Roshar deserves to lose

[Frustration]

21 hours ago, Oltux72 said:

The Knights Radiant wouldn't lose. The Rosharan humans would lose. You would have a small elite and a broken people. And then: Shardbearers cannot hold territory.

The Singers would lose in the same way, but humans reproduce faster.

13 hours ago, Tglassy said:

But he won't.  I'll never understand the use of irellivant arguments.  "Just ask the Nightwatcher to give it to you."  The Nightwatcher is an insane Spren who does NOT give you what you asked for, but what SHE thinks you should have, and a curse to go along with it, which in every case but one made the individual regret going to the Nightwatcher.  "Ask the Nightwacher for it" is never a valid argument for anything.   "The Stormfather can just make new honorspren" is not a valid argument, because he won't do it.  Period.  Ever.  Regardless of whether or not he's going to die.  He's too proud, too stuborn, and too scared.  Now, other Honorspren could, and have, done it, but the Stormfather never will.   

Then perhaps you should have paid more attention to the context of that line, Odium never made more Fused, so if you say he could I can easily say the Stormfather makes more Honorspren.

13 hours ago, Tglassy said:

Yeah.  Ok.  Tell that to Syl.  Who literally went to sleep for a thousand years to hide from the fact that her Knight had died.  They are most certainly hurt.  It isn't deadly, but it still hurts.  It causes them pain.  You can't bond your soul, your very essence, to someone, feel them die, and just go on like "Oh well.  I guess I gotta pick the next schmuk in line." 

The books literally say the only reason Syl reacted like that is because she was too young.

And that spren do in fact prefer to bond quickly after their radiant dies.

[cometaryorbit]

The current storyline is balanced pretty well.

What I find a plausibility issue is... back when there were Orders of well trained Radiants (the later Desolations) how did the Fused kill 90% of humanity?

If I were in charge of the human side, I'd put all humans in the 11 Oathgate cities (Soulcasting can handle all logistics, you don't even really need to farm) and make the Fused come to us. there's nothing the Fused could do, pre-RoW discoveries, against a hundred Windrunners/Skybreakers/Stonewards in living Plate backed up by Dustbringer artillery and Edgedancer/Truthwatcher healing. And with everyone in the Oathgate cities, they can't avoid fighting those groups unless they give up the war entirely.

For that matter, tell the Heralds to go retire. The Isolation doesn't provide a permanent solution. Rekilling the Fused to the point they all become useless does. Presumably eventually the Fused will lose horribly enough, often enough* that the Singers will stop serving them... if you've seen your gods helplessly slaughtered in dozens repeatedly, how long can you keep seeing them as gods? And how many Fused would stay functional after 50 deaths and rebirth in immediate succession?

I think they'd eventually give up and make peace, unless they all went nonfunctional from repeated deaths first or Odium killed them for trying.

*Moash killed Leshwi, a relatively competent Fused, without powers and with a mundane weapon. Kaladin killed the Pursuer the first time with most of his powers suppressed. An actually well-trained 4th ideal Windrunner in living Plate should be able to mow through Heavenly Ones trivially.

Edited January 1, 2023 by cometaryorbit

[cometaryorbit]

2 hours ago, Frustration said:

The Singers would lose in the same way, but humans reproduce faster.

Actually Singers probably do. They're adult much faster than humans... maybe like 10? Venli is 14 in RoW I think and she's been an adult for a few years.

On the other hand Singers are usually not in mateform... and while that's not the only fertile form it's not clear if all forms are fertile ("slaveform" definitely is and dull form likely is as kind of a default; not sure if any other form is known to be) and they definitely don't seem to reproduce much in other forms. So while Singers definitely have a shorter *generation time* than humans their overall population growth might not be higher.

[+Oltux72]

5 hours ago, Frustration said:

The Singers would lose in the same way, but humans reproduce faster.

Singers may not be as fertile as humans, but they grow up faster.

And, much more important, their recruitment improves during a desolation. They have people who really live only for revenge.

5 hours ago, Frustration said:

And that spren do in fact prefer to bond quickly after their radiant dies.

That's still a losing game, because your Radiants now have neither Blade nor Plate.

2 hours ago, cometaryorbit said:

What I find a plausibility issue is... back when there were Orders of well trained Radiants (the later Desolations) how did the Fused kill 90% of humanity?

They did not. Odium's full forces include the Unamde, Thunderclasts, Regals, Voidspren, Midnight Essence and true Voidbinders and probably other things we have no yet seen.

2 hours ago, cometaryorbit said:

If I were in charge of the human side, I'd put all humans in the 11 Oathgate cities (Soulcasting can handle all logistics, you don't even really need to farm) and make the Fused come to us. there's nothing the Fused could do, pre-RoW discoveries, against a hundred Windrunners/Skybreakers/Stonewards in living Plate backed up by Dustbringer artillery and Edgedancer/Truthwatcher healing. And with everyone in the Oathgate cities, they can't avoid fighting those groups unless they give up the war entirely.

Attrition. Guerilla warfare until the cities run out of gemstones.

 

[cometaryorbit]

1 hour ago, Oltux72 said:

They did not. Odium's full forces include the Unamde, Thunderclasts, Regals, Voidspren, Midnight Essence and true Voidbinders and probably other things we have no yet seen.

Attrition. Guerilla warfare until the cities run out of gemstones.

 

1. True, but...

- So far the Unmade have a poor record vs Radiants. For those who have actually had confrontations... Re-shephir ran away very quickly after being confronted by Shallan; Yelig-nar Amaram got killed pretty fast, with a very unimpressive performance for someone with all Surges; Ashertmarn apparently retreated willingly, so that's not really evidence either way; Nergaoul got imprisoned (though that's Dalinar, so special case). Moelach doesnt seem to do anything but give Death Rattles. Sja-anat changed sides. So we have 2 poor performances and 4 unclear/special case, with no clear effectiveness vs Radiants. I grant the 3 unseen Unmade may have been far more capable, though - Ba-ado-Mishram was apparently a really big deal in the past, and Chemoarish's title 'Dustmother' could suggest major destructive power.

- thunderclasts don't seem all that impressive vs Radiants, though they are awesome living siege weapons. Nightblood wasn't available in the past, but they don't have the mobility to deal with flying or Abrasion-using Radiants, and Renarin isn't really hurt much by a solid hit - and he didn't have Plate yet.

- Regals and Midnight Essence are less powerful than Fused, they're going to be very little use vs trained Radiants. I don't think they can really use their very small quantity of Voidlight to heal, and against Radiants who actually had loyal Skybreakers and Dustbringers, not sure anyone who can't heal is effective. (Though some argue Division is touch only... I think that would make it useless, though, since Radiants have Blades; and Hoid talking to Jasnah in RoW implies mass-destruction use of Surges is a thing - IMO that's probably Division). Bringing Regals into the fight is probably a net loss for the Fused, since they're now giving the humans free gemstones (see below).

- Unclear that Voidspren can do much physically.

2. This is genuinely possible, since Soulcasting food requires specific gem types. They'd never run out of gemstones in general, since singers have gemhearts and ancient humans harvested them (this is the source of the listeners' corpse taboo), which means using Regals and regular singers is probably a net loss to the Fused - theyre providing resources. But conceivably they could run out of emeralds and heliodors.

Even then, though, I don't think its a clear win for the Fused, for two reasons:

- The Radiants shouldn't need anything like their full forces to defend the Oathgate cities. I doubt there's enough Fused in existence to beat 200, or even 100, 4th ideal Radiants in a straight fight. (4th ideal Radiants with both Plate and Stormlight healing are incredibly hard to kill; Fused are not.) That leaves Radiants free to go hunt the Fused so they can't organize a siege well. Or to go hunt greatshells for more gems; before millennia of overhunting, they were probably not hard to find, especially for flyers.

- Animals with gemhearts are ranched for gems on Roshar. Even with the need to maintain some farming and ranching (so not all humans are literally in the Oathgate cities themselves) the flight speed of Radiants with Gravitation is enough that I don't think any humans would ever have to be out of quick response range of Radiants. Especially with Progression boosted crop growth... you wont need much farmland. And with a double Lashing Windrunners are probably flying well over 100mph. (A diving human's terminal velocity on Earth is about 120mph; a double Basic Lashing is 1.4 g, but we don't have a good value for Roshar's air pressure.)

Edited January 2, 2023 by cometaryorbit

[Frustration]

5 hours ago, cometaryorbit said:

Actually Singers probably do. They're adult much faster than humans... maybe like 10? Venli is 14 in RoW I think and she's been an adult for a few years.

On the other hand Singers are usually not in mateform... and while that's not the only fertile form it's not clear if all forms are fertile ("slaveform" definitely is and dull form likely is as kind of a default; not sure if any other form is known to be) and they definitely don't seem to reproduce much in other forms. So while Singers definitely have a shorter *generation time* than humans their overall population growth might not be higher.

Singers do age faster, but Mateform is one of the few fertile ones, and by far the most fertile. Stormform and other forms of power are infertile.

2 hours ago, Oltux72 said:

Singers may not be as fertile as humans, but they grow up faster.

And, much more important, their recruitment improves during a desolation. They have people who really live only for revenge.

They also require a singer do die for them to exist, if it got to near extinction levels the singer side will feel the pinch on recruitment more than humans.

3 hours ago, Oltux72 said:

That's still a losing game, because your Radiants now have neither Blade nor Plate.

Which they will get back, Fused however never regain their sanity.

[Tglassy]

You gotta remember that in the distant past, the people usually didn't even have steal.  Radiants are relatively new in the grand scheme of the fight.  They suffered many desolations without them.  Without ANY help except the Heralds, who were able to help train and prepare to fight off armies of Singers. 

When Radiants came, they DID gather people in the ten oathgate cities.  And Alethela was the nation who prepared for war so the others could live in peace.  And they fought off the Desolations over and over.  So obviously they were effective. 

But the people STILL didn't have access to hardly anything.  Those wars were more brutal.  There were no fabrials save for soulcasters.  An while Radiants are awesome, they can't be everywhere.  Just look at the vision Dalinar had with the Midnight Essence.  A village attacked in the middle of the night, and only two Knights showed up to protect them.  Now, those two knights may be all they needed, but tell that to the number of people who died before they got there.  These wars aren't just fought in the ten big cities, but in every village and town across a very large continent.

And while Thunderclasts, Fused, and the 9 Unmade haven't shown themselves as too terribly threatening to the Radiants, they HAVE shown nearly impossibly deadly to normal people, and they vastly outnumber the Radiants.  You can't look at someone like Moash and Kaladin as examples of the average person fighting these things.  

[+Oltux72]

7 hours ago, cometaryorbit said:

1. True, but...

- So far the Unmade have a poor record vs Radiants. For those who have actually had confrontations...

Yes. The Unmade are also decaying. It can hardly be denied in total.

7 hours ago, cometaryorbit said:

- thunderclasts don't seem all that impressive vs Radiants, though they are awesome living siege weapons. Nightblood wasn't available in the past, but they don't have the mobility to deal with flying or Abrasion-using Radiants, and Renarin isn't really hurt much by a solid hit - and he didn't have Plate yet.

Combined arms. The Singer armies in this Desolation are quite debilitated by having no established militaries. A Thunderclast is something you have to defend against or attack. Thus you are losing initiative. We have seen a Shard being forced into taking personal command.

7 hours ago, cometaryorbit said:

- Regals and Midnight Essence are less powerful than Fused, they're going to be very little use vs trained Radiants.

We have not seen trained Regals. And again combined arms. A team of Regals and Thunderclasts is harder to beat than either of them alone, for example.

7 hours ago, cometaryorbit said:

2. This is genuinely possible, since Soulcasting food requires specific gem types. They'd never run out of gemstones in general, since singers have gemhearts and ancient humans harvested them (this is the source of the listeners' corpse taboo), which means using Regals and regular singers is probably a net loss to the Fused - theyre providing resources. But conceivably they could run out of emeralds and heliodors.

Even then, though, I don't think its a clear win for the Fused, for two reasons:

It isn't. Given the number of Desolations and how they lways ended it is quite clear that the outcome is almost preordained. However, that does not make Odium's side harmless. And remember, ultimately Odium does not want humans on Roshar to be exterminated.

7 hours ago, cometaryorbit said:

- The Radiants shouldn't need anything like their full forces to defend the Oathgate cities. I doubt there's enough Fused in existence to beat 200, or even 100, 4th ideal Radiants in a straight fight. (4th ideal Radiants with both Plate and Stormlight healing are incredibly hard to kill; Fused are not.) That leaves Radiants free to go hunt the Fused so they can't organize a siege well. Or to go hunt greatshells for more gems; before millennia of overhunting, they were probably not hard to find, especially for flyers.

Yes. If worst comes to worst, you can retreat back to Urithiru. The Singers were never able to exterminate their opponents. But they didn't need to. The Radiants and Heralds always knew that the next Desolation would come. The risks in a pyrrhic victory were too great. You would need to really exterminate the Singers. And you would never have been sure.

7 hours ago, cometaryorbit said:

- Animals with gemhearts are ranched for gems on Roshar. Even with the need to maintain some farming and ranching (so not all humans are literally in the Oathgate cities themselves) the flight speed of Radiants with Gravitation is enough that I don't think any humans would ever have to be out of quick response range of Radiants.

True, but on a world without fast communications meaningless by itself. Spanreeds are a recent innovation. The Radiants would need to patrol. And there go your resources.

 

[Frustration]

In the past Honor also commanded the Highstorm and would move it to wherever he needed it, so running out of Stormlight was no a huge problem.

[nyxvoid]

11 hours ago, Oltux72 said:

Yes. The Unmade are also decaying. It can hardly be denied in total..

 

Unmade are decaying ? like fused that lose their mind when their soul becomes worn and thin enough and lose their will? they (Unmade )are type 1 invested beings , investiture come alive because it was a big chunk of investiture . they are immortal . 

Edited January 2, 2023 by nyxvoid

[nyxvoid]

29 minutes ago, Frustration said:

In the past Honor also commanded the Highstorm and would move it to wherever he needed it, so running out of Stormlight was no a huge problem.

i dont think Honor could do that , him being god of laws and all that stuff, shards having their rules, intent etc. Stormfather is like honor just much smaller and he acts like he can't go against nature of storms when Delinar asks him to do things.

[Frustration]

25 minutes ago, nyxvoid said:

i dont think Honor could do that , him being god of laws and all that stuff, shards having their rules, intent etc. Stormfather is like honor just much smaller and he acts like he can't go against nature of storms when Delinar asks him to do things.

When Odium drives the Everstorm towards Theylanah and then stops it in place the Stormfather says that Odium drove it the same way Honor once drove him.

Edited January 2, 2023 by Frustration

[nyxvoid]

8 minutes ago, Frustration said:

When Odium drives the Everstorm towards Theylanah and then stops it in place the Stormfather says that Odium drove it the same way Honor once drove him.

i do remember that in OB. but  i thought Stormfather was referring to fact that Odium is riding the storm like Honor once did , and not that Odium stopped it for his purpose like Honor might have done.

either way ,personally ,i think It would be harder for Honor to move highstorm outside time table because he is god of laws and Odium would not feel any restrictions because intent of his power is different .

Edited January 2, 2023 by nyxvoid

[alder24]

Tbf Stormfather sent Highstorm out of schedule at the end of WoR, so it's valid to suggest Honor might have controlled them them the way Odium did. But I agree on the specific interpretation of Stormfather's quote about "riding the Storm".

Edited January 2, 2023 by alder24

[+Oltux72]

1 hour ago, nyxvoid said:

Unmade are decaying ? like fused that lose their mind when their soul becomes worn and thin enough and lose their will? they (Unmade )are type 1 invested beings , investiture come alive because it was a big chunk of investiture . they are immortal . 

They are also slave soldiers. That makes their loyalty questionable. The more time they have the more they'll scheme. And Odium had already lost one.

[nyxvoid]

27 minutes ago, alder24 said:

Tbf Stormfather sent Highstorm out of schedule at the end of WoR, so it's valid to suggest Honor might have controlled them them the way Odium did. 

i forgot that.

[cometaryorbit]

18 hours ago, Tglassy said:

An while Radiants are awesome, they can't be everywhere.  Just look at the vision Dalinar had with the Midnight Essence.  A village attacked in the middle of the night, and only two Knights showed up to protect them.  Now, those two knights may be all they needed, but tell that to the number of people who died before they got there.  These wars aren't just fought in the ten big cities, but in every village and town across a very large continent.

And while Thunderclasts, Fused, and the 9 Unmade haven't shown themselves as too terribly threatening to the Radiants, they HAVE shown nearly impossibly deadly to normal people, and they vastly outnumber the Radiants.  You can't look at someone like Moash and Kaladin as examples of the average person fighting these things.  

Right - that's why I suggest the obvious strategy is to move all humans to the vicinity of one of the Oathgate cities. Then there are no isolated villages and towns to be vulnerable, and there's no way for the enemy to get at normal people without confronting Radiants almost immediately.

Kaladin is exceptionally super awesome, sure, but I do think Moash killing Leshwi without powers is very significant.

Also, in the Herald-only (pre-Radiant) Desolations surely many Fused were killed by normal soldiers.

I guess part of my issue is, if humanity survived with just 10 Heralds then why didn't the desolations become incredibly one sided once the Radiants appeared? The later Desolations were still huge threats. Yet there were presumably hundreds and possibly low thousands of Radiants, who are by 4th ideal each far harder to kill than a Herald. (Kalak died to thunderclasts repeatedly. Renarin laughs one off without Plate. Sure, that's probably Progression but I don't see them having much luck against Radiants with live Plate and full Stormlight healing.)

The implication seems to be loss of infrastructure/technology as the Desolations came closer together... but with the "get everyone close to Oathgates" strategy its not clear you really need infrastructure. There's hardly a point in having regular humans fight then, and the logistic capabilities of Soulcasting are so utterly extreme that regular infrastructure becomes kind of meaningless very fast.

IMO things make far more sense if Radiancy developed slowly, the early Radiants did not have the full powers (less advanced healing more like what a Honorblade gives, less efficient Surges, no Plate) as the spren were still perfecting the process. And maybe fewer spren were involved at the beginning?

That way there would be time for an "arms race" where the Fused developed counters. Suppressor fabrials would have been an even huger deal if early Radiants didn't necessarily get 4th+ ideal bond strength to resist them, for example. The Feverstone Keep vision arguably implies that fully functional Radiant orders had most people in Plate, so what were the Stormlight draining weapons for? Maybe Plate was once rare or not yet invented...

Even then, though, the last two or three Desolations probably had full powered Radiants and were still civilization breaking, so...

Edited January 2, 2023 by cometaryorbit

[alder24]

8 minutes ago, cometaryorbit said:

I guess part of my issue is, if humanity survived with just 10 Heralds then why didn't the desolations become incredibly one sided once the Radiants appeared? The later Desolations were still huge threats. Yet there were presumably hundreds and possibly low thousands of Radiants, who are by 4th ideal each far harder to kill than a Herald.

During Heralds Desolation humanity had hundreds of years to recover, later, during Radiant times, just few years. This is huge difference, as there are limits as how much losses population can take and still be able to fight effectively. With Desolation happening year after year, humans can't replenish losses fast enough, can't train effectively, can't replace fallen Radiants when necessary. The losses kept accumulating until it reach breaking point, where humanity was unable to further support war effort - including Radiants as well.

13 minutes ago, cometaryorbit said:

but with the "get everyone close to Oathgates" strategy its not clear you really need infrastructure.

Today humans not only have a hard time of leaving thier homes when hurricane approaches, but also when shells are falling on thier roofs. Humans are bad at leaving behind their homes, and now we can easily buy/rent a new one. During medieval times, house is everything you have, it's all your wealth, leaving that means homelessness and poverty. Even when Desolation approaches, convincing people to leave behind their entire live for promises of safety would be futile. Most would not listen to you, they would stay. And while your Radiants and army is wasting time trying to convince the entire continent to move, Desolation starts and your forces are spread too thin and far away from each other to effectively fight it. 
And you do NEED a lot of infrastructure to move that amount of people to 11 cities. First of all, those cities have to have space for millions, then you need roads to those cities, vehicles and animals for people to travel with, food, water, shoes, medications, clothes. Not to mention shelters from Highstorms for millions of people on the roads, that comes every couple of days. It would take months to complete this process, and by this time, Desolation would be already ongoing. Logistically it's impossible, even with Radiants help. You have to move hundreds of millions of people. Not to mention that a lot of people would still die during travel, even with Edgedancers help. It's better to spend this time on recruitment, training and fortifying your positions.
It's logical to do what you propose, but people don't behave logical, they emotional. This would never work.

 

I do see that Radiants with their theoretical potential are just too powerful, especially compared to Fused. Maybe we don't see everything that Fused and Odium has to offer, there is a lot of Singers forms that we didn't see yet. Or maybe 4th Ideal and more Radiants are just extremely rare. Maybe the one at Feverstone Keep were all their orders had, and other orders had similar or smaller numbers of 4th ideal - as that was after peaceful millenia with no Desolations, 4th Ideal Radiants had time to appear, train, and swear their oaths, befere False Desolation happened. When it started, all sprens joined the efford and bonded, some of those new Radiants might reach 4th Ideal, but most would not. Before Last Desolation, many would not live long enough to swear 4th Ideal, and there would be no time in between Desolations to recover, train and progress, as new one is incoming already. So the number of 4th Ideal Radiants would be even lower than what we saw during Dalinar's vision. I hope that's the case at least.

[Frustration]

26 minutes ago, alder24 said:

Maybe the one at Feverstone Keep were all their orders had, and other orders had similar or smaller numbers of 4th ideal - as that was after peaceful millenia with no Desolations, 4th Ideal Radiants had time to appear, train, and swear their oaths, befere False Desolation happened. When it started, all sprens joined the efford and bonded, some of those new Radiants might reach 4th Ideal, but most would not. Before Last Desolation, many would not live long enough to swear 4th Ideal, and there would be no time in between Desolations to recover, train and progress, as new one is incoming already. So the number of 4th Ideal Radiants would be even lower than what we saw during Dalinar's vision. I hope that's the case at least.

Feverstone keep was only the orders of Windrunners and Stonewards.

[cometaryorbit]

3 hours ago, alder24 said:

During Heralds Desolation humanity had hundreds of years to recover, later, during Radiant times, just few years. This is huge difference, as there are limits as how much losses population can take and still be able to fight effectively. With Desolation happening year after year, humans can't replenish losses fast enough, can't train effectively, can't replace fallen Radiants when necessary. The losses kept accumulating until it reach breaking point, where humanity was unable to further support war effort - including Radiants as well.

Today humans not only have a hard time of leaving thier homes when hurricane approaches, but also when shells are falling on thier roofs. Humans are bad at leaving behind their homes, and now we can easily buy/rent a new one. During medieval times, house is everything you have, it's all your wealth, leaving that means homelessness and poverty. Even when Desolation approaches, convincing people to leave behind their entire live for promises of safety would be futile. Most would not listen to you, they would stay. And while your Radiants and army is wasting time trying to convince the entire continent to move, Desolation starts and your forces are spread too thin and far away from each other to effectively fight it. 
And you do NEED a lot of infrastructure to move that amount of people to 11 cities. First of all, those cities have to have space for millions, then you need roads to those cities, vehicles and animals for people to travel with, food, water, shoes, medications, clothes. Not to mention shelters from Highstorms for millions of people on the roads, that comes every couple of days. It would take months to complete this process, and by this time, Desolation would be already ongoing. Logistically it's impossible, even with Radiants help. You have to move hundreds of millions of people. Not to mention that a lot of people would still die during travel, even with Edgedancers help. It's better to spend this time on recruitment, training and fortifying your positions.
It's logical to do what you propose, but people don't behave logical, they emotional. This would never work.

The "population" doesnt really need to fight though once you have Radiants, if you move people into a defensible area. Radiants and squires should be more than enough to protect a relatively small area against a few thousand Fused (are there even a few thousand Fused total? 100 leaders, iirc... might be more like 500-1000 total), even backed up by Regals and warforms.

Radiant losses just shouldn't need to be replaced very often, if you have the 4th ideals take point. They are *insanely* hard to kill; we haven't even seen 4th ideals working as a team yet (even a few).

But the emotional point is good. I'd say the simple, strategically correct, answer is "you move to an Oathgate city or you're on your own - we won't be sending out Radiants" but Windrunner oaths probably wouldn't allow that. Perhaps that's why they didn't pursue this path, yeah.

(I doubt there were hundreds of millions of humans alive in the later Desolations, though, given repeated 90%+ losses - and I don't think Roshar ever had a billion people or close to it. In the late Desolations, a million to a few million seems more reasonable imo. They might have got to 50 - 100 million or so with centuries of peace... the human ideal part of Roshar is not that large compared to Earth's, and they weren't that advanced. But the rest of this makes sense.)

Edited January 3, 2023 by cometaryorbit

[+Oltux72]

13 hours ago, cometaryorbit said:

I guess part of my issue is, if humanity survived with just 10 Heralds then why didn't the desolations become incredibly one sided once the Radiants appeared? The later Desolations were still huge threats. Yet there were presumably hundreds and possibly low thousands of Radiants, who are by 4th ideal each far harder to kill than a Herald. (Kalak died to thunderclasts repeatedly. Renarin laughs one off without Plate. Sure, that's probably Progression but I don't see them having much luck against Radiants with live Plate and full Stormlight healing.)

Because Odium in turn gave his forces more firepower presumably. In fact the bestowal of the Surges onto the Fused may have been exactly that counter.

13 hours ago, cometaryorbit said:

The implication seems to be loss of infrastructure/technology as the Desolations came closer together... but with the "get everyone close to Oathgates" strategy its not clear you really need infrastructure. There's hardly a point in having regular humans fight then, and the logistic capabilities of Soulcasting are so utterly extreme that regular infrastructure becomes kind of meaningless very fast.

Think this through. You do that consequently for years. Singers settle the abandoned lands. They reproduce. What will happen after a few decades?

This is a beautiful example of a sound tactic being awful strategy.

13 hours ago, cometaryorbit said:

IMO things make far more sense if Radiancy developed slowly, the early Radiants did not have the full powers (less advanced healing more like what a Honorblade gives, less efficient Surges, no Plate) as the spren were still perfecting the process. And maybe fewer spren were involved at the beginning?

They doubtlessly did. But to more than the current radiants. Look at the remnants like the barrier seen in Rhythm of War in Urithiru or the old fabrials. All that took time. But that was not limited to one side. No bioweapons so far for example. Imagine what combined arms teams of Reals and Fused who have Futuresight can do.

 

[Frustration]

5 minutes ago, Oltux72 said:

Think this through. You do that consequently for years. Singers settle the abandoned lands. They reproduce. What will happen after a few decades?

This is a beautiful example of a sound tactic being awful strategy.

Considering how slowly singer reproduce, not much. The human population would grow faster and they'd begin to expand outward.

[+Oltux72]

9 minutes ago, Frustration said:

Considering how slowly singer reproduce, not much. The human population would grow faster and they'd begin to expand outward.

Hence breaking your own strategy. Only that now you have a population that is not used to farming and will have to expand into areas the Singers have devastated.

And the settlers to be would be quite likely to die. That will be excellent for morale.

[Frustration]

3 minutes ago, Oltux72 said:

Hence breaking your own strategy. Only that now you have a population that is not used to farming and will have to expand into areas the Singers have devastated.

And the settlers to be would be quite likely to die. That will be excellent for morale.

With a larger population you'll have more radiants and can begin a campaign to simply overrun the singer through sheer numbers.

Not to mention the fact that you should never actually lose anyone as with a Dawnshard you could easily wipe out the entirety of the singers forces.

[alder24]

23 minutes ago, Frustration said:

With a larger population you'll have more radiants

You don't. Radiants are limited to the numbers of available sprens. And sprens don't reproduce like humans. So their numbers are not changing - within a certain timeframe.

24 minutes ago, Frustration said:

Not to mention the fact that you should never actually lose anyone as with a Dawnshard you could easily wipe out the entirety of the singers forces.

Do we know that humanity USE Downshards during Desolation or it was just Honor that mention them in the visions, and one poem also?