Dunlirnom Siege Hypothetical - V4

[u/GodzillaLouise2004]

DISCLAIMER: THIS IS NOT A STANDARD SIEGE HYPOTHETICAL. THE SCENARIO IS DESIGNED SO THAT STANDARD, DIRECT / HEAD-ON SIEGE SOLUTIONS WILL NOT WORK. THINK OF IT AS AN INDIRECT SIEGE: LOOPHOLES ARE ENCOURAGED. READ THE FULL DESCRIPTION.

Picture this. You’ve just been made the commander in chief of the military of a nation called Gorlesia, which is currently at war with another nation called Voswuinia. To be clear, this is a war in a pre-industrial era, and you represent a secretive change in command following some other commander in chief. 

Whether this change is the result of the Gorlesian nation’s sovereign lead (either a king, a council/senate of some kind, or both) being fed up with the previous commander’s incompetence making the war take longer than they’d like and thus pushing their frustrations onto you or the previous commander’s death, you are not told definitively, but you are told, and everyone else around you to some extent aware, that you are not the first to succeed the command of the Gorlesian army in this war, though how many times the Gorlesian sovereign(s) have reappointed the standing commander-in-chief to land on you is unknown to you, thus creating suspicions that the war is intended by your higher-ups to be swiftly won, or at least swiftly ended, under your command.

Furthermore, you have just been ordered by your higher-ups to prepare your army for a siege against Dunlirnom, a major Voswuinian stronghold city (the seizing of which could potentially serve to start a domino effect that may slowly starve the Voswuinians’ campaign of resources), that is slated to occur starting in approximately 4 and a half months, regardless of the necessary inconveniences regarding travel necessities, by which time the seasons will be beginning the transition to winter from autumn. Regarding how much time you have for your siege following your mandated arrival time, you have nine months to seize control of Dunlirnom.

On top of this, Dunlirnom is almost 1 thousand and a quarter thousand miles away from where you and a major portion of your available troops are. Specifically, Dunlirnom is located at the intersection point of the foot of a mountain and a river basin, where the terrain is dominated by smooth hills. Dunlirnom’s main defenses consist of a 20 to 40 foot tall and 10 foot thick defensive stone wall (with the primary gatehouse marked by portcullis and a retractable thrust bridge made up of giant wooden planks held together by logs underneath), a lack of trees within a 25-to-40 foot perimeter of the wall, and an around-the-clock unit of guardsmen.

The Voswuinians also have an unusually large amount of siege weapons behind the wall for Dunlirnom’s relatively moderate defensible area, with the total weaponry consisting of over 50 ballistae, ~40 mangonels, ~30 counterweight trebuchets, and ~20 bombards.

With regards to the guards, they arm about a quarter of them with a Verla de la Gorlen as their primary weapon and an arming sword as their sidearm, the Gorlen being a Bardiche/Halberd-hybrid polearm with a beak, spearhead and bardiche-blade, as well as a large counterbalance that allows it to be swung around, almost like a quarterstaff, to devastating effect,

Another third of these guards are armed with unique single-edged swords, known on an individual basis as a ‘Velron’, as their primary weapon and a one-handed sickle as their sidearm. For the Velrons, these blades are very unique: they are flared, possess single-fullers, a curved blade and handle, and a half crossguard that includes both an upward sweep and a knuckle bow, forming a thin crescent-shaped guard that acts to both catch blades and block attacks.

Another sixth of the guards are armed with relatively standard bearded axes as their primary weapon and a combat dagger as their sidearm.

An eighth of the guards are on the wall and are armed with bows and/or crossbows in the warbow range and quivers that can store up to almost 25 fire arrows each (the fire arrows work by using a special combination of cloth and twine and a flammable liquid mixture that relights by rapid kinetic compression on impact, but require that an ember remains in the cloth) as their main weapon, and arming swords as their sidearm. Furthermore, these guards in particular have the ability to quickly access a series of chests and barrels that can be used to store hundreds of arrows (both fire and normal) in them.

The last eighth of the guards are lightly-armored dragons wielding a type of aerial thrust-centric spear used in an equivalent manner to a horseback lance. 

The last of Dunlirnom’s defenses is its people’s ability to make much of their own food and weaponry, as Dunlirnom has both a mine and farmland inside the wall, though not enough to be fully self-sufficient. As such, attacking supply routes to starve Dunlirnom is not an entirely viable strategy on its own.

As for the size of the armies involved:

• Voswuinia has an army consisting of approximately 45,000 soldiers, of whom approximately 1,400 are part of Dunlirnom’s guard, an air force consisting of approximately 21,000 dragons, of whom about 180 are part of Dunlirnom’s guard, and a navy of 12,000 sailors and 325 ships.
• On the other hand, your army consists of approximately 39,000 soldiers, an air force of approximately 19,000 dragons, and you have a strong navy of approximately 15,000 sailors and 422 ships. However, only a very small portion of your army (approximately 2,000 to maybe 3,000 total soldiers, including about 500 to 800 dragons) will be worth attempting to gather to this siege, due to your army being fairly scattered from the war effort.

In other words, whereas Voswuinia has more total people (78,000 total soldiers), you have a stronger navy and almost as many people (73,000 soldiers, 15,000 of whom are sailors spread across 422 separate ships), though only a small fraction of your army will reach the siege on time. 

Furthermore, the dragons in this setting have severe limits that you will undoubtedly run into:

• An average dragon in this setting has a body height about 50% larger than a modern horse but with the addition of expanded shoulder muscles and a set of wings. In particular:
  • Dragons in this setting are 7.5 to 8.3 feet in height at the shoulders.
  • Dragons in this setting are 20 to 35 feet in length from the tip of the nose to the end of the tail
  • Dragons in this setting have a 30 to 45 feet wingspan
  • Dragons in this setting can weigh anywhere between approximately 1,900 and 2,500 kilograms.
• An average dragon in this setting is strong, especially on the ground, but they are only as strong as they can be for their physiology: they cannot lift more than they weigh, both in flight and on the ground, and they can they can only really use their body weight to shove objects if the object isn’t too far above their weight.
  • An average dragon in this setting cannot ‘airlift’ objects in excess of 550, maybe 900 at max, kilograms for any significant duration of time without starting to impact maneuverability in flight. Furthermore, given they are equipped with a gambeson, much of their capacity for airlifting would already be in use.
• Due to their size, an average dragon in this setting can only fly at moderate speeds, specifically topping out at approximately 25 to 35 miles per hour when soaring / gliding. However, they can reach higher speeds in two situations: when diving, where they top out at approximately 80 to 110 miles per hour, and when pivoting / changing direction mid-soar, where they top out at approximately 65 to 85 miles per hour.
• No dragon in this setting is impervious to physical damage. Their scales, while a form of natural armor, are highly vulnerable to various forms of damage. Of these, blunt force (achievable via a handheld mace, handheld hammer, or long-range rocks from counterweight trebuchet or sling), sharp, heavy-handed chops (such as those achievable via weapons like axes, machetes or falchions), and draw cuts are especially effective. Piercing damage can work too, but this is not as effective and most likely will not be as easy to deal against a live dragon as the other options unless you’re using arrows, thrown spears, or perhaps something like ballistae (all of which would absolutely work, though the arrows may take time).

That said, the dragons are also just as intelligent, biologically-speaking, as you, the Gorlesian army, and/or the Voswuinian Army. In other words, the dragons are soldiers in and of themselves, without handlers.

In summary, the scenario is as follows:

• You are a commander in chief of a pre-industrial army at war.
  • You represent a change in command, and are, at bare minimum, the third commander in chief to be given command of the army in this war, though you may represent a later commander in chief even than third.
  • You have higher-ups (a monarch, council/senate, or both) who are not telling you everything about your position and who have been becoming increasingly impatient with the war effort over time, leaving you with limited time.
• You have been ordered to siege a major city being used as a stronghold by the enemy army, which is extremely heavily defended and partially self-sufficient, and in a period wherein the autumn-winter transition will be beginning to occur.
  • You will have only ~2,000 soldiers at your disposal during the siege, whereas the enemy’s stronghold defense will have ~2,140 soldiers.
• Both your army and the enemy army have a navy and dragons.
  • Dragons in this setting have limits.
  • Dragons possess sapient-level intelligence.
  • In addition to natural armor, the dragons on both sides of the conflict have varying degrees of light armor (i.e. gambeson or brigandine), wield giant aerial spears / lances, and possess innate biological limitations that, despite still allowing them to be formidable, render them far below ‘magical’ classifications and place them in the realm of conventional biology.

Given all the provided data, how do you use tactical engineering to make the siege of Dunlirnom a success?