Board Thread:Roleplaying/@comment-17114085-20150207130230/@comment-24696651-20150211171953

Harold Burned-Mane wrote: (I already said that they'd reach Riverwood within the day, and it is already night so they will arrive soon.)

(They only have handaxes, which I assume you meant waraxes, as melee weapons. They wouldn't be able to form up to fill the phalanx and wouldn't be as effective as warriors with one-handed weapons and shields who can just block the Skirmishers attacks and counter with a bash then a strike. So again they wouldn't be that effective as light infantry.)

(Ten men deep? You never specified the size of the phalanx, only how many men were in it. You never said anything about its length or wideness. All you mentioned was that it was blocking the whole street, which means that it has to be at least much longer than only 10 men. Also as you've said not every one of the men in the phalanx use the same weapon, meaning that there are weak points in the formation where a soldier's weapon is either shorter than the others or heavier and thus slower. Halberds, which you said some of your Heavy Infantry are using, are two-handed weapons and thus it would leave your men slower and without a shield to protect themselves from enemy attack. That is a flaw in the formation. The Spartans for example all had shields to protect themselves from enemy attack, this is one reason that their formation was so effective.)

(Incorrect, they've already broken through the formation so they can strike at the dies without having to go through the skirmishers. The warriors are in the formation already and so all they'd have to do is have a few men in the front fight the skirmishers while the ones behind them fight the phalanx from the sides.)

(The great cavalry reached the shieldwall first, so they would've told the Thane's men about the other soldiers coming. That is just logical. So you wouldn't have caught them by surprise at all.)

(That is true, but it a lot harder to use a bow an arrow in a tight spot than a sword.)

The tactic of trying to hit the warrior's legs only came back to bite Luciun's men in the butt, as trying to strike so low left their upper body open for a bash or a counter attack. This caused just as many men to die on Luciun's side as in Riverwood's side. In total each side lost about 40 men during this debacle. This was also because only about 100 of the soldiers fighting the warriors had been heavy infantry, the rest were archers. (You only had 350 heavy inf. to begin with, 100 were in the phalanx and the other 250 went with Luciun.) The situation is now 530 v. 490 in the street.

The warriors in the west continued to strike at the phalanx from the sides while the others already past the formation were holding back the skirmishers. Another 25 men died in the west as 5 Skirmishers died and 20 from the phalanx as they were being flanked by the warriors. 15 warriors died from this however as the skirmishers were able to land a few precise hits. The situation on the street was now 505 vs. 475.

The dismounted cavalry were able to hold their own against the heavy infantry, the skirmishers as they had to be pretty close ended up giving little help. In the fighting however the heavy infantry suffered 10 losses while the cavalry suffered 20, only having 140 men left, the same as the heavy infantry in the east. The situation was now 495 vs. 455.

One of the dismounted cavalry, who was an officer, called his men to stop attacking. "You surrendering?" he asked the infantry men. Despite the fact that Whiterun and Riverwood soldiers stopped fighting those right next to the infantry were still ready to continued the attack at any moment. The archers behind those right next to the infantry, about 80 archers, pointed their arrows down towards the street bellow. From their high vantage point they could see pretty much the whole skirmish. However there were few spots that they could actually aim at that had little to no risk of hitting their own. One of those spots were the archers behind the phalanx. There were 160 of them so the Riverwood archers began to fire down at them. (If the cavalry is galloping most of the way there, and they took about half the day, then how would the infantry get there in time. They wouldn't run (infantry marches), and if they did they'd be exhausted. They'd move at about a quarter of the cavalry's speed, and thus take two days.)

(The effectiveness of phalanxes in general was down to them having a wall of sharp things pointed at the enemy. Also, you can have small shields on your arm if your using a two handed weapon. Not a very good one, but if you've got a giant spear (or indeed a halbred, which can function as a spear), they have to get past all of the spears. Aside from the whole problem of getting stabbed to death, the spear wall is quite difficult to get past, as you have to push all of the spears out of the way. Macedonian phalanxes used by Alexnader the Great were incredibly effective, conquering half of the known world, and they used two handed weapons.)

(The whole point of light infantry is that they don't fight in close order. Not much of a match against heavy infantry, but in a supporting role (as in here), or with greater numbers (as in here, as they probably number more than the heavy infantry who got through the phalanx), they can do well. They also defend using dodges rather than parries.)

(Streets aren't that wide, especially in a village. It's a street right next to the wall, not in the center, so it wouldn't have much horse traffic. Therefore, not many men would be needed to block it. It's only going to be 5-10 metres wide, which ten men could easily occupy.)

(No, the skirmishers would immediately charge forward if the line was broken. And even if they didn't, the men attacking the flanks of the phalanx would be getting attacked by the skirmishers from the side. Even if they do have light weapons, they'd have an advantage against a soldier distracted by killing someone in heavy armour. If they had a shield wall to protect against attack from skirmishers, it'd either be behind the phalanx (from their perspective), so there would be exposed points at the sides that the skirmishers can outflank, or the shield wall would be in line with the phalanx, so some of the phalangites would be attacking the shield wall, supported by skirmishers.)

(They may have been warned, but Luciun's men literally just went round the block (or whatever equivalent there is in Riverwood). The cavalry wouldn't arrive much earlier than the infantry, certainly not early enough to give appropriate warning.)

(First of all... axes. Second, how did the archers fire at my infantry if they were on a cramped wall.)

(Striking at the legs doesn't require you to duck down, particularly when you're a knight with a longsword. Secondly, by the time the infantry reacted, they'd have been stabbed in the leg. In a tight formation, it's impossible to dodge such an attack.)

The phalanx started to slowly march backward, whilst mantaining the fighting. The skirmishers did likewise, though those not in the fighting returned the fire of the archers. They fired at the ones on the edge of the wall, who would be easy to hit with their accuracy.

The commander of the regular infnatry said nothing, and merely stood there in glum silence.

Luciun's infantry attacking the shield wall, having killed most of the front rank, were now making good progress in the murder of the enemy, as the shield wall couldn't reformed properly in the fight. Those fighting the cavalry with the skirmishers continued the fight. They outnumbered them by about two to one, but roughly half were skirmishers. Still, they were killing the cavalry faster than they killed them, and would be victorious.