Outside the east gate of Luoyang City, there was a commanding duel between Zhuge Liang and Sima Yi.
Facing Zhuge Liang's circular formation defense, Sima Yi adopted an offensive formation of sharp arrow formation to deal with it. But as he was fighting, Zhuge Liang suddenly shrank the outer formation and turned it into a formation similar to an octagon - the Eight Formation Diagram.
The eight-formation diagram is a multi-arms joint combat formation that integrates offense and defense. If it is a full-state eight-formation diagram, with the same strength, Sima Yi's 40,000 Cao Weijun troops would be difficult to confront the main force of the Han army head-on.
But unfortunately, Zhuge Liang now only has 30,000 soldiers and horses in his hands, of which 20,000 are the Northern Han Army who are proficient in the formation transformation of the Eight Formation Diagram, and the other 10,000 are Nanyang County soldiers who have no experience in practicing the Eight Formation Diagram.
For this reason, Zhuge Liang could only withdraw the troops from Nanyang County to the interior, place the Northern Han Army on the periphery, and use 20,000 Northern troops to fight against Sima Yi's Wei army.
As for Sima Yi, because he was worried that Zhuge Liang would have a backup force, he kept a reserve force of nearly 8,000 people. The actual number of troops deployed on the battlefield was only about 32,000.
In terms of military strength, Sima Yi still had the advantage, but as the actual battle situation developed, Sima Yi found that the situation was different from what he thought.
When Zhuge Liang used a circular formation to defend at the beginning, Sima Yi used a sharp arrow formation to attack. The purpose was to focus on breakthroughs and penetrate Zhuge Liang's circular formation.
For this reason, Sima Yi ordered the 15,000 men of the front army to attack, with 80,000 men on the left and right sides each, moving to the side of the circular formation, trying to contain Zhuge Liang's flanking troops as much as possible.
Of course, the most important thing is to draw as much distance as possible between Zhuge Liang's flanks and the focus of his front army's attack, so as to separate the support of the Han Army's circular formation flanks from the Wei Army's attack focus.
To put it simply, it was to tear apart the interconnections between the Han army's circular formations.
The circular formation can work wonders on the defensive end because the circular formation can maximize the mutual cooperation between soldiers, resulting in the effect of more hits and less in local defense.
Now, what Sima Yi has to do is to cut off this possibility of mutual cooperation, so that he can easily break the defense of the circle formation.
It can be said that Sima Yi had a very clear purpose in his initial command, and the attack was carried out fairly smoothly.
But in the meantime, Zhuge Liang came up with a strange "eight formation diagram".
The eight-formation diagram not only has the defensive nature of the circle formation, but also causes inconvenience to the opponent attacking from the front due to the different conversion and adjustment of multiple arms. If you cannot quickly adapt to the opponent's changes on the battlefield, you may be caught off guard. , causing a lot of unnecessary losses.
Originally, the opponents you faced were soldiers holding Miao swords, but as you fought, they suddenly turned into a group of sword and shield soldiers.
If that's the case, that's it. Although the sword and shield soldiers have strong defense, they have weak offensive capabilities. It doesn't matter if they change from Miao sword soldiers to sword and shield soldiers, and the conventional response remains unchanged.
But the terrible thing is that behind this group of sword and shield soldiers, you don't know what kind of soldiers the Han soldiers will be matched with. They may be spearmen or crossbowmen, but they are not pure sword and shield soldiers anyway.
Sometimes the soldiers of Wei were busy fighting for their lives with the sword and shield soldiers in front of them, but a spear came out of nowhere and could easily kill themselves. When the soldiers of Wei began to adjust their formation, they were distracted from dealing with the spear soldiers. When threatening, countless arrows suddenly flew out from behind the sword and shield soldiers.
Just like this, I gradually became accustomed to the sneak attacks of spearmen, the air strikes of arrows, and began to adapt to the changes in the enemy's attack. The sword and shield soldiers in front of me may return to fighting for their lives. Miao sword soldiers.
Really, it is difficult to get benefits in front of the eight formations just by relying on the soldiers on the field to adjust themselves. Sima Yi is also very capable of adjusting on the spot, but the problem is that this is the first time that Sima Yi has encountered this eight formations. Even though he could adjust the formation map on the spot, the conditions at hand simply didn't allow it.
For example, regarding the response of crossbowmen and spearmen, Sima Yi actually knew with a little thought that as long as he could increase the number of shield soldiers in the army, he could weaken the threat of the enemy. However, Sima Yi did not prepare so many shield soldiers. ah.
This battle is a field battle, not a siege. Of course, Sima Yi will not equip the army with too many shield soldiers. He will definitely try to have his soldiers carry long and short weapons such as spears and ring-shou knives to effectively kill the enemy. Yes.
It's fine now, and I don't have the conditions to make adjustments.
Of course, Sima Yi's adjustment idea is actually only a theoretical idea, and actual combat is not that simple. And now Sima Yi has no time to consider such issues that need to be considered later.
As Zhuge Liang changed his formation to the Eighth Formation, the situation on the battlefield changed.
Sima Yi's front army was not in a good position to deal with the eight formations. The original offensive formation was forced into a defensive formation.
The purpose of the Wei soldiers on the left and right wings at the beginning was to tear apart the mutual cooperation between the circular formations, but now they were pulled by the enemy's eight formation diagram. On the contrary, the left and right armies of the Wei army were pulled further and further away. , there is a tendency to gradually lose touch with the former army.
If the fight continues like this, Zhuge Liang will divide his forces to attack again, inserting himself through the gaps between the Wei army's left army, front army, and right army to separate the Wei army. The consequences will be disastrous.
For this reason, Sima Yi was forced to have no choice but to order the offensive troops on both wings to temporarily stop attacking, shrink in a defensive posture, move closer to the front army in the center, gather forces as much as possible, form a joint force, and defend first.
Then Sima Yi thought for a while and ordered again, asking the front army to retreat and form an inverted horseshoe-shaped formation with the troops on the left and right wings, attracting the Han army to take the initiative to attack.
According to Sima Yi's observation, Zhuge Liang's eight-formation diagram should be the kind of formation that integrates offense and defense, but offense and defense must be integrated.
In other words, whether it is offense or defense, Zhuge Liang's eight formation diagram cannot be split. The integrity of the formation must be maintained. If you want to attack, the entire army must press together. If you want to defend, the entire army must form a defense together.
That's why Sima Yi adopted this method, using the formation of the inverted horse's hoof to attract some Han troops into the inside of the inverted horse's hoof, and then used the soldiers on the left and right wings to close the door. The front army counterattacked in an effort to annihilate a group of Han troops and destroy the integrity of the formation. nature, thus achieving the effect of breaking the formation.
Sima Yi's response was not slow, and he was very quick in commanding the battle. But there was one problem: if the eight formations could only be used for all-attack and all-defense formations, why did Zhuge Liang bother to study them so much?
The Eight Formation Diagram originally consists of two sets of rotating changes, one is the change of the outer formation, and the other is the change of the inner formation.
Seeing that Sima Yi took the initiative to retreat and gave up the most important position in the middle of the battlefield, Zhuge Liang smiled slightly and was not polite at the moment.
When the eight-formation diagram rotated to the Miao Dao soldiers with the strongest attack ability, they appeared in the middle of the battlefield. Zhuge Liang immediately ordered the Miao Dao soldiers to attack. Then the entire eight-formation diagram moved forward, changing the circular eight-formation diagram into a linear eight-formation diagram.
The outer formation stopped rotating, with Miao sword soldiers and sword and shield soldiers as the vanguard, chasing the Wei army's retreating footsteps to attack, while the various arms of the inner formation still rotated, just because the rotation range was greater after the formation changed from closed to open. It's a little bit longer, and the cycle of changes in arms is just a little longer.
After doing this, Sima Yi suddenly became passive.
There was no way. What Sima Yi suffered was not his lack of commanding ability, but the fact that it was the first time he encountered such a strange formation that could change the configuration of battlefield troops at will while still maintaining combat effectiveness.
The Miao sword soldiers and sword and shield soldiers attacked forcefully, supplemented by the ever-changing pikemen and crossbowmen at the rear. Sima Yi's left, center and right armies were completely suppressed.
The reason why we can still hold on now is because we still have an advantage in strength, and the Han army cannot defeat the enemy in front of them so quickly.
But if Zhuge Liang is given enough time, when the Miao soldiers in the middle kill the more than 10,000-strong front army of the Wei army in the middle, his entire formation will completely collapse.
In this case, Sima Yi had no choice. He could no longer worry about whether Zhuge Liang had a back-up plan. He had to ensure that his front army could not be defeated by the Han army. Sima Yi put the 5,000 reserve troops he left behind into the Central Committee battlefield.
At the same time, Sima Yi immediately ordered the soldiers on the left and right wings to launch a counterattack on the spot, trying to close the gap in the inverted horseshoe formation as soon as possible, and first encircle and eliminate the Han troops who broke into the inverted horseshoe formation.
In fact, to put it bluntly, now Sima Yi has no means to adjust the situation. He just relies on more people to fight and consume, and see who can't stand the casualties first and can't persist.
As for Zhuge Liang, Zhuge Liang also frowned a little at this moment.
The reason is simple, the offensive effect is not very good.
There is no way, the troops on hand are not enough. Or to put it more clearly, the strength of the Northern Army of the Han Dynasty is not enough.
The Eight Formation Diagram places high demands on soldiers, requiring them to be very familiar with the rotation and coordination of the inner and outer formations in order to exert their greatest power.
But among the eight formations on the battlefield now, the outer formations are basically the elite Northern Han Army, but only a small part of the inner formation are the original Northern Han Army, and most of the rest are Nanyang County soldiers.
Not only were the Nanyang County soldiers newly recruited, they had not undergone any joint training with the eight formations.
If it is a closed defensive phase, let them run in the inner formation and change the formation in a small area according to their own command and the guidance of some Northern soldiers. The problem is not big. At most, the formation operation is a bit jerky. Simple The tactical coordination can still be achieved.
But now it is an open offensive stage, and these Nanyang County soldiers are somewhat unable to cope with it.
On the one hand, the soldiers of Nanyang County have not received the training of the eight formations and do not know what to do next. They all rely on Zhuge Liang's command or the reminders of the soldiers from the north around them. The formation flow is too slow and cannot be in place in time to be effective. Cooperate with teammates in the outer formation to kill the enemy.
On the other hand, in the open offensive stage, all soldiers will be directly threatened by the enemy. Nanyang County soldiers have to maintain formation rotation and deal with the direct threat from the enemy, which is a bit overwhelming.
If this is the case, that's fine. Although the casualties in the outer formation will be greater, there is still a chance of victory if you grind slowly.
The most terrible thing is that as the war entered a fierce and desperate stage, Nanyang County soldiers gradually became unable to keep up with the requirements of formation rotation. During the rotation process, the problem of loose formations even appeared.
In other words, the Nanyang County soldiers were unable to withstand the changes in the internal formation and were unable to provide much support to the front army. This resulted in the Northern Han Army in the external formation being forced to maintain the battle situation alone.
It seems that this eight-formation diagram can no longer be placed.
(End of chapter)
