Board Thread:Roleplaying/@comment-17114085-20150207130230/@comment-17114085-20150211113153

Pacman the great wrote: (How are these people moving so quickly. I know we've already adressed (well, adressed in inverted commas) the issue of time, but infantry marching seventy miles in a day? Thirty miles a day is pushing it, seventy would probably kill them (figuratively).)

(I did mention in the unit card that the Forest Skirmishers could function as good light infantry.)

(I think you're overestimating the ease with which one can break a wall of pikes, especially one that is ten men deep. Their weapons are several meters long, longer than the spears the Spartans used, and quite vicous. You have to get past that wall of spears without being mullered, then engage in close quarters melee, to have a chance here. The key element is a bottleneck, and having lots of sharp sticks pointed at the enemy. The training and whatnot, though nice, is not essential.)

(Also, the skirmishers are right behind the phalanx. You have to kill all of them to roll up the flanks. To break a phalanx is hard work, and to then resist the onslaught of light infantry is harder. The men would get bogged down eventuall and not be able to fight all too well. Add this to the fact that your shield wall has been attacked from the rear, and it's going to be very hard indeed.)

(Luciun's men's charge made contact within half a minute of it coming into eyesight. Given the fact that the shield wall was engaged with killing the phalanx, and the fact that it takes time between a captain issuing an order and the order being carried out, and the fact that it takes a half minute or so to turn around and form a proper shield wall, and the fact that they were charging the rear... They should be doing a lot better than they currently are.)

(If you get shoved into a tight space, even combat with a sword is hard.)

Luciun's nobles pressed the assault on the shield wall, avoiding the problem of the shields by striking low at the enemies' relatively unprotected legs. For every man that died, the shield wall lost more and more of its formation that was critical to its success. The heavy infantry at the rear, who numbered one hundred and fifty(ish), continued the fight against the cavalry. Although they were equal in heavy infantry, the skirmishers helped turn the tide of the battle in their favour.

The infantry on the walls got decided they were unwilling to die for Falkreath.

"Give us quarter!" the commander shouted. (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.