Chapter 45
“Hold!”
Earth Ponies galloping towards us, mixed in with them were pegasi flying above and unicorns running behind.
“Hold!”
I peered over the edge of the trench, “Loose!”
My ponies rose from the trench and let loose a flurry of crossbow bolts and spellfire, cutting into the first ranks of charging ponies.
“Raise!”
Earth Ponies pulled on ropes, raising sharpened spikes facing away from the trench.
I could hear Celestia yelling orders and her forces turned away, splitting and galloping in two directions around my fortifications as the Pegasi passed above us, swooping down towards us, being met by unicorn spellfire as they did while the earth ponies used their strength to reload the used crossbows.
Meanwhile, my pegasi headed to the left to harass the earth ponies and unicorns there.
Just as they hit the second trap.
Small sharp wooden spikes, just a hoof tall stuck into the ground in the thousands along the flanks of my fortifications.
The first pony went down rolling with a scream.
My pegasi was upon them as they were forced to slow down and watch their steps.
That’s where things went wrong as firespells started to arch towards us as Celestia rallied her unicorns.
“Shield!”
The unicorns stopped firing and raised overlapping shields as the earth ponies took aim at the right groups and fired again. This time they plinked off magical shields, and didn't do much damage at all.
Well, that was a standard tactic, so luckily I had planned for that.
I jumped out of the trench, “Ready for hoof to hoof!” I yelled. The Earth Ponies and unicorns started to gather up in formation when I discovered a slight flaw with my plan.
It ended up with me in the middle of two enemy forces.
Uhm.
Buck.
“Shift pikes towards the rear force and move west!” I yelled loudly. Unicorns started to rip the raised west facing pikes from the earth and shifted them towards the left force before I galloped towards the west, everypony galloping along and trying to keep to formations as my pegasi circled around above.
Shit, shit, shit! Need to get out from between! She’s only won like that twice in the past!
Spellfire slashed down towards us from both directions, breaking shields down as they did.
“Shield! Shield! Pegasi, harass their outer flanks!”
By the time we were out of their combined spellfire and had everypony behind solid shields, I turned to look back towards Celestias forces, only to find that while I had been busy yelling at ponies and get them lined up, Celestia had taken possession of my fortifications and pulled the sharpened pikes back into their original positions.
...Buck…
I wasn’t sure how many ponies she had lost, but my forces were down to two thirds. Well, I’m not charging into that, I know exactly how nasty it is and it’s currently inhabited by a sneaky bitch too.
“Unicorns, high arching spellfire!” I commanded and spells started to arch through the air to hit the shields held over the trenches by her unicorns.
Damn it, I need a better view.
Taking to the air, I joined my pegasi, circling above my forces as I peered towards Celestias forces.
Well, this was bad.
Okay then, I know what I wouldn’t like when I was in there, so let’s try that. It looked like I was still outnumbering her.
I went down to land, “Okay, Pegasi harass, Unicorns and Earth Ponies, split the forces and flank. Careful with the trip hazards.”
Heading with the left force, we kept our shields up against her spellfire as we trotted forwards to flank them. My unicorns were starting to look worn and tired from the constant shielding.
Okay, we’re in position, now we move in and-
A battle roar filled the air and Celestias forces charged us, completely abandoning the fortifications as they all galopped towards our forces, earth ponies with spears at the ready.
Buck.
“Shields down! Shields down!” I ordered, “Spellfire! Spellfire! Crossbows! Front ranks, spears!! Pegasi, aircover!” I yelled as I cast piercing spells towards the charging ponies, joining in with a couple of spears of ice.
Our forces crashed with the sound of armor against armor as ponies hit ponies and things descended into a melee as her forces hit mine in an arrowhead formation, piercing into my forces and breaking my lines.
I turned, pulling my chakram from it’s hanging hook and sent it spinning with my magic, “Unicorns!” I yelled, “Switch to fire! Fire!”
Things descended into confusion and fighting until something hit me from the right, sending me sprawling on the now muddy ground with an earth pony wearing her armor pinning me down, a knife in his teeth held against my neck.
Everything went quiet, the sound of battle dying down and I collapsed, breathing heavily as I felt the mud soak into my coat and beneath my armor.
Buck.
Opening my eyes again, I looked up at Celestia, finding her standing above me. Her legs were muddy, but the rest of her looked as radiant as usual, her golden armour glinting in the light of her sun.
“Well…” I said, looking up at her as the earth pony moved off me, “I bucked up.”
Celestia smiled and laid down in the mud next to me, “Page, it’s not the first time I met somepony that tried those sort of fortifications,” she said and her horn lif and I could feel her brush mud from my face, “if it helps, I say you did better than they did. Now, what was your mistake?”
Rolling over onto my stomach in the mud, I shifted the dream to make the forces around us go away, but I left everything else like it was while trying to brush some mud off myself, “Well… a great number of them. But the main one was splitting my forces while in a position that allowed you to use all of yours on half of mine.”
Celestia nodded, “So what should you have done?”
I sighed, “What you did. I should have taken everything I had and went after the half you were in.”
“One way of doing it,” Celestia agreed and helped brush mud off me with her magic, “Especially while your unicorns were relatively fresh. But if it is risky as it leave your flank exposed against the other half. Why digging holes though? To avoid spellfire?”
“Mostly,” I agreed,“ and to hide the rest of the surprises. They also give some cover against pegasi.”
“Unless we use them for weather,” Celestia pointed out, “Your pegasi wouldn’t be able to go up and stop it without exposing themselves to spellfire from my unicorns.”
I slowly nodded, “So the idea to use trenches was completely wrong?”
“Not at all. The idea with those little spikes hidden in the grass on your flanks was a good one as well,” Celestia said and frowned, “Somewhat cruel, but it would work quite effectively. But it was the wrong composition on my side of the fight for that sort of fortification to work effectively. You’d need actual walls. It helped, of course, but even so. And you abandoned them too easily when you thought you were being surrounded.”
I slowly nodded again and climbed to my hooves, “I see,” I said and shifted my wings, “Let’s move this to somewhere other than a muddy field an-eeepOPH!”
Celestias magic gave my hooves a firm push and I found my hooves suddenly not beneath me anymore and I ended up face down in the mud with a splash as the multi thousand years old goddess of the sun descended into laughter next to me.
Revenge will be mine.
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MUD FIGHT!
"Celestia, little spikes are cruel? If you think so about them, you will better never find about mustard gas, crippling mines, phosphorus and carpet bombing of cities. Very effective things, that turn war into hell."
Time to get down & dirty with Celestia Page. LITERALLY!!!!
Someone smart would have set up some hidden explosives in their fortifications so that if an enemy DID take them, as long as you could remotely detonate them. they would be screwed
Celestia... After sweeping the Stallion of his Hooves your suppose to hold him in your forlegs and kiss your maiden Stallion
Guess sexy mud wrestling is a gooo ♡♡♡♡♡
kind of exactly why in the late medieval period they would divide into 2 or 3 boxes of pikemen so there wouldn't really be any way to flank and it protected your ranged forces
Page is not a true gamer, I'm disappointed
Also splitting forces isn't bad
That is how Bonaparte won the battle when the enemy had bigger forces.
*Celestia's hoof grabs Page's tail and lifts the thestral alicorn up in the air*
Page: HEY!
Celestia: MY COMRADES! Victory is ours! Tend to the wounded and then go collect your spoils of war! I expect everypony to gain a herd addition by the end of tonight! I found mine...so you can too~!
Celestia's Soldier Ponies: SOLARFLARE! SOLARFLARE! SOLARFLARE!
Page: HA! HA! Very funny!
We need human war tactics then everything will be nice
10976805
ponies probably have a bit more difficulty doing moving fire tactics as well as battle lines. that said they'd probably take to mechanized warfare pretty well
He should have thought about creating heavily armored units.
Like in heavy, full body armor, with chain mail, etc
i.redd.it/w8ynjmws3bfy.jpg
He should have also used minotaurs and big earth ponies (like Big Mac)
I'm imagining Page wearing a Brodie helmet at this moment, it's a funny look to be sure.
And predictably, using WW1 tactics without sufficient firepower to suppress the enemy didn't work out, if only because plot said so.
That may be a bit mean to be fair, especially since the simulated battle really wasn't well described if I am to be perfectly honest (no insult to Hiver, since a proper description would take multiple thousands of words). The main issue I have is that the unit movements didn't seem reasonable. Celestia's troops (who were not all pegasi) would have had to circumvent the flank defences to get into the trenches, which presumably weren't a tiny spread. Additionally, her forces were engaged in combat at the time and that sort of manoeuvring is practically impossible in a realistically-scaled battle (which I assume this was with thousands per side) of this tech level due to the difficulty of relaying orders and moving formations without presenting the rear to an enemy. A tactical withdrawal is possible for well-led and trained troops, but not incorporating a complex movement like that as well. Celestia might be a good officer, but her troops weren't all veterans with thousands of years of experience.
Simply put, Celestia's troops would realistically have become disordered (and formation is everything) panicked, broken and been cut down in a rout trying to do that they did narratively. Was morale not simulated? If so, that's an oversight by Page. Speaking of which, Page would have lost the grinding melee caught on two flanks as he was with the same impracticality of retreat from such a position.
On the bright side, no grammar jackboot today, so good job there.
10976722
I get the impression he wasn't actually very good. For one thing he just bundled his unit types together and commanded them with no regard for positioning on the field, apparently without any aid from a staff or the consideration of bodyguard forces.
10977335
In pages defense, he has no real training in this kind of thing. That what this is for.
10977371
Yeah, the simulation wasn't that realistic as it seemed.
Ok new plan
Go to "human" mirror the world
Buy disk copies of Total War games ,new and old ones, or at least the closes thing. But only that start with Rome and end with Medieval times.
Then somehow bring them to the dream space. Or at least their data, so maybe sleep close to them?
Throw these discs at his VRCHAT pet project and hope for it to stick......
Or even better and more likely to work, go inside Celestia dream, restart it to a white empty room,imagine a computer that is connected to the dream. And throw the discs, maybe even install the games.XD
So it will give automatically commands and simulate everything.Or at least most of the stuff from presets.
Wait why he didn't try to do something like that with his dream project?
10976542
If one can afford them and make sure they have them where they need them when they need them. As I seem to remember the saying going, amateurs study tactics, but professionals think about logistics...and the flashier, more powerful, available in quantity, and higher-tech one wants their frontline gear to be, the more first creating it to begin with and then also getting it all to where it’s needed in time to do any good is going to strain even the resources of a large nation.
Now obviously our setting isn’t completely primitive, technology-wise, and troops equipped with things like magic or natural flight already allow for the use of some strategies and tactics that humans could at most dream of until they were a fair few steps further up the tech ladder. But the basic principle still holds, and so it’s unlikely that we’ll see anyone actually unleash the full horrors of modern(-ish) human warfare anywhere outside flights of fancy and just perhaps some judiciously planted nightmares here within the timeframe of this story and whatever sequels may still be waiting to emerge. The means to do so simply aren’t quite there yet.
10977371
):
Absolutely, he was foolish to abandon his defences as Celestia pointed out and he does need to learn these things, what didn't quite click for me was two points with regards to the exact way things fell apart. Of course it's your story and I would never be so self-entitled as to suggest a total rewrite for the sake of something happening in a dream of all things, especially when the chapter does work, but my educated feedback on those points as one reasonably knowledgeable about pre-modern warfare goes as follows (prepare for a wall of text
Firstly, morale is everything in warfare, especially pre-modern battles. Cohesion of formation is a great way both to measure this and understand how it works. Eager soldiers will press forward into the enemy during a melee, holding a solid line with plenty of back pressure to stop the front rank from being trampled. As morale drops, a block of soldiers will fragment as the back ranks waver, pulling back from the fight out of self preservation. Usually the battlefield job of NCOs in a pre-modern army was to use a polearm of some kind to shove these wavering soldiers back into line because if the wavering gets too bad, the back pressure ceases and the front ranks get overrun, which is where most of the casualties in a battle happen (it is very hard to kill an armoured soldier holding a shield from the front). This rapidly leads to a rout as the shock of fear instilled by these losses sends the back ranks running. By disrupting a formation with missile fire or forcing them to move over rough terrain, one lowers their effective morale even if they are not actually scared/tired yet. It's also a very good reason to keep soldiers well fed and rested, as weakened soldiers will push with less force, therefore requiring less wavering for the formation to fall apart.
Celestia was therefore very sensible in reigning in her initial charge when they were disrupted for this reason. Meanwhile, Page threw his soldiers into a charge over rough terrain (the stakes) against a mostly ordered force and got caught in a pincer. Real soldiers would panic very quickly upon being caught in such a situation. The battle effectively was decided at that point and rather than performing a risky manoeuvre, a skilled commander like Celestia would realistically have then committed herself and her bodyguards to the counterattack to speed up the collapse.
This ties into another very reasonable beginner error on Page's part which wasn't brought up; he should not have been in the main mass of troops, thus giving up all oversight of the battlefield. He should have been on a hill (or flying in the air) nearby overseeing the battle with his bodyguards and staff. The only time the general of a pre-modern army should ever commit himself and lose that vision of the field is when he spots the exact tipping point of the battle, where his personal presence will give his soldiers the edge in morale and the impact of his guard will deliver the punch of shock needed to break the enemy. Alexander the Great in particular was historically excellent at this.
Secondly, the one third losses mentioned at one point are what makes me wonder if morale was being simulated in the dream, since over one third losses is remarkably high for any army (as opposed to individual companies/regiments) to withstand. Even at a famously bloody battle like Agincourt for example, the English lost about 5-10% of their force while the French lost about 30-35% dead and another 5-10% captured. Many of those who died did so due to the execution of prisoners due to a miscommunication. Almost any army that isn't backed into a last stand will retreat long before the point of such high losses, especially a pre-modern one.
As the one writing suggestion I would seriously make right now, I would drop the losses at that point down to a tenth. It would even be an opportunity to make Page feel overconfident that he's doing fine when he really isn't, further showcasing his inexperience.
Onto what Page did right and how he might have turned things around:
He had the right idea to be creative. Celestia has the charismatic edge on him and as such his troops would waver and break far faster than hers in a straight up push of pike, especially as both sides started on an even footing with regards to supplies, energy and so on.
The only way to beat her that way in a pitched battle under those conditions, aside from taking Celestia out with a very lucky shot from range is to do something impossible in the dreamscape under the rules set down; delegate the initiative to make attacks to competent senior officers. Since Celestia can't be everywhere, dividing her attention with heavy pressure at multiple points in the line will force her to either respond to one personally or try to oversee the defence at multiple points from a distance. By breaking her subordinate captains one can defeat her overall army and there would be absolutely nothing she could do to stop it aside from order a retreat to better ground, at which point one is now dealing with campaign strategy rather than battlefield tactics.
Thank you for coming to my TED talk.
page needs to work on crossing fields of fire, backup trenches, and rally points.
also, chain of command and preset plans
hardpoint bunkers that can only work against the field of fire, flanking trenches, outlying trenches, and yeah I think you get the point
combat is difficult to plan
10976912
I mean full on guerilla warfare
10977485
I love this idea! Admittedly it runs into the problems of realism (again) and a lack of magic/flight being taken into account, but dream-modding could fix that.
10978216
Or just going with one of the fantasy RTS games like Warcraft, since they already have magic and flying troops.
I wonder if pony warfare would feature pegasus ponies flying up and just dropping heavy rocks onto enemy formations. It would seem to be a fairly practical and effective strategy, especially if you catch the unicorns unaware.
11105325
Or spikes. A shower of darts. Salt. Quite s few possibilities.