SHARK said:
Well, suppose that you are the commander of a powerful fortress. How would you develop it's defenses? You must be prepared for commando raids by groups of 15-40 powerful adventurers, as well as raids by enemy cavalry forces, and ultimately--a showdown with an invading Vallorean army composed of 350,000 Legionnaires!
The Valloreans are organized into thirty-five Legions, each having 10,000 Legionnaires. The Vallorean army will no doubt have plenty of supplies, engineers, extra equipment, and formidable magical support from enchanted war machines, powerful warrior-clerics, and dreaded wizards. The Valloreans can also expect to have various contingents of elves, dwarves, halflings, as well as other races and beings, including some ogres and small units of Cloud-Giants.
Amateurs study tactics, professionals study logistics.
That concentration of troops cannot possibly survive by foraging, but I'll scorch the earth just in case. Then, 350,000 legionaires will require a minimum of 700,000 pounds (over 312 tons) of food per day, probably more. (If I poison a few wells and rivers they'll need 3,500,000 pounds of water per day as well). And that's without allowing for the auxiliaries and camp followers. Or munitions, for that matter.
Before the Valloreans can attack they are going to assemble huge stockpiles of food. Grain silos explode very nicely once you set them on fire, and
Bacillus botulinus flourishes nicely in meat and preserved vegetables.
One day's supplies for the legionnaires alone is about sixty waggon-loads. And even along roads waggons move only about eight miles per day. Once the Vallorean army is 100 miles from its food dumps that means a 25-day round trip for each waggon: they will need 1500 waggons, teams of oxen or mules, drivers: plus supplies for all that livestock. How well can they defend all those waggons and bullocks on the open road?
I abandon my fortress, fall back before the advancing Vallorean army, scorching the earth as I go. My supply lines get shorter and shorter, his get longer and longer. I send werewolves and high-level parties to destroy his supplies and kill his mules and bullocks. Eventually his supply fails. I wait for his troops to get hungry, and then counter-attack.
That's how Wellington beat Napoleon's marshals in Spain, and how Kutuzov beat Napoleon himself in Russia.
ECONOMIC WARFARE AGAINST WIZARDS AND CLERICS
If is important to prevent enemy spellcasters from taking advantage of the months leading up to the assault to stock up on scrolls, potions, magical weapons, and wondrous items. So we stage surprise commando attacks against these people and their workshops and chapels. We raid stockpiles of potions, scrolls, wands, and magical arrows. We make nuisance attacks so that if thse things be distributed widely the sergeants and medics will use them up before the main event (troops are lavish in their use of
cure potions,
restorations,
cure diseases in 'peace'time and in the homeland). It might well be a good idea to concentrate on frightfulness in these raids to sap enemy
morale.
Think of assassinating clerics as being like submarine warfare against Britain.
The enemy will be depending heavily on clerics to deal with diseases, level drains, and so forth. But he can't have many who can cast
restoration,
resurrection, and the like. We ought to identify and target those who can. A program of assassinations against high-level clerics should cut down drastically on the enemy's ability to cast
Resurrection,
Restoration,
Remove Curse, &c.. Then that remaining ability can be overwhelmed by a broad campaign of assassinations, level drains, and infection with vampirism, lycanthropy, and other diseases throughout enemy territory. If we can pull this off, the enemy is going to have to let some important people lose levels, lose some almost-important people altogether, and kill a few of his own people himself. With any luck we can make a substantial numbe of his clerics themselves died permanently or for the duration, or lose enough levels that they can't cast the crucial spells. Once you can shake his people's confidence in being raised, restored, and cured or disease, having their limbs regrown you can produce the impression that invading your country will be (for the troops involved) worse than death.
OTHER THOUGHTS
It is probably important to our plan of campaign to let the enemy concentrate his army so that we can starve it without destroying too much of our own territory. But if we wanted to keep it spread out we could do so by threatening raids-in-force over scattered territories and by fomenting rebellions. Our ideal would probably be to let him concentrate the grunts but force him to spread out the high-level stiffeners. We might accomplish this by staging widespread raids of a nature that high-level heros are needed to cope with them, but of which grunts are of little use. Invasions by pairs and trios of vampire-spawn sound like about the right speed.
The high mobility of some of our forces and their high destructive output makes it attractive to think in terms of attacking mills, bridges, ships, irrigation and drainage canals, and other vital assets. It ought also to be possible to spread murrains among his livestock, blights in his crops, etc. Cut down his agricultural surplus and watch his whole empire fall apart.
If we have members of the right races among our people, it might be possible to use their weakness against the enemy. Starving troops, anybody's starving troops, will rob and kill peasants. And the enemy paladins, being racist pigs, probably wouldn't might butchering goblin and orc peasants. But if we leave a few human or halfing peasants with food in the scorched zone it might be possible to induce fighting between enemy paladins and his general troops.
As always, plan to make fighting horrific and surrender attractive. If any enemy troops surrender they ought to be disarmed, given a meal, lectured on how wicked they are to invade their neighbours' country, held overnight, and then released unharmed to eat enemy supplies and to spread the news that their comrades need not fight to the death, fate worse than death, etc. On the other hand, it is probably a good idea to tell our troops that the enemy are merciless racists intent on exterminating our kind, and that nothing can be hoped for by surrendering.
Regards,
Agback
