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The Sage
Procrastinator Most High
Australia
31799 Posts |
 Posted - 13 Feb 2012 : 00:53:20
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quote:
Originally posted by Nicolai Withander
Hmm...
Could someone try to list an army that in their opinion could conquer Fearun?
How could we even conceivably attempt such, when we have no real numbers of the magical assets of opposing forces, special units, aerial forces, etc., of the various realms? |
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The Sage
Procrastinator Most High
Australia
31799 Posts |
Posted - 13 Feb 2012 : 00:55:07
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quote:
Originally posted by Nicolai Withander
But I simple cannot believe that with the right sort of classes in the army that, Fearun could not be taken!
And what prevents the opposing forces, also composed of "the right sort of classes," successfully countering an attacking army's attempt to conquer Faerûn? |
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Candlekeep - The Library of Forgotten Realms Lore
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Zhoth'ilam Folio -- The Electronic Misadventures of a Rambling Sage |
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Wooly Rupert
Master of Mischief
USA
36912 Posts |
Posted - 13 Feb 2012 : 01:37:29
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quote:
Originally posted by Nicolai Withander
For if I have taken Fearun by force there will be no living human, elf, dwarf, orc, giant, drow or dragon, cause they would have been killed in the proses of conquest. I would think? Or am I forgetting something or misunderstanding some of your points?
What's the point of killing everyone? What good is a land filled by soldiers, with no farmers to feed them, no barmaids to keep them company, and nowhere for them to spend the money they're earning on this conquest?
And how do you propose to kill every drow? Are you going to send hundreds of thousands of troops miles below the surface to kill an enemy that will have every conceivable advantage over them? |
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Ayrik
Great Reader
Canada
7989 Posts |
Posted - 13 Feb 2012 : 01:44:16
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quote:
Wooly Furball
What's the point of killing everyone? What good is a land filled by soldiers, with no farmers to feed them, no barmaids to keep them company, and nowhere for them to spend the money they're earning on this conquest?
That's a human standpoint, shared by many demihumans and perhaps even Giths and Illithids. But what you describe would be an admiral goal and something of a paradise for fiends. |
[/Ayrik] |
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Dennis
Great Reader
9933 Posts |
Posted - 13 Feb 2012 : 01:47:44
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quote:
Originally posted by Wooly Rupert
quote:
Originally posted by Nicolai Withander
For if I have taken Fearun by force there will be no living human, elf, dwarf, orc, giant, drow or dragon, cause they would have been killed in the proses of conquest. I would think? Or am I forgetting something or misunderstanding some of your points?
What's the point of killing everyone? What good is a land filled by soldiers, with no farmers to feed them, no barmaids to keep them company, and nowhere for them to spend the money they're earning on this conquest?
An attempt to conquer Faerun is welcome, and in some ways might be fun. But to make the conquerors win would most likely make the world a boring place. There's beauty in diversity. Take that away, and you'll get nothing but a boring mass of land.
quote:
Originally posted by Wooly Rupert
And how do you propose to kill every drow? Are you going to send hundreds of thousands of troops miles below the surface to kill an enemy that will have every conceivable advantage over them?
Send in an artificial "sun." |
Every beginning has an end. |
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Icelander
Master of Realmslore
1864 Posts |
Posted - 13 Feb 2012 : 02:33:27
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quote:
Originally posted by Nicolai Withander
To respond to the whole garrison part... I have got to ask, that if I have conquered the whole of Fearun or a very big part of it... I assume I would have killed most of the "soldiers" or battle ready part of a land or kingdom...
Unless you are using some other method of warfare than engaging the enemy in battle with spear, sword and spell, most assuredly not.
'Taking' a land means that you have enough military strength so that no enemy force in it can meet you in open battle and you can thus march to the capital (or build a new one whereever you like) and declare yourself the ruler of it. The most common way of finding yourself in this position is winning a battle, usually a series of them.
Battles, however, rarely cause the deaths of all the enemy soldiers. In fact, it is somewhat unusual for them to be bloody enough for the majority of them to die. In fact, the expected outcome of even a victorious battle is that the enemy army is put in a position where it is forced to withdraw, losing some of its strength in the process and leaving you in control of the field. Best case scenario, you rout the enemy, but that still means that a lot of people survive, because they ran away from the battlefield.
Even if you win all your battles with great slaughter, there will still have been lots of soldiers of the enemy who have never found themselves facing you in battle*. You might find yourself holding the heartland of the enemy, but that would leave a lot of outlying territories where there would be garrisons and to which surviving enemy soldiers could flee after you break the army to which they belong.
At some point, the enemy will stop sending armies against you. In fact, he'll not have any armies left. But among the civilian population or hiding away in difficult-to-reach regions, there will probably be a lot of former soldiers. There will also be a lot of people, who while they might not have been soldiers before you arrived, have skills useful to an insurgency, such as hunters, blacksmiths, caravan guards, adventurers, scholarly wizards, clergy, etc.
If you simply defeat an army from somewhere in Faerunian in the field and take the fortresses and cities of the nation by storm or siege, you will not have killed more than maybe 1-2% of its population. If you deliberately massacre surrendering and wounded enemies, in addition to committing genocidal slaughter on the civilians of conquered cities, you might manage 10% of the people.
Yes, it is true that among the dead, there will be a disproportionate number of the trained soldiers of the enemy nation, but even so, the odds are that at least half of them will survive even a war waged with the intention of slaughtering as many as possible. And those that survive will now be veterans of a hard campaign, be self-selected for the resourceful and self-reliant (because they made it away alive during a rout) and have little reason to like you. In fact, the more slaughter you have done and the less concern you show for the lives of the defeated populace, the better the incentive for the people there to rebel during your new reign.
Now, you have taken one nation. Your goal is to take all the nations of Faerun, of course, so whether or not you want all the people there dead or not, you don't have time to hunt down everyone, especially not if they run away when they see soldiers. This means that even if your eventual goal is to genocide everyone, you'll have to wait to do it until you have defeated the armies of everyone else. Scouring every valley, hill, forest, swamp, tunnel and highland is such tedious and time-consuming work that the rest of Faerun would have years to get over their internal differences and present a unified front. That's bad for you.
So, you'll have to march your army out of this defeated country and on to the next enemy. You'll leave behind a governor, of course, if only to justify your new title as 'Ruler of [insert your new title for the conquered land]'. And along with a governor, you really, really ought to leave a garrison, one large enough to deal with any potential uprising and preferably one large enough to effectively police the whole conquered nation, meaning that there are frequent patrols and that the laws are upheld by your men.
If you do not, you are inviting disaster. You're a foreign conqueror and depending on how thorough you were in your initial victory, you might be regarded as a genocidal monster. Even if you are not, because you took care to treat civilians and defeated soldiers fairly and mercifully**, well, if you overthrow the existing social structure, either you install a new one or you risk chaos, brigandage and the rise of uncounted new warlords*** to trouble your new land.
Sure, untrained civilians make lousy soldiers, but it doesn't take a great deal of martial training to poison or cut the throats of anyone you leave behind to govern, not if he has no garrison to protect him. Even if you leave behind a minimal force of bodyguards for the governor, how will that governor enforce his edicts? If he can't send soldiers to kill or arrest those who flout his authority, does he have any authority? Saying 'when my army gets back, you'll all be dead' is not an effective threat if you don't even have the means to check if your edicts are being followed. Not to mention that if it is established that you plan to eventually kill everyone anyway, not one has any particular reason not to rebel against you and your governor.
So, this is why you'll need garrisons for your newly conquered lands until you've defeated all the armies in Faerun. What about after that? Surely you can then use your armies to simply massacre all the civilians everywhere? Well... yes. For a given value of 'yes'. You see, it depends on what you want.
Presumably you are conquering for some reason, right? You want to exploit the resources of the land, farm the fields or something. In that case, you will need a subservient populace to do so. Land without farmers is worthless. Mines without miners don't yield minerals. There is no trade without people to buy or sell. Fighting soldiers don't produce anything and you'll still need to pay them, feed them, arm them, clothe them, etc.
Now, if you plan to import your own populace, that's just dandy. In that case, though, you'll need enough people to work all the fields of Faerun, fish all the seas around it and exploit all its resources. As it turns out, this is a lot more than 20 million.
And you'll need enough armed men to police your newly-installed people, because they'll still be fallible, greedy and quarrelsome people, as we all are. Not to mention that you'll need soldiers to defend your new populace from all the other dangers of Faerun, for which, see below.
Of course, I didn't bother to list all the practical problems inherent in genociding the 60+ million people who've survived the kinetic war part of your campaign of conquest. It ought to be obvious by now how much fun it would be to search every single nook and cranny of 14 million square miles for people who know that to be found will mean their death and who will certainly band together for mutual protection into bands of resistance fighters.
How good do you think that your fancy field army, of men-at-arms and knights, perhaps, would be at traversing unfamiliar jungles, swamps, forests, tunnels, mountains, etc.? And how much fun would it be to do it while opposed by people who have lived there all their lives and who, by now, will include among their numbers hardened ex-soldiers, fierce brigands and pretty much everyone else who was tough or resourceful enough to survive during the time of your initial invasion?
The rebels will have the best kind of motivation, i.e "Even if I don't fight, I'll still be killed, so resistance is literally the only hope of survival". They won't need legends or propaganda to convince people to join them (but they'll have a wealth of them nevertheless). By hunting down everyone and killing them, you are doing the work for them, by demonising yourself more effectively than they could ever do. Even rebels with wildly different backgrounds will have a powerful incentive to work together, because literally nothing is worse than you. After all, other rebels might have strange ways and be terrible barbarians, but they have no plans to murder everyone.
In fact, the rest of Toril will probably leap at any chance of supporting those rebels. After all, while you are busy dealing with endless insurrections in your own land, you will have no chance of deciding to invade them next. And you'll also have done more work than any diplomat could ever do in uniting all the nations of Toril. Shou Lung, Tu' Lung and probably most of the other polities on Kara-Tur will assuredly have mutual defence treaties against you. And the smaller polities will maybe even willingly submit to their rule to gain protection from you, since being controlled by an empire they know beats being massacred by the terrifying new one.
*Because they were being trained as reserves or because they were garrisoning some out of the way place. Alternatively, perhaps their commanders saw that open battle was hopeless and deliberately transformed their regular army units into guerilla forces, taking to the hills, forests, underground tunnels or any other available terrain where armies have a hard time following.
**This is actually a very sensible thing to do. On the other hand, it is extremely hard to accomplish. Armies require such a great deal of supplies that most of them will eat the land where they travel bare, leaving the locals to starve. Added to that, many humans are bastards, their murderous and sadistic instincts kept in charge only by fear of punishment. If killing or otherwise harming 'the enemy' is repercussion free, many of your men will indulge in gratutious cruelty, rapine and looting. Even if you forbid it, it is not as if your army is going to have any easy method of investigating claims of atrocities or checking that independent patrols obey the rules. Finally, even decent and honourable men may react to the stresses of warfare by violence, even when it may not be warranted. After an assault on a defended city or fortress (a notoriously scary prospect), for example, troops would often massacre the defenders and murder, rape and pillage the civilian inhabitants, even when such behaviour was clearly counterproductive and their officers had promising hanging for any troops mistreating the civilian populace. Men who under ordinary circumstances would be predisposed to like the civilian populace found themselves transported into a fighting rage by the fear of assaulting a defended breach and the horrors suffered there (losing friends, seeing the dead adn dying all around them, etc.) and performed horrible crimes in a few crazed hours.
***Commanding a mix of former soldiers who find themselves with no employer any more and a foreign enemy from whom they can easily justify stealing and people with appropriate skills or just the right mind-set recruited from among the civilian populace. In a wartorn land with no effective police or government, a lot of people will decide that they'd rather be the people with weapons who take advantage of their fellows than be among those of whom advantage is being being taken. And besides, all those warlords can claim high ideals like freedom and self-determination of their people. Some will even mean it.
quote:
Originally posted by Nicolai Withander
who am I garrisoning for??? Dragons? Giants? Well if I have taken their land... there is a good chance that I would have killed then in the proses. I acknowledge the need for garrisoning, but not for all these armies on hold. This is ofc if I have taken Fearun by force. For if I have taken Fearun by force there will be no living human, elf, dwarf, orc, giant, drow or dragon, cause they would have been killed in the proses of conquest. I would think? Or am I forgetting something or misunderstanding some of your points?
Even if you conquer all the nations on the map of Faerun, there will be lots of wilderness that you can only 'conquer' by having an army there at the current time. As soon as it leaves, you no longer control it. The mountains contain untold orcs, goblin-kin, ogres, giants and other creatures. Likewise for all the rest of the wilderness.
If you send troops everywhere, with orders to massacre all that they see, you'll have the same problems as with the rebels noted above. You'll be doing all the diplomatic work for the enemy. Even if the orcs and goblins and other creatures could not trust each other enough to form a huge army against you*, they don't need to. Each tribe could work on its own to raid you where you are weak. They'd avoid the powerful forces that you sent to scour their hiding places as much as they could, taking care to ambush you only where you had few men. They'd strike at your camps while you slept, attack your field hospitals and the groups of your Cook Brigade clergy.
And while you were searching millions of square miles of wilderness for elusive monsters who know it far better than your men, all your surviving enemies would be using the time to rearm, train new soldiers, strike at any place that you might be weak and form new alliances.
If you only have a few hundred thousand men, even if you had several million men, the cold hard fact of it is that you could only occupy a tiny fraction of the wilderness of Faerun at a time. Since large armies are not exactly stealthy or fast-moving, human and non-human refugees, brigands and rebels would not have much trouble simply staying out of the way of your armies.
You could march an army through the Stonelands for ever without ever finding all the local monsters if they didn't want to be found. And the Stonelands is just one little patch of badlands. Imagine having to do the same with all of Faerun.
Even formerly civilised lands would quickly become wilderness, with cities being a sort of urban jungle. If you don't leave garrisons, remember, there is no law anywhere and any survivors of your initial attacks have little choice but to become raiders that hide from armies and attack and rob anything weaker.
And even if you had enough men to successfully hunt down all the people and all the monsters of the surface of Faerun, you would still need to garrison everything.
Remember, there are probably more creatures living in the Underdark than live on the surface. Most of them are dangerous and many of them have armies numbering in the tens and even hundreds of thousands. Since no man (and probably no god) knows all the tunnels that lead to and from the Underdark, this means that anything from a single assassin through raiding party to an army matching your own could appear from some previously unknown tunnel. And if you were to leave large swathes of land unguarded, they would come.
If you are doing genocidal sweep-and-kills on the surface, you'll have to hunt the goblinkin into their warrens. This means that the underground populations of them will hear of your terror and have an excellent reason to band together against you. If you secure the surface, they will probably be next. You'd have underground rebels of all the races that could live in the Underdark. And they'd eventually manage to cooperate with some of the other rebels you're busily creating, not to mention your nervous neighbours.
Besides, a lot of the underground races survive or at least supplement their diet by raiding the surface. They won't stop just because there is a new ruler there.
The malevolent and intelligent subterranean races won't like the idea of a single ruler over all the surface, because that is a terrible threat for their way of life, not to mention their dreams of world conquest. Beholders, mind flayers, aboleth, duergar and drow would all hate the idea and you can rest assured that if they had a chance to strike at anything you left unprotected, they would. As soon as you started winning against the armies of the other surface powers, these races would start lending aid to your enemies, just for the real-politikal reason that they want the surface world divided, not united under a strong ruler.
The same applies with all the undersea races. They can raid your coastlines, sink your ships, steal your people, etc. A number of them, such as the sea elves, already have allegiances with surface folk, so you'd find that they were working in concert with the enemy armies, rebels and raiders throughout all your campaign to first defeat the regular armies and then massacre all the people. The others would either have purposes which are better served by not having a single empire that could some day pose a threat to them on land or they are just taking advantage of a situation where their raids will be unopposed, because there are no garrisons (the sahuagin).
Sure, these efforts would be uncoordinated and most of these races would never field a united army. But you don't need a united army to strike against an enemy who controls a lot of land and doesn't garrison any of it. For that, you just need a lot of small bands of raiders, which all the subterranean races have in plenty.
And the undersea and underground races would have the bonus joy of getting to loot all the treasures of the surface. Because, well, if you don't have any garrisons, how are you going to stop them? You can't carry everything valuable along with your armies, can you? That would slow you down to a crawl and eventually stop your advance long before you could defeat all the armies of Faerun.
Not to mention that you would have to garrison your borders. Faerun is just a part of Toril, so you'd have potential enemies along your land border with Kara-Tur and a seaborne invasion would be a possibility from almost anywhere. Not to mention the thousands of portals from which invasions from Outer Planes or elsewhere in Toril could come. And the possibility of spelljammer ships or flying enemies choosing to land anywhere you don't have a garrison.
And don't think that you wouldn't have enemies. After all, you just massacred all the people of a whole world. Any place where there are worshippers of the same gods or people who identify as the same race, you might have enemies. There would be vengeful elves on Evermeet who have allies in Realmspace, for example, and, as noted multiple times before, you would have provided all your enemies with perfect reasons to work together.
Basically, in a fantasy world, there aren't just regular 2D borders. They are three-dimensional, because attacks can come from below (under the seas, Underdark) and above (sky, Realmspace). They are also four- or five- or more- dimensionsal, because attacks can come through the Ethereal Plane, the Shadow Plane, the Astral Plane, portals or by means of some stranger magic. No place is safe, so no place where there is anything of even the smallest value for you can be left unprotected.
Mind you, in my post, I've focused on the problems that you would have to face after victory. Keep in mind, however, that all these threats would be present as soon as you invaded and that it is very likely that you would still be fighting actual armies of the familiar nations of the surface at the same time as all the new enemies that you were so busily making started to threathen you from all these unexpected directions. As bad as insurrections and raids can be, they are many, many times worse when they occur in conjunction with regular military operations and maybe even coordinated with them.
Remember, you are trying to kill everyone. People who would normally never consider even conversing civilly with each other are going to take a strong look at the possibility that anything other than you is a lesser evil. As soon as you've defeated a few nations, the rest will pretty much be allied against you by default.
And given that you would be invading at the head of an army that was highly religious in nature and that you planned to kill all the worshippers of the Faerunian pantheon, thus killing a lot of these gods, there wouldn't be a lot of constraints on the ability of the gods to take an active hand against you. Expect, at the very minimum, to see them granting their followers a wide range of divine powers to oppose you with and I would not be surprised if a lot of the more warlike gods took the field themselves against you.
The gods are not normally permitted to war against mortals, but a plan for a continent-wide genocide would probably be enough to justify you as a threat that the gods are free to use any and all means at their disposal to destroy. So you'd have to consider how you'd defeat most of the Faerunian pantheon, as well as their allies from other pantheons.
Granted, a lot of the gods wouldn't be able to cooperate very well, but I'd expect a fair number of them, certainly numbering in the scores, could get behind 'I don't think that destroying all my worshippers so that I lose my powers is a good idea and we ought to kill that guy and all his army before he does'. And then you'd be facing an allegiance led by a bunch of gods, all of whom have churches with a lot of social power that could do a lot to unite the forces of Faerun by calling for holy crusades against you and ordering all normal national, racial and religious enmities temporarily suspended for the duration of the emergency.
*Or if you simply defeated all such armies. |
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Forgotten Realms fans, please sign a petition to re-release the FR Interactive Atlas
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Edited by - Icelander on 13 Feb 2012 02:42:32 |
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Icelander
Master of Realmslore
1864 Posts |
Posted - 13 Feb 2012 : 02:41:20
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quote:
Originally posted by Ayrik
That's a human standpoint, shared by many demihumans and perhaps even Giths and Illithids. But what you describe would be an admiral goal and something of a paradise for fiends.
An empty land, with no one to grovel to them, no one to boss around, no one to terrify, to torture or to kill when one is so inclined?
It would be boring beyond description for any of the common types of fiends. |
Za uspiekh nashevo beznadiozhnovo diela!
Forgotten Realms fans, please sign a petition to re-release the FR Interactive Atlas
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Edited by - Icelander on 13 Feb 2012 02:41:59 |
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Kentinal
Great Reader
4696 Posts |
Posted - 13 Feb 2012 : 03:09:58
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Treat as an war game. Is it possible to build a force on the Realms possibly to defeat and rule all the Realms?
The odds are low. Points raise Food, there are other aspects weapon resupply (like arrows) and weapon and armor repair for weapons damaged or lost.
Depending on version a 10th level character can feed more, even if casting the same spell more then once. Have enough of them, with their combat, raise dead and battle magic if needed - the army needs no base to start from.
The question then becomes where do the force come from?
Oh there are power centers, Waterdeep, Cormyr and so on that would need to be controlled. Power centers worry about other power centers.
Solution, open portal, bring though at least 1 million clone troopers and hope their weapons work. *G* |
"Small beings can have small wisdom," the dragon said. "And small wise beings are better than small fools. Listen: Wisdom is caring for afterwards."
"Caring for afterwards ...? Ker repeated this without understanding.
"After action, afterwards," the dragon said. "Choose the afterwards first, then the action. Fools choose action first."
"Judgement" copyright 2003 by Elizabeth Moon |
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The Sage
Procrastinator Most High
Australia
31799 Posts |
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Dark Wizard
Senior Scribe
USA
830 Posts |
Posted - 13 Feb 2012 : 03:45:20
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Holy Tempus, Icelander, you put forth some thoughtful and epic posts.
To emphasize the garrison concept, if the populace doesn't respect your authority (and why would they, you just conquered them), you will need to have troop presence at any settlement or strategic point to remind them who's in charge and reinforce your claim to rulership when they forget you're in charge.
Traditional pre-industrial warfare concepts break down in a D&D fantasy world. Given enough time and resources, a group of high-level casters can gradually whittle down your force of 100K Level 4 Fighters. Even a couple of well placed fireballs or area damage spells will wipe out dozens at a time. They become essentially airstrikes and artillery barrages. Like modern warfare, forces that control an area's "airspace" have a great advantage.
This is where an invading army, even one with hundreds of high level casters is going to have trouble. It's easier for spellcasters to set up defenses than for anyone to assault it. Also accounting for feats like Sanctum Spell and Homeland Defender, there's a significant home team advantage against foreign invaders. The invading casters have to strike all their counterparts quickly. If even a few go underground, they will gradually assassinate the higher ups in the invading army.
If the invaders breaks down into full slaughter mode, numbers are still on the side of the defenders. Every natural 20 is a hit. It doesn't matter if high-level invaders are cutting down droves of people at a time, the defenders eventually roll thousands, even millions of dice, how long will their HP last? This is assuming mass frontal assaults, which aren't always the case, these are people we're talking about here, they will adapt and go for hit and run, cover, higher ground, flanking, desperate grappling.
Even if the top level 20s survive, they've lost most of their mundane army and all of the conquered peoples, they're alone in the world. No, conquering the world is a generational prospect if anything, time given to assimilate what is conquered.
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Kentinal
Great Reader
4696 Posts |
Posted - 13 Feb 2012 : 04:03:47
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| Earthquake also works to kill part of army *G* |
"Small beings can have small wisdom," the dragon said. "And small wise beings are better than small fools. Listen: Wisdom is caring for afterwards."
"Caring for afterwards ...? Ker repeated this without understanding.
"After action, afterwards," the dragon said. "Choose the afterwards first, then the action. Fools choose action first."
"Judgement" copyright 2003 by Elizabeth Moon |
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Wooly Rupert
Master of Mischief
USA
36912 Posts |
Posted - 13 Feb 2012 : 04:16:35
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quote:
Originally posted by Wooly Rupert
quote:
Originally posted by Nicolai Withander
(snip)I find the notion to conquer fearun silly, (snip)
So if you think it's a silly idea, then why bring it up in the first place, and why continue pushing the discussion?
I still want this question answered. |
Candlekeep Forums Moderator
Candlekeep - The Library of Forgotten Realms Lore
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I am the Giant Space Hamster of Ill Omen! |
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Nicolai Withander
Master of Realmslore
Denmark
1093 Posts |
Posted - 13 Feb 2012 : 10:40:22
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I LOVE IT!!! Damn that is some very insightful posts indeed. Thanks!
Its so nice to see people actually taking time to answer with some well thought... answers!
Im not realy sure what to say! Touché
Well im staring to see the problem... and the ever consuming time it would take to take all of fearun by force. I think now, that this should be done diplomatically and not by armed forces. I simply (even though I dont like to) must give in to the fact that this might be a too big area to do. But I dont like it.
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_Jarlaxle_
Senior Scribe
Germany
584 Posts |
Posted - 13 Feb 2012 : 11:56:41
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Well you wouldn't really need that many people to hold conquered areas when you would have so many characters at such an imensive high level.
You just have to eliminate all enemy high level charaters while conquering the city or region and than a 20th level cleric could hold it by himself. Because he can force every one else to obey his will.
The problem with this approch would be if there is an enemy group of high level characters (casters) left that uses scry&die tactis and eliminates that single cleric the whole city/region would be free again... |
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Kentinal
Great Reader
4696 Posts |
Posted - 13 Feb 2012 : 12:39:09
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Hey I still like the idea of clone troopers, maybe 250,000 would be all that was required, if their weapons would work, supported by a few "Capital ships" and one Death Star victory is assured. *G*
To conquer the world indeed needs treaties and diplomacy, also much time. Even with the clones it would take years to control the planet, of course it could be given up as a wasted effort and destroyed *wink*
I do not believe any of us said that it could not be done a world government. Just most of us are saying it can not be done by only an army. |
"Small beings can have small wisdom," the dragon said. "And small wise beings are better than small fools. Listen: Wisdom is caring for afterwards."
"Caring for afterwards ...? Ker repeated this without understanding.
"After action, afterwards," the dragon said. "Choose the afterwards first, then the action. Fools choose action first."
"Judgement" copyright 2003 by Elizabeth Moon |
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Artemas Entreri
Great Reader
USA
3131 Posts |
Posted - 13 Feb 2012 : 14:01:13
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quote:
Originally posted by _Jarlaxle_
Well you wouldn't really need that many people to hold conquered areas when you would have so many characters at such an imensive high level.
You just have to eliminate all enemy high level charaters while conquering the city or region and than a 20th level cleric could hold it by himself. Because he can force every one else to obey his will.
The problem with this approch would be if there is an enemy group of high level characters (casters) left that uses scry&die tactis and eliminates that single cleric the whole city/region would be free again...
1 adequately powerfull psionic would destroy this idea |
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_Jarlaxle_
Senior Scribe
Germany
584 Posts |
Posted - 13 Feb 2012 : 14:18:03
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| Why would he? |
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Artemas Entreri
Great Reader
USA
3131 Posts |
Posted - 13 Feb 2012 : 14:42:13
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quote:
Originally posted by _Jarlaxle_
Why would he?
Your plan relys on the cleric forcing the recently conquered to obey his will. Who is better at forcing others to obey their will than a psionicist? Psionicists have many mental defenses against these types of things. |
Some people have a way with words, and other people...oh, uh, not have way. -Steve Martin
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_Jarlaxle_
Senior Scribe
Germany
584 Posts |
Posted - 13 Feb 2012 : 15:11:36
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I wasn't thinking on dominating others mind or such spells but on sheer fear. It doesn't have to be a cleric (or caster), any high level character would work.
But beeing a caster makes things incredibly easier.
Someone oposes you? Desintegrate him
There is an uprising? Summon some Monsters/demons to crush them
So the high level character would put himself as a ruler of the local inhabitants, forcing the militia/military to do his bidding. The usual Level 1 to 5 characters in such organization can do nothing against this. And everyone else was eliminated during the conquering  |
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Kentinal
Great Reader
4696 Posts |
Posted - 13 Feb 2012 : 15:29:52
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If you find all the powerful foes and take them out, there is nothing preventing lower levels gaining power enough to become high level. The odds are good that many high level would sit by until what new ruler does as well. If they like would join, if opposed act to change things.
The main point I agree with, one high level certainly can be taken out by another high level. I would go further to say many low levels as a group can take out a high level. Frantics, might require 40 of which 39 die before high level is defeated. |
"Small beings can have small wisdom," the dragon said. "And small wise beings are better than small fools. Listen: Wisdom is caring for afterwards."
"Caring for afterwards ...? Ker repeated this without understanding.
"After action, afterwards," the dragon said. "Choose the afterwards first, then the action. Fools choose action first."
"Judgement" copyright 2003 by Elizabeth Moon |
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Icelander
Master of Realmslore
1864 Posts |
Posted - 13 Feb 2012 : 16:17:12
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quote:
Originally posted by _Jarlaxle_
Well you wouldn't really need that many people to hold conquered areas when you would have so many characters at such an imensive high level.
You just have to eliminate all enemy high level charaters while conquering the city or region and than a 20th level cleric could hold it by himself. Because he can force every one else to obey his will.
No, he really can't.
This is about space/time constraints. He can't impose his will on people can't doesn't know exist and he can't find. If you leave one high-level character holding a region, he is limited to exerting power over that part of it he can currently see.
No to mention that if he's alone, how will he sleep and regain spells? He can't rest, because there's no telling when someone will come and kill him. Even a child could do it if he's sleeping. |
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TBeholder
Great Reader
2482 Posts |
Posted - 13 Feb 2012 : 17:27:43
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quote:
Originally posted by Dennis
quote:
Originally posted by Wooly Rupert
And how do you propose to kill every drow? Are you going to send hundreds of thousands of troops miles below the surface to kill an enemy that will have every conceivable advantage over them?
Send in an artificial "sun."
Dunno, them drow are sneaky little besties, it may backfire. What if in about the third or fourth city they'd manage to snag the thing, then analyze it? In half a year they'd produce the first slightly modified version useable as a mythallar-like power source for their cheapskate radiation magic. After this point about the only true arcane magic they really need are sunlight protections, i.e. a handful of 1-3 level spells. This being the drow... "And that's where the trouble began". 
quote:
Originally posted by Kentinal
Hey I still like the idea of clone troopers
Already was done in Forgotten Realms. By the dwarves. Didn't end well, though. |
People never wonder How the world goes round -Helloween
And even I make no pretense Of having more than common sense -R.W.Wood
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_Jarlaxle_
Senior Scribe
Germany
584 Posts |
Posted - 13 Feb 2012 : 22:06:40
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quote:
No, he really can't.
This is about space/time constraints. He can't impose his will on people can't doesn't know exist and he can't find. If you leave one high-level character holding a region, he is limited to exerting power over that part of it he can currently see.
No to mention that if he's alone, how will he sleep and regain spells? He can't rest, because there's no telling when someone will come and kill him. Even a child could do it if he's sleeping.
Thats why I said beeing a spellcaster makes things so much easier. He can sleep in his extra warded and magic sealed place, or in some extra planar mansion or make him a lich and he doesn't need to sleep at all.
If there is some underground resitance he scries them, teleports there and crushes them.
And with the right magic items and contingencies there is nothing even hundreds of level 1 commoners can do.
But all this isn't needed imho. Because if the army conquers the city for example and places one of them as the new leader he can simply take over the local authorities after they surendered.
Even if some of the local population would resists most wouldn't really care as long as they can live their life on and most of the watchmen and soldiers will just continue to follow their chain of command after some of the higher commanders are replaced by more willing onces (and there are allways some).
When another citý/region/land is conquered the whole population isn't automatically fighting fore their lifes to cast the conquers out.
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Kentinal
Great Reader
4696 Posts |
Posted - 13 Feb 2012 : 22:24:17
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quote:
Originally posted by _Jarlaxle_
When another citý/region/land is conquered the whole population isn't automatically fighting fore their lifes to cast the conquers out.
This is the key point. If done well many will welcome new ruler, if done poorly the peasants and remaining home troops will resit. If the new reduce taxes, relax death penalty, offer pardons things have good odds or working well. Marriage to Noble family helps and so on. It is how one takes territory that has a major impact on how residents react to it.
Move in and double taxes, there will
Oh other factors come onto play, limited or no raping or looting of the people can make invader appear to be a liberator. be much resistance, move i offer lower taxes, but increase slightly each year odds are better that the area will not revolt. |
"Small beings can have small wisdom," the dragon said. "And small wise beings are better than small fools. Listen: Wisdom is caring for afterwards."
"Caring for afterwards ...? Ker repeated this without understanding.
"After action, afterwards," the dragon said. "Choose the afterwards first, then the action. Fools choose action first."
"Judgement" copyright 2003 by Elizabeth Moon |
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Dennis
Great Reader
9933 Posts |
Posted - 14 Feb 2012 : 01:39:35
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quote:
Originally posted by TBeholder
quote:
Originally posted by Dennis
quote:
Originally posted by Wooly Rupert
And how do you propose to kill every drow? Are you going to send hundreds of thousands of troops miles below the surface to kill an enemy that will have every conceivable advantage over them?
Send in an artificial "sun."
Dunno, them drow are sneaky little besties, it may backfire. What if in about the third or fourth city they'd manage to snag the thing, then analyze it? In half a year they'd produce the first slightly modified version useable as a mythallar-like power source for their cheapskate radiation magic. After this point about the only true arcane magic they really need are sunlight protections, i.e. a handful of 1-3 level spells. This being the drow... "And that's where the trouble began".
I was only joking when I said that.
But, if you'd like me to be serious about it... Well, let's see...
If somehow Nicolai gains control of the entire Abolethic Sovereignty, specially the Eldest, then he'd have no problem with the drow. To the aboleths, the drow are mere fodder. |
Every beginning has an end. |
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Icelander
Master of Realmslore
1864 Posts |
Posted - 14 Feb 2012 : 08:16:24
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quote:
Originally posted by _Jarlaxle_
Thats why I said beeing a spellcaster makes things so much easier. He can sleep in his extra warded and magic sealed place, or in some extra planar mansion or make him a lich and he doesn't need to sleep at all.
Remember that he's coming from the outside. Before he can sleep for the first night, he'll have to find a safe place. He's not the one who knows about any residual or local magic, about gates in or our of the former royal palace, about the wards already in place, etc. Nope, that advantage is with any potential rebels.
Sure, he could just find a place where there is no magic already in place and cast a few warding spells on it. But then he's leaving the already established place that has connotations of authority to any potential rival claimant. Sure, your guy is the representative of the army who defeated the armies of the last leader, but if your guy is sleeping in a cave he enchanted for safety and some treacherous vizier or a distant heir or someone else is in the palace, who are the people going to follow?
And the rival claimant in the palace might well be able to whelm the wards of that place to defend him there. Remember, it's hard to find a place in Faerun without some strong magic lying around and it is not a bad bet that a lot of magic will end up in the hands of the people in charge.
I'd say that your guy has little choice but trying to occupy whatever passes for the local palace or place of government. Which brings us back to 'how will he sleep?', because I can't imagine that discovering enough secrets about the wards, secret passages, tunnels, etc. of any self-respecting royal residence in Faerun can be done easily in one day. So how will he know that his hastily cast wards are going to be enough against any surviving royal mages (or non-royal mages with ambitions), clerics and worshippers of gods who don't like the new conquerors* or assassins and slayers who could never penetrate the full wards of the palace, but who find a spells cast over a single day a very different proposition?
Make him a lich, you say? The process of attaining lichdom takes months or years. In the meantime, what happens?
*I can't stress enough how nobody will like the new conquerors if you goal is to take over the world and it is done purely by invading from another crystal sphere with a force made up largely of clerics (thus having all the characteristics of a crudade).
quote:
Originally posted by _Jarlaxle_
If there is some underground resitance he scries them, teleports there and crushes them.
How?
Scrying has to be done at a place or individual he already knows. He can't scry 'my enemies' and expect anything useful. Sure, he could use a bunch of other spells to determine who is plotting against him first, but at some point, there is just too much information for one mind to usefully sift through it.
If a significant portion of the sentient beings in a 700 square mile radius are plotting against you, you will have extreme problems seperating the idle plotters from the dangerous ones. And if you actually control 50,000 square miles, just forget it.
Look at Cormyr, Evermeet, Mezzoberranzan or other lands on the record. Do their numerous, powerful and organised mages and clerics automatically find all dangerous plotters against their authority with scrying in Realmslore? No, they have to find most of them with traditional investigative work.
This is because using magic to find out things demands that you have some idea what you are looking for in the first place.
quote:
Originally posted by _Jarlaxle_
And with the right magic items and contingencies there is nothing even hundreds of level 1 commoners can do.
Perhaps not. But how do you know that just because you defeated the armies of the land in the field, you will have defeated every single person with adventurer levels from this land? Or that he neighbours, on whom you are now making war, will not send in some behind your lines, happily making use of the local resistance for intelligence and support?
The answer is that you can be certain that no military victory in the field will ever neutralise all the possible threats in a given geographic area.
Also, given that you would want one of these high-level priest chaps for every region on Faerun, you can't expect every single of them to have access to just the right stuff.
If each of them were to control an area the size of Greater London, you'd need 20 million of them to cover Faerun. Even if you assign them each land the size of England*, you still need almost 300.
Unless you mean to prepare for your invasion by having them all enchant their own suite of 'just the right stuff'**, you're going to have to accept that there is a limited supply of each kind of magic item. Sure, there's a lot of magic in the world. But for every right kind of protective item, there is probably a lot of utility items, offensive ones, etc.
*I shouldn't have to tell you that in this case, each of them is ruling in name only. Anyone not living within walking distance from your scary high-level cleric is able to ignore him and any edicts he might give out, just because your cleric will never even hear of their disobedience.
**In which case, expect the gods and epic mortals of Faerun to know about your potential invasion several years before you launch it.
quote:
Originally posted by _Jarlaxle_
But all this isn't needed imho. Because if the army conquers the city for example and places one of them as the new leader he can simply take over the local authorities after they surendered.
Even if some of the local population would resists most wouldn't really care as long as they can live their life on and most of the watchmen and soldiers will just continue to follow their chain of command after some of the higher commanders are replaced by more willing onces (and there are allways some).
For a program of limited conquest, where the new rulers are given time to consolidate their power, this is accurate.
When invading at the head of an army set to take over all Faerun, however, it is not. Remember, all the nations that you will one day invade are also your enemies. And whereas you are an outsider with no knowledge of the local politics, they'll have spies and agent-provocateurs already in place.
You'd have rebellions, because the nations you were invading next would make sure that you would. Also, when there is a religious component to warfare*, there will often be some ideological opposition to the new rule.
*Of which you've made sure, having your local governors be powerful representatives of the god you serve.
quote:
Originally posted by _Jarlaxle_
When another citý/region/land is conquered the whole population isn't automatically fighting fore their lifes to cast the conquers out.
Unfortunately, the plan here isn't for limited conquest. It is for total dominance of everywhere, led by priests and thus having the character of religious war.
All the gods that aren't a part of your theocratic people will register your army as a threat. All the diviners who live anywhere you plan to invade (meaning, all of Faerun) have a good possibility of detecting you. And, given how many of your men would have to know at least something about your plans, it isn't exactly something that could be hidden from epic-level diviners or epic-level priests, let alone the gods.
So, at some point, probably before you invade, but at the very least, after you've conquered the first land or two, the gods will send messages to their clergy and the powerful of Faerun will confer and everyone will know what you intend.
Since success on your part will lead to every god not represented among your priests* suffering massive reduction in power or possibly even being destroyed, everyone who is religious will be exhorted to resist your forces at every turn and provide you with no assistance. Everyone who has a sentimental attachment for any nation on Faerun will know that only by resisting you can he preserve that nation in its current form. And the whole of Faerun's powerful, good, neutral and evil, will be busily working against you, mostly behind the scenes, marshalling secret allegiances against you and stirring rebellion in the places you have already conquered.
*Given that Faerunian gods are discouraged from all-out attempts to destroy all other gods (if only by the certainty that the other gods would band together against such attempts), you would probably have to get your divine power from somewhere else. Which means that the Faerunian gods would be united against you. |
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Nicolai Withander
Master of Realmslore
Denmark
1093 Posts |
Posted - 14 Feb 2012 : 10:17:23
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quote:
Given that Faerunian gods are discouraged from all-out attempts to destroy all other gods (if only by the certainty that the other gods would band together against such attempts), you would probably have to get your divine power from somewhere else. Which means that the Faerunian gods would be united against you.
Are they realy that mortal in mind that they would intervene? I would se them more s observers than medlers in the affairs of mortal! |
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Wooly Rupert
Master of Mischief
USA
36912 Posts |
Posted - 14 Feb 2012 : 10:50:56
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quote:
Originally posted by Nicolai Withander
quote:
Given that Faerunian gods are discouraged from all-out attempts to destroy all other gods (if only by the certainty that the other gods would band together against such attempts), you would probably have to get your divine power from somewhere else. Which means that the Faerunian gods would be united against you.
Are they realy that mortal in mind that they would intervene? I would se them more s observers than medlers in the affairs of mortal!
The Faerûnian deities love to intervene, they just rarely do so directly. But your campaign of genocide? They'd have no choice but to act. |
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Icelander
Master of Realmslore
1864 Posts |
Posted - 14 Feb 2012 : 11:16:37
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quote:
Originally posted by Nicolai Withander
quote:
Given that Faerunian gods are discouraged from all-out attempts to destroy all other gods (if only by the certainty that the other gods would band together against such attempts), you would probably have to get your divine power from somewhere else. Which means that the Faerunian gods would be united against you.
Are they realy that mortal in mind that they would intervene? I would se them more s observers than medlers in the affairs of mortal!
They are not only free to act, but bound to do so, when it involves the direct defence of their portfolio. And if you propose to conquer all the lands and replace them with new gods, well, there are very few portfolios that are not under attack.
Basically, you are challenging them all, by bringing an army led and fed by clerics of other gods to Faerun. Even if your attempt to conquest is somehow initiated by a local god, it doesn't make much of a difference. All that changes is that whatever god is helping your side will have thus challenged all the other Faerunian gods, in his bid to become the only god in Faerun.
Remember, worshippers sustain gods and killing them destroys gods. |
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Nicolai Withander
Master of Realmslore
Denmark
1093 Posts |
Posted - 14 Feb 2012 : 12:11:45
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Ive just always thought they were suposed to keep the ballance, but i guess im messing with tha ballance and hence forth thats why they would intervene.
Could such an act even make them personally intervene though avatars or by them self??? |
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Armed Forces
