Natural Defense vs. Learned Tactics

Learned Tactics.. this would leverage intelligence, and would be more about what level of military strategy and tactics the creatures developed. And, that would depend on how intelligent the creatures are. In some fairy tales, creatures are smart enough to know what humans are saying, but are otherwise still animal-like. In other fairy tales, the creatures are donning armor and practicing fighting with swords and smelting metals and such. You have to consider that if a creature reaches a certain level of intelligence, it might go the way of humans are start expanding on it's technology to where it's not "living with nature" anymore. Intelligent squirrels might stop being complacent with living in trees and eating nuts, and instead creating nut farms, little hovel cities in the trees, make equipment out of leathers/woods/etc.

The learned tactics route would require you to decide how "militarized" the creatures became. Anything under constant attack would need to adapt tactics to survive, and as such could develop into a militaristic society that constantly practiced in order to stay ready to repel attack. This would lead to them knowing advanced strategy, like setting up traps and things. But, a society that has always known peace wuoldn't know how to defend itself, even if they had other advanced technologies. EG: squirrels haev automated nut farms... doesn't make them great defenders of the forest.

So, you'd have to think about how much interaction the humans have had with the forest creatures to decide how militariezed and prepared the creatures are. If they could mobilize all of nature at their disposal, then they would just get some poisons (eg: from plants) and go poison the human water supply. (Fastest way to destroy a castle in medival times was poison the water supply... troops can't hold a castle if there's no water to drink).

You'd also have to decide if the creatures are just defensive, or do the go on the offense. If they're just defending themselves, then they'd stay in their part of the forest and just set up traps or poisons or whatever. If they go on the offense, then they'd have to militarize and mobilize more and actually go raid the humans.

The thing with conflict is .. unless one side is wiped out in the initial conflict... they conflict on both sides grows and evolves. If the humans struck first, the animals in the forest would adapt and find out they need to defend their forest. Eventually, if the humans kept raiding, the forest creatures would decide to go on the offensive and do things to make the humans lives miserable (sneak attacks). Most forces go for whatever method will get them the best outcome with the least casualties, so that's why sneak attacks would work. Unless the humans would want to come into the forest and burn the whole place down, they'd have to go look for animals one-by-one. So, the animals doing a direct fight would be more foolish since the humans could face all of the animals and possible wipe them out in a single bout.

So, it all depends on how advanced the forest creatures are (technolgy-wise), how big of creatures we're talking about, how quickly the conflict escalates between humans and creatures (as each side gets more and more defensive or offensive, and also starts to modify it's society to become more militarized to handle future conflict), and how far they learn advanced strategy and tactics. Is there some squirrel version of Sun Tzu that shows up and is a master tactician? Or, are squirrels just stuck fighting like the Rats of Nim? Do the humans get the aid of dogs to go into the forest to chase out the squirrels? Is everyone fighting "nobly" (ie: directly), or are they being sneaking and dastardly?

Lots of things to consider, with time (ie: how quickly things have escalated, or whether it's been a constant back-n-forth) also being a major factor.

Natural Defense vs. Learned Tactics

Learned Tactics

This would leverage intelligence, and would be more about what level of military strategy and tactics the creatures developed. And, that would depend on how intelligent the creatures are. In some fairy tales, creatures are smart enough to know what humans are saying, but are otherwise still animal-like. In other fairy tales, the creatures are donning armor and practicing fighting with swords and smelting metals and such. You have to consider that if a creature reaches a certain level of intelligence, it might go the way of humans are start expanding on it's technology to where it's not "living with nature" anymore. Intelligent squirrels might stop being complacent with living in trees and eating nuts, and instead creating nut farms, little hovel cities in the trees, make equipment out of leathers/woods/etc.

The learned tactics route would require you to decide how "militarized" the creatures became. Anything under constant attack would need to adapt tactics to survive, and as such could develop into a militaristic society that constantly practiced in order to stay ready to repel attack. This would lead to them knowing advanced strategy, like setting up traps and things. But, a society that has always known peace wouldn't know how to defend itself, even if they had other advanced technologies. E.g.: squirrels have automated nut farms... doesn't make them great defenders of the forest.

So, you'd have to think about how much interaction the humans have had with the forest creatures to decide how militarized and prepared the creatures are. If they could mobilize all of nature at their disposal, then they would just get some poisons (e.g.: from plants) and go poison the human water supply. (Fastest way to destroy a castle in medieval times was poison the water supply... troops can't hold a castle if there's no water to drink).

You'd also have to decide if the creatures are just defensive, or do they go on the offense. If they're just defending themselves, then they'd stay in their part of the forest and just set up traps or poisons or whatever. If they go on the offense, then they'd have to militarize and mobilize more and actually go raid the humans.

The thing with conflict is, unless one side is wiped out in the initial conflict, the conflict on both sides grows and evolves. If the humans struck first, the animals in the forest would adapt and find out they need to defend their forest. Eventually, if the humans kept raiding, the forest creatures would decide to go on the offensive and do things to make the humans lives miserable (sneak attacks). Most forces go for whatever method will get them the best outcome with the least casualties, so that's why sneak attacks would work. Unless the humans would want to come into the forest and burn the whole place down, they'd have to go look for animals one-by-one. So, the animals doing a direct fight would be more foolish since the humans could face all of the animals and possible wipe them out in a single bout.

So, it all depends on how advanced the forest creatures are (technolgy-wise), how big of creatures we're talking about, how quickly the conflict escalates between humans and creatures (as each side gets more and more defensive or offensive, and also starts to modify it's society to become more militarized to handle future conflict), and how far they learn advanced strategy and tactics. Is there some squirrel version of Sun Tzu that shows up and is a master tactician? Or, are squirrels just stuck fighting like the Rats of NIMH? Do the humans get the aid of dogs to go into the forest to chase out the squirrels? Is everyone fighting "nobly" (i.e.: directly), or are they being sneaky and dastardly?

Lots of things to consider, with time (i.e.: how quickly things have escalated, or whether it's been a constant back-n-forth) also being a major factor.