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Yvonmukluk posted:I like how this guide describes the lend-lease tanks as 'similar' to their American counterparts, as if the British just happened to possess tanks that were identical to ones the US army was using. Because the US is neutral, you see.
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# ? Aug 2, 2016 13:14 |
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# ? May 13, 2024 07:19 |
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how is it that we have a new thread and I already have 4 pages to catch up on
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# ? Aug 2, 2016 13:39 |
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Jamwad Hilder posted:how is it that we have a new thread and I already have 4 pages to catch up on military-industrial complex
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# ? Aug 2, 2016 13:46 |
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Grey Hunter posted:I'm thinking of running a game of Black Powder that has all the divisions commanded by Goons (on both sides) - with everything going through emails and messages moving via riders. I want to recreate as much of the fog of war as possible - I'm not sure HOW often to make the messengers get lost, or how fast to make them move yet, but the planning stage is there. This sounds awesome.
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# ? Aug 2, 2016 13:49 |
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Comstar posted:Why did the 30 years war go on for so long? It helps when you don't think of it as s single war with clear-cut war goals and opponents and whatnot, but instead of a hilarious clusterfuck of several wars at once that just happened to coincide. Sometimes it's also like a TV show that tries to draw out its running time as much as possible with hilarious twists and turns thrown into the mix (looking at you, Restitutionsedikt). Hey Gal posted this once already I think, but look at it:
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# ? Aug 2, 2016 13:54 |
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Was there a year at the start when nobody was working against the emperor? Cos the graph makes it look like that. Lol @ transylvania, the cat of 30yw
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# ? Aug 2, 2016 14:09 |
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JcDent posted:Was there a year at the start when nobody was working against the emperor? Cos the graph makes it look like that. Tekopo fucked around with this message at 14:19 on Aug 2, 2016 |
# ? Aug 2, 2016 14:17 |
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Part of the problem was that the intersection between times the emperor was willing to back down enough to get a peace treaty and times the emperor was winning was empty.
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# ? Aug 2, 2016 14:20 |
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simplefish posted:I have a couple of questions about Napoleonics Musketry was very effective at least compared to the modern perception of its effectiveness. A lot of guys were killed by it. When fighting in line, the first rank kneels, the second rank is standing, and the third (optional, the British and Portuguese did away with this) rank is standing offset slightly behind the second rank. It's the job of the corporals to keep guys in place and dress the ranks. The Prussians famously conducted a neat musketry experiment. They built a wickerwork frame approximately the size of a battalion formed in a three deep line of companies, and then had battalions shoot at it from varying distances. Once you get down to 75 yards, about 60% of rounds fired will strike the battalion frontage. Of course in true battle conditions, this would likely be a bit lower, but being 100 yards front of a battalion drawn in line firing platoon volleys would be a really miserable experience. A hypothetical battalion on battalion engagement in a flat field, with a defending force drawn up in three deep ranks, and an attacking force advancing in column of companies. (Ragingly unrealistic, as in the modern battlefield Combined Arms operations between infantry, cavalry and artillery was critically important and effective). The defending force pushes out its Light company, which is tasked to fight in "open" or skirmish order. (Everyone eventually also used complete battalions of skirmish ordered troops - Jaegers, Rifles, Light Infantry, Voltigeurs, Cazadores etc). These guys hang out about 60-150 yds in front of the line, and work in pairs using cover and terrain to try to cause casualties for the enemy. The attacking battalion pushes out its light company, and they fight until someone gets bored, or the attacking force advances to approximately 100yds, maybe a bit further out. Then the defending light company will fall back on the left of the defending battalion and add to the length of the line. The attacking light company will fall back on the left of the attacking battalion and add to the length of the line, as the rest of the attacking battalion evolves in to line from column. The line advances on the enemy. Up to a certain distance, probably anything over 75 yds, whoever fires first has probably made a mistake. The defender has an advantage because the attacker has to issue commands to halt, prepare, take aim, fire, so the defender can probably get an effective volley in first. Usually for infantry drawn up in line, the first volley would be by battalion, in an effort to create the most casualties as rapidly as possible, and then fire could either be maintained by battalion or switched to by company or by platoon to maintain a constant volume of fire. Once it appeared that one formation was wavering, the other formation would order fixed bayonets and advance on the enemy. The smallest effective and reasonable unit of action was the company (or squadron, for cavalry), although in anything Corps-sized or up the smallest unit of action was the Battalion. The "ideal" in all warfare of the era was to soften with artillery, pin the enemy in line with infantry, and attack from a flank with heavy cavalry to start a rout. The relationship between infantry, cavalry and artillery is a bit like rock paper scissors. Infantry in square is not vulnerable to cavalry, which eventually just goes away, but it's extremely vulnerable to infantry in line or artillery. Infantry in line is somewhat vulnerable to artillery and extremely vulnerable to cavalry. Infantry in columns is vulnerable to everything but has substantial mass. Cavalry is not vulnerable to infantry, but unsupported it can't actually do anything against infantry, and it's fairly vulnerable to artillery. Artillery is very vulnerable to cavalry if unsupported, less so to infantry. A single arm can't do that much on its own against another single arm - for instance, cavalry vs infantry is a bunch of guys telling each other how retarded their uniforms look after then infantry forms square. Add a half battery of horse artillery and the infantry are shot to death at leisure by cannon fire until the square disintegrates and the cavalry comes in. If you were Napoleonic era was still quite aristocratic in that a lot of guys on the non-French side were called Duke of Something, but it's not Dukes in the traditional feudal sense where their troops are personally raised. There were regiments, especially in English service, that were raised by private citizens, but they were still subordinate to the overall army structure. The title had very little to do with the level of responsibility, although good soldiers were frequently titled. For instance, Robert Craufurd as a common-born major general in charge of a brigade would still exercise tight control over his subordinates even if they were titled, and many of them would be. Chain of command was very important. You would not have a battalion commander request aid directly from another battalion commander in his brigade or outside of his brigade unless things had gotten very hosed up and the brigade commander was dead, incapacitated, or unavailable. Frequently, battles turned on the fact that the correct guy wasn't able to gather information and issue orders in time. This is why task-oriented orders were much more effective - ie 1st brigade to hold village X, 2nd brigade in reserve, 3rd brigade to hold ridge line to East with artillery park. If you're in charge of 1st brigade, and you get thrown out of village X, unless you get orders to the contrary via a messenger you're getting your guys back in that village come hell or high water, and if it looks like it's impossible you better have already sent a messenger the minute you got thrown out. It's an interesting balance between detail of orders and flexibility. 1st brigade may be tasked to hold Village X, but the Corps commander won't say "keep 4eme de la ligne in the village firing from loopholes and blockhouses, blockade the streets in a grid pattern, use your Voltigeur regiment separated by companies to skirmish from the broken ground to the south of the village, keep your brigade level artillery in reserve, and keep the 21eme de la ligne in reserve at location Y." You'd just kind of assume the Corps guy was decent enough to do a good job. Most of these guys had been fighting together or in various wars for decades, so there was a lot of competence. Messengers frequently got lost or killed. They were usually young lieutenants with decent families mounted on very good horses, and the headquarters staff would have a pool of them at brigade, corps and army level getting successively larger. Send two at a time usually. Once the battle gets going, you better hope that your initial assigned tasks were reasonable and that your brigade generals and colonels can react to situations effectively. Everyone issues messengers in both directions - could be a battalion asking permission to withdraw, or counterattack, against issued orders, could be a brigade asking to move up in support, or an army requesting a brigade in reserve to detach a battalion or two, or a corps telling a brigade that they were on their own. Commanders had to be fairly confident in their subordinates, because things change more rapidly on the field than the ability of commanders to acquire information, issue orders, have those orders be received, understood and executed. Plus, messengers could get out of order, or pass each other, or have all kinds of things happen that made the orders or requests difficult to interpret. As a result, commanders tended to sit fairly still in a decent observational position so that they could see with their own eyes, and so that messengers could easily find them. The battalion commander sits on a horse behind his battalion so he can see what's going on with his battalion and the others in his brigade. The brigade commander sits on a horse at a higher point so that he can see all of the battalions in his brigade. The corps commander, etc, etc. Of course, battlefields got smoky pretty fast, so there were issues in observing who was where and doing what - hence the brightly colored uniforms, the specialized headgear, and the elaborate regimental standards. If you're lucky, you scout the ground and can plan the fight in advance, and the fight goes roughly to plan. If things don't go to plan, you're reliant on your subordinates to understand the operational plan, adapt to the changing situation, and execute effectively with limited oversight. If you're unlucky, you get surprised in an area you don't expect to fight, and your chain of command is disrupted early in the battle: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Salamanca Salamanca is kind of interesting and shows some of the limitations and successes of Napoleonic command control and communications - the French are initially disrupted and part of their force effectively destroyed in part due to a rupture in the chain of command of the army, but recover somewhat effectively because a division commander (Clausel) of an unaffected division is smart enough to see that the Allied line is likely vulnerable and acts on his own initiative to force his division and another in to a counter-attack, and assumes command of the army. However, since time has been lost and much of the force destroyed or scattered, it's unlikely that the situation was actually reversible - losing your two most senior leaders in the early going is a recipe for disaster, since nobody knows where orders should come from. Clausel's attack is repulsed by a divisional commander reacting to the local situation on his own initiative, and the army commander allocating central reserves to meet the threat, the latter acting essentially to plan. It also shows the importance of literal visibility to enemy movements, since the fact that the French didn't see the allies deployment left them at a disadvantage. edit: pre-battle drawings are a lot less common than for Hey Gal's people, I think because most armies at this point had an engineering group which was tasked with providing maps and scouting to create maps. So in that sense, there are pre-battle drawings, but they're a little less ad-hoc. In the Peninsular war, you'd have maps for every likely fortified position on the Portuguese frontier. KYOON GRIFFEY JR fucked around with this message at 14:29 on Aug 2, 2016 |
# ? Aug 2, 2016 14:22 |
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System Metternich posted:It helps when you don't think of it as s single war with clear-cut war goals and opponents and whatnot, but instead of a hilarious clusterfuck of several wars at once that just happened to coincide. Sometimes it's also like a TV show that tries to draw out its running time as much as possible with hilarious twists and turns thrown into the mix (looking at you, Restitutionsedikt). Half expected the Emperor to be at least indirectly involved against the Emperor.
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# ? Aug 2, 2016 14:22 |
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Tree Bucket posted:A question- how do submariners avoid going insane? How do navies decide which people will be able to cope with hours crammed inside a boat designed to sink, and do they ever get it wrong...? They give you a shrink test and put you in a closet for 15 minutes.
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# ? Aug 2, 2016 14:27 |
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From the historical minis thread:DiHK posted:https://m.thevintagenews.com/2016/07/30/priority-see-surviving-images-veterans-napoleonic-wars-hd-color-2/
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# ? Aug 2, 2016 14:40 |
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JcDent posted:Was there a year at the start when nobody was working against the emperor? Cos the graph makes it look like that. I think the first year or so was putting down a revolt in Bohemia, which isn't on that list because it was put down very thoroughly and so becomes part of the Empire. (Under Wallenstein, eventually, so there is some debate as to whether it was against the empire or for him by the end).
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# ? Aug 2, 2016 14:44 |
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Antti posted:Half expected the Emperor to be at least indirectly involved against the Emperor. That's an uncharitable but not inaccurate description of how he kept winning and then immediately doubling down with something so outrageous that the Protestants were guaranteed to keep fighting.
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# ? Aug 2, 2016 14:45 |
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Siivola posted:From the historical minis thread: These are really good but guys would mostly not have looked like that at any point in time unless they were in barracks. Uniforms were a mishmash of looted poo poo that you liked better. You probably kept your headgear, the coat, and that's about it. Stuff wears out fast.
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# ? Aug 2, 2016 14:50 |
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JcDent posted:Was there a year at the start when nobody was working against the emperor? Cos the graph makes it look like that. edit: also saxony's involvement for the emperor at the beginning of the war needs to end in '25, not the teens, since that was when the war in their corner of the Empire ended, also also they forgot hesse-darmstadt
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# ? Aug 2, 2016 14:57 |
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KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:These are really good but guys would mostly not have looked like that at any point in time unless they were in barracks. Uniforms were a mishmash of looted poo poo that you liked better. You probably kept your headgear, the coat, and that's about it. Stuff wears out fast. This dude is cool as hell, can someone tell me more about Napoleon's mamelukes?
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# ? Aug 2, 2016 14:58 |
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KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:edit: pre-battle drawings are a lot less common than for Hey Gal's people, I think because most armies at this point had an engineering group which was tasked with providing maps and scouting to create maps. So in that sense, there are pre-battle drawings, but they're a little less ad-hoc. In the Peninsular war, you'd have maps for every likely fortified position on the Portuguese frontier. in your time, the guy in command of the entire army is not expected to take personal command of his own regiment and fight like a colonel would in addition to floating around to keep an eye on things in general while there's still a whole lot of luck involved in a pitched battle, my guys seem to believe that once the fight starts it's almost all out of the commander-in-chief's hands so more depends on the initial deployment pretty sure your guys had more dudes running messages back and forth, per capita HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 15:11 on Aug 2, 2016 |
# ? Aug 2, 2016 15:04 |
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spectralent posted:KV-2 is so cute. Well, when you have one road through a marsh and a giant column of vehicles, any tank that could reliably penetrate any of the tank therein would've been successful at that. I remember it ran out of ammo, which is why the crew ended up abandoning it and withdrawing. Also, the KV-2 did not like any terrain that wasn't flat.
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# ? Aug 2, 2016 15:11 |
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Yvonmukluk posted:Obviously these scans are not the best, unfortunately, but hopefully they're a bit helpful. I'm sure EnsignExpendable has links to better guides. "The Panzer II's main combat drawback was His description of the Panther tank makes me assume he was jerking off as he wrote it.
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# ? Aug 2, 2016 15:19 |
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JcDent posted:Lol @ transylvania, the cat of 30yw
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# ? Aug 2, 2016 15:19 |
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HEY GAL posted:that break in the very end for bavaria was when their entire army--yes, the whole thing--committed treason along with their Elector Yeah, after Swedish and French troops were utterly destroying Bavaria and torching Bavarian cities left and right and the elector's good buddy Ferdinand II had died while his son and successor expressed no interest at all in finally negotiating a drat peace Also we entered the war like half a year later again, so the treason wasn't too bad I think
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# ? Aug 2, 2016 15:21 |
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Grey Hunter posted:I'm thinking of running a game of Black Powder that has all the divisions commanded by Goons (on both sides) - with everything going through emails and messages moving via riders. I want to recreate as much of the fog of war as possible - I'm not sure HOW often to make the messengers get lost, or how fast to make them move yet, but the planning stage is there. Yeah that sounds totally baller. Make sure you link in here when you do it
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# ? Aug 2, 2016 15:43 |
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HEY GAL posted:Some other reasons for that difference: for sure, personal command is no longer a thing, the highest rank that is expected to take serious personal risk is a colonel. and messengers are everywhere, you have to find something for all those loving useless rear end third sons to do my dudes definitely think in terms of a more dynamic battle than yours do
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# ? Aug 2, 2016 15:54 |
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Yo no one answered my question on las thread: Where can I find good sources and articles about the Yugoslav wars of independence? Specifically the Bosnian and Croatian ones
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# ? Aug 2, 2016 16:08 |
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HEY GAL posted:yeah, "is bethlen gabor/rakoczi going to do a thing" is a running minor theme throughout. the answer is always "maybe, if he feels like it" If the 30 YW was a WWE pay-per-view event you'd have something like six or eight or ten instances where Jim Ross goes BAH GAWD IS THAT BETHLEN GÁBOR'S MUSIC, Bethlen runs in and smacks Ferdinand in the back with a steel chair and takes off again.
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# ? Aug 2, 2016 16:12 |
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HEY GAL, is honor the reason commanders in your period are expected to fight personally in battle? i have some other questions about honor in the early modern period, too: is there any connection between medieval codes of chivalry and early modern soldier's honor? do early modern duels share any similarities with judicial combats of earlier periods? did duels of honor also exist alongside judicial duels? do your soldiers recognize any differences in honor between different regiments? i.e., can an entire regiment be seen as more or less honorable based on its performance? you mentioned that entire professions can be seen as honorable, so I'm curious how much honor can become a collective thing. also, how far did honor matter on the battlefield? is there any recognition of difference in demands of honor between combat on a "battlefield" and the kind of ambush based combat that the raiding parties would engage in? finally, what are the differences between a more formal duel and the kind of fight over honor a non-elite soldier would get into? you've mentioned brawling with civilians and things like that. i assume duels would be reserved more for one's relative equal; is that the case?
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# ? Aug 2, 2016 16:43 |
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System Metternich posted:Yeah, after Swedish and French troops were utterly destroying Bavaria and torching Bavarian cities left and right and the elector's good buddy Ferdinand II had died while his son and successor expressed no interest at all in finally negotiating a drat peace bigotry pure and simple
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# ? Aug 2, 2016 16:45 |
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KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:and messengers are everywhere, you have to find something for all those loving useless rear end third sons to do shallowj posted:HEY GAL, is honor the reason commanders in your period are expected to fight personally in battle? quote:is there any connection between medieval codes of chivalry and early modern soldier's honor? quote:do early modern duels share any similarities with judicial combats of earlier periods? quote:did duels of honor also exist alongside judicial duels? quote:do your soldiers recognize any differences in honor between different regiments? i.e., can an entire regiment be seen as more or less honorable based on its performance? you mentioned that entire professions can be seen as honorable, so I'm curious how much honor can become a collective thing. They could also gain the privilege to do certain things based on honorable deeds they had performed in the past, like this arquebussier regiment: RIP austro-hungarian dragoon regt. #8, 1618-1918, like dis if u cry ever time quote:also, how far did honor matter on the battlefield? is there any recognition of difference in demands of honor between combat on a "battlefield" and the kind of ambush based combat that the raiding parties would engage in? quote:finally, what are the differences between a more formal duel and the kind of fight over honor a non-elite soldier would get into? you've mentioned brawling with civilians and things like that. i assume duels would be reserved more for one's relative equal; is that the case? HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 17:20 on Aug 2, 2016 |
# ? Aug 2, 2016 17:02 |
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Jobbo_Fett posted:Well, when you have one road through a marsh and a giant column of vehicles, any tank that could reliably penetrate any of the tank therein would've been successful at that. I remember it ran out of ammo, which is why the crew ended up abandoning it and withdrawing. The story I read was that they were attacked at night by pioneers and found dead within the vehicle in the morning. quote:Also, the KV-2 did not like any terrain that wasn't flat. But it's so cute.
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# ? Aug 2, 2016 17:07 |
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So apparently Heinrich Himmler's lost wartime diaries have been found and Bild is publishing excerpts. They will be published in book form next year, but we already know from his notes that: A) Himmler was having a lunch in Buchenwald when he gave orders to the SS to train dogs to tear Jews into pieces. (What a work ethic he had, most would finish their meal before resuming work.) B) When Himmler was following a massacre in Minsk he nearly fainted. He almost did the same another time when an executed Jew's brain splattered onto his coat. (Yet people called him insensitive!) Why would you even keep a diary of your role in carrying out a genocide, down to little details, when at the same time you tried to hide it from the public?
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# ? Aug 2, 2016 17:17 |
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let's hope this doesn't become another Hitler's diaries thing
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# ? Aug 2, 2016 17:18 |
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So I'm playing HOI4 as France, and this game is making me think that the Maginot line was actually cool and good. Am I wrong?
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# ? Aug 2, 2016 17:24 |
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HEY GAL posted:
Yeah, this is a big myth about late medieval warfare too. People are somehow under the impression that knights wouldn't utilize missile weapons (why did they spend so much money on all these crossbowmen then?) or that they wouldn't ambush enemies. One big thing I hate is the idea that the custom of capturing people for ransom somehow was a lesser form of warfare. No, a lot of the time, people need to get their asses beaten pretty hard in order to convince them to surrender. There's a lot of guys who get captured just because they're too wounded to keep fighting. Not exactly a bloodless affair.
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# ? Aug 2, 2016 17:28 |
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P-Mack posted:So I'm playing HOI4 as France, and this game is making me think that the Maginot line was actually cool and good. Am I wrong? It definitely served its purpose of stopping the Germans from invading from THAT part of the frontier. Too bad they didn't extend it to the Ardennes and Belgium!
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# ? Aug 2, 2016 17:29 |
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so i specifically looked up the 8th Bohemian Dragoons (Montecuccoli's), and the privileges they received for appearing in that courtyard when they did were huge:quote:The regiment may march when on duty to the sound of trumpets and with standards flying through the Imperial and Royal Hofburg Palace and the Imperial capital and Residenz city of Vienna, and may also set up on the imperial palace forecourt (the Franzensplatze) and recruit there for three days. The guard is then to be drawn from the regiment in front of the apartment granted pro forma to the regimental commander in the Hofburg Palace, to where the regimental standards are to be brought, and the respective regimental commander is permitted on such an occasion to appear, unannounced, in full dress before His Majesty the Emperor. Read the language--glory, privilege, etc. This would be like catnip to the sorts of people who join cavalry regiments. They would have loved this so much. No doubt various regiments/companies in other armies had similar things going on, based on similar brave deeds, etc. Edit: When and in what context you take the flags out of their cases ("fly them") is a huge Thing, as is when you may play your trumpets/flutes and drums. HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 17:37 on Aug 2, 2016 |
# ? Aug 2, 2016 17:33 |
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I've seen a few references to tank destroyers. Did I miss some sort of tank vs. tank destroyer pissing contest in the last thread?
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# ? Aug 2, 2016 17:34 |
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thanks for the great answers Hey Gal. also, what does " finally the distinction that no man of the regiment, for a crime punishable by death, shall be executed for the same, but in such cases the culprit will be transferred to another regiment where such penalty may be carried out at any time." mean? is that a one-time get-out-of-execution-free card through being transferred out? or does the last bit imply that they will/may be executed for the crime, but in a different regiment where they won't tarnish the 8th Bohemian Dragoons?
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# ? Aug 2, 2016 17:38 |
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Dick Trauma posted:I've seen a few references to tank destroyers. Did I miss some sort of tank vs. tank destroyer pissing contest in the last thread? Hahaha
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# ? Aug 2, 2016 17:40 |
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# ? May 13, 2024 07:19 |
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shallowj posted:thanks for the great answers Hey Gal.
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# ? Aug 2, 2016 17:40 |