Another thing we might want to consider is getting Joral to turn her tribe to support us rather than Gergal, with a promise that her tribe will be minor nobles inside these lands after the war, in exchange for their cooperation. Leave that tribe relatively unbeaten and unkilled and unimprisoned when we leave. These tribes are said to be easily fractured.
To the other clans, we need to be rather aggressive and unstinting in the number of blows we rain out upon them.
I think the latter might help the former. Let's see, what warrior- or general-type deeds has Sir Stone accomplished that would improve how these people see him? ...There's the bear, for starters, let's tell that story one night and let Joral hear it.
Fishers gonna fish. If we burn their boats and nets, they will improvise with less efficient means, rafts and hooks, spears in a stream bed, but not be without a certain level of competence which will be upgraded as they restore their tool-making and skiff-crafting production. It'll be rough, but a good 60%-40% can survive famine long enough to recover.
They could also have others search the fields and forests for anything edible. Depending on if the soldiers get back, or if they're really desperate/aggressive, they could even raid nearby villages. Starving towns are not good for the surrounding areas. It's a bad idea to just leave them behind.
I'm kinda surprised that Gerv is with me on the prisoner-taking thing, but I won't look a gift hore in the mouth.
60-40 percent of the town? What about the armies on the feild when will they be fed?
Towns don't produce food, they distribute and consume it. Capturing the town would have a greater effect on the supply chain than leaving them there.
The longer this town takes to recuperate it's losses the less food for the armies and that's our victory. I see what your hinting at though but its a huge risk we don't need to take in my opinion.
I agree with the first nine words and the last three or four, but not the stuff in between. We can't really affect that much of the supply chain, just disrupt this one link and maybe destroy/commandeer whatever's in this town.
It's easy to slaughter thousands of disorganised people. There wll be no rabble controlled by a hivemind consciousness. This is not M2TW where blocks of peasants are controlled by a god force that can utilise them with perfect timing. In reality, each civilian does not know when or where to group up with likeminded resistance in large enough crowds to matter. All war is a matter of concentrating strength and applying it to weakness. The civilians are neither strong nor able to concentrate themselves, particularly after we make obvious assembly points like the main square a burning death zone.
They are, however, numerous. A mob of thousands could easily overpower a couple hundred soldiers. The only potential issue is morale, and these are evidently from a "warrior" culture. That means they're likely to fight.
If we leave civilians behind, they will eventually resume production for the enemy. they are resource gatherers and will continue to gather at diminished rates. I favour taking a large number prisoner to work our resources, or alternatively eroding the enemy production by killing them all. Leaving them to eventually restore their capacity is a waste of our time.
Agreed. I think that the hypothetical-best-case-scenario would be to capture as many as we can and kill the rest...although for reasons I noted above, I don't think we're going to get away with wholesale slaughter of the town.
Also note: From the perspective of what the enemy can do, capturing the townsmen has exactly the same effect on their production as killing them.
It may be useful when planning our fire-setting to point out that convection winds blow inland from the sea during the day, because the water retains its temperature and cools the air above it, while the sun heats the land faster than the water causing the air above the land to rise and be replaced by cooler air from the sea. Any fires that we set will tend to travel away from us, since we come from the shoreline with a wind to our backs. 
Fact-check my science there, btw.
I do recall that being the case.
Speaking of cases, in any of them we need to see how the battle progresses before can can definitively state how we're going to deal with the survivors of the town. For all we know, they could all flee or there could be a few thousand fresh soldiers sent here or something, and either of those would screw up our plans.
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