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**Unnamed Mercenary** · **08-28-2014, 01:34 PM**

Post-Calamity elementals are weakened though. This would be the perfect opportunity to attack Gridania. Now if this was 1.0 setting....people invading the forest would be...umm..well, eaten by trees.

Kage · **08-28-2014, 01:34 PM**

(08-28-2014, 01:28 PM)Dogberry Wrote: Historically, a naval based force will always beat a land based force.

This is what I've learned from Civ 5.

Um.

I think they'd all go bankrupt trying to beat each other down. Who would come out for the worst? I believe Ul'dah is the most likely to be most disadvantaged. Wealth and power can only hold so much if your resources have dwindled and starving.

Melkire · **08-28-2014, 01:37 PM**

(08-28-2014, 01:28 PM)Dogberry Wrote: Historically, a naval based force will always beat a land based force.

However, I wouldn't count Gridania out. They have an entire forest they can use that they know better than anyone else, and can wage guerilla warfare on anyone foolish enough to invade. If Gridania is smart, and they are, they'll let The Shroud do most of their fighting for them.

To amend that: historically speaking, a force supported by a navyÂ will usually beat a force not supported by a navy.

The further inland a naval-based force has to strike, the worse off they are.Â Their advantage only counts whereÂ they can use it: on the water andÂ near the coasts. What determines theÂ advantage in an inland conflict is,Â more often than not, air superiority. This is discounting discussion of supply lines, of course. It gets tricky there, because then you have to get into the nitty gritty of who has what and where and for how long and how vulnerable and yadda yadda yadda.

This all gets thrown up in the air when considering the offensive actions against and the defensive actions of an island state. Britain, WWII.

Of course, environmental conditions also contributed to Britain's defense. Those with the home ground have the advantage. See also: Russia vs. Napolean and Russia vs. Hitler.

Warren Castille · **08-28-2014, 01:38 PM**

Barring the seemingly-agreed-upon skirmish battle treaty conclusion, I think the only safe bet is to say that whomever acts as the aggressor loses. There's argument to be made that Limsa could invade and take Ul'dah, but that's still got a lot of variables.

Crisiet · **08-28-2014, 01:38 PM**

Post calamity elementals might be weakened, but they're still a force to be reckoned with and they're angry as hells, apparently.Â

Between the three I still vote Limsa though. If anything, they'd sit back and outlast the other two.

But my money would always be on the empire in this situation anyway.

McBeefâ„¢ · **08-28-2014, 01:40 PM**

(08-28-2014, 01:28 PM)Dogberry Wrote: Historically, a naval based force will always beat a land based force.

I wouldn't agree.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peloponnesian_War
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punic_Wars

I would say that a Naval based force can rarely lose to a land based force, because there is no way for the land based troops to fight it. Likewise control of the sea doesn't help you much if you don't have the offensive land troops needed. See world war II for an example.

Sea based forces can only win when they bring a land force capable of defeating the enemy land force. Sea allows you to move force around faster, but against a concentrated city state like Ul'dah that doesn't matter. Also it's stated that the currents of vesper bay changed with the calamity, which is why there are no large ships there. So Limsa wouldn't be able to say, shell the city from the sea.

Zyrusticae · **08-28-2014, 01:44 PM**

(08-28-2014, 12:50 PM)Melkire Wrote: I find it laughable that the top comment is "No one wins, but Ul'dah probably loses." Objectively speaking, I'd say Gridania probably loses. Second-smallest population, if I'm not mistaken (if it's third, they're even worse off), and their force of lancers, archers and conjurersÂ are, as stated in the reddit thread, best suited to a defensive action (likewise for the Elementals). If you're always on the defensive and on the backfoot... you're eventually going to lose, even ifÂ you outlast a thousand sieges.Â

I don't buy this.

The nature of the landscape of Eorzea means that Gridania is simply the richest in terms of natural resources. This, coupled with their absolutely insurmountable defensive terrain advantage, in addition to the aid of the Elementals, the Sylphs if they decide to pitch in, and the Padjal (who are all White Mages, which, I should remind you, is the single most powerful form of magick in all of Hydaelyn), means they could easily force any invading force out with minimal losses.

Hell, just think about what they're surrounded by - you have to cross either a desert or a massive frozen tundra just to reach them! By the time you get there, you will have to be maintaining massive supply lines while the Gridanians have virtually limitless supplies thanks to the bounty of the forest.

Explain to me how they would "lose", somehow, just because they don't need to leave their forest at any one point in time. I'm pretty sure convincing everyone else that they are untouchable after losing hundreds or thousands of troops in a single battle would be enough of a victory that they would win by default, simply by virtue of sustaining the fewest losses. It doesn't matter if someone EVENTUALLY wins a thousand years later if they sustained a thousand times more losses in the process of achieving that so-called "victory".

McBeefâ„¢ · **08-28-2014, 01:49 PM**

(08-28-2014, 01:44 PM)Zyrusticae Wrote:
(08-28-2014, 12:50 PM)Melkire Wrote: I find it laughable that the top comment is "No one wins, but Ul'dah probably loses." Objectively speaking, I'd say Gridania probably loses. Second-smallest population, if I'm not mistaken (if it's third, they're even worse off), and their force of lancers, archers and conjurersÂ are, as stated in the reddit thread, best suited to a defensive action (likewise for the Elementals). If you're always on the defensive and on the backfoot... you're eventually going to lose, even ifÂ you outlast a thousand sieges.Â
I don't buy this.

The nature of the landscape of Eorzea means that Gridania is simply the richest in terms of natural resources. This, coupled with their absolutely insurmountable defensive terrain advantage, in addition to the aid of the Elementals, the Sylphs if they decide to pitch in, and the Padjal (who are all White Mages, which, I should remind you, is the single most powerful form of magick in all of Hydaelyn), means they could easily force any invading force out with minimal losses.

Hell, just think about what they're surrounded by - you have to cross either a desert or a massive frozen tundra just to reach them! By the time you get there, you will have to be maintaining massive supply lines while the Gridanians have virtually limitless supplies thanks to the bounty of the forest.

Explain to me how they would "lose", somehow, just because they don't need to leave their forest at any one point in time. I'm pretty sure convincing everyone else that they are untouchable after losing hundreds or thousands of troops in a single battle would be enough of a victory that they would win by default, simply by virtue of sustaining the fewest losses. It doesn't matter if someone EVENTUALLY wins a thousand years later if they sustained a thousand times more losses in the process of achieving that so-called "victory".

The syndicate gives gives a bounty to anyone who starts a fire in the forest. Ul'dah gives incindiary devices to the refugees and gives them food to plant them in the forest. Limsa sets up trebuchets and lobs barrels of flaming oil into the shroud.

The only way to control gridania would be to tear down the shroud first. It wouldn't be impossible, and it would work eventually, unless Gridania came out of the shroud to stop it, and negated many of their advantages.

Melkire · **08-28-2014, 01:50 PM**

(08-28-2014, 01:44 PM)Zyrusticae Wrote:
(08-28-2014, 12:50 PM)Melkire Wrote: I find it laughable that the top comment is "No one wins, but Ul'dah probably loses." Objectively speaking, I'd say Gridania probably loses. Second-smallest population, if I'm not mistaken (if it's third, they're even worse off), and their force of lancers, archers and conjurersÂ are, as stated in the reddit thread, best suited to a defensive action (likewise for the Elementals). If you're always on the defensive and on the backfoot... you're eventually going to lose, even ifÂ you outlast a thousand sieges.Â
I don't buy this.

The nature of the landscape of Eorzea means that Gridania is simply the richest in terms of natural resources. This, coupled with their absolutely insurmountable defensive terrain advantage, in addition to the aid of the Elementals, the Sylphs if they decide to pitch in, and the Padjal (who are all White Mages, which, I should remind you, is the single most powerful form of magick in all of Hydaelyn), means they could easily force any invading force out with minimal losses.

Hell, just think about what they're surrounded by - you have to cross either a desert or a massive frozen tundra just to reach them! By the time you get there, you will have to be maintaining massive supply lines while the Gridanians have virtually limitless supplies thanks to the bounty of the forest.

Explain to me how they would "lose", somehow, just because they don't need to leave their forest at any one point in time. I'm pretty sure convincing everyone else that they are untouchable after losing hundreds or thousands of troops in a single battle would be enough of a victory that they would win by default, simply by virtue of sustaining the fewest losses. It doesn't matter if someone EVENTUALLY wins a thousand years later if they sustained a thousand times more losses in the process of achieving that so-called "victory".

Rephrase: Gridania doesn't win. They can turtle up and survive, sure, but they lack both the technology and manpower to take the offensive against either of the other two city-states.

As for the "bounty of the forest"... I'm not even going to touch theÂ "burn the Shroud down to the ground" argument or scorched-earth policy other than to bring them up, though where one would getÂ enough firepowerÂ for that (akin to Bahamut) is questionable (hello, Omega).

EDIT: Never mind, Nat did it for me.

Warren Castille · **08-28-2014, 01:52 PM**

(08-28-2014, 01:44 PM)Zyrusticae Wrote: Explain to me how they would "lose", somehow, just because they don't need to leave their forest at any one point in time.

It isn't that they don't need to, it's that they CAN'T. Maybe we're all misunderstanding but we all seem to be fairly certain that the strongest fighting force Grid would have would be the elementals defending the shroud. They'd be forced to turtle up; Once they set foot out of their land, they'd be run afoul by either cannonfire or an allegedly-superior military force.

Ul'dah wouldn't need to invade. They could amass their resources and, using what's on hand and scraps of the empire, just create giant threshers to slowly destroy the Shroud itself. The Padjals might be teeming with powerful magic, but Ul'dah's the only place in Eorzea where you can learn to throw fire with your mind. I'm imagining huge, sweeping warmachines and buzzsaws, complete deforestation and squads of black mages cutting and burning. Eventually, and it might take a sea of spilled blood, the Shroud would be reduced enough that the REAL fighting could begin.

Arguably, that could stand to small benefit Gridania; Without the treecover, their archers could be of some use in defense. I'd like to think that the massive morale blow that comes from your homeland being turned to ash over a generation or three would do the bulk of the heavy lifting, though.

Edit: Dammit Nat and also Melkire.

Zyrusticae · **08-28-2014, 02:32 PM**

See, the problem with that argument is that it's incredibly counter-productive. The ONLY reason to even attempt to conquer Gridania in the first place is for its natural resources; burning it all down negates any reason for going there at all. You don't even have the argument of Gridania being a massive existential threat to justify such extreme measures, as, as everyone already mentioned, most of their most threatening features only work defensively, not offensively.

Of course they COULD be really, really stupid and burn it all down and lose all of that for the sake of "victory", but, uh, yeah, nobody really wins in that scenario. May as well just throw everything to the Empire if you're gonna go that route.

Warren Castille · **08-28-2014, 02:34 PM**

Hey, no one is looking at this logically. In a strictly "Let's you and him fight" scenario that's the most direct way to obtain victory.

C'kayah Polaali · **08-28-2014, 02:37 PM**

(08-28-2014, 01:49 PM)Natalie Mcbeef Wrote:
(08-28-2014, 01:44 PM)Zyrusticae Wrote:
(08-28-2014, 12:50 PM)Melkire Wrote: I find it laughable that the top comment is "No one wins, but Ul'dah probably loses." Objectively speaking, I'd say Gridania probably loses. Second-smallest population, if I'm not mistaken (if it's third, they're even worse off), and their force of lancers, archers and conjurersÂ are, as stated in the reddit thread, best suited to a defensive action (likewise for the Elementals). If you're always on the defensive and on the backfoot... you're eventually going to lose, even ifÂ you outlast a thousand sieges.Â
I don't buy this.

The nature of the landscape of Eorzea means that Gridania is simply the richest in terms of natural resources. This, coupled with their absolutely insurmountable defensive terrain advantage, in addition to the aid of the Elementals, the Sylphs if they decide to pitch in, and the Padjal (who are all White Mages, which, I should remind you, is the single most powerful form of magick in all of Hydaelyn), means they could easily force any invading force out with minimal losses.

Hell, just think about what they're surrounded by - you have to cross either a desert or a massive frozen tundra just to reach them! By the time you get there, you will have to be maintaining massive supply lines while the Gridanians have virtually limitless supplies thanks to the bounty of the forest.

Explain to me how they would "lose", somehow, just because they don't need to leave their forest at any one point in time. I'm pretty sure convincing everyone else that they are untouchable after losing hundreds or thousands of troops in a single battle would be enough of a victory that they would win by default, simply by virtue of sustaining the fewest losses. It doesn't matter if someone EVENTUALLY wins a thousand years later if they sustained a thousand times more losses in the process of achieving that so-called "victory".

The syndicate gives gives a bounty to anyone who starts a fire in the forest. Ul'dah gives incindiary devices to the refugees and gives them food to plant them in the forest. Limsa sets up trebuchets and lobs barrels of flaming oil into the shroud.

The only way to control gridania would be to tear down the shroud first. It wouldn't be impossible, and it would work eventually, unless Gridania came out of the shroud to stop it, and negated many of their advantages.

That would only work if the Elementals continue to sit back and allow people into the Shroud. Which I personally don't buy at all.

That said, it's clear who wins if the three nations are at war: C'kayah wins! Destruction = profit for your friendly neighborhood smugglers!

Dogberry · **08-28-2014, 02:38 PM**

Yeah, burn the magic forest. Worked in Princess Mononoke.

***Nero*** · **08-28-2014, 02:41 PM**

(08-28-2014, 02:38 PM)Dogberry Wrote: Yeah, burn the magic forest. Worked in Princess Mononoke.

Hey, it almost worked in FernGully too!

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The three nations are at war, who wins?

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