Winter of 80 B.C.
It has all been leading up to this.
Twenty years after the military enfranchisement of vast swaths of Greek citizenry, and corresponding military reforms which saw the implementation of standing professional armies for the first time - used to great effect soon thereafter to conquer Sicily, Iberia, and Afrika within a decade - we stand at the precipice of immortality.
Years of training and battle experience, mustering and maneuvering, negotiating and politicking, has resulted in the greatest invading force the world has ever seen. 320,000 Hellenic soldiers: Makedonians, Thessalians and Epirotes - Aetolians, Athenians, Korinthians and Spartans - Thrakians, Illyrians, Bosporans and Kretans.
Along with the most powerful naval fleets the seas have ever known, numbering in the thousands, our forces are divided into five field armies of 64,000 men each, further divided into light and heavy corps of 32,000. Each is led by an able commander, many having proven themselves just a few years prior in the Carthaginian war, others through crushing internal dissents over the years after completing mandatory rigorous Spartan training.
1st Army
2nd Army
3rd Army
4th Army
5th Army
Now, to the matter at hand.
Despite our titanic strength being brought to bear, our enemies number in the millions. The sheer numerosity of our foe has made planning for the invasion not an easy task. With springtime fast approaching and set as our timetable for landing troops, we must discuss various approaches and decide on the optimal course of action to see our warriors victorious and the last remaining barbarians on earth destroyed.
Two strategies are being considered in particular:
The conservative approach sees all our forces landing in the north, taking what settlements may lay in our wake, and packing our reinforcements tightly at choke points to discourage attack from the local tribes. This should allow us to pick and choose offensives with detachments using naval support to get around, attacking weakened points behind their front when opportune or just brute forcing forward by moving south with everything we've got.
The aggressive approach sees our forces landing simultaneously all across the coastlines, taking as many settlements as quickly as possible to reduce the tribes' capabilities of raising even more reinforcements, hopefully making the isolated campaign more manageable in the long run. The risk is in becoming completely encircled and outnumbered to an unmanageable degree with individual armies being forced to take on much greater numbers and more open areas of attack.
These are not the only options that will be considered, and the esteemed Council is encouraged to offer their wisdom from years of experience.
The main concern and goal is to be able to use one corps. (fullstack) at a time per battle, ideally as the defender, against as few enemy armies at a time as possible, using choke points and terrain advantages, in order to avoid self-reinforcement battles (terrified of leaving any of these precious armies/commanders to AI, even in defensive stance). Our spies have reconnoitered the landscape, and there are few positions where we can achieve this cleanly. Most locations will leave room for encirclement eventually, unless adjacent reinforcements are used to cut them off.
Another great concern is endless, repeated attacks in a given season against a single position. Is that a potential eventuality given any of your experiences? Would it be likely or possible that these savages send 20 armies, one after the other as they are defeated, keep sending more after each battle before the season is over? It is difficult to predict how these wild beasts will behave in order to tailor our approach to their tendencies.
Time runs short. The snows are melting. The men grow anxious. Having survived two vicious storms over the past two years on their journey from the southern Peloponnese by sea, the promise of great battles, fame, and plunder beyond all imagination calls to the warrior spirit of our fearsome troops. All able-minded Strategoi are now called upon to put their experience and expertise to good use in offering perspectives for how to bring these brave men back home after a total and complete victory in the furthest corner of the world.
The War Council is hereby convened - Invasion: Britannia
Reply With Quote
Originally Posted by Sar1n
)... and that's not counting any hidden stacks in the forests, which almost certainly there are (I don't think toggle_fow makes those visible). And I really am concerned about not having enough armies. I think I can bring in two more corps relatively soon, though two years journey, plus recruit mustering, would take around three years. Probably will end up doing so as the war progresses. Probably will have to. Also, I had a detachment of a spy and an assassin embedded with each army. Most of them died in a storm on the way. I haven't used spies to infiltrate in this campaign, I'm not planning on it here. 
