Board Thread:Roleplaying/@comment-24696651-20160625002154/@comment-24696651-20160710190344

(The gatehouse has several gates and is pretty long - that doesn't make it wide enough for Anvil's formation to extend into it.

The fighting in the gatehouse wasn't very conclusive - the front was narrow, slowing progress, and many of Anvil's men were killed on the actual walls, where Kvatch would have had a big advantage.

Kvatch's army had four hundred or so archers at the start of the battle, with infantry from the city itself and the surrounding garrisons. It doesn't have any other types of soldiers because they would be pretty useless defending a city. I established the numbers some time ago - you should have brought them up then if you think they were incorrect.)

20th of Hearthfire

The archers in the gatehouse were unaffected by Anvil's suppressive fire, so could continue firing as much as they wanted. The archers on the walls, though suppressed, could still fire and inflict casualties on the infantry below. The infantry were pretty close to the archers, so some of the arrows were capable of puncturing the shields, and the Anvil's infantry, being in a battle, were unable to form a testudo and their shields were unable to offer full protection. The boiling oil also inflicted significant casualties, and were more or less unaffected by the shields.

Kvatch's infantry had lost a hundred men, and their archers fifty, but this was far less than Anvil - they had lost one hundred and fifty infantry, one hundred archers, twenty dragoons, and ten mages. Anvil's insistence on a direct assault through the gatehouse was funneling their men through killing grounds, and their men were, unsurprisingly, being killed as a consequence.