To battle effectively battle Drow humans would need...

[ThatGuyThisGuy]

Napalm and flame throwers in general sound like they could be a double edged sword as flame sorcery is a thing some drow possess along with foci. Fuel air bombs would be vary useful as it would probably take a large number of skilled powerful air sorcerers who know what there up against to deal with that. Many other things like grenade machineguns would be useful along with recoil-less rifles and most helicopters would be invaluable in most conceivable battle situations.

But come to think of it nerve gas would ludicrously effective against most factions as there are only a few that have classes of soldiers that have sealed armor and only one clan i can think of has widespread access to sealed armor and with things like air sorcery being rare and said air sorcerer if not equipped with sealed clothing of some kind will have a tight margin of error(aren't most nerve gasses such as vx for example heavier than air and invisible) and the penalty for error can very easily be death.

Still we should think of is how big the force and how well trained does it need to be and what volume of various weapons and vehicles does it need to win and for what type of campaign such as defending their country or invading the drow or fighting over a neutral piece of land and how much does a commander need to mess up to lose a battle and or the war we should probably think of this for the other scenarios as well?

[Hiveshade]

One word.

Mongols.

Here's a link to the wikipedia article on Mongol military tactics:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mongol_military_tactics_and_organization

Read through that carefully and then come back.

...

Wow right?

Against a large force of Drow then I'm not sure what would happen. But against a group like the Highland Raiders the combination of moility, discipline and strategy would be killer. They'd stay out of reach and if the arrows didn't get through the armor then they'd shoot the wolves.

At a medieval tech level, I think the Mongols are the deadlist army there is. On the surface then they could give the Drow some real trouble if they were unified. Against smaller factions then I think they'd be absolute murder.

They'd certainly conquer any of the 'goblin' races easy.

[ThatGuyThisGuy]

That brings up another question the poll doesn't account what kind of nation is supposed to be fighting in this scenario because if you say modern it could mean anything from the united states military and her allies to the the north korean army to even the defense force of sealand, and can only get more complicated like if you use the medieval option in this scenario as it covers even more of a ridiculous number of things from many different places and times like the han or ming or song dynasties from different periods of chinese history or the the many different eras of the roman empire or something small and relatively unimportant like the spartans.


Many of these nations obviously had varying levels of military ability like how good the kind of tactics and strategy they used was and the chance they could come up with new ones should the need arise and what kind of armies they could muster and move like what kind of training did they do and what equipment did they use and who did they recruit and how many people can they recruit and how did they support this army and move it and how well defended and stable/prosperous was their homeland as these are all important questions.

[Kaiser]

Mongols and post-Marian Romans would probably be able to defeat Drow armies pretty easily due to their combined arms tactics and flexibility in negating their opponents biggest advantages while exploiting their weaknesses. Your average Chinese army of the period could probably win too due to the sheer size of those forces (warring state period armies numbered in the hundreds of thousands) and the relatively sophisticated engineering they'd use with siege weapons; the Chinese also employed early cannons and even a primitive flame thrower.

[Jayngfet]

Mongols and post-Marian Romans would probably be able to defeat Drow armies pretty easily due to their combined arms tactics and flexibility in negating their opponents biggest advantages while exploiting their weaknesses. Your average Chinese army of the period could probably win too due to the sheer size of those forces (warring state period armies numbered in the hundreds of thousands) and the relatively sophisticated engineering they'd use with siege weapons; the Chinese also employed early cannons and even a primitive flame thrower.

Flamethrowers are the least of their worries. Ancient Chinese had semi automatic weapons and rocket powered artillery going back hundreds to thousands of years.

In-Universe human forces seem kinda puny and that's probably contributed to drow victories as much as anything else. Their military ability is largely limited to relatively primitive melee weapons and there's no use of chemistry in terms of ballistics or gas based attacks. I'd reckon the Highland Raiders as being equivalent to the Mongols in this case more than anything else given their emphasis on mobility, but it's important to remember that Mongols weren't invincible. They tended to slow down significantly once they hit more densely populated or advanced areas and then break apart whenever leadership wasn't strong. In fact I'd argue one of the main reasons they were even able to conquer china to begin with was mostly due to the ruling dynasty having similar origins as steppe-raiders and not respecting traditional Chinese advantages, which lead to a notable cultural decline.

By that same token Haltonribe and the other human settlements we see are relatively small and resource-poor. Going by shots of the whole city I'd say it's kinda shrimpy even by real life medieval perspectives and geographically it's lack of a major water source like a large river or lake means it could never have supported that many people or successful agriculture to begin with, and by comparing it to other real life medieval civilizations it's incredibly poorly armed. It's the kind of place raiders looking for an easy score would aim for, but not really material for the pinnacle of any civilization. Further supporting this would be their style of armor, boiled leather, which is generally the kind of thing you'd get if you can't get chainmail going by historical precedent; not to mention their weapons, which look to be metal poor and simple going by those spears and not too advanced, going by gladius type blades without any of the little details in design that show up in more well engineered roman models, and not too good with archery given their crude looking bow and arrow sets.

If one swapped them out for something a little better equipped, even if it's "only" chain shirts and more well crafted arming swords from the dark ages, that'd make a significant difference. Once you bring into play renaissance plate and hand cannons it gets closer to even, but still not actually even. I'd reckon that the earlier guess of enlightenment era weapons being the actual tipping point is most accurate, since the firing rate and power of a few mounted puckle guns could probably consistently punch through a group mana shield, or at least do enough damage to hold any stronger units back. Once you hit the 19th century and wind up seeing Gatlings and Maxims it stops being fair in any respect.

[Obsidian Agent]

Mongols and post-Marian Romans would probably be able to defeat Drow armies pretty easily due to their combined arms tactics and flexibility in negating their opponents biggest advantages while exploiting their weaknesses. Your average Chinese army of the period could probably win too due to the sheer size of those forces (warring state period armies numbered in the hundreds of thousands) and the relatively sophisticated engineering they'd use with siege weapons; the Chinese also employed early cannons and even a primitive flame thrower.

Flamethrowers are the least of their worries. Ancient Chinese had semi automatic weapons and rocket powered artillery going back hundreds to thousands of years.

In-Universe human forces seem kinda puny and that's probably contributed to drow victories as much as anything else. Their military ability is largely limited to relatively primitive melee weapons and there's no use of chemistry in terms of ballistics or gas based attacks. I'd reckon the Highland Raiders as being equivalent to the Mongols in this case more than anything else given their emphasis on mobility, but it's important to remember that Mongols weren't invincible. They tended to slow down significantly once they hit more densely populated or advanced areas and then break apart whenever leadership wasn't strong. In fact I'd argue one of the main reasons they were even able to conquer china to begin with was mostly due to the ruling dynasty having similar origins as steppe-raiders and not respecting traditional Chinese advantages, which lead to a notable cultural decline.

By that same token Haltonribe and the other human settlements we see are relatively small and resource-poor. Going by shots of the whole city I'd say it's kinda shrimpy even by real life medieval perspectives and geographically it's lack of a major water source like a large river or lake means it could never have supported that many people or successful agriculture to begin with, and by comparing it to other real life medieval civilizations it's incredibly poorly armed. It's the kind of place raiders looking for an easy score would aim for, but not really material for the pinnacle of any civilization. Further supporting this would be their style of armor, boiled leather, which is generally the kind of thing you'd get if you can't get chainmail going by historical precedent; not to mention their weapons, which look to be metal poor and simple going by those spears and not too advanced, going by gladius type blades without any of the little details in design that show up in more well engineered roman models, and not too good with archery given their crude looking bow and arrow sets.

If one swapped them out for something a little better equipped, even if it's "only" chain shirts and more well crafted arming swords from the dark ages, that'd make a significant difference. Once you bring into play renaissance plate and hand cannons it gets closer to even, but still not actually even. I'd reckon that the earlier guess of enlightenment era weapons being the actual tipping point is most accurate, since the firing rate and power of a few mounted puckle guns could probably consistently punch through a group mana shield, or at least do enough damage to hold any stronger units back. Once you hit the 19th century and wind up seeing Gatlings and Maxims it stops being fair in any respect.

Which is why the Hermionnes are able to do so much damage, since they DO have iron weapons and armor - IIRC, Haltonreibe is the last independent Halme realm, and that's only due to trade with Drow allies.

[Jayngfet]

Mongols and post-Marian Romans would probably be able to defeat Drow armies pretty easily due to their combined arms tactics and flexibility in negating their opponents biggest advantages while exploiting their weaknesses. Your average Chinese army of the period could probably win too due to the sheer size of those forces (warring state period armies numbered in the hundreds of thousands) and the relatively sophisticated engineering they'd use with siege weapons; the Chinese also employed early cannons and even a primitive flame thrower.

Flamethrowers are the least of their worries. Ancient Chinese had semi automatic weapons and rocket powered artillery going back hundreds to thousands of years.

In-Universe human forces seem kinda puny and that's probably contributed to drow victories as much as anything else. Their military ability is largely limited to relatively primitive melee weapons and there's no use of chemistry in terms of ballistics or gas based attacks. I'd reckon the Highland Raiders as being equivalent to the Mongols in this case more than anything else given their emphasis on mobility, but it's important to remember that Mongols weren't invincible. They tended to slow down significantly once they hit more densely populated or advanced areas and then break apart whenever leadership wasn't strong. In fact I'd argue one of the main reasons they were even able to conquer china to begin with was mostly due to the ruling dynasty having similar origins as steppe-raiders and not respecting traditional Chinese advantages, which lead to a notable cultural decline.

By that same token Haltonribe and the other human settlements we see are relatively small and resource-poor. Going by shots of the whole city I'd say it's kinda shrimpy even by real life medieval perspectives and geographically it's lack of a major water source like a large river or lake means it could never have supported that many people or successful agriculture to begin with, and by comparing it to other real life medieval civilizations it's incredibly poorly armed. It's the kind of place raiders looking for an easy score would aim for, but not really material for the pinnacle of any civilization. Further supporting this would be their style of armor, boiled leather, which is generally the kind of thing you'd get if you can't get chainmail going by historical precedent; not to mention their weapons, which look to be metal poor and simple going by those spears and not too advanced, going by gladius type blades without any of the little details in design that show up in more well engineered roman models, and not too good with archery given their crude looking bow and arrow sets.

If one swapped them out for something a little better equipped, even if it's "only" chain shirts and more well crafted arming swords from the dark ages, that'd make a significant difference. Once you bring into play renaissance plate and hand cannons it gets closer to even, but still not actually even. I'd reckon that the earlier guess of enlightenment era weapons being the actual tipping point is most accurate, since the firing rate and power of a few mounted puckle guns could probably consistently punch through a group mana shield, or at least do enough damage to hold any stronger units back. Once you hit the 19th century and wind up seeing Gatlings and Maxims it stops being fair in any respect.

Which is why the Hermionnes are able to do so much damage, since they DO have iron weapons and armor - IIRC, Haltonreibe is the last independent Halme realm, and that's only due to trade with Drow allies.

Whoops, it's been a while, I was referring to Nagyescsed, not Haltonrebe, and got my names mixed up. Hermiones are the ones with incredibly poor weapons and armor.

Just makes you wonder where the major bodies of water are. You'd presume a river or lake that'd support a larger and more complex population somewhere. Surface towns are crude but they seem disproportionately so.

[Obsidian Agent]

Actually, Nagyasced was also a Halme kingdom. Hermionnes were the ones who were attacking Ys, and who had also eventually conquered Nagyasced. On the whole, the Drow also seem to fear the Hermionnes somewhat, as Kyo'nne mentioned that they could clear forests in very little time, and - if left unchecked - would destroy all of the Drow surface colonies.

[Jayngfet]

Actually, Nagyasced was also a Halme kingdom. Hermionnes were the ones who were attacking Ys, and who had also eventually conquered Nagyasced. On the whole, the Drow also seem to fear the Hermionnes somewhat, as Kyo'nne mentioned that they could clear forests in very little time, and - if left unchecked - would destroy all of the Drow surface colonies.

Which raises a whole lot of questions as to what Hermionnes are doing that's so scary. I mean their equipment is sub par and they travel in groups too small to pose a real threat to a population in any real battle. I suppose it could be a decent Gurella situation if you can't sense them coming, but that's the extent of it. I mean even Faen managed to hold her ground. The amount of damage they cause vs lives lost suggests a serious disadvantage at play to them.

Of course it depends on how many of them there are. We've never seen an actual fighting force in full strength and it could just be that they never stop coming. If you grow at more than double the rate of drow and reproduce much more frequently it could just be a never ending stream of them with a death of a thousand cuts situation. After all, human lives aren't exactly worth as much in a numeric sense and their equipment has proportionally the same value. I'd guess that even wounding one drow at the cost of ten human lives is a fair trade to them. Drow are going to need that soldier for a hundred or two hundred or three hundred years, whereas the human would be lucky to get two decades of active military service in. Kind of like the vikings I suppose, thinking about it. Which also kinda fits in with their crazy useless ship in the middle of nowhere.

Though that reminds me of viking arms and armor. Vikings may have used mail when they could but their designs weren't that complex, but at the same time the metal forging was reasonably advanced for it's day. It could be that their actual swords are physically tougher than one would guess, and may rate better than you'd expect in comparison to drow blades. I mean when you've got like a million tons of steel you don't necessarily need to get that complex with forging. In fact, just checking the designs again I'm seeing that drow blades may be more ornate and fancy shaped but there's no real use of grooves or ribs and most "cool" weapons just have a powerstone or whatever in them. It looks like they basically just bend metal into a convenient shape and don't really care about the physics behind it. Though it might just be that the artists don't care about the specifics of weapon designs so much as them looking cool.

Though to be honest I have no idea what some of the Hermionnes are wearing. I think Kite just kind of flubbed the material on a lot of the armor and while I'd guess a lot of them are wearing simple leathers, their elites look like they're wearing bronze or some other metal that happens to be of a similar design. The scaled design is really convenient in that you can scale it up or down with any material you have on hand, so it kind of makes sense in hindsight for a raiding force to use equipment patterns they can substitute materials for, while also being reasonably light and free moving.

Contrast this with the drow for a bit. Basically everyone who's everyone insists on having it done their way. Their use their own hair dye, but also custom armor or customizing what they get if at all possible. That's way harder to repair and replace and maintaining it is a nightmare even before complex magical shit on top of it. The most regimented are the Sarghress, but even they clearly use way more unique parts and components than they should and but a large emphasis on personal glory.

It's less an upgrade or downgrade than sidegrade if this holds out. The arms and armor involved are built with wholly different philosophies in mind.

[ThatGuyThisGuy]

Which raises a whole lot of questions as to what Hermionnes are doing that's so scary. I mean their equipment is sub par and they travel in groups too small to pose a real threat to a population in any real battle. I suppose it could be a decent Gurella situation if you can't sense them coming, but that's the extent of it. I mean even Faen managed to hold her ground. The amount of damage they cause vs lives lost suggests a serious disadvantage at play to them.

Of course it depends on how many of them there are. We've never seen an actual fighting force in full strength and it could just be that they never stop coming. If you grow at more than double the rate of drow and reproduce much more frequently it could just be a never ending stream of them with a death of a thousand cuts situation. After all, human lives aren't exactly worth as much in a numeric sense and their equipment has proportionally the same value. I'd guess that even wounding one drow at the cost of ten human lives is a fair trade to them. Drow are going to need that soldier for a hundred or two hundred or three hundred years, whereas the human would be lucky to get two decades of active military service in. Kind of like the vikings I suppose, thinking about it. Which also kinda fits in with their crazy useless ship in the middle of nowhere.

Though that reminds me of viking arms and armor. Vikings may have used mail when they could but their designs weren't that complex, but at the same time the metal forging was reasonably advanced for it's day. It could be that their actual swords are physically tougher than one would guess, and may rate better than you'd expect in comparison to drow blades. I mean when you've got like a million tons of steel you don't necessarily need to get that complex with forging. In fact, just checking the designs again I'm seeing that drow blades may be more ornate and fancy shaped but there's no real use of grooves or ribs and most "cool" weapons just have a powerstone or whatever in them. It looks like they basically just bend metal into a convenient shape and don't really care about the physics behind it. Though it might just be that the artists don't care about the specifics of weapon designs so much as them looking cool.

Though to be honest I have no idea what some of the Hermionnes are wearing. I think Kite just kind of flubbed the material on a lot of the armor and while I'd guess a lot of them are wearing simple leathers, their elites look like they're wearing bronze or some other metal that happens to be of a similar design. The scaled design is really convenient in that you can scale it up or down with any material you have on hand, so it kind of makes sense in hindsight for a raiding force to use equipment patterns they can substitute materials for, while also being reasonably light and free moving.

The only thing we actually saw was a fight with some infiltrators who are although probably some of the more skilled warriors they are almost certainly under equipped do to a need for stealth.

The fight was actually somewhat indicative that the hermiones can do damage as even though they had lost the situation at the end of the fight was so that if reinforcements hadn't arrived its very likely faen, chiri, and ariel would have died. Why i say this is because faen wasn't really doing so well as she was just barely managing to block the enraged blows of the old guy and if no one had shown up to help the old guy would have likely killed faen and then chiri and ariel and probably could have gotten some of his men up since if the empathic blast didn't do any serious harm to ariel or chiri it definitely didn't do much of anything to them they couldn't shake off with some prodding.

We still don't know the hermiones full capabilities as we haven't seen them in a situation where they would be armed with the best weapons possible or there strongest army is present. We don't know how big and well trained their armies are or even what their ultimate strategy is or how well organized they are. As its possible the entire attack on Ys was a feint or done by some minor lord or they considered destroying Ys to be a objective they can pass off and therefore unlikely to have much resources dedicated towards it and any assault would likely be called off with little hesitation if things turned out to be harder then they were expecting.

[AnoP]

As its possible the entire attack on Ys was a feint or done by some minor lord or they considered destroying Ys to be a objective they can pass off and therefore unlikely to have much resources dedicated towards it and any assault would likely be called off with little hesitation if things turned out to be harder then they were expecting.

The attack on Ys was done due to a slave raid on them, where they captured a relatively important nobles son, who was due to be sold into slavery which could have put him into any drow city. The Hermiones probably can't directly assault underworld holdings, ergo the attack was likely rushed and with relatively few warriors, as there was only a short time until they would be shipped off to an unassailable place. The settlement was completely failing to stop any burning of their extensive fields, so as far as I can tell the Hermione held the ascendancy even with fewer numbers , as they completely failed to stop those attacks for an extremely long length of time. Only when they made a dangerous raid into the center of town were they killed.
A more cautious and perhaps more numerous force might have been able to inflict more damage then this. Note that the attack they made included ~12 people. It is frankly unimpressive that such a large town couldn't kill them sooner.

[Kaiser]

My readings on the Mongols makes me interested to see how Drow would handle having to deal with horse archers on a steppe like environment. Their biggest weaknesses from a military perspective given their style of fighting are still disciplined troop formations and skirmish and guerrilla type warfare with plenty of ambushes and the Mongols were capable of fighting as both.

[Mott]

Hrm, I personally would separate 17th and 18th, maybe even early and late 18th, since on Earth, the advancements were very significant. Rifling alone changed much of the battlefield.

Rifling was developed early in the history of Western gun making. It was first developed at the end of the 15th century and true rifling was available in the middle of the 16th century. It was available for the matchlock musket. The main reason the European armies primarily used muskets was cost. If you have a thousand men to arm and you have 1000 Ada to buy arms . If a matchlock musket costs 1 Ada and a rifled musket costs 10 Ada you can see you get more firepower giving everyone a musket instead of giving a few rifles and the rest sticks.

[ThatGuyThisGuy]

Hrm, I personally would separate 17th and 18th, maybe even early and late 18th, since on Earth, the advancements were very significant. Rifling alone changed much of the battlefield.

Rifling was developed early in the history of Western gun making. It was first developed at the end of the 15th century and true rifling was available in the middle of the 16th century. It was available for the matchlock musket. The main reason the European armies primarily used muskets was cost. If you have a thousand men to arm and you have 1000 Ada to buy arms . If a matchlock musket costs 1 Ada and a rifled musket costs 10 Ada you can see you get more firepower giving everyone a musket instead of giving a few rifles and the rest sticks.

Something to add further on to this analogy is that repeating magazine loading rifles have existed since the seventeenth century https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalthoff_repeater https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cookson_repeater https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferguson_rifle but they never saw use outside of a few elite units do their great cost and the amount of skill it takes to handle the rifle properly to make sure you don't break it.

*EDIT*

and shielding would be effective in big battles, if I remember correctly, even a single personal shield deflected a dwarf cannonball, a the most powerful elves would be able to cover whole armies from returning enemy fire, allowing elven armies to outshoot, or golems to assault artillery lines unopposed.
.

Wat it was clear that she and the others where being supported by several mana specialists behind her and they are elite troops far above the average drow so its likely it doesn't scale that much and that level of ability is quite rare.

Also the Dwarf cannons probably are not that powerful they use blackpowder and have a short muzzle so its likely they don't have that much muzzle velocity. And those cannonballs are fairly small likely no more then a kilogram in weight.

Saying a Drow "Can block cannonballs" needs some serious elaboration as its something we have seen no drow do entirely by them self and it was done by a group Drow quite a bit above the average and when people here the word cannon they think of something like this

Not this
http://www.drowtales.com/mainarchive.php?sid=617

The difference in power between the two would be quite substantial.

[Gunbird]

I know this a little off topic. But how much(or how little) damage a 5.56 round coming out of a 14.5 inch(370mm) barrel will do to a canon sized drow?