InvaderErl wrote...
Maybe I'm just off, but when Loghain retreats you get a nice shot of his army in the background. It looked like he had THOUSANDS of men when he pulled back, certainly more than what was in the valley with the King.
A flanking attack with that force should have made a serious difference unless it was the entire blasted Horde attacking and I didn't get that impression.
And even if casualties were heavy it would have been worth it. We know that the army was relatively freshly assembled so it wasn't as if this was all of Ferelden's might and that many of the Arls and such hadn't yet sent troops, plus Orlesian Wardens were in bound. Holding Ostagar was critical.
He did indeed seem to have a lot of troops back there.
However, even with the flanking attack, and making any difference, the people on the previous front line aren't going to automatically survive. As you say, there would likely be heavy casualties. Based on the cutscene, which is all we have to go on, are the events sequential, or happening at the same time? Loghain sees the beacon lit, and gives the order to withdraw. However, when it cuts to Cailan, is the beacon lit yet? All we know is that the beacon is lit when Duncan gets killed, but we know that because he looks up to see that it is. However, we have no idea how long it's been lit. It's entirely possible that it just got lit. We don't know. What I can tell you from checking things in the background at that time is that the battle isn't going very well. That the Ostagar forces are outnumbered is obvious, even before the battle Duncan will comment on that fact. This does not spell an automatic loss, but it doesn't bode well for the chance of success. Remember, the horde is bigger in this battle than it was in the previous battles, despite losing those battles. This means that while "endless" is probably not the correct word, the darkspawn had a lot of forces to commit to the battle.
Orlesian forces were not coming. They were turned back at the border by Loghain. The only Arl that we know didn't have troops at the battle was Eamon. While at the Denerim stage we do have a lot of human soldiers, this is the combined armies from the Civil War, and Eamon's troops. Ideally, holding at Ostagar was important. However, with the forces available, it wasn't going to be possible, even if that battle did get won, the next horde, following the pattern from the previous battle, would have been larger still, and the defenders would have been less than what we had at the last battle. Especially since the darkspawn pulled the same strategy on Ferelden's forces that had been laid out for the Ferelden troops. The darkspawn coming in through the Tower of Ishal had flanked the army of Ferelden, and now had it in a hammer and anvil.
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