Yuxi Timur was really worried, he thought that he could attack tactics and capture Changshu City in a battle, but at the moment it became a stalemate. As for the destruction of the stone thrower, I actually didn't care too much, because I knew very well that a 'real' stone thrower was very cumbersome to make, not to mention ten days and eight days, it was good to be able to build it in a month. So he knew that the stone thrower built overnight was barely shoddy, and even if it was not destroyed by the Song army, it was a question whether it could be used today.

Now, when several generals were shouting that they would only build a few giant stone throwers to smash down the city walls and attack the city, Yuxi Timur didn't say anything, and he knew in his heart that it would be useless at all. It is not that adding the word "giant" to the stone throwing machine can solve the problem, it can only be said that this stone throwing machine is powerful and can throw larger stone projectiles, but in terms of key technologies, there is no breakthrough innovation.

The stone thrower cannot be increased indefinitely, and if it is large to a certain extent, there will inevitably be a technical bottleneck and lose its inherent advantages. How to arrange the huge device in the right place, how to prepare enough giant stone bullets, how to transport these huge stone bullets, how to install the giant stone bullets on the machine, these are also problems. Moreover, these tasks will consume too much manpower, and each shell will require many soldiers to work hard to carry, which will undoubtedly reduce the efficiency of the use of this weapon, and the practical value of this weapon will be greatly reduced.

In addition, because of his young age, Yuxi Timur did not have the opportunity to participate in large-scale wars such as the Western Expedition and the destruction of the Song Dynasty, but as a family of generals, the elders still said that they wanted to use a stone thrower to smash the city wall, which was almost impossible, especially the fortified city built by the Southern Dynasty.

The cities of the Southern Dynasties were generally built with tall walls, wide and deep foundations, wide enough even at the top, and even worse, walls made of rammed earth, bricks on the surface, and sloped. This kind of 'thick, mud-core, sloping' wall has a strong defense against the stone thrower, and the power of the projectile will be absorbed by the center of the earth wall. The walls are still sloping, indicating a significant slope from the bottom to the top. This can also act as a protective effect, as the horizontal projectile will have an angle when it hits the wall, and the force will not act directly on the wall.

Therefore, the target of the stone thrower in the siege is mainly the city head and the wooden fortifications in the city, attacking both the building entity and the city gate that marks the authority, because the city tower is made of wood, so it is very vulnerable to damage; In addition, the target of the stone thrower attack is the people in the city, and the resistance to the siege is reduced by killing and injuring the soldiers defending the city; In addition, it is to use this to psychologically deter the defenders of the city, so that they are timid and give up resistance, of course, the larger the stone projectile, the greater the deterrent effect on the enemy.

Yuxi Timur also knew that when he captured Xiangyang, even if he used the 'Xiangyang cannon' offered by the Western Regions Alao Wadin, Yismayin and others, it would be difficult to cause serious damage to the city wall, and in the end, the enemy army was besieged for many years, and in desperation, he used heavy bribes as bait to make the defenders surrender, and they were able to capture the city. At present, Changshu City, although not as strong as Xiangyang City, is also a newly built city, and the soldiers are well fed, and there is a large army on the side that may come back at any time to reinforce, it is basically impossible to 'scare' close to the stone thrower, so he still hopes to dig the tunnel to Ke City.

As for their plan to build a giant stone throwing machine in order to boost morale, Yuxi Timur did not stop it, but he did not care about it. But the return of the scout's overnight return made him very uneasy, and made him a little uncertain about his strategy. When he first arrived in Changshu, he inquired about the situation around Basa, and he told him that the scouts had searched the surrounding area for 30 miles, found no trace of the Song army, and the residents had also evacuated. This made him feel a little relieved, but he still sent the scout cavalry to search for fifty miles around again, and the scout cavalry returned one after another at night.

According to the reconnaissance report of the reconnaissance cavalry that went to the direction of Pingjiang, it was found that the Fifth Army of the Song Army's Forbidden Army, the Shaoxing Army, the Pingjiang Army, the First Cavalry Division, and the First Artillery Brigade had about 80,000 troops; According to the reconnaissance report in the direction of Queensland, the 3rd Brigade, the 4th Brigade, the Cavalry Brigade of the Imperial Front Guard, the banners of the Xiuzhou Army and the Kunshan Army were found in Queensland, with a strength of around 60,000; The Wuxi direction reported that the 1st and 2nd Brigades of the Imperial Front Protector Army and the banners of the Runzhou Army, the Changzhou Army and the Jiangzhou Army were found to have no less than 50,000 troops.

Yuxi Timur's head buzzed when he heard this, and he was a little dazed. If the news brought back by the scout cavalry is good, the Song army is already in Jiangdong, and it is also on its own way to advance that it has gathered an army of nearly 200,000 troops, far exceeding its own strength. Then the most realistic problem is that you can annihilate more than the enemy army and complete the predetermined strategic goal. He understood that judging from the recent experience of fighting with the Song army, his own side would not be able to defeat the enemy army with the same number of troops, especially when the Song army had danger to defend or a city to rely on, as evidenced by the long-term siege of Changshu City.

Yuxi Timur looked at the map on the desk and was a little stunned, Pingjiang, Kunshan and Wuxi are the three fortified cities lying on his own path, separated from the left, right and front three directions, it is almost impossible to go straight to Lin'an City if you want to bypass it. Therefore, the first thought that came to his mind was that he could not do anything, and there was a danger of being surrounded here, so he should preserve his strength and retreat quickly.

"Hehe, this thief is cheating!" Yuxi Timur looked at the information brought back by the detective again, and suddenly stood up and said with a smile. He understands that the so-called "knowing oneself and knowing one's opponent and winning every battle" refers to the importance of intelligence work on the battlefield. As a qualified military commander, you must have a rough idea of the opponent's troops, deployment, logistics, morale and combat effectiveness level.

So how can we get a rough and accurate picture of the size of the enemy's forces? Yuxi Timur knew that after the hindsight of Zhuge Liang, he looked at a war that had already taken place in ancient times, and the victory and defeat of the war, the process and the comparison of forces were clear, but it was impossible for both sides of the war to know this information at that time. This requires constant reconnaissance in order to obtain some inadequate information, whether true or false.

And even if the approximate total number of enemy troops is known, and the number of troops allocated to each specific battlefield is different, reconnaissance is still needed to get the real situation. However, the transmission of information will be limited by weather and traffic conditions, and the concentration of troops cannot be uniform, usually the outpost has already been fired, and most of the troops are still on the way, and it is unknown when they will be put into battle. Therefore, for the generals on both sides, the battlefield situation is changing rapidly, and it is necessary to constantly carry out reconnaissance work to find out the real-time strength of the enemy in front of them.

But Yuxi Timur knew that any general knew that this job was not easy to do. First of all, it is impossible for the opponent to take the initiative to tell you, generally speaking, the commander with the troops does not want the other party to grasp his own situation, the bluff of the few troops is afraid that the opponent will find out, and the one with a large number of troops wants to hide the strength and suddenly hold back a big move. Secondly, it is also unreliable to expect visual inspection when the two sides play against each other.

What's more, there are many sub-battlefields in a big war, and it is unlikely that the main forces of both sides will all be deployed on the same battlefield, and the generals with a little experience will not put all their forces into the front. In other words, outside of the visible eye, there may be a strong force waiting for an opportunity, and if the estimate is wrong, the consequences can be catastrophic.

And to know the exact number of opponents, the most conventional way is to send a small team or a scout to directly investigate. He often had to dress up as civilians or even enemy soldiers, trying to get close to or blend into the enemy camp. The scout cavalry is agile and agile, and its main role is to sentry from afar, in case the enemy hides ambushes, and once it arrives at the enemy camp to observe, it can roughly judge the strength of the place from the number of tents.

Generally speaking, the regular army has a fixed number of troops in each camp, which may vary from era to era or contemporaneous army, but the spies are generally experienced guys, and it is not difficult to deduce the approximate number based on experience. Of course, it is also possible that the army encountered by the fine work does not play according to the routine. For example, in an improvised patchwork army, even their generals don't necessarily know how many people there are. In this case, the detailed work can only be fuzzy calculations, and it is intuition to say that a number is wrong.

In addition to sending agents to spy on the enemy, they can also learn about the situation of the enemy through the interrogation of prisoners of war. However, this method is not necessarily reliable, first of all, if the identity of the captive is too low, the information that can be obtained from him is very limited, and it is difficult to guarantee that the other party will not provide false information or even deliberately design. Once you make a mistake, it is easy to fall into a Jedi, and the ending is often miserable. In addition, the best way to truly understand the enemy is to place a high-level inside line in the enemy camp. Compared with the previous method, the threshold of the inner line method is much higher, and a good inner line is hard to find, but once successful, it is a fatal blow.

All in all, there is no absolutely reliable way to accurately count the enemy's strength on the battlefield except to count them in person. The so-called "impermanence of water and impermanence of troops" means that the situation on the battlefield is changing rapidly, and judging the enemy's situation is also a dynamic process, which not only requires all-round reconnaissance of the enemy's situation, but also needs to constantly reconnoiter and keep it updated at all times.

Now, after Timur calmed down, he found that he had almost been hit. According to the intelligence found by the spies sent to Jiangnan long ago, the establishment and number of the Song army have long been no secret, and their forbidden army has a total of ten armies, each with about 30,000 people; The Imperial Protector had eight brigades, each numbering about nine thousand men; In addition, each province has a division of the Xiang Army, and the number of troops varies according to the situation, with more than 10,000 people and less than 5,000 people. In addition, it is a naval army, but it is deployed along the coast and in rivers and lakes, does not participate in ground operations, and is responsible for transporting troops and baggage at most.

Therefore, Yuxi Timur knew that in addition to the garrison troops of the Song army, the troops that could be recruited and fought were about more than 300,000, and the current intelligence showed that the troops they invested in Jiangnan and Jiangbei had far exceeded this number......