Fridge logic: why life must be unfair to goblins.

[Dr.Zero]

The reason Azure City could only muster 10k soldiers is because they didn't even know there was either a lich or an army headed there way until too late to do anything meaningful (remember, the Order not even considering Azure City a potential target was a major plot point!). It takes time to both recruit and arm forces (the vast bulk of armies in those times weren't permanently mobilised) and to pull forces away from where they aren't needed anymore (like the borders). The country Azure City is in almost certainly has at least a million people if I'm remembering the population of the city itself correctly, far more than enough to defeat a hobgoblin nation that probably numbered 120k at most if every able bodied man was conscripted into this invading force... if it had time to mobilize properly.

Which is the whole point of surprise attacks in whole history.

Rome was way stronger and had way more men -theoretically- to fight than Spartacus or Hannibal ever dreamed of (and indeed, when they left to Rome the time to organize itself, Rome crushed them).

But, as good generals, they managed to hide their movements and win some battles (if Rome wasn't already immense, by the time it was in war against Spartacus and Hannibal, and hadn't almost limitless reserves, Rome would have been another Azure City, beaten by a good -but not magic- general).

If we want, we can cite II WW attacks of Germans to France and of Japan to USA, but the point wouldn't change.

[Worldsong]

If we want, we can cite II WW attacks of Germans to France and of Japan to USA, but the point wouldn't change.

Technically you can't because the official comic thread already temporarily got shut down because people kept using real life examples.

[hroþila]

Dr.Zero, you're underselling the degree to which Redcloak and Xykon achieved strategic surprise. It's not comparable to any of the historical examples you're thinking of. They managed to keep their army undetected until the day before it arrived at the gates of the capital city, long after hostilities had actually started. That's not merely catching an enemy army in an ambush or attacking at an unexpected point of the front. It goes waaaaay beyond that.

[Ionathus]

Speaking of the gate its explosion took out proportionally way more of the Azurites than the hobgoblins. There's a lot about the gate and Team Evil that tilted the balance significantly!

Edit: I don't know if the elementals Redcloak summoned were mentioned in particular but without them it's very possible the walls never would've fallen. Normal catapults wouldn't have breached the walls nearly as effectively (and would've been in range of counter-fire), and we saw that trying to scale the walls wasn't working at all to enter the city (though it did work well to pin down forces).

Agreed: the Titanium Elementals made a HUGE difference. The hole they punched in the wall is the hole through which the entire hobgoblin army charged! Without that supernatural damage to the walls, the battle would have been remarkably different.

Between that, the ambush of every early-warning beacon, and the threat of Xykon keeping the entire Sapphire Guard in the throne room away from the battle, the hobgoblins would not have stood a snowball's chance in the Nine Hells without X & RC at the helm.

[Dr.Zero]

Dr.Zero, you're underselling the degree to which Redcloak and Xykon achieved strategic surprise. It's not comparable to any of the historical examples you're thinking of. They managed to keep their army undetected until the day before it arrived at the gates of the capital city, long after hostilities had actually started. That's not merely catching an enemy army in an ambush or attacking at an unexpected point of the front. It goes waaaaay beyond that.

Well, Hannibal actually managing to hide almost his whole army is something well comparable, I'd say.

We want to talk about first, sudden strikes? Germans attacking France, in II WW, France surrendered shortly. Japan attacking Pearl Harbor, USA was ridden off from the Pacific for a while (and could return only because, well, its production centers were way away, in a safe and rich land).
Plenty of example.

I'm not saying RC hadn't a weight on it, the contrary: he was the chief general, the chief of intelligence service, and whatnot. And did a great job.
I'm saying this is what a good leader is supposed to do.
And Azurites had Shojo, for a while, who managed to keep the Roman Empire the Azurites unified without their internal disputes blowing the whole thing off.

I don't see why everyone gives for granted that humans must have good leaders and goblinoids, apparently, shouldn't.

[Emberlily]

Well, Hannibal actually managing to hide almost his whole army is something well comparable, I'd say.

We want to talk about first, sudden strikes? Germans attacking France, in II WW, France surrendered shortly. Japan attacking Pearl Harbor, USA was ridden off from the Pacific for a while (and could return only because, well, its production centers were way away, in a safe and rich land).
Plenty of example.

I'm not saying RC hadn't a weight on it, the contrary: he was the chief general, the chief of intelligence service, and whatnot. And did a great job.
I'm saying this is what a good leader is supposed to do.
And Azurites had Shojo, for a while, who managed to keep the Roman Empire the Azurites unified without their internal disputes blowing the whole thing off.

I don't see why everyone gives for granted that humans must have good leaders and goblinoids, apparently, shouldn't.

To compare the Azurite-Hobgoblin war to a real life war, one must imagine that the invading army was able to mobilize its forces and bring its army to the doorstep of the enemy capital (where half of the population lives) not only before the enemy knows there is a war going on but before they know the army even existed or could exist. There are probably some examples like that in history, but I can't think of any off the top of my head.

[hroþila]

It's not comparable. The Romans knew the Carthaginian army was somewhere near, the French knew the Germans were attacking, they just failed to identify the main thrust in time to close the gap, the US learned about the Japanese attack immediately after it happened (and had been in high alert long before that). By contrast, Redcloak and Xykon took the Azurite border forts and outposts, including the country's second largest settlement, and their attack still remained undetected for the approximately one week it took them to reach the capital.

So no, I don't think it's the same, or within the realm of what standard good leadership could accomplish. They needed powerful outside forces to pull it off and they'd never have been able to do it on their own.

[Blue Dragon]

One, Xykon didn't take part in the siege and Redcloak was offset by the OotS.

You're kinda severely downplaying just how much a few united tribes managed to accomplish, though I'm not sure why.

And they would lose if wasn't for that meddling Paladin blowing up the gate.

[Lacuna Caster]

Speaking of the gate its explosion took out proportionally way more of the Azurites than the hobgoblins. There's a lot about the gate and Team Evil that tilted the balance significantly!

I'm seeing a lot of orange faces around the keep here? Where are you getting this idea of disproportionate azurite casualties?

This feels stretched in a world where power equates just gathering XP, not the accumulation of resources or training.

XP is training, in a certain sense, and magic items and the like are a form of resources (or can be traded for them.) Certainly things like food, timber, and metals are useful for supporting a large population and/or army.

This reminds me of what someone else said on the subject matter, which is explains it well:

Something I want to add.

IRL a species with both a high birthrate and low life expectancy is typically considered to be a prey animal. At best it might become a pack hunter but rarely do they become true apex predators. Even among the apex they usually have the chance to live longer than their relative counterparts. This is because the high birthrate allows for the species to survive when being preyed upon and there's little need for longterm investment since they can't compete with the higher predators. Better to 'put it all upfront' as it were and have 1-3 years of fruitfulness before you get killed by something you can't fight against.

Intelligent species benefit immensely from a lower birthrate and longer lifespan however. This is because they can focus the resources more towards individual members, including education, and then live long enough to pass on their knowledge to future generations. You don't want to be competing against your own after all. An elven child won't need to compete against their siblings for attention or resources, will be able to receive a focus in education, able to leverage their education for longer, and then pass off that education + accumulated knowledge to future generations with ease. Meanwhile a goblin has to compete for both resources and educational attention, won't be able to leverage their education for as long, and even if they do survive to old age won't have much accumulated knowledge to pass on.

To make it worse, in a society with a high population innovation tends to stagnate as solutions can be 'solved' with manpower. For example, a knight is EASILY superior to a peasant in combat. They have superior armor, weapons, and so-forth. However armies are made up of peasants. This is because while knights are powerful and, when deployed properly, highly effective they are expensive and outfitting a peasant is as simple as handing them a spear and maybe a shield or cheap armor. When knights clash there's a contest of weapons, armor, and training in which any improvement can be a deciding edge. When armies clash while tactics and equipment factor in the defining factors are things like manpower and supply lines (which is dependent on manpower). Even out of combat there's no need to innovate when you simply can throw more people at an issue especially when social cohesion and stability matters more that innovation. There's a reason why many major technological innovations happened in places with high individuality and low population and places with more population tend to lag behind. Higher resource competition, solutions solvable through manpower application instead of innovation, and a desire for a stable society instead of an innovative one.

To finally 'cap it off', in an intelligent society you want your geniuses to live as long as possible. That way they can develop new innovations and pass them on to later generations. You don't get that in a society in which there's high competition (which typically rewards physical capabilities; though intelligence can impact) and with a high birthrate (where fertility can have a massive impact instead of intellect).

In other words: Fenris basically made a race of sentient rabbits incapable of actually leveraging the advantages they have in the long term or creating the type of society capable of out-competing the normal races since their biology is effectively trapping them in a society that doesn't allow them to leverage their own intellect. The best they can hope for is leveraging their numbers as a labor force and leech off of the innovations of others... who they opt to pillage and raid from instead of working with. It's likely that Gobtopia or w/e will last only as long as Redcloak does regardless of any outside activity before devolving into a tribalistic raiding nation. It will be highly interesting to see how well they stack up against the refugees in a year or three.

A lot of this is accurate, though there are points I could quibble with (the regions of our world with the highest levels of tech innovation have often had pretty high population densities, partly because tech innovation in fields like agriculture and sanitation actually allow you to support larger populations, and all else equal having more people means more overall brain power can be harnessed as well as greater potential for skill specialisation. Hunter-gatherer societies with low population densities are not known for their blazingly rapid technological progress.)

But yeah, unless you can find some way to strenuously regulate goblin birthrates they're gonna be stuck in a malthusian hellworld pretty much regardless of whatever other concessions they can grab in terms of land and legal status, which also tends to make them pretty dangerous neighbours. They may have the reproductive strategy of rabbits, but rabbits don't grab pikes and swords as a solution to their problems. Goblins do.

[KorvinStarmast]

But yeah, unless you can find some way to strenuously regulate goblin birthrates they're gonna be stuck in a malthusian hellworld pretty much regardless of whatever other concessions they can grab in terms of land and legal status, which also tends to make them pretty dangerous neighbours. They may have the reproductive strategy of rabbits, but rabbits don't grab pikes and swords as a solution to their problems. Goblins do.

Or in this case, Hobgoblins (as regards pikes anyway). Also: nice to see you back in the scrum. Been a while.

[Peelee]

The Mod on the Silver Mountain: Necromancy is also unfair to goblins.