V5: Chapter 7
…
I'll admit it.
I'm a whore for instant gratification.
If I want something, and I've earned it, then I want to get it within a day at most. Less than 12 hours, if possible. Some people say that same-day delivery is a sign that society has gotten depraved, that it can't be saved, and that there's no choice but to burn it all down and start from zero. I disagree. If I have the money and the desire, then I should be able to get what I want in the same hour.
Nay.
In the same second that I've paid for it.
In fact, I want whatever I want to be prescient, for the money to just flow out of my pocket, and for the cognitive decision-making process to be taken out of the equation. Just shove whatever it is the algorithm has discerned as what I want down my throat and take the money right out of my bank account. All I want to do is sleep, wake up, work, and everything else to just fall onto my lap without any consequence or ramification or social interactions or active thinking on my part.
Sadly, in my current state of existence, I was far from that form of living.
I mean, technically speaking, I was far from that form of living in my previous life, too… but in my previous life I never had to deal with the slow, lumbering speed of an army at march.
Seriously, even if everyone else is impressed, I'm not at all impressed by the fact that it took a month for me to assemble an army and march it to the Conqueror's capital.
…
In every battle of the game, both sides get what's called headquarters. At the start of the game, you get some tents, some guards, telescopes, officers, messengers, and runners. All the things you need to command an army from the relative safety and nothing more. If your HQ is taken, and you don't have a general Champion conferring leadership bonuses who could fight, then the game enters auto-resolve with the odds massively against you.
Your army's fighting without executive command, maybe with just some officers on the scene, and you'd be lucky to find your army at a quarter health and with all units intact.
As the game progresses, getting a unit or a Champion into an HQ gets harder.
HQs turn into small fortresses built overnight with magic, which can even provide artillery support or shields against long-range bombardment. They can heal your units and increase morale and increase damage depending on who you've got in there, and the bonuses they give are amplified by what you've invested in. Each army's HQ can be customized, specializing them in whatever you want, for a price and increase in upkeep cost.
If you lose the army, you lose the HQ that you've built for them, and if you lose the HQ… you may as well lose the army, too.
And, with the lack of communications systems that would let me coordinate from afar, if I wanted to manage an army… I needed to put my neck on the line.
Yeah.
I'm all for instant gratification, until my life's on the line.
I'd rather wait and hear about how things played out regarding battles, thanks.
…
Thankfully, being demonically addled in the head meant that the corrupted Crusher and his army weren't about to make us run the gauntlet through the capital. After they subsumed the people left behind fighting in the Citadel, due to our lack of airlift capacity, they started foraging the city for supplies. Meaning that they started harvesting it of the bodies left behind, and started processing the fruits of their labors.
Demons spread a corrupted realm around them, born from the sacrifices of their followers, the deaths of their enemies, or even their own deaths. According to lore, it was a downgraded version of the airborne particulate that they spread across the planet when shit kicked off. The particulate couldn't survive, transfer energy and nutrients to the high-spec bodies of the demons, and so they had to evolve and change to creating a living 'carpet' of their weak, their servants, and their enemies.
The Demons win once they start capturing souls in that 'carpet,' after taking enough Citadels to start tinkering with it, and with it at full strength regain their powers before they got fucked hard by the counter attacks. Their victory means everyone not a Demon gets turned into living pieces of furniture that they feed off of, while everyone not furniture turned into docile cattle.
Needless to say, I wasn't going to fight them on their home turf and I was going to burn them out of the capital to face us on an open field.
"We'll strike at dawn tomorrow morning. With their fleshbed destroyed, they'll be forced to fight us to make new ones, or kill each other and make a new one. Either works. Hopefully, they choose the latter." I had a smattering of officers flown in to make a command staff. Usually, Riegert and Khanrow would be present in some capacity with their retinue, and they'd command the officers in the tent while I provided advice. The HQ honestly felt empty without them and their staff, but Morgan was providing excellent assistance. "Morgan, do a final check on the heavy infantry. The pikes will be receiving the enemy, and get me a progress update on the shaping procedures we've asked the mages for."
"Already have them. Here are the reports from the officers of the pikemen. All have been blessed appropriately by our mages against disease. The Conqueror's shamans were very helpful." Morgan's pretty omnicompetent, so it was only natural that she was capable of handling most of the footwork, checkups, and coordination. I kept them in the back of my mind, of course, but I looked at the bigger picture. "As for the shaping operation, the mounds of dirt have been created, but I'm still not sure how they'll help. They are easily surmounted by our foes."
"They're not physical blockages. That's what the ditches and cavalry barricades are for." Most of my worries were centered around the Demonic Charge ability and the Flesh Warp that Demonic melee units had. Demons didn't have much in the way of ranged units, since they were all crazy psychopaths who got off of murder and mutilation with their own hands, so they worked hard to get that. In-game, the Demonic Charge gave them ten percent evasion while charging. Flesh warp just gave them a flat ten percent evasion rate against anything. It's a bullshit twenty percent reduction in direct damage, which was why I hoped that some earthworks and barricades would help us. If I could shave even ten percent evasion off, that'd be a world of difference. "The dirt mounds will be moved and give us the height advantage for our lines of rifles. They'll be able to fire over our lines of pike. They're not archers or crossbows, so the changes are necessary."
"I see. That makes perfect sense. Thank you for sharing that with me. It's a fantastic tactic and makes use of a resource that would otherwise simply be wasted with Mages doing nothing." Morgan nodded, not even needing a visualization of my statement. It was good that she didn't. Ayah was busy making sure that the aerial cavalry was ready for tomorrow. So far, I'd used all my airlift capability for the sake of trade, rescue, or humanitarian efforts like making sure a famine didn't kill most of the people on the continent. Tomorrow, we couldn't afford mistakes, since their payloads were far more deadly. "However, have you given my earlier suggestion to place the Conquerors on the frontline some more thought?"
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"Your concerns ring true. I had Ayah verify and the Conquerors are unhappy with their posting, but we've already seen the aftermath of their last encounter with this force. I'm not letting them do it again, even if it means having Rita or Ilych crack heads before the battle." The Conquerors, being honorable, prideful, and respectable people, wanted the vanguard position to regain their lost honor for retreating. They wanted the first shots against the enemy, and the most casualties, too. "If complaints continue, I shall speak to Conquest on the matter, first. Discipline will be ensured, of course."
I'm forcing them to act in their best capacity: auxiliary cavalry that'll smash into the enemy once it's sufficiently bogged down by pike and shot. If there was a part of the line that was going to break, and that was guaranteed since we were fighting against Demonic Conquerors, plenty of them were going to be on standby to patch up any stragglers.
They're the steel jaws that'll force the enemy into the fields of ditches and sharpened log barricades, behind which were going to be lines of pike ten men deep, and behind them were going to be an equal number of high-caliber single-fire rifles. Once the aerial cavalry is all reloaded, they can bomb the enemy from above, and the mages can keep the pressure up. Aerial Cav and mages for DPS, rifles for chip damage, pikes of tanking, and Conquerors for harass.
No one sane would run into it, but we weren't giving the corrupted any options.
Ayah came right on time.
"Everyone is equipped and ready for tomorrow, my lord."
"Good, then let's all get some rest. Tomorrow, we put them to the torch and force the survivors into a vice, but keep scouts out on the surrounding region. I don't want any surprises."
"Yes, my lord."
With that, the most preparation I could manage was done.
Tomorrow, all I'll be able to do is commit reserves, order some charges, and maybe call in artillery.
Damn, I really wished I could micro Ilych around and have my forces shoot at the Demons while they all ran after her.
Unfortunately, control like that was just beyond me in reality.
…
It felt strange to look straight at a battle.
It was happening, people were going to die by the hundreds if not thousands, and I was seating down with drinks, people muttering around me, and barely armored.
Well, the people around me weren't just muttering. Messengers were on standby. Signalers with flags were present and waiting to give directions. Massive horns were present that could be heard through the battlefield to have officers look our way. Maps were laid out on tables, some just sketches of the current battlefield, and our defensive lines.
I guess, it felt strange that I wasn't closer to the front line, doing some crazy mission behind enemy lines, or doing something else crazy.
Morgan tapped me on the shoulder and pointed over at our timetable.
It was a literal table with a sundial on it and hour glasses in case clouds came overhead.
Anyway, the sun was just about to rise, and so it was time to poke the bear.
With explosives.
"Send the message to begin."
"Yes, my lord."
Morgan gave a bow and spoke to one of the messengers attending to her, and she stayed standing beside me as we both looked at the battle from afar. It almost felt like a game. We were far enough, and high enough, that most normal men were like the size of rice grains. Armored, armed rice grains in block formations, but still… grains. At our distance, the earthworks we had made seemed like little bumps on the plains, the trenches seemed like loose lines on the earth, and the wooden barricades looked too few.
If I angled the camera right in the game, and zoomed out, I'd be able to see things the same way… but this was far from perfect.
I'd rather see from above, see everything that my troops saw, and be able to mouse-click-and-and-drag the formations into better shape… but that wasn't happening.
I'm constrained and limited to an immense degree, but I couldn't change that fact in the slightest.
The sight of all the aerial cavalry going off was pretty cinematic, though.
Four horses to a transport meant that we had plenty to spare. Simple math laid out that seventy transports meant almost three hundred horses. However, we lost a few people during the airlift, and more than a few horses were made lame. The final number of aerial cavalry was two units worth. A hundred to each one with lots of others assigned for recon or messenger duties.
If I had more explosives, I'd load up whole cargo boxes full of explosives and drop them right on top of the enemy, but I didn't.
No.
The first strike setting off to attack was using a combination.
The firebombs we developed to raid Scholar lands go first, then the bombs were going to land after them to spread the flaming contents all around.
So, I watched with all my troops as two hundred flying knights went off to the base of the Conqueror's Citadel. We were just a few kilometers away from the city, five max, so when they took off it was just minutes before they reached their destination. They were like flies in the distance, but in formation and glittering in the sun thanks to their armor, and we could all see perfectly as they began their dives with their weapons.
The first unit went for it, hitting the corrupted area surrounding the base of the Citadel. The tactics I gave them were based off of dive bomber tactics from WW2. The initial strategy, and how it worked in the game, was that flying units would glide in, slowing down to properly drop their bombs off, and then lift off after hitting the ground. It was for balance, so that aerial units took some chip damage from melee attacks and didn't dominate ground battles.
They didn't have to be limited in reality.
They went into steep dives, while still high up. Their projectiles were bomblet shaped and with fins to stabilize, and weighted at the nose. Momentum took care of the rest once they hit the latches that strapped the bombs to the underside of their horse. Then, the horses would flare their wings, catching themselves, and then take off back into the sky and back to base for rearming.
Practice runs told us that the incendiaries had a ten meter spread, double a hand grenade from back home, while the thunderlances had a about 12 meters or so.
I thought that those numbers were alright, that they were in line with the game, but as I watched… I came to a realization.
The power of firebombs and explosives were limited in the game.
Fires went out within seconds.
Explosives chipped at health points, rather than hit bodies or buildings.
As explosions resounded, as my flying forces returned unscathed, and as an inferno began to billow at the base of the Conqueror's Citadel, I came to a simple realization.
Aerial units, just like in real life, were absurdly broken.
And, I had to make use of them as much as possibly could.