The Battle of Azure City

[Lyinginbedmon]

How would you do it?

The Giant seems to be running it as a fairly straight head-on attack with a triplicate of fake Xykons to distract attention from the real Xykon, who flies over the defenses in his invisible zombie dragon-mobile with his own Overland Flight for emergencies. I can overlook the issue of producing a massive target like that for the moment on account of Xykon's general cliche-baddy persona :xykon:

Now, personally, I would have the well-planned-out head-on assault as is presently happening. Breach the wall and concentrate a significant number of ground troops toward it whilst the archers and artillery aim for retaliating ranged defenders. :thog: :redcloak:
In addition, a city as big as Azure City has to have some kind of waterway or sewer that leads out/in of the city. Therefore, I would send a sizeable insurgent force into the city via that entrance/exit to undermine the defenses, open up some gates and doors, etc. :mitd:
The Xykon plan is good, and solid, but I'd have a fourth fake Xykon on the dragon whilst the real one flies over some distance down the wall. Because of the minimal distinction between the Xykons, when a local spellcaster gets tipped off by the dragon's wing-wind, they'll take out the fake and think that Xykon is gone, leaving the real one to float over safely (Even if they don't buy it, it's a distraction). :nale:

[Lyinginbedmon]

My method is a pretty sensible, if complex, way to invade a city. In the home city of my PCs, built during one massive war over four centuries ago, the sewers have a 'flush' mechanism by opening a planar portal to the Elemental Plane of Water to clear the place like Niagara Falls every few hours, which funnels straight back to the plane a little while out to sea. As a result, this helps prevent sewer invasions and keeps the sewers unclogged and relatively stable, though the PCs have seen the former situation twice while they were down there...

But that's my thoughts, how would you run an invasion like this?

[jindra34]

I would have an invisible Xykon pound the walls then fall back... dargon and big undead would go in followed by clerics... hobs would just be a diversion...

[OmadaZero]

My wisdom score is just plain terrible, so my plans aren't always the best to follow (yes a pally with a wisdom penalty, may the berating begin) but I will do my best to describe what I will do. First off, I would use my flying creatures (flying undead) to scout the city from a lofty position and report their activities. Upon seeing the mass exodus of ships I would reason that they are using all their ships to send people out, leaving them with no ships for trading or fishing, leaving them with only the food they had. I would then begin what would look like a battle of attrition, only to have a sneak attack one night from the opposite end (the sea) and pincer the city while I head for the throne room personally (perhaps with a backup unit to sacrifice if things get bad).

Edit: the pincer would be undead from the shore, hobbos from the front gates. Otherwise you have to worry about GETTING the hobbos back there... whereas with undead you can just tell them what to do and toss them in the ocean. (essentially)

[Lyinginbedmon]

I would have an invisible Xykon pound the walls then fall back... dargon and big undead would go in followed by clerics... hobs would just be a diversion...

Diversions work best when the object being distracted from isn't seen. A horde of undead and a zombie dragon isn't something you miss easily. That, and an invisible Xykon pounding spells onto the wall also isn't something easily missed.

[Craptactular]

Ah, at last, a topic I can truly make a fool of myself on.
Right First off all:
Pre-battle plans. Moving a horde that huge would have taken a *lot* of time (I'm sure someone will be over any minute now to tell me the exact amount of strips). During that time an actual subtle minion could have been employed (I.e. an evil warlock for instance) to mess with Azure city in the meantime. The avenues for this I could think of are appealing to a number of the nobles to elicit their help in the battle ahead (easily done with assurances to wipe out the paladins, retrieve an icon of Xykons stolen long ago, then leave....yeah...leave...totally......) and by using the Dark Speech Language/Feat in the Book of Vile Darkness feat (I've liked this thing for a while, so I'm going to rant with it involved damn it!). Using the feat, all the rats (it's a port, it must have bloody loads of the things. If not, get an evil druid to summon a bunch of them) get put into a hive mind. You can give the mind one order, so you tell them to "Go get some!". This is a purposefully ambiguos command, as it makes the male rats go have sex to increase the size of the hive, and makes the other rats go to any lengths to feed, ruining Azure's food supplies creating a powerful, ingenius sorcerer in the bowels of the city (for those not in the know, A hive mind is what it sounds like, but the bigger it gets, it slowly gains spells as a Sorcerer and becomes smarter, to the level of outwitting V [I can't wait for V fans to start slamming me over that]).
Another thing that comes to mind is poisoning/tainting the wells. Now, poisoning in DnD isn't so great as far as I'm aware, so why not bind demons/Devils into the sources of pure water? Taint the population into desiring to serve you, or at least create a horrid underclass movement of Evil humans willing to serve Xykon.
The city could also be weakened by the assassination of people important to the cities defence, but aren't as important plot wise (stupid plot save..) specifically, the higher ranked clerics, general Chang, any arcane spellcasters (them being a limited resource in Azure). Obviously, that wouldn't be particularly easy, but someone else can think of ways to do that.
The Paladins are the unit I'd most want to cripple early on. This is achieved by making use of the code of Honour that they are forced to follow (Use that stick class feature dammit!). A company (say about 100 odd) of hobgoblins could move out weeks (a number of strips?) early and lie in wait near the paths leading from Azure. Have a small amount of Undead (a few dozen perhaps?) attack small villages in succession near Azure, always allowing a few to escape, seemingly due to the Undead poor movement speed. A few Paladins will be forced to go, and they'll be ambushed and surrounded by the Hobgoblins, who kill them all. Next time, a few more paladins are sent, and so on. Of course, the tactic might fail, but anything is worth a few less Paladins in the world (My personal alignment is not up for discussion yet).
The head on attack as mounted by the Giant is reasonable, as is the three fake Xykons. I would have had a fourth fake Xykon leading all the flying troops under a mass invisibility spell to suddenly appear and attack the troops defending the breached wall from behind, as the real Xykon flew overhead to enact Redcloaks plan, which was quite reasonable (execution might need some work, but i guess its working well enough...).
A unit of Undead could also have walked through the ocean near to sure, and entered the city that way, forcing men (or at least paladins) to turn and fight them lest the city be destroyed and anyone foolish enough to be left behind be killed. And with the movement rules as they are, that could be an invaluable reduction of unit strengths when the evil hordes break through.

Also, just as a side note, cause I like the Dark speech way to much, if someone with the feat talked to the wall for an action its hardness would be reduced by Half, so the Titanium golems would have done a lot more....
And someone get those catapults firing again!

[Cade Shadow]

Wow... well thought out.

I agree with Craptacular

[Lyinginbedmon]

It's a great plan, but assumes too much of an undercurrent. Put too many of your guys into the city pre-plan and you risk them being discovered and thereby alerting the defenders to the invasion. However, if you send them in during the battle, they're too distracted to notice.

Now, the last time anywhere in my campaign world was taken over, it didn't involve combat. It was done by carefully and cautiously gradually taking over >50% of the ruling democratic council.

During this process, the prospective new ruler made sure to impress himself upon the citizens as a great and noble potential ruler whilst making the present rulers seem incompetent by releasing prisoners and causing serial undead attacks etc.

When it finally came to it that he had the controlled members vote him in as dictatorous Lord, the citizens were happy and few if any people batted an eye as he 'improved' the place as a whole.

Far more insidious and drawn out, but with much less chance of discovery.

[Craptactular]

It's a great plan, but assumes too much of an undercurrent.
*snip*
Far more insidious and drawn out, but with much less chance of discovery.

:smallbiggrin: ..I like it...
But that example isn't really applicable for the Giant. It's just not what Xykon would want, in that he is understandingly impatient to rule the world (actually, a Lich has all the time in the world, but if Xykon can pretend to sleep while his minion explains whats happening....).
As for the amount of people, quite simply, I think the evil guys have more than enough to spare.....

[tilionvevfet]

The easiest way is to find some epic-level evil guy to help you kill all the PCs and promise him all but one mesely gemstone. That way the epic guy slaugters all the PCs and the Castle is completely helpless.

[Lyinginbedmon]

Yes, but it's hardly a battle plan :tongue:

[tilionvevfet]

aye but whatever

[Lyinginbedmon]

How do you intend to find or finance the epic guy anyways? I imagine he'll hardly run cheap for this kind of work.

[Geilan]

Since all of the people left, seige tactics! Surround the city and prevent all entranceand exit from the city. The people on the boats starve, and are forced to return and get slaughternated. The fighters in the city'll fare better, but after a while they will run out too. The nice thing about Xykon's army is if a hobbo drops over from exhaustion, boom. Instant zombie or zombie FOOD. He's got a bunch of em, so he can wait it out, save for the fact that he isn't particularly PATIENT.