Guild Wars 2

Yeah, LA simply wasn’t ready for a new from of combat. They were prepared for a sea attack, maybe a ground attack.

LA was never prepared for airships. The Molten Alliance could come from underground, dredge tech, and through their flame portals (in fact Scarlet has been noted as having portal technology). The krait could relatively easily sneak past Claw Island (as long as they kept themselves deep underwater). Besides how’s Claw Island looking after the attack by Zhaitan? So all you needed was to set up the miasma deployers and it was victory. Think of WW1 when they started using chemical weapons, initially it was devastating, people eventually adapted, new chemicals were developed, people adapted etc. But it took time.

EDIT: Errata, as pointed out by Kalavier.1097 :P

CureForLiving.5360:

Yeah, LA simply wasn’t ready for a new from of combat. They were prepared for a sea attack, maybe a ground attack.

LA was never prepared for airships. The Molten Alliance could come from underground, dredge tech, and through their flame portals (in fact Scarlet has been noted as having portal technology). The krait could relatively easily sneak past Claw Island (as long as they kept themselves deep underground). Besides how’s Claw Island looking after the attack by Zhaitan? So all you needed was to set up the miasma deployers and it was victory. Think of WW1 when they started using chemical weapons, initially it was devastating, people eventually adapted, new chemicals were developed, people adapted etc. But it took time.

Underwater* actually. But yes, Claw Island was completely bypassed. LA’s main form of defense was Claw Island either absorbing and defeating the attack force, or delaying and wounding it enough that the Lionguard/orders/other friendly forces and mercs/adventurers had time to prepare and be ready.

Let’s say Fort Mariner had cannons set up on the walls, the lionguard was prepared(due to Kiel and Magnus, as best as they could with the stonewalling) and that “gunnery range” (which I think held trebs during the Karka attack) was good to go as best they could. Then the airships started firing. Well if the cutscene all took place at roughly same time, that means the Molten alliance dredge APCs and portals opened up INSIDE the fort, shortly after the first bombardment. That’d cause major distraction. I think the first event in the Fort at the first minute inside the zone is literally driving the Molten alliance out of the fort and securing it for Lionguard. And as soon as Magnus evacuates with his forces, the Molten alliance swarm back in.

LA is destroyed, many of its inhabitants being dead. The council will need outside help to rebuild the city (hopefully in stone this time), and i am not sure that a lot of LA’s ships have survived. That means that materials for rebuilding will have to come over land and therefore through Kryta. Which gives Kryta a strong negotiating hand. Any great power offering help to rebuild LA would not let the opportunity pass to gain more influence.

And what would speak against Kryta ruling over LA? Every species can come and go in the Black Citadel, in Rata Sum, in Divinity’s Reach, as long as they obey the local laws.

So i assume that, should LA be rebuild (and i am pretty sure of that), Kryta would offer help on the condition of negotiating a new treaty which is more in their favour than the one forced onto Kryta by Cobiah Marriner.

Kalavier.1097:

There is no war between races to be had, and at most it’d be Charr attacking Ebonhawke and… that’s it. They literally didn’t care about Kryta.

The Charr planned an attack on LA from the sea as late as the time of Zhaitan’s awakening – their scoutship survives the Tsunami and fishes Cobiah Marriner out of the sea, so that a human could negotiate for them at LA (they badly needed to reach a port), without them getting lynched immediately. But true, today the Charr got no interest in Kryta any more – they got their hands full with too many other opponents.

Do we even want to rebuild LA?

It is obvious that LA is a very poor area to defend. It can be attacked by land, sea and air. It have zero natural protection. It is an excellent location for trade. But with Kaineng and Elona out of contact, it is pointless to have such a city in the location of LA.

I believe the future city should be build around/outside a mountain and cave system, which offers much more protection. In case of emergency the citizens can quickly find shelter. This would also give the future council some time to hold out and plan their next move, instead of losing the whole LA in less than an hour.

For example the Glisteriece Caves.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Glisterice_Caves

CHIPS.6018:

Do we even want to rebuild LA?

It is obvious that LA is a very poor area to defend. It can be attacked by land, sea and air. It have zero natural protection. It is an excellent location for trade. But with Kaineng and Elona out of contact, it is pointless to have such a city in the location of LA.

I believe the future city should be build around/outside a mountain and cave system, which offers much more protection. In case of emergency the citizens can quickly find shelter. This would also give the future council some time to hold out and plan their next move, instead of losing the whole LA in less than an hour.

For example the Glisteriece Caves.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Glisterice_Caves

Cave system provides risk of Destroyer attacks, other cave settlements have faced them.

Really, LA’s area can be defended, Claw Island covers the sea, and if you built walls/battlements around the ways inside/around the main city, it’d be feasable (I’m unsure how well a sea wall would work, given how the depth quickly increases the closer to the lighthouse). But that’d be something that requires a ground up rebuilding.

Well I did made a thread a while back on how to upgrade Ebonhawke, so it can defend itself against all these new technologies and threats. Maybe they can do some of these in the future LA.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/lore/lore/Ebonhawke-needs-Upgrades/

1) 4 layers of trenches, anti tank trenches and pillboxes outside of the wall.
2) 100 meters deep moat just outside of the walls.
3) 100 meters high anti-air and artillery flak towers just behind the walls.

CHIPS.6018:

Do we even want to rebuild LA?

It is obvious that LA is a very poor area to defend. It can be attacked by land, sea and air. It have zero natural protection. It is an excellent location for trade. But with Kaineng and Elona out of contact, it is pointless to have such a city in the location of LA.

I believe the future city should be build around/outside a mountain and cave system, which offers much more protection. In case of emergency the citizens can quickly find shelter. This would also give the future council some time to hold out and plan their next move, instead of losing the whole LA in less than an hour.

For example the Glisteriece Caves.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Glisterice_Caves

Actually if we look at more conventional combat, air attack wasn’t a thing, and it would be difficult for an army to mount a naval and land attack simultaneously that would be able to completely cut off LA, so having so many openings would actually have allowed for quicker escape (they attack A we flee out of B). But yes as it stands LA isn’t all that save any more. Although I’m guessing LA was basically the Switzerland of Tyria, didn’t take sides with any of the major races, a hub of trade so their continued survival benefit all major races. The only thread they had was from the Elder Dragons or lesser races, but with pack forces located in LA, and how closely all the faction HQs are they probably felt very save. Claw Island would give sufficient notification of a sea based attack allowing the pack forces to respond (as we saw in the Personal Story, the combat was focused around Claw Island well away from LA). Land based attack would also have sufficient warning (any army would either have to march past Hoelbrak, the Vigil or Chantry of Secrets), plus LA is surrounded by cliffs on 4 sides, with narrow entry ways.

But like you asked, does LA need to be rebuilt. In terms of game-mechanics, probably. Lore-wise, mmm. Well since they’ll practically have to rebuild from the ground up (judging by how it looks now), they might as well move it to somewhere safer. The problem of course is the citizens, would they so easily be able to pick up and move? If LA was more militarised that would be a different matter, but it’s not.

About Lions Arch and Kryta. Maybe we will get second part of Cutthroat Politics with election whatever LA should remain independent or be incorporated into Kryta? Some faction fights Queen Jennah’s vs Capitan Kiel’s/Evon’s for example :P

Kalavier.1097:

And in general, most of those attacks had warning and preparation. This one did not. It had warning but the warnings weren’t acted upon. The Council got careless/overconfident, and they’ve paid for it.

What a strong shield arm you have. Read what you wrote up there. Maybe not what you meant to say.

Both Ellen and Evon have warned the counsel about the impending attack. It’s clear that they intentionally disregarded the safety of LA. Since according to the LS, Scarlet’s agenda has gone ‘to plan’ each step of the way, there was no reason for the counsel or anyone to be careless or overconfident. Regardless of your feelings on the quality/believability of the writing, Anet wants players to think that Scarlet is a force to be reckoned with. Why would the counsel disregard Ellen and Evon’s warnings?

To me this could mean a few things. The ideal scenario is that the counsel did indeed ignore the warnings for a reason. A political reason no doubt which could have a very cool/intriguing story to it.

My fear is that there is no such scenario. My fear is that they ignored the warnings simple because plot so that we could have yet another installment in LS.

I would be all for a LG regime change. A failure of this magnitude deserves no less. The leadership had all the information it needed yet it failed to act. It sounds like (with Evon & Heal-O-Tron) they are indeed addressing this though. Maybe there is indeed a reason that the LG didn’t act and perhaps we will get to see a plot with some intrigue.

Even if they didn’t ignore the warnings, who is to say that Lion’s Arch wouldn’t have ended up exactly as it is right now?

LA doesn’t have anti-aircraft technology, so even if they were to deploy some they’d need time to work on a prototype. There’s also no such thing as anti-portal technology, and we KNOW Scarlet likes portals.

I’m not about to say that the council was or was not taking steps to prepare for the attack, but the one thing they would have needed, they wouldn’t have had enough of. That thing is time.

Keyce.8137:

Even if they didn’t ignore the warnings, who is to say that Lion’s Arch wouldn’t have ended up exactly as it is right now?

LA doesn’t have anti-aircraft technology, so even if they were to deploy some they’d need time to work on a prototype. There’s also no such thing as anti-portal technology, and we KNOW Scarlet likes portals.

I’m not about to say that the council was or was not taking steps to prepare for the attack, but the one thing they would have needed, they wouldn’t have had enough of. That thing is time.

No effort at all though? And LA should have no trouble getting AA technology. Pact forces use it against the Claw of Jormag in FG (even if you exclude the Zhaitan fight).

For the story’s sake, I think it makes more sense to stand behind a leadership that did try to mount a defense. Even if they didn’t have the proper time. Then we know that they tried but failed because they didn’t have enough time/money/etc… to stop a full aerial assault or an attack via portals.