37 réponses à ce sujet

[tklivory]

@ SoLD: imagine using Virulent Walking Bomb in a formation. Disaster! Especially with multiple targets (assuming multiple mages, etc)

[Costin_Razvan]

Storm of the Century is not artillery. And I don't care how tight a formation is, it won't do squat against Crushing Prison, Earthquake. or Blood Control. A canister shot that bounces off your shields is not comparable to a spell that bypasses defenses, explodes you from the inside as though you'd swallowed a live grenade, then infects your companions.

The effects of both artillery and magic is the same in that they work very well to destroy tightly packed formations and anyone suggesting otherwise should read up on the Napoleonic wars on how artillery was used there to devaste tightly packed formations, does that mean said formations crumbled? Uhm no.

Formations that I might add were used for the entirety of the wars by both sides. Canister Shots do not bounce off shields, they tear right through em and kill dozens of soldiers in one go. Just because a tight formation can be destroyed by area of effect magic doesn't make that formation useless in war, and anyone who says otherwise doesn't know jack **** about warfare, be it ancient, medieval or modern.

Tight formations stopped being used by the time people developed machine guns, when a single infantryman could be just as devastating to said formations as a dozen cannons would have been only 100 years ago.

Modifié par Costin_Razvan, 10 novembre 2011 - 03:21 .

[tyrannosaur56]

my thoughts on this. pikes will be better if the army are behind the doors. at least shield your army from their arrows.
i don't understand why is cailen so stupid as not to use the fortress as part of his battle? an outnumbered army often used fortress as a line of defense. one good example, the battle of helms deep and battle if minas terith, both from lotr and of fantasy origin. to fight outnumbered on an open field is a stupid idea. also, cailen occupied ostagar, why did he not even boobytrapped the surrounding to make the battle more to his advantage?.
the dawnspawn are quite cunning in this battle as to strike from behind the lines.also, cailen's men are not really at high morale. they are fearful and contemplated desertion. compared to the darkspawn, cailen had already lost first round in the psychological warfare.
based on these mix of wrong decision and the mens morale, i doubt even pikes will ensure a sure win in this so-called skirmish as called by some.
if they fought from within the fortress and use pikes, there is still a 50-50 chance of losing but at huge cost to the darkspawn. the only reason that will cause the loss will be darkspwan attacking from behind, breaking cailen's army formation and break the men's spirit.

[Costin_Razvan]

You can't win against a massively superior force by barricading yourself inside your castle unless you have a relief force coming your way. Which is exactly what happened as Minas Tirith and Helm's Deep. Baisc Hammer and Anvil tactics, wirh the fortress the Anvil.

There is no Fereldan army coming to reinforce Ostagar, thus they either flee or give open battle or they fight a Minas Tirith type battle with no Rohirim and Army of the Dead/Southern Gondorians comming to their aid.

Modifié par Costin_Razvan, 10 novembre 2011 - 05:06 .

[Shadow of Light Dragon]

Costin_Razvan wrote...

The effects of both artillery and magic is the same in that they work very well to destroy tightly packed formations and anyone suggesting otherwise should read up on the Napoleonic wars on how artillery was used there to devaste tightly packed formations, does that mean said formations crumbled? Uhm no.
[...]

I don't think I ever said the mere presence of magic automatically made formations in battle useless, just that formations are useless when magic is turned against them in the same way that a stick of butter is helpless before a microwave. It doesn't sound like we're disagreeing on that score, but I could be wrong about that like I was wrong about canister shots.

I still stand by magic not being artillery, however. Yes, they have similar effects on the score of killing large groups in one shot, but I'm pedantic.

And no, I still don't think formations would have saved Ostagar. It was doomed. More by the writers than Loghain and Cailan.

[CBGB]

How smart are darkspawn, anyway?

Whether magic can be used as artillery or Cailan's army simply adopted Dodger's suggestion of pikes, are the darkspawn capable of varying tactics in response?

DDayDodger wrote...
 If Cailan had equipped and trained his army in the use of a long pike (i.e. the sarissa), like that of Alexander the Great or Philip II the ground he chose would have made his position virtually impregnable.

The pike was a strong step forward against cavalry, in particular, and it could be wielded by troops with relatively little training. But a highly trained force could still defeat pikesmen, as the Roman cavalry showed in an early battle against a Macedonian sarissa force.

The Macedonians deployed in a rectangle with pikes forward, but the Romans swerved to attack them from the side. Moving a twenty-foot pike to the right is easy enough with one man, but in a formation, it takes a coordinated, practiced effort, and the cavalry simply rode them down as they struggled to reorient.

If the Fereldans presented a threat to an approaching horde, whether with Walking Bombs or outstretched pikes, would the darkspawn charge blindly ahead, or would they adapt?

Modifié par CBGB, 10 novembre 2011 - 06:19 .

[Shadow of Light Dragon]

CBGB wrote...

How smart are darkspawn, anyway?

Whether magic can be used as artillery or Cailan's army simply adopted Dodger's suggestion of pikes, are the darkspawn capable of varying tactics in response?

They were smart enough to undermine the Tower of Ishal and get behind Ostagar's line of defense. The Warden is forced to fight through them to get to the beacon (late), and is overwhelmed by them shortly afterwards.

Cailan would have been fighting a two-front battle, and the rear flank of darkspawn, protected by Ostagar's walls, wouldn't have been vulnerable to Loghain's cavalry had a charge actually happened.

[Joy Divison]

Magic is supposedly rare. There would not be enough darkspawn emissaries, let alone high enough level ones with spells like virulent walking bomb and earthquake, to invalidate traditional military tactics.

Darkspawn are neither trained nor disciplined enough to counter pikes the way the Romans did vs. the Macedonians.

[tyrannosaur56]

you mentioned relief force and hammer and anvil tactics, but isn't loghain army the hammer?
even without the hammer(loghain army), fighting in the fortress is still the more superior tactics than an open field battle in this case. as you can see from the map, after ostagar, it is lothering, if the battle is not won at ostagar, there is still a chance of retreat. the kokari wild can provide ambush on the darkspawn to buy time and such.
again, i still don't understand why they never boobytrapped the area. boobytrap will help the battle alot with example of romance of three kingdom, using fire to scorchearth burn their enemy or tumbling rocks, burning oil and such.
overall, i felt cailen did not prepare well enough for this battle. and therefore, no formation can help him win.

[Costin_Razvan]

Fighting in the fortress would require Loghain and Cailan to deploy all their troops inside the fort because the flanking force that Loghain had at the Open battle would be cut to shreds otherwise.

This is not Helm's Deep where you had 2.000 Rohirim ( or 1.000 in the books with the remaining 1.000-2.000 defenders charging out ) or Minas Tirith with 6.000 expert cavalry. Hell at Helm's Deep without Aragorn the Rohirim would have perished.

The point I am trying to make is that Loghain's battle plan was for him to draw the Darkspawn in to attack, once they do they get flanked and BOTH the center and the flank push them back...a bit like Cannae, and you can't push back an enemy from inside a city...cause first you need to get out of the city and then form ranks, and forming ranks takes HOURS.

Modifié par Costin_Razvan, 11 novembre 2011 - 03:59 .

[Zaxares]

I do find it odd that polearms don't seem to be at all prevalent in Thedas, but given the presence of magic and artillery (from the qunari), defensive phalanxes probably wouldn't be a good strategy in any battle when the enemy can just blast you from a distance.

Could the Battle of Ostagar have been won with greater defensive preparations? Possibly. We're given no indication of the exact numbers of troops both sides had at their disposal, but judging by the amount of people we see during the battle, I wouldn't expect Cailan and Loghain's forces to number more than 1 or 2 thousand, at most. On the other hand, the darkspawn could have had anywhere from two to ten times that number, based on what Duncan tells you and the number of lights we see from the marching darkspawn during cutscenes.

Clever use of the terrain can equalise this factor, of course, and I don't doubt that with defensive ditches, palisades and booby traps, Cailan's forces could have probably lasted a lot longer than they did in the battle. I blame this on overconfidence on his (and possibly Loghain's) part. We aren't told how previous battles with the darkspawn went; for all we know, they may have been minor skirmishes with only a few dozen to a hundred darkspawn, and certainly not something one would bother building entrenched defenses against. So when the main bulk of the horde shows up, it may have caught the King's forces by surprise. (The fact that the darkspawn were marching through a forest makes it more difficult to properly scout and assess their numbers too.)

Finally, we must consider fatigue and exhaustion as a crippling factor for the King's forces. If you've ever been in a fight, or even just a sparring match, you'll know that fighting for longer than 10 minutes starts to become tiring. When you consider that the soldiers are also burdened by the weight of their armor and weapons, even well-trained, professional soldiers are likely to be exhausted by the time half an hour rolls by. The Battle of Ostagar probably went on for at least the entire night. With the darkspawn forces constantly pushing against the front, and the darkspawn incursion through the tunnels dug into the Tower of Ishal (remember, the Warden's party only cleans the darkspawn up to the hole and then they push up into the Tower. It wouldn't have stopped subsequent darkspawn coming up through the hole and attacking the defenders from behind their lines), it would only be a matter of time before formations fractured and the defensive line breaks. When it does, the defenders would have been quickly overwhelmed by the darkspawn's superior numbers.

[DDayDodger]

Just thinking here but all this talk of magic is excluding one thing the press of all the darkspawn. In DAO it seems that at least some form of hand gesture/staff movement is required to cast a spell or at least direct it at the person/thing you are trying to hit. Yet in the battle footage you see there is literally no room to maneuver, even less so when the horde gets bunched up along a pike wall. I know this is an example of a real world battle, and hard to apply to a world of magic, trolls etc. but look at the battle of Cannae. Hannibal essentially crushed together the Roman formation so thoroughly that it physically wasn't able to defend itself, something like getting stuck in the middle of concert where one can barely move their arms.
Also if I remember correctly the ground sort of sloped upwards to the battle ground, which would prevent smaller darkspawn such as genlocks from even seeing who they were fighting, and area of effect spells (like fireball)would hit the backs of a horde of darkspawn arranged along the slope.
Artillery like that which destroyed the bridge at Ostagar would also be ineffective. Ancient artillery (the closest comparison to what Darkspawn likely have) was horrendously innacurate, not to mention they are placed inside a forest which would limit visibility first and then prevent a lot of 'shells' from hitting their targets second. They are also firing into the backs of their own troops and there would be a good chance of friendly fire.
Finally though the Romans did manage to defeat the pike phalanxes it was only because they had degenerated to the point of uselessness by the time of the 2nd century BC. First the impoverished states of the time couldn't afford to equip large numbers of heavy cavalry anymore, which secured the flanks of the phalanx and allowed it to do its job. Second terrain was really the thing that caused the downfall of the phalanx, as the Macedonians pushed the Roman back over rocky terrain which broke apart the phalanx and the Romans exploited the gaps and got inside the phalanx, this would be a non-factor in the battle of Ostagar with its position on the open ground in front of the fortress. If you want an example of how effective a properly equipped phalangite army can be, take a look at the campaigns of Pyrrhus, he defeated the Romans twice (though at heavy cost it must be said).

Modifié par DDayDodger, 13 novembre 2011 - 11:46 .