Greek Tragedy

[Franconicus]

Well, I assume this comes to an end - mainly my fault, I guess. So let me give you my view on things:

I think the innitial situation was clear: the rebels had the innitiative, the Persians were stronger in the long run. So the Ionainas had every reason to act quickly and decisive. Stranger had a strong army ready for combat and Greyblades had a superior force on his island. Together they controlled the sea. King Kurt had no opponent at all. The rebellion took the Persians by surprise, they had to build up new armies, get them to the rebelling provinces and build up a fleet.

To my surprise, the Ionians acted very passive. King Kurt did nothing but "prepare the cities for siege". Stranger did nothing as well, although he could have used his fleet to attack anything along the coast or could have used his army to attack Sardis (what happened in history!). Greyblades obviously hesitated to attack a fortified city, although he had superior forces. My only explanation is that Stranger and GB were not familiar with the type of game and did not really know what they could do.

Persians did better, they recruited suitable forces and began to deploy them. Two armies in the right size is something you can start a campaign with. Maybe it would have been better to recruit a third "army in reserve", to replace casualties and to send soldiers for garrisons. This would have guaranteed that the two armies kept on running.

It was amazing that both sides ignored reconnaisance. King Kurt fortified his towns, so he must have been sure that the persians would come, but he was taken by surprise and took the first defeat. Only then he began to think how he could defend himself (it was too late for any alternative like retreating or calling for supporters). So he decided to concentrate his soldiers to one city to stand the invasion of the superior Persian force. On the long run, he had no chance. His tactics were simple - hold the fort at any cost and never give up. Actually he took Arjos by surprise as he decided to take a desperate counterstrike. Arjos had already pulled off some forces as he was sure that King Kurt was already defeated. Although Arjos suffered a defeat, he could clear the situation by calling back his diverted troops.

It seems that Greyblades does not like the brutal phalanx warfare. He tried to reorganize his troops in a lighter manner and execute special operations. My opinion was that it was not the best thing he could do with the men he has got. Finally he decided to attack his enemy and won.

Stranger als decided to fight. He had his fleet and his army was superior to the Persians. In my opinion his plans were to complex for a commander who had so many unprofessional soldiers from different allies and unexperient commanders without suitable communication means. Nevertheless he managed to defeat a Persian army.
On the other side, Rickinator was willing to fight. His plan was to search for the enemy and to attack - maybe a bit too simple.