Battle Elves

[rugor]

Originally Posted by rugor
You give me an elf or two that can cast Entangle and Fog spells (low enuf level spells) and a handful of good Archers, and I'll wipe out an entire unit of some 200+ Knights and their Priests.

This is just silly.

Well thats how it works in reality. least from my RL experiences.

A few good, well prepared men, can make mince meat out of a conventional army unit that doesn't have the advantage of air support or mobility.

Elite Knights would be nothing more than prime targets in a forest environment.

Without magic, without spells and supernatural abilities... if you dressed up 200 guys in full platemail and sent them into a heavily forested area filled with brush and vines, pitfalls and fallen trees... and gave 20 other guys Composite bows, steel tipped arrows, who are wearing nothing but cloth and leather, those 20 guys would finish off those 200 guys in platemail in less than 20 minutes... and shouldn't take one casualty.

They can outrun the guys in armor, all they have to do is stay out of reach of their swords, maces, or whatever they carry, and just keep firing away... so long as those arrows are penetrating the armor, the Knights would stand no chance.

Actually I just thought of a good RW example, Henry V, and the English longbows decimating a vastly superior force of armored french knights.

[ConjurerDragon]

Airgedok schrieb:
> This post was generated by the Birthright.net message forum.
> You can view the entire thread at:
> http://www.birthright.net/forums/showthread.php?goto=newpost&t=4131
> ...
> There are some very low level spells that allow communication over distances. Given that there are more magic users in an elven community
Is that so?
As humans are much more numerous than sidhelien than even if a lesser
percentage of them than of the sidhelien population consists of
spellcasters they still have more of them.
Not necessarily wizards but also clerics and a whole lot of all sorts of
Magicians (from the majority of the population that is unblooded).
> What!!?? Where do you get this? Mobility is far more important. Mobility is for choosing when and where you fight. Mobility forces the enemy to react instead of initiate. Mobility is the route to victory. This is such a fundemental aspect of warfare. Lack of mobility kills.
>
That depends on the situation and the adversaries. Even the highly
mobile hungarians, mongols or whoever in history have at some time been
beaten by less mobile enemies. The battle at the lechfield is an example
from my country:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lechfeld

> The schiltron was not a pretty ineffective formation. It had its limitations but was highly effective at what it was design to do. It was a tacticly defensive weapon used best to secure the flanks of a force against clavalry. If was used incorrectly as in the attack, tacticly, or used without support where archers could attack it with impunity then it didn`t do well but I could say the same with any unit. Units used in a manner that they were not design to be used in makes them weak and "ineffective."
>
The english wikipedia is far shorter and it leaves out much of the
weaker points of the schiltron as compared to the german wikipedia
entry. And even the english entry mentions that Robert the Bruce
employed it successfully in the offence -requiring highly disciplined
and experienced in formation fighting troops to be successful. The
Schiltron left those outside vulnerable to enemy cavalry and those
"heroes" that charged out of the Schiltron to pursue some enemy were
easily chased down as they left the protection of the formation. A dense
formation is pretty vulnerable to arrowfire - only against the right
enemy (the english knights and heavy cavalry) and at the right place
(e.g. chokepoints on the other side of a bridge) is it a brilliant use
of the very limited scottish resources regarding material.

> Formations have been a vital part of infantry warfare since the greeks. Something that was NOT lost in the medieval period. The saxon shield wall was so effective in the battle of hastings that if it wasn`t for Superior unit disipline the Normans would have lost. It was in fact saxons breaking unit cohesion and charging after routed normans that allowed William to counter attack and break through the saxon lines.
And that several times not only once. However important to remember is
that most of the saxon armys "soldiers" were not professional soldiers
but the fyrd and that the army had already fought a major (victorius)
battle before against vikings in the north and had done some forced
marches to reach Hastings in time.

[ConjurerDragon]

rugor schrieb:
> This post was generated by the Birthright.net message forum.
> You can view the entire thread at:
> http://www.birthright.net/forums/showthread.php?goto=newpost&t=4131
> rugor wrote:
> ...
> Well thats how it works in reality. least from my RL experiences.
>
> A few good, well prepared men, can make mince meat out of a conventional army unit that doesn`t have the advantage of air support or mobility.
> Elite Knights would be nothing more than prime targets in a forest environment.
> Without magic, without spells and supernatural abilities... if you dressed up 200 guys in full platemail and sent them into a heavily forested area filled with brush and vines, pitfalls and fallen trees... and gave 20 other guys Composite bows, steel tipped arrows, who are wearing nothing but cloth and leather, those 20 guys would finish off those 200 guys in platemail in less than 20 minutes... and shouldn`t take one casualty.
> They can outrun the guys in armor, all they have to do is stay out of reach of their swords, maces, or whatever they carry, and just keep firing away... so long as those arrows are penetrating the armor, the Knights would stand no chance.
>
An untrained real human person with a composite longbow is more likely
to hurt himself and the trees than anyone else in that situation.
Good Archers are highly trained soldiers and need regular training to
accurately hit an enemy. The english longbowmen had as far as I remember
nearly daily training when not in battle and every other sparetime
activity was even forbidden for a while in england to encourage training.
That is one of the reasons that it was several times suggested by
different people to have Archers have a longer mustering time before
they become available for fighting in BR.

The question what tactics to use is depending on the goal.
What are both parties to achieve? The archers can?t control the area as
they fire and retreat all the time and can never met the enmy in close
because that means their death.
With a 10:1 superiority and a somewhat intelligent commander the knights
would employ shields or simply stay behind a tree before advancing to
the next - no archer will have more than say 20 to 30 arrows with him so
they will run out of arrows if they fire at all possible targets and
will miss at least sometimes. Human archers in woods will probably see
the knights advance through the trees - but firing an arrow (not a gun
or crossbowbolt) through a dense forest is much more difficult than in
open terrain due to the ballistic flight curve.

[rugor]

An untrained real human person with a composite longbow is more likely
to hurt himself and the trees than anyone else in that situation.
Good Archers are highly trained soldiers and need regular training to
accurately hit an enemy. The english longbowmen had as far as I remember
nearly daily training when not in battle and every other sparetime
activity was even forbidden for a while in england to encourage training.
That is one of the reasons that it was several times suggested by
different people to have Archers have a longer mustering time before
they become available for fighting in BR.

Are you trying to make my argument for me?

We are discussing the elves' ability to make pin cushions out of knights stumbling around in a dense forest.

20 elves with elven bows, would have no problems with 200 knights in a dense forest, that the elves know well, and the knights don't.

Due to the armor the knights would be ponderously slow, and exhausted easily if on foot - on horse forward progress would become restricted if not impossible eventually, or they would be funneled into an ambush zone that they could not manuever out of...

The knights could never move faster than the elves, so they could never catch up to them. They also would have difficulty spoting their targets before they revealed themselves when loosing an arrow.

Their deaths would be certian if they persisted into the forest after their enemy.

[kgauck]

Rugor, you keep adding disabilities to the humans that should not be assumed. If you want the elves to win by definition, just say so. Then we'll know that elves should beat humans regardless of weapons, tactics, and the relative quality of the combatants.

Otherwise even with advantages, elves are not invincible. If elves are simply advantaged in quality then even with a home field advantage its possible to calculate what force should expect a reasonable victory.

[rugor]

What I'm trying to say, IMO, is no more difficult to recognize and accept, than saying ocean-faring-ships don't work to well in the mountians.

And I've given plausable examples of why Humans were able to maintain their control of coastal and plain regions, and why they would be trounced in Elven forests... which would damned sure help explain why Elves were still around at all considering they can't reproduce in numbers to validify their continued existance otherwise

If it were as simple as you claim, goblins and humans would have eradicated elves long ago... so what reasons are their that they have lasted these thousands of years against humans and humanoids?

I've even cited examples used in LoR, and touched on historical reference to the original works of Faerie and Elves.

Trying to broaden the differences between the way elves perceive things, think about things, and react to things, because of their ties to nature and magic, and because of their immortality... trying to move them further away from human/humanoid type norms rather than describe them, and their military units as equivalent to humans/humanoids.

Elves as they were meant to be, or should I say, elves as it seems to me Baker presented them, would kick the holy crap out of standard human units in an Elven forest. And IMO game mechanics should reflect that, humans entering into Elven territories should have major negatives to overcome.

[kgauck]

[Elves] would therfore have more access to magical communications. They would therfore has superior communications. Would their communications be exclusive? No but they could make it a normal part of military operations and thus be more efficent with it than their human counter parts.

I think ConjurerDragon answered this. Magical communications are just as easy for humans. But there is another important issue here. The modern mind tends to use communications in a modern way, establishing C3I. I don’t find it very interesting to have a very modern tactical situation in medieval clothing. Things could very easily devolve into having signals corps where both sides are sending messages and both sides are trying to listen to the messages of the other side. Given that this is a role playing game in a fantasy setting, isn’t it more interesting to banish the modern solution, and either develop fantastic situations or build on medieval and renaissance situations to maintain the flavor of the game setting. Magical communications that work just like radios ends up producing a game of squad leader.

What!!?? Where do you get this? Mobility is far more important. Mobility is for choosing when and where you fight. Mobility forces the enemy to react instead of initiate. Mobility is the route to victory. This is such a fundemental aspect of warfare. Lack of mobility kills.

I think this is an example of a little information being more dangerous than no information. This is only true when one side can out maneuver troops of the same type. And even then, the purpose of a mobility superiority is to create opportunities where you can outnumber an opponent, or seize advantageous terrain. Outnumbering an opponent presumes that forces are divided so that the whole of one force can concentrate on a part of another force. Medieval type forces traveled as a single group and did not break into pieces for complex operations.

If they had modern communications, they would tend to adopt modern operations, but then you have the wehrmacht in tights and a cloak. I prefer not to see elves or humans become modern armies using modern tactics and magic as a technology substitute.

Since whole forces will operate as a single large unit, mobility is significantly less important than it is in modern combat, where the goal is to travel separately and fight united. The elf advantage of mobility is just an exaggeration of the pre-existing advantage of light troops over heavy. But light troops are inferior to heavy troops because heavy troops kill their opponents far more effectively. When you enhance the advantage of light troops, you can expect that they can pull off some victories more often, but until they start to be more effective than heavy troops in close combat, all they can hope to do is delay, detour, distract, and harass the heavy troops, who, though slow, remain decisive.

Define "assembled quickly" if you are talking days to a couple weeks then yes. If you are talking hours to a day then no.

ROFL. Hours. You have got to be kidding. Try months. It takes a season to raise a small force such a single realm might organize, but it would take a full year to mobilize all of Anuire to respond to the Gorgon, or a major war with all the elves.

My definition of assembled quickly is that there is no time between assembly and use to permit training, drill, or preparation for sophisticated maneuver.

john Keegan's History of warfare is a great book that I think you should read because you have some odd ideas about warfare.

I do mean to bust your bubble, but I cited this book early in the tread. Check out post 28. Speaking of John Keegan, you should check out his Face of Battle to check out his odd ideas about the way Agincourt was fought. Don’t presume to educate me about military history.

The schiltron was not […] ineffective.

As we get into the nature of formations, its useful to make certain things clear. People fighting in groups, even the typical mob of heroic warriors, are doing so in an organized way. Homeric armies had archers, chariots, and spearmen. They attempted to coordinate each force to achieve victory. Likewise medieval forces were sensibly arranged and made use of their tools sensibly. Using obstacles, natural or man-made, is useful to any combatant, no matter how primitive.

What the formation does, is to increase combat effectiveness by substituting the cohesiveness of the unit in place of the individual prowess of the warrior. To do this, drill and training is generally required. In special circumstances, some defensive formations can be built on social cohesion of family groups (Scottish clans) or clearly defined bounded groups, like a town (Flemish) or valley (Swiss). Pointing to a shield wall or the notion of utilizing troops types in cooperation does not indicate the kind of special unit cohesion that will be sufficient to shift the balance from victory through individual champions to a victory through drill and training.

Further, it seems to me that in a game based on heroic combat, advancing through levels, and the power progression of D&D advancement, dominance will always be held by heroic leaders, especially rulers, who turn the tide of battle and win the day despite odds, terrain, tactics, and such things. Certainly its fun to make plans and make meaningful decisions, like choosing this troop type and that formation, using terrain this way, and so on. But given the historical period analogous to the setting, and the centrality of the PC, I don’t see formations, drill, and training, becoming more important than character level, feats, and mechanical player options.

Formations have been a vital part of infantry warfare since the greeks. Something that was NOT lost in the medieval period.

Its one thing to suggest that medieval, and even dark age armies, did more than just run at one another with weapons, but there is no sense here that something was lost in military discipline as the Roman empire gave way to the Germanic tribes. And that likewise with the military revolution and the study of Roman methods, that the renaissance didn’t restore something in terms of organization and discipline.

A professional army allows units to be better train and thus hold unit cohesion and unit discipline better but that is a far cry from saying a none professional army equals an armed mob.

Well this is really dependent by what we mean by mob. If you mean random violence by excited persons, then it is unfair to call medieval armies a mob. But I think it is fair to mimic the criticisms of the later era of drill that did consider medieval armies “a mob”. This is because from the point of view of a drilled unit, like a Roman Legion, a medieval army, a celtic horde, or a crowd of rioting citizens amounts to the same thing: an undisciplined mob that is only dangerous to a Roman legionary who falls out of formation.

To a medieval knight or man-at-arms their strength and vulnerability was not so connected to the body of men around them, and much more on their luck and personal skill.

[kgauck]

Elves as they were meant to be, or should I say, elves as it seems to me Baker presented them, would kick the holy crap out of standard human units in an Elven forest. And IMO game mechanics should reflect that, humans entering into Elven territories should have major negatives to overcome.

No one is arguing that. Indeed, there is a general agreement that elves have additional class levels, that their racial abilities are substantial (I'm surprised that no one has mentioned low light vision, because I always have goblins attack at dusk), and that they have built in advantages on their home turf. Indeed, the question at hand is not (and has never been) what an elven unit would do to a standard human unit in an elven forest, but rather, just how powerful would a human unit need to be, to stand toe to toe in these conditions. So for several pages, I've only been discussing the most elite human units (specifically huskarls and knights, but I presume Vos, Brecht, and Khinasi have elite units that could be just as impressive) and arguing that they are not hapless babes. I certainly have not argued that they are poised for conquest, but rather, as stated originally, able to go into the elven forest, look for trouble, and come out again having given as good as they got. That's all.

Do you think some body of elite soldiers, be they knights, huskarls, elite infantry, whatever, is capable of doing what I have described? If so, what do they look like?

I contend that the elite units could do it, but I will happily point out that no realm on the map could assemble enough elite units to fight an elf realm, and that I consider all elf units elite. I think a realm like Stjordvik could have one, maybe two huskarls. Assembling enough huskarls and elite Rjurik archers to attack an elf realm would require all of the Rjurik realms to combine for this war. I don't see that unity for any of the human nations, so the elves are unconquerable.

[Airgedok]

Airgedok schrieb:
> This post was generated by the Birthright.net message forum.
> You can view the entire thread at:
> http://www.birthright.net/forums/sho...newpost&t=4131
> ...
> There are some very low level spells that allow communication over distances. Given that there are more magic users in an elven community
Is that so?
As humans are much more numerous than sidhelien than even if a lesser
percentage of them than of the sidhelien population consists of
spellcasters they still have more of them.
Not necessarily wizards but also clerics and a whole lot of all sorts of
Magicians (from the majority of the population that is unblooded).

If magic is so common with human populations why are humans not described as magical? Why is magic used to describe the elven way of life? Why is magic more common in elven culture? If there was so many spell casters in human society why is magic something an average human is less likely to experience and see compared to an average elf? The idea that the humans have more magic but less of a percent than elves doesn't hold because of the descriptive information given about both cultures. Elves are described as magical by nature. Humans are not. We can't use non descriptive data because we are not given quantitative data. So only qualatative data is what we can use as the measure. And given that most humans will never experienced magic in their lives but Elves expeience magic as an everyday almost mundane fequency. Something that could only happen if Elves had a vastly greater pool of magic users to draw from than humans. Just because humans have three times as many different types of spellcasters, Wizards,Clerics and Magicians, doesn't mean that they have more nor does the idea that humans have far greater populations does this mean that Humans have more spell casters. Yet all the descriptions of every day human activity is not described as magical because magic is not something that humans experience. With elves the descriptions are just the opposite.

> What!!?? Where do you get this? Mobility is far more important. Mobility is for choosing when and where you fight. Mobility forces the enemy to react instead of initiate. Mobility is the route to victory. This is such a fundemental aspect of warfare. Lack of mobility kills.
>
That depends on the situation and the adversaries. Even the highly
mobile hungarians, mongols or whoever in history have at some time been
beaten by less mobile enemies. The battle at the lechfield is an example
from my country:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lechfeld

Yes that is true. But you take the exceptions and make it a norm. Most battles are won by forces that are moblie its not always the case but it is where you should place your bets as its more likely to be true. History proves that forces that are highly moblie are more likely to win against forces that are not as mobile. The fact that you point out the exceptions only strengthens my arguements.

> The schiltron was not a pretty ineffective formation. It had its limitations but was highly effective at what it was design to do. It was a tacticly defensive weapon used best to secure the flanks of a force against clavalry. If was used incorrectly as in the attack, tacticly, or used without support where archers could attack it with impunity then it didn`t do well but I could say the same with any unit. Units used in a manner that they were not design to be used in makes them weak and "ineffective."
>
The english wikipedia is far shorter and it leaves out much of the
weaker points of the schiltron as compared to the german wikipedia
entry. And even the english entry mentions that Robert the Bruce
employed it successfully in the offence -requiring highly disciplined
and experienced in formation fighting troops to be successful. The
Schiltron left those outside vulnerable to enemy cavalry and those
"heroes" that charged out of the Schiltron to pursue some enemy were
easily chased down as they left the protection of the formation. A dense
formation is pretty vulnerable to arrowfire - only against the right
enemy (the english knights and heavy cavalry) and at the right place
(e.g. chokepoints on the other side of a bridge) is it a brilliant use
of the very limited scottish resources regarding material.

How is this strengthening your arguement? Again we are talking about a NON professional army using formations in medieval warfare. Your example of "Heros" is further proof of what I have been saying units/or men that leave the strength of a formation are easy to be cut down. Sounds like you are arguing why elves will win most engagements against humans. Elves will be able to maintain unit cohesion far easier than their human counter parts because terrian does not have the same adverse effect.

> Formations have been a vital part of infantry warfare since the greeks. Something that was NOT lost in the medieval period. The saxon shield wall was so effective in the battle of hastings that if it wasn`t for Superior unit disipline the Normans would have lost. It was in fact saxons breaking unit cohesion and charging after routed normans that allowed William to counter attack and break through the saxon lines.
And that several times not only once. However important to remember is
that most of the saxon armys "soldiers" were not professional soldiers
but the fyrd and that the army had already fought a major (victorius)
battle before against vikings in the north and had done some forced
marches to reach Hastings in time.

And whats your point? The fact that the majority of teh saxon army was not a professional army Strengthens my point. It proves that formation fighting was the norm not the exception and could be executed by a non professional army. Are professional armies better? Yes but that is not the arguement. THe discussion is that medieval armies are not aremed mobs and that formations the lose cohesion and vulnerable to units that have high cohession.

[kgauck]

Most battles are won by forces that are moblie its not always the case but it is where you should place your bets as its more likely to be true. History proves that forces that are highly moblie are more likely to win against forces that are not as mobile. The fact that you point out the exceptions only strengthens my arguements.

This is simply not true. The Greeks and Romans, who won a lot of battles, were almost never the more mobile force. They were the heavier force.

Battles are won by the forces that do the most killing, and those, by far, are the heavy infantry, followed by the heavy cavalry. The mobile forces are good for pinning heavies down, while our own heavies come to get them in the spot we picked, but if left to themselves, the lights would be crushed by the heavies.

Take the Greek developments of the peltasts. When peltasts fought the phalanx alone, despite thier considerable advantage in mobility, they were always defeated. When the peltasts were advantageous is when they were accompanied by their own hoplites who did the real killing and won the battle. What the peltasts did was hold the enemy hoplites in place, tire the hoplites out before our own hoplites attacked, skirmish, scout, and surprise. But in so doing they are a force multiplier of the heavy forces, without whom, the light mobile forces are either destroyed, or driven off.

Light, mobile forces alone do not wage the kind of decisive face to face battle to the death that is the central thesis of John Keegan's A History of Warfare. To use the US Army's nomenclature, ideally one has mass and maneauver, becuase with both, you will overcome mass alone. But the question at hand is give either mass or maneauver, which is the stronger form of war, and history clearly favors mass.

If Marathon, Thermopylea, and Platea aren't good enough examples, look to the Anabasis in which the 10,000 Greek mercenaries march to the Black Sea while fighting along the way. The Persian forces, lighter, faster, in home territory, familiar with their area, could not defeat the Greeks despite their being 800 miles from home, out of contact with any friendly places, and desprived of their leader, the pretender Cyrus the Younger.