Struggle in the Steam Age

After discovering that those wilderness races were infiltrating behind their own front lines by relying on the complex local terrain and hidden underground passages, the military on the civilized race side immediately issued an order to all troops on the front line to stop advancing and enter a defensive state on the spot.

At the same time, the headquarters began to mobilize more troops composed of races like dwarves, gnomes or ratmen who are good at fighting in the underground environment from the rear into the theater, and then began to search for possible underground hiding spots near the entire theater, especially Land near various traffic lines.

As the legions of these races who were good at fighting in the narrow underground caves were organized and put into the war zone, many tunnels and secret camps were gradually discovered and occupied.

Most of these camps were built temporarily, obviously the nails left by the other party when they retreated in an orderly manner. But there are also some that seem to have a long history, and are likely to be part of the entire underground tunnel system in the Dashan region.

As for why there are so many underground passages here, it is easy to understand. After all, there are not many places where a large number of populations can live in a place with a bad natural environment like a mountain range, and they are often concentrated in places with flat terrain.

And these locations are basically the locations that humans must choose when they want to build cross-mountain communication lines.

For example, this is the case with the series of valleys and valleys that humans need to capture this time. They are often areas with an average altitude of less than 500 meters, flat terrain and sufficient water sources.

And the important factor for those populations like goblins, goblin bears, or wolf people to survive here is that they occupy places with relatively high environmental carrying capacity.

Also because of the topography of this area, the goblins and gnolls who originally lived on the plains by hunting and plundering have switched to a nomadic life, supplemented by plundering.

Although this kind of life still depends on the weather, it is difficult to store any food. But in any case, it is better than the life of hunting or robbing to obtain supplies purely for face.

As for races that live underground like dark elves and gray dwarves, although they don't need much output on the ground, the problem is that the structures of basins and valleys in these mountainous areas are often syncline structures, which can gather the surrounding surface Water goes into the subterranean areas where they live, and in the subterranean world, water is the most important commodity.

In this case, even if they don't need or even hate the environment on the surface, they have to organize people to occupy some settlements on the surface, and use various means to gather those surface creatures as their vassals.

In addition to obtaining some surface materials, the most important point is to protect their precious water sources.

On the other hand, for these wilderness races, this terrain is also convenient for them to rush out of the mountains along the easy valleys to rob the settlements of those civilized races on the plain, and bring back various spoils.

This is especially important for those more civilized races like dark elves or gray dwarves who live underground.

This is why those wars that open up lines of communication will turn into large-scale civilized expeditions, because the territories needed by the civilized races are so important to these wilderness races that they simply cannot give up these lands and must do everything possible means to keep out the attackers of those civilized races.

Similarly, these areas are also rare places for civilized races to cross large mountains. They really couldn't find any other place to build a passage other than this area.

As the war progressed, the civilized races entered a stage of strategic contraction, and then in addition to the dwarves, a race that was good at underground combat, were put on the battlefield, non-human troops of other races were also gradually entering the war zone.

And after these races with their own advantages joined the battlefield, the pressure on the wilderness races on the defensive side suddenly increased a lot. This kind of pressure doesn't just come from the new high-level transcendents, but also from ordinary soldiers.

For example, at the beginning, the sniper team composed of gray dwarves and dark elves used the mountains to bring a lot of trouble to the attacking humans.

But with the reinforcements of the elf ranger troops on Summerset Isle, the civilized races slowly regained some of their advantages in the battle in the mountains.

Under such circumstances, the wilderness side can naturally feel more and more pressure. This is especially true for those races on the periphery.

So the alliance formed by these wilderness races that often broke out wars for territory, wealth, or slaves soon held a second meeting.

Unlike the first meeting organized and held after hearing that civilized races were about to attack, almost every city-state and every tribe sent their representatives to this meeting.

The reason for saying almost is because many tribes that ran slower had been completely wiped out in the previous battles in the outer mountainous areas.

In the first meeting before, no one could convince anyone because of the previous grievances. Some people think that they should take advantage of the terrain of the mountainous area to hold on, but those forces on the outskirts of the mountainous area naturally oppose this method of sacrificing their territory.

Not to mention that some of them go out to rob every day, and they only face militias and mounted police forces in some poor areas all the year round. They think that intelligent races are nothing more than that. After obtaining sufficient equipment, they can completely defend those areas and even launch counterattacks against civilized races.

"Take down St. John's Fortress and rob the St. John's Plain." This was the slogan shouted by those wilderness races at that time. They believed that they were fully capable of overcoming those civilized races and gaining unprecedented benefits outside the mountains.

And the reason why they have the confidence to shout such slogans is because this group of wilderness races who have the two main channels of human smuggling and the dark region are completely different from those races on the plains.

Taking the most common goblin as an example, the goblins on the plain were just like the goblins Lawrence saw when he was a child. They were just small-scale tribes with few people and few equipment. A wooden stick with nails is considered advanced equipment.

But the goblins of the Great Mountains are much richer than that, in addition to providing each combatant with a set of leather armor and metal weapons. It is even possible to form a group of professional cavalry with tusk boars as mounts.

The same is true for other races. In addition to making use of local resources, they can also import various weapons, ammunition and magic props from civilized races through smuggling and robbery.

Under such a premise, they naturally felt that they could give a head-on blow to the legions of civilized races on the outskirts of the mountains.

As a result, this caused the first meeting to break up unhappy, and most of them chose to build fortifications on the outskirts of the mountainous area and were ready to launch a counterattack at any time.

Only a small number of wiser forces chose to hide in the mountains, and used the complex terrain of the mountains to make various preparations for the attacking army of the intelligent race.

Facts have proved that a small number of talents are right now. When faced with the fierce artillery fire and three-dimensional large-scale attacks of the regular army of the civilized race, which is completely different from the security forces in various places, the defense line built on the periphery of the mountainous area and regarded by the wild race as impenetrable is only It only lasted a few days before being breached.

After the line of defense was broken, the civilized race's pursuit of the defeated army caused several powerful forces to almost shed their blood. If it weren't for the obviously rough terrain after entering the mountainous area and the wilderness races that hadn't attacked before, they would have blocked it. The huge wilderness race legion may not have too many people surviving.

But even so, the power of this group of wilderness races has been lost by 40%. Among them, many established standing legions including elite troops such as wolf cavalry of gnolls and hobgoblin infantry with heavy armor were completely wiped out.

For these populations that are already lacking in supplies, it may take more than ten years to make up for this loss slowly.