On the Military Capabilities of the Two Alliances

Report by the Supreme Commander of the OFK Forces Nechtarhebi Anhurwaw

Some say that war never changes, which is true in many ways, but the scale of war has certainly changed over the last decade. Long gone are the days of battles involving only hundreds of warriors and armies containing ten thousand soldiers being considered large and able to conquer the entire region with ease. Now we are dealing with much bigger numbers, unimaginable even in the days of Ramesses II. A major power must have close to a hundred thousand soldiers if it is to be considered a credible threat these days, and that’s not even counting the navy or the garrisons at home. Indeed, wars are now thought on a much larger scale, with the recent OFK-EC War involving close to a million soldiers in total at one point during the conflict’s peak. And going forward, the numbers are only going to increase, naturally, as the populations increase and more and more kingdoms become affiliated with us or our enemies.

However, for now our forces seem to be a good match for the Eastern Coalition, at least numerically. We have quickly managed to close the post-war army gap and have enough units to defend our borders against the invaders if it came to that. This was helped by the Hittite Civil War coming to an end and the subsequent reconstruction of Hatti, the accession of Tirynthius to the Mycenaean throne, in turn leading to their higher commitment to the OFK, and the inclusion of new lands in the coalition, those being Kush and Punt, with their fresh new pools of young and eager recruits. Yet our armies still have ways to go, and I would not recommend starting an offensive war against the EC, as we are still far from prepared for that and don’t have enough resources for such an operation. Luckily, they do not have that either, and so I find it highly unlikely that an EC invasion is coming anytime in the next decade. Thus the peace may last for a while still, but we should always continue preparing for another confrontation with the easterners. I will now present my findings on the current state of military capabilities of every OFK and EC country and my suggestions of what could be improved so that our chances of winning the next potential conflict would be even higher.

Overview of the OFK forces

I am going to be honest and say this upfront – the OFK army has one inherent issue, which drags it down quite a lot when compared with the EC army. That is, simply, that there is no united OFK army and only smaller armies belonging to member kingdoms. The integration of the armed forces is going quite slowly and I do not see this aspect improving very much at least in the short or medium term. The EC army always had the benefit of having a unified army, all the way back from Shilhak-Inshushinak’s first campaigns in Babylonia a decade ago, and this remains the case now with his wife and son in charge. The OFK, however, is not a singular empire, it was founded by the voluntary agreement of different kings, and so uniting the armies is not as simple, as every ruler wants control over his own forces.

This presents a variety of problems. Non-standardized equipment, different army structures, different tactics, separate supply routes, just to name a few. Not to mention that in some cases the army is even further subdivided, such as the Mycenaean Confederation, whose armed forces basically consist of close to twenty tiny armies and navies, under the control of the regional kings. There is also of course the issue of language – the easterners have easy way out by using Akkadian, as everyone speaks it there, but we don’t have such a simple solution. Akkadian could be used for our armies as well, but that presents the problems of few soldiers below the rank of captain speaking it, as well as the loss in optics as we would essentially be speaking the language of our enemies. So instead we have close to a dozen different languages being spoken even inside my own main camp, which includes Egyptian, Hittite, Mycenaean, Kushite, Alashiyan, Phoenician, a few more Canaanite dialects, Amorite, Luwian, and now even Libyan and Puntite tongues. As you can imagine, this makes communication quite difficult. We rely on thousands of translators already, and while this can work temporarily during peacetime, there won’t be any time for translation in the heat of the battle, especially in an unexpected attack. This is frustrating and needs to be addressed, though I am afraid I have no simple solution yet. Enforcing Egyptian as the official army language would surely be seen as a sign of egregious imperialism by our allies, and possibly even our own subjects in Kush and Retjenu. Meanwhile any other OFK language is not spoken widely enough to be considered viable. Promoting the learning of second and third languages for the common people would certainly help, but I realize how much of a tough ask that is and how it would take many decades for the goal to be reached. Thus for the time being I believe the best course of action to be dividing soldiers into companies along ethnic lines, unless one is proficient in some other language and explicitly states their desire to join another company, while their captains and the higher-ranking commanding officers continue communicating in Akkadian (or Egyptian, if possible). The battalions and, of course, armies should be made up of companies of different ethnicities though, in order to further promote cooperation between all these groups.

There is also another issue, concerning women’s integration in the armed forces. The EC seems to be dealing with that rather well, but for us, the presence of some rather conservative states in the coalition makes it more difficult. Our Commonwealth is still the only country in the OFK to allow female soldiers. Hatti seems vehemently opposed to such practice, as do most Mycenaean kings, thus leaving only a couple Mycenaean sub-armies with a female presence, and even then women usually are only in support roles. Alashiya technically has no restrictions on women joining the army or navy, but then again, even Alashiyan men scarcely enlist, so it makes little difference. This again results in problems, from the fact that the other countries cannot truly pull their weight in terms of troop numbers, to our female soldiers being harassed by foreign soldiers, mostly Hittite, I might add. Even our own armies have some issues on this front. This conflict can be seen both on the personal between individual soldiers, all the way up to the high command, with some hardliner traditionalist generals and admirals still opposing the inclusion of women in the armed forces. The navy still mostly doesn’t allow any women in, after all, even if unofficially. There is not much we can do except push on and not yield to popular pressure, as the rewards of having a potential recruit pool be twice as large are too good to pass up. Still, there is progress, as, for example, we have commander Nedjmet, who might very well become the first female general in the next few years, and would lead a mixed army of both men and women and of many ethnicities, which could help integrate everyone better.

The widespread adoption of guns would also most likely help in this regard. Women currently serve mostly in support roles, such as field medics and in supply and logistics companies, though there are some female archer and explosives companies too, which can result in them being discriminated by the infantrymen and charioteers. However, the guns seem to be equally usable by everyone, regardless of gender, age, or physical strength, and so might very well equalize the situation on the ground. The age of warriors may soon be over, if it isn’t over already, and the age of technologies is about to kick in fully, sooner than one would expect.

Speaking of guns, these are indeed very useful inventions. I would say we might soon need to start depicting Anhur and Montu with one in hand rather than a spear or a sword. After all, it feels like for millennia we have been using weapons of mere animals and now we finally have the powers of the gods right at our fingertips. Yet our enemies were not slow to catch onto this development and they seem to have some as well, which makes guns not so much an advantage and more of a necessity when fighting the EC. I can only strongly urge the building of more gun manufactures so that we would outproduce the easterners and so hopefully have more of these god given armaments at our side for when another war comes. We wouldn’t even need to sacrifice any production of regular weapons – the lead for the ammo isn’t being used anywhere else anyways, and the quantities of wood and iron used for the guns themselves are so small that the changes in stockpiles would barely be noticed. With guns we might also be able to establish the first OFK armament standards, which would simplify things quite a lot down the road. Just need to make sure the Hittites or Mycenaeans don’t begin producing any of their own designs and only buy them from us, which I don’t think would be a problem since both societies are slow in terms of innovation.

Some are skeptical of these new weapons, especially among the charioteer class, but they would benefit from this development just as well. A gun may very well be wielded by the occupant of the chariot, or it may be mounted on the chariot itself for more stability. This would still retain chariots as the core of the army, while also making them even more powerful and as terrifying as the elephants that Elamites brought to the Levant to those who have never seen one.

But I digress, those are future developments, better left to the engineers and inventors than us generals. However, like I mentioned, even now our forces are decently well prepared, and are the most powerful they have relatively been in over a century. Considering the fact that historically our main military adversary has been Hatti, we are now fortunate to have joined forces with them and have their soldiers fight for and not against us. In fact, the OFK army might as well be called the Commonwealth-Hittite army, as together the two forces have about three hundred thousand soldiers right now (ours surpassing theirs by forty thousand or so, though they have a higher ratio of soldiers to support personnel), which is about 80% of the total OFK army size. The Mycenaean Confederation has a sizeable force of sometimes up to seventy thousand men, but it is constantly shifting in size, as the different kings keep raising and disbanding their forces whenever they feel like it. Mycenae is also far to the west and has to constantly fight off barbarians around the Danube and in Italy, which might make their army not that useful on the Levantine-Mesopotamian frontier. The remaining states of Alashiya, Punt, and Amurru have and will have only token forces, due to their small size. I believe it would be a rather foolish idea to try to force the Alashiyans to raise a fifty thousand strong army or something of the sort, and instead I think having those states specialize in something else than infantry would be preferable. They are all coastal countries and so naturally specializing in naval developments and shipbuilding is the obvious course for them. Granted, no country would choose to have no army and only a navy, or the opposite, but we can still give them a push towards one side or another in order to improve efficiency. The best scenario right now seems to have Amurru, Punt, and Alashiya focus on ships and perhaps specialist companies, Mycenae on ships and colonial troops (with some kings building the ships and others commanding the land forces), Hatti fully on land armies and mass infantry, and ourselves on a mix of regular and elite troops, as well as large ships, since we have enough resources to have both an extremely powerful army and navy.

Also, a small note on the navy – while I am no admiral, I can rather confidently state that one sphere where we have the EC completely outmatched is the navy, and I think grand admiral Khaemtir would confirm this. Even if no one else produced ships except the Commonwealth, we would still be able to match the EC at sea. Of course, the hundreds of ships of Hatti, Mycenae, Alashiya, and Punt add up with ours and so now we have a navy almost twice as large as the one our enemies have. Our two thousand warships to their one thousand. Not to mention that we along with the Mycenaeans and Alashiyans had centuries of shipbuilding and sailing experience, whereas the EC built the whole navy from scratch in recent times and so has to start from the fundamentals. Thus the actual ratio of combat power at sea might be closer to three to one. This was well demonstrated during the OFK-EC War, where we absolutely destroyed their newly built fleets in almost every battle in the Mediterranean. Of course, if a war was to be fought in the future, it would mostly take place on land: Levant, Mesopotamia, and eastern Hatti, which would limit how useful our navies would be. Yet there are still applications, such as the plan to blockade Elamite Gulf completely and so leave the entire EC essentially landlocked. This would require immense naval superiority, but could be doable. That scares the empress and all the other EC rulers, which is why they are desperately searching for allies overseas, who could provide them with more ships and access to other naval routes. This is also reflected in their tactics, prioritizing quick strikes to cripple the enemy and take out the opponents by surprise, rather than our method of attrition warfare and incremental advancements. With that said, I will turn to the EC forces now and discuss how they compare.

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Overview of the EC forces

Now, for the EC, they have one massive advantage over us, that being the fact that is very unified militarily, as I mentioned before. It does make sense, since the entire coalition is well connected economically, has the same currency, the rulers are all subservient to the Elamite empress to some degree, and so the fact that it has a unified military is completely in line with such a model. During the war, Shilhak-Inshushinak basically created the EC army from scratch, by assembling new units from conquered territories and placing them under the command of his loyalist generals, so it was one large army from the very start. And after the war, his wife, quite smartly, retained that model and did not devolve the management of the armies. This means a few things: the soldiers use the same types of weapons, the army structure is the same everywhere, and the officers share the same tactics. Everyone can also easily communicate in Akkadian, though that would have been the case in any event, even if the armies were independent. Of course, Akkadian isn’t the native language of Elam, but the people there have been connected to Mesopotamia for millennia through trade and war, and so by now most Elamites know the language. The Lullubi might be the only exception, since their king Zubani always had control over his forces, but even then, his army emerged from the mercenaries who served Shilhak during the war, and so they are quite integrated into the EC system as well.

Another thing helping the EC forces is the specialization of different countries and regions, rather than every one of them having to provide the same troops. We already saw that during the war, and it worked quite well during the Levantine campaign. The Elamites make up barely a fifth of the coalition’s population, so they mostly serve in elite positions – heavy infantry and chariotry – to not waste men and women on simple infantry duty. They also provide almost half of the coalition’s ships. And, of course, Elamites disproportionately make up the highest percentage of officers in the armed forces, though in recent years more Assyrians and Babylonians rose in the ranks as well. The Babylonians, meanwhile, serve mostly in the infantry and in siege battalions, as well as various specialist forces (such as explosives’ experts). That is due to Babylonia having many engineers and other such experts – stemming from a very urban and rather literate population. Assyrians also provide infantry, but mostly focus on medics and archers, who are now an almost equal mix of men and women. This idea was initially established by Shilhak and Ninsina right as Ashur was taken, so that Assyria could provide the EC with adequate numbers of troops while only having a female recruitment pool. That in turn was caused by Assyria having few men available after the invasion and change of government, since most military men had been killed or wounded by then or fled with Tiglath-Pileser over the Euphrates to seek refuge with us. Meanwhile the remaining men were not trusted enough at that point to be recruited into the army, for fear of betrayal or defection back to Tiglath’s old regime. Now, as a new generation of men are coming to age in Assyria, and the old regime has been put to rest with the disestablishment of the Assyrian Liberation Army, more men are joining the army, though still not nearly as many as in other countries.

As for Dilmun and Magan, they don’t provide any land forces, except garrisons for their own territories, but they provide the coalition with more than two hundred ships each, thus making them crucial for the EC navy. Finally, the Lullubi serve almost exclusively as mounted soldiers, something that is unique in the region, as no other country has mounted non-chariot units. But again, this makes sense if we remember that the Lullubi were nothing more than just another barbarian band a few years ago, and so for them riding the horses themselves, rather than using chariots, is the natural way, just like it is for any filthy barbarian vermin. There is also the matter of elephants, which were used in a limited capacity during the Levantine campaign, mostly by hired Indian mercenaries. I do not know whether they are still in use, but since the EC is trying to establish a foothold in India and make some new allies there, these beasts may very well come into play once again. We did make some traps and defenses against them during the war, and I don’t think we should abandon these developments, as we do not want to be caught unprepared and lose an entire army like the last time. If the expansion into India does take place, and now that seems more like a question of when, the EC would have more elephant units, but also many more infantry divisions, since India has a massive population which is not to be underestimated.

So, yes, the easterner army is a massive, well organized, well specialized, and terrifying force of well over three hundred thousand soldiers. I will admit this, and I will not discount its potential for destruction, unlike some other generals who refuse to acknowledge the reality. However, I also see a few flaws within it. One is the aforementioned navy. It is still two times smaller than ours, and is somewhat trapped within the Elamite Gulf. That means that even in the event of a war we shouldn’t be worried too much about naval battles, naval invasions, or being cut off from trading routes. The Red Sea is still fully ours, and so is our access to the Arabian Sea and from there to India and further east. That’s not even mentioning the Mediterranean, which is now pretty much the OFK’s internal lake, considering all the Mycenaean colonization and our westward expansion. The canal between the two seas also helps immensely, as we can now easily transfer fleets between them and so don’t need to build a separate Red Sea fleet to defend from the EC. In naval matters, our opponents would always have to be on the defense now and we would still likely be able to cut them off from global trade, making them rely only on the internal market and on land-based trade routes. This is one advantage that we have, and it would help us immensely in a protracted conflict.

Another thing – and this is more of a personal observation and a theory rather than proven fact, though I would still like to make it known – is that the EC soldiers don’t really know what or who they are fighting for. We saw that quite clearly when Shilhak was killed and the whole army disintegrated into chaos and the entire Levantine front collapsed. The one man around whom the entire coalition was built around is gone, and now the faction has a bit of an identity crisis. Here in the west, the kingship still remains as important as ever, and the people can proudly join the army knowing that the king they serve will lead them to victory. But in the east, that’s no longer the case. The monarchs there are either non-existent, subservient to the companies, or ones never leaving the palace, such the so-called shadow empress Lim herself, named so after the fact that she rarely if ever leaves here palace and so barely anyone, except the highest-ranking officials and nobles, ever see her. Lullubum is again the sole exception, though once Zubani’s reign comes to an end, I believe that a civil war between the dozens of tribes within that region may very well occur, so this case is far from perfect either. The generals themselves are also mostly sent directly from Susa to command soldiers of other ethnicities, who have no relation and inherent loyalty to their superior officers. Now, don’t get me wrong, they would still defend their homes as seriously as anyone if it came to that, and guerrilla warfare would still occur most likely, but right now most scenarios include the EC attacking us, not the other way around. They don’t have anything that we particularly need, but we do have something that they need – the Levant. Having it would allow the EC to split the OFK into the northern and southern portions, while also granting them access to the Mediterranean. The EC also had the Levant under Shilhak, and so naturally wants to reclaim it. However, this doesn’t seem to be something the people are very concerned about, and so I doubt they would be very enthusiastic about marching west and crossing the Euphrates once again for such a campaign.

The lack of morale on our enemy’s side may very well be their greatest undoing, and that is what gives me great hope that we would be able to defend against them. Really, while the EC keeps saber-rattling all the time, I doubt there are many across the border who would care much for another great conflict, other than maybe a couple extremely jingoist generals. The commoners live well and are fine with what they have, and even if they have more wants, that would be lower taxes and better worker protections, and not the possibility to gain some western lands they have no connection to. The merchant class obviously despises war, as it limits their opportunities and, in turn, profits. Same for the megacorporations and the industrialists they belong to, as war might cut into their profits. In fact, I believe they would be the first to switch sides the moment the OFK starts to win and our first soldiers cross the Euphrates. Even if we did end up occupying Mesopotamia, we would just establish an OFK mandate there and have the new leader follow our foreign policy, nothing more. The people there aren’t threatened by genocide or anything of the sort, and so for most, I imagine, it would not matter too much which faction they are in. After all, Mesopotamia has been under dozens of different dynasties from cities within and outside the region and the people are not the rebellious kind, unless the new government does something terribly wrong. We should reinforce this sentiment, and make sure the people there know that we don’t have any intention of conquering Mesopotamia, but even if we did, not much would change for most people, except the highest-ranking officials. Elam is, of course, a different deal, but it would scarcely be a threat if we snatched Mesopotamia from them, as it simply wouldn’t have the population and resources to sustain itself as a great power, at least one rivaling us.

Those easterners aren’t oblivious though, and they are trying to improve the situation in this regard. Organically or not, there is a new so called “Easterner” or “Elamo-Mesopotamian” identity emerging. The proponents of it claim that civilization itself emerged first in the common Mesopotamian-Elamite region and so the EC is the true successor to the civilizational line, as opposed to the OFK, which they claim consists of mostly barbarian states. The higher levels of urbanization, literacy, industrialization, and wealth of the eastern states are also often used to reinforce their arguments. Of course, some states don’t fit into this theory at all, such as the Lullubi being on the EC or the Commonwealth leading the OFK, but they usually claim that the Lullubi are only useful idiots for their cause and nothing more, while also inventing some convoluted excuses for why the Commonwealth is supposedly barbarian as well, those including the mention of Kushites, Canaanites, the heretic pharaoh Akhenaten, the monotheist revolt in Jerusalem during the Great Powers’ War, and the Hyksos invasion, among others reasons. It is all nonsense, but according to my sources it is taking off, at least among the youth, and so may forge a new EC identity in the future, one for which more people might be willing to fight and die for. Ironically enough, this movement worships Shilhak-Inshushinak and claims he was one of them, even though the late emperor clearly didn’t think of Mesopotamia any higher than of the Levant or Egypt, and his main goal was the conquest of the known world, not any sort of Mesopotamian supremacy. Only now that the EC has receded back to Mesopotamia and Elam is this new thought being formulated, and we will have to see how it fares in the long run.

Of course, there is also the issue of the young Shilhak-Humban, who is now almost of age and may take the Elamite throne, and in turn become the EC’s leader, sooner than expected. We will see whether he will continue the legacy of his father. He will probably try, and this may cause trouble for us. The EC would once again have a figure to rally around and a monarch who is not afraid to get his hands dirty and march along with the soldiers to battle. Yet at the same time he is still just a teenager, all that fervor would not overcome cold hard economic facts and many might soon be longing for the shadow empress bringing stability and wealth rather than the rash boy who wants to recover his father’s empire, no matter the cost. A few months of stagnating frontlines and increasing prices of consumer goods might lower his approval by quite a lot, and he would have to try even harder than his father to win them over. His military victories would not come as quickly, since we are now much better prepared than we were upon seeing that first Elamite charge descend on us in Qatna all those years ago. And so while Humban’s rise might be remarkable, his fall would be even more spectacular.

At the end of the day, I am confident in our abilities. There are issues to be fixed, resources to be acquired, and much to be done in general, but we are very much on the right track. We have solid foundations, and we know what we are fighting for us. We are a strong alliance, the most powerful one to have ever existed, and we are growing by the day. Our enemies are formidable, yes, but they have their flaws which could be exploited. And, after all, we fought with worse odds many times over the millennia and still came out on top. With the guidance of Horus, Amun-Ra, and Anhur, we will be victorious.