The mobile army was in Oligarch at the time. Somewhere in the 5k to 10k range as I remember. There were around a dozen active players at the time.
It could not win in a stand up fight against the 20k to 30k armies of three or four dozen nobles the North was sending at the time, but it could raid and stuff like that.
Along with the 20k militia, it could hold the city against even the mega 30k armies and four dozen nobles the North was bringing against it.
And when the beaten Northern armies went back home to refit, we could go out and retake regions or raid for food and gold and the like.
Oligarch was a very rich city which could grow a lot of food inside its walls, and we had support from the Southern Alliance. Mostly economic and food related. Though we did see the occasional Southern Army rolling through after Sirion called all of their allies into the field against us. It generally made us a very hard nut to crack.
Then Sirion used the archer-only abuse to suck the infantry out to get slaughtered, and threw enough wounding magic scrolls at the nobility to keep half of the nobles in comas for a week or two at a time. Then they would attack with their infantry when we only had a handful of remaining nobles to rally and there was just no way to fight them at all. They could sack the city for days at a time with their constant magic attacks against the nobility while burning the walls and economy down and basically making it impossible for our players to even play the game. That's the real reason Oligarch was abandoned in the end. Sirion did that two or three times in a row, and there was just no way to play the game against them. The game just wasn't designed with those tactics in mind and it gave Sirion an overwhelming advantage that simply could not be played against.
Very similar to what Sirion did with the portal event that stripped the walls from Perdan City and the surround regions, erased their best recruitment centers, and gave walls to Sirion allied regions. That has been partially dealt with via a responding portal event to return at least the walls, but it's endemic of the effects of magic in what is supposed to be a low-magic continent. That is another subject though.
The main thing I was focusing on is the archer-only tactic they used in drawing out the infantry by abusing the code that sends infantry out to charge after the attacking infantry is decimated. It's really odd because there used to be code that kept the infantry on the walls for several turns before ALLOWING them to charge out. I remember old battles where they wouldn't charge until turn 8 or 9. Now they charge on the opening turn against intact archer squads. It just makes no sense when that happens.
Much like the "suicide squad" tactic used to suck all of the archers to attack a single suicide squad deployed ahead of the army.
Basically, I take notice of tactics that change the way entire wars are fought. Some of them are just smart tactics. Some of them are abuses of unintended side-effects. And just like we need to find a way of balancing militias against the new, smaller player base.
The Southern Alliance ran into that issue actually. We could smash Northern armies again and again in the field, but taking a city was nearly impossible even with our entire army. And then 5k and 10k militia units started appearing out of no where when we marched into their regions, and that made things difficult for us. Basically, militia is an issue we need to deal with. It is too powerful for the present player base. And if we're being honest, many very small realms with three or four nobles are basically depending on militia to survive. I don't think that was ever the intention of the militia system.
