Thank you everyone who participated. All submissions are closed. The winner and historical battle reveal will be on the 13th. Round 2 starts on the 20th.

Just to toss this in, with no intention of competing.

Continue the raids to prevent foraging, keep their avenue of escape cut off, then offer the enemy general terms of surrender.

If he refuses, continue as we have been, allowing his army to destroy itself. If he accepts the terms, I ransom the officers back to their country, split his army to work at hard labor for no less than 5 years, before exiling them into different nations,

Any who resist, or show the slightest will, execute.

Edit: the reason I chose the strategy I did, is preservation of my own troops. Presumably, as this is a battle, there will be other battles, not only will I need these troops. Them knowing I value their lives, and will not spend them lightly, will improve morale.

Round 1 Wrap Up

Greetings Elyrians! The winner is HuldricFranconian. The runner up is Kokorozashi and the honorable mention is Terham, because his presentation was excellent.

The results and the historical battle are all on the first page of this thread.

Thank you all for your participation, feedback, and commentary! We will use the example of Round 1 to produce a more refined product for Round 2 with more specific guidelines for submissions and more details for the scenario. It has also been recognized that a number of minor mistakes were made both in the presentation and execution of the event. We were fortunate that none of the mistakes really ruined the event, however we wish to reiterate our appreciation for the feedback we've received and we look forward to Round 2! We hope that everyone who submitted a plan for Round 1 will come back for Round 2!

If your submission was not selected as the winner or runner up and you have questions or concerns about the reviewing process please direct these issues via e-mail to the e-mail used for submissions. Once again, all submissions were reviewed purely in terms of their relation to real world tactics and strategy. These contests are not be interpreted as having anything directly to do with warfare in COE.

Finally, just to reiterate first prize for Round 1 is a $10 gift card from the COE store. Round 1 was intended to be a relatively easy and simple scenario. Round 2 will be more difficult and to reflect this first prize for Round 2 will be a $20 gift card from the CoE store.

We apologize for falling behind schedule, the reviewer Barleyman, lost his internet connection yesterday morning and wasn’t able to get it back until this afternoon. Thank you all again for your participation.

Glad to be on the podium, but I'm confused with your criteria. The winner and the runner up seem to be the ones who found the closest strategy to your historical reference. I think more explanations would help the other participants for the next rounds, myself included.

Do you have other criteria, and how much important they are for you ?

Could you explain why you choose Huldric and not Kokorozash or me ?

Posted By Terham at 02:26 AM - Wed May 15 2019

Glad to be on the podium, but I'm confused with your criteria. The winner and the runner up seem to be the ones who found the closest strategy to your historical reference. I think more explanations would help the other participants for the next rounds, myself included.

Do you have other criteria, and how much important they are for you ?

Could you explain why you choose Huldric and not Kokorozash or me ?

It wasn't intentional that the top plans happened to correspond most to the historical outcome, that's just how things happened to work out.

The issues many people had included; plans which were too complicated; underestimating the enemies capabilities; or anticipating certain behaviors from the enemy which it is unlikely they would conform to.

Since you commented here instead of e-mailing I'll address yours directly. The coordination required of your units in order to pull off your plan is too great, and if the enemy does not act as expected the plan starts to fall apart. Command and Control on a chaotic battlefield is an important factor to remember. Most units do not see the whole battlefield or even a very big part of it. In order for a complicated plan to work in which many units are maneuvering precisely each unit must have precise orders at the precise moment and the enemy must behave as expected. Well, that just seems like too much to ask.

Further, it's a little much to expect that the enemy won't do effective reconnaissance and discover hidden units. Historically there were hidden units, but these were hidden behind the line of battle where the enemy would be unlikely to spot them prior to the engagement. While there are instances of armies being caught by hidden units hidden in front of the line of battle, such as Cannae the stereotype battle, the inexperience of the Roman commanders and army at Cannae is what made this situation possible. It was mentioned in the scenario presented here that the enemy commander was experienced, and that his men were veteran warriors despite their circumstantial disadvantages. Additionally, it was mentioned that they were a tribal force with experience in living off the land and path-finding ie travelling without roads or through wilderness. At least one submission presented a battle plan which took place on a road and assumed that the enemy would therefore approach on the road, obviously that isn't something one can necessarily assume.

Many people ended up falling behind on account of simple oversights. Someone, who I am pretty sure knew the battle's historical outcome, wanted to begin the battle in a V formation to catch the enemy's charge. In this instance if you begin in such a formation you expose your left and right flanks to the enemy. It's ridiculous to think that when they see your pre-prepared V the enemy will charge right into it.

Once again, the two overall biggest issues I saw were over-complication and failure to anticipate the enemy's decisions and capabilities (other than assuming they will fall into your plans).

Finally, all of that being said, there was only ever going to be one anyway. Most people who submitted were going to lose from the beginning as that's just the nature of the beast regardless of simply whether their plan would have worked or not. Many flawed plans presented in this scenario probably still would have worked in practice, but that's just it, we weren't looking for any plan that would work, we were looking for the best plan presented. Even minor flaws could knock a submission out of the running.

Glad to be on the podium, but I'm confused with your criteria. The winner and the runner up seem to be the ones who found the closest strategy to your historical reference. I think more explanations would help the other participants for the next rounds, myself included.

While I was actually surprised at how close the historical outcome was to my layout of the plan. I didn't know the battle in particular, but I can tell you the thought process I had for the operation order(OPORD).

Firstly, I didn't want to assume the enemy location, even though I was free to place them however I wanted. Being that knowing your enemy's location, make up of his forces, and general posture of your foe is key, before acting.

Secondly, despite being outnumbered, my forces had significantly more options than the enemy forces, who were also "looking for a decisive engagement, and also suffering from dysentery, and hunger." made it easier to bait the enemy to moving into terrain that favored cavalry.

Lastly, as I mentioned earlier, the enemy was itching to fight, likely because they couldn't sustain an operational tempo (OPTEMPO) for operating in enemy territory. While my forces had supplies and rest, that allowed them to sustain a higher rate of attack. The key, in this engagement, was to sow chaos in a already beaten enemy. If I read into the challenge, they enemy wanted to get an attack over and done with, or in other words, get put out of their misery. A last ditch effort. With terrain favoring cavalry, with troops morale and spirit still high, and simplistic orders, to follow. That's what ultimately allowed friendly forces to overrun the enemy.

Hope that helps.

just out of interest... how many entries were there in total and how many were litterally exactly what happened in reality (like mine and the ones that won (who put more work in it and included nice graphics and stuff))?

As an addendum, I fully recognize that there were some flaws in the presentation. I said that people could choose the site of the battle, but I didn't realize that people would interpret this to mean they could literally dictate enemy behavior.

Any plan that expects a sick and hungry enemy to commit to an uphill battle already has marks against it in terms of feasibility. Taking a operationally defensive posture with the enemy in this way is more likely to give them the opportunity to escape than it is to entice them to an obviously suicidal fight.

I would like to point out for everyone that historically the enemy army almost won anyway despite everything against them. If they had been able to split the Byzantine line they could have enveloped both halves of the infantry from the opening in the center and routed the entire army. While you all had the advantage in cavalry the enemy's battle line consisted of their entire army which outnumbered your army cavalry included. The sheer weight of their attack concentrated on a single point would blow apart most any infantry formation deployed against it, all other factors being equal. That was the enemy's gamble (historically), one do or die assault and it almost worked. Of course, that isn't to say that they would automatically do the same thing in each of the submissions presented.

Posted By Gromschlog at 09:11 AM - Wed May 15 2019

just out of interest... how many entries were there in total and how many were litterally exactly what happened in reality (like mine and the ones that won (who put more work in it and included nice graphics and stuff))?

To be technical none of them mirror reality exactly. I think at least three of them used cavalry charges to the enemy's rear.

Posted By Terham - Wed May 15 2019

Glad to be on the podium, but I'm confused with your criteria. The winner and the runner up seem to be the ones who found the closest strategy to your historical reference. [...]

I have re-read Huldric's submission, and I do not at all see how it mirrors the historic battle plan employed by the Romans.

In Huldric's plan, the heavy infantry is expected to wedge into the enemy formation. Which is what the opposing force was trying to achieve. Still haven't gone through all other submissions though, but I have read Terham's cuz the pictures caught my eyes XD.

I am pretty happy how I successfully predicted the opponent's battleplan on an open battle given the limited info. And the historical outcome does prove most of my concern valid. The critical difference is that there is a loyalty issue in history, which I assumed there is none in my scenario.

As I have said before, it is up to the reviewer to decide how reasonable a prediction of enemy movement is. I, as a participant, simply lay out on what ground my prediction is based on.

I am looking forward to Round 2. I would be utterly shocked at ever winning these as I know absolutely nothing about battle tactics (as likely evidenced by my submission lol) but it's a fun thought exercise and I think being able to see other people's submissions will help me have a better handle on what you're looking for. So hopefully attempt 2 will be less awful, even if it will still be bottom-of-the-barrel most likely. :D

Maybe I'll manage some better graphics than my 10 minutes with Microsoft Paint this time too. lmao