Orlanthi vs Empire

From: Svechin_at_cs.com
Date: Fri, 8 Dec 2000 21:23:10 EST


Peter:
> I don't think it's true either for the hoplites or the college
> magicians. All that's been written is that the Lunars use their
> magics in unison, not that they are useless by themselves and
> that only in unity they can find strength.

Mikko:
>That is not of course what I said either. But their training is geared
>towards getting them to work effisciently together, much like the
>soldiers. Do you think this makes for the most formiddable individual
>fighters or spellcasters? I definitely don't.

I agree, but I don't. To qualify, you don't qualify your statements, hence I partially agree, but mostly don't.

Some Imperial magicians, particularly of the minor classes are certainly weaker and _younger_ than the average Orlanthi storm priest or godi, and hence are weaker individually. They are strong as a collective, but this is why the Minor classes have between 60-100 spellcasters per DP sized unit while the Major classes achieve much the same effect with less than half that number - age and experience. The Major Classes are those at the end of the "Masters of PHD" (forgive the RW analogy) and just like the Orlanthi priest, they've been around a bit and survived their tours as a Minor Class reservist AND survived the intensely competitive Imperial magical system which promotes warlike skills among its mages via the Dart Competitions.

>Military training is geared towards churning out reasonably skilled
>fighters in a short time.

Qualify please - SOME military training is geared for that. Some of the Imperial regiments like the ones I listed in previous posts, train heavily for individual prowess, and really only group together for battlefield effect.

>The orlanthi warriors are much more like the martial artist than a soldier.
They are >individualistic fighters, and the orlanthi spellcasters are used to relying on their own >strenght, not in that of numbers.

The Orlanthi are used to working as a _group_ to perform magics. Look at the Arming of Orlanthi - all part of a group ritual. When they prepared Morden the entire clan and tribe did it. Morden would have been far weaker without that support. The Storm priest routinely draws on the magics of his entire clan in almost every ritual, yet you somehow think he will be practicing individual combat with his magic all the time? How is he any different from a House Sorcerer in a Dart Competition assault team? If anything, he spends _less_ time practicing for battle than the Imperial!

>I stick to my wiev that the orlanthi culture churns out the more fierce
>individual fighters and more powerful magicians.

I would agree, iff you qualified this and said "as a percentage of population, the Orlanthi culture churns our more individual fighters and powerful magicians", after all, I argued much the same thing in Enclosure 2 in the "How Many Heroes" article.

What you seem to be ignoring is that the Empire has millions of people and cultures that even though as a percentage they produce far less warrior-heroes than the Orlanthi, the pure absolute numbers advantage makes their available forces far superior.

>The problem is that twenty lunar magicians working together create effects
that can't be
>countered by the individual storm priests (skalds) opposing them.

Three or four minor classes magicians could do that. A Major class sorcerer is a match for most priest at the clan level. There are many Imperial magicians who would simply blow the socks off almost every Sartari priest, except for the absolute elite, like the Storm Walkers (who are heroic warriors anyway) or the elite of entire tribes.

To further explain this, we can look at support mechanism. Sartar, with its population of 180,000, even if it supported 1 elite (tripple mastery or higher) magician per 100 people (which I think ludicrous, but for the sake of example) as opposed to the Empire with 8,000,000 supporting 1 elite magician 1000 people, would still have 8000 elites to 1800 Sartari elites. Over 4:1. And the ratio is far worse than that. The Empire can afford to lavish money and time on turning out super tough warleaders and then maintaining them _outside_ of the production cycle. The Orlanthi have a far weaker economic base to do this with. In effect the Orlanthi have to be like the Soviets and devote a massive percentage of their GNP to maintain a viable military force, while the Empire can supply far more forces at a far smaller percentage of GNP due to economies of scale and absolute bulk growth advantage.

>Why should the lunars try to train the individual magicians to the heroic
>levels of the orlanthi priests, when they can take out the priest with
>coordinated spellcasting.

They train them to be magicians and as magicians they have to learn how to fight individually, as much of their time in later life is spent either fighting for the Imperial Army or in a House Bodyguard unit, against other individual sorcerers or priests. Likewise an Orlanthi priest spends most of his time actually working at improving the lot of his clan, initiating young folk, acting like his god etc and learns his combat skills, like the Imperial sorcerer, through the rigours of his life.

>It's much more effiscient to train good enough
>spellcasters in a couple of years, than to take the whole decade to train
>a magician that can stand up to the orlanthi priests toe to toe?

But Mikko, the Imperial spellcasters get old too, and comparing a 20 year old sorcerer to a 30 or 40 year old priest of Orlanth, is apples and oranges. What about all the old Imperial sorcerers? And given their support mechanisms, healers, food, shelter etc, they can actually live on average longer than the Orlanthi and have less risk of dying. Thus their skills grow over time.

>*shrug* That may be. I try to create a vision of Glorantha that seems to
>make the most sense to me, including all I can from the previous
>material. Why should the empire try to train their _unit_ magicians to be
>that tough on the individual level?

Because their unit magicians are trained only partially in being a unit and mostly in being magicians. The Minor and Major classes are PART TIMERS, they are reservists. Even the specialist schools like the Spell Archers have a lot of part timers and apprentices. What is frightening about them is that they have a LOT of these schools and can raise more than the DP game shows, whereas the Sartar magicians are the priests their people and their loss is a tragedy to their people. If four or five minor classes are destroyed, its a disaster for the university they came from but it will not affect daily life in Peloria one whit. Whereas if the magicians of the Colymar are wiped out, then the tribe is truly FUBARED for yonks both mythically, socially and economically. This is the true weakness of the Orlanthi - their culture allows almost everyone to fight and this means they can oppose an Empire of vastly greater resources and appear to have equal strength at the critical points, but in truth their strategic depth is entirely lacking. They are brittle and loss to them is utterly serious, whereas to the Empire it is recoverable.

>Why should the hoplites waste time
>learning how to fight in a chaotic free-for-all melee, when their gear and
>tachtics are totally unsuited to such?

Hoplites don't train as individual fighters deliberately. They train as a group, but they do gain skills as individual fighters. They are not on par at this as a Humakti of equal age and experience, but then he would not be as good as them at marching in step. I think what worries me about your concerns is not this point, which is valid, but rather the assumption that the Imperial Army is made up of Phalanxes. The Phalanx component of the Imperial army is small and dropping. The Sheng wars vastly increased the importance of the Cavalry Corps and the combined arms aspects of Imperial forces. Phalanxes are valuable, but not Roman Legion-like in their ubiquity.

> So tell us where you can find Phalanxes in the Bronze Age?

>Well, mostly you don't. I don't like the idea of the Lunars using actual
>phalanxes, despite the name being used in Dragon Pass (the game). Since
>the Sundomers were the only ones to get the defensive bonus in the game,
>they remain the only ones to use the macedonian phalanx in my vision of
>Glorantha.

The Yelmalion (Macedonian) phalanx is an entirely different beast to the DH and Daxdarian phalanx, one being Sarissa armed, the other using overhand spear. The Empire does use them and has used the phalanx since Jenarong and Daxdarius.

>The Dara Happans fight like earlier Greek hoplites IMO, not using the
>sarissa, and often in formations only a couple of men thick, or somewhat
>looser formation.

Agreed, except they fight usually 10 men deep.

>I hope you people remember that the actual phalanx only works if you can
>contain the enemy to the front of it. The phalanx needs skirmish troops
>(and hopefully cavalry) to stop the enemy from attacking it's sides and
>especially back. If the orlanthi manage to attack a phanx from many sides
>it's in real trouble.

Well, naturally but this is why Suvarians exist, as a counter to barbarian attacks.

>PS. Oh, and about using the Dragon Pass game to defend the notion of the
>fierce (and heroic) heortlings. I don't think the unit strengths are all
>that tought out or reflect the strength of all the units too well. I just
>think it's meant to reflect the fact that Sartar could put up a
>significant fight to the Empire, which it couldn't do if the sartarite
>fighters and units were for some reason totally outclassed by the
>Lunars.

The DP wargame is a battle in isolation. One might as well look at the Allied invasion of France in 44 and say that we won the war against Germany and we kicked their butt because we matched their army and beat it fair and square. This forgets the fact that 75% of the Wehrmacht and Waffen SS were committed against the Soviets. In _Theatre_ the allies, like the Sartarites vs the Empire, win, but one is not looking at the overall strategic picture when doing that.

Firstly DP is set after the Dragon event. After the death of the cohesive Emperor Argenteus. The Emperor counter in DP could represent Takenegi but it might not, it might in fact be another Emperor altogether or even a Proxy (most likely). Likewise, at this point, Oraya was overrun and Rinliddi invaded by the Pentans. The Empires forces were committed to a life and death struggle on that border. Also during this period Dorastor and Bilini ally to invade Dara-Ni, effectively removing the Sylilan regiments from the DP theatre till mid 1630s. There are countless other problems besetting the Empire, not least of which is civil war. The war in DP is the "Southern War" to the Empire and is not their main concern till 1638 when they crush Argrath like a bug - why? Because they turn their attention too him strategically.

Martin Laurie


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