You're an evil evil warlord. Really good at what you do. You want to take over a well-defended city that's resisting your rule, and of course you need an army. You've got three potential offers, but none of them want to work with the others.
One is a necromancer, who would raise a horde of skeletons, zombies, and anything that you can kill that can be raised up again. Dragons? No problem, he can give you undead dragons. The main flaw is that the undead aren't able to follow very complex orders, or good at manning siege equipment, despite needing no food or water.
Another is an orc chieftan. His people aren't very good with tactics or logistics, but they are very strong and skilled warriors who can easily outmatch the average enemy defender. Their seige engines are crude, but can be quite clever, though they're not the most patient type.
The third offer is a mercenary leader, whose forces are mainly human, with a scattering of other races. Professional soldiers, well trained, and have done sieges before. But they expect Independence and to follow their own code, and could be enticed to join the enemy.
Who do you chose?
>>43616596
Make them work with the others. They'll be no bitching in my command.
Although if I have to pick, the Orcs.
>>43616596
Necromancer, and just a fuckton of zombies. Enough of them, they'll climb the walls on a mound of corpses. And every dead enemy is a fresh recruit. If I can't get that many Undead, smuggle the Necromancer into the city, start up a sketchy murder-cult to kickstart a zombie apocalypse and go from there. Alternatively, have your undead, tireless warriors dig under the city.
>>43616596
Necromancer:
Use the necromancer to raise enough men to kill the other two groups. Raise them. Have a huge army. Who needs siege machines if we can have undead trolls and a few skeletal dragons. Also, even if undead are stupid we can probably get them to "dig a tunnel that way" so they undermine the walls.
The biggest advantage of undead is their lack of fear or grumbling. Throw waves against the walls time and time again and they won't care. The orcs will get impatient or be scared, the mercs will get pissed and want to quit, but undead don't care. If the enemy loses men we can just take their numbers.
>>43616596
DAT DERE OIL IS OURS
>>43616596
Necromancer.
Best for a long siege and decent on an assault.
Excuse me sir, if I'm an evil warlord, why do I need to hire an army? Isn't mine good enough?
>>43616596
I do what smart evil warlords would do.
I of course chooseto trick them all into thinking the other two are trying to beat them to the punch/are working with the city.
I can always replace all the residents with more subjugated outsiders. Let them all make the city a warzone!
Mercs are potential backstabbers, nuff said. Should probably kill them off just to stop the city from hiring them.
Orcs will want to rape and pillage even if the city surrenders, which presents two problems: I apparently want to rule this city, not destroy it, and the defenders will fight harder knowing its death by greenskin either way, increasing the chance that they hold the walls long enough for the orcs to get pissy.
Necromancer makes it easier to play the long game, because you have less mouths to feed and at least one mage that can help screw the city's attempts to magically grow/import food. You don't need manned siege engines if you have undead dragons. And they don't NEED to kill anyone, so once you get past the "holy shit zombies" reaction you can make surrender an attractive option.
>>43616596
You see, what separates the evil warlord from the evil emperor is the ability to use all three.
Think about it, mixing and matching these three with understanding of individual strengths and weaknesses can create an unbeatable army, the key is to lay pressure between each of the armies, ensuring all three answer to you, and you alone. I don't want an army that will fall apart to a Paladin Savant, nor have my army destroy itself, or alternatively have it stab me in the back.
Balance in all things right?
>>43617475
>Mercs are potential backstabbers, nuff said. Should probably kill them off just to stop the city from hiring them.
it's like you want to commit suicide by lone survivor
>>43616596
The Villain with Style within me says go with the Necromancers, as an army of zombies and ghouls scaling the white walls of my enemies' city is metal as fuck.
The Villain with a Sense of Pragmatism (who has also read the Black Company novels) says go with the mercenary army. This is their job afterall, I can trust them to get the real work done.
>>43617068
Not to mention, if we're honest and not worried about in-game balancing issues, they're reusable. Killed a zombie? Oh hey. Now it's a corpse. Now it's a zombie again. Damn things keep going until you destroy the body. Yay profane magic!
>>43617238
You had summoned an army of demons to augment a rather paltry militia, and they did a damn good job in conquering what you already hold. Problem is, they have a limited shelf-life and limited warranty, so when they poofed off you had to hold what was left through your remaining forces and fear. And you don't want to wait on some well defended bastion of goodness and purity to put down the olive branch and raise up a sword, right? Not when you want to keep conquering.
And hey, they're offering, right? Might as well make use of them while you can. If they want a tome of magical power, or some pretty baubles and slaves, or plenty of gold, whatever. It's all worth it for your ambitions, isn't it?
I'll hire the necromancer but tell him to stay put for now.
Now I will summon the orcs and "hire" them to attack the mercenaries.
Now I summon the necromancer to help me and the remains of my militia to kill whatever is left of the orcs and mercenaries, triple my army.
>>43619833
Why not just hire both armies, throw them against the walls, and when they fail raise them?
>>43619858
City might start burning the dead before necromancer gets a chance.
>>43619863
Suppose they burn 1/3 of the bodies.
That still gives you 2 live armies and 4/3 of an undead army over 2 dead armies.
>>43616596
Necromancer, proceed to just wait out any keep that we can't barge through. Pretty easy to feed an Army when you are dining for two.
Also pic related
>>43616596
What fool would choose anything else?
>>43619928
>>43619942
>>43617327
>>43617068
Stoopid skelies.
>>43619873
I would have to give the mercenaries gold to hire them, I don't part with gold. Gold that migh get send away before I can... reclaim it.
The orcs I can satisfy with promise of plunder in the city and that the mercenaries have some valuables.
Also, the unthinkable might happen that the first wave actually breaches and takes the city, would likely be the orcs in your scenario. The city would be razed, I don't want that.
>>43616596
>undead dragons
No, you enslave real dragons and you enslave a wholeload of them too
>>43616596
If I can't make all three of them work together (and of course I can, I'm a fucking evil warlord. Forcing my will upon the weak is in my contract), I'll go for the spooky scary skellingtons. Orcs and mercenaries are nice, but they die. A necrotic army may lose a few soldiers, but grows stronger with every enemy that dies. If you're evenly matched with the enemy, a slight tactical victory on one edge of the battlefield can snowball into a gigantic wave that quite literally consumes the enemy's forces.
>>43619942
I like you.I wonder if Momonga-chan regrets picking a race that doesn't have any Ds to hand out.
>>43623019
I dungeddit surely he has shapechangeing magic or pay2win items so he should be able to throw her a bone if you get what I mean.
>>43616596
>Seige
>Necromancer doesn't require food or water. Soldiers can be infinitely replenished. Every death in the city is now a berserker behind enemy lines.
It's a no brainer really.
>>43616596
Well you just told me I'm really good at what I do, and I'm a warlord, so I presume that means I'm good at making decisions in war-related scenarios, so obviously I make, you know, a good decisions, because I'm good at what I do. So I do whatever you say works. I'm not gonna accept that I'm both good at what I do and still able to give the wrong answer to the question you asked me in the same post. You set up the scenario, that means you stick with it.
>>43616596
Absolutely not necromancer. That undead don't eat or drink is irrelevant, because as the besieger I'm not the one in danger of starving. If I can't man siege weaponry, I might be stuck for years, like a sitting duck. Everyone knows where I am. I've no idea about enemy reinforcements in the scenario. There's one person who can give orders, the necromancer, who hopefully listens to me, but either way it means we're surrounding a city and I have no way of directing of the troops unless I'm exactly where I need to be, which I won't be since I can only be on one side of the fortress at once and the enemy, be he inside the castle or outside reinforcements, will do his best to attack when I can't get there in time. They can just lure the stupid undead to them and have all kind of bone-crushing traps prepared, and when I get there it's too late to do anything about it. If the enemy can use my limited chain of command to steal the initiative, then my shit is fucked. An undead army is at its best when it's on the move, marching, because it doesn't have to rest so it can march far as fuck, and it doesn't need constantly supplies so it's basically impossible to predict or cut off. Scorched earth doesn't work either. Gorilla warfare doesn't sap morale despite inflicting low casualties. But for sieges, no, unless I have vampires and other thinking undead to give orders in my absence.
1/3
>>43616596
Orcs, sure. I can do logistics myself. Get some carpenters, teach the orcs how to make wagons if we can't steal enough, we can capture horses and tell the orcs not to eat them, I'll study the geography myself and draw up supply routes. Tactics aren't particularly useful in a siege either, so fuck it if they suck at it. Write up a rotating system for plundering the countryside if they get bored, or organize tournaments.
Human mercenaries, why not. Nothing the defenders can offer really matches the opportunity to plunder all their shit after a long drawn-out siege with minor losses for the mercenaries, assuming starving the defenders is an option of course.
>>43619833
Was going to suggest similar. Fling zombies over the walls with catapults to start a zombie infection. After panic starts send the rest over the wall.
>>43619787
