I actually like what I'm hearing about Skyhold so far.
I actually think I don't want it to come under attack, unless it's the conclusion of the story. You are making the assaults, it seems, it's why you send out Cullen/Leliana/Josephine. You shouldn't need to defend yourself, you're taking the fight to the demons or what have you.
I like how it feels like a base, you can shape and mold it. I think it's everything that BioWARE wanted for Kirkwall (to evolve over time) but didn't actually do.
I actually think I don't want it to come under attack, unless it's the conclusion of the story. You are making the assaults, it seems, it's why you send out Cullen/Leliana/Josephine. You shouldn't need to defend yourself, you're taking the fight to the demons or what have you.
That's not how war works.
I hope the "decorating your castle" thing doesn't get too busy and complicated. I have a feeling that DA:I is trying to cram a ton of stuff into the game and I hope it doesn't land up being too much fluff and nonsense.
That's not how war works.
I hope the "decorating your castle" thing doesn't get too busy and complicated. I have a feeling that DA:I is trying to cram a ton of stuff into the game and I hope it doesn't land up being too much fluff and nonsense.
I wouldn't worry too much about it. It sounds like it's going to be fairly manageable.
That's not how war works.
Seeking out and attacking your opponents is not war? Wow, every siege is wrong...
Seeking out and attacking your opponents is not war? Wow, every siege is wrong...
What if it's camouflaged with the body of your enemies?I think he means that Skyhold won't be attacked...
It's not like our enemy's will just overlook the massive fortress on the mountain
If it will be an attack it will be either A. the Climax or B. Mid way point, you built the Keep to Maximum, and it gets wrecked. Or something. As far as the 'this is war part' many of the screen shots show the Skyhold, what we assume, in the middle of the mountains, which we assume to be the frostbacks...I know a lot of assumptions here. But if we are right this makes Skyhold very difficult to attack without massive resources and a good plan. Isolated, easy to defend, etc, etc, most people may not take the risk.
I find that interesting, since we effectively had our own estate or castle for all of Mass Effect, except it was a spaceship rather than any of those things.
It's not as novel as you might think.
Yes it is. I loved the normandy.
The first picture in the Game Informer article is very impressive.
It can be, and often is!
*That's not how dramatic war in a fantasy setting works
Seeking out and attacking your opponents is not war? Wow, every siege is wrong...
1) From the various images provided, it looks like Skyhold would be extremely difficult to siege, so it seems unlikely to happen.
2) If Skyhold is to be attacked, I would prefer it happen when you are present. I'd hate to randomly come home to a wrecked castle.
3) I don't know about anyone else, but I'd be pretty mad if all my hard-earned renovations all got destroyed because PLOT SAYS SO!
4) I expect the ability to fix said damage if it occurs, whether it happen mid-story or at the end. At least revert it for the playable epilogue.
1) From the various images provided, it looks like Skyhold would be extremely difficult to siege, so it seems unlikely to happen.
Why besiege the place?
Skyhold is in the mountains, yes? Food is relatively scarce up there. If you sent an army to besiege Skyhold, that army would have to be sustained on local food supplies. Good luck with that! You'd run out much faster than Skyhold's defenders - with prepositioned and hardened granaries - would. (I suppose it's an assumption that Skyhold has these things, but I think it's a reasonably safe assumption because pretty much every major fortress ever did.)
Without food to sustain a large blockading force, a besieger would likely have to try an assault. But the position appears to be an awful one: Skyhold is well fortified and in rough terrain. Success is unlikely. And failure would be disastrous: escaping from the mountains after a major, army-shattering defeat is a dicey proposition at best, compared to regions with easier terrain.
No, both of those things are silly. Instead, Skyhold can be neutralized by much more prosaic means.
Mountains are difficult to get through, and there are usually only a few major transportation arteries. Closing these lines of communication off by raiding ought to be a top priority for any enemy of the Inquisition. If Skyhold can't get messages, troops, trade, or supplies out, then the Inquisition is effectively headless - or, rather, it's still got its head, but it's choking, randomly flailing around, and rapidly losing consciousness.
The scarcity of food supply in the mountains also makes the region potentially vulnerable to raids. Destroy farm produce and attack outlying settlements. Mountain communities, more marginal than those in flatter regions, will be brought to the brink of starvation and penury. This will either lure Inquisition forces out of Skyhold - so that they can be defeated in detail, reducing the opposition - or it will dry up the Inquisition's economic and agricultural base, crippling its operations generally.
The idea here is to get the terrain to work for you, not against you.
Whether you're sieging the fortress itself or attempting to cut off it's supply lines, you have the enemy of time. As you mentioned yourself, fortresses are usually very well stocked. Traditionally and historically speaking, laying siege to a fortress is one of the hardest things a military commander is called to do. The longer it draws on, the worse the morale of the besieger. Historically speaking, there hasn't been a very successful ratio of successful sieges either. Castle sieges aren't brief, we're talking about months and months, possibly even years of attrition here depending on food stores.
If the enemy attempts to cut off the Inquisition via dedicated kill zones, then the reverse is true as well. Sieging anything in a mountain pass (let alone simply getting an army into a mountain pass) would pay havoc with the besiegers supply lines as well and there's no such thing as complete blanket of information to prevent its spread. It could be messenger pigeon, it could be secret escape tunnels. Hell, even slipping out at the dead of night.
Attacking farmlands may be the answer, but all they would have to do would be fortify some to make them unattractive targets and then the enemy would have to abandon the strategy. You can't 'sneak' in further inland because moving an army secretly is a bit of an oxymoron. You could possibly try to sneak attack with a small amount of people, but then that isn't a guarantee for success, risks exposure and since you've built your team for speed, it would be susceptible to a well timed pitch fork as well.
Whether you're sieging the fortress itself or attempting to cut off it's supply lines, you have the enemy of time. As you mentioned yourself, fortresses are usually very well stocked. Traditionally and historically speaking, laying siege to a fortress is one of the hardest things a military commander is called to do. The longer it draws on, the worse the morale of the besieger. Historically speaking, there hasn't been a very successful ratio of successful sieges either. Castle sieges aren't brief, we're talking about months and months, possibly even years of attrition here depending on food stores.
If the enemy attempts to cut off the Inquisition via dedicated kill zones, then the reverse is true as well. Sieging anything in a mountain pass (let alone simply getting an army into a mountain pass) would pay havoc with the besiegers supply lines as well and there's no such thing as complete blanket of information to prevent its spread. It could be messenger pigeon, it could be secret escape tunnels. Hell, even slipping out at the dead of night.
Attacking farmlands may be the answer, but all they would have to do would be fortify some to make them unattractive targets and then the enemy would have to abandon the strategy. You can't 'sneak' in further inland because moving an army secretly is a bit of an oxymoron. You could possibly try to sneak attack with a small amount of people, but then that isn't a guarantee for success, risks exposure and since you've built your team for speed, it would be susceptible to a well timed pitch fork as well.
Nothing beats the camp in DA O
Nothing beats the camp in DA O
Sorry? I couldn't hear you over the construction of the west wing, the marching of soldiers outside, and the raucous laughter of the members of court.
@joddi: wow, are you sure? First time I heard somebody prefering the camp site instead of the castle ^^v care to elaborate why? I'm curious
I myself can't wait for my Inq to settle in Skyhold. And knowing that the castle will reflect on perks you take it'll be just .. \(^o^)/ [*fangirl ecstatic scream*]
I think I'll be slightly prefering military a bit.. Something like 40% Military, 30% Espionage, 30% Diplomacy. Wonder what my castle will look like, though, heh..
Anybody here plans on going for Full Military or Espionage or maybe be a true peacemaker and take the Diplomat route all the way?
I'm thinking strong diplomacy with military and espionage "where appropriate." I do plan on romancing Josephine, after all, so I need her around SOME of the time.
You're half getting it, half missing the point. The idea isn't to do all this stuff while besieging Skyhold or whatever, it's to do it in lieu of a formal siege. (See literally the first sentence in my post: "Why besiege the place?") Because I totally agree: a siege is horrendously difficult, expensive, and impractical, and there are better alternatives to weaken the Inquisition. Which is, y'know, why I made the post in the first place.
The point is not to "besiege" the mountain passes, but to deny them to the Inquisition, probably via some combination of flying columns and partisan teams. There's no expectation of a total blockade this way - that would be impossible - but vastly reducing the amount of information and orders flowing to and from the seat of a continent-spanning organization is a worthy goal in itself. Even a minor disruption in communications and trade could be deadly, especially considering the marginal nature of the nascent Inquisition's organization and of the communities of the Frostback (?) Mountains, and would certainly have a disproportionate psychological effect on the Inquisition's leaders.
Getting into the nitty-gritty of responses to specific countermoves is even more pointless than my initial brainstorm, but yeah, if the Inquisition were to try to fortify outlying farms then one's operational response would have to be modified as well. It's the obvious first step toward a solution and it does make life somewhat harder for the attacker, but at the same time it disperses Inquisition force and invites defeat in detail; an attack on an outpost in overwhelming force might be an excellent opportunity to draw a large Inquisition army out of the Skyhold defenses and defeat it in detail.
But yes: the point is that the Inquisition's great military strength, a well-defended fortress in a geographically difficult region, should not be dealt with by a force-on-force collision or a formal siege, because both of those options fight to the Inquisition's strengths. The Inquisition's most obvious potential military weakness is its food supply and its communications with the rest of the world, and attacking those yields the most obvious opportunity for success.
I have zero expectation that this will actually be reflected in the game. I would be very interested, however, to learn the story reason for why that is the case.
Yeah, it was half my mistake to read your first sentence and then quote while reading the rest of it and then sort of morphing my message at the same time. However, the main point of what I was getting at was that your comment generally reads as if it's a 'sure thing' that any besieger of the area would be successful. I think an invading army could have limited success to be sure, but the keyword is limited. Practically all they could do would be a scorched earth policy, which actually may be somewhat effective long term because while the local farms are being 'rebuilt', by necessity they'd have to get stores from further away. And it would only be as 'effective' as how many farms they have access too, assuming that the Inquisition even gets to act as a homeland security force or whether they're so far above it that becomes a national security issue.
Of course, it could be a different matter entirely if the keep is besieged by the supernatural critters of the warp fade. The general rules for siege warfare could potentially go out the window entirely. You can't pour pitch on daemons demons that manifest a foot away from you as opposed to trying to bash the portcullis down.
Nothing beats the camp in DA O
We shall see, but I think Skyhold will blow that away...easily.
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