Tolkeen Should Have Won

[Sohisohi]

So I don't know where I first heard it, (obviously alot of people where rubbed the wrong way by that specific push forward in RIFTS Earth story progress), but I have a specific question about an event/rumor that was said to have happened among the Palladium community during the realise of the coalition war expansion.

It goes like this:
Two (or more) people got really frustrated that the CS beat Tolkeen, so much SO that they decided to take the troop numbers (and class breakdowns) as presented and played out the war (solider by solider) until a winner could be decided. They found that the CS simply could not win, something about an infinite demon/devil/super horde.

This is the story I heard and although I found a handful of people who also heard something similar, most people have no clue what I am talking about. I have come here to find out if there is any truth to this tale, its origins, if any of you have heard about it, or if it's just evil baby sacrificing Tolkeen propaganda gone unchecked.

[kaid]

Tolkeen was 3 small to mid sized cities with moderate population. I would have go go back through my books but I am pretty sure the CS had more people in their military than tolkeen had period. Magic is an equalizer but there is a limit to how much you can do when you have a hostile power with 100 times your population within an hour flight time from you.

Most demons/devils while physically tough have minimal long ranged attacks. That is why the minion war as written is kinda questionable how much a threat they can even be as samas alone could kill dozens of demons and fly back to rearm and fly back to kill dozens more without any risk of counter attack as the demons are too slow to catch up and lack effective ranged attacks. Now in the tolkeen they did have those TW demon things that at least proved to be some ranged threat but their numbers were never that huge.

[Axelmania]

It's hard to think it's feasible to RP out every single battle, and there's too many variables in battle to account for like surprise attacks, tactics, infighting, friendly fire, etc.

I don't see how you could get infinite demon/devils though. The only renewable kind of demon I know of is Death Demons and they still require an underlying life form to transform and some kind of waiting period.

[Shark_Force]

the war, fought as it was, should probably have been unwinnable for the CS.

a slow, crawling advance, controlling territory one step at a time, would be absolute nightmare fuel against an enemy with magic fighting dirty. it might be theoretically winnable, but it would likely take so long to accomplish that the CS would probably have to pack up and go home.

this is not the same thing as saying that it was unwinnable however. a massive direct assault on tolkeen right from the beginning could have very plausibly won the war. tolkeen didn't really have a good answer to the question "what if the CS just airlifts a million soldiers to our front door and kills us all". their supposed solution (a magical forcefield dome they could create) was laughably weak - a handful of soldiers with laser rifles could punch holes in it and get through a few at a time, never mind if you support them with heavy weapons. once you've got those million soldiers past the shield (which tolkeen cannot attack them through, so it would allow them to walk right up to the shield safely), i wouldn't expect things to end well for tolkeen. now, i'm not going to say that tolkeen *couldn't* have potentially come up with something that would have protected them from a frontal assault... i think there are ways they might have been able to pull it off. but they didn't have those, so in theory, a direct assault could have gotten the CS to the point where at least the city was defeated, and arguably won the war.


something along those lines is more or less what happened officially... provided we completely ignore the stupidity of a huge army coming out of the xiticix hivelands in any condition to fight (i have relatively few problems with the CS exploiting an unknown behaviour of the bugs, though i have *huge* problems with it being a behaviour that their commander only vaguely speculated might possibly exist and just threw his soldiers in there willingly, and also with the idea that hundreds of thousands of soldiers just watched their companions get picked off one by one, slowly, and didn't raise a finger to help them). the idea that they came out the other side after weeks of sleep deprivation, lack of proper food, water, and shelter, under constant assault to which they could not respond, and still be a functioning army, is laughably absurd. they should have all been stark raving mad shells of human beings by that point.

i also have problems that tolkeen apparently must have gone out of their way to buy radar systems that can only point in one direction, and must have built only directional radio receivers to hear panicked reactions from the many farmers living on the side the assault came from.

so no, i don't think the war was unwinnable for the CS. i do think it was stupid that they won the war fighting the way they did. you do not engage in a war of attrition with someone that can summon tens of thousands of new soldiers every few minutes, basically as fast as you can kill them off, by very slowly advancing into their territory. you also cannot allow guerilla warfare against an enemy that can literally teleport their troops to anywhere (especially when a significant portion of those troops are 100% expendable), does not require supply lines to resupply, and has an absolutely absurd numerical disadvantage.

magic is really good at some things. the type of war that the CS conducted was pretty much playing right into the advantages of a magic-using nation, and it should have been no surprise to anyone that it went spectacularly poorly.

[HWalsh]

Logically Tolkeen should have won.

Yes, the CS realistically outnumbered Tolkeen a minimum of 3:1 and probably a lot more than that, but Tolkeen was the defender and, as such, always had the advantage. The enemy has to come to you and you pretty much know where they are going to be. The CS needed supply lines and logically Tolkeen could have done all kinds of things to circumvent, destroy, and mess with them. The CS troops would demoralize very quickly as well, this is due to the CS propaganda telling them how awesome they are (this also happened in real life in WWII German soldiers were told how awesome they were and how inept their enemies were and when their enemies started winning they couldn't handle it because they assumed that they would actually be safe fighting in the war) vs the reality. Tolkeen had the ability to attack the CS in ways that the CS simply had no defense against. They didn't use their intelligent tactics though and, for some dumb reason, got into a slug fest with the CS.

The real downfall of the story as written is how many people abandoned Tolkeen following the Sorcerer's revenge. That would never have happened. They were a dominating and winning force against a much more powerful force. The fact that they used demons and shadow dragons, and that being a problem for too many people, is BS. They knew what they were getting into and, demon use or not, the CS is a million times worse than Tolkeen was.

Here is what *realistically* should have happened at the end of the Sorcerer's Crusade.

The Tolkeen Forces, remember at this time the CS has almost no troops left, march into CS territory and go full on scorched Earth. They burn the CS fields, they blockade Chi-Town, they cut off supply lines to Chi-Town and start launching raids on CS holdings. Primarily attacking their storage facilities where they keep all of their fun toys, like millions of SAMAS Armors. All the while demanding the head of Prosek. Constant harrying attacks, a loss of food, inability to rearm their people, and the constant pressure of a very scary enemy would have eventually broke the CS like any siege did. The Tolkeen army had better supply lines and, by all rights, should have won.

Also in a logical world once the Sorcerer's Revenge succeeded the independent powers, such as Lazlo, should have acted on behalf of Tolkeen, it was the one chance when the CS was (storyline-wise) vulnerable and none of the powers took the opportunity to act. Seriously, Lazlo, according to the Rifter, has a freaking SDF-1 main cannon installed in it's main base. Set that sucker up right outside of Chi-Town during the blockade and BOOM you destroy the Chi-Town wall and can break the back of the CS, but nobody took advantage of the fallout of the Sorcerer's Revenge. They slapped themselves on the back, went home, and straight up gave the CS months to recruit and resupply.

It was narratively bad for the CS to win, it was also silly that they did, and by God the only thing I want to see in a future Palladium book is the CS, just once, get an actual bloody nose and have their power level reduced significantly enough to be realistic. The CS are written should have conquered all of North America and Canada by this point. It is just silly how much plot armor the CS has.

[HWalsh]

All I can tell you is that, in my game, the CS lost and is now just a shell of its former self. This also helps make the Minion War an actual threat.

In mine, the CS soldiers that come out of the Hivelands are in no shape to fight. They are suffering from malnutrition, exhausted, and tired and when they pop out Tolkeen forces rip them to shreds. The main forces of the CS march right up to Tolkeen and start getting pincered from behind cutting their supply lines while the Tolkeen forces start teleporting in mages who drop massive nuke blasts onto the CS forces then teleport away, constantly damaging CS equipment. Lazlo comes in for the save, pincering the CS forces even more and the "New" CS army crumbles in a defeat worse than the Sorcerer's revenge.

The CS retreats, their population is shaken, they have lost 90% of their armed forces and all of their equipment.

Because that is straight up how that should have ended.

[Axelmania]

We should keep in mind that SOT was written before RUE upgraded the leylines into super PPE factories, I found the victory more believable then. If we view it from a lens of the RUE rules for PPE from ley lines it does become harder to accept.

[dreicunan]

Logically Tolkeen should have won.

Yes, the CS realistically outnumbered Tolkeen a minimum of 3:1 and probably a lot more than that, but Tolkeen was the defender and, as such, always had the advantage. The enemy has to come to you and you pretty much know where they are going to be. The CS needed supply lines and logically Tolkeen could have done all kinds of things to circumvent, destroy, and mess with them. The CS troops would demoralize very quickly as well, this is due to the CS propaganda telling them how awesome they are (this also happened in real life in WWII German soldiers were told how awesome they were and how inept their enemies were and when their enemies started winning they couldn't handle it because they assumed that they would actually be safe fighting in the war) vs the reality. Tolkeen had the ability to attack the CS in ways that the CS simply had no defense against. They didn't use their intelligent tactics though and, for some dumb reason, got into a slug fest with the CS.

The real downfall of the story as written is how many people abandoned Tolkeen following the Sorcerer's revenge. That would never have happened. They were a dominating and winning force against a much more powerful force. The fact that they used demons and shadow dragons, and that being a problem for too many people, is BS. They knew what they were getting into and, demon use or not, the CS is a million times worse than Tolkeen was.

Here is what *realistically* should have happened at the end of the Sorcerer's Crusade.

The Tolkeen Forces, remember at this time the CS has almost no troops left, march into CS territory and go full on scorched Earth. They burn the CS fields, they blockade Chi-Town, they cut off supply lines to Chi-Town and start launching raids on CS holdings. Primarily attacking their storage facilities where they keep all of their fun toys, like millions of SAMAS Armors. All the while demanding the head of Prosek. Constant harrying attacks, a loss of food, inability to rearm their people, and the constant pressure of a very scary enemy would have eventually broke the CS like any siege did. The Tolkeen army had better supply lines and, by all rights, should have won.

Also in a logical world once the Sorcerer's Revenge succeeded the independent powers, such as Lazlo, should have acted on behalf of Tolkeen, it was the one chance when the CS was (storyline-wise) vulnerable and none of the powers took the opportunity to act. Seriously, Lazlo, according to the Rifter, has a freaking SDF-1 main cannon installed in it's main base. Set that sucker up right outside of Chi-Town during the blockade and BOOM you destroy the Chi-Town wall and can break the back of the CS, but nobody took advantage of the fallout of the Sorcerer's Revenge. They slapped themselves on the back, went home, and straight up gave the CS months to recruit and resupply.

It was narratively bad for the CS to win, it was also silly that they did, and by God the only thing I want to see in a future Palladium book is the CS, just once, get an actual bloody nose and have their power level reduced significantly enough to be realistic. The CS are written should have conquered all of North America and Canada by this point. It is just silly how much plot armor the CS has.

Your transferred hatred of real Nazis to the CS is showing, and it is blinding you to massive flaws in your argument. Logically, Tolkeen should have been nothing more than a crater with a minimal investment on the part of the CS. Supply lines? With the speed at which CS vehicles can travel, that isn't even a thing.

The CS was not nearly out of troops at the end of the sorcerer's revenge. Reinforcements from Chi-town arrived to stop the rout. They still had all the forces deployed against Free Quebec as well. You also are forgetting that Tolkeen lost 53% of their fighting force. They managed to kill 78% of the troops thay stood and fought them in Alamo like last stands. In other words, thwy cluldn't even manage to completely wipw out people who were trying to die fighting! The majority of the troops fled, and most of them survived. Don't beleive me? Go read p. 107 of Sorcerer's Revenge.

The CS had a defense against those supposed undefendable attacks. The Vanguard.

The idea that people would not have abandoned Tolkeen after seeing what they allowed the demons to do for an entire week is laughable, as is the idea that the CS was a million times worse than Tolkeen. It is really hard to claim to be on the side of the angels when you are summoning literal demons to fight for you! You frequently insist that people not whitewash the CS. Don't whitewash Tolkeen, either.

[Axelmania]

I think a big secret to CS success is, if you remember that the Vanguard has psychic agents... that they might actually be members of Psi-Net / Psi-Bat too? That could be a major reason why they're allowed to exist while non-Vanguard mages get hunted in the burbs.

[Shark_Force]

there are non-vanguard mages in the 'burbs as well. presumably the vanguard mages mostly use the same method of hiding as the non-vanguard ones; it is implausible that they have enough connections to keep every single patrol off their backs.

as to the vanguard stopping tolkeen from having their way with the CS... that is laughably absurd, for the same reason the idea that tolkeen would do well in a frontal confrontation with the CS is laughably absurd. the vanguard simply doesn't have the numbers (and probably also doesn't have the variety of magic users, in particular i doubt they have any magic users that interact much with non-humans, so no shifters or warlocks for example), nor do they have the resources that tolkeen has.

it is hard to build up numbers when the people you need to be recruiting from are explicitly taught to hate you and everything you stand for, and believe that you should die horribly.

[HWalsh]

Logically Tolkeen should have won.

Yes, the CS realistically outnumbered Tolkeen a minimum of 3:1 and probably a lot more than that, but Tolkeen was the defender and, as such, always had the advantage. The enemy has to come to you and you pretty much know where they are going to be. The CS needed supply lines and logically Tolkeen could have done all kinds of things to circumvent, destroy, and mess with them. The CS troops would demoralize very quickly as well, this is due to the CS propaganda telling them how awesome they are (this also happened in real life in WWII German soldiers were told how awesome they were and how inept their enemies were and when their enemies started winning they couldn't handle it because they assumed that they would actually be safe fighting in the war) vs the reality. Tolkeen had the ability to attack the CS in ways that the CS simply had no defense against. They didn't use their intelligent tactics though and, for some dumb reason, got into a slug fest with the CS.

The real downfall of the story as written is how many people abandoned Tolkeen following the Sorcerer's revenge. That would never have happened. They were a dominating and winning force against a much more powerful force. The fact that they used demons and shadow dragons, and that being a problem for too many people, is BS. They knew what they were getting into and, demon use or not, the CS is a million times worse than Tolkeen was.

Here is what *realistically* should have happened at the end of the Sorcerer's Crusade.

The Tolkeen Forces, remember at this time the CS has almost no troops left, march into CS territory and go full on scorched Earth. They burn the CS fields, they blockade Chi-Town, they cut off supply lines to Chi-Town and start launching raids on CS holdings. Primarily attacking their storage facilities where they keep all of their fun toys, like millions of SAMAS Armors. All the while demanding the head of Prosek. Constant harrying attacks, a loss of food, inability to rearm their people, and the constant pressure of a very scary enemy would have eventually broke the CS like any siege did. The Tolkeen army had better supply lines and, by all rights, should have won.

Also in a logical world once the Sorcerer's Revenge succeeded the independent powers, such as Lazlo, should have acted on behalf of Tolkeen, it was the one chance when the CS was (storyline-wise) vulnerable and none of the powers took the opportunity to act. Seriously, Lazlo, according to the Rifter, has a freaking SDF-1 main cannon installed in it's main base. Set that sucker up right outside of Chi-Town during the blockade and BOOM you destroy the Chi-Town wall and can break the back of the CS, but nobody took advantage of the fallout of the Sorcerer's Revenge. They slapped themselves on the back, went home, and straight up gave the CS months to recruit and resupply.

It was narratively bad for the CS to win, it was also silly that they did, and by God the only thing I want to see in a future Palladium book is the CS, just once, get an actual bloody nose and have their power level reduced significantly enough to be realistic. The CS are written should have conquered all of North America and Canada by this point. It is just silly how much plot armor the CS has.

Your transferred hatred of real Nazis to the CS is showing, and it is blinding you to massive flaws in your argument. Logically, Tolkeen should have been nothing more than a crater with a minimal investment on the part of the CS. Supply lines? With the speed at which CS vehicles can travel, that isn't even a thing.

The CS was not nearly out of troops at the end of the sorcerer's revenge. Reinforcements from Chi-town arrived to stop the rout. They still had all the forces deployed against Free Quebec as well. You also are forgetting that Tolkeen lost 53% of their fighting force. They managed to kill 78% of the troops thay stood and fought them in Alamo like last stands. In other words, thwy cluldn't even manage to completely wipw out people who were trying to die fighting! The majority of the troops fled, and most of them survived. Don't beleive me? Go read p. 107 of Sorcerer's Revenge.

The CS had a defense against those supposed undefendable attacks. The Vanguard.

The idea that people would not have abandoned Tolkeen after seeing what they allowed the demons to do for an entire week is laughable, as is the idea that the CS was a million times worse than Tolkeen. It is really hard to claim to be on the side of the angels when you are summoning literal demons to fight for you! You frequently insist that people not whitewash the CS. Don't whitewash Tolkeen, either.

Not my hatred for Nazis, my hatred for any unrealistically constructed uber-powerful faction that, by any sense of logic should have crumbled under its own weight. Have you ever looked at the CS population numbers? THEY ARE INSANE. An area that isn't even 1/3 of the US has something like 5 times the troops, active combat troops, as the entire current United States. That while still having a total population of half of the US that aren't even combat troops.

Do you realize how big the CS is? There is no way to support that large of a population, let alone keep them supplied.

Any military that loses 1,000,000 troops in real life would be crippled.
There is no way any military could recruit 10,000,000 in under a year and support itself.

Seriously, with every weapons manufacturer in the real world working together you couldn't supply 10,000,000 troops in a 6 month period. Yet the CS can. In order for the setting to stay healthy the CS needs to fall and fall hard. They can still be around, they can still be a power, but they can't be that large of a power. It is unrealistic that they haven't conquered every corner of North America based on their numbers.

[Mack]

Let's not re-hash the CS vs Tolkeen debate, and we don't need to re-hash the CS's numbers.

If anyone can address the OP's actual question (the story he heard) please do.

[Hotrod]

Rifts is a group-focused game, not a post-apocalyptic version of Axis & Allies. I interpret most of the narrative behind the setting to reflect some N.P.C.'s take on what's going on, not the factual reality of Rifts Earth. Thus, everything published is canon, but canon does not make it factually accurate.

Personally, though, I would have liked to see the Siege on Tolkeen done up as some kind of a strategy game with the option of introducing RPG adventures into the mix.

[Axelmania]

I would have liked to see the Siege on Tolkeen done up as some kind of a strategy game with the option of introducing RPG adventures into the mix.

Closest I can think of is the CCG. Wasn't there a hypothetical computer MMO in planning at one point? Guessing tied to the movie so fell apart with that... I hope it didn't get axed due to that mini-game.

Would love to see something like the Starsiege Tribes engine adapted to use rifts vehicles. Magic probably wouldn't be that hard, the biggest trouble would be monsters like dragons/splugorth and having them look good.

[Sohisohi]

It's hard to think it's feasible to RP out every single battle, and there's too many variables in battle to account for like surprise attacks, tactics, infighting, friendly fire, etc.

I don't see how you could get infinite demon/devils though. The only renewable kind of demon I know of is Death Demons and they still require an underlying life form to transform and some kind of waiting period.

I'm trying my best to represent what I heard, though its been like 3 years since I last heard this.

Anyway, I'm fairly certain that both armies where placed down right next to each other, but I have no clue about the actual distance. Also I'm pretty sure the demon thing was them just up-playing that demons could be summoned repeatedly.

[Shark_Force]

very few summoning spells are limited to demons. most of them are limited to supernatural beings.

and there are a *lot* of supernatural beings in the megaverse. if you were to use them up at a sufficiently high rate, i suppose you might eventually run out, but i have a hard time believing a war between the CS and tolkeen could have ever hoped to expend every single supernatural being in the megaverse.

so sure, you might run out of a certain type of demon, theoretically. the population of the two hell dimensions are as i recall surprisingly low. but if you summon, say.... tectonic entities, or gargoyles, their population is likely so high and continually rising that there are more than you could ever possibly need.

with that said, i suspect that in all likelihood, the amount of demons that tolkeen could summon at any given time would likely be insufficient to keep the several million CS soldiers/dog boys/skelebots from killing demons faster than they can be summoned. in any straight-up fight, i have a hard time believing the battle would go in favour of tolkeen. if the CS did the equivalent of an RTS attack-move command on all their troops, they still probably win that because they will probably kill enemies faster than they can be replaced by the number of spellcasters available.

it is when you give tolkeen months and years to find isolated groups of soldiers (even as many as a few thousand) and you can send in a larger number of demons to that one place (because you can teleport) that it gets hard for the CS to win. the ability of an individual shifter to summon up a dozen minions that can be easily replaced is insanely powerful in a guerilla warfare scenario, but not nearly as useful when you're feeding them into a killzone against an enemy with far superior numbers, range, and destructive power.

tolkeen needed to put the CS in a situation where they had to defend every inch of their territory from teleporting squads of demons and then hit them while they're spread out across their entire territory. but in a regular battle, i just can't see how you reach the conclusion that the CS are going to be incapable of winning. they might suffer more losses than they would like to, but they can afford to suffer those losses.

[jaymz]

Not for nothing guys but by the rules as written Tolkeen would have been lucky to last a few weeks. Constant battle, even with RUE era Ley Line drawing of PPE, the vast majority of mages would never be able to hold on the enough PPE to be effective after a day or two at best and the majority of spells cannot do enough to actually hammer down the CS numbers the way the fluff states to begin with. Also most demons and supernaturals might do well once in melee but they'll still be outnumbered and in a life or death scenario friendly fire won't even be a consideration.

Frankly there was just as much arse-pulling of things on the Tolkeen side as there was to varying degrees on the CS side and the war really should never have happened.

[Shark_Force]

Not for nothing guys but by the rules as written Tolkeen would have been lucky to last a few weeks. Constant battle, even with RUE era Ley Line drawing of PPE, the vast majority of mages would never be able to hold on the enough PPE to be effective after a day or two at best and the majority of spells cannot do enough to actually hammer down the CS numbers the way the fluff states to begin with. Also most demons and supernaturals might do well once in melee but they'll still be outnumbered and in a life or death scenario friendly fire won't even be a consideration.

Frankly there was just as much arse-pulling of things on the Tolkeen side as there was to varying degrees on the CS side and the war really should never have happened.

RUE era ley line rules would give access to up to 57,600 PPE per 24 hour period. double for ley line walkers. now, practically speaking, some of that time needs to be spent sleeping, but the sustain spell cuts that down to 2 hours per day, which still leaves a lot (it also removes time needed for eating, and presumably therefore removes time for bathroom breaks as well). now, realistically i don't think most of tolkeen's spellcasters spent 22 hours a day drawing PPE and using it towards the war effort, so we're probably dealing with even less than that, but still, that's a heck of a lot of PPE. and of course, amounts go up on a nexus, and tolkeen is situated on *three* nexus points.

that allows them to cast a heck of a lot of spells, provided you don't charge your wizards into the front lines and have them try to spam fireball spells or something stupid like that. and then there's the question of how much might have been saved up in advance... if tolkeen was stockpiling scrolls and talismans (though i doubt every spellcaster in the city had those spells, many would... i mean, there were literal hundreds of adult dragons if nothing else), that would stretch their resources even further.

if you use a wizard like you use a grunt, tolkeen will lose. badly. if you use them like a wizard, it's a lot less straightforward. they are an absolutely insane force multiplier, and they don't necessarily even need to be on the front lines to multiply your forces.

now, if all you mean is that if tolkeen and the CS were to be standing in an open field and everyone was to just use their most damaging abilities on each other, then sure, tolkeen isn't going to last long. but in the kind of war that the CS wound up allowing them to fight? no. that isn't going to be over in days. look at modern wars that have featured guerilla warfare. the insurgents in them don't have the ability to teleport or to make themselves immune to the most commonly used weapons of their enemies, cannot summon demons that can turn invisible at will and paralyze enemy soldiers (or do any number of other interesting things), cannot instantly create bunkers, control the weather, cause natural disasters to strike at will, teleport soldiers to anywhere they please, or do any number of other things that spellcasters in rifts can do. how quickly do those wars end? by all rights, one side has a massive technological and resource disadvantage and are outnumbered by a huge margin, but they can go on for years. decades, even.

now, if you just mean *if* we assume the official version of events in the books was being ignored and we're just talking about the OP's scenario of tolkeen going toe to toe with the CS indefinitely, then sure. that isn't happening. in fact, in such a scenario, weeks is far too generous, in my opinion. hours might be too generous. but in the scenario that did happen, where the CS wanted to secure every single farm and house along the way? you're looking at a war that the CS probably wouldn't win if it went on for so long that the grandchildren of the original soldiers were still fighting it.

[Axelmania]

One easy way to handwave it might be to say that RUE-era level ley lines didn't exist during the Siege, but happened as a result of the destruction of Tolkeen (all that mage PPE boosting the lines) in combination with the eruption of the minion war which linked Rifts Earth more securely with the Palladium World and Dyval/Hades, each boosting the other.

That would also explain some other megaversal problems like...
1) why Hades/Dyval weren't MDC when the Palladium RPG interacted with those planes, but are suddenly MDC dimensions... (Rifts overlap boosted them)
2) why the Palladium World hasn't been utterly dominated by mages due to its high PPE levels (like RUE, you could handwaive them as a recent thing, explaining why books written from a spells-per-day 1st edition perspective might still make sense) since they haven't really adapted to this new resource YET

[eliakon]

So I don't know where I first heard it, (obviously alot of people where rubbed the wrong way by that specific push forward in RIFTS Earth story progress), but I have a specific question about an event/rumor that was said to have happened among the Palladium community during the realise of the coalition war expansion.

It goes like this:
Two (or more) people got really frustrated that the CS beat Tolkeen, so much SO that they decided to take the troop numbers (and class breakdowns) as presented and played out the war (solider by solider) until a winner could be decided. They found that the CS simply could not win, something about an infinite demon/devil/super horde.

This is the story I heard and although I found a handful of people who also heard something similar, most people have no clue what I am talking about. I have come here to find out if there is any truth to this tale, its origins, if any of you have heard about it, or if it's just evil baby sacrificing Tolkeen propaganda gone unchecked.

I can easily debunk this tale.
It is an urban legend.
The math shows that it is physically impossible as they would still be gaming out the invasion today.
No seriously. Running a mass action game where you have fully stated out every one of the hundreds of millions of beings involved. AND then you run them action by action, 15 second by 15 second through the invasion?
That would take a team of hundreds of people, with massive computer support, decades to do.

So no. Nobody did this.
At best they fought out a few battles said "gee when we run the battles using our assumptions and our versions of the rules Tolkeen wins. Obviously that means Tolkeen should have won" and that the story got garbled in the sharing via "the telephone effect"
More likely it was some pro-Tolkeen people making a claim to cite an imaginary source of authority for the early arguments on the outcome of the battles.

[HWalsh]

So I don't know where I first heard it, (obviously alot of people where rubbed the wrong way by that specific push forward in RIFTS Earth story progress), but I have a specific question about an event/rumor that was said to have happened among the Palladium community during the realise of the coalition war expansion.

It goes like this:
Two (or more) people got really frustrated that the CS beat Tolkeen, so much SO that they decided to take the troop numbers (and class breakdowns) as presented and played out the war (solider by solider) until a winner could be decided. They found that the CS simply could not win, something about an infinite demon/devil/super horde.

This is the story I heard and although I found a handful of people who also heard something similar, most people have no clue what I am talking about. I have come here to find out if there is any truth to this tale, its origins, if any of you have heard about it, or if it's just evil baby sacrificing Tolkeen propaganda gone unchecked.

I can easily debunk this tale.
It is an urban legend.
The math shows that it is physically impossible as they would still be gaming out the invasion today.
No seriously. Running a mass action game where you have fully stated out every one of the hundreds of millions of beings involved. AND then you run them action by action, 15 second by 15 second through the invasion?
That would take a team of hundreds of people, with massive computer support, decades to do.

So no. Nobody did this.
At best they fought out a few battles said "gee when we run the battles using our assumptions and our versions of the rules Tolkeen wins. Obviously that means Tolkeen should have won" and that the story got garbled in the sharing via "the telephone effect"
More likely it was some pro-Tolkeen people making a claim to cite an imaginary source of authority for the early arguments on the outcome of the battles.

This.

Basically both sides fought stupidly. A lot of the battles don't work by the rules. Nobody can conclusively prove anything because, hey, dice variance.

[kaid]

I think one big issue with the way it was written is forgetting the fact that the twin cities area is only a few hundred miles from the heart of CS territory. The logistics lines for the CS are basically unnecessary as getting troops forward right from your main fortress city/manufacturing base would minimal. A deathshead transport could get troops to the tolkeen area in probably 40 minutes or so. Samas likely would just do their sorties and return back to chitown directly.

Its written like its some big spread out theater of combat when the reality is if you just want to punch out the tolkeen area it is literally right next door to the biggest stronghold of the CS.

[Axelmania]

SAMAS decontamination would be interesting in case a Siphon Entity somehow took up residence in your railgun. You'd probably need to be able to predict flight paths to intersect them though.

[kaid]

SAMAS decontamination would be interesting in case a Siphon Entity somehow took up residence in your railgun. You'd probably need to be able to predict flight paths to intersect them though.

This is kinda an aspect of one of the harder to game out things. A lot of magic/supernatural stuff is powerful but most of it is also slow compared to things like samas and short ranged. Things like elementals could be nasty but if they guess wrong which direction you are coming from even by as little as a mile or two chances are they won't even be able to engage let alone hurt fast moving fliers. Also for things like entities vs a fast moving target like a sam they don't have radar they don't have long range communications. The amount of time from when they would see a target until that target is long past them would be probably a minute or two. So if it is not 100% directly in the path of its target any chance of an engagement is close to nil.


This is a problem in the minion war as well. As written the demons/devils are a huge powerhouse threat but given what is actually given stat wise the CS should in theory be able to decimate their forces with fast moving fliers with the demons having almost no ability to even respond. They couldn't close the range to engage and are too slow to avoid the fight.

[HWalsh]

I think one big issue with the way it was written is forgetting the fact that the twin cities area is only a few hundred miles from the heart of CS territory. The logistics lines for the CS are basically unnecessary as getting troops forward right from your main fortress city/manufacturing base would minimal. A deathshead transport could get troops to the tolkeen area in probably 40 minutes or so. Samas likely would just do their sorties and return back to chitown directly.

Its written like its some big spread out theater of combat when the reality is if you just want to punch out the tolkeen area it is literally right next door to the biggest stronghold of the CS.

That works EVEN WORSE for the CS actually. Because you can easily predict their paths. Sure, it is easy for a Death's Head transport to get people out there... You also lose a LOT of troops when someone blows the transport apart with all of those troops on it.

[kaid]

I think one big issue with the way it was written is forgetting the fact that the twin cities area is only a few hundred miles from the heart of CS territory. The logistics lines for the CS are basically unnecessary as getting troops forward right from your main fortress city/manufacturing base would minimal. A deathshead transport could get troops to the tolkeen area in probably 40 minutes or so. Samas likely would just do their sorties and return back to chitown directly.

Its written like its some big spread out theater of combat when the reality is if you just want to punch out the tolkeen area it is literally right next door to the biggest stronghold of the CS.

That works EVEN WORSE for the CS actually. Because you can easily predict their paths. Sure, it is easy for a Death's Head transport to get people out there... You also lose a LOT of troops when someone blows the transport apart with all of those troops on it.

Actually the reverse because it is so close given the endurance of the vehicles in question the CS could literally come from almost any direction with very minor increases on time to target. Given the mobility of the troops and the speed of the transports assault forces could be deployed along basically any axis with only an hour to hour and a half of transit time. It always struck me as odd it was written that the CS was going for a long grinding ground war when they have almost as many fast power armor as tolkeen had defenders period. If you use your mobility you could force the defenders to have to try to be strong everywhere at the same time which is not possible so you could lay hammer blow attacks and then remount the transports and rinse and repeat.

The biggest issue for tolkeen and also for lazlo and most other non CS powers is having 1 maybe 2 cities that you have to defend. There is no defensive depth you can't afford to lose anything because losing anything basically means you lose everything. Tolkeen had 1 big city of tolkeen and one midsized city of freehold and a bunch of towns that had sub 1k populations. If either freehold or tolkeen gets knocked out they lose their other major defenses for the other city too. The CS only really had to get lucky one time if you can get the defense network to drop then the fight is basically over from long range bombardment.

[dreicunan]

That works EVEN WORSE for the CS actually. Because you can easily predict their paths. Sure, it is easy for a Death's Head transport to get people out there... You also lose a LOT of troops when someone blows the transport apart with all of those troops on it.

Actually the reverse because it is so close given the endurance of the vehicles in question the CS could literally come from almost any direction with very minor increases on time to target. Given the mobility of the troops and the speed of the transports assault forces could be deployed along basically any axis with only an hour to hour and a half of transit time. It always struck me as odd it was written that the CS was going for a long grinding ground war when they have almost as many fast power armor as tolkeen had defenders period. If you use your mobility you could force the defenders to have to try to be strong everywhere at the same time which is not possible so you could lay hammer blow attacks and then remount the transports and rinse and repeat.

Quite right, Kaid. About the only limit the Coalition had against Tolkeen as far as angle of attack was not coming up from under the ground.

[Axelmania]

Ground foes seems like the big CS vulnerabilities, since you've have a real hard time securing against Earth Elementals coming up from the soil. Water elementals would cause similarproblems for the CS navy.

As slow as they are, air elementals' stealthiness probably causes problems for CS flight paths too unless you have hovering astral psi-stalkers giving out warnings.

[HWalsh]

Ground foes seems like the big CS vulnerabilities, since you've have a real hard time securing against Earth Elementals coming up from the soil. Water elementals would cause similarproblems for the CS navy.

As slow as they are, air elementals' stealthiness probably causes problems for CS flight paths too unless you have hovering astral psi-stalkers giving out warnings.

Also remember that Tolkeen knew months in advance every move the CS would make due to the great talking skull.

That's probably how the CS got broken. They tried to attack through multiple angles but every move they made Tolkeen could counter it.

[dreicunan]

Ground foes seems like the big CS vulnerabilities, since you've have a real hard time securing against Earth Elementals coming up from the soil. Water elementals would cause similarproblems for the CS navy.

As slow as they are, air elementals' stealthiness probably causes problems for CS flight paths too unless you have hovering astral psi-stalkers giving out warnings.

Also remember that Tolkeen knew months in advance every move the CS would make due to the great talking skull.

That's probably how the CS got broken. They tried to attack through multiple angles but every move they made Tolkeen could counter it.

You really need to re-read Poor Yorick's entry in book 1 and the info under Creed in book 6, because while he did give Tolkeen some useful information, a bunch of what he says it extremely cryptic. It is not a consistently reliable source of information, and by the end of the war what he was saying was basically something like this.

[Axelmania]

Ground foes seems like the big CS vulnerabilities, since you've have a real hard time securing against Earth Elementals coming up from the soil. Water elementals would cause similarproblems for the CS navy.

As slow as they are, air elementals' stealthiness probably causes problems for CS flight paths too unless you have hovering astral psi-stalkers giving out warnings.

Also remember that Tolkeen knew months in advance every move the CS would make due to the great talking skull.

That's probably how the CS got broken. They tried to attack through multiple angles but every move they made Tolkeen could counter it.

I don't know about EVERY move, I'm sure Yorick gave good general guidelines but he couldn't have had specifics on every single thing.

[eliakon]

Aaaaaannd, We are back to re-hashing the Tolkeen vs. CS. Debate.
Didn't Mack just literally tell us not to do that?

[Sohisohi]

So I don't know where I first heard it, (obviously alot of people where rubbed the wrong way by that specific push forward in RIFTS Earth story progress), but I have a specific question about an event/rumor that was said to have happened among the Palladium community during the realise of the coalition war expansion.

It goes like this:
Two (or more) people got really frustrated that the CS beat Tolkeen, so much SO that they decided to take the troop numbers (and class breakdowns) as presented and played out the war (solider by solider) until a winner could be decided. They found that the CS simply could not win, something about an infinite demon/devil/super horde.

This is the story I heard and although I found a handful of people who also heard something similar, most people have no clue what I am talking about. I have come here to find out if there is any truth to this tale, its origins, if any of you have heard about it, or if it's just evil baby sacrificing Tolkeen propaganda gone unchecked.

I can easily debunk this tale.
It is an urban legend.
The math shows that it is physically impossible as they would still be gaming out the invasion today.
No seriously. Running a mass action game where you have fully stated out every one of the hundreds of millions of beings involved. AND then you run them action by action, 15 second by 15 second through the invasion?
That would take a team of hundreds of people, with massive computer support, decades to do.

So no. Nobody did this.
At best they fought out a few battles said "gee when we run the battles using our assumptions and our versions of the rules Tolkeen wins. Obviously that means Tolkeen should have won" and that the story got garbled in the sharing via "the telephone effect"
More likely it was some pro-Tolkeen people making a claim to cite an imaginary source of authority for the early arguments on the outcome of the battles.

Ya, from what I heard it took about 4 years. I kept some info close to my chest just so I could make sure no one could try pulling my leg. That being said, this forum has people who participated in the various Rifts fan sites before they shut down. If I can't find any info about it here then it likely never happened. My last bet is to check the archives and see where this story at least originated.

[eliakon]

So I don't know where I first heard it, (obviously alot of people where rubbed the wrong way by that specific push forward in RIFTS Earth story progress), but I have a specific question about an event/rumor that was said to have happened among the Palladium community during the realise of the coalition war expansion.

It goes like this:
Two (or more) people got really frustrated that the CS beat Tolkeen, so much SO that they decided to take the troop numbers (and class breakdowns) as presented and played out the war (solider by solider) until a winner could be decided. They found that the CS simply could not win, something about an infinite demon/devil/super horde.

This is the story I heard and although I found a handful of people who also heard something similar, most people have no clue what I am talking about. I have come here to find out if there is any truth to this tale, its origins, if any of you have heard about it, or if it's just evil baby sacrificing Tolkeen propaganda gone unchecked.

I can easily debunk this tale.
It is an urban legend.
The math shows that it is physically impossible as they would still be gaming out the invasion today.
No seriously. Running a mass action game where you have fully stated out every one of the hundreds of millions of beings involved. AND then you run them action by action, 15 second by 15 second through the invasion?
That would take a team of hundreds of people, with massive computer support, decades to do.

So no. Nobody did this.
At best they fought out a few battles said "gee when we run the battles using our assumptions and our versions of the rules Tolkeen wins. Obviously that means Tolkeen should have won" and that the story got garbled in the sharing via "the telephone effect"
More likely it was some pro-Tolkeen people making a claim to cite an imaginary source of authority for the early arguments on the outcome of the battles.

Ya, from what I heard it took about 4 years. I kept some info close to my chest just so I could make sure no one could try pulling my leg. That being said, this forum has people who participated in the various Rifts fan sites before they shut down. If I can't find any info about it here then it likely never happened. My last bet is to check the archives and see where this story at least originated.

Yah... no.
There is no way that they did this in 4 years.
Period.
It would take longer than that to create the characters.
There were, conservatively, 20 million people directly involved directly in the Tolkeen war. The true numbers are probably much higher since you have to count all the actions of all the people in Free Quebec, the various strike teams that went all over the place... for example a single raid in the burbs would necessitate simulating every CS agent in the burbs (and not just the burb that was hit, but anywhere they could call for back up!), as well as any person who might get involved. And that doesn't factor in every single summon...
But we will be conservative and say 20,000,000.
AND lets say you can make a character in only 5 minutes.
It would take a team of 150 people, working 8 hours a day, every day of the week four years to generate the character sheets.
That doesn't even cover moving anything.
Or writing any of the programs you could use to automate any of the processes.
This is pure, unadulterated sunshine and pixie dust.

[Shark_Force]

i'd expect building a quick roll character generator would save a lot of time on that. a lot of the characters are going to be very similar as well.

that said, you'd need to run everything multiple times to have any conclusive evidence

[Sohisohi]

Agreed, I'd think you'd simply remove the need to even roll and simply average wherever you could. But, is it really RIFTS anymore?

[RockJock]

For what it is worth I don't remember "this" version of the fight being debated.

[eliakon]

i'd expect building a quick roll character generator would save a lot of time on that. a lot of the characters are going to be very similar as well.

that said, you'd need to run everything multiple times to have any conclusive evidence

Sure. Why I bet a quick roll generator would allow you to probably cut the time down to around five minutes per character
I mean you would still need to enter them in the amazingly huge wargaming database program that you somehow wrote in like, zero time.
The one that is able to resolve everything fast enough to not need any human supervision... or a GM to make any calls... AND accurate enough to be not be "homebrew"

Lets be real here.
This never happened.
And anyone trying to defend that it did happen or even that it could have happened is selling you a bill of goods.

There is simply no way, at all, that you could do this with out a team of thousands of people, working around the clock, full time for years, with the support of some majorly impressive computer hardware and software (especially for the time period that this is claimed to have happened).
So unless someone is going to claim that the DoD ran this simulation...
Yeah, Did Not Happen.

[Hotrod]

You could create a model of Rifts combat and use the Monte Carlo technique. Basically pre-programmed given actions for given scenarios and roll dice using a computer's random number generator, program victory/loss conditions for each fight, then iterate the fights a few thousand times to get some statistics about who wins. Programming it would be a bit of a hassle, but once you had the structure put together, you could simulate many thousands of fights in a matter of minutes.

You could even randomly sample the number, level, OCC, and stats of the participants.

Of course, if you are that good at this sort of simulation, you should probably be designing nuclear reactors or spacecraft or something.

[eliakon]

You could create a model of Rifts combat and use the Monte Carlo technique. Basically pre-programmed given actions for given scenarios and roll dice using a computer's random number generator, program victory/loss conditions for each fight, then iterate the fights a few thousand times to get some statistics about who wins. Programming it would be a bit of a hassle, but once you had the structure put together, you could simulate many thousands of fights in a matter of minutes.

You could even randomly sample the number, level, OCC, and stats of the participants.

Of course, if you are that good at this sort of simulation, you should probably be designing nuclear reactors or spacecraft or something.

The problem is that none of that is remotely like what was claimed.
Especially since it would *still* take you months if not years to write up such a program. A program that still would not be doing what the original people claimed to do
So, I reiterate.
This never happened.
No one did this
I will confidently say that no one even did anything remotely close to this either considering how hard would be to make a computer model of Palladium combat that just accounted for weapons, let alone adding in things like spells, psionics, and tactics or the like would make it utterly impossible
So no. No one wrote a Monte Carlo program in the 80s that did an accurate replication either.

It is 100% pure, unadulterated urban legend.

[torjones]

You could create a model of Rifts combat and use the Monte Carlo technique. Basically pre-programmed given actions for given scenarios and roll dice using a computer's random number generator, program victory/loss conditions for each fight, then iterate the fights a few thousand times to get some statistics about who wins. Programming it would be a bit of a hassle, but once you had the structure put together, you could simulate many thousands of fights in a matter of minutes.

You could even randomly sample the number, level, OCC, and stats of the participants.

Of course, if you are that good at this sort of simulation, you should probably be designing nuclear reactors or spacecraft or something.

The problem is that none of that is remotely like what was claimed.
Especially since it would *still* take you months if not years to write up such a program. A program that still would not be doing what the original people claimed to do
So, I reiterate.
This never happened.
No one did this
I will confidently say that no one even did anything remotely close to this either considering how hard would be to make a computer model of Palladium combat that just accounted for weapons, let alone adding in things like spells, psionics, and tactics or the like would make it utterly impossible
So no. No one wrote a Monte Carlo program in the 80s that did an accurate replication either.

It is 100% pure, unadulterated urban legend.

I agree that it is very unlikely to have happened thus far, exactly as described.
I do however have to correct a few misconceptions.
Since as early as the 18th century there have been battle simulators, most notably Kriegsspiel from 1812 that could have EASILY simulated these battles, repeatedly in order to get statistical analysis.
Today, we have computerized versions, such as Universal Epic Battle Simulator(UEBS), TABS, and the entire genre of battle simulators, that can handle tens of thousands of units in single battles.
5 years ago, UEBS didn't exist, but computerized battle simulators did, though, were more rare and harder to access by the general public. However, someone who knew someone who had access to one of these sims, could have turned in a request for sim time (and possibly even paid for it), handed over the config files, and had the sim run. ANY of the national war colleges could certainly have run such a simulation, and if you think they don't contain geeks willing to spend months setting up such a sim, you're badly mistaken. Many universities also had access to such simulators, even if only through their programming departments, such as the programming school I went to where we had such a simulator. The one I got to play with was based on a PC and could really only handle a couple squads on each side at a time, platoons was pushing it, but you could still do it. Of course, that was more than a decade ago, and computer power has come a long way since then, which is one of the things that has made something like UEBS possible today.

While it's long been something that I've been thinking of simming, IIRC, I had (maybe?) the first two books by the time I left Uni and no longer had access to those sims, I've been studying the modern incarnations of Kriegsspiel in order to program something of my own that's comparable. However, with the advent of UEBS, I've kinda abandoned that, and I have just decided to purchase & d/l & run some sims to answer just this debate.

Once I get all the units set up, I'll start posting sim strategies and results in a separate thread.

[Shark_Force]

Nobody ever mentions the fact it takes a life long dedication to the Pursuit of Magic and the first requirement to wield its power is the belief that it exists and its the greatest power attainable.

Troop replacement is nonexistent compared to the legions of the CS. This was always going to be a war of attrition at best. A war that the CS couldn't lose.

if the CS troops are spread across every inch of their empire trying to deal with teleporting squads of expendable demons, they very well could. there are plenty of examples of people with lower numbers and resources successfully defending themselves against people with more resources and numbers if you study history.

i mean, the CS ALSO had those same legions to bring to bear on free quebec. who would you say was the winner of that war? because personally, to me it looks like free quebec got *everything* they wanted out of that war (sovereignty and not having to face the CS in open warfare) while the CS got basically nothing they wanted (none of free quebec's exclusive tech, no control over their government whatsoever, no lands claimed for the empire). that sounds an awful lot like somebody with the exact same disadvantage you've just attributed as guaranteeing the CS couldn't lose beating the pants off of the CS and winning a crushing victory.

[eliakon]

You could create a model of Rifts combat and use the Monte Carlo technique. Basically pre-programmed given actions for given scenarios and roll dice using a computer's random number generator, program victory/loss conditions for each fight, then iterate the fights a few thousand times to get some statistics about who wins. Programming it would be a bit of a hassle, but once you had the structure put together, you could simulate many thousands of fights in a matter of minutes.

You could even randomly sample the number, level, OCC, and stats of the participants.

Of course, if you are that good at this sort of simulation, you should probably be designing nuclear reactors or spacecraft or something.

The problem is that none of that is remotely like what was claimed.
Especially since it would *still* take you months if not years to write up such a program. A program that still would not be doing what the original people claimed to do
So, I reiterate.
This never happened.
No one did this
I will confidently say that no one even did anything remotely close to this either considering how hard would be to make a computer model of Palladium combat that just accounted for weapons, let alone adding in things like spells, psionics, and tactics or the like would make it utterly impossible
So no. No one wrote a Monte Carlo program in the 80s that did an accurate replication either.

It is 100% pure, unadulterated urban legend.

I agree that it is very unlikely to have happened thus far, exactly as described.
I do however have to correct a few misconceptions.
Since as early as the 18th century there have been battle simulators, most notably Kriegsspiel from 1812 that could have EASILY simulated these battles, repeatedly in order to get statistical analysis.
Today, we have computerized versions, such as Universal Epic Battle Simulator(UEBS), TABS, and the entire genre of battle simulators, that can handle tens of thousands of units in single battles.
5 years ago, UEBS didn't exist, but computerized battle simulators did, though, were more rare and harder to access by the general public. However, someone who knew someone who had access to one of these sims, could have turned in a request for sim time (and possibly even paid for it), handed over the config files, and had the sim run. ANY of the national war colleges could certainly have run such a simulation, and if you think they don't contain geeks willing to spend months setting up such a sim, you're badly mistaken. Many universities also had access to such simulators, even if only through their programming departments, such as the programming school I went to where we had such a simulator. The one I got to play with was based on a PC and could really only handle a couple squads on each side at a time, platoons was pushing it, but you could still do it. Of course, that was more than a decade ago, and computer power has come a long way since then, which is one of the things that has made something like UEBS possible today.

While it's long been something that I've been thinking of simming, IIRC, I had (maybe?) the first two books by the time I left Uni and no longer had access to those sims, I've been studying the modern incarnations of Kriegsspiel in order to program something of my own that's comparable. However, with the advent of UEBS, I've kinda abandoned that, and I have just decided to purchase & d/l & run some sims to answer just this debate.

Once I get all the units set up, I'll start posting sim strategies and results in a separate thread.

My point is that all those simulators don't simulate *game mechanics*
Which was the claim.
You can't compare apples to oranges or mangos or Lightbulbs.

And I guarantee that you will be unable to program a sim that runs the game mechanics AND that has *all* the troops on both sides *and* accounts properly for all spells and effects.
Considering how hard it is for table top games to deal with those issues in live games and the number of calls a GM has to make in the course of an average game the contention that someone could program a flawless simulator that uses the rules is beyond absurd.

Now could you program a simulator with hypotheticals based on a persons interpretations of the rules and the units in question and the tactics used and all the rest and run some sims?
Oh heck yeah.
But That Wasn't What Was Claimed.

[ShadowLogan]

Nobody ever mentions the fact it takes a life long dedication to the Pursuit of Magic and the first requirement to wield its power is the belief that it exists and its the greatest power attainable.

Troop replacement is nonexistent compared to the legions of the CS. This was always going to be a war of attrition at best. A war that the CS couldn't lose.

You are glossing over a few important points though with regard to Tolkeen:
1. Tolkeen is not comprised 100% of mages or their apprentices. Nor is their army.
2. Mystics, Warlocks, and Witches might disagree about the time it takes to learn the craft. Not to mention we don't know if you can do things to "speed things up" (take the student to the astral plane for example, 1minute on the material plane = 1week/7days on the astral plane. You could do the equivalent of 1 years training every 52minutes!)
3. Tolkeen's hard to replace specialists give them access to abilities the CS can't match (like weather control, earthquakes). Though one could also say that Tolkeen did not use its magic capabilities to full extent.

i mean, the CS ALSO had those same legions to bring to bear on free quebec. who would you say was the winner of that war? because personally, to me it looks like free quebec got *everything* they wanted out of that war (sovereignty and not having to face the CS in open warfare) while the CS got basically nothing they wanted (none of free quebec's exclusive tech, no control over their government whatsoever, no lands claimed for the empire). that sounds an awful lot like somebody with the exact same disadvantage you've just attributed as guaranteeing the CS couldn't lose beating the pants off of the CS and winning a crushing victory.

I agree FQ gets everything it wanted and the CS doesn't. It should be noted that FQ though had the CS Playbook (which it helped write aspects of).

[Daniel Stoker]

"Rommel, You Magnificent Bastard. I Read Your Book!" Great movie, though that quote would sound a lot less impressive with Patton's real voice.


Daniel Stoker

[Shark_Force]

magic is not a non-replenishable resource on a battlefield. you can literally summon magic users, for example. you can also generate ludicrous amounts of PPE in non-battlefield areas (especially ones with ley lines) and use that PPE to store magical effects for later use. you can bring animals to sacrifice, or use one of the variety of methods of storing PPE in an object (the energy sphere was already a thing at this point, for example, and would likely be the most commonly used option). you can bring charged techno-wizardry devices. you can fight on a ley line as well. you can draw on the PPE of your own regular soldiers or summoned supernatural beings.

you can also show up, expend some resources, and leave. potentially, you could even leave behind some ongoing magical effects (like summoned beings or massive AoE damaging effects) that the enemy will continue to be forced to spend resources on.

guerilla warfare is a thing in real life. it is devastatingly effective if used well. guerilla warfare with literal magic as powerful as magic is in rifts would be absolutely terrifying. a simple spell that makes the wearer immune to energy negates a massive portion of the CS infantry, and that's just one spell. the various teleport spells would be nightmare fuel, because now there is no safe area. there is no such thing as being behind your own lines; every last square foot of territory occupied by anything you value is now the front line, for you at least (since the CS doesn't have access to the same resources, tolkeen doesn't have the same problem). there is literally a spell that you cast on an area, figures out the strength of your enemies in that area, and then puts those enemies up against a force of equal strength created from nothing. against a spell like that, you are never going to be able to bring superior force to bear, because whatever superior force you bring the enemy can instantly match it.

(also, skelebots aren't really the same thing as summoned creatures. the books literally tell us that skelebots are so bad at war that they are destroyed in mass quantities by tolkeen with trivial losses. there are giant piles of them scattered all across the countryside as a testament to just how ineffective skelebots are. in contrast, the only problem tolkeen had with their own summoned forces came when they finally got smacked upside the head with a clue bat and realized "oh hey, turns out that all these demons we've been stupid enough to spend massive amounts of resources on are acting like demons" and lost a lot of allies as a result of their absolutely shocking level of stupidity).

if (and again, as i've already mentioned further up in this thread, this is a big if) tolkeen had actually found a proper way to stop the CS from showing up on their front door and assaulting the city directly, and if they didn't do an absolutely atrocious job of using the advantages they had, it would honestly have been very realistic for the CS to be unable to win the war. now, they didn't have any actual way of preventing a direct assault from being effective, so ultimately i'm not entirely upset at the eventual outcome of the war (the specific details are just stupid, but the overall idea of a massive direct assault on tolkeen being effective is not), but in general: this was never an unwinnable war for tolkeen. it was only unwinnable because tolkeen was handed an idiot ball of epic proportions. take away that idiot ball, and have them fight a proper asymmetrical war enhanced by the use of magic used intelligently, and it is very possible for them to win, albeit with a high cost.

[zexsis]

You can say this all you like. I have done so. However, I began realizing I was spending more time on things I didnt like, than on what I did. It doesn't matter what you think "should" have happened.. the CREATOR of the game said something very different (kind of like those moments you as the GM say "this" happens and your players don't like it but it does anyway.. have the same respect for him.. if its ok for you to do that, then it is for Kevin).

[Shark_Force]

You can say this all you like. I have done so. However, I began realizing I was spending more time on things I didnt like, than on what I did. It doesn't matter what you think "should" have happened.. the CREATOR of the game said something very different (kind of like those moments you as the GM say "this" happens and your players don't like it but it does anyway.. have the same respect for him.. if its ok for you to do that, then it is for Kevin).

i'm not arguing against what happened (currently at least - i do enjoy pointing out that they've done a poor job of showing in the books that the war should've gone the way it did, but that's not what i'm doing right now). i'm arguing against people who are saying that it was absolutely impossible for tolkeen to win because the CS had bigger numbers. whether the CS won or not is not in question (especially in the official setting). whether or not it was possible for them to lose is the question, and the answer is yes... it is absolutely possible for them to lose, *if* tolkeen makes good use of the advantages they have and finds some way to protect the city itself effectively.

[HWalsh]

You can say this all you like. I have done so. However, I began realizing I was spending more time on things I didnt like, than on what I did. It doesn't matter what you think "should" have happened.. the CREATOR of the game said something very different (kind of like those moments you as the GM say "this" happens and your players don't like it but it does anyway.. have the same respect for him.. if its ok for you to do that, then it is for Kevin).

In any game I run, straight up, Tolkeen wins. They should've won in the canon. The CS winning is a terrible narrative. It did happen, but I will never agree with it.

[Axelmania]

Vanguard awesomeness aside, regarding the Coalition's Psi-Battalion, if they had ISP multipliers from BTS when encountering mages/supernaturals do you think the victory would've been plausible?