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daniel day-lewis as wallenstein ron perlman as pappenheim (or some other person with a face like that who is a little younger) liam neeson as gustavus adolphus? just get him to bulk up some but who, who will play tilly
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Jan 20, 2018 03:35
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HEY GUNS posted:daniel day-lewis as wallenstein john oliver? he's got the nose
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Jan 20, 2018 03:37
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GreyjoyBastard posted:john oliver?
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Jan 20, 2018 03:38
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If you drop the paratroopers at the same time as the bombs, you know your preparatory bombardment is on target!GotLag posted:Yes. I read that as "soldier" at first and was briefly horrified.
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Jan 20, 2018 04:51
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Still be horrified. It's going to melt their flesh.
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Jan 20, 2018 04:52
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HEY GUNS posted:daniel day-lewis as wallenstein
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Jan 20, 2018 05:08
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if only david suchet were old as balls
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Jan 20, 2018 05:16
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HEY GUNS posted:daniel day-lewis as wallenstein a friend of mine did that portrait matcher thing that's making the rounds on social media and matched with gustavus adolphus, i could see if he's available although another friend of mine only matched 49% with his own headshot, so maybe it's not the best casting tool
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Jan 20, 2018 05:30
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The guy from the Chieftens Hatch gives a talk on: US AFV Development in WW2, or, "Why the Sherman was what it was".
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Jan 20, 2018 05:41
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Jeff Bridges as Gustavus Adolphus.
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Jan 20, 2018 07:14
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Mark Zuckerberg debuts as Philip IV of Spain .
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Jan 20, 2018 07:48
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Epicurius posted:Mark Zuckerberg debuts as Philip IV of Spain . hapsperging out
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Jan 20, 2018 07:54
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Sir Ian McKellen for Tilly? He's only 78 though.
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Jan 20, 2018 08:22
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BRIAN BLESSED is 81, he can be someone right?
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Jan 20, 2018 08:33
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Siivola posted:Sir Ian McKellen for Tilly? He's only 78 though.
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Jan 20, 2018 08:33
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John Hurt? Lmfao whoops he's dead as hell
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Jan 20, 2018 09:03
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 United States military: “we shall give you a medal for this heroic achievement” Australian military: “sick oval office send that bloody bogan some beer”
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Jan 20, 2018 09:37
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From a few pages back:Cyrano4747 posted:That said it’s on to something with non democratic countries broadly needing prosperity to be stable but i think really over selling the importance of that vis a vis war. But democratic countries don't? I mean, without getting too into specifics a heck of a lot of recent political instability and upheaval can be traced back to recent failures in the financial system and policies designed to recover from that, and going back further (and specifically to the UK), the oil crisis in the 70s lead to the three day week and governmental tumult and the 1980s recession lead to two waves of riots, and those are just recently. I'm sure other democracies have political unrest tracking with economic inequality and recession, too, though obviously those come to mind less immediately.
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Jan 20, 2018 11:54
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Shimrra Jamaane posted:What was the Allied plan at the end of 1944 before the Germans began the Ardenne's offensive? Was it to wait out the winter and build up supplies and troops for a big push into Germany in the early spring? They were trying to secure bridgeheads across the major rivers and breach the westwall fortifications- 9th army had already done so north of the Ardennes(in a series of operations that included the disaster at the Hurtgen forest). Patton was trying to get across the Saar and basically turned his gathering of troops to break through northward for the counterattack against the Germans. The Colmar pocket also vexed the French first army and they were constantly trying to clear it, but the poor units in that army and low supply made it difficult. Also, the commander of the French 2nd armored division refused to work with the commander of French first army so it sat in the US 7th army sector instead.
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Jan 20, 2018 12:00
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spectralent posted:From a few pages back: Well, to get a little more into the argument the authors were making (apologies if this is considered a derail)... The theory is that everybody involved in a state should be considered as an individual concerned with their own self-interest. In an autocratic country, the dictator's goal is to remain in power, and this is best and most easily accomplished by diverting a large percentage of the state's income in what amounts to bribes for relatively few key partners - military officers, heads of the secret police, tax bureaucrats, notable business partners, etc. In such a setup, the important thing isn't really how well-off the state itself is, as long as the dictator can extract enough wealth out of it to keep his cronies loyal and happy. Conversely, in a democracy leaders need to stay in power by keeping their voters happy, and there's too many voters to effectively bribe the way an autocrat can; as such, a democratic leader needs to focus more on broad initiatives that increase the overall prosperity of their voters and which coincidentally is usually more economically healthy. They do spend a lot of time noting that "democratic" and "autocratic" aren't binary states of being, though, and that democratic leaders benefit just as much as autocratic leaders do from restricting the voting base so that they can more cheaply buy the loyalty they need, while an autocratic leader whose economy is going completely down the shitter needs to actually spend on infrastructure and the like if he wants to still be able to extract meaningful taxes from the country. I get the impression honestly that the authors were specifically focused on foreign aid reform, as they kept harping on the point that if given a lump sum of money by a foreign power, an autocrat's self-interest dictates that he divert most of it to bribes to keep his cronies loyal, thus reducing the strain on his own resources. They suggest instead tying foreign aid to specific goals the dictator has to accomplish before getting the money, thus incentivizing them to actually reform their country so that they can get the cash.
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Jan 20, 2018 12:31
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Tomn posted:I get the impression honestly that the authors were specifically focused on foreign aid reform, as they kept harping on the point that if given a lump sum of money by a foreign power, an autocrat's self-interest dictates that he divert most of it to bribes to keep his cronies loyal, thus reducing the strain on his own resources. They suggest instead tying foreign aid to specific goals the dictator has to accomplish before getting the money, thus incentivizing them to actually reform their country so that they can get the cash. While this would be a good idea, it's hard to enforce as long as there are competing powers in the world. There's not much preventing an autocrat to refuse "incentivized" aid and run to the political enemy of their now ex-friend for help.
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Jan 20, 2018 12:39
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Libluini posted:While this would be a good idea, it's hard to enforce as long as there are competing powers in the world. There's not much preventing an autocrat to refuse "incentivized" aid and run to the political enemy of their now ex-friend for help. I think they actually specifically talk about this at one point, but I don't remember what their solution was. I can look it up if there's interest.
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Jan 20, 2018 13:11
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Of course, the givers of the aid cannot be assumed to be entirely altruistic either. Tying aid to 'have to achieve objectives' usually ends up with those objectives ending up coincidentally being 'buy stuff from us'.
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Jan 20, 2018 14:24
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Okay so this is a loving weird-rear end question but, given that the qualities of "the elite" for most of history seem to be a mix of "can follow orders to change plans reasonably promptly" and "very good at dying without running away first", are we faced with the terrifying possibility that warhammer's skeleton hordes (and similar undead armies from other fiction with the traits of marching in lockstep under the command of liches or necromancers, as opposed to shambling zombie hordes) are, far from being mooks, probably the best "regular" troops fantasy worlds have?
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Jan 20, 2018 14:37
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Elite can be a flexible word. Palace Guard, grizzled battle tested riflemen of a world war or just some soldier who's skilled at dropping from a plane with a parachute.
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Jan 20, 2018 14:55
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One thing: the Vampire Counts' lack of missile troops was explained with zombies and skeletons having too poor dexterity to handle bows. What is different about TK skeleton archers?
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Jan 20, 2018 14:58
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Elite troops are generally also supposed to display some level of initiative on occasion. Like that story of those soviet infantrymen who all drowned because their officer misread a map and made them cross an uncrossable river, they are probably not elite. Reading WWII memoirs, one gets the impression that the real difference between the Guards units and the others are basically 'innovative solutions to problems', from pretending a bogged down tank was abandoned to set up an ambush to well, using a T34 to brew vodka.Kopijeger posted:One thing: the Vampire Counts' lack of missile troops was explained with zombies and skeletons having too poor dexterity to handle bows. What is different about TK skeleton archers? Vampiric undead are all pretty much puppets of varying degrees of sophistication. Tomb kings undead are all individually sentient, though the sentience are heavily atrophied in most cases. TK skeletons are ex-soldiers who remember their training in life, though it can be all they remember. Your average vampiric undead is some poor peasant whose body is being used as structural material in a magic robot. Fangz fucked around with this message at 15:04 on Jan 20, 2018 |
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Jan 20, 2018 15:00
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That's true, but I'm thinking skeletons: Do what a necromancer says on cue. Have no fear of death. Will always move in formation. Like the sparta thing suggested, just "moving in formation" is a massive advancement early enough. If there's guns, skeletons can also fire in volleys (and probably only volleys), so there's no disorganised fire. I can see skeletons now, where we expect initiative even at very low levels and moving in formation is mostly a parades thing, being kind of a liability, but in most historical periods, skeletons sound like they'd loving own to have on command, which is odd because skeletons are usually the prime mooks of fantasy stories and have to rely on weight of numbers*. *which to be fair they would also have, given the kind of chaos large scale war causes. Fangz posted:Like that story of those soviet infantrymen who all drowned because their officer misread a map and made them cross an uncrossable river, Also not a problem for skeletons! 
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Jan 20, 2018 15:02
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quote:Like the sparta thing suggested, just "moving in formation" is a massive advancement early enough. If there's guns, skeletons can also fire in volleys (and probably only volleys), so there's no disorganised fire. I can see skeletons now, where we expect initiative even at very low levels and moving in formation is mostly a parades thing, being kind of a liability, but in most historical periods, skeletons sound like they'd loving own to have on command, which is odd because skeletons are usually the prime mooks of fantasy stories and have to rely on weight of numbers*. Yeah but I think you are overgeneralising here. Soldiers that keep to orders and use formations are a cut above your average guy-with-spear, but even before WWII you have 'elite units' who do better. For example, by the time you get to Alexander the phalanx is *not* the elite. The elite is the cavalry, and the phalanx is there to hold the enemy there while the rest do work. The mongols succeed also because of their individual initiative in setting up sophisticated tactics like feigned retreats, and had a small unit organisation that allowed for that. You've got the whole battle of Cannae thing where a Roman army with formations and all that jazz ran into a flexible Carthaginian force and got totally hosed up.
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Jan 20, 2018 15:11
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This is an absurd argument to engage, but if an undead army is being controlled by a single necromancer it is usually implied that the necromancer usually doesn't have the attention or juice to make sure each deadite is actually fighting well. A battalion of mobile punching bags would fill the same requirements you point out, but without the ability to effectively DO anything to an enemy it's mostly useless except as a mobile wall. For that matter, if the necromancer is the one actively controlling his troops, given that most necromancers skip leg day in favor of poring over dark mystical tomes, it's even odds that even if they COULD control each skelington individually to the best of their ability, what they'd end up with is an entire army of the fat Jedi kid.
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Jan 20, 2018 15:23
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Fangz posted:You've got the whole battle of Cannae thing where a Roman army with formations and all that jazz ran into a flexible Carthaginian force and got totally hosed up. I'm not sure the Carthaginians were any less in formation than the Romans of the period, actually. They were an organised major mediterranean power, not, say, a British tribe.
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Jan 20, 2018 15:29
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Besides there's the better example where a roman legion confronted a phalanx and won because a tribune spotted a weakness in the formation and organized a counterattack. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Cynoscephalae
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Jan 20, 2018 16:06
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So, basically the bit we're missing is junior necromancers who're controlling a few formations of skeletons each?
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Jan 20, 2018 16:26
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Ardent Communist posted:Besides there's the better example where a roman legion confronted a phalanx and won because a tribune spotted a weakness in the formation and organized a counterattack. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Cynoscephalae Yeah, I recall that one of the big advantages of the Roman legion over their classical adversaries wasn't that they were particularly more disciplined or better at fighting, but because their formations were flexible and their lower-level commanders were trained to look for opportunities and exploit them on their own initiative.
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Jan 20, 2018 16:27
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Also in case I have to specify, yeah my "Who would win: the armies of europe or skellingtons" question is not entirely serious. Though the obvious answer is skellingtons since everyone defects to the skeleton side eventually
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Jan 20, 2018 16:30
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spectralent posted:So, basically the bit we're missing is junior necromancers who're controlling a few formations of skeletons each? Well, that's not all. Don't forget that all armies run on logistics, and undead armies are no exception. Yes, yes, "death is ever-present, corpses are everywhere," BUT these corpses all need to be armed and equipped, and while battlefield scavenging will get you part of the way even such scavenging needs to be overseen and supervised by some junior NCOs (necromantic commissioned officers) if you don't want the mindless undead stacking up tree branches on top of spears for use as weapons. Then too acquiring all the bodies necessary and preparing them for resurrection requires a good deal of preparation and specialized mortuary supplies, which need to come from somewhere. Furthermore NCOs need to be fed, dressed, and otherwise assisted in a manner befitting their stations (remember we're talking about early modern necromancers), and while mindless undead are chilling their expendable nature means they wouldn't be appropriate status symbols, so naturally you need to acquire living servants, who in turn need to be fed and housed, which makes for yet more of a logistical drain, requiring even an unliving army to have a living baggage train and necromantic camp followers (Igors, embalmers, alchemists, etc.) While the popular stereotype is that an unliving army has no logistical train, and while there is some truth to the idea that their logistical train is SMALLER than a living army, the fact is that an unliving army must maintain a significant logistical train to support itself, albeit of a different nature than their flesh-and-blood enemies. In summary, Vampire Wallenstein could conquer all of Europe.
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Jan 20, 2018 16:41
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I'm seeing a progression from early petty lich kings overseeing vast formations (by the standards of antiquity and the middle ages) of skeletons from atop some kind of armoured undead elephant that gives the a decent view of the battlefield to groups of necromancers working in concert to direct smaller formations with greater efficiency and, with that increased sense of community, the arising of necromancer bling like ridiculous capes and hats with skulls on now. It's slightly distressing how cleanly this explains ridiculous undead-faction dress sense, now. You're expected to stay at the back and direct stuff, so you don't really need something built to take a beating, and posturing among your peers is a thing... spectralent fucked around with this message at 16:56 on Jan 20, 2018 |
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Jan 20, 2018 16:49
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The idea of the Hell Skeletons as mindless horde that only prevailed through sheer numbers is an artifact of relying primarily on their opponent's self serving postwar accounts. Granted, with access to the undying bone archives cut off due to Cold Skull War politics it's not surprising this became conventional wisdom.
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Jan 20, 2018 17:04
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Tomn posted:Well, that's not all. Don't forget that all armies run on logistics, and undead armies are no exception. Marry me. I love every bit of this post.
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Jan 20, 2018 17:12
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As well as proper channels to review complaints from the civilian populace!
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Jan 20, 2018 17:21
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