(Spoiler) What military role will Corisande play in HFQ?

I think that while the Charisians are bold...

Siddarmark is still being actively fought over. They may be out of the woods, they may have enough troops under arms, enough weapons, enough support to win through.

They may not.

As a strategist you have to maintain focus on your aim. The primary aim of Charis, right now, has to be securing the Republic of Siddarmark, so that the Republic's manpower and resources can be brought into play on the alliance's side. Messing with Dohlar is important but can be done by naval forces.
Things might be different by the time the Corisandians can be trained up to Charisian standards, but right now all available troops beyond Marines to accompany naval raids and garrison forces should be pouring straight into Siddarmark.

It's like the fact that in 1940 there was a crash program to rearm the British Army; all manner of new weapons designs were delayed, and obsolete types kept in production. There was confidence that the RAF could win the struggle in the air, and even if they failed the Navy could keep the Germans from invading Britain. Nonetheless it would have been negligent in the extreme to continue with bland confidence that those two services would succeed, without making the Army as ready as possible.

Just so, the Empire of Charis must put efforts into Siddarmark that may, with their advantages, turn out to be overkill; because if they're wrong the consequences could be catastrophic.
Siddarmark armed with modern weapons and with infantry and gunners trained to use them becomes a nut so tough to crack that even all the mainland realms together would struggle to crush them, IMO. Once that point is reached Charisian (Corisandian, Chisholmian, Emeraldian, Zebediahan etc) troops can be withdrawn if necessary to form forces for use elsewhere.

Incognitia wrote:I think that while the Charisians are bold...

Siddarmark is still being actively fought over. They may be out of the woods, they may have enough troops under arms, enough weapons, enough support to win through.

They may not.

snip

Let's review some troop numbers.
http://forums.davidweber.net/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2963&start=00

Fifth, troop strengths:

Siddarmark's pre-Sword standing army: 1,200,000

Siddarmark's post-Sword standing army: 394,550
Siddarmark's post-Sword loyal militia: 496,420
Imperial Charisian Army: 450,000
Total post-Sword good guys: 1,340,970
Militia as % of total: 37%

Siddarmark post-sword Temple Loyalist militia: 473,900
Desnair + Dohlar invasion force: 360,000
Army of God invasion force: 500,000+
Harchong invasion force: 1,500,000+
Total post-Sword bad guys: 2,833,900
Milita as % of total: 16.7%

These figures suggest that Siddermark has almost 900k troops, 500k are regulars. There are ~225k mahdrayns, 80k rifled flint locks and assorted jihadist flint locks. IIRC, by the Summer Charis will have another ~200k M96s and convert ~90k trapdoors. That totals ~300k rifles firing metal rounds and 500k rifles almost all of which are breech loaders.

Compare this to the jihadi forces. They have only ~100k breechloaders and ~600 muzzle loaders. At 6 rounds per minute for the muzzle loaders and 12 rounds per minute for the St. Kailmyn's, that's 4.8M rounds per minute. The ~200k M96s alone can fire that many per minute assuming 24 rounds per minute each. Add in the mahndrayns and that's another 3.6M rounds per minute. Even if Charis only manages 100k M96s, the that's 6.0M rounds/minute to the jihad's 4.8M and all of the Allies will be firing breech loaders.

In terms of manpower the RSA has 900k soldiers in total. Roughly 300k will be armed with mahndrayns or trapdoors by Summer. The ICA will have ~200k M96s deployed my Summer. The jihadi troops will have maybe 700k rifle armed troops between the GHoGatA and Dohlar. Only ~50k will be from the remainder of the Army of Shiloh and perhaps another ~100k muzzle loading rifle armed troops in Dohlar proper. I doubt dohlar could have produced many more rifles than ~250k if that's about how many Charis managed over a longer time.

That 100k rifle armed RDA troops have to protect the entire border and all the port cities. Let's add a fudge factor and say there are 200k rifle armed troops protecting Dohlar. It takes only 50k M96s to equal that total firepower. The Corisandians break into 1 corps or 30k and 4 or so raiding brigades. The raiders draw out the RDA field force and the corps comes in to overwhelm that force. Do that once or twice and the majority of the 200k RDA home guard will be wiped out. Once the majority of the home guard is gone, sail to Gorath in concetrated strength and flatten it. If Rahnyld refuses to send out his home guard, destroy every single city along the coast on the way to Gorath.

I honestly don't see what Dohlar can do to stop this. I also don't see how the GHoGatA can match the forces the Allies can field drawing from Siddermark alone. That assumes Charis provides the weapons for the newly raised RSA troops. Corisandian troops are but a tithe of the troops available in Siddermark. It is the weapons from Old Charis and Chisholm that will make the difference. Besides, it would be quicker to send the M96s from Chisholm to Corisande to Dohlar than from Chisholm to Thesmar/Siddar City to East Wing Lake and Baron Green Valley.

However, the Army of God weapons are far more deadly, in the important sense that every time one kills a Siddarmark soldier the loss in firepower to Siddarmark is far larger that the loss in firepower to the Army of God every time a Siddarmark weapon kills an Army of God soldier.

The number can be computed out, but simply computing firepower may be a tiny bit misleading.

phillies wrote:However, the Army of God weapons are far more deadly, in the important sense that every time one kills a Siddarmark soldier the loss in firepower to Siddarmark is far larger that the loss in firepower to the Army of God every time a Siddarmark weapon kills an Army of God soldier.

The number can be computed out, but simply computing firepower may be a tiny bit misleading.

Agreed. If, however, one takes in the ability to replace the weapons as well as soldiers, the disparity remains significantly in the Allies' favor. Still, if one is foolish enough, one can piss away any advantage.

IIRC the reconstituted Corisandeian Army numbered about 30-35,000 troops and the ICMC garrison was 35,000 troop. If you integrate the units. General Gahrvy can probably field by spring an initial trained force of 40-50,000 troops to send to Sharpsfield. That also gives time for the arms factories in Chisholm to come online and supply Gahrvys with either Mahndrayns or M96's and revolvers.

dwileye13 wrote:
Drak,
It is a waste of time and resources to go anywhere to train. There is an excellent core cadre of Charisians to train Corisande's new Army right there at home. Why go West to Go East?

Train them and pick them up on the way to the Gulf of Dohlar

No, there aren't. Unless you just want more Marines. The occupying force is not a training cadre, as has been shown numerous times that Marines know nothing about Army tactics.

I'd expect that those Marines are on the first troopships out--if not already gone at this stage--and Corisandians will, indeed, go up to Chisholm to train.

phillies wrote:However, the Army of God weapons are far more deadly, in the important sense that every time one kills a Siddarmark soldier the loss in firepower to Siddarmark is far larger that the loss in firepower to the Army of God every time a Siddarmark weapon kills an Army of God soldier.

The number can be computed out, but simply computing firepower may be a tiny bit misleading.

In a real sense there is no loss of firepower to the AoG when one of the Harchongese army is killed; his colleagues retrieve his rifle to be re-used by one of the many soldiers who doesn't have a rifle. It's effectively an army with a huge number of replacements.

Counting the average firepower over a whole country ignores local concentration of force and the 'quantity has a quality all of it's own' saying which most Vets on here seem to tip their hat to.

PeterZ wrote:(SNIP)

Let's review some troop numbers.
http://forums.davidweber.net/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2963&start=00

Fifth, troop strengths:

Siddarmark's pre-Sword standing army: 1,200,000

Siddarmark's post-Sword standing army: 394,550
Siddarmark's post-Sword loyal militia: 496,420
Imperial Charisian Army: 450,000
Total post-Sword good guys: 1,340,970
Militia as % of total: 37%

Siddarmark post-sword Temple Loyalist militia: 473,900
Desnair + Dohlar invasion force: 360,000
Army of God invasion force: 500,000+
Harchong invasion force: 1,500,000+
Total post-Sword bad guys: 2,833,900
Milita as % of total: 16.7%

Just to point out, that the Desnair/Dohlar force is effectively gone, as is parts of the Siddarmark post-sword Temple Loyalist militia and parts of the AoG invasion force. I would estimate that this reduces the size of the Temple forces by ~500,000.

These figures suggest that Siddermark has almost 900k troops, 500k are regulars. There are ~225k mahdrayns, 80k rifled flint locks and assorted jihadist flint locks. IIRC, by the Summer Charis will have another ~200k M96s and convert ~90k trapdoors. That totals ~300k rifles firing metal rounds and 500k rifles almost all of which are breech loaders.

Plus how many rifles manufactured by Siddarmark? At the moment, Siddarmark would be doing everything it can to ramp up it's existing production lines, as well as constructing new ones.

By Summer, I would be surprised if they hadn't constructed another 50,000 (or so) new rifles. (After all, they have ~30 divisions either in training, or planned to be trained as riflemen - they wouldn't be doing this unless they also had plans for the weapons to be ready for them....)

Compare this to the jihadi forces. They have only ~100k breechloaders and ~600 muzzle loaders. At 6 rounds per minute for the muzzle loaders and 12 rounds per minute for the St. Kailmyn's, that's 4.8M rounds per minute. The ~200k M96s alone can fire that many per minute assuming 24 rounds per minute each. Add in the mahndrayns and that's another 3.6M rounds per minute. Even if Charis only manages 100k M96s, the that's 6.0M rounds/minute to the jihad's 4.8M and all of the Allies will be firing breech loaders.

As RFC has repeatedly pointed out (see last paragraph of this post http://forums.davidweber.net/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=5277&start=9), the difference in aimed fire between a M96 and a St. Kailmyn's is going to be a lot smaller than you stated above.

So when comparing ICA/Siddarmark riflemen to Temple riflemen, I wouldn't put too much of a modifier on the good guys, due to their superior rifles.

Of course, due to their superior support weapons and tactics, I expect that they would add a substantial modifier to the good guys.....

For the strangest reason I would be very very surprised if General Gharvi was not seeing to it that his troops were kept up to date in training. I guess he could have let his men turn into incompetent drunken loafers that were busy trying to figure out which end bullets shot out of. I just have trouble seeing it.


I really don't see a need to ship the ENTIRE frigging Corsindian branch of the Imperial Army to Chrisholm to teach them the finer point of modern infantry tactics.

The Siddimarkians seem to be getting by, and their army was decimated. For that matter most of Eastshare's force had never held a breech-loader until they landed in Siddimark. The Corsindians have been sitting around for a couple years now regrouping, and reforming around the "guard" who WERE allowed access to modern muzzle loaders. I want to say it was 30-40k worth.

Personally I see a convoy of rifles being diverted to Corisande on the order of 50-75k M96s to give them breechloaders. Not only would this be the quickest delivery for the supplies, it would also be an EXCELLENT good will gesture, and get the branch of the army moving out to Siddimark or w/e they end up going ASAP.

I also do see them going ti Siddimark, the Harchong army is getting a little to well trained and to well equipped. It can not be taken lightly. I think the army will be all hands on deck in Siddimark until that army is broken. Once they go down however...

PeterZ wrote:Let's review some troop numbers.
http://forums.davidweber.net/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2963&start=00

Fifth, troop strengths:

Siddarmark's pre-Sword standing army: 1,200,000

Siddarmark's post-Sword standing army: 394,550
Siddarmark's post-Sword loyal militia: 496,420
Imperial Charisian Army: 450,000
Total post-Sword good guys: 1,340,970
Militia as % of total: 37%
[snip]

Look at that comparison - Siddarmark at peace had 3 times more regular soldiers than Siddarmark at war. Siddarmark at peace also had several times more militia than Siddarmark now.

The Charisians and re-equipped RSA have done extremely well, and will probably have done better by the time current operations conclude (those High Hallows horses and snow lizards...)
They are still, however, a fairly brittle shell around the Republic. If you want to gamble everything on one throw of the dice, then sure you can send troops to attack Dohlar and elsewhere, and expect that the shell will hold long enough for Siddarmark to train up more infantry regiments for modern combat.
The Japanese in WW2 would have run operations on that kind of basis. It served them extremely well...for about the first six months, and many of those successes were based on luck.

I expect Cayleb and Sharleyan, in concert with the Inner Circle and (for Siddarmarkian operations the Lord Protector and his advisors) to be bold, and take advantage of opportunities that present themselves. They may feel secure enough in Siddarmark to send substantial forces elsewhere, and if so I will be interested to see that, but I will be quite surprised.