Actually Guerrilla warfare is the single most effective way to bring down a world power no matter how big your military may be. There's a reason why we ended up losing the non-organized battles of Vietnam and Afghanistan. When your enemy doesn't play by the rules, uses quick small strikes against small military targets, and above all doesn't have a distinct uniform. (Something which the Legion fits minus the lack of uniforms since ya' know..they wear football pads and all). Its very hard to win a war without taking sever causalities both in the literal and political sense.

That said I do think the NCR would win eventually, but it would be political suicide for whoever lead the war for however long it lasted.

I see, but would guerilla warfare also work against you when you are fighting on your own turf? (Hopefully I phrased this right)

Vietnam.

Key word being "usually."


Which is why invading and capturing NCR territory would be nigh-impossible for the Legion.

It bugs me when people bring up Vietnam and Afghanistan. Those wars are very different from every war in human history. Lets compare them to WW2. The key difference between WW2 and Vietnam and Afganistan is that WW2 was a war of territory, the more you take the more you know you are winning. Vietnam and Afganistan aren't wars of againing territory, they are wars judged by body count, kill as many of the enemy as you can until they give up but the problem is you don't know who your enemy is most of the time. In WW2 you knew who your enemy was.

Sure the Legion can hide as civilians and fight a Guerrilla war, but it wouldn't take long for NCR to find out who is legion or not. Why is that? Because the NCR will be taking over every single town they come across. Sooner or later the slaves they liberate will point out to the NCR who is Legion or who isn't. The longer the NCR stays in a town the longer they have to capture those that attack them.

Vietnam in Afganistan aren't wars of occupation and conquest. They go in kill the bad guys and bug out, and then the bad guys move back in and the cycle repeats. Google "Hamburger Hill." Imagine how much better Vietnam would have went if the American's just set up a base on every hill they captured instead of giving it back to the enemy everytime. Imagine how it would have went if they just bombed the crap out of the North day and night. It was working in the end. Vietnam is a great example of when hippies and politicians run a war. You lose everytime, because killing becomes a bad thing in war, which war is all about.

The best Ally the North Vietnamese had was the American media and the North Vietnamese leadership boasted about that.

They did bomb the crap out of the North. TOT I believe? Time on Target? And what's so bad about losing a war because of unrest in the homefront? It's a legit strategy that the Legion could use. In fact, they kind of use that in Nipton.

Well, Legion doesn't have to invade, to invade. But, by terrorizing NCR land, force NCR to attack where and when they don't want to. Your goal is to lure NCR into a trap. Damage them enough, and you could actually invade.

The wild card is the BoS. Would BoS take advantage of situation and attack NCR, or sit back and wait, to attack the eventual winner? Or use threat of attack for political leverage?

Nixon ordered around the clock bombing of the North and it finally brought the North to the table and allowed America to get out of the War. Do you want to know why? Because the North was in serious danger of losing the war. Everytime America needed to get the North back to the table they ordered bombing of the North.

Vietnam was a war which was watched on TV for the first time. If WW2 was on TV every night people would have wanted that to end as well. War is hell, war is about killing the enemy. Once you decide killing is a bad thing in a war, you lost.

But it doesn't matter in the Fallout Universe. That crap wouldn't happen. There would be no civilian media sending reports to the people back in NCR. No watching people getting killed on the 5 o'clock news, therefore the Legion wouldn't be able to take full use of guerilla and win by causing trouble on the home front.

Edit: Another thing I forgot to add is that America didn't feel threatened by Vietnam. The NCR has every reason to feel threatened by the Legion. The Legion is in the NCR's backyard and kicking at the gate.

Of course T.V doesn't work but the Legion has quite a bit of Frumentarri agents. Many of which that nobody knows. Heck, from Ulysses words, many couriers are Legion frumentarri agents. How's it so hard for one of the Frumentarri couriers to arrange a simple thing right after Legion guerrillas destroy an NCR frontier.

"Oh I just passed on my way to X NCR camp and it was totaled by Legion guerrillas! Barely got out with my life," Makes everyone none the wiser to the actual frumentarri agent and everyone scared. After all, couriers are supposed to be reliable sources of information when they're on the job.

He's right, if you look at the battles and causualty rates in Vietnam, we were kicking thier asses. Even the Tet Offensive, popularly thought to be a victory for the Vietcong was a complete disaster. They lost 55,000 men killed, and hundreds of thousands more wounded for only 4000 american causalties, and 8000 south vietnam causalties, and the battle completly destroyed the Vietcong as a fighting force and the north was forced to use conventional tactics, and lost half thier army several years later in a single campaign. but people only heard about the dead and wounded, not to mention several media personalities falsifiying reports.

Guerrila tactics can be effective, but usually what happens with them is a stalling action, prolong your eventual defeat and hope for something to happen that achieves victory. The problem with small unit tactics/raids is that if they get caught, they'll be massacred, especially if the opponent has superior firepower, like the NCR.

That's why I think the NCR will most likely win, if this is agianst each side's entire army. In a conventional slaughterfest battle, the NCR's superior firepower, and ability to replace recruits will likely win, not to mention, they have an airforce and mechanized division. If the Legion goes Geurilla, the slaves & citizens won't likely support them, making it harder to replace troops, plus the whole small-iunit tactics thing. If the NCR goes geurrila then again the Legion will have no support and they not only have to face the NCR troops but the police, Gun Runners, Caravan Guards of all types, mafia goons, those brahmin baron guards, and anybody with a gun. They'll likely be forced to leave at some point or completely depopulate the region in in punishments & examples.

LMAO the TET Offensive was a huge epic failure on on the North's part. America was going by body count, well the TET offensive almost wiped out the North's forces. America won hands down, but that piece of [censored] Walter Cronkite went on TV and announced that there was no way for America to win.

Like I said the North boasted about morons like Walter Cronkite, people like him were their biggest allies. All America had to do was level every city in the North and build bases on every hill they captured and that war would have been over in less than a year. But no the media and politicians decided killing people was a bad thing and they decided to only kill "the bad guys." Well who is the bad guy?

Fighting a war with you hands behing your back is a great way to lose. Vietnam is a text book example of how not to fight a war. That's all I have to say about that.

While I agree that the North got its ass kicked but the whole level every city in the north is just wrong. Those would be hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of innocent deaths, besides the moral cost, all it would do is either make the rest of the vietnamese hate america so much to never give up and make the public & international countries want out of 'nam even more.

Do the Japanese and Germans hate America? (No they don't they are great allies today) At best Vietnam should have been fought like Korea but look at Korea today, it's still divided and the war is still technically going.

Styles: Vietnam did this before the USA conflict. They did same thing against the superior Khans, Mongols.

Legion does not have to fight a conventional war, and they do not have to go underground and vanish to fight guerrilla warfare. They are out in the open, and fighting guerrilla tactics in NV.

People have so far pointed out what priority targets should be, but it is a little ridiculous to say NCR has a air force. 3 verts is not a airforce.

Pushing back the Legion would be bloody, and still doesn't hurt Legion tactics. NCR already spread thin, attemptin an occupation, would be what Legion should want. Bring the fight to me, where and when I want.

Yeah, the US losing the war in Vietnam wasn't inevitable at all. The British defeated communist guerrillas in Malaya in the 50s, the Americans just failed to learn from the Brits.

According to the wiki and the Fallout bible they do have a divison of the army called the airforce, we just don't know how big it is.


Well that still doesn't justify the thousands/millions of deaths, and considering how the public and the rest of the world reacted to us entering cambodia, erasing the north would not have gone over well.

China would also have protested, big-time. And they had nukes.

Guerilla warfare can only be used in a defensive setting unless they can work in conjunction with a conventional army. A guerilla army has little offensive capablity unless it evolves into a more conventional force like the Viet Minh at Dien Bien Phu or the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka. The Legion could disrupt an NCR invasion in its territory, but that is an unlikely scenario to begin with, and I presumed we were talking about the opposite happening, and all their asymmetric advantages are out the door once they go on the offensive.

So will people please stop using the Vietnam War and Afghanistan as examples, they have absolutely no relevance to the topic at hand. Guerilla warfare is a potent tool, but like with any tool, there are only certain situations it can effectively be used in. And a full-scale invasion of a much larger, more modern country is not one of them. We are not talking about a small border conflict like what exists in the game, we're talking about a full-blown war, i.e conventional. Most of the people shouting Vietnam here, even though they have no idea whatsoever how it actually applies to the scenario we are discussing, tend to forget that Saigon fell not to unconventional NLF/VC forces but conventional PAVN forces with tanks and artillery.

First part: Really? You learn something new every day I guess. Well thanks I guess for pre-emptively keeping me from using that argument in the future in my Speech competitions.

America can't/won't do that though. The North Vietnamese literally had EVERYONE in the North against the U.S. prosttutes, taxi drivers, janitors, and everyone else who'd be useful and is in contact with Americans. Besides, destroying cities may be easy but building bases are a bit hard when guys are coming at you with guns. They may or may not be well trained but it's still guys with guns nonetheless. Not to mention many of the guys who were sent to Vietnam only wanted to go back home considering they were drafted

What did I say? You do not have to invade, to invade. If I was Legion, I force the NCR to attack me, where I fight on my terms. I do this by using tactics that they use in game. Sacking an entire town, and pulling back. Bombs, assassination attempts, covert ops, espionage, etc etc.

NCR flank in Mojave is ripe for a total slaughter.

So, either the NCR attacks, or I continue to strike at their industrial complex and supply lines. Once they commit to the attack, it is guerrilla warfare.

I just want to add a few more things.

America didn't have to level every city, just one at a time. Everytime America dropped bombs on the north, the north flinched and ran to the peace table. A round the clock bombing would have ended the war. Going into other countries was a good thing. As far as I can tell Cambodia never objected to America going in. What svcks about that is American got pissed about it so the troops had to stop about 12 miles into the country. Just 5 or so miles more was the largest enemy base and stockpile of weapons, but they couldn't get to it.

Also the North boasted long after they won that the American media was their greatest ally. People like Walter Cronkite screwed things. He was over there for about 5 days and it just so happened TET happened and suddenly he becomes a military genius and knew America can't win? He crossed the line of being a reporter and became a pundit. Don't like Fox News well you have him to thank, he was the first.

America would have been able to win the way they were doing it, if only they had kept the media out of it.

Anyways end of my rant. There is a reason we aren't supposed to go into these issues. But I will add that media is key in guerilla warfare, without it the cost you inflict doesn't effect the civilian population of your enemy. The NCR military will censor the hell out of the causality rates.

Except that the point of this thread is to speculate on what would happen if the war escalated further into a full-scale war rather than the limited border conflict it currently is. Unless the NCR-BoS war is over, their main goal will be to hold onto the Mojave, which really isn't a change of policy at all, it would just mean that a few more units will be deployed to the Mojave and a slightly larger mobilization. And what exactly is your plan if they don't fall for such an obvious trap? They haven't done so for years, despite the fact that the Legion has done exactly what you've suggested so far. It looks like the general described in a recent thread as 'a bumbling moron' has already called your bluff.


From a political perspective, it was a victory for the North, but from a military perspective, it was a disaster. They took control of more of the countryside as a result of allied troops re-deploying in the cities threatened by Tet, but failed to capture the vast majority of their objectives, and took horrendous losses. The NLF had to be reconstitued with PAVN troops from the North, and I've even heard some speculation from some VIetnamese friends that Tet was essentially a purge of the South's leadership. Clearly Caesar's history textbooks forgot to mention that, or he wouldn't have attempted to copy that same approach in the ending of NV.

You guys seem to be missing the part where I use Vietnam and Afghanistan as examples of losing the Political battle. War isn't just the military there is a whole separate set of socio-political relations that happens back home. There's a reason America 'lost' Vietnam, we won all the battles but we lost the political side. Now let's use the NCR in context of them invading the Legion. All the Legion has to do is use Guerrilla tactics to prolong the war long enough that people in the NCR start to get sick of it and the Politicians who support the war are slowly picked off. Remember, when war happens taxes go up, and while people may not be able to see the war they can definitely feel the toll it takes on their wallet.

Also failing Guerrilla warfare, the Legion can just do what they've always done and use honest terrorism. Fear is one of the emotions humans respond to the most, and eventually it can cause enough stress on a country to divide it. (See the sharp division between pro-war and anti-war people in America once the true toll of terrorism started to take effect).

Considering all of this, the NCR may be able to win the military side of the war. But it will be at great cost to their politics and pretty much ensure that Oliver/Kimball never have a chance to be reelected. :/

An NCR invasion of the Legion? Wait, how far down the road are we talking here? The most likely scenario would be the other way around, where the Legion dramatically ramps up its efforts to invade the Mojave and/or the NCR. In which case, guerilla warfare will have almost no use at all. Keep in mind, fighting a brushfire war in some country on the other side of the planet is a whole lot diferent than when there right across the border. Saying that the NCR might just lose faith in the war and try to walk away is a moot point because they can't, at least with a Legion victory. If it's Inde or House, they could make a clean exit from the Mojave.

What? Caesar won the Dam, NCR is routed and left to the Mojave Outpost. Vegas is his city if he won. It wasn't like Vietnam where it was there was essentially two parties. Yeah, other countries helped but it didn't concern them as much as the main two parties.

Caesar has the Khans screwing over NCR and Omertas doing the same. Not to mention, if you did all of the quests to benefit Legion: White Gloves, Remnants, and Boomers. It's not just that they care, it's that they're all fighting for their own personal cause which goes hand in hand with Legion, NCR, House, or Indie. Except the Remnants but one of them hate NCR and the other two just want to go back in the battlefield.