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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Empirate" data-source="post: 5981805" data-attributes="member: 78958">Some thoughts:1. Assuming you still have some time left before the assault, maybe you could train a few of the accompanying soldiers to become magic-users of sorts? Maybe Adept 1 instead of Warrior 1? That would already help a TON since all of a sudden, your standard actions are free to do whatever you feel like, while your level 1 grunts become feasible threats, given the boatload of powerful battle wands you have.2. Your wands scream "area damage to masses of Orcs", but that won't work too well out in the open. After all, a city is a huge place, and in a fantasy world, armies don't really have an incentive to stay huddled close together. Warfare is probably more like modern war, with minimum distances between individual soldiers carefully kept, in order to minimize the impact of area effects.So you need to clump up the Orc army. This can be done using lures (groups of defenders fleeing along carefully prepared paths, while others lie in wait to make use of chokepoints), traps (seal the entrance and the exit to a road the Orcs must take, then proceed to cook them), and mass psychology (stop the front lines, and the ones in the back will likely move up, creating a bigger mass to fire your Ice Storms into).You'll still need to clean up the leadership yourselves, though.3. Divide and conquer might be your game. IF you can take out the four camps one at a time, you're good. Obviously, that depends on how far they are from each other, how well you can keep up the pretense that your city is still relatively well guarded, and how good communication between the Orc camps actually is.4. In a strategic challenge, one side completely destroying the other side is unlikely. If you can make it costly enough (or make it look costly enough) for the Orcs to gain the city, they might just say "ah, crap, let's just get out of here", and that's that. Obviously, attacking the rank-and-file, while easier, won't do it, while destroying expensive equipment and valuable assets (siege engines, leveled NPCs, magic support, supplies etc.) might work. Note that simply capturing stuff will likely make the Orcs want to get it back from you, while destroying it will frustrate them.I said killing lots of the simple grunts won't help in this regard - but it might just lower morale enough that the captains fear their troops' loyalty might be lost if the keep it up.5. Shock can be very useful, even if it doesn't do too much outright damage. Showing off your best moves all at once, burning a lot of resources just to show that you can, using lots of high-level magic might convince the Orc leadership that they're in for more than they've bargained for. This is a bit of a con act, just like the empty fort strategy. But if you couple the deterring shock with some actual damage to valuable assets...6. Is single combat between champions an option? I think Orcs would love to do this kind of thing. Maybe even a 4v4 (one Orc champion from each camp, plus four of your best). You'd probably have to impress them beforehand, though. If they think taking the city would be a piece of cake, there's not much incentive of accepting the single combat gambit. But delivering huge shock first, coupled with the realization that attacking you might be very costly, would probably make the enemy leadership more receptive to an offer of single combat.7. Can you find any timely allies? Maybe if you can teleport somewhere else and bring some powerful guys along (even if it means you owe them some in the future), you'd stand a better chance all in all.8. What about the hellholes and hauntings in your city? You probably have a pretty good idea where the trouble zones are - any chance of luring the enemy there and making use of your old problems to fend off your new problems?</blockquote>

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