare a raiding force for harrassing the bugbears. What he needs, what he should have already done, is focus on turning the village into an attackers nightmare.

Stakes and walls are a good first step, but how about going training people to cast the oil spell in combination with torcch throwers? The simplest use would be to force the enemy back from the walls while the sprites rain fire from above. Even the toughest fighter will hesitate to rush into a wall of flame several feet wide in order to scamper up a wall. If done right, the bugbears coming up from behind will be pushing their own into the fire.

The best thing is that the fire tactic doesn't require men with great skill, a novice mage can cast the oil spell and a child or an elder can throw a torch.