Ye Olde Hegemony

[Retech]

The European Conflict - French Theater - The Empire Strikes Back

 

While the eyes of Europe focused on the conflict in Bruges, a militant power was rising to the west. Its powers had doubled over the past few decades, and its people were as committed to expansion and conquest as its King. This power was Spain.

 

King Ferdinand the First's speech:

 

"Soldiers, citizens, and God fearing men of Spain! We stand to do battle with our age old enemy the French! For generations the Frankish barbarians have eyed our land with greed! They want Spain to be a part of their corrupt and Godless nation. But I say no! Spain is for the Spaniards, and we will teach these Frenchmen to [cabbage] themselves with fear if they even think of crossing the Pyrenees into God's land! These French prostitute themselves out the heathens and heretics; they defy the will of the Pope and the message of God himself! And for that they must die."

 

The crowd shouted, "Santiago! Santiago! Santiago!", and raised their arms in salute of their King. The news could not travel fast enough, as the Spanish war machine rumbled over the border into France. Their blitzkrieg overwhelmed the skeleton garrison at the lone French castle on the border, taking the castle for Spain. Further, all of the French forces were either in Bruges, on the border with Bruges, or in Paris. When news finally reached the French commander at the border, he hastily marched his army towards Paris and made a defence in the city's walls.The Spanish army gobbled up the French countryside until they finally reached Paris by the end of the year, beginning the siege on the famous city.

 

(I will finish up the reports for Earth and Dungeonal in the evening, as I can't do three huge battles in succession. :thumbup:)

 

-----

 

Nex, what I do is I only use a fraction of your soldiers at a time, to compensate for the fact that they can't all carry the same arnmaent.

 

Grim, it's troublesome to look at allied plans in two different posts, as I've noticed some differences between your two posts, meaning I had to improvise. It would be nice to include them in one post in the future, so I don't miss anything

[Nero]

 

Now, Icu. If you'd be willing to negotiate some terms, I'd be willing to withdraw my troops back to Spain with no further harm done.

[Earth]

kk man. looks liek your fkd, ICU.

[Icuownage]

Oh Jesus >.>.

 

Notse to Nex, If I fall Dusty will have a budget of over 30 million. So who's the overpowered tyrant then?

 

Dusty.... How about I give you Sardina, not the IAG just the land, then there wont be a quarrel with the med cause I wont be a part of it.

[Seraphi]

Wait, why is the HRE involved in this?

[Nexaduro]

Aaand that's why we fear Dusty.

[Icuownage]

I shoulda guessed he'd attack, I put all my forces in Paris and the border of Brudges, leaving Spain open.

 

Infact it was his luck that availed, he did nothing special XD.

[Seraphi]

Note: Station more troops on the border.

[Retech]

Okay, I just figured out that I messed up with the ambush Icu set up, so it looks like Nex will be taking heavier casualties. It will be included with the batch of reports I will be doing in the evening.

 

Now for some historical parallels:

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ABv9IrGT5qs

 

----

 

To Ross, the Dutch speaking portions of the HRE (northwestern provinces) sympathise with their cultural brothers, so they sent some provincial soldiers.

[Nexaduro]

Wait, what? Why? >.>

[Nero]

So Doctor Who is not a complete loss. But then there are some shows that go completely beyond the pale of enjoyability, until they become nothing more than overwritten collections of tropes impossible to watch without groaning.

 

I think the worst offender here is the History Channel and all their programs on the so-called "World War II".

 

Let's start with the bad guys. Battalions of stormtroopers dressed in all black, check. Secret police, check. Determination to brutally kill everyone who doesn't look like them, check. Leader with a tiny villain mustache and a tendency to go into apopleptic rage when he doesn't get his way, check. All this from a country that was ordinary, believable, and dare I say it sometimes even sympathetic in previous seasons.

 

I wouldn't even mind the lack of originality if they weren't so heavy-handed about it. Apparently we're supposed to believe that in the middle of the war the Germans attacked their allies the Russians, starting an unwinnable conflict on two fronts, just to show how sneaky and untrustworthy they could be? And that they diverted all their resources to use in making ever bigger and scarier death camps, even in the middle of a huge war? Real people just aren't that evil. And that's not even counting the part where as soon as the plot requires it, they instantly forget about all the racism nonsense and become best buddies with the definitely non-Aryan Japanese.

 

Not that the good guys are much better. Their leader, Churchill, appeared in a grand total of one episode before, where he was a bumbling general who suffered an embarrassing defeat to the Ottomans of all people in the Battle of Gallipoli. Now, all of a sudden, he's not only Prime Minister, he's not only a brilliant military commander, he's not only the greatest orator of the twentieth century who can convince the British to keep going against all odds, he's also a natural wit who is able to pull out hilarious one-liners practically on demand. I know he's supposed to be the hero, but it's not realistic unless you keep the guy at least vaguely human.

 

So it's pretty standard "shining amazing good guys who can do no wrong" versus "evil legions of darkness bent on torture and genocide" stuff, totally ignoring the nuances and realities of politics. The actual strategy of the war is barely any better. Just to give one example, in the Battle of the Bulge, a vastly larger force of Germans surround a small Allied battalion and demand they surrender or be killed. The Allied general sends back a single-word reply: "Nuts!". The Germans attack, and, miraculously, the tiny Allied force holds them off long enough for reinforcements to arrive and turn the tide of battle. Whoever wrote this episode obviously had never been within a thousand miles of an actual military.

 

Probably the worst part was the ending. The British/German story arc gets boring, so they tie it up quickly, have the villain kill himself (on Walpurgisnacht of all days, not exactly subtle) and then totally switch gears to a battle between the Americans and the Japanese in the Pacific. Pretty much the same dichotomy - the Japanese kill, torture, perform medical experiments on prisoners, and frickin' play football with the heads of murdered children, and the Americans are led by a kindly old man in a wheelchair.

 

Anyway, they spend the whole season building up how the Japanese home islands are a fortress, and the Japanese will never surrender, and there's no way to take the Japanese home islands because they're invincible...and then they realize they totally can't have the Americans take the Japanese home islands so they have no way to wrap up the season.

 

So they invent a completely implausible superweapon that they've never mentioned until now. Apparently the Americans got some scientists together to invent it, only we never heard anything about it because it was "classified". In two years, the scientists manage to invent a weapon a thousand times more powerful than anything anyone's ever seen before - drawing from, of course, ancient mystical texts. Then they use the superweapon, blow up several Japanese cities easily, and the Japanese surrender. Convenient, isn't it?

 

...and then, in the entire rest of the show, over five or six different big wars, they never use the superweapon again. Seriously. They have this whole thing about a war in Vietnam that lasts decades and kills tens of thousands of people, and they never wonder if maybe they should consider using the frickin' unstoppable mystical superweapon that they won the last war with. At this point, you're starting to wonder if any of the show's writers have even watched the episodes the other writers made.

 

I'm not even going to get into the whole subplot about breaking a secret code (cleverly named "Enigma", because the writers couldn't spend more than two seconds thinking up a name for an enigmatic code), the giant superintelligent computer called Colossus (despite this being years before the transistor was even invented), the Soviet strongman whose name means "Man of Steel" in Russian (seriously, between calling the strongman "Man of Steel" and the Frenchman "de Gaulle", whoever came up with the names for this thing ought to be shot).

 

So yeah. Stay away from the History Channel. Unlike most of the other networks, they don't even try to make their stuff believable.

 

http://squid314.livejournal.com/275614.html

[Retech]

Wait, what? Why? >.>

 

I completely forgot the Bulgarian forces involved in the ambush.

[Icuownage]

Cause my plan failed, you werent meant to lose a lot more, but you got lucky we didn't get a full swing going.

 

Anywho, I really have to go now, so negotiations with France and Spain have currently gone underway but will be halted, he brings up a mildly fair deal, so it looks like France will survive.

[Nexaduro]

Okay, how stupid were they? Does all that time in Military School do nothing? What happened to the "disadvantageous terrain" protocol?

 

What was General Kyrrd doing during this?

[Nero]

What was General Kyrrd doing during this?

Belgian whores probably.

[Grim_]

In any rate Retech disregarded an entire group of my soldiers in the attack on the English so you don't have it all too bad.

[Retech]

Okay, how stupid were they? Does all that time in Military School do nothing? What happened to the "disadvantageous terrain" protocol?

 

What was General Kyrrd doing during this?

 

I'm sure that all the other situations where the Hlaupari succeeded is a testamant to the military school. Besides, the terrain wasn't bad until they got close to the enemy soldiers.

 

In any rate Retech disregarded an entire group of my soldiers in the attack on the English so you don't have it all too bad.

 

I did?

[Grim_]

Okay, how stupid were they? Does all that time in Military School do nothing? What happened to the "disadvantageous terrain" protocol?

 

What was General Kyrrd doing during this?

 

I'm sure that all the other situations where the Hlaupari succeeded is a testamant to the military school. Besides, the terrain wasn't bad until they got close to the enemy soldiers.

 

In any rate Retech disregarded an entire group of my soldiers in the attack on the English so you don't have it all too bad.

 

I did?

Group 5? (The archers)

[Retech]

Oh no, I included that in my missle fire calculations. I just didn't put them in the report because by the time they had slowly advanced near the hill, the rest of the people were retreating.

[Grim_]

Oh no, I included that in my missle fire calculations. I just didn't put them in the report because by the time they had slowly advanced near the hill, the rest of the people were retreating.

Ah sorry for the misunderstanding :oops:

[Retech]

It's okay. There is precedent for me forgetting things. :thumbup:

[Retech]

Kievan Invasion of Mongolian Poland

 

The Kievan army had been waiting and watching the Mongolian citadel, for the chance to do battle with the pillagers from the east. Three years of waiting finally came to an end when the Mongolian relief force finally arrived. It was much smaller than most predicted: only around twenty thousand strong. By comparison, the Kievan force numbered close to a hundred thousand. It had exceeded that number for a time, until the Spanish force had to head west and fight the war with France.

 

The battle began with the Mongolian force riding in a cantabrian circle, pummeling the twenty thousand pikemen that the Kievans had left for bait. Soon enough, the Kievans emerged from hiding and began firing at the Mongolian force. Ten thousand Kievan crossbowmen took a heavy toll on the Mongolian forces. However, the Mongolian commander saw that the rest of the Kievan forces were too far away to help if the Mongolians feinted an attack before striking hard against the crossbowmen.

 

What the Mongolians did not know was that the Kievan general had planned such a trap to engage the Mongols at close quarters. The Mongols made the feint and soon enough, fifteen thousand horse archers and five thousand lancers barreled towards the crossbowmen, which were arranged in two rows. The first row was protected by two thousand men at arms, who managed to hold the Mongols off. Then the second row of crossbowmen fired at the Mongols astride their horses, which made them taller than the Kievans on foot. Then, ten thousand horse crossbowmen swung around the side and shot at the Mongols from behind. Sure enough, the Mongol force suffered heavy casualties, which the small force of five hundred nobles quickly mopped up.

 

Upon entering the citadel, Kievan forces discovered that Subutai had already fled with five thousand of his best warriors back to Mongolia. His second in command surrendered the Mongolian lands in Europe to Kiev. Unfortunately, due to the nomadic nature of the Mongolians and the wartorn state of Europe, the land suffered and remains a shadow of its former glory. (+6 million to IEG)

 

Casualties:

20,000 Assorted Mongols

6000 Kievan Crossbows

4000 PAA

1000 Horse Crossbows

 

Scottish Invasion of England

 

It was almost like the last invasion, but instead of facing squabbling barons, the Scots faced a united kingdom. Over the years, Scottish threats caused the barons of the northern regions to construct a medieval version of Hadrian's wall. The Scottish army moved into the battlefield: a grassy plain with a gentle ridge where the English stood. Despite the fact that the English were outnumbered, they had the experience of many victories and plunders.

 

The Scottish general ordered a general charge across the plain, led by the Scottish knights. The skirmisher bows would form the flanks and fire at the English positions. As the Scots advanced, they took heavy fire from the English longbowmen, while the skirmisher bows could not retaliate with such power. Finally as the Scottish army got closer, the Skirmisher bows began firing, but the longbowmen began firing directly into the Scottish position, penetrating the heavy armor of the knights.

 

Finally the Scottish knights climbed over the wall, the wild axemen in tow. They were repulsed several times by the English billmen, before finally breaking through and making a foothold over the wall. As the remaining Scots crossed the wall, two thousand English knights on huge warhorses ambled into the fray, smashing through the Scottish forces. Despite fierce fighting by the Scots, the entire army was either killed or captured by the end of the day.

 

Casualties:

Entire Scottish Army

 

6000 English Billmen

500 English Knights

[Nexaduro]

Gack. Everyone gets land but me.

 

Shouldn't have invested in Greenland, it's completely worthless.

[archimage_a]

This is why, if you are not gonna attack for some years, you research something to give you a distinct advantage....

[Grim_]

The re calculated results of the ambush retech?