#803 - Opportunities and costs

"I wouldn't have guessed you observe so carefully."

Seeing Snape's rare interest in the battlefield simulation, Anduin took the initiative to explain it to him.

"The reason you feel the defending side has a significant advantage during engagements, besides having a large number of items that counter the attacking side, is likely due to their considerable geographical advantage."

"Indeed," Snape nodded, then looked towards the screen. "Look, aside from the walls occupied by the defenders and the long-term defensive equipment, even their respawn points are much closer than the attackers'."

"After respawning, the attackers need to advance at least 100 meters to reach the walls again, all while under enemy fire. Meanwhile, the defenders only have a distance of less than 50 meters to support their walls, a route that is both safe and convenient."

"From that perspective, that's certainly true," Anduin didn't deny the other's point. "However, this disadvantage isn't insurmountable. Didn't you see the attackers have convenient devices like temporary respawn points?"

"But those fragile devices are easily destroyed. The defenders have already done so," Snape retorted. "So I always feel that besides having cheaper equipment, the attackers are completely unable to contend with the defenders."

"So you're more optimistic about the defending side?" Anduin didn't directly answer, just asked with a smile.

"Yes…" Snape nodded without hesitation. "The defenders only lost before because they wasted military supplies. Now, Wood has clearly learned from his mistakes, and the gap between the two sides has widened considerably. In my opinion, the attackers are at their wit's end."

"I see," Anduin nodded slightly, then said seriously, "It seems you don't have much experience with large-scale battles."

"How so?" Snape raised his eyebrows in surprise, then put on an attentive expression.

"This type of battle with a large number of participants is completely different from ordinary single duels, especially among wizards."

Anduin drew his wand and slowly stroked it as he continued, "With such a small wand, a wizard can turn clear water into fine wine, rock into sand, and effortlessly pierce steel."

"And in war, the extremely destructive nature of wizards is fully demonstrated. When dozens of wizards gather together, their power is even more astonishing."

"So in the face of wizards, the so-called advantages of terrain and distance don't really have much impact. The main reason these kids are having such a hard time is because their own skill level is too green."

"They're considered green?" Snape rolled his eyes speechlessly. "Those little wizards are already stronger than many adult wizards, alright!"

"That may be, but they're still quite a ways from becoming true soldiers, at least in terms of tactical diversity," Anduin said calmly.

"In wizarding warfare, the truly decisive factor is actually the victory conditions for both sides. These conditions directly affect their opportunity cost!"

"Opportunity cost?" Snape frowned in confusion, frankly, he didn't understand Anduin's meaning at all.

"Indeed, like in this battlefield simulation," Anduin gestured towards the big screen. "The biggest obstacle for the defenders is actually that the conditions for failure are too simple."

"As long as the attackers can break into the enemy's command post and occupy it for a period of time, they can achieve victory in this stage."

"Around this goal, as long as the attacking wizards are given enough time to try and fail, they can always seize the opportunity for victory."

"In this type of siege warfare, it doesn't matter if the defenders win a hundred times. The attackers only need to seize one opportunity, and even if they can't completely control the situation, they can still achieve final victory."

"I see," Snape suddenly understood. "So the time limit you gave the club leader is actually increasing the attackers' cost of trial and error? If they fail to seize the opportunity for victory within the limited time, they will be completely defeated."

"Yes!" Anduin nodded. "No matter how strong the defenders' walls are, they are meaningless in the face of wizards. Even if they simply use human lives to fill the gap, they can flatten the walls in repeated attacks."

"And Wood and the others have obviously realized this, so from the beginning, they didn't plan to completely rely on this seemingly solid barrier. Instead, they accumulated advantages for themselves by widening the resource gap."

"In that case, from a strategic point of view, the defending side is still more advantageous in this confrontation," Snape nodded knowingly.

After Anduin's explanation, he had a clearer understanding of the struggle between wizards.

But soon Snape looked at Anduin with a slightly surprised expression. The longer he interacted with him, the more he felt Anduin's unfathomable depth.

This guy in front of him doesn't seem that old, how does he have such a deep understanding of war? He didn't participate in the wizarding war back then, where did he get so much theoretical knowledge?

Suddenly shaking his head, Snape temporarily suppressed these doubts in his heart, then curiously asked Anduin, "In that case, if it were you commanding the attacking side, how would you break the situation?"

"With the current personnel configuration, there are actually many plans," Anduin grinned. "If I used the safest method, I wouldn't let my wizards attack rashly at the beginning."

"Instead, I would direct everyone to dig a trench directly to the city gate through earthwork, and at a distance of forty to fifty meters from the wall, dig to both sides, extending a front line position that can accommodate all the troops."

"With the support of Transfiguration, the corresponding work can be completed in just ten minutes, and there is no need to worry about the opponent's interference during this period. After all, it's outside the opponent's attack range. If the defenders immediately attack the wall, they can even wait for work in leisure and turn the offensive into a defensive."

"Then find a safe place on this line to deploy a temporary respawn point, wouldn't the problem of respawn distance be easily solved?"

"Huh? You can do that?" Snape was stunned when he heard this. "What if the defenders use lava cannons to strike?"

"No!"

Before Anduin could reply, Snape refuted himself, "Such an attack would have no effect. It's a complete waste of money to use expensive shells to kill enemies inside the fortifications. The attackers would even be happy to see it happen."

"That's right," Anduin nodded with satisfaction when he saw that Snape had learned to draw inferences from one instance. "Moreover, this tactic can actually be extended. For example, send a small team to focus on underground digging, directly digging an underground tunnel leading to the enemy's command headquarters."

"While the main force is entangled with the opponent head-on, both destroying the walls and covering the underground troops," Snape took over and supplemented on his own.

Then he couldn't help but gasp. This tactic was too insidious. He originally thought that attacking from the ground and air would be very oppressive, who would have thought that they could also advance from underground.

Although the two people in the conversation were far away from the crowd at this time, there were still some little wizards around. After hearing the topic Anduin was discussing, they immediately held their breath, pricked up their ears and began to eavesdrop.

Anduin, who was on the side, didn't care about everyone's actions, he just continued, "Moreover, under long-term high-pressure operations, another factor must also be taken into consideration, that is, the problem of physical strength and magic consumption."

"In this siege battle, in order to defeat the enemy at a smaller cost, the defending side did not make extensive use of military equipment, which means that they are actually exchanging their own magic for the enemy's respawn times. In the long run, it's actually not worth it."

"When resources are dominant, it's the right solution to appropriately use military equipment to defend and balance everyone's consumption. I don't know when Wood will realize this."

Snape nodded slowly, then refocused his gaze on the screen. "It seems that the direction of this battle is still confusing. Look, Percy and the others are making another move!"

Sure enough, as soon as Snape finished speaking, the attacking wizards on the screen immediately began a new action.

It's just that Percy doesn't seem to have grasped the idea of launching an attack from underground, they still choose to break through from the front.

It's just that this time the attackers didn't rush forward blindly like before, but used the same old trick, using a similar smoke bomb-like darkness charm to spread a passage from the front that couldn't see the situation inside.

Faced with this familiar old tactic, the defenders didn't have many options for a while. After all, the first 50 meters had exceeded the range of the spell, and it was a waste of ammunition to attack with lava cannons or crossbow cannons with a longer range, so now they can only quietly watch the opponent's actions.

Fortunately, the defenders had completed the repair work on the city wall during the previous offensive vacuum period. The walls on the first floor were all patched up, while the walls on the second floor were transformed into a hollow upper half.

Because the opponent had shown them the power of aerial bombardment before, the main force was not all deployed on the top floor like at the beginning, only a part of the wizards who operated anti-aircraft weapons were left.

When the black fog passage gradually spread to near the city wall, the defending wizards finally couldn't help it, they tentatively began to fire spells into the smoke.

But most of the fired spells had no reaction, as if a clay ox had entered the sea, only a few magic bullets fed back a 'poof' sound of hitting something, but it didn't sound like hitting a wizard.

After discovering this, Wood didn't sit idly by and watch the opponent continue to approach, but ordered to release a few tire snakes that could automatically lock on and explode, so that they could explore the reality for his side.

Such an attack was indeed effective. The tire snakes exploded one after another not long after they rolled in, and many wizards hiding in them were shaken out of the smoke range by the huge impact.

However, seeing such results made Wood and the others feel that they had lost money. The price of these self-detonating snakes was not cheap, and it was too wasteful to release a few and kill less than ten people.

But there was obviously something tricky in that fog, and if they allowed the other side to continue to approach, it was possible to cause serious consequences.

So the defending side decided to release a self-detonating snake every few seconds, anyway, this fog could only last for a few minutes, as long as they could prevent the other side from continuing to approach, it was excusable to waste some resources.

After the attacking side discovered the opponent's intention, they also thought about preventing those self-detonating snakes from breaking into the black fog, but in the black fog, the attacking wizards couldn't see the situation clearly, so if they wanted to destroy the self-detonating snakes, they could only walk out of the scope of the smoke.

But the defending wizards would not agree to this kind of thing, as long as they saw someone showing their head, they would immediately fire several spells to kill them on the spot before they had time to act.

After the attacking side discovered this, they also knew that they couldn't continue to approach, it wouldn't be able to withstand anyone if a bomb sneaked in.

So, whether it was the wizards in the simulation or the people watching the live broadcast outside, they heard a burst of dull banging, as if some giant creature was running fast.

But soon everyone figured out what was going on, it was a venomous horned beast with big eyes, more than four meters high, and a fleshy wart-like horn on its head!

Faced with this scene, the defending wizards immediately launched a counterattack, trying to use spells to stop this running behemoth, but it had already run a long distance, and its huge size made its speed completely unstoppable.

The next moment, this venomous horned beast slammed the sharp horn on its head heavily into the city gate, and at the same time, there was a burst of puffing, and the deadly liquid in the sharp horn was poured into the city gate in one go.

Then what everyone saw was a violent explosion, and the power of this explosion was completely incomparable to the previous high-altitude bombing.

The entire city gate, along with the three-meter-wide walls on both sides, was blown away on the spot, and a huge gap of four or five meters wide was directly blasted in the entire city wall.

And that poor venomous horned beast was also blown into white light by the explosion it caused, this was completely a one-time suicide attack.

What followed naturally was Percy's full-scale attack, they had paid a lot of resources for this wave of attacks, and they had a desperate aura.

However, the defending side was obviously not vegetarian either, they had earned so many merits, and the combat power that broke out after the exchange should not be underestimated.

Soon four stone statue soldiers more than three meters high walked out of the city wall, they held equally huge melee weapons and blocked everyone's way with slightly stiff steps.

At the same time, the self-detonating snakes that everyone had seen before, as well as the lava cannons, also appeared one after another, launching a double attack combining distance and proximity on the attacking soldiers who were preparing to rush into the gap in one go.