Caesar learned. In the First Battle, NCR's edge was fighting from a distance, taking out Centurions and other officers to disrupt momentum. Graham couldn't adapt. The only thing Legion had going for them were stronger warriors and the element of surprise. If I remember correctly, Legion hasn't done much before the Battle, except take out a few NCR camps.

In the Second Battle, Caesar, or Lanius, is attacking the NCR from inside and out. Using intake tunnels, they're ambushing NCR while also attacking from the top as usual. As Lanius says, the Legion will be so close to the enemy this time, that their teeth will be at the NCR's throats.

However, that's not all. They're sabotaging the monorail while ordering the Omertas to attack the Strip. Whether they succeed or not is irrelevant, it causes a distraction. Not to mention that Legionaries are all sent to destroy the Rangers base in Camp Golf and capture Novac. The former essentially doing what the NCR did, destroying leadership (this is proven in one of the endings for Chief Hanlon). The latter blocks the road west, isolating the NCR forces (other than radio contact) within Hoover Dam. With no Courier intervention, all of this happens.

Id have to go with NCR since they use guns and could kill them from a range and most of the time the legion uses melee weapons which means they would have to be close

I'm forced to NCR, because if the Legion need divide and conquer tactics(fiends, omertas, great khans) to win at Hoover Dam while the NCR has enough troops to deal with those threats and keep a strong fighting force at Hoover Dams main battle.

Guerrilla tactics can go on offensive.

Some elements: surprise, sabotage, etc that have been mentioned are tactics.

But there is also: Enemy advances, you withdrawl. Enemy rests, you attack. Enemy retreats, you pursue.

Could be more, but that is all I can remember off the top of my head in guerrilla warfare 101.

The American Revolution had elements of guerrilla warfare as well. As did the Civil War. It isn't that guerrilla tactics can't go on the offensive, it is just a matter of when. Timing is important.

I've been shot at enough by Legion soldiers to know they have guns.

As for this debate, Legion has the better soldiers, but NCR has the better army. Without the Courier's help, I'd put money on the Legion winning with all their plans in place and whatnot. The NCR had no offensive plans in the Mojave and wouldn't see what's coming. As for the big picture, I have no idea.

We are told in game that the NCR just throws the recruits into the Mojave because they have little care for the legion, they even put their president right out in the open on the dam.

NCR has plenty of good troops they are just at home because the corrupt Brahmin barons insist they need good protection.

That would be an interesting class

Yeah I agree elements of guerrilla warfare can be used to go on the offensive. Done to clear the way for the main military force. If all you are doing is relying on guerrilla warfare to conquer the enemy then you are pretty much going to lose.

Well that is how war goes. Win a battle, lose a battle. Just want to hope in your losses it isnt a total slaughter.

What I don't like about Legion tactics is the killing off of your commanders if you lose a battle. Keep that up and you screw yourself.


But, I never thought Legion only relied on guerrilla tactics. They are just very good at it, but they also show, they will resort to conventional warfare. Problem being they got svckered into a trap.

I am currently doing an NCR playthrough, while I do agree with some of their ideals and goals, I can't help but question them at the same time. I don't know much of the lore involved with the other factions, but I am fond of Mr. House as well.

Despite Oliver's adamant opposition of this, the Veteran Rangers from Baja are being sent. According to EVERYONE, the Rangers are the strongest. Heck, Lucius says that the Rangers are the main reason why the Legion is having a harder time than it should.

Even then we know not all rangers are in the Mojave and only do the vets come until tensions get really high, other than the few dozen rangers and dozen veteran rangers most of NCR's troops are just recruits picked off farms.

Of course not, but not all Centurions or Veteran Legionaries are at the Mojave either. But saying that most of the NCR troops are just recruits might be exaggerating it a bit. People like First Recon or even the generic Heavy Troops are all fairly well trained.

I don't think people like First Recon or Heavy Troopers make up most of the NCR army. . .
And we're told that Ceasar sent to many men to the Dam then they could afford, and we're also told most of the NCR army isn't in the Mojave.
Make of that what you will.

NCR would win hands down. All it took was one Courier to take out Caesar and the rest of the Fort well on one of my playthroughs.

All it takes to annihilate all of the forces of Camp Mcarran, Hidden Valley, Nellis Airforce Base, Black Mountain, Red Rock Canyon and all three of the casinos is one Courier so what's your point?

And yet NCR soldiers can't use thier guns to kill a few ants blocking the road

Considering that a thousand troops per year die in Hoover Dam (Chief Hanlon), NCR is expending quite a bit from the Mojave campaign and since Hanlon is fabricating reports (which proves to me that NCR is really ineffective if a person needs to do that to get them to listen to him).

As for Caesar sending too many men, there are no raiders in Caesar's territory. He's not sending too many men, he's sending enough in his situation. NCR, they're being screwed over by too many people, raiders, Brotherhood, and others. So which one is really the ineffective ones?

The Bull.

Why?

In my opinion, if you do your best to act neutral during the Second Battle of Hoover Dam, the Bull, to me, comes out on top. On one hand they simply show superior tactics in that they acknowledge their weakness of close-range, and thus they stay within doorways and pop out at people as they approach doorways; the NCR just says "herp derp defend dam" with little to no tactics. On the other hand the Bull seems to lose the top of the dam but win the inside; I'd say that's more important, imo.
If you disagree with that, let me also point out this: do an NCR playthrough, do a Legion one. I've done both, and what impression did I get? That the NCR is caught with it's pants down and YOU have to play hero for them, whereas for the Legion, they're organized as hell. I literally don't think I had to fire a shot for the Legion until I got to the part that conveniently puts you alone. But yeah, DEFINITELY felt like the Legion had it better organized and easier.

So let's assume the Bull wins the Dam and Vegas. What's next? California. California is far too big and spread too thin, and the Bull is incredibly brutal, willing to do anything to win. They'd "cut the supply lines" and constantly wage war on settlements that weren't properly defended, and given how thin the NCR is spread, I'd imagine there's a lot of things. It's just a nightmare setup for the NCR; their biggest weakness would be exploited by a group that exploits this exact weakness regularly in wars they wage. At least with Vegas, that was the front line, with all NCR units funneled into one general area. The moment the Legion establishes a good base in Cali though, the NCR is in trouble.

You do realize that you can hardly intervene at all in the Inde ending, and the NCR still defeats the Legion at Hoover Dam, the only thing really differing from their ending being that they get stabbed in the back afterwards. Fortifying well-paced strategic strongpoints in an otherwise empty and featureless desert is hardly a poor strategic decision, but of course, all you care about is 'tactics.' Never mind that lying in wait inside a doorway is a horrible tactical idea, as doors are natural chokepoints (and kill zones). I would hate to be under your command, because awful decisions like that can get an entire squad wiped out by a handful of shooters. I struggle to think of any evidence suggesting they 'win' in the lower levels of the dam short of Courier intervention in their ending, because, as I believe I had to state earlier, a small degree of tactical surprise does not offset the high state of operational and strategic readiness amongst the garrison at Hoover Dam. They may not have predicted them to come from the intake tunnels per se, but they had patrols on the lower levels to defend themselves against Legion sabotage and infiltration. Which is what happened, and they engage Legion forces coming in the lower levels rather promptly. So much for their brilliant 'tactics', eh? The overall operational readiness of the Hoover Dam garrison meant that despite the Legion's tactical svcker punch, the NCR was able to quickly respond to these Legion attacks.

Unfortunately, If I can recall, the only time we really go on the lower levels is on the NCR and Legion endings, and they win in their own respective endings by default, so there's no definitive answer as to the outcome of the battles in the lower levels, but since the NCR reaches the Legate's camp in the Inde and House endings and Oliver gives pretty much the same speech as in the NCR one about how satisfying it is to see the Legion rout, It dosen't look good for them.

Btw, I had a much different impression during my playthroughs. It just so happens I didn't feel like I had to play the hero in order for the NCR to win, and the NPCs around me more or less cleaned house on the NCR ending, particularly in the turbine area at the very bottom level where all the rangers spawn. The only reason I had to fight at all is because the Legion troops don't spawn until you get close enough on the map. The only thing that I saw as indicating a 'lack of prepardness' was the occasional line of frantic pvssyr over the Emergency Radio broadcast (although one of them turned out to be an 'Aliens' reference), but then again, the opening moments of any major battle is always chaotic, and it seems unreasonable to conclude that they were disorganized.

And in regards to your last paragraph, I would suggest you look up the concept of "Interior LInes". The NCR's main problem in the Mojave is its distance (and that distance complicates their logistics), and the Legion's relative proximity to the theatre of battle (meaning their supply lines are much shorter). If the Legion were to take the Mojave, and that's a big, big *if* right there, as there is little historical precedent for a preindustrial military conducting a successful conventional invasion of an industrial power, their roles would be reversed, as the Legion struggles to maintain its increasingly long, vulnerable supply lines in territory with hostile populations while the NCR continues to enjoy all the advantages a defender has, particularly when said defender has a massive advantage in firepower. A Legion invasion of the NCR would only get harder, not easier, the farther they get.

Frankly, in the short-term, neither side has shown the capability to bring about a decisive and total victory, with the NCR currently facing steep, but transitory problems at home (the BoS war and the resulting economic damage) while the Legion is hardly equipped to invade a much more modern country well in their own turf due to systemic problems rooted deep within their country (their relatively primative state.) If tribal, preindustrial armies, even ones with (some) modern firearms could have conquered the industrial West, they would have, and today North America today would be carved up into several separate nations by the various native american tribes. But that's not how history turned out, did it?

But special forces wouldn't be part of the most, something like 80% or 70% recruits, those numbers would still be most their troops.

Nope, should I?

I don't know much because its not part of Brittish history or something that peaks my interest.
The way Legion uses guerilla warfare isn't the same as Vietnams though, Legion is offensive in their approach using the Frumentarii to infiltrate enemy lines as both civilians and soldiers, looking at the Mojave the Frumentarii have been vital to the Legions war effort and are the reason Legion has been allowed to cross the river and secure the South East of the map.
If the Legion tried this on a massive scale they would need to withstand months if not years of fighting before their spies got into poerful enough positions to hrt NCR from the inside, like Captain Curtis' position, but they could just rally people on the streets to rebel against the NCR gov for going to war.

"The East was a hard-fought campaign. Even now, Caesar drew too much of the Legion's blood needed there for this." That's a direct quote from Lanius, Caesar's chosen successor and top general. So yes Caesar is sending too many men.

And Legion, lore wise, sends their recruits before Veterans. So...either way, doesn't matter.

Yeah, go fight a couple hundred Securitrons that have an arsenal of a tank, armor that can block small arms fire, and the ability self repair (according to Yes Man and House). Even the best of NCR and Caesar's Legion can't do that. All you do is literally push a button and Caesar's Legion is wiped out. Not to mention that the Courier has to flush out the intake tunnels. The soldiers there were surprised and the engineers ran.

Without the Courier's involvement, the inside of Hoover Dam would've been overrun.

"a small degree of tactical surprise does not offset the high state of operational and strategic readiness amongst the garrison at Hoover Dam."

The only tactic the NCR had was strategically positioning snipers at the Dam and having Oliver wait at a secure compound with quite a few Rangers and Heavy Troops. Even if they did have strategy at Hoover Dam, doesn't matter.

The Legion blocked the road west. It's in the dialogue with Oliver. It doesn't say or like it does with the other confrontations so it's probably true. Also backed up by the Emergency Radio for a Legion playthrough. They attack Forlorn Hope, Novac, Fiends attack McCarran, monorail bombed, etc.

A handful of soldiers going up against a massive Legion (pun intended) of soldiers better trained and some of which are better equipped (Centurions, Decani, and Veteran Legionaries) with no reinforcements. I don't care how strong your Rangers are. They're dead.

Special Units or forces are not normal infantry, the normal NCR infantry never comes as they just air in NCR the whole duration, where the Legions normal infantry does show up. Rangers, heavy troopers, and snipers are not infantry for the NCR.

What exactly is your point? You do realize that if you disable the Dam rather than activate the securitron army, you can pretty much have very little influence on the battle until the betrayal except for killing/convincing Lanius to leave, but he probably would have gotten killed if he'd stayed anyways, so that's a rather moot point. I see no indication that the Legion wins on the lower levels in-game, and the fact that the NCR reaches the Legate's Camp without the demigod Courier striking down their foes like the hammer of Thor (with 100 Sneak, Speech, and stealth boys, you can beat it with hardly fighting at all), that's plenty of evidence of how it goes. And where, pray tell, does it give the indication that the Legion has a decisive numerical advantage at Hoover Dam? The whole game has pretty much given the indication that they are at a stalemate at Hoover Dam, the only place that actually matters (if either side fails at the Dam, then they lose everywhere, and vice versa) and it took a lot of creative writing to shoot the NCR in the foot enough so that it wouldn't just be a game about the "enlightened, industrial West" steamrolling the 'savages of the East.' Because frankly, even though I support the NCR, it would be incredibly depressing to play a recreation of the Scramble for Africa, not to mention come off as a tad bit racist. This is Fallout, not another 'Heart of Darkness' remake like Spec Ops: The Line or Far Cry 2, which referenced it heavily.