[Buuyon]

Originally posted by Blood Red Poet
Cardians are not like Irobot. Only the old Cardians rebeled, the ones in the war. Bastok are not allies with Norg, if anything, foes. Bastok navy is constantly being attacked by pirates. Guess where those pirates hang out... Norg.

San d'Oria knights are very well trained. Just one of them in a suit of Adaman, riding a chocobo, could probably take out countless soldiers. That one knight could be leading some troops.

Cid is great and all, but if he got in the way of the Society, they would take him out.

Adventurers > Bastokian soldiers, Adventurers can do Slug Shot, they can't.

And Zeid alone could take out half the Sandorian army...

That adaman armor aint lookin so great now...

Any ways, the Ace Cardians are the ones that teach the cardians right and wrong, they could teach them wrong is right and right is wrong...

And sure bastok soldiers can do slug shot...your saying out of the 40,000 troops not one of them will have any skill with a gun? Even if they arent they best with a gun, i bet they could still hit the choco...

[Blackjack]

I'm not so certain Sadeira. The key to Korroloka is that its easily accesible and provides fast access from both Eastern and Western Altepa right into the Bastok Mines district.

Volbow on the other hand would take much longer since the Anticans would likely colonize the region first before moving onwards. Not to mention that any sizeable army moving that long a distance would be known well in advance.

It would only take a few hundred Antica or if the Anticans were strict on formations, a single legion, to maintain control of the Zerhun Mines. With the lack of any morale and the advantage of numbers the Anticans would simply overwhelm any immediate defenses that would have been hastily thrown up. The lack of any already existing emplacents pretty much shows Bastoks ill-preparedness for this event.

In order to blow up a tunnel, one has to cart the gunpowder there in the first place and a quick initial strike backed up with the massive reserves would make that scenario impossible. To the Anticans the complexity of the tactic is simply going to boil down to throwing as many Anticans as possible through the line of least resistance as fast as possible.

The key to the Korroloka access is that it bypasses Bastoks defenses entirely and negates any long-range bombardment tactics.

The real advantage the Antica currently have is the numbers and the fact that their abilities are really a pain to combat. Over time however, numbers become meaningless as technology builds even faster firing weapons. Bastok isn't all that far away from building cartridge based weaponry and once they create Vana'diel variants of the repeating rifle, gatling gung, and even the machine gun, things are going to go badly for everyone else.

[Blackjack]

Originally posted by Blood Red Poet


One last thing: Who would get involved in the war? Lets list some 'bad guys'.

Windurst: Reble Cardians, none otherwise but the Yagudo seek power.

San d'Oria: Orcs... and Orcs. Possibly, itself.

Bastok: Antica, Moblins, Sahagin, Pirates, and Quadavs. wow.

None of the other Beastmen save for the Anticans are really a threat. Most have had their forces split across various regions of the known world, and they did lose the Great War.

Quadav, Moblins and even the Sahagin have an isolationist nature. The Goblins are nomadic and thrive on commerce with everyone. The Orcs are culturaly war-like so that always means they're a threat, but it shouldn't be too much of a problem except for the fact that Sandoria seemingly lets them build catapults on Horlais that overlook Ronfaure...

The Yagudo is Windursts main problem and that hazard is unknown. The Yagudo appear to be more civilised than the others but their theocratic nature leaves a lot of room for zealotry.

[DM337]

The game points more to norg being allied with Bastok than with Windurst, if you pay attention. Firstly, the Bastok and Norg Auction Houses are linked. Would that indicate an alliance? Who knows, but Kazham and Windurst have their AHs linked, and they are allies. Also, one of the Bastok Rank Missions involves you being sent on a diplomatic mission to Norg to talk to Gilgamesh.

Elvaan Knights being skilled means little on a battlefield, sad as it might sound. Bastok has guns and cannons, Windurst has magic. None of the San d'Orian Knights wear Adaman armor, all the Evaaln NPCs are wearing either Royal Knight gear or that big white armor. Adaman is typified by its purple/blueish color.

Airships. As of right now, only Jeuno and Bastok has access to them. Jeuno runs the airship service and is neutral. Cid invented airships, and he created the first armed airship for combat. San d'Oria has no way to defend against an aerial attack, just like how they were decimated by Bastok's superior technology in the battle of Konstacht in the Great War.

Windurst and Bastok is a hard fight to call. On one hand, Windy has powerful magic and limited summoning powers. on the other hand, Bastok has superior numbers, technology, air force, and a better navy. If Bastok can corner Windurst's limted numbers within the city and begin to shell them, they'd have a fair chance of winning. Spreading out forces would alleviate the amount of losses suffered by magic, and Bastok could win by sheer number alone.

[fuz]

Bastok has the advantage, if sound strategy is applied. The varried forces and sheer number gives them a certain flexability--whether or not it can be used well is another question.

The common beastmen are not seemingly a threat to any of the nations, as in missions you see them being dealt with as an annoyance with ease. Most others are isolationists and do not fight for anyone unless forced. Anitcans may be a threat, but they don't show any sophistocation in technology. Thy don't even build supported caves (the ruins are galkan)--which means I doubt they can tunnel underwater. Even the giants in quifim were able to build ships to get there, and they're already pretty dull.

Not to mention, you can just sit at the entrance of a tunnel with some guns a blast anything that pops out. Anyone who's played a FPS knows being stuck in a hallway with no cover with someone shooting at you produces a low chance of survival. Worse yet is getting hit by some melee attack when you round a corner. For that reason, bastok is extremely easy to defend. Heck, they can pop some cannons in N gusts by the waterfall and shoot anyone that comes in from the highlands below, if they can even make it past the high ground advantage the bastokan side has, and the inevitable traps they can place in the narrow canyons.

[CarbonFibre]

Originally posted by fuz
Even the giants in quifim were able to build ships to get there, and they're already pretty dull.

I haven't done many missions, so this may be why I don't know about this. Where do you find out the above? I basically know at least a little background on all the Beastmen except for them.

[fuz]

It was some npc in jeuno. I just ran around taking to npcs and stuff, which happens when I'm trying to finish a quest and can't seem to find the correct npc.

I certainly remember it's not from a mission. I got into some talk about the history of qufim.

In the great war, the giants built ships to invade vanadiel, i'm not sure if it was the orcs, shadowlord or demons that made them do it; but after the war, not all of them escaped back to their homeland so they took up residence in delkfut's tower.

[JadeNightshade]

I said it before and I'll say it again..
as long as Cid is valuable to Jeuno, the Duchy will never let Bastok fall.
the Archduke, the society, and every other "bad guy" needs Cid to use link the old and new technology..
until they find someone more valuable, Bastok will always be the favored nation..

besides, just in general, Bastok is the "it" country now..
both Windurst and Sandy had their moments in history..
it just happens at the the present time, Bastok is the top dog.

[lionx]

Originally posted by JadeNightshade
I said it before and I'll say it again..
as long as Cid is valuable to Jeuno, the Duchy will never let Bastok fall.
the Archduke, the society, and every other "bad guy" needs Cid to use link the old and new technology..
until they find someone more valuable, Bastok will always be the favored nation..

besides, just in general, Bastok is the "it" country now..
both Windurst and Sandy had their moments in history..
it just happens at the the present time, Bastok is the top dog.

Conquest in many servers, however does not indicate that O_O At least not on midgard for the most part :x

[Buuyon]

Originally posted by lionx
Conquest in many servers, however does not indicate that O_O At least not on midgard for the most part :x

I dont think we are talking about conquest...wich on my server has bastok in lead...

[lionx]

Yeah i know, i am just saying that out for fun.

For the most part i dont see why there would be another war unless one nation started it, in which i guess Jeuno will have to say you cannot because its a violation of treaty..and might bring the other two into alliance..which is kinda dumb oO I feel that if you try to make war, you war with the world.

[sudo]

I think people are way overestimating the power of guns in the game world of today.

Sure bastock may invent new thingies in the future to make guns more deadly

But what's to say windurst won't have invented some mind control gas in the mean time?

So bastock goes and invents the gas masks or buys them off goblins

then windurst invents giant super plant monsters, then bastock invents the armored mobile gundam suits, sandoria invents super knights with psysionic powers and rides to battle on vrtra type wyrvens etc etc.

the end less speculation continues, basically we can make a case how any nation can come up with even more super technology or magic or huges beasts of burden.

But if we go by game mechanics of today, What's in Vanadiel of right now assuming that you passed all 3 nation rank 10 missions, done all of zilart, got though to al'taieu.

Armored airships: There's only like 5 of them total in the world. You don't have an armada capable of destroying armies yet. They are a nusience and can perform special tactics but you aren't going to be able to use them for much more than that.

And by the way, jeuno controls most of the armored ones too. Bastock has like 1 and it was broken the last time cid tried to send ppl over to Al'tieu before the patch.


Infantry with guns: Guns are undoubtable very powerful. Guns are also very expensive. Bastock uses a lot of cheap soldiers. It's very unlikely every single last one of them has a high quality rifle.

If you assume that only iron musketeers get the iron musketeer lv of guns, that basically only leaves like platoon guns and a few other ninja guns available to the bastock forces in majoirty.

The lower lv of antican are like lv 36. It is not possible to 1 shot even the lowest lv of antican even with the strongest gun in the game.

You can of course sidewinder or slug shot one to death. Eagle eye shot one to death works too but single shot wise, You can't kill 1 antican with 1 shot even if they had no cover and were in a cooridor.

The current guns of vanadiel are also not very fast loading. They are more like muskets of the civil war or american revolution.

1 guy camping a hallway can't hold off 3-4 ants rushing. you might be able to bring one or 2 down but the others will kill you with melee and thrown spike balls.

If just 1 antican breaks though, he can sand trap / petrify everyone around so defencive lines have to never let a single one though or it could prove diasterous.

Magic:

Magic like meteor seem to take multiple mages to cast at the same time i.e. in the opening movie. We can't do this as adventurers but NPC's have certainly been hinted as being able to do these things. Also carbuncle has meteor.

But yes, magic is limited by MP. Taru mages are not invincible. And for the sake of game mechanics it wouldn't be possible to flood a field or make gaping holes in the ground to suck infantry down to their deaths.

Mages can indeed do a lot of damage none the less though. And yes, if you have enough forces, you can rush a mage till they run out of mp or casting time and kill them.

So an army of mages may destroy more than 1/2 of bastok forces before they ever get to the gates of windurst but bastock probably has enough numbers to throw at windurst if they got the troops all there.

Unfortunately, windurst mages would no doubt attack bastock forces en mass in fields leading up to windurst and warp home as harassing tactics and also kill a lot of troops.

If windurst uses some stragety instead of all waiting in windurst walls, it is very likely windurst can defeat all the infantry of bastok.

However if it was like the situation in the movie and there were only a handfull of mages left, then I'd have to say bastok would win too.

Really I think it comes down to:

#1 if bastok can get forces within striking distance of windurst without being attacked/harassed/destroyed/detected

and

#2 if windurst chooses to attack bastok troops on the move or sit at home and all wait for bastok to arrive at their foot steps.


People have also suggested a sea side invasion of windurst.

I have to say that would be a bad idea since troop carriers make everone bunch up. AoE spells would tear the infantry apart since they are packed together like sardines on a ship.

The area surrounding windurst are all cliffs making them impossible to land troops. Port windurst has the war warlock school right there. They even have people overlooking the sea practicing 24 hrs a day. Sneaking in troops without catastrophic losses seem unlikely.

Best bastok can do is to take over the port at mahura and march against windurst which undoubtably would alert windurst and invite all sorts of attacks before they ever reach windurst.

[sudo]

For people who have never seen massed infantry vs an avatar before:

[Pounce]

It depends just how much of the actual game mechanics apply to a "real" Vanadiel.

Actual in-game mechanics rarely reflects the "reality" (for lack of a better term) of a game that is depicted in cutscenes, etc.

If you really want to strictly adhere to game mechanics, one could argue that almost every adventurer out there is a pansy wimp that gets owned by crabs and bunnies.

[fuz]

I don't think adventurer experiences can really translate into NPC play. For example maat, with an apparent uncapped subjob, ajido with unknown magic, or all the special armors and weapons. The powers and weaknesses of NPCs are intangible yet may greatly influence a war.

No to mention that it is unknown if such avatar power can actually be controlled. As is for most things you have to give up one thing to gain another--to get such magic, what will you have to sacrifice? Perhaps the majority of tarus will have to sacrifice themselves to get it, which asks the question--what is the point of winning if you're dead like the person who summoned fenrir?

And thinking too far into the future is out of scope, we're discussing what would happen now, or in very short term what might happen should they go to war. The futher you think, the less accurate your predictions will be.

And if anything the bastokan alchemists have been dabbling with artificial life creations, not giant robots. The bugbears are supposedly created with the help of bastokan knowlege stolen by the moblins. (Not unlike fullmetal alchemist, also conveniently made by SE.) Then again, they can probably already make bombs, weapons (like the ones at the crags), maybe dolls and pots.

An unchecked airship raining down atillery with impunity will eventually destroy a city, or army. I mean, look at the size of the world in vanadiel, it's not big. The V1 and V2 rocket attacks by germany vs. england were sparse, but they created mass havoc and plenty of destruction as they were impossible to shoot down with regularity till later in the war. A building destroyed and the area set ablaze every day will take it's toll. An obvious morale destroyer since nowhere is safe, and it can't be gotten rid of--everyone lives in fear. Dropping poison gas on enemies by airship or artillery is probably not beyond bastok either.

Also just how low level the quality of bastokan sodiers are is unknown. They still defeated the highly trained sandiorians in every recent battle--so either their forces are good, or their tactics are. What is almost certain is that the level of their equipment is high. Just about all nations make use of bastokan forged weaopns and armor. That white plate that all the gaurds in jeuno use, even trion in sandy, is iron musketeer armor. The largest forge and materials research is right in bastok, ehanced further by alchemic additions like bloody weapons and fire enhanced swords. Cid is even researching mass production of cerment in replacement of metals for arms and armor. That's like having affordable armor and weapons for your army just a step below adaman in quality. Very intimidating on a mass scale should it happen.

With the number of soldiers that bastok has, they don't need just 1 person guarding an entrance, they can have a whole alliance waiting and ready. Yo don't need to 1 shot anything when you have a dozen barrels pointed at one target. And hey, with widescan, you can see them comming.

Even though bastok has a large army with varying equipment, I'd bet that they have more well equiped (for melee at least) personel than the other nations. As time goes on, they have many projects that will continue to increase the warring power of bastok. I don't know of any other nation that is so agressive in the pursuit of military power--with no qualms about the repricussions. (Just like the good old USA! ;>.>)

Windhurst won't do anything unless backed into a corner (otherwise just maintain the status quo), sandy is still trying to get back to even standing and recover from losses, leaving bastok as the only nation going forward.

If not for the food problem, bastok would not have any major weaknesses.