Moment of Decisive Battle! Commander at Full Capacity
Deploying troops and arranging formations.
Duncan had never formally studied military strategy. All his formation skills came from playing games like Total War in his previous life. If asked to explain any fancy formations, he would know nothing at all. But if the question was whether a formation could win a fight, he had his own set of theories and practical experience—and in actual combat, he was remarkably fierce.
The simplest example was the formation of — — —: the left, center, and right armies spread flat across the field, with ! markers on the rear flanks representing the cavalry units with the greatest mobility on the battlefield.
In cold-weapon warfare, formations were not the decisive factor. The decisive factors were the soldiers' combat quality, morale, willpower, and command cohesion.
Taking that flat three-line formation as an example, once the right wing was broken, the central army would be caught in a pincer attack. You might be standing in the front rank, desperately holding off the enemies surging at you, needing only to focus on blocking with your shield and cutting down those in front of you. But once the right wing collapsed, enemies would suddenly close in from the right, perhaps even circle behind to attack and cut off your retreat. In an instant, you would be under attack from both front and rear.
Unless your troops were exceptionally strong, in such circumstances, soldiers of equal strength would inevitably have their morale shaken and suffer greatly increased casualties.
As the saying went, two fists could not beat four hands. In cold-weapon combat, those directly engaged were mostly the front rank, so two hundred men could surround and attack four or five hundred. Once casualties in the first rank rose sharply, the