Remnants of Exilvania wrote:Tracian Empire wrote:Well, this is partially my fault, as I have never noticed it.
But as I said in the post above, it is perfectly feasible for Calaria to have also slowly but surely been preparing its forces. Tensions have been risiny for quite some time, and both nations are rich enough and have enough people or maintain sizeable peace time forces.
And we do have to think indeed that this is first and foremost, a medieval setting. By also taking into account the idea that the continental border between Calaria and Anselm/Arghyo is most likely a historical one, which would lead us to the assumption that the region should be heavily fortified. Castles with good fortifications, strengthened by magic.
Then how would your mercenaries have taken them that easily? Even if we only take the soldiers into account, the garrison would have the advantage. You can't just climb over the walls. Even a small garrison would be able to more or less effectively man their walls, and your element of surprise wouldn't last forever. Add the mages in and a siege becomes a rather brutal endeavor.
Granted, your attack could have taken some of the first forts, but you'd quickly lose the surprise. Yes, mercenaries are irregulars but they're still armed men, and you need to gather a lot of them in the same place in order to be able to strike. All while the first Calarian fort would have been able to warn the others.
So while you would have been able to strike some initial victories, I don't think that the entire Calarian border would be defenseless.
See, I didn't even know that. Fuck, I don't even know my own forces. I personally went with Anselm in my imagination as a nation that does not maintain an army in peacetime apart from town guard against criminals due to cost reasons. Now I know that Anselm is apparently rich enough to maintain sizeable forces even in peacetime. And now I hear about magically fortified castles for the first time. Bloody hell, the problem with fantasy settings when you have no actual clue how fantasy it is. Same with this warning. This is a attack against several forts or fortresses along the border. You btw, never specified how these warnings looked like so I imagined it to be either by horse, hence why I sent out light cavarly to circle fortresses, or by dove, hence why horse archers of the good Yazgirian stock are mong them. Now though, the question is magic since I have no clue what magic can or cannot do. You also never said anything about how integrated mages are in the armies of the countries etc.
I sent atleast one TG asking what I should be aware of when attacking Calaria. If I remember, the answers were pretty vague and could be summarized with: " You do you but don't conquer the entire nation unrealistically quickly." Granted my memory has never been the best so I can probably not hope to actually remember what was said 7+ months ago.
As I said, sorry about it. It was probably right around the period when I was really busy, so I was mostly focused on other things. But my vague reason was still somewhat right. You can do whatever tactics you want to, but you can't just go straight through such a fortified fortress without the Calarians being able to at least react.
Well, since you control the Council for the time being, it's actually your choice - but due to trade, both Calaria and Anselm are able to maintain sizeable peace time forces. There are reasons for why they wouldn't - most of their forces are made up by their own mercenaries after all, and mercenaries are difficult to control, but they would be more than able to keep them there. And my logic is that the tensions between Calaria and Anselm had been growing for a while - it would be pretty weird for the Calarians to not have any forces in the only direct continental border region they share.
And yeah, that is fantasy I suppose. But that is magic. I never properly said I suppose, but mages are everywhere. All nations have them, even if realms like the Ecclesiarchy or Achisia have/had the most of them when compared to their other forces. Considering the importance of magic though, it is easy to assume that there is at least a single mage in even the lowest of forts, and calling for help, either through one of the ways which allow mages to talk between each other from afar, or if needed, by just creating a big pile of smoke or something, is possible.
So as I said before, in my opinion, your attack could have been initially successful, you could have taken over the border forts through sheer force of surprise, as long as you still think about how specifically your men took over those forts.
Now, you have a couple bigger castles to face while the Calarians are warned. It wouldn't be fun if Calaria would just fall easily, right?
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