What!?, I was referring to Simon there, you know the one noble who might not see Helots as a lesser form of life by default (even Horion comes across as merely indulging a talking monkey, it’s just that he has such a warm and cuddly personality that even my character can’t help but like him on some level), sorry if that came across all wrong.
Like I’ve already said the only use Hector and his sister would be to my character alive is as “test” subjects for magical experiments, nothing more.
Ok, let’s just chalk that up to a misunderstanding. I didn’t realize you were talking about Simon since you didn’t name the noble you were talking about in that particular post, and then you mentioned Calea later in the same post, so I mistakenly inferred you were talking about her brother who has a noble-only romance. My bad.
If the MC is cosmopolitan enough to attract the Wendish deserters that means we have some no kidding phalangites in the band now. I would hope to start learning about their standard kit, tactics and doctrine. In combination with Zavd, de Firiac, Elery, the deserters advice and COM+INT=3 it should be possible to start thinking about how the band might be able to use the terrain of the wilderness and the phalangites own tactics against them in a series of ambushes and running battles. There might be a chance to pull off a Lexington-Concord style victory.
I assume they are spear infantry since phalange is another term for phalanx at its root. Obviously phalanx style tactics are unworkable in a forest and leaves them vulnerable to missile weapons. Might be able to sucker them into forming up in a clearing and then riddle the formation with arrows and fade back into the wood over and over again…
“Phalanx” just comes from phalangos, referring to a line of battle - doesn’t directly relate to the choice of weapons.
Obviously @Havenstone can reinterpret the meaning of the accent Greek words for whatever suits his needs but a phalange was specifically a Macedonian tightly packed spear infantry formation with overlapping shields.
Ejem Not Macedonian. Polis used it 200 years before Alexander… Thankfully, if not we were Persians in Europe
Oh I’m not trying to say the Alexander invented the tactic I’m just saying the Macedonian word for it most closely resembles the one @Havenstone is using for the Karagon equivalent of “soldier” by my reading.
I thus assume Karagon soldiers are or at least were primarily spear infantry.
hmm. did i miss another update? I did not get deserters.
No this is if you end chapter 3 with a cosmopolitan value over 76 I believe. Then your band is joined by some Wendish deserters.
It’s a been in for awhile.
Just for the record, Calea is (for all her faults) not into cannibalism, erotic or otherwise.
Same answer as a year and a half ago – they evolved out of phalanx units, but are no longer limited to those tactics. Beating them won’t be quite as easy as Teutoburg Forest.
Yes, Korszata and Bjel could turn out to be very useful if you want to go for the extremely difficult goal of beating the Archon’s troops rather than just evading or surviving them.
Now back to writing mule management (much the most exciting bit of the revamped Ch 2)…
I want cataphracts 
Both dismounted and mounted variations.
How much will stat choices play into the possibility of beating the Archon’s troops?
For instance, does it come down to the status of your band from previous failures and successes, or is it going to be something only available to the correct character builds?
When I got to the teaser for Chapter 4, it seemed like the natural choice for my CHA 2 character was spreading through the Helot fields to win with words. While I am sure this is the easier choice, I am curious as to if it precludes fighting the Archon directly.
The outcome of Ch 4 will depend on a number of things. High anarchy will mean the Archon can afford to send fewer troops after you; high notoriety will mean that she sends as many as she can afford. High morale will mean your outlaws stay with you rather than melting into the woods. High leadership for (and relationship with) your various deputies will affect both what it’s possible to choose and how well your outlaws perform under those leaders. If you’ve inadvertently made a Laconnier friend, he’ll find a way to get you some rather useful mage-forged lances. And so on.
That said, your stats will also matter, and beating the Archon’s troops in the field is by far the dumbest hardest way through Ch 4. Doing it with a 0 COM should be impossible, and with a 1 COM very, very difficult.
It’s only a dumb blunder if it doesn’t work…
If it does then you are a tactical genius!
Even if it works, you’ve still burned off valuable troops that you could use later in the rebellion.
You’ve also told the Archon that you’re a rebellion to take seriously. This is not really a good idea. (Of course, it also tells everyone else that you’re to be taken seriously, which could be good or bad.)
Then again, people will know you are capable of taking on the hegemony, rather than a dreamer who will get everyone who follows them killed, and it will greatly bolster morale, as well as bringing tons of helot supporters and a few aristos who previously believed your rebellion destined to fail.
Yeah, it’s hard for me to see “defeating the Hegemony on the field of battle” as a bad thing, unless your own losses are so severe as to make the whole thing Pyrrhic.
The only major downsides, if you can pull off a victory like Lexington-Concord, that I see are one you are going to be getting a lot of the Hegemony’s attention very quickly and two if you are leading a nationalist rebellion the phalangites you kill might very well be the troops you need to resist the Hegemony in the future. I suspect though, based on de Firiac story and the policy on assigning the alastors, that very few of the Archon’s phalangites are from Shyard.
Hmmm… On the subject of beating the Archon’s troops, one would perhaps do well to remember the example of Nils Dacke (whom I mentioned in an earlier post). His rebellion went well as long as he conducted a kind of guerilla warfare against the king and his army, but when he made the decision to face that same king and army in a pitched battle, things went… Badly, ending his rebellion right there. Not saying it’d have to end the same way for us, but it’s a potentially huge risk that could jeopardize the entire rebellion, and maybe not even for the best of reasons…
Sure there will be losses, but if you can beat the Hegemony soundly it immediately propelles your rebellion from a small annoyance to a contender. That’s going to spread the news of your rebellion far better than sneaking into helot camps in twos and threes ever could, attracting anyone with a bone to grind or axe to pick against the Hegemony.