21.13 Battlefield conflict: engagement and review.
Legions when equipped are vastly more effective than those without the correct inventories for the battlefield. A small troop of well-trained archers are capable, for instance, of decimating a vast corps of loin-cloth wearing dunderheads even if outnumbered ten to one. The task of the military commmander is twofold: firstly to ensure the legions in his/her charge are suitably equipped, and secondly to either issue commands in real-time or prepare dispatches sufficiently complex to make good use of any advantages (horses, armour, bows, etc).
Conflict dispatches or order sequences generally begin by defining the enemy (if appropriate) and determining the percentage of the legion to involve with the order. Then once you have picked your fight, you dictate the manner of attack (or conflict response) and follow on with any subsequent orders/dispatches required to flesh out the order, add critieria, control it more meticulously. You can cut down on volume of less-relevant text at any time by typing CONCENTRATE, reversing the reduction by typing RELAX. You can provide instead summary texts from the battlefield by typing FVB (fightverybrief) -- and you will recognise all legion/warfare-related text by the prefix "Battlefield". The battlefield text is also colour-coded: green for minor/passive event, yellow for dangerous or non-fatal conflict, and red for fullscale often fatal engagements.
BATTLEFIELD COMMANDS AND SYNTAX HELP
Syntax: BATTLEFIELD <area>/HOME/ABROAD.
Reviews the visible battlefield for the specified area, for your home legions/territory, your home legions on foreign soil, etc. This is very useful for keeping abreast of widespread legion movement.
Syntax: BATTLES.
Informs you of any active conflict between legions in your region, or involving your home legions; together with the opponents and the numbers involved.
Syntax: ... MELEE [<percentage>].
Engages your legion in direct melee with its declared enemies, involving (if possible) only the specified percentage in the combat. If no percentage is specified then the melee will involve the highest possible percentage - all those in the legion not currently about some other business. The skill of 'meleefight' is used as primary, with 'meleeweapons' as a boost for those legionnaires able to lay hands on weapons for their attack round. A legion, for instance, with 100 weapons but 200 legionnaires with every last man involved in melee will fight with 'meleefight' plus 'meleeweapons' for a hundred soldiers, and 'meleefight' on its own for the rest.
For as long as formation, position, your own legion's combination of skills and morale are sufficiently confident and successful then the melee will continue to involve only those numbers specified by your percentage. However, the battlefield is an unpredictable place and often the tide will turn against you - in which case, rather than risk more casualties, invariably more of your legion will be drawn into the melee and away from whatever else it might have been employed in. A most common example of this might be a legion in proper formation for a mix of rearguarding archers and frontline infantry. 50% of the legion is in the melee, 50% deployed using archery to deplete the enemy. The enemy, however, is strong and numbers deplete in your infantry; down to the point the archers are embroiled, close enough to be caught in the melee. Gradually the 50% melee, 50% archers will shift, the melee percentage growing, the archers falling.
NOTE: melee is typically the most effective attack method when odds are overwhelmingly in one's favour and times when a defending legion might be suitably arranged to deflect an offensive - e.g. tortoiseshell formation - and small enough to dodge incoming projectiles - it will NOT find it possible to weather an attack by vastly superior numbers when assaulted face to face.
Syntax: ... ENGAGE <enemy> <criteria> or RETRACT <enemy> <criteria>.
To define your enemy, use this command. Enemies can be specific legions, cities, or guilds. Most legions will, unless deployed about something contradictory, defend themselves when attacked but it is better to direct engagement in the manner of your hcoosing and this is the command to do so. ENGAGE THAKRIA will engage all legions of Thakrian origin, for instance, though it is most common - in the hands of a careful tactician - to ENGAGE followed by a specific legion to direct the efforts of your legionnaires where it would do the most harm. There are other 'targets' for your legions akin to an engagement but the ENGAGE command is intended for inter-legion conflict and generally offensives against other targets (e.g. hostile forests) is achieved using the BESIEGE command documented in HELP BESIEGING.
NOTE: there is a distinction between opposing legions with and without a 'banner' - that is to say, legions of training and cohesive purpose, and legions that are merely collections of prospective legionnaires grouped together awaiting allocation under a proper banner or creation of a new banner about with can be gathered their training/legion purpose. The proper legions with banners are always targetted, first and foremost, by the ENGAGE command but if it transpires there are literally no other targets for engagement the attacking legion will resort to menacing bannerless groups. Three possible outcomes every few attack rounds result from this engagement: the bannerless legion loses an individual 'til it exists no more, the engaging/attacking legion either gains an individual (defection), loses an individual (lost in pursuit) or remains unchanged despite enemy depletion. This is the method used by invaders to sweep away remaining, un-legion'd enemy enlistments.
BATTLEFIELD CONSEQUENCES AND RELATED HELP-FILES
One of the most significant differences between the consequences of warfare and the fall-out from a combat between two individuals is the extent and permanence of harm done to the defeated, the scale of spoils afforded to the victor, and - for some as important as any material wealth - the indelible mark made on the ever unfolding history of the land. Although treaties and divine negotiators tend to involve themselves in aiding peace settlements long before anything so serious as a complete annihilation of one party is countenanced, the theory remains that if a victorious group was so inclined they could chase down and slay every last defender, besiege, raze to the ground and plunder every construction, all the opponent's wealth, possessions, commodities and artifacts; burn down and pillage, to an irretrievable extent, the homeland of the defeated foe.
Guilds could be closed down, academies destroyed, city councils and ministries rendered homeless and impotent... whole cities can be made vassals to the victor; the possibilities and stakes of War are near-limitless and should cause even the most staunch of warmongerer to reflect a moment on the spectrum of outcomes - victory to defeat - merciful occupation to sadistic conquest - futures unknown. Warfare, even more so than the divine ordination, can have the mightiest impact on the land and thus there are many commands/orders to deal with the process of conquest, plunder and reordering enemy soil freshly laid bare and undefended.
See HELP BESIEGING for information on the laying of the siege, the destruction of defences and the removal of non-legion opposition from a target locale. This is followed by the plundering and razing stages, see HELP PLUNDERING or HELP RAZING for documentation on these aspects of battlefield conflict.
The end-result of success on the battlefield and subsequent eradication of defences (legions, fortifications, whatever they may be) is the perogative of the victor. This may be withdrawal; but likewise it may be an attempted conquest. Conquest of a town or village, where the sphere of influence/occupation is being expanded, is different to conquest of an entire city. Occupation and conquest within one's sphere of influence, of towns and villages, is documented in HELP OCCUPATION and HELP CONQUEST while the momentuous final occupation and conquest of a major city is detailed in HELP SUPPLICATION.
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