Attacking Vore would've been a disaster for Melhed, and I was cheering routinely for you guys to try it. You tried it once, I suspect, when you moved haphazardly into Qual. Sometimes, we'd sit in Orde and wait to see where you'd go. It's quicker for us to get to Lastfell or Qual from Orde than it is for you to get to either. And while Marvel got behind the lines occasionally to scout, he can't tell when we're misdirecting or traveling. and we misdirected an awful lot. If I had my druthers, we'd have misdirected every turn we weren't actually moving. That's a hard pace to keep up.
Let me give an example with numbers. You have 20K headed to Qual. Let's say they all arrive at the same time. A dubious proposition, but let's do it. Thalmarkin has 20K mobile total, to keep things interesting for this example. We also have 4K mobile in Qual (for most of the war, we had 5-6K) and Level 1 walls. 12K moves into Qual the turn before you arrive. 15-18K with the walls, you'll lose. Those folks from Thal will need to refit, sure, but at the same time, 8K is sent into Bil Havil to create mischief. THEY don't need to refit. We repeated this routine several times, from both Lastfell and Qual. In fact, this was the basis for the previous war plan, before the invasion.
Yeah, I agree, going for Vore sounds nice on paper but the practicality of it was highly suspect. We'd lose a ton of strength pushing through Qual's fortificatons and militia, and once we got there, we'd be cut off from a retreat, or would go south through Fronen and risk pissing off the 'neutral' republic on our border.
On the note of Fronen, did Thal make some overtures to them to get them involved or keep them out? Maya tried to get them to declare on Thal in the late-game but they didn't seem to be interested, even though she offered up Fronepu if Melhed somehow got Unger.
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