Quote:
Originally Posted by Rupert
They don't need to be 1-yard away. Five yards off to one side will do. Most regular soldiers don't have combat reflexes, and if the ambush isn't detected until it's triggered most of the patrol will be surprised, and by the time they aren't, the swordsmen will be up in their faces, and they'll be losing arms. Now, I fully expect that the samurai would take solid casualties unless things go perfectly, and after the first couple of ambushes like that patrols in heavy bush would change their marching spacing, etc., and response drills to counter, but initially it'd be pretty nasty for the riflemen. Of course, once they change, the Master Tactician will change in turn - start hitting the patrols in some other way (samurai traditionally also used bows, so hit and run with those for a while, for example).
|
Please also see my other reply. Yes, if we move this down to the level of a less-than-a-skirmish patrol encounter, and we go for the 5-yards yardstick, this might occasionally succeed. At this point, the swordsmen's side is using a world-class skill level (Tactics-24) to try and win a 5 vs. 5 combat. The master is one man, can't be present at every patrol combat in the country at the same time. I'd call it a waste of skill.
Quote:
|
Close country is awful for conventional forces, because irregulars can get close and negate much of the firepower advantage than conventional forces have. Avoiding this means ceding the dense country to the irregulars or turning it into desert, which tends to alienate the local populace.
|
Well, the point with dense forests, marshlands and jungles is that they are very sparsely populated, improductive and largely useless marginal lands. That is probably also why in history conventional forces seldom made that great an effort to develop tactics suitable for them. They preferred and prefer fighting on plains not just because it's more comfortable for horses, long-ranged firepower and tanks, but because that's where the interests lie.
Consequently, there will be cases when ceding the Pripyat Marshes to the irregulars won't be that big a loss, save if one is considering political issues.
In other cases, the jungle will only be worth the effort as a place to be traversed to reach a real objective - in that case, the conventional forces may well accept the temporary pinprick losses as they pass through.
In other cases, the jungle does have something valuable: mining, logging or conversion into farmlands. In that case, heavy landscaping can and does take place, but it's not necessarily into a desert, and it's not a given that the locals disagree (also depending on how one defines the "local populace").
Finally, there might be cases in which the forest or jungle has something valuable but only if it is not landscaped: say furs or spices. In these cases, penetration will be slower and rely on either befriending some of the locals (at the expense of others) or on "going native" so that one will have his own irregulars accustomed to work and fight in the place, and able to face the hostile irregulars.
All of that without forgetting that guerrillas, as a general rule, only have a chance to succeed if they also have a non-jungle, industrialized, powerful patron, that the conventional forces trying to eradicate the guerrillas cannot touch. Coming back to our case, the samurai will only have a chance to win the war if they find some power who will supply them with automatic guns and the training to use them, and the riflemen's state can't deal with that power directly.