Battle to order: Second Battle of Tapae
Mar. 10th, 2015 12:37 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dhampyresaI’m going to explain how I go about making battles, using the Second Battle of Tapae as my case study. Why? Because the Wikipedia article article is 100% unsourced and thus no one can tell me that my battle plans are wrong.
Disclaimer: I’ve no formal training in this sort of thing. I read too many books and spend too long looking at battle plans and so am essentially self-taught. Consider this the online equivalent of scribbling on the back of a cocktail napkin.
I’m assuming that there are only two armies fighting, or at least only two sides with one general each, because otherwise things get very complicated very quickly.
There are five things you need to think about before you can plan your battle: Where, When, Why, Who and What, not necessarily in that order.
Where: Are you in 2D? Are you in 3D (space battle)? What about 2.5D (mountains)? Are there rivers? Marshes? Black holes? Fields? Woods? Tunnels? Is this a siege? “Where” is “what’s the terrain like?”.
This is the first bit that requires scribbling on the back of a cocktail napkin (or can use Paint, I’m doing for this demonstration). You need to make a basic outline of the place your battle is set in.
In this case: The terrain is a mountain pass.
Our mountain pass, from the front:
And now from above:
The grey areas are areas (here: mountain flanks) where you can’t put your armies. This will become relevant later.
The view from above is the one you want. I’ve only provided the view from the side for illustrative purposes.
When: “What is the time of year/day?” Is it cold, is it rainy, is it night, is it day, is there fog, is it too hot to wear armour, is it dragon migration season? Basically any outside elements that might impact any of your armies. ‘Where’ obviously plays a role into this as January in Iceland is not the same as January in Vietnam, for example.
Unless someone if doing something really clever with any of it, you really don’t need that much details here. On the other hand, if one of your generals is emptying a lagoon, as Scipio Africanus did when he took Carthago Nova, you’re going to need details and details that work.
In this case: It’s September in Romania, 1rst Century CE. A little chilly, maybe rainy, we don’t really know what the weather was like, so because I’m lazy, I’m going to assume it was chilly and cloudy but it wasn’t raining and visibility was good.
Why: “Why are these people fighting?” If you want to take over because you need more land to feed your people, you’re probably not going to set fire to the grain fields. On the other hand, if you’re fighting because you want to exterminate the othersbecause you are apparently Daleks, then fieldburning is going to be the least of the things you can do: biological warfare (throw corpses infected with the Black Death over city walls, for example), bombing, etc.
You can also think about questions of honour and rules of engagement here, because “why” is all about putting limits to how far you generals are willing to go. (Note: Willing. They may not go that far if they see no reason to or they may go further, in which case you get character conflict, but then that starts running into “Who”.)
In this case: It’s the Roman Empire under Trajan, they want to take over Dacia. They’re not all that particular about how they do so but would prefer to kill as few people as possible in order to sell them as slaves and make a profit. (Never forget about money. There’s a saying in French, “l’argent est le nerf de la guerre”, which means that money is the driving force behind wars. Can’t make war without money.)
Who: “Who’s running this show, exactly?” Who are your generals? Are they honourable, are they ruthless? Do they think inside the box? Do they think outside the box? Do they break the box?
There’s not a lot of people who can break the box. Hannibal Barca did it at Cannae and that’s why he’s remembered as the father of strategy. Of course, since then the box has expanded to include “the encirclement of a greater army by a lesser army”, so you can’t break it again doing that. The box is relative.
It might also be worthy to consider if the generals are familiar with their opponents. If they know how the other thinks and the other doesn’t, then the one who does know has an advantage. If they both know how the other thinks and they each know the other knows, this can devolve into mindgames really easily. Take the following incident between Zhuge Liang and Sima Ya, in third century CE China: Zhuge Liang doesn’t have the army to defend the city against Sima Ya, so he has his men open the gates. Sima Ya, knowing that Zhuge Liang would never do such a thing unless it was a trap, withdraws his army in fear of an ambush, which is what Zhuge Liang was counting on. Mindgames!
Then you could start looking into chains of command and if there are proxies involved, all of which complicates things: the more links there are between the person giving the orders and the people carrying them out and the longer those links take (radios vs runners) the more time there’ll be between when an order is given and when it’s carried out. This can prove fatal. The less responsive your army is, the more likely you are to be defeated by an enemy who knows how you fight.
In this case: It’s Trajan and some Dacian dude. I’m not really familiar with either, so I’m just going to assume that they’re reasonably competent. Because I’m lazy, I will also assume they don’t know each other and so mind games aren’t on the table. Since we’re dealing with Ancient Rome levels of technology, changing the battle plan once the battle is underway will most likely not be happening.
What: Troop numbers and specialty and equipment. “What are we fighting with?” An army that’s 1/3 cavalry will not fight the same way as an army that’s made entirely out of archers. If you’re fighting in vehicles (tanks, spaceships, etc) that changes thing as well. Absolute troop numbers can be very impressive, but often don’t matter as much as people tend to think. Look instead for troop numbers relative to each other.
Equipment is very very important. Technological advances has won more battles than I can count. The Hittites conquered Egypt because they used iron for war instead of bronze. Guns completely changed the face of warfare. As did crossbows and longbows. Ranged weapons in general will change things.
This is also where you want to consider how likely it is that your troops will pull a Sir Robin and run away from a fight. As a rule of thumb, mercenaries will not fight losing battles, because they’re there for the money, so they’ll probably turn tail as soon as it starts looking bad. If your army’s mostly mercenaries, you can’t afford to even look like you’re losing or you’ll end up losing for real. On the other side of the spectrum, a lot of people would rather go down fighting if they’re going to die anyway. People with their backs to the wall will do crazy things. Then there’s everything in the middle, which depends both on culture and the individual character of each soldier, but given peer pressure, just go with what the culture would dictate.
In this case: We know a lot about the Romans and not a lot about the Dacians, but I’m going to assume that by this point in Antiquity, everyone’s got iron weapons and broadly similar weapons. The (unsourced) Wikipedia article gives about 2 Romans for every Dacian and while it is totally unsourced, I’m willing to accept that. My totally-not-based-on-in-depth-research advice for anything involving Romans or Roman-like cultures is that there will be 1 Roman for every opponent during the Kingdom, 1-1.5 Romans for 1 opponent during the Republic and 1.5-2 Romans for 1 opponent during the Empire. This is because of the way the Romans worked and bla bla bla, that’s not the point. And hey, while I’m at it, let’s just take the troop numbers from Wikipedia, so 40k Dacians and 80k Romans.
How: Now you decide who wins and work backwards from that. There’s no one-size-fits-all solution for this, so you just use what you came up with above and try to make it work.
Get out the napkin-slash-Paint again, it’s time for some more drawing. Take your setting map from “Where” and get to drawing.
In this case: The Romans win.
Which is just ridiculous, because the Dacians know the lay of the land. It’s their mountain pass. How do you fail so badly at warfare? But since I’ve decided that both my Romans and my Dacians are competent, I will give the Dacians a good plan that is unfortunately ruined by the Romans’ better plan. (For convenience’s sake, the Dacian army is the Army, in blue, and the Roman army is the Legion, in red.)
The Dacian Plan: Lure the Romans into the pass, then have half the Army attack the rear of the Legion. Keep hacking away at Romans until they’re all dead. (Close off the Thermopylae bottle neck, if you will.)
In pictures:
Part 1: Lure the Legion in
Part 2: Attack rear of Legion
Part 3: Kill the Legion dead.
Good plan, right? Should lead to a bunch of dead Romans. After all, it’s not like they can run uphill.
What about downhill, though?
The Roman Plan: Put people up in the mountain, have part of the Legion be lured in the pass and then attack the Army on three sides (both flanks + front).
In pictures:
Part 1: Let the Army get into the pass.
Part 2: Run downhill shouting ‘Wheeeee!’ or ‘Yahaaaa’ or a warcry of your choice to attack flanks of the Army.
Part 3: Kill the Dacians dead.
(The last part of all battle plans tends to be “Kill the other dudes dead.”)
Let’s see what happens when I throw both battle plans at each other.
Part 1: Legion up in the mountains and down in the pass. Army down in the pass. Army and Legion in the pass have a go at each other. So far both battle plans are happening as they should.
Part 2: The other part of the Army shows up to attack the Roman rear.
Part 3: The Legion up in the mountain splits in two and applies their part of the plan on both part of the Army.
Part 4: The Dacians get dead or injured or enslaved. They lose.
That’s my story, anyway, and I’m sticking to it.
Disclaimer: I’ve no formal training in this sort of thing. I read too many books and spend too long looking at battle plans and so am essentially self-taught. Consider this the online equivalent of scribbling on the back of a cocktail napkin.
I’m assuming that there are only two armies fighting, or at least only two sides with one general each, because otherwise things get very complicated very quickly.
There are five things you need to think about before you can plan your battle: Where, When, Why, Who and What, not necessarily in that order.
Where: Are you in 2D? Are you in 3D (space battle)? What about 2.5D (mountains)? Are there rivers? Marshes? Black holes? Fields? Woods? Tunnels? Is this a siege? “Where” is “what’s the terrain like?”.
This is the first bit that requires scribbling on the back of a cocktail napkin (or can use Paint, I’m doing for this demonstration). You need to make a basic outline of the place your battle is set in.
In this case: The terrain is a mountain pass.
Our mountain pass, from the front:
And now from above:
The grey areas are areas (here: mountain flanks) where you can’t put your armies. This will become relevant later.
The view from above is the one you want. I’ve only provided the view from the side for illustrative purposes.
When: “What is the time of year/day?” Is it cold, is it rainy, is it night, is it day, is there fog, is it too hot to wear armour, is it dragon migration season? Basically any outside elements that might impact any of your armies. ‘Where’ obviously plays a role into this as January in Iceland is not the same as January in Vietnam, for example.
Unless someone if doing something really clever with any of it, you really don’t need that much details here. On the other hand, if one of your generals is emptying a lagoon, as Scipio Africanus did when he took Carthago Nova, you’re going to need details and details that work.
In this case: It’s September in Romania, 1rst Century CE. A little chilly, maybe rainy, we don’t really know what the weather was like, so because I’m lazy, I’m going to assume it was chilly and cloudy but it wasn’t raining and visibility was good.
Why: “Why are these people fighting?” If you want to take over because you need more land to feed your people, you’re probably not going to set fire to the grain fields. On the other hand, if you’re fighting because you want to exterminate the others
You can also think about questions of honour and rules of engagement here, because “why” is all about putting limits to how far you generals are willing to go. (Note: Willing. They may not go that far if they see no reason to or they may go further, in which case you get character conflict, but then that starts running into “Who”.)
In this case: It’s the Roman Empire under Trajan, they want to take over Dacia. They’re not all that particular about how they do so but would prefer to kill as few people as possible in order to sell them as slaves and make a profit. (Never forget about money. There’s a saying in French, “l’argent est le nerf de la guerre”, which means that money is the driving force behind wars. Can’t make war without money.)
Who: “Who’s running this show, exactly?” Who are your generals? Are they honourable, are they ruthless? Do they think inside the box? Do they think outside the box? Do they break the box?
There’s not a lot of people who can break the box. Hannibal Barca did it at Cannae and that’s why he’s remembered as the father of strategy. Of course, since then the box has expanded to include “the encirclement of a greater army by a lesser army”, so you can’t break it again doing that. The box is relative.
It might also be worthy to consider if the generals are familiar with their opponents. If they know how the other thinks and the other doesn’t, then the one who does know has an advantage. If they both know how the other thinks and they each know the other knows, this can devolve into mindgames really easily. Take the following incident between Zhuge Liang and Sima Ya, in third century CE China: Zhuge Liang doesn’t have the army to defend the city against Sima Ya, so he has his men open the gates. Sima Ya, knowing that Zhuge Liang would never do such a thing unless it was a trap, withdraws his army in fear of an ambush, which is what Zhuge Liang was counting on. Mindgames!
Then you could start looking into chains of command and if there are proxies involved, all of which complicates things: the more links there are between the person giving the orders and the people carrying them out and the longer those links take (radios vs runners) the more time there’ll be between when an order is given and when it’s carried out. This can prove fatal. The less responsive your army is, the more likely you are to be defeated by an enemy who knows how you fight.
In this case: It’s Trajan and some Dacian dude. I’m not really familiar with either, so I’m just going to assume that they’re reasonably competent. Because I’m lazy, I will also assume they don’t know each other and so mind games aren’t on the table. Since we’re dealing with Ancient Rome levels of technology, changing the battle plan once the battle is underway will most likely not be happening.
What: Troop numbers and specialty and equipment. “What are we fighting with?” An army that’s 1/3 cavalry will not fight the same way as an army that’s made entirely out of archers. If you’re fighting in vehicles (tanks, spaceships, etc) that changes thing as well. Absolute troop numbers can be very impressive, but often don’t matter as much as people tend to think. Look instead for troop numbers relative to each other.
Equipment is very very important. Technological advances has won more battles than I can count. The Hittites conquered Egypt because they used iron for war instead of bronze. Guns completely changed the face of warfare. As did crossbows and longbows. Ranged weapons in general will change things.
This is also where you want to consider how likely it is that your troops will pull a Sir Robin and run away from a fight. As a rule of thumb, mercenaries will not fight losing battles, because they’re there for the money, so they’ll probably turn tail as soon as it starts looking bad. If your army’s mostly mercenaries, you can’t afford to even look like you’re losing or you’ll end up losing for real. On the other side of the spectrum, a lot of people would rather go down fighting if they’re going to die anyway. People with their backs to the wall will do crazy things. Then there’s everything in the middle, which depends both on culture and the individual character of each soldier, but given peer pressure, just go with what the culture would dictate.
In this case: We know a lot about the Romans and not a lot about the Dacians, but I’m going to assume that by this point in Antiquity, everyone’s got iron weapons and broadly similar weapons. The (unsourced) Wikipedia article gives about 2 Romans for every Dacian and while it is totally unsourced, I’m willing to accept that. My totally-not-based-on-in-depth-research advice for anything involving Romans or Roman-like cultures is that there will be 1 Roman for every opponent during the Kingdom, 1-1.5 Romans for 1 opponent during the Republic and 1.5-2 Romans for 1 opponent during the Empire. This is because of the way the Romans worked and bla bla bla, that’s not the point. And hey, while I’m at it, let’s just take the troop numbers from Wikipedia, so 40k Dacians and 80k Romans.
How: Now you decide who wins and work backwards from that. There’s no one-size-fits-all solution for this, so you just use what you came up with above and try to make it work.
Get out the napkin-slash-Paint again, it’s time for some more drawing. Take your setting map from “Where” and get to drawing.
In this case: The Romans win.
Which is just ridiculous, because the Dacians know the lay of the land. It’s their mountain pass. How do you fail so badly at warfare? But since I’ve decided that both my Romans and my Dacians are competent, I will give the Dacians a good plan that is unfortunately ruined by the Romans’ better plan. (For convenience’s sake, the Dacian army is the Army, in blue, and the Roman army is the Legion, in red.)
The Dacian Plan: Lure the Romans into the pass, then have half the Army attack the rear of the Legion. Keep hacking away at Romans until they’re all dead. (Close off the Thermopylae bottle neck, if you will.)
In pictures:
Part 1: Lure the Legion in
Part 2: Attack rear of Legion
Part 3: Kill the Legion dead.
Good plan, right? Should lead to a bunch of dead Romans. After all, it’s not like they can run uphill.
What about downhill, though?
The Roman Plan: Put people up in the mountain, have part of the Legion be lured in the pass and then attack the Army on three sides (both flanks + front).
In pictures:
Part 1: Let the Army get into the pass.
Part 2: Run downhill shouting ‘Wheeeee!’ or ‘Yahaaaa’ or a warcry of your choice to attack flanks of the Army.
Part 3: Kill the Dacians dead.
(The last part of all battle plans tends to be “Kill the other dudes dead.”)
Let’s see what happens when I throw both battle plans at each other.
Part 1: Legion up in the mountains and down in the pass. Army down in the pass. Army and Legion in the pass have a go at each other. So far both battle plans are happening as they should.
Part 2: The other part of the Army shows up to attack the Roman rear.
Part 3: The Legion up in the mountain splits in two and applies their part of the plan on both part of the Army.
Part 4: The Dacians get dead or injured or enslaved. They lose.
That’s my story, anyway, and I’m sticking to it.
(no subject)
Date: 2016-04-07 11:08 am (UTC)