How are vanilla humans in a High to Late Medieval or Renaissance setting supposed to fight larger creatures like trolls...

What if the Big Guys have those too?

The bigger they are, the harder they fall.

Mouse and smaller animals don't fear falls at all.

>What if we're fighting enemies that have literally everything we have, but also have ?
Then we're fucked. The solution lies in having the things that were just named while they don't.

Numerical superiority.

Shock cavalry are basically half-ton animals armed with human intelligence and equipment. They did pretty well, but they also had a lot of issues which limited their use.

For a start, they were expensive for what you got. Armouring something the size of a horse takes more metal than armouring a man. They eat more food. They need bigger shelters, stronger bridges, can't ride horses. Basically, the logistics get pretty difficult.

Square-cube law means that big things aren't terribly efficient at carrying stuff or using huge weapons. Most fantasy giants are stronger than humans pound-for-pound though, so we'll skip that. Likewise we have to ignore the fact that larger creatures run with less spare allowance on their organs and are actually more delicate for a given level of trauma, because big fantasy races are almost always tough.

Big things aren't actually much harder to kill than small ones. A spear through the heart will kill a man, horse or elephant. The difference is the depth which you need to drive the spear in, but that scales with the cube root of mass and flesh is a lot easier to punch through than armour. Anything that can go through a couple of millimetres of plate can carry on through a few feet of meat.

Big creatures are big targets. More surface area to aim at, larger weak points. Kill one and you inflict the equivalent of several human casualties thanks to the extra expense of fielding them.

Finally, it's pretty rare for giant fantasy races to be as clever, organised, disciplined, numerous and technologically sophisticated as humans. Most of them have some significant flaws in their social structure which makes it hard for them to field armies like humans do.

But basically, everything that worked against knights also works against ogres. Powerful missile weapons, either mounted on horses or protected by guys with polearms capable of being planted in the ground and using the enemy's strength against them if they try and smash into you.

Then side in some underhandedness, caution, and accept lower odds of success.

then we either need even greater courage, determination and teamwork (probably combined with greater numbers and organisation), or those big guys are going to dominate the setting.

humans dominate our world because we have the best organisation.

by not being pussies

There was this guy who did take downs of all those arms and armor tropes on youtube a while back, stuff like Knights VS Samurai, why blades don't make *sshiiiink* unsheathing noises, and shit. Well one of his episodes was about how to kill a giant turtle dragon.

I guess it depends on exactly how much bigger your enemies are. Either way, armor is going to be important. First off, good metal armor will be easier to obtain for humans because armoring a big person is more expensive than armoring a small person. Also, making large plates of metal that are good quality in a pre-industrial setting can be kinda tough. Since these enemies are much larger, cloth armor is even more important since it protects against blunt force trauma. Cotton/wool is going to be your best friend.

If they're a foot or two taller and 100 or so pounds heavier, I'd say pikes should be pretty good. Sure they can just pick up a big stick too, but there's a limit to how long you can make a pike before it bends or snaps, and you can fit more humans into a smaller space which means more pointy things facing the enemy. One big advantage humans will have is cavalry. Unless the enemy use chariots (which are easy to kill for their price, offer a huge target, slower than cavalry, crappy on anything besides flat terrain) they can't match normal horse cavalry. The enemies will not be able to run as fast as a rider, so they have a solid mobility disadvantage. Shock cavalry should be a perfect answer to this.

If the enemy are much larger than a person, the pikes might not work any more. A large troll with a eight foot club has about as much reach as a pikeman and a lot more killing power. Massed projectiles like guns, bows, and crossbows are the way to go. Rigging up artillery wagons might be able to marry speed and firepower. But there is one problem, the enemy are not stupid. Having a gun wagon is cool, but if a troll or giant has any kind of intelligence, it will know how to make a sling. In a Renaissance setting a sling might not sound bad, but when it's throwing rocks the size of cannonballs, that's terrifying. I don't know how well shock cavalry would do either. Can a lancer kill an elephant sized monster?

>Can a lancer kill an elephant sized monster?
Seems likely. Didn't people used to kill elephants with spears on foot? Whether it can kill an elephant-sized monster with heavy armour over its vital organs seems less certain... but I'm inclined to say that a fast horse and not bothering with armour can probably get you some serious penetration.

I think archer giants are the real threat. Being able to out-range anything except siege engines is a huge advantage and things like small numbers are less relevant when you can bring your full force against anywhere on the battlefield.

Thank you for your input.
I honestly never thought about the advantage in density smaller humans would have over the larger humanoids lol.

>human don't have the advantage of discipline in WFB

wut

Then we become the Goblins of the setting

Then we do what humans do best...
Cheat by fighting dirty!
Poisoned bait for the less intelligent creatures, ambushes and leading them into areas prepared with traps for the smarter ones.
If it's good enough for Tucker's Kobolds...

Avoid direct engagement and deny them their food supply through theft, pollution or outright destruction. If they're bigger, they need more nutrition, and that means it's much easier to starve them out.

The name of that guy invokes a shitstorm every time it's mentioned around here.

Shit on the warcraft movie all you want, but it answered this question perfectly. And the answer is, they struggle imensely and resort to gun powder.

It was incredibly generic and shallow noble savage kind of thing.

In take on the upper one you can actually just take from the game.

You don't fight the orc head on because it'll stunlock you, you gotta dance around their mindless charges and LOUD YELLING.

The second pic also shows how too, numbers and sharp sticks.

Is it Shadiversity?

Pike and shot tactics, with crossbows instead of arquebuses. Backed up with as many lance-toting cavalry or ballistae/scorpions as possible.

Fire
If you can get some of it to stick it will do a lot of damage. More vs things with fur

This. Spears, guns, skirmishing.

I mean, shit, spears and guns is how they used to hunt bears

organisation, discipline, choosing the terrain & utilising massed projectile weaponry.
plan B: bribe something scarier to get rid of them

If Gothic is anything to go by, the Orcs have a smaller ecological niche. On top of being hungrier, meaning they need wider hunting/agriculture pastures for a smaller population.
And they aren't that much bigger. On top of humans being able to become superhumanly strong.

Meaning as they eventually get demon magic and some reasonable civilization, they might be a threat. Which is a core point in Gothic: Its a sort of God Proxy war.
But the 10v1 advantage combined with superior sea logistics, tends to make that somewhat irrelevant. Alongside combining that with combined arms warfare, which would be how its actually represented in Gothic.