Baltika9, the madman isn't stealing a ship. It's as you said: why bother stealing ships from Odessa, of all places? That's why I think he's trying to draw us out - Odessa is a town that isn't particularly important to the Empire strategically, nor does it seem related to Ean at all, really.
I was thinking more along the lines of "garrison Odessa->save Ban and his men->go to Odessa with Ban." And as for the commanders, that's what 1A is there for.
Not sure if it's that simple. It's been weeks since we've heard from the Fort, holding off on the rescue might mean the end of our buddy Ban if the place is starved out or overrun.
It's a question of what you value more: the city and the Empire's stability, or Ban and his usefulness to Dio. If it's one or the other, I'm going with Ban. Yeah, if Odessa gets burnt down by tribal savages, it's not good for the stability of the Empire, but remember that we came to Rus so that we could recruit Ban as muscle for whatever lies in New Athens. Admittedly, we also came to find out what was stopping the madman from going to there directly after finding out where Ean's body was located, but that's simply a bonus.
treave, were there roughly 30,000 men at Fort Tigrien before it got isolated (since the update mentioned that we came with a force of 60,000 originally)? I'm curious as to whether we could have part of our forces hold the town while the other half breaks the blockade and frees the remaining forces held down in the Fort. As long as the force of 13,000 at Odessa manages to survive until reinforcements arrive, it might be able to work. I still am not sure I like it because Odessa doesn't have walls, however.
One thing though, I actually believe that the Rus likely outnumber us significantly more than is believed:
The Shinari soldiers were reliant on caravans from Skane and Hatti to keep their expedition supplied. These soon became the target of the tribes, who knew the lay of the land far better and could apparently launch attacks from nowhere with little notice. Within weeks, Fort Nileia had fallen and Fort Tigrien isolated to the north.
...
A population census had never been performed on the tribes of Rus, as the nomads were not under Shinar rule and obviously would not sit still for some Shinari scholar to take their numbers. Estimates of their population, however, range anywhere from 700,000 to more than a million. The number of fighting men gathered by the Madman of Anatolia, on the other hand, was entirely unknown due to the hit-and-run tactics the tribes had employed. Numerically they did not seem to be more plentiful than the 60,000 men from the Empire that had marched in, but no one knew for sure.
The madman has a few tricks up his sleeve, I'm sure of it. Something about all of this just seems off: the madman's hit-and-run strategy had clearly been working and he was knocking off Imperial strongholds one by one, so it doesn't make much sense to me why his forces would bail to take a city when he's already got the Shinari forces isolated. I think he definitely has reserves: this is a man who was able to establish a large and very aggressive cult in the heart of the Empire itself, and I think he's done the same here. So I believe that we'll encounter a ton of resistance no matter where we go.
Anyways, it's also clear to me that if you want to even attempt to save both Odessa and rescue Ban at the Fort, you shouldn't try to take Garsu out. He's the closest thing we have to a competent field commander here, so if we want to do everything at once, we can't worry about trying to take him out. To minimize conflict, the soldiers loyal to him should be segregated from our own. So, I would imagine something like this:
A) Competency is crucial.
C) Splitting our forces will probably result in spreading ourselves too thin, but that's what you have to do if you want to do everything at once.
B1) Garsu holds Odessa while Diogenes breaks the blockade, links up with the Fort's survivors, then makes his way towards Odessa. Giving Garsu only 1,000 men is a clear signal to him that we want him dead, but if we give him an actually substantial force, he won't really be up in arms about it. The downside is that we probably will lose some prestige by not defending the city ourselves, but I believe that the respect we'll gain from our men will offset that. Furthermore, perhaps if we're smart, we can come in and save the day and take all the credit a la Tywin Lannister at the Battle of Blackwater.
The reason I don't want Diogenes holding Odessa is because I don't trust Garsu to not throw us under the bus and allow us to die so that he can go back home. This guy clearly thinks this is all a waste of time, and if we're holding Odessa with a meager force, I don't want to be at his mercy.
Also, unrelated question,
treave: does the religion of Ean have any holy books or holy sites a la Jerusalem or Mecca? Considering the investment Ean put into education at the start of the Empire, it would make sense that someone would have wrote some sort of mythical holy book related to the life of Ean. And I could totally see places like Heliopolis, Tjaru, Babylon, and the Great Wall at Korinthos holding some sort of religious significance.
Voting
ACB1 ADA1 for now.