Your Strategy to Conquer this Region: The North

[Bright Blue Eyes]

Well that's fair enough. Invading Russia doesn't end well, unless you can secure objectives by making them come to you, like the UK and France did in the Crimea in 1854-56.

It is also why I'm proposing to stay near WH and the White Knife and goad the Stark to come to me. Only after inflicting a crippling moral blow on the Starks would I try and send forces anywhere else. I'd also secure WH and Moat Cailin.

Probably the best idea, but it gives the Starks time enough to gather their superior forces while your forces dwindle away.

And the Starks can recover from a loss, even a crippling one. You can't.

[Señor de la Tormenta]

Yes, but Willam Stark and Harmond Umber raised their armies in very short time, basically only bringing what they had available on the spot. Probably 500 and 200, just to give some numbers.

I disagree. You cant

sourrond and army numbered in the thousands

with two hosts of 300 and 500 men.

Secondly, the fact that wildings

f

ight their way as south as

suggest they dealt with smaller forces as the ones you said in their way, and that Starks and Umbers had some more time to face the threat.

[Talleyrand]

I'm starting in the Free Cities right? If so I sell my 30,000 to slavers as an act of mercy and then retire to a beach side manse somewhere near Tyrosh

[Irish]

The logistics on this one makes my head hurts.

The average soldier in medieval times could carry 8 days worth of food (he required about 3lbs of food a day, not including the 20lbs needed to sustain livestock)

For 14,000 men it required about 14000 gallons of drinking water and 30 tons of wheat/grain for bread (at the bare minimum). An acre of arable land could produce 56 bushels of wheat.

The North is roughly 415,000 square miles (from what I can gather). If we use the Scottish average of 15% arable land (which is probably lower than what it is actually capable of, since the Karstarks sent 2200 men south which reduced their farming ability to the point where crops died), that's 67,500 square miles.

That's 43,200,000 acres of arable land. If each acre produces 30 bushels (assuming that the war makes almost half the land infertile), that is 1,296,000,000 bushels. We will divide that by 10, assuming my army only lands in the southern tenth of the North. That's 129,600,000 bushels. Each bushel is the equivalent of 60lbs of food.

Assuming half of that is lost or inedible, that's 3,888,000,000 lbs of food (or 3.9 million tonnes), per year.

If soldier needs 3lbs of food per day and could carry 8 days worth of food, that's 24lbs per man.

With 45,000 men carrying their food alone you could sustain an army of 45,000 on 3lbs of food for 360 days, roughly. This doesn't take into account foraging, looting or hunting.

Unless I did the maths wrong (I probably did), then the North shouldn't have any problem sustaining multiple groups of several hundred men spread across the continent, or even a relatively large army like I had intended.

The only problem would be having such a large army of men staying in one place, since bringing food to them would be difficult. It's why Robb's 18,000 men couldn't stay encamped north of Moat Cailin, but still possessed the means and resources to travel south in a baggage train.

So yes, my plan isn't logistically impossible. It would be difficult, but not too much, especially considering I would be focusing any forces of significant size in the southern part, with smaller forces looting and burning the coastlines.

[Bennis of the Brown Shield]

The North being unconquerable doesn't seem to be how the Northmen themselves view it. See how demoralized they become during the WOT5K when they realize that Stannis is gone and that the Lannisters and the Tyrells will now be able to turn their full forces towards them. Shortly thereafter the North ends up surrendering to Tywin, without him even needing set his foot there. That's with the Riverlanders as allies too.

[Pod The Impaler]

The wildlings can't do jack shit. They got barely 1% of the Northern's populace and it's worse on the military front. They'll tell you to shove your commands anyway, they'll do as they please.

And the whole marching and victory en detail doesn't work in the North. The distances are far too large and you'll be the one who'll loose men to guerrillas wherever you go.

The Wildlings are no good at formation fighting, in large hosts, or going after major fortified towns, true. They generally don't have the discipline for it, even if they had the numbers. Stannis' army crushed them easily, but then again, they had actually forced up into a standing army - a single target that could easily be hit. The chieftains were the only elite troops they had, and just as with the old Bear's aborted plan from the Fist, if you take them out, they rest lose all cohesion.

But this is not what we're talking about here - we're talking raids and guerilla warfare. A wildling doing hit and run, fighting and foraging on the go, would be every bit as good as the average common northman. The only disadvantage is the arms and armor available, but that is why you provide some. The most important houses are properly armed, but look at the common northern smallfolk and petty lords, and their arms are hardly any better than wildlings own. Furs and leather, not chainmail and plate. Spear and bow and axe, not longsword and lance. The common northman is more likely to be a warrior than his southron kind, but also lives in deeper isolation. Every wildling is a warrior too; certainly every one going raiding will be.

Wildlings make great raiders and maybe outriders / scouts, but there main purpose here is diverting and draining the forces of 3 major banner houses (Umber, Karstark, and Bolton) into the area that's actually far from the key area of fighting. The isolation of these areas from the rest They have to send out most of their men to hunt the wildlings down, going the opposite direction from where they need to be - the White Knife, the key axis between White Harbour and Winterfell. Better still, of those houses and White Harbour's ships commit to rooting out the wildlings' base on Skaagos, and instead get wiped out there, when your fleet takes cuts them off from the rest of the North.

The deeper objective is that with a professional army of just 30000, you need to pick off the Northern bannermen one by one. Your 30000 against their 5000 or 2000 or 4000 - never engage your main force in a "fair" fight. If you take on the whole host of the North in one battle, chances are you will lose. If you expend it besieging places like the Dreadfort, or holding places like Moat Cailin against the Crannogmen, you will get slowly worn out and lose. The issue is not the skill or bravery of your men vs. theirs; the issue is the high cost of closely-matched battles or sieges in enemy terrirtory. You have to use your strength at the right time and place.

The conventional battle strength of the wildlings in the end hardly matters. When all is said and done, chances are most will not kneel, and eventually the problem you created as invader is one you will have to solve as ruler. You want them only for their effect of depleting and stretching thin the northern forces, before those forces can gather together against your real army, the one which is well-armed, well-trained, and fights conventional battle as one force.

And there is the all-important seasonal time limit: You prepare this invasion in winter, where your "help" may win you allies, but launch it in spring. Why? Because you must finish off the Starks' main forces before winter. Time is your foe - but you must make the Starks think it is theirs. If you reach winter, and Winterfell is not yours, then you will depete your strength further over the winter, only able to hold White Harbour, and then die come spring.

[Señor de la Tormenta]

And people need to stop cite the world book to me. From the little I've seen of it, it's bullshit. I don't care what it says.

It is not a matter of taste. Either we like it or not, it is part of the world now.

[Chaircat Meow]

The North being unconquerable doesn't seem to be how the Northmen themselves view it. See how demoralized they become during the WOT5K when they realize that Stannis is gone and that the Lannisters and the Tyrells will now be able to turn their full forces towards them. Shortly thereafter the North ends up surrendering to Tywin, without him even needing set his foot there. That's with the Riverlanders as allies too.

Good point.

[Trickrs]

-snip-

I'm talking about sending the fleet to the other side of the continent and still manage a communication line to a coordinated assault.

[OldGimletEye]

Obviously, trying to invade the North during Winter would be suicide. You would have to invade while the weather was good. For one, your army is going to need to find forage.

I think your basic problems are:

1. Your not going to get an army past Moat Cailan by doing a frontal attack.

2. And your probably not going to have enough naval resources to simply land enough men in the North.

3. Even if you can push an army through the Neck, the Crannogmen can make life very difficult for you. They can attack both supplies and reinforcements that come up through the Neck. The only effective tactic against the Crannogmen is to probably bring up forces in strength to deter their attacks. They would probably have an easy time destroying any supply trains that were not heavily guarded.

Accordingly, I would probably:

1. Seize control of the three sisters. And build supplies and perhaps use as a base for reinforcements.

2. Form the bulk of the main army at the neck.

3. With naval forces, land some troops on the west bank of the White Knife. Their job would to be to take Moat Cailan in the rear. And to link up with the main army coming through the neck.

4. After link up, turn the army east to take White Harbor.

5. If White Harbor falls, then take Old Castle to protect my rear.

6. And probably take Ramsgate to protect my eastern flank.

7. At this point, it's kind of hard to say. I think I would want to know where the main enemy force was massing.

[Ser Greenseer]

I wouldn't even try. The North is too large and too powerful to fully conquer and hold for any stretch of time. It can't effectively be attacked by land and setting up a massive sea invasion would be too costly and dangerous. If the Northerners know where you are going to land then they will send an army to crush you as soon as your stepping off the ships. Even if they don't know where your landing It will take a long time to get all your troops rallied on land and it might be enough for the northern lords to rally and attack. Another disadvantage you have is that Winterfell is smack dab in the middle of the country so your gonna have a long and hard march to get there with the Northerners bleeding you every step of the way. Even if you get to Winterfell good luck taking one of the best fortresses in all of Westeros.

[Nyrhex]

1. The friggin door was open at Griffin's Roost! With 200 men, the Dreadfort is impossible. With 7,500, it's still impossible or why do you assume that long-dead Stark didn't manage to take it during two years with all the might of the North at his back?

2. Spitting distances in the North are damn long. If you can sail up the Weeping Water at all.

3. The same days you need marching towards. If you got sufficient siege engines and stuff. Building those takes months.

4. Your assumption.

5. And is covered the entire way by the Northmen.

6. Let's avoid that style of discussion please.

7. Which 200 directions? There is only so much space around a castle, or do you plan a four-dimensional battle?

8. 250 miles whereto? To the Dreadfort? That's about three weeks. Attrition should be manageable. And afterwards?

9. A city that has never been attacked. Undermanned, understaffed and a damn small inner castle garrison, taking it's importance into account. For comparison, Constantinople 1453 was defended by 7,000 men and had a tenth the size of KL. And despite the Turks using heavy cannons, it took them seven weeks. Stannis was almost in the city after seven hours.

1. Because the Starks had all the time in the world, and the Boltons played for time, and hoped that the Starks would have to break the siege come winter. A siege is always better if you have time. It does not mean that it is the only way to take something.

2. Still shorter than Dagmer's distance.

3. So Hornwood would have about the same alert level as Torrhen's Sqaure. Which was, last I check - Send some riders to check up on the rumor of enemy sightings, oh shit the men I've sent are dead and an enemy lays siege to my holding, please send help. Leobald tells Rodrik who lays siege, which means that Dagmer was able to arrive at Torrhen's Square before the bird was sent.

4. No, I actually bothered to explain how wrong Jon was. Jon calimed that Umber would cut Stannis' host to pieces. Hother had most of the men south to meet up with Roose, and Mors has 20 boys. Jon claimed that the Dreadfort lasted 2 years of siege, but ignores the different situations - Stannis is not going to siege 50 men, he is going to storm it, like Rodrik was going to when he though that Theon has 50 men at Winterfell and Rodrick had 2,000. Jon claimed that by the time Stannis builds a siege engines, Ramsay would have returned from Deepwood. Stannis built a ram and took Deepwood Motte, and Ramsay only heared when he was still in Deepwood Motte. Jon was wrong in all three claims, this is fact, not an assumption.

5. Scattered resistance on thier own soil? Sort of like the Riverlords and the BWB were harassing the Lannisters? Hardly effective. Tywin had fewerr than a thousand men deal with them. I left <8,000 men to do that in about the same size of area. If it's not an army it's not going to stop mine before I meet the main Stark host and destroy it.

6. Then let's avoid making ridiculous claims about the military prowess of the Northmen, after we see they are just like anybody else in the books.

7. “I have food enough to stand a year’s siege, if need be.”

“There will be no siege. Perhaps they will spend a day or two fashioning ladders and tying grapnels to the ends of ropes. But soon enough

they will come over your walls in a hundred places at once. You may be able to hold the keep for a time, but the castle will fall within the

hour. You would do better to open your gates and ask for—”

It's a castle. It has walls. Pick enough spots, place enough ladders/ropes, and attack. It's a bloody mess (no, no where near 20,000 corpses...) but it works. The payoff is worth it.

8. 250 miles from Ramsgate to Hornwood. About 150 miles from the coast to the Dreadfort along the Weeping Water. That means I have about half the distance Dagmer had to do. And please, attrition for a medieval army is one thing, don't assume that a scenario that claims it is summer with winter not in sight will claim even close to the "cold count".

9. Let's not go into historical examples, and why we both think the other one's are out of place becasue xyz. Your example: Stannis nearly takes KL in hours, after the city had prep time. I send about the same size army, against a fraction of the defending force, in a smaller and weaker White Harbor, with complete surprise. It is safe to say that the city falls without costing me much, agree: Yes/No?

EDIT:

It is not a matter of taste. Either we like it or not, it is part of the world now.

Does'nt mean I have to accept it for a scenario that asks me to think. There are cases both in ASOIAF, and in the world book from the little that I read from it, that just don't make sense. They only work because Martin says so. Which pisses me off when he says that he hates "and then Aragorn ruled wisely" becaue it does'nt say what his tax policy was, or his orc-genocide, or how is he any more special than the stewards before him, and then he goes and does exactly that. He tells us that someone is xyz, and I read what the guy actually does and it falls short.

Since the scenario in the OP asks us to think how to do something that never happened, I am not going with "GRRM said that it never happened, so it clearly cannot happen", and then he gave a bunch of reason that don't hold water both in the real world, and even in his own.

Just from recent history in the books, we see too much to simply handwave an invasion of the North as impossible. It's 100% possible, but with OP restricting us to 30,000 men, 100% naval transport, and 20 war ships, we actually have a basis to work with other than the knee-jerk "DRAGONS!" because we can't think of anything other than that to bring us victory. It's something that happens alot in military planning - You have a hammer, and a bunch of problems start to look like nails, when they are actually screws. I'm not looking at the North as a fortress that only a dragon can assault, because the North depicted in the books is far from it.

[Pigeon Pie]

The way it's done in the books: Find some traitor bannermen of the Starks/whoever rules North, tell them they'll have gold and more castles etc if they betray their liege lord, kill him and secure the region for me.

[Irish]

I'm talking about sending the fleet to the other side of the continent and still manage a communication line to a coordinated assault.

Ah.

Well, I don't think it would be that hard. You'd be out of communication for most of the journey, but if you set a reasonable date for them to arrive and send a raven with the simple words "We are here", both forces know to attack. The attacks could be hours or days apart, but word travels slowly in the medieval world, so even if you're 2-3 days late at the attack, it will still take your target by surprise.

If not, then even if Stark knows the attack came, he will think the main force in the south-east, while you just landed troops in the south/south-west.

But, I understand your point.

[Ser Greenseer]

The North being unconquerable doesn't seem to be how the Northmen themselves view it. See how demoralized they become during the WOT5K when they realize that Stannis is gone and that the Lannisters and the Tyrells will now be able to turn their full forces towards them. Shortly thereafter the North ends up surrendering to Tywin, without him even needing set his foot there. That's with the Riverlanders as allies too.

To be fair they were stuck in the Riverlands unable to get back to the North with the Iron born holding Moat Cailin at the time. Also there was this thing called the red wedding that kinda forced the North and Riverlands to surrender but you might not have heard about it, it was a really minor plot point anyways.

[Bright Blue Eyes]

I disagree. You cant

sourrond and army numbered in the thousands

with two hosts of 300 and 500 men.

Secondly, the fact that wildings

f

ight their way as south as

suggest they dealt with smaller forces as the ones you said in their way, and that Starks and Umbers had some more time to face the threat.

You very much can, depending on the terrain.

The Night's Watch did not made it to Long Lake in time, despite getting the news at the same time as Winterfell or Last Hearth and basically having the same distance to cover as the Starks. Therefore the Starks have to leave Winterfell basically immediately, with what is currently in Winterfell.

With 45,000 men carrying their food alone you could sustain an army of 45,000 on 3lbs of food for 360 days, roughly. This doesn't take into account foraging, looting or hunting.

Eight days. Eight days, not 360. I have no idea how you arrived at your conclusion, but you probably lost track of it during that complicated multiplication/division stunt, which was entirely unnecessary. A host of 45,000 eating soldiers can't carry more food per mouth than one eating soldier.

snip

True, but the raiding wildlings are a damn negligible number. The Starks can simply wave it. That may create unrest if left unchecked for some years, but in the face of invasion nobody cares.

1. Because the Starks had all the time in the world, and the Boltons played for time, and hoped that the Starks would have to break the siege come winter. A siege is always better if you have time. It does not mean that it is the only way to take something.

Why did the Starks not assault the castle if it was possible? Please explain that.

2. Still shorter than Dagmer's distance.

Could we please ignore anything as ridiculous as 80 men surviving the onslaught auf 2,000 and taking a well-defended castle with the survivors? Please? Because that plothole really hurts and is best ignored.

3. So Hornwood would have about the same alert level as Torrhen's Sqaure. Which was, last I check - Send some riders to check up on the rumor of enemy sightings, oh shit the men I've sent are dead and an enemy lays siege to my holding, please send help. Leobald tells Rodrik who lays siege, which means that Dagmer was able to arrive at Torrhen's Square before the bird was sent.

4. No, I actually bothered to explain how wrong Jon was. Jon calimed that Umber would cut Stannis' host to pieces. Hother had most of the men south to meet up with Roose, and Mors has 20 boys. Jon claimed that the Dreadfort lasted 2 years of siege, but ignores the different situations - Stannis is not going to siege 50 men, he is going to storm it, like Rodrik was going to when he though that Theon has 50 men at Winterfell and Rodrick had 2,000. Jon claimed that by the time Stannis builds a siege engines, Ramsay would have returned from Deepwood. Stannis built a ram and took Deepwood Motte, and Ramsay only heared when he was still in Deepwood Motte. Jon was wrong in all three claims, this is fact, not an assumption.

See the question above for the Dreadfort. And please don't ignore that all the Northmen around Deepwood Motte worked for Stannis/Jon, definitely not for Ramsay.

5. Scattered resistance on thier own soil? Sort of like the Riverlords and the BWB were harassing the Lannisters? Hardly effective. Tywin had fewerr than a thousand men deal with them. I left <8,000 men to do that in about the same size of area. If it's not an army it's not going to stop mine before I meet the main Stark host and destroy it.

Distance, distance, distance.

6. Then let's avoid making ridiculous claims about the military prowess of the Northmen, after we see they are just like anybody else in the books.

Who talks about the men? I'm talking landscape.

7. “I have food enough to stand a year’s siege, if need be.”

“There will be no siege. Perhaps they will spend a day or two fashioning ladders and tying grapnels to the ends of ropes. But soon enough

they will come over your walls in a hundred places at once. You may be able to hold the keep for a time, but the castle will fall within the

hour. You would do better to open your gates and ask for—”

It's a castle. It has walls. Pick enough spots, place enough ladders/ropes, and attack. It's a bloody mess (no, no where near 20,000 corpses...) but it works. The payoff is worth it.

8. 250 miles from Ramsgate to Hornwood. About 150 miles from the coast to the Dreadfort along the Weeping Water. That means I have about half the distance Dagmer had to do. And please, attrition for a medieval army is one thing, don't assume that a scenario that claims it is summer with winter not in sight will claim even close to the "cold count".

9. Let's not go into historical examples, and why we both think the other one's are out of place becasue xyz. Your example: Stannis nearly takes KL in hours, after the city had prep time. I send about the same size army, against a fraction of the defending force, in a smaller and weaker White Harbor, with complete surprise. It is safe to say that the city falls without costing me much, agree: Yes/No?

Fraction of the defending force? Unlikely. Fraction of the area for the defenders to cover? Definitely. Weaker? How's that?

Ah.

Well, I don't think it would be that hard. You'd be out of communication for most of the journey, but if you set a reasonable date for them to arrive and send a raven with the simple words "We are here", both forces know to attack. The attacks could be hours or days apart, but word travels slowly in the medieval world, so even if you're 2-3 days late at the attack, it will still take your target by surprise.

If not, then even if Stark knows the attack came, he will think the main force in the south-east, while you just landed troops in the south/south-west.

But, I understand your point.

You can only send ravens to a rookery. Therefore, you'd need to actually take an (important) castle before you can receive a raven.

[Bennis of the Brown Shield]

To be fair they were stuck in the Riverlands unable to get back to the North with the Iron born holding Moat Cailin at the time. Also there was this thing called the red wedding that kinda forced the North and Riverlands to surrender but you might not have heard about it, it was a really minor plot point anyways.

They were in the process of surrounding and opening up Moat Cailin before the Red Wedding happened. Tywin and Mace hadn't even started moving their armies into the Riverlands at that point as far as I remember, so it didn't look like the Northmen were going to be squashed against the castle before they had time to retake it.

The Red Wedding happened in the first place because many Northmen and Riverlanders saw that the war was lost and wanted to surrender. It didn't come out of the blue.

"I am not a man to be undone" - Roose Bolton, Warden of the North.

[Bright Blue Eyes]

They were in the process of surrounding and opening up Moat Cailin before the Red Wedding happened. Tywin and Mace hadn't even started moving their armies into the Riverlands at that point as far as I remember, so it didn't look like the Northmen were going to be squashed against the castle before they had time to retake it.

The Red Wedding happened in the first place because many Northmen and Riverlanders saw that the war was lost and wanted to surrender. It didn't come out of the blue.

"I am not a man to be undone" - Roose Bolton, Warden of the North.

Riverlanders, yes. The Riverlands could neither be abandoned nor defended. That was the problem.

[Bennis of the Brown Shield]

Riverlanders, yes. The Riverlands could neither be abandoned nor defended. That was the problem.

Hence why the Riverlander Roose Bolton was worrying about his future, and that of his stronghold on the banks of the Weeping Water. The fourth, rarely mentioned, arm of the Trident.

[Ser Greenseer]

It would still take time to get to Moat Cailin and take it.

Who wanted to surrender? The Bolton's and Frey's only did the red wedding because they had nothing to loose and everything to gain on top of them being treacherous bastards.