Strategy

[Hewlett Aldershot III]

To answer Chad on a couple of points;

In my mind, ducks simply didn't occur to them. Oversights are common among everyone, even battle trained warriors. As for Tobias going eagle? I guess (and it certainly is a guess) that he had become so much a hawk that anything else that was in the same category (e.g. bird) was just a bastardization of self. He WAS a hawk; why become something similar when he was essentially him on the missions.

To be fair though, there are still holes. Like why Tobias was usually hawk in battles, as opposed to Hork-Bajir or something else? Would have made a lot more sense than him ripping at the Visser's stalk eyes.

[voodooqueen126]

hindered by the genre (young adult or children lit) they had to use child heroes. but the anis had some of the intellectual limitations of children and didn't ever bother to study up on strategy (how hard can it be to read che guevera or sun tzu?) one of the reasons the british aristocracy studied the 'classics' was too teach them strategies that would be useful to lead.

[adeon222]

Except for all the historical and biographical information that Jake boned up on... Patton and the like... The problem was Jake never applied strategy in a literal, strategic sense... He tried to apply it to individual battles, and sometimes missions, but was always hesitant about developing an over-arching grand plan for the war...

(the Animorphs always thought their job was to slow down the yeerks until the Andalites arrived, at which point they assumed that they would have the strategy and whatnot to defeat the yeerks...)

[Stephquiem]

When I was in high school, I took this Ancient and Medieval History class. We were studying the Romans, and when they were fighting the Carthaginians. For this one class we went online and did this "If you were Hannibal/whatever the Roman general was.. what would you do?" Sort of simulation.

I did Hannibal. I based my answers on a "What would Jake do?" kind of thing. I only answered wrong when Hannibal started messing up.

But yeah, I agree, in general. Battle-to-battle, Jake could do strategy. From that perspective, he was a good leader. He knew his people, he knew his enemy. And sometimes he got lucky. (There's a quote of Elfangor's a la Ax that I just read from #11. Basically, it's his (Jake) job to be lucky.)

He didn't need an over-arching strategy until near the end. They all figured that they were just there to keep the Yeerks at bay, and to stay alive, till the Andalites got there. When it became obvious that no help was forth-coming... well, at that point, hell was breaking loose, anyway. There weren't much options for dragging it out. I really don't think they would've lasted much longer in Hork-Bajir valley. They could hold it together enough to win, but they were falling apart.

[Hewlett Aldershot III]

The thing in my mind is, what good would an over-arching strategy have anyway? The anis for the most part played a reactionary game throughout, and with a force of six (plus some decent allies a la chee and hork-bajir) you cannot effectively fight a war. We're talking Patton and Hannibal; the real comparison should be the Zulus against the redcoats (see anglo-zulu war). The yeerks were a trained empire, and as such had many flaws associated with a hierarchy. The Visser infighting, the rigid battle plans, the ego ect. The anis really didn't need a battle plan beyond "let's foil whatever the yeerks are doing" until the final story arc of about book 50. That's when it became army v. army, as opposed to basically a harassment force, always foiling, never going proactive. Patton was inspiration to Jake; not a source of battle tactics.

Just my thought

[adeon222]

With the understanding that the series would have been dramatically different in such a scenario, (and with all due respect to HA3) the Anis COULD have easily had an over-arching strategy... They just didn't because they assumed that the only requirement on them was to "foil whatever the yeerks are doing", and because they felt that that requirement was already a lot to handle...

In fact, after David, the Animorphs would have done well to rebound with more "experiments"... Instead of just picking whoever happened to be lying on the pavement in front of them at the moment, (i.e. David) they could have carefully controlled who they chose, and the surrounding circumstances...

They would have had to choose members (ideally from their own age group), that they knew they could trust... people they could watch for three days and be sure of their freedom... people who weren't on power trips, or were prone to psychosis...

Also, it would have been better to add them in small groups of three to five, so as to limit the "new guy" feeling... this would also immediately give the new members a feeling of belonging, as they would be grouped together as a team... kind of like an antithesis to the Sharing...

They could then continue this pattern, spreading out and using cell tactics... The sudden onset of multiple "Andalite Bandit" attacks would not be a problem... the yeerks could be free to assume that the Andalites had begun to recruit humans to their ranks... That doesn't change the fact that they don't have a clue who they could be...

With such a network, and yes, "army", at their disposal, the Animorphs could have gone on the offensive, especially if they stockpiled weapons and technology while they were growing their ranks... The yeerks would have been forced to either go public with the invasion (an unwise option with so many dangerous covert soldiers now saturating Earth's forces, or pull back and try again even more subtly (an option that V3 would never condone - but it's very likely that the addition of hundreds of "Animorph Bandits" would be a failure that would certainly merit the removal of the Visser...

[voodooqueen126]

I wonder why this was never done?

[adeon222]

It would've complicated things... And probably added too many new characters...

(plus the war wouldn't have ended with a dramatic "final battle" in which lots of people on both sides died and the result is in question up until the very end...)