Frosted Flake posted:

When you do wargames professionally, you see beyond the lunar sphere.



All military science is geometry, and so is the movement of the heavenly spheres.

Takanago posted:

isnt w&r 0% off right now though. no capitalism discount

StashAugustine posted:

Tbf the "Marian reforms didn't happen" argument merely posits that there were a series of incremental changes starting around Marius and ending with Augustus, not that Roman infantry kit and supply didn't change between the Punic Wars and the early imperial period

Frosted Flake posted:

People like doing this about army reforms in the 18th century too.

The reality is, even to people in the lifetime of those changes, attributing reforms to one transformational figure is more satisfying than trying to work out when plug bayonets gave way to socket. “Louis the XIV did it.” emotionally connects the gradual shifts to a idk “pleasant” periodization.

“Marian” should be understood akin to “Georgian” and “Victorian”. Did Queen Victoria supervise the issue of the Martini-Henry rifle? Of course not! But “Victorian army reform” explains when changes happened.

Endman posted:

That’s different though, the reforms happened during the reign of Victoria, so calling them ‘Victorian’ adds context. Most of the changes to the Roman military didn’t happen during the consulship of Marius, which reduces helpful context and needlessly confuses the historical record in favour of a ‘satisfying’ simplification.

Satisfaction be damned!

Frosted Flake posted:

is much more exiting to people than

Tekopo posted:

i've had a situation where someone was surprised that I was on the left because i played wargames and heavy economic games, but I don't think the trend is a prevalent nowadays as it used to be

although before the soviet archives opened in the 90s, wargaming was basically a landscape dominated by clean wehrmacht myths and the "enemy at the gates" fever-dream of the eastern front, as well as outright nazi small press studios that pushed hard the "heroes on both sides" bullshit (but only on the western front, of course)

Frosted Flake posted:

redleader posted:

good poo poo

so like canning must have been a pretty significant development in military history?

Endman posted:

This problem is simply beyond me, because I do find this way more interesting than the former.

One of the most hilarious parts of Total War games, to me, is that armies just move from A to B. Whereas, at least for the pre-Napoleonic games, they should be leaving a terrible trail of economic destruction in their midst as they eat everything they can reasonably chew.

redleader posted:

good poo poo

so like canning must have been a pretty significant development in military history?

AnimeIsTrash posted:

Anyone been playing any AOE? I don't know what they changed but AOE4 no longer runs like poo poo on my computer so I have been playing it a lot. The campaigns are like history channel style of documentaries but they're fun. I only played a few games with friends but it seems pretty balanced?

KomradeX posted:

How many Abrams can dance on the head of a pin?

AnimeIsTrash posted:

Anyone been playing any AOE? I don't know what they changed but AOE4 no longer runs like poo poo on my computer so I have been playing it a lot. The campaigns are like history channel style of documentaries but they're fun. I only played a few games with friends but it seems pretty balanced?

Danann posted:

There's definitely going to be a new spate of wargames where Azov Ubermensch gun down hordes of Russian orcs with the side dlc being epic IDF tankman who has to solo capture the Hamas headquarters perfidiously located under the orphanage.

my dad posted:

You can unironically apply the rocket equation to a pre-modern army's non-looting logistics.

e: Hell, in many ways, it's measuring the same damned thing.

StashAugustine posted:

Yeah canning and then obviously rail and motor transport. I've heard it argued potatoes as well, since they're more dense (and also a lot easier for peasants to hide from foraging soldiers)

Typo posted:

the game is easy because the A.I is stupid

redleader posted:

extremely good poo poo, cheers. i knew in a very abstract way that old-timey armies had big trains of followers and such, and that logistics is a huge part of military life. but you _never_ hear about it or see it portrayed or anything, and don't realise what 10,000 men marching around wherever means in practice, etc etc

fermun posted:

Depending on the weather and variety of potato, potatoes have a much longer harvest window than grain, some even can be overwintered, so peasants could often leave potatoes in the ground and harvest them over a longer period of time as-needed during the time armies were actively campaigning before the armies set up camps for the winter or dispersed back home to re-form back in the spring, whereas grain has a much stricter harvest time and then is stored. A marching army has time to go to a village and demand all their stored grain, they don't have the time to go to villages and demand a lot of potatoes be dug up.

There's a bunch of stuff that shows potatoes were adopted more quickly in areas where there were frequently armies on the march in europe.

in prussia they even gave free seed potatoes to peasants and told them to grow them on marginal land with instructions on how to best grow them and told them to feed livestock with them, knowing that when there was war, they could have their armies take the cows, pigs, and horses, demand all the grain, and that the peasants would probably still survive so they wouldn't be demolishing their tax base as badly.

Cerebral Bore posted:

yea, for early modern times an army of some tens of thousands plus all its associated camp followers and such would p much be the equivalent of a mobile medium-sized city except it has to bring all of its infrastructure with it

Charlie Cutshall posted:

Napoleon knew of the failure of earlier campaigns into Russia. Throughout history
earlier attempts to invade Russia had failed to take into account the vast, empty spaces
of Russia. Aware that his usual tactic of living off the land with his invading forces
would not work he began assembling supply wagons from across the empire. He also
began the construction of advance supply magazines.

While detailed in its planning, Napoleon’s plan envisioned a relatively short campaign
of no more than a month or so. The French logistical plan while adequate to the
concept of a short campaign was not equal to the long drawn out campaign that
eventually ensued. The eventual French advance moved huge distances from the
magazines that had been built. Further complicating the problem was the usage of
Napoleon’s troops of large supply wagons that difficulty on the poor Russian road
system.

French logistics further broke down at the lower levels of command. Some
commanders, like Davout, did an excellent job of seeing to their troops needs others
were largely oblivious to the issue.

The enormous attrition that the French army was to suffer during the campaign actually
began before the crossing of the Nieman. Troops began to drop out of formation while
moving through the open spaces of Poland. While the Russian campaign is popularly
remembered for the damage done to the French army during the snows of winter, the
largest loss was suffered during the heat of summer and the advance into Russia.

Thousands of Napoleon’s army died from thirst or hunger, especially among the troops
marching in the rear of the advancing columns. By the time the troops arrived from the
rear at a supply area, they would find the forage long since gone. Further, many died of
thirst and even suicide during the long marches over miles and miles of the Russian
hinterland. It also estimated that after the first couple months of the campaign there
were over 50,000 deserters marauding in the rear areas.

By the time Napoleon finally brought the Russians to a reasonably sized battle at
Smolensk in mid August, his main army had shrunk to 60 or 70 percent of its former
size. The task Napoleon found was something akin to fighting a fire by using a colander
to carry his water. By the time he got to the fire, much of the water was gone.

Napoleon’s logistical problem only got more desperate as the campaign continued. The
Russians had begun employing a scorched earth policy after the first few weeks.
Supply had to be brought over an increasingly long and vulnerable path. More and
more troops had to be detached to guard the rear areas further siphoning the strength
from Napoleon’s striking force.

The Russian logistical problem was simpler. Like Napoleon the Russians established
supply magazines. They had the advantage though that the citizenry were more
forthcoming with supplies for their own troops. Additionally supply lines were getting
shorter, and garrisons could be reabsorbed into the main Russian army.

gradenko_2000 posted:

I've read more than one history of the Battle of Borodino, and some speculation on what Napoleon could have done better, but I haven't really read anyone even make a guess as to what Napoleon could have done to "win" in Russia in terms of accomplishing his political goals

Yadoppsi posted:

He wanted Russia to stop trading with Britain (join the Continental System). Napoleon had some idea of forming a stable political system in which Russian and France would be two poles working together across Europe to keep the Germans down and the British out. The invasion wasn't about raw conquest of territory.

TheHoosier posted:

the diet of Grande Armée soldiers.

Orange Devil posted:

I think the only succesful invasion of "Russia" he could've done would be to bite off a small chunk of it and occupy it with troops dispersed along the border and back into the depth of Poland and Germany to be called up on short notice in case Russia mustered an army to take it back.

Then either use that to come to terms or constitute a Polish Republic or whatever to administer the place and prepare to grab another chunk in the next campaigning season.

Going for the throat is folly.

Cerebral Bore posted:

well, the problem with the slow approach is that france already managed to get bogged down in one grinding war of attrition down in spain and if you just go to take a chunk out of the border you're basically just walking into another quagmire

not to say that marching straight for moscow was a better option, but rather that there really was no good way to invade russia in 1812

Orange Devil posted:

Stoke the flames of nationalism in the Polish parts,