Dex-chan lover
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- Sep 26, 2018
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The defender's advantage is really only when the attackers aren't on even ground yet. There's only a melee on top of the walls or in a gap of the walls, and the attackers would usually have advantage in numbers. Then again, we're talking about field fortifications; unless they have some elevated ground walled with palisade which also involves moving dirt, there's no climbing of walls happening anywhere.Firstly - even that is hard enough, and then it is still only a start of an assault with still big defender's advantage.
Retreat as in just falling back into a more advantageous position in the immediate battlefield. Shoot arrows, magics, and throw stones at the approaching enemy, and then fall back before they reach the trenches. Now the enemy's formations are broken up and they have to follow you through the trenches into your traps and ambushes. Either way, you'd be fighting in more or less even ground, as the enemy can't flank you within the walls of the trenches - the enemy is bottlenecked. Heck, I bet there would be some thing about not being able to swing your weapon in tight spaces too (not that wide horizontal swinging motions are ever used in formations already). I assume the barbed wire and ranged attacks would discourage the attackers from climbing out of the trenches.What's the point if you just going to retreat before the engagement anyway? And that is in better case, if you actually engage with the enemy you'll basically deny yourself any chance to retreat fast enough.
And walls aren't the same? Defenders have to man the walls too.Because it's too hard and pointless. You won't have forces to have grasp of everything anyway. You need to pretty much single-handedly establish border service with all logistics and manpower required for that.
Strongpoint as in like a castle? Invaders can't ignore castles for the threat of being hit from behind and having their logistics cut off. Otherwise, I'm not sure what you mean by that. Walls also deny usage of cavalry all the same. If you have any such strongpoint, the enemy might take over it and use it as a stage for their next attacks just as you argued against trenches. If the setting is similar to the later middle ages, attacking with cavalry would be futile against dense infantry formations. You could probably only use cavalry when the enemy is routed.You can't surround everything, but you can give yourself strongpoint agains your enemy and give yourself counterattack opportunity. Also it was established local forces have cavalry, so denying yourself strategic opportunity makes no sense. Anyway, the trenches yet again the worst choice of defence.
I suppose if you have to build fortifications, you'd want to implement as many things as possible. Then again, perhaps even an attacker would consider undermining against palisades if they were to attempt to employ every technique available.Actually, moats were used enough even with temporary fortifications outside castles and fortresses. Not that it's the best of options (and they used combined with other forms of defence) - just one of infinite possibilities better then trenches.
The ranged attacks above ground are to force the enemy into the trenches. It's not like the defenders wouldn't employ ranged attacks in the trenches either.So you make trenches specifically so that your enemy would have cover from your ranged attacks? Doesn't it comes as counterproductive?
The castle is the Hohenzollern Castle in Swabia. The implements did seem like they would have been very effective in the middle ages, but I can't be too sure since its current state which I have seen is the 3rd construction (1800s), and was occupied by the crown prince in 1945. Since the current castle was built to impress - it was basically a showpiece. "Maze" is an exaggeration, but I think I used the more apt phrase "winding paths" to describe the path that goes through multiple gates, arrow slits, and under murder holes.Just a note here: It take into account the possibility - like every military in any time period. Noone goes with the assumption they will loose from the very beginning. Basically "if" - not "when". Also common sense tells me "maze" is highly exaggeration on your part (primarly because people lived there), but I don't know what exact castle you are talking about so never mind that.
I believe that unknowingly falling into an ambush is just incompetence and/or inexperience unless an innovation or new technology was deployed for the first time. Ambushes don't work when the enemy knows.Locals alredy have home field advantage and even the best armies can fall into ambush - that's why ambushes were made in the first place. Only idiot will make a stratedy relying solely on enemy incompetence.
If you meant "conspicuous holes in the ground" as the trenches - if the only way forward is into this weird moat, then they have no choice but to walking straight into those. If you meant pitfall traps, I would assume that the defenders would disguise the holes and maybe even show themselves passing over the trap. The difference between setting up traps on flat ground and setting them up in trenches is that you're more likely to catch enemies with them as they are funneled into them. Also, another purpose of traps is to let the defenders fall back while their pursuers are slowed down by traps. The attacks can't run through the trenches as they have to look out for traps.Ok, how can I not ridicule this? Isn't walking straight into conspicuous holes in the ground without any preparations stupid as hell? If you have time to dig trenches to disclose the location of your traps and to set up traps, wouldn't it be better to just set traps in the same place?
That depends if they were equipped with shields in the first place. At some point later in the middle ages, infantry shields were dropped in favor of two-handed weapons and partly also due to advancement in armor. Two-handed weapons are also preferred as formations and really long weapons prove effective against cavalry. You also can't climb over walls and ditches with a shield in hand. Later shields were also quite small (bucklers) and I doubt those were meant to protect the wielder from arrow fire.Shields. They tend to defend for arrowfire and don't cost much.
I was wondering why not these but barbed wire. Well, unless the spikes are densely placed, you could just walk through them. You also don't need a special tool to dig them out of the ground unless they were placed really deep. But yeah, they help.Just sharpen some poles and dig them into the ground pointing towards your enemy - tends to help.
Well, if the walls break down so easily, then the effectiveness doesn't justify the cost anymore. Walls were still built later on, but not to the same size as castle walls. Later artillery is what made tall walls obsolete.Again - cavalty was not that good at breaching any defences and the reason behind stopping building huge walls was probably more on economic side. After all, castles are expencive. Peopel still built some tall walls what withstood early artillery fire. Smolensk wall, for example.
An expeditionary force would probably be made up of professionals and regulars - all who aren't already working on the fields. Sure, there would be peasant recruits, but I doubt that they would be too many. Supporting personnel during those times were usually also just men in the rally; lieutenants (and lieutenants of lieutenants) would have been tasked to do logistics (and maybe pillaging).Never underestimate how much trouble do you need to go through for seemingly minimal movements. Well, if it was an empire with alredy working expeditionary corps at the ready - it would be probable, bu I think neighbours would have noticed it alredy. Remember that every soldier in medieval army is one less worker in the field. Not to mention even if you are going just ouside of your borders you need all kind of supporting personnel.
Marching in the spring, and then starting the siege maybe early in the summer would give you enough time before winter comes. Two or three months of no supplies coming in would be too difficult for the defenders, refugees, and an entire town. Attackers would only have to feed their soldiers, and they at least can hunt and forage even when no cattle and butter are coming their way. Well, if the field fortifications could hold the invaders for a month, then maybe having the siege last into winter just might be realistic.And the storage usually made with emergency situation in mind, so it can take long time to run out. And all this time besieging party will be on timer till reinforcement from mainland comes. That and naturally you have major forces that do basically nothing spending lots of resources while at it with less then ideal sanitary situation and probably not that good of living conditions wearing your own army much more then of your enemy. And then comes winter. Depending on climate it could become a meme for generations to come, but it's common sense you don't want to spend winter guarding some persistend bastards in the middle of nowhere, borderland. Also attackers need more forces, so they spend more resources and considering they all basically spend their time in field conditions their morale drops faster.
While an invading army would have to be larger than the garrison to stand a chance, the total size would still be smaller than the population of a town. The defenders have more mouths to feed.
Now that you mention it, I don't think the king would "get rid" of Balud, because there's a certain war maniac who would probably kill him if he did. However, he doesn't favor him enough over his other subjects that he would mobilize his personal army; instead, a rally to defense has to be called (for it to be an act of interest for the realm and not the king alone). Even then, it would be bad for Balud's renown if he gets saved by anyone, and this would probably go against the king's plans (he's probably raising an adversarial lord against dissenters) if Balud can't take all the achievements.Are you saying king will reject piece of his own lands he actually had several conflicts for just so that he could get rid of Balud? Well, while it could be possible in other situation, I really doubt it's the case here.
A frontier territory is only good for the realm as a buffer rather than of economic significance. There might have been many conflicts over it, but it was only so that the rest of the realm would be secure.
tbh, I'm on the fence about the trenches because honestly, it is a questionable implement. But I thought it would be interesting to see if it was executed well - I could think of many ways to make this work (just not a thing about limiting the range of motion with swinging weapons). The big "if" is that there is some sort of implement - like magic - that would make walls obsolete and also prevent enemies from just climbing up from 2m-deep trenches.That's where evolution of warfare comes in. If locals of that world are not stupid they unquestionabely have countermeasures for any trouble they can potentially face. Also, have we actually seen something more powerful then bolt of lightning in the series?
Oh yeah, there were also flying demons, so walls were completely useless from anything other than the main ground forces; the anti-air has to be positioned far forward to hit the flying demons before they reach the walls. The "siege engines" isn't step one - it's the main breakthrough implement. Behind the walls is the city. There is no advantage to be had by sitting on top of the walls since that would mean that they would just wait for the "giant battering rams" to get close.I mentioned before, but breaching the wall is step one, what about two through ten? But honestly, I only read Sentouin as manga so I can barely speculate on what was exact reasoning behind the raid. Could be to strike tired from marching demon avantgard before main forces join the fray and the moment of opportunity would be lost. Could be to take down "siege engines" and make it easier for themselves later on. Either way, castle walls explicidely exist so that defenders would have advantage over attackers and it makes no sense to abandon it alltogether in some desperate outing.
Either way, the city walls will still have to exist as a countermeasure against other humans; it's just that they're not good against a demon army.
yepP.S. Basically it all comes to - if the enemy has any weapon rivaling bullet fire en masse.
On a side note, a siege engine or an artillery in the form of a single person that is a mage is nothing like what the pre-modern world has ever seen. You can hide them among the standard bearers or even in the ranks. Scouts wouldn't be able to identify them from a distance. There's no way to preemptively attack them since you don't know where they are or if they're even there. And they can move really fast especially if they're on a horse. With the relative rarity of mages (the only one we've seen use a powerful magic so far is a queen) walls still have a strong case as they would deter raids and would (still) only be vulnerable to rich/powerful attackers like lords.