@@normalusername5223it would depend on how windy it is and whether the battle was stationary or a running engagement but yeah, ever realistic video games can't portray authentic amount of smoke from blackpowder or players would control clouds instead of ships and regiments.
The eagles bring used as anti magic is a great idea. It fits so well with actual roman history with how important the standards were to legions. There are countless stories of legionaries laying down thier lives for the eagle and the retrieval of a lost eagle was regarded as important as the conquest of entire kingdoms . Now more so because it was actually needed to rebuild a lost legion
@@BenDeHarti aktually had q simular idear. Tho mine waa mor physicaly like basily a Metall/ copper wird tree od Sone sort, so the magic spherea hit them and Explored in Front. Simular to care armour on Tanks.
One could also look at the Palladium from Rome's Aeneid, which might have a similar effect, just for an entire city (and thus would of course remain in Rome at all times). Maybe, where the legionnaires themselves carry the eagle standards for magical protection, the artillery support or field camps get smaller copies of the Palladium, wooden figurines of Minerva, to protect them from the magic of the Gauls? And maybe, a legion falling out of favour with Minvera for a certain deed or lack of piety and veneration could lose said protection...
@@BenDeHart Indeed. I`m currently running a campaign loosely based on the Roman Legions/WW2. Only with the military training giving the Archery Fighting Style, Sharp Shooter Feat, and the Crossbow Expert Feat, along with all Military issue crossbows having the Artificer Repeating Shot Infusion. I really like the idea of the Eagle having an Anti-Magic Field in order to protect the legions... I am stealing this, thank you!
These Elves in the Battle of the Five Armies are not the Elves led by Elrond of Rivendell, they are Sylvan Elves of Mirkwood. They're seen as less cultured, and in the War of the Last Alliance charged their lightly armored infantry against Sauron's Orc lines, getting their King killed in the process. I know the movies didn't cover that, but the lore is there.
I always chalked it up to the dwarves have very highly developed tactics and the elves having better individual martial skills, and that scene demonstrated the two different martial doctrines attempting to cooperate. Basically, the elves seem more skilled in combat as individuals, but lack large scale tactics and teamwork. The dwarves make up for their lack of individual combat prowess with excellent teamwork and good tactics and war machines. That shield wall was immaculate.
@@GusCraft460 That is a fair interpretation, but in Lore the Elves from Mirkwood are much more adept at asymetrical warfare, as their home and their normal battleground is the great forest of Mirkwood. The Noldor elves (who by the end of the 3rd age are very few, and are the ones we see at the start of the fellowship) have always performed way better in what is essentially symetrical warfare, but unfortunatly those days have long passed. There are no more Noldor to perform a great host as those of the 1st age, and no great battles against the darkness to fight in the way they fight.
Oropher's death was like three thousand years before the movie timeline. The silliness of the shot really doesn't make lore from outside the movie cover its mistakes, just gives them flimsy excuses to make all the elves act like fools.
I liked the dwarves in battle of the 5 army's they handled the elves very well and the same with the orks. that Falinks would have been good if the stupid elves didn't jump it right as the lines were colliding.
Except this battle also happened in the books and these elves didn't do that. Since the author of the books knew a thing or two about military operations.
Ditches will also damage the land, and movies are often borrowing land to shoot on and some places will restrict the types of landscaping that may be done. Especially if it is public land.
TV-wise, you solve that issue the “fix it in post” way by placing down a tarp on the ground (long series of tarps) and you tell the attacking side to treat it as a ditch, and then CGI it as a ditch later.
Counter point Some film set went to an authentic made village, heart and soul put fourth to make it authentic and just as magnificent as back then The set showed up and throught medieval people had to be dirtier bc of stereotype and decided to trash the place, lamps nailed everywhere outside, building covered in mud and straw, windows removed or hidden The film set were the unhygienic ones They then decide to cover mud dripping leather everywhere They trash a good site with the trashing making it less authentic
You have a budget for a movie or an episode, battle scenes take only a tiny portion of screen time, but also eat a large portion of the budget. Imagine if you add ditches, tactics, and other unnecessary things, the battle would take entire screen time, probably multiplying the expenses. Not only you would not be able to make a profit, but your career in the industry would end. Fantasy, adventures, and actions are all about characters, and actors. Documentaries about wars, battles, and ditches.
Remember kids in the battle of the five armies movie, the DWARVES totally tried to play it tactically, quickly setting up a phalanx position against their lighter armored charging foes. We do not hate on the Dwarves, we hate on the Elves. Who let their pride demand them to leap over a defended position to out glory the enemy. Even when forced to charge the Dwarves still maintained formation in a double-piked battleline.
My favorite part of that fight was that strategically and tactically best faction were orcs. They used banners and horns to symbol different tactics and they attacked from multiple different routes. Heck, orcs should have won that war by any means. If elves, dwarves and humans wouldn't have had plot armor and if legolas wouldn't have skill to defy gravity then better side would have won.
Honestly I reckon the elves could've been used as either a set of flank guards or just go back to their bloody bows, which you know, is the most unifying stereotypical elf thing there is. Could've have even provided cover the humans running back to Dale, BUT NO, THEY HAD BE ALL 'AH WATCH MEH PROOF MY COOLNESS, AH' (sorry, for using caps, I cant figure out the way to make the letters thin and slanted slightly)
@@focusofthefuture8689 Definitely bows, I mean heck, we are speaking of Mirkwood elves aka best archers ever. Not to mention that ranged weapons have been most devastating in battlefields starting from first bows and javelins (I think that it's unnecessary to say ending point ;) Then again I guess using working and realistical actions in movies like these wouldn't look as "cool".
As usual, almost everyone ignores the most important, but most boring part of warfare. Logistics. And here big changes will happen. Flying units can monitor the terrain. It means no assaults and ambushes, troops sneaking away/by. Magic can change accessibility, rivers, swamps, rocks need not be an obstacle, at least not for smaller units. Magic can make food and water more readily available, by purifying bad water and making grass/leaves edible. Starvation can therefore be ruled out in certain situations. Which means that an army can sit longer behind the walls. Or the army can make its way on otherwise impossible paths, such as the desert and vast wastelands. All this only applies to humans in fantasy worlds. Other creatures provide even more possibilities. The wars will look very different depending on the type of creatures that face each other.
Quite funny since skirmishes are the Battle scenes that are best to Showcase because you can Showcase your Heroes more and have more loose fighting,hell the typical Fantasy free for all melee IS perfect for skirmishes
This is relevant but not nearly as much as you think. Logistics are a major issue for real world armies because they rely on massive sizes. In reality, in a D&D world, the strongest thing a powerful kingdom could field would be a party of a few high levels.
Ahh, logistics. Honestly became my favourite part of battles/wars when I first learned about it. And something I stupidly never considered until a UA-cam video talked about it years ago (forgot which one it was). Just something so simple yet an important backbone that is often overlooked for flashier and cooler things (which is understandable), but is always present no matter if it was never mentioned. Fuck yeah, logistics. It's great!
Ambushes are still a thing in modern warfare where we have drones and satellites XD Honestly, the best way to imagine fantasy battles is just to look at how modern warfare is done.
@@eadgyth5009 Partly true. Because it depends on the size of the forces. Small forces can hide and ambush. But real armies can't hide if you have air surveillance. The big difference to modern warfare is that in modern times everyone has ranged weapons and movement is so much faster. But probably movement can be faster when air surveillance can prevent assault. Because then the army does not need to get into marching formation. In the past, 20 km per day was the normal movement for an army, in good terrain. In the past, you had to fight in tight formations to avoid being cut down by the cavalry. Which makes it much more difficult to hide and fast movements.
i think with magic and giant creatures? ranged attacks would be constant. why risk putting any of your giant creatures in melee? yeah sure, we all love the look of a giant swinging a club and clearing 20 dudes with a single swing. But realistically, giant creatures are huge targets. They'd be focused and targeted into oblivion without proper protection. Most generals would be using their giants to throw boulders right next to the mages, throwing fireballs or putting up shields to block other incoming boulders. we all like to imagine fantasy battles as being even more melee centric, but i think in reality, they'd be the exact opposite.
Surely that's really dependant on how magic works in your fantasy setting? For example, Narnia, LoTR and GoT all don't have the D&D style Ranged Magic. And even in a D&D style world, Anti-Magic Fields often exist. Having a counterspell wizard or Anti-Magic Field generating magical item carried by your unit of giants might well mean they should be upfront with some sort of Pole or Flail to take an incredible amount of ground. Magical Superiority as a concern in addition to Air is a definite topic though.
Depends on setting tho. If sour magic is way better at ehancing physical attributes like strenght and durability than throwing fire around, then barely anyone is gonna bother.
You have to consider that martial technology doesn't advance in only one direction. Usually the weapons get better so the defense has to get better so the weapons have to get better so the defense has to get better. In terms of magic you would probably see schools dedicated to defensive and offensive arts developing counters to each other. In my D&D setting the more powerful mages are like artillery engaging in long range duels of spell and counter spell. Sometimes one side's mages win and call down something like a meteor swarm on the enemy successfully, other times the battle line pushes into the mage's camp and wipes them out, most often a strike team (adventuring party) gets behind the enemy lines and disrupts their defenses so their own side can land a meteor swarm.
@@BenDeHartPaolini did so much research and put so much time into his magic system to not break anything and make it flow. I'm in the middle of reading his sci-fi book now, and it does the same thing. It's really amazing
The inheritance series had the most realistic use of mages in it. Instead of being blasters, they were there to prevent other mages from obliterating their unit. I loved that detail.
The "ditch" argument is the reason I quite like the military stuff in the Stormlight Archive. The Parshendi are a race who live on a bunch of raised plateaus with huge cracks in the earth separating them. They're so damn hard to fight because they literally live in a place made up of thousands of naturally-formed ditches. And a huge part of the first few books is spent exploring the various ways how their enemies (the protagonists) even get to them.
Slaves carrying flat bridges with no cover or armor never made much sense to me, though. Then when the protagonist eventually figures out they can carry the bridges differently to give themselves a little cover, the book portrays this as a bad thing, because... they're also supposed to be bait for the enemy to focus on, and that only works if they have no cover. I guess? It's no way to fight a war. Build a covered bridge on wheels, and push it to the cracks. Drop the bridge, slide in a new one and push the contraption on to the next crack. The covered bridge would also cover your invading forces hiding just behind it, so win-win. Or at the very least put some shields on the bridge to protect the bridge crews.
@@berserkasaurusrex4233 Dalinars bridges offered protection to the people carrying them, the reason Saadia(god I hope im remembering these names properly) uses bridges which dont is because they're faster, which lets him get to the very valuable and important gem-hearts quicker.
(spoilers for Way of Kings below, ye be warned) Yee, building from what lonecustodes said, in the first book of Stormlight the Alethi are very much *not* fighting a war, and that's the whole problem. The Parshendi are, while the Alethi are competing in the Gem Heart olympics. The unarmoured slave runs are very dumb indeed, unless all you care about is getting to the plateaus fastest. Which they do. You have Dalinar, who has sensible, slow, unwieldy bridge towers that are dragged by oxen and beasts to get into position, very safe, very secure, very very slow. Then you have Sadeas who basically wrote the manual for them on how to use disposable chaff (bridgemen) to maintain speed at the cost of lives you never cared for in the first place. If they were fighting conventional war objectives or trying to win the battle that'd be one thing, but they haven't been trying that since the opening year or so of the conflict. All they care about is getting to the Gem Hearts and securing that bag, no matter how many slaves have to die to do so. They can always get more slaves. Hell, the entire first book is Dalinar desperately trying to wrangle a bag of feral Alethi high prince cats, all of whom only care about themselves and making their own bread, into one cohesive force that actually wants to end the war instead of prolong it and lose ever more lives for money. The book itself, i don't think tries to portray Kaladin being smart and using his bridge as a barricade as a bad thing. Or more, it does, because that's the prevailing feeling amongst the camp he's a slave at. How dare he not consider himself disposable, everyone else does. That's just Sadeas' camp though, and sure there's a couple other princes who copied the methodology, but the other primary character in the Alethi conflict (Dalinar) spends the book reinforcing the fact that the high princes have lost sight of the righteous casus belli they once had in favour of loot and will throw away countless 'lesser' lives to gain said loot. A viewpoint he vehemently disagrees with and will ultimately sacrifice a priceless artifact for. 'what is the cost of a life?' If anything, i think the book goes out of its way to showcase the stupidity of sacrificing lives for gain like that instead of doing the smart thing and focusing on tangible, war ending objectives like Dalinar would try to do (and gets betrayed doing). Especially when the value of those lives when given the chance to excel without fear of punishment or sufferance under a slavemaster increases exponentially through the series. TL;DR: Ultimately, the books agree with berserk. It *is* dumb to do what they did with the bridgemen in order to win a war. They weren't trying to win a war in the first place, and thats the major plot thread of book one.
@@generalpumpkingaming To be fair to myself, it's been ages since I read the book and I'm struggling to remember much of anything apart from the bridges and the magic armor. I vaguely remember something about glass beads with magic battery powers, and the little sprite things that come out of everything (can't remember what they call them in the book), and how the planet's ecology is like some sort of bizarre alien dry sealife due to the unique weather. That's about it. The actual plot is mostly a miss. I've got the sequels, but I'd have to reread the first to get back into it, and that's a choir I'm not up for anymore, lol. I've still got like seven Malazan books to get through first.
@@berserkasaurusrex4233 MBotF is a beautiful series and i hope you enjoy it, it's my #1 fantasy series pick so far and i re-read it at least once a year for the feels. My comment wasn't meant to be criticism nor indictment tbf, you were 100% correct and the WoK agrees with you. The bridgemen is a dumb, sacrificial system that wastes lives for the pursuit of resource gain. P.S: The sprites are called Spren. Windspren, Honorspren, Gloryspren etc etc
People like to jump to cool offensive things in combat, but it's rare to see people think about defense properly. Castles had all kinds of crazy layered defenses. Some of my favorite battles as a dm came from sitting down and thinking about common magical attacks and how my baddies would defend against them. This is especially true of dragon lairs. You have a hyper intelligent magic creature with centuries to think about how they will protect their precious hoard. They aren't gonna let you stroll up and challenge them for it. Unless if your bard has some good taunts perhaps. Anyhow, you've earned a subscriber.
Which is weird... Cause like, if you _are_ focusing on offence... Then like... You still need to know what the defenders are doing... How you assault a castle is just as important as how you defend it... cause it can't be defended, then _why are you even taking it?_
The books in Morrowind are nice about that. Abuses of waterbreathing, army-wide buffs/debufss, levitation, invisibility, summoning... And of course, there's the game Dominions, THE fantasy armies battle simulator on the logistical, strategic and tactical side.
Oh Lawd, Dominions! Where you could focus your mage corps on blastomancy or mass buffs of solid troops. ....And then curse yourself for poor order of operations and/or bizarre luck that is normal in the game. It will forever be a classic.
When your army's far better warriors than the clumsy cyclopes you're facing except their subterranian Olm horrors are psychically attacking your minds so your astrologer casts an Astral ward to protect you but their deep seer casts the Curse of Stones upon the entire battlefield so you can't catch your breath in your armor but it's okay because your living God and master (A horrible thing from the underworld) just summoned a throng of demons to fight in your stead except the enemy prophet just banished them all so he conjures an unnatural winter and the enemy slows down but another deep seer extinguishes the fucking sun it's the middle of the day how and now the frontline is just a mass of skeletons fighting eachother and then you feel your bones beginning to crack oh god oh fuck-
I just played Dom5 yesterday after a long brake and abused the hell out of simplest tactic in the game; strong line of Abysian infantry across the battlefield backed up by fire drakes. Fire immune heavy infantry and fire breathing lizards are too OP combo, pls nerf. 90+% of my casualties were single drakes that managed to get in front of the infantry.
@@IamOutOfNamesI’m late but that only works early. Even as ulm I’d be able to challenge that turn 10-15. Though that wouldn’t work if you rushed me so I guess it has its place
Tolkien simply clips Bilbo the narrator on the head with a rock after describing how they all line up. Then a dwarf recounts the battle in broad terms as Bilbo jogs to Thorins deathbed.
8:57 The reason why the Romans disliked bows initially was probably related to Europe having a pretty wet climate in general, and their enemies mostly relying on shields instead of armored breastplates. So instead of practicing archery for a decade, which is necessary to become an effective battlefield archer, they preferred to arm their skirmishers (so, younger soldiers) with javelins, which are much easier to learn and are more effective against shields, and hire professional archers as mercenaries instead whenever that made sense. However, in the Eastern Roman Empire composite bows quickly gained popularity thanks to their compact size, the overall drier climate of that area, and the Romans being introduced to the concept of horse archers by the Parthians.
The best use of magic in fantasy army warfare I've seen was from the Sword of Truth series by Terry Goodkind. The primary role of Wizards in warfare was to be the "magic against magic" so that the regular soldiers would be the "steel against steel". That is, wizards would create magic to give their side an edge, and the wizards on the other side would then counter that magic, then try to give their own side an edge, which would be countered. So a battle ended up looking like and functioning as if there were no magic being used at all. There is a scene where the seasoned wizard is lecturing the other wizards and sorceresses who were enthusiastically intent to just consume the other army with fire, about how its such a basic bitch strategy that the enemy will already have a counter in place that would end up sending the fire back to the caster.
How good is the Legend of the Seeker series of television? My father just absolutely thinks the name: Zeddicus Zu'l Zorander, is the coolest thing ever.
Just shows how great "frieren: beyond journeys end " is. "Modern attack magic" evolved as a counter to a shield spell that in turn evolved to an attack spell that could pierce any defence that existed before, while also beeing super fast and mana efficient.
Right! The whole reason people don't use the most efficient spell is cause it's not as good against physical things and a wide variety of magic is used cause when spells become too common they become researched and easily countered. It makes perfect sense as to why niche spells would be seen simply to avoid your magic being known
that's how actually real life is , for example drone is become popular tool to destroy a tank cheaply , but by the time going anti drone technology also developed to counter it but because the anti drone is still expensive it's not used very often so the drone is still relevan
@@chocho6766 You can say that to guns too. At first, guns can only shoot one bullet at a time, and now guns can goes pew-pew as long as their ammoes allows.
In the Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian, they made a ditch to stop the enemy cavalry from finishing their charge. Their momentum was broken, they were still enough for archers to do a ton of damage, they were charged from the front, and from 2 angles in the rear. This is what every total war player wants to see in a movie. It is our wet dream.
That is one thing I like about the Narnia movies. While obviously far from perfect they do show some interesting strategies in battle. Bombing runs, using a firewall to cover allies retreat, and as you say collapsing the ground to prevent a cavalry charge
Regarding the question you poised of formation fighting and things such as magic or aerial beasts - Warhammer: Total War may answer part of it. In historical Total War games a lot of players would tend to group their units pretty tightly as artillery units - while powerful - would still likely only hit 1-2 units at a time unless you had a very packed formation. In WH:TW with magic existing and some spells being quite wide-spanning both for debuffs and offensive spells a lot of players have shifted to having a more spaced out 'checkerboard' style of formation so that those same spells will only devastate/debuff one unit, while still mitigating wider damage. Similarly, defending archers and artillery from cavalry was generally easier in the historical games as long as you could block their route or have your own cavalry to contest their charge before they could flank you. With WH:TW you will have to keep melee units in reserve next to your archers to jump in and help their fight, and you'd want to spread your archers out so a single aerial unit can't as easily tie down all of your ranged units. Flying units could also harass anti-large units (IE: Spearmen) and bring them out of a braced formation and make them vulnerable to cavalry charges
"In WH:TW with magic existing and some spells being quite-wide wide-spanning both for debuffs and offensive spells a lot of players have shifted to having a more spaced out 'checkerboard' style of formation so that those same spells will only devastate/debuff one unit, while still mitigating wider damage." Are you referring to Total War: Warhammer? If so, I don't think it's a perfect example for this because realistically, cavalry could just charge the mages down. Since there are no defensive lines in the scenario you described, they can easily slip past. Magic also takes fairly long to cast, so it's easy enough to avoid for fast units and once the cavalry has reached the mage, the latter would just die. Unless the latter is a monster that is very resilient, of course, but even then that monster should be bogged down by the cavalry and unable to cast any major or long range magic. I honestly don't know why this isn't a proper game mechanic and instead even human mages who don't wear armor can tank a charge of an entire cavalry battalion while throwing out a bunch of devastating spells in succession. On top of that, a lot of magic there feels less like the magic should work and more like it is built around providing a fun and at least mostly balanced gameplay mechanic. Of course you could also argue that the mages are protected by infantry, but a single infantry unit won't be able to hold out long while heavy cavalry charges into them, especially if it's multiples units of heavy cavalry. Fast monsters could also do the job, especially something like a Jet Lions with their innate magic resistance. Or how about another unit from Grand Cathay: the Celestial Lions. With their missile resistance, they could just disregard enemy archers and such while flying straight at the mages. Once there, they'd cause enough terror the send the infantry to rout before mauling the mage, then taking off again before any other troops can bog them down in melee, something that could easily happen against an enemy using standard formations.
@@firekeeper1870 Net of amyntok exists and now your heavy cavalry cant move while getting shot and gunpowder weapons also exist so your stone statues are going to crumble. If fast monsters or cavalry could've done the trick mankind would've already fell in the setting.
@@firekeeper1870 i mean but then the named "mage" ist an undying vam Carstein on a Zombie Dragon. Charge that with you'r few Knights... But i mean sniping the wnamy mage to reduce loss IS a normal strategy in These Game Just need some Thing strong enoth that gets the Job done before He decemated you'r half you'r army. So defending you'r mage will need to be part of you'r Battle plan.
@@firekeeper1870 If your mage is on a eagle or a mutant rat ogre or a dragon or a basically a trex or giant zombie crabs good luck charging them with Calvary
I ran a game that was set in the D&D universe if magic had replaced technology and pushed the timeline up to World War 1. Quickly figured out that communication and information was *far* more important than a fireball. If one fireball was the equivalent of an artillery shell, then having a caster that can only cast that two or three times is not all that useful. But, get that same wizard to cast find familiar and invisibility on them to have them scout and report back with impunity? That's way more useful. It also ended up playing well into the adventuring party dynamic, as now the party were far more like a special ops team with heavy firepower used strategically, because large formations of troops were still too juicy a target for precision AoE attacks.
This is actually something that happens in Saga of Tanya the Evil. Mages have artillery spells like Fireball, and can fly, but they obviously have counter-mages, and trenches that have enemies in them whom are hard to see. They therefore use scouting mages to find enemy mages and important people in trenches. The scouting mages call in strikes from the artillery mages, or for backup against enemy mages in a dogfight. There are a bunch of other magics in the series too, such as illusion magic, and shields. Very interesting stuff.
@@ThugHunterfromIsrael Yeah, Saga of Tanya the Evil is one of my favorite anime and I definitely used it as an inspiration for my campaign. One of the lessons I took from the show was the idea that mages are great for taking territory, but they are trash at holding it. Such a good show.
@@legomacinnisinc if you liked it, and you like deeper insights into strategy, psychology, etc, you should definitely read the novels. It's longer, more in depth, and goes very deep on the lore, worldbuiling, real life parallels, and Tanya's own character.
When it comes to Monsters, I think Warhammer handles it pretty well, Monsters while common enough are pretty rare in military and most have handlers that actively accompany the monster into combat, or example Skaven Packmasters handle practically all of the warbeasts Clan Moulder makes even while on the battlefield, and it's especially important with Rat Ogres because without Packmasters driving them into the enemy, they will generally run amok and be as much of a danger to the Skaven army as they are to the enemy. The Lizardmen aren't shy about bringing the various beasts of Lustria into battle either, from Cold Ones either just sent onto the Battlefield or used as mounts, or bringing to bear a Dread Saurian one of if not the largest single largest Land Predator in the Old World, they even mount magical artillery on the backs of some of the beasts they bring into battle. And in every Warhammer Fantasy Stratagy Game a monster colliding with your lines usually becomes a "kill it now", or you risk a breach being made, the Empire's standard answer for Giants for example is to just roll up Cannons to deal with it since they don't actually have many (tameable) monsters within their lands, the best they got are Demi-Gryphs and Pegasus and maybe the occasional Griffon because Griffons are picky with their riders, and aside from Deathclaw the Griffon Karl Franz rides they don't get particularly massive and even then Deathclaw is far from the largest creature out there. But monsterous creatures would likely excel as linebreakers, since sure you may be protected from Magic and your Frontlines are solidy built but I doubt the people goading a Hydra to run in your direction are going to care overly much for either of those things.
The tactic of sending a few specialty troops armed with large, 2h weapons into an enemy formation to cause chaos, confusion and generally help to break the enemy formation up, slow/stop their momentum/charge and be an overall huge threat that had to be dealt with before [the goblin charge] hit the shield-wall/pike-formation/whatever is not a new thing. I believe the Dacian Falx was a particularly good example of such a strategy designed to work against Roman troops' tactics (much like the Dwarves'). I'm not saying the elves leaping over the 2-shields-high-wall and into the massive hoard of charging goblins was a particularly good idea, and it certainly was not written anywhere by Tolkien afaik, however it does seem like a semi-plausible strategy given the goblins and [vampire] bat swarms greatly outnumbered the "good guys", so a sacrifice of a few dozen elves to slow down the initial giant tidal wave of goblins might have been worth it, so that the battle wouldn't have basically ended as soon as it began. Just my 2c playing Devil's Advocate.
A good story starts with practicality. Build your world rules… Then FOLLOW them! These are natural laws to your characters. They know success is learning how those laws operate, and intelligent characters plan accordingly (unintelligent characters are fun too, but make sure your audience knows that’s the case if it is). It is always better to break a flimsy scene with hard laws of the universe it exists in, then to let your audience do it. That way you have a chance to build a better scene to replace it.
I think D&D inherently models skirmishing based combat and you can't directly Port that over to battles. When the creators made Fireball they thought of it hitting 10 people, not 80. So one would think that the power would be dispersed over a larger group of people. However more importantly, bows if directly ported over mechanically would dominate combat. A short bow from a distance is just as dangerous as a short sword in melee. Heavy knight Lance charges do barely more damage than a barrage of arrows. Not to mention, war bows in D&D don't even require strength unlike real life. So training a bunch of archers would be a lot faster. The world be absolutely and unquestionably dominated by horse archers.
So it would be like real life? Like...horse archers are famously not an easy thing for medieval/ancient armies to deal with, except from behind elaborate defenses or castle walls.
It's weird because D&D was actually originally a mod for the large-scale medieval simulation wargame Chainmail (which is why health is called hit points), but as the editions go on it goes from simulation to what is essentially an MMORPG but on a table that emphasizes just staying in one spot spamming abilities and actively discourages using real tactics, especially for melee. Afaik tho it's kinda impossible to design a system that accounts for both individual and mass scale engagements without either massively simplifying one or bogging them both down in the minutae of complex rules, and even then it's very easy to break the game with unbalanced rules. Even Pathfinder 2E starts breaking when it comes to mass scale despite otherwise being almost perfectly balanced.
@@Syndie77-gk4xk In D&D ranged weapons can just mow people down. Like if you put 2 groups of 10 archers 100 feet away from each other. The fight would end in a minute. But if you were to scale it up it would be horrifying. Battles historically lasted hours.
The thing about D&D combat is that in D&D it's commonplace for people to survive a half dozen hits or more with no significant impairment, which is going to have a significant impact on the tactical calculus.
I recall reading a splatbook that specifically delved into how things like magic would operate in large-scale warfare. And this is from the 3rd edition era, where magic was much more powerful. The most useful spells for a wizard on the battlefield (and, incidentally, the best way to bypass anti-magic standards) are those that do not actually target the enemy. Sure, you might blow away a couple of dozen men with a fireball, but grease or soften earth and stone directed to the right point of the battlefield at the right time can completely neutralise an entire enemy unit. Or, you can use illusion magic to conceal one of your units until it is time to ambush or convince the enemy they have been outmaneuvered. One of the uses of magic in warfare that has always stuck with me is actually from the Elder Scrolls, where a commander had alteration mages cast water breathing on their heavily armoured shock troops, who then simply walked across the bed of a lake to attack from an unexpected direction.
Here in Brazil we have D&D "adjacent" rpg named "Tormenta RPG", in there they have a minotaur empire that heavilly uses roman inspiration, they even have magic classes that work together as a formation
Tormenta é uma m****, ao mesmo tempo que tem umas sacadas dessas, tem reinos com nome de chocolate e menininhas mágicas de anime e um paladino transformista. É um cenário que nunca soube o que queria ser, com muito potencial perdido.
Absolutely spot on. This video is more than worthy of a subscribe. Three things i believe any story needs: -Weight. Any interaction, from smallest to the most grand, needs to have impact, and the more emphasis you put into making it believable, the more youll get out of it. -Natural believability. Just showing things as they are, natural and normal, without fanfare or dramatization, is another quality in it of itself. -Continuity. Sticking to your guns and making sure the lore/the universe you created stays true to what its intended to be will be worth many times more than that single "cool moment". (this is like the LOTR battle argument) Awesome video. Cheers.
1:00 brb buying a ditch 1:15 I found this more funny than it probably actually was 2:15 ahh yes of course (I've never seen the Hobbit movies) 2:57 fucking elves 3:38 photoshop battlemap ftw (brother bear you HAVE Warhammer Total War) 5:23 nah that's nerd shit Good gravy Napoleon broadsiding the Pyramids is so lame 6:48 nah 7:06 because the Forgotten Realms is ass! 7:09 ....oh 9:00 I too have played Rome Total War Smashing video Benny Boy
I think the roman army would be full of artificers - entire core of them in fact - that would have a lots of spells, tricks and items to support the Roman Legion. For example, when dealing with flying unit, not only will they hire flying aarakocra auxiliary, they would probably have a few expert units equiped with boot of flying to deal with that threat.
thats ceative, the thing is tho, that if flying beast are like cavallry, then they would absolutly dominate warfare, even more thant catafracts in our timeline, unless somthing somthing magic. Airpower with only medival tech as counter mesures is just unstoppible. even with counter messure, why woulnt an massive empire just focus on air power and counter messures against the counter messures itselve? Whats the point of infatrie if you can bomb enemy formations into oblivian? What defence has a decenterlised government against a proffesional airforce except for its onw flying nobility? What defence does a fleet have against flying beast except for its own? What advantage does an infatrie based army have against a flying one? A Hundret flying beast that are unapposed could defeat an army of 10000. Air power especialy in the form of flying beasts is mutch more felixble and manuverible than infatrie ever will be. What use will the heavy infatrie be when the enemy revuses to come down and instead just drops rocks on your dense formation? What use will the heavy infanrtie be when the enemy burns your crops villages and unprotected towns while your army is on campain? Rome was lucky that they didnt encounter that mutch heavy cav, especialy in the wars against alexanders succeors. Still in the end the romas addopted a cavallry aproach.
In high magic settings with a lot of destructive magic armies would need to emphasize discipline. Soldiers in the 17th - 19th century were expected to stay in formation and take it when under artillery fire. If the magical firepower is even more intense than that small unit tactics make more sense.
i think guerilla tactics and more chaotic fights overall would be far more common in a magical fantasy world because of the shear variety of different types of troops. Imagine, an army sets up a proper defensive fortress with shield walls. All it really takes to counter that is one experienced wizard on a fast mount with any kind of large scale area attack spell, like a meteor shower or just a bunch of mustard gas. Although, now saying that, I see your point about how there's so many interesting ways things could be countered; all it takes to counter that one wizard is some other wizard archer who has homing arrows or something. Overall though, I still imagine battles would quickly devolve into chaos when there's so many spells and counter-spells that could theoretically exist for every situation.
There would not be chaos; you would need to think it through carefully. If a wizard could destroy a castle in 15 minutes, no one would even bother to build one.
@@ThePawcios I don't understand your point. If there are no castles to defend, would that not mean battles would be less organised, since there are no proper defensive positions to hold and no defenses to defend them? and would that not make it more chaotic?
@@cooiecub Nope, what castles have to the organization on batles? Please check more how histrorically battles were carried out, there are plenty of examples. I will give you one. In XVII century eastern eaurope battlefield was dominated by cavalry while in the west they used pikemens. Pikemens and early guns forced to construction of star fortreces while in eastern Europe mobile cavalry lead to open battles where star fortresses are useless. Therfore in eastern Europe you wont find many star fortraces :P When one side started behaving chaotic and was looking. Most of the people died not in the engagement of two battle formations but in the moment when one side was mentally broken and started to run.
If magic is the dominant form of combat, and can trash mundane fighters that easily, why on Earth would anyone train in mundane combat? If you want to fight, you study combat magic. And if you want an army, you invest in wizards. Unless magic has some very stringent limits, there is nothing stopping it from just becoming the dominant military system, everywhere. And there is no reason such a system would be chaotic. Far from it. Because... well, you haven't defined any bounds on what these hypothetical wizards can do. Who's to say a castle couldn't be defended by the wizards inside, maintaining a defensive shield or ward? Or if castles are danger-magnets, what about defensive structures that are shorter but deeper, like those built during the Early Modern period? Fortifications designed to withstand bullets and cannonry. Even if all static defences are non-viable, you might still see formations of wizards on a battlefield. Groups of casters operating as cohesive units under fire, drilled and disciplined to fight with combined magic of all kinds. Again, just like early firearm infantry in the Early Modern period. And if long-range communication magic is a thing, then warfare might even slide straight into WW2. With dispersed military divisions fighting along country-spanning frontlines, and independent tactical units as small as platoons, squads, or even fireteams. You really cannot come to any conclusions about how much magic would influence a battlefield, unless you define some very clear rules about what the magic can actually do.
@@tbotalpha8133Just look at how bunkers can withstand huge amount off firepower. I think the amount of tunnel warfare that we would see would be crazy. With of course the dwarfs being highly sought after for it's construction. (1 of the reasons we don't see it as much in our world is because how slow and how many resources it takes to dig these tunnels, but in a magic world we might even see in a field battle. I believe the Warhammer fantasy Skaven have a mechanic that proof my point. Since being able to outflank the enemies troops is of huge tactical and strategic value. You can't think of warfare in only 2 dimensions anymore. Going through the sky is great and all, but you can easily be seen, tunnelling on the other hand.) So not only would there be magic to counter all/most of the magic that would be used against them. Requiring you to be sneaky and making infiltration the name of the game. Detecting infiltrators would also be key to not getting nuked into oblivion if 1 does manage to sneak past. I think it all really depends on how you build the fortifications. Making important to turn it into sections, so that 1 section falling doesn't mean the whole thing is lost. Installing blast doors, choke points, maze like structures, that only the defenders know exactly where and how to go anywhere since magic you could have the lair change itself constantly along pre-established patterns that the defending troops have to know. The biggest question is: how rare is magic, because the more common it is, the more units you will have that can counter it. Other questions may involve it's potency and scale and how hard is it to learn the defensive magic, counter spell and anti-magic. Because if the anti-measures are relatively easy to learn, than defending against magic also becomes a lot easier.
Watching the gryphons dive to drop rocks on a semi massed group of enemies exposing themselves to arrow fire rather than flying high and dropping the rocks while out of range.
The tactic makes sense, though the scene portrays it badly. When dropped as the gryphon pulls out of a dive the rock would fly at a low angle, crushing through multiple ranks of soldiers and potentially even skipping off the ground to continue flying, essentially turning the gryphons into cannons firing solid shot with pinpoint accuracy. Sure, dropping from altitude would be safer; but when they only have one shot before melee is joined, it's best to maximize the damage and disruption it does.
But how are you making sure the rock is hitting your target? During WW2 bombers had to drop hundreds of bombs in one raid and even still most of them at best hit the same general region. And those are fin stabilised bombs that fall mostly straight down - a big rock has way worse aerodynamics by comparison. This is why to use such strategy your flying units would have to dive down, although it's better if they at least threw something that explodes than just rocks.
@@kindlingking WWII bombers are flying way higher, at a far faster speed. If they are trying to hit something they have a correct widow to score a hit measured in the total size of the object divided by the ground speed of the bomber, at 450km/hr that's 125m/s or a target 125m long they have 1s to drop a bomb and hit it. At bombing altitude 7400m which is as high as they can fly and still have enough lift to carry their bomb load you have a 39s fall time at which your bomb will be blown around by any cross wind as it falls 7.4km. If they are US bombers they are using a bombsight made by a conman that didn't work and was objectively worse than just guessing. A gryphon flying at a few hundred meters of altitude at 20m/s dropping rocks on a target hundreds of meters square is going to have much more success at being effective, or at least hitting someone directly. In both cases a dive bomber style will have much better accuracy, with WWII pilots being able to hit single tanks, at the risk of much more ground fire. For the gryphon they have no chance of doing more than marginal harm given their weapon and lack of numbers so they may as well fly high enough to not be subject to any ground fire and just take more runs at the army.
Couple of notes, the elves loosing arrows from behind the dwarves would also be unhistorical. Same with the orc army, they would not have their archers in the rear, not if intended to use them. That style of fighting is another product of Hollywood. Also, just the shooting in mass was not really done except with the English and Janissaries and it may well be that Edward got the idea from the Janissaries as it came after a Crusade. The Mongols sometimes used a variation of it.
in Malazan they more or less have "whoever still has the most soldiers left after the wizards expend their capabilities" as a thing, with casualties upwards of 50% from fire and lightning and giant balls of acid and shit (also the "Heavy infantry" they use are loose, maniple like formations of soldiers with big unwieldy shields and crossbows with small swords if melee is joined, because massing for infantry battle with fireball spells without having some kind of cover to hide behind is utter suicide) A thing I like, this kind of formation: pavis style shields you dig into the ground, heavy crossbows, secondary small shields and short swords, light lance cavalry in the wings, these are great for fighting when armies have magic, because soldiers aren't too concentrated but can still concentrate fire pretty well, but it's also good if you're fighting ogres or giants or minotaurs or whatever because the tall beast will be getting absolutely rocked by your siege weaponry behind you and all of your soldiers laying into them with crossbows, and can only reach 2 or 3 soldiers at a time even with their big oversized monster weapons
I think the fundamental flaw with all of this logic, which is echoed through this comment section, is assuming armies would even exist lmao. He's a question for you - why does everybody obsess over armies? A level 20 fighter is more or less immune to damage, on a battlefield they would be the equivalent of a god given life. Having a horde of chaff is more or less a useless endeavor
@@iain-duncan Not all fantasy heroes are demigod dnd 5e level 20 tier, bro. I think most characters like this would not exist in many fantasy settings, and in many others they would be extremely rare. One man armies suck at one of the primary role of all armies : holding the land. So your assumption woud only make sense in a world where demigod supersoldiers are common enough. In that case tho, you’d probably still create armies made out of these superhumans. A fantasy setting can, if it wants it, be more grounded in reality. In GoT the peak of a warrior’s performance would be someone like Jaime Lannister or Barristan Selmy. They are the lvl 20 fighters of their world (even if in absolute terms they aren’t). Yet put Jaime infront of a spear line and he will die.
you would want horse archers as light calavly, but heavy calvaly for lance. bc against a loose formation these would be insane. Mages would take the role of canons basicly. so you could also get some kind of pike block warfare, potencially.
I absolutely loved this video. You said you could spend hours talking about Roman to Dnd analogues and I would probably listen along the whole time. Your ideas of how you have combined those two worlds was wonderful and inspired my own thoughts too, thanks so much for creating this video!
Was thinking about this a few years back and came up with: "magic has to have an exponential range function", it's really hard to push out the range of your spell effect but up close is pretty easy; and: "while mages are fairly common, powerful mages are very rare", to cut down on their systemic use in society and warfare.
As a former soldier, mold earth is my favorite spell in dnd. Anyone who has spent any time on a Shovel or e-tool will understand. 5 cubic feet in 6 seconds!?!?! My God yes!!! If the defenders have it and the attackers don't, then my money is on the defender. If the attackers have it and the defenders don't, then no non magical fortification will last very long. Sieges of months become days. If both have it... wowza! Better have some good communications and QRF ready to fill gaps in the lines and secondary fronts.
4:53 Peter Jackson and his crew were not lazy and the battle of the five armies was targeted towards J.R.R Tolkiens story and NOT what Peter Jackson wanted. In fact, his whole team was set to understand that the story of LOTR was based to feel like it is historical fiction.
You’ve answered questions and affirmed ideas that I have for my dnd campaign. Funnily enough the fantasy napoleon trope is part of my campaign and so are the griffon-riders you mentioned. Have my sub, man. Glad I found this channel. 👍
It's a shame that the disastrous GoT final seasons have soured people's opinions of GRR's worldbuilding - almost all of the heinous mistakes made weren't made by him
The trick is not having magic widely available. Still, the Witcher is more of a tale in toned down setting, tale that tries to avoid worldbuilding in general. And Martin still unfairly nerfs dragons because even just that is too op to handle. What strikes me as I think about it is that both setting deal with loss of magic, Witcher in general and asoiaf historically.
the problem with the mentioned (D&D, his example not mine) boundless scenarios IS that there are no limitations in power-scaling/world-building: if there are limitless possibilities that all seem to be unstoppable except for nonsense that is "even crazier" ("oh yeah? you cast meteors on my city?! Well I have the infinity uno-reverse-spell for that!") then it is hard to really invest your time and thought process into it since it there is no point in searching for the "best" strategy. Because there is none. The end-result of it: no body cares about it and it feels somewhat loose, or unreal when fantasy is all about making it feel real.
Ya, these types of mental exercises only work in settings where magic has useful restrictions. If wizards can phase entire armies out of existence, an epic battle should always devolve into skirmish between lvl 20 demigods.
It comes down to physics, basically. Matter and energy can't be created or destroyed, which is why resources are limited, which is what causes conflict. If all of a sudden you can create water out of thin air in infinite quantities and make it disappear with zero effort, there's nothing to really fight over. You've solved the problem. Need to move up a tower? Just tie it to a balloon and have a mage flood the area to float it to the top, then remove the water. Need to cool an area down, such as a desert? Flood it. Thirsty? Flood. I find myself liking super hero fantasy less and less because of this. If there's some motherfucker out there who can make infinite fire, _you have the ability to make infinite energy._
Thats what makes finding the capability of a fantasy army difficult, as typically, there must be a limit on how powerful the magic is. Which is why many times people just lowball the fantasy army in a medieval army. Because if magic is powerful enough armies are worthless. Take godclad for example, the only reason armies exist is to confuse the enemy about your intentions and to get thaums and ghosts(resources required for the magic system of godcad which can only be obtained by people dying. Death is a pretty big thing in this novel and pretty much all progression depends on death). But in the end, wars are decided by the highest ranking godclads fighting against each other and whichever. This also applies to Tensura to certain extent. While armies exist the war is always decided by whichever faction has their high ranking mages left A powerful magic system typically leaves armies as useless
@@giftzwerg7345 goodberry. and 'create food and water'. A single cast of third level creates food for 15 people for a whole day. Goodberry is even more efficient, with a first level spell to feed 10 people for a whole day.
@@giftzwerg7345 True. But GoodBerry is a 1st Level Spell. A single casting feeds multiple people and prevents the need to eat for a day. A small group of druids will prevent starvation in a seized local so long as they don't run out of Mistletoe.
You should no more jump over a phalanx formation than you should charge head on with horses into one and yes, I'm looking at that scene in The Two Towers when the Rohirrim led by Gandalf charges into the Uruk-Hai who have their pikes set ready to face the charge. Normally that would be suicide for a cavalry unit but since Gandalf uses his "magic" the problem just goes away. That is perhaps my biggest gripe with the Battle of Helms Deep.
i think the best fantasy combined arms (infantry, magic, cavalry) infantry army combat ive read was in A Practical Guide to Evil. also, we can kinda tell your reading a script when you move your eyes left and right. try making your lines narrower so you dont have to move your eyes so much. and maybe try to line up your camera to where you are in the text so it appears you are looking at the camera, or vis versa
Speaking of The Battle of Winterfell, you know what'd be really cool? Showing the wall to keep them out actually being sieged and not just blown up by a dragon instantly.
Many years ago, in a campaign of D&D that was coming to its close, our party had just reached level 20 after multiple years and after a long winter campaign leading an army into orc lands on a crusade to kill an ancient primordial dragon that functioned as their god, we had made camp not far from the mountain stronghold that served as their capital, and the Sorcerer had just learned Meteor Swarm as his capstone spell. In character he revealed he had finished work on a new and terrible spell, devoted entirely to the swift end to this bitter war, a spell so unthinkable that it should never be cast, but in these unthinkable times, should only be cast once. Just before dawn, my paladin took the sorcerer to the sky on his griffon steed and rode out over the enemy capital, along the edges of their outer defenses under the cover of night, to avoid their wyvern patrols, and he cast Meteor Swarm so as to carve a line of destruction through their rings of walls and up to their city gates. The resulting firestorm made for an early dawn, and as we arrived back in our warcamp as the troops were making ready for the day's siege there was a grim mood about the troops, and the sorcerer. Our own troops felt unsure what to think of a man who could unleash such devastation, while the sorcerer himself, despite his noble goals, could not help but feel a shame for having used his arcane gift, his life's passion, to bring such pain and devastation into the world. He only hoped it would prove to be worth it, and never spoke of the spell again, burning all notes he used to develop it, for fear of anyone ever using it again.
These Elves are a very particular breed of Elf in LOTR. They were not Rivendell elves, cultured and magnificient and above it all. No they are Sylvans, seen as less cultured, less wise even, by other elves. And INCREDIBLY fucking prideful. They are also known for being relatively lightly armored and seeking to send their warriors into melee, counting on their speed and skill to win engagements if they don't have the pace and time to destroy an enemy with arrows. So, what happens when orcs charge them and the Dwarves they were JUST FIGHTING who made a fool of their archers with a neat spinny toy immediately drop the battle to brace against the Orcs? Prideful Elves leap over them, because FUCK those dwarves, to show off in a battle while also keeping their old oaths. The dwarves, just as stubborn and prideful, and now slighted, charge in as well for the SAME REASONS. Is it the WISEST decision? No. But a part of HONESTLY viewing and critiquing fantasy battles is the characters and peoples involved. And this is something often forgotten in this vein of cinematic critique.
Then portray it as a bad decision instead of some cool flashy action stunt 😂 It wasn’t framed properly because the people making The Hobbit didn’t care. The studio was abusing Jackson like the orcs abuse those Trolls who operate the Black Gates.
i mean yea, its is at least a explonation, but like ist still stupid. erspecialy, bc the dwarfes could have just kept the pike wall and killed two foes with one pike/ spear so to speak. The elves going for the lthe flanks, or even the kinng would make a lot more sense, also from the pride factor. bc then they could claim that it was them who gave the killing blow. For the same reasons, the glory seeking knights argued about who would take the right flank. Heck even if they wanted to do a frontal charge, then they should atleast have formed a wedge.
Thank god these weren’t warhammer dwarves, even if you’re helping them fight orcs, the act of jumping over a dwarf let alone a phalanx would be a very serious grudge
@@giftzwerg7345 They were fighting in a dip in the ground, with rougher terrain to either side, which is WHY the Elven and Dwarf armies fought where they did. Further, the time it would take to mobilise everyone into units, divert to the flank, and make the manuever would mean that a line of maybe three dwarves deep have to content with the ENTIRE ORC HOST on their own, unaided, for at least a few minutes. It also means elves would have to allow the DWARVEN army to decide the place of combat, and the mode, and they would have to SUPPORT them. A prideful, more aggressive race like this would never do that. Finally, there are a TON of Orcs, with more emerging from the holes every moment, and a flanking maneuever would leave them similarly cut off. THIS aspect is why they complain. Because people associate a phalanx with the height of military tactics. People would still complan in that direction, because they'd demand that the elves stay back and shoot. This manuever is in character for how the Sylvans fight, how they think, how they move, and how they feel. Is it entirely perfect? No. But it's in character and that is what should ACTUALLY be asked here. As an aside, almost no Elves even fall in this manuever. They start to fall LATER, when they move to defend the city after the manuever being criticized WORKED and the Orcs largely broke in the first engagement
3:35 I don't know of any battles where archers (especially in archer heavy armies like the English) were used from behind friendly lines. Nobody wants to risk getting shot in the back.
The Persian Achaemenid battleline was built with melee troops in front with a thick line of archers behind, which was a standard formation for the time
@@BenDeHart Hm I can't find anything on it so I have no choice but to believe you right now, but I find the idea of shooting into a melee from behind questionable. Maybe the Persiian archer's main job was just skirmishing? That era isn't particularly well known for its empathis on ranged combat.
Always hate it, when writers just abuse magic as a way to lazily write whatever they want. Yes, magic is magic and the most boring way to use it is when it's treated very scientific and for example the Harry Potter way with fix spells and a wand you need, so it's overall just as technical as any tool. It was for example a great moment when in "The Last Unicorn" the young wizard, who had his problem to remember and use any kind of spell just preached to the "magic": "Do as you will", making it that mysterious force even better magicians likely can't really control for real, able to maybe do anything, but just as much out of control to really use that. This way you keep magic as it should be, a fantastic, mysterious thing in your world, what pushes it beyond the reality we know, likely forever unknown land, human can at best take a glimps in. And when it comes to the parts which are under control, then they still must make sense. While it is fantasy, this fantasy setting got its own reality and rules which should stay that way with all the consequences.
Hmm.. that is exactly like hearing the voice of your lover, seeing her or him only thru a muslin paravan and not touching one another but only briefly once or twice in ones life. That is how I interpret how you see the proper use of magic in a setting but for me seeing it as a science shows and gives more fascination then the other variant. Is it corect?
Now days it's not just magic, look at the Star wars movies, in the second movies the rebels are down to a single ship, next movie they are somehow a massive army. In game of thrones the Dorthraki army is sacrificed, only to respawn when needed later. Stuff like that really bugs me, it makes thinking during watching a movie piss you off.
My magic system is like programming so there are always new ways to do things in a smarter way or more efficiently as well as tools always evolving. Also there are many sources of magic with different rules and capabilities that can't be easily discovered without reverse engineering/hacking/trial and error.
It's funny that you say that magic is boring when it has rules, but that it is lazy when writers can use it to do whatever they want. Personally, I think if magic can do big things, it needs to be defined, to have costs and limits. Otherwise, well, why wouldn't people do it? And there are different ways to do it. Some define a truly hard system. But you can have a soft system, yet still limit it. For instance, the Coldfire Trilogy, where the magic isn't really defined, has the underlying concept of sacrifice (and said sacrifice's value is determined by how much you value it... not the "sacrifice a stranger" type) to do sorcery, meaning the answer as to why people don't do stuff is provided: the cost of the sacrifice is too high, and it also pushes the more powerful spells into the ritual range, rather than fast casting. Added to that, belief shapes the world as well, so there's a second version of the same "magic" counterbalancing the first a bit. Alternately, you have LotR, where we are told Gandalf and Saruman are great and powerful, but we see them do jack all. Nothing worthy of their reputation, pretty much. So again, it stops it from unbalancing the world, because by never showing them doing anything of note, we don't ask, "Why didn't they do X here?" Them doing nothing is the norm, and so we don't expect them to do anything. Even what Gandalf did, fighting the balrog, well, he fought a balrog... but no specifics. So again, we really have no clue what he can do, beyond that he's powerful enough to fight a balrog. Other setting allow more freedom, but still limit mages, by having their magic manifest in different ways, so magic can do anything, but any given mage is very limited in the grand scope of things. Again, this avoids magic just being a boring Deus Ex Machina or an immersion breaker. Magic is limitless, but any given mage isn't and has hard limit/rules. Short of it, magic needs rules or to be limited in power, if only in the reader's mind.
A side story in one of the series I've been working on follows a Germanic orc who enlists as an auxiliary with the Romans to secure their tribe against other larger tribes. They also provide an excellent fish-out-of-water character to show the process of Roman construction for bridges and forts, logistics, and the scale of operations needed to maintain a legion, as well as the internal structure of training and promotion as they learn to read and eventually rise in the ranks and train other orcish auxiliaries. Then, in the same series, over a thousand years later in the series, Prussian and Austrian grenadiers, artillery crews, and light infantry still include orcish formations, where their physical strength serves them well on long marches and handling "ogre guns" to fell larger beasts, though they cannot move as quickly and need more food than humans and many other races. These units often still have eagle motifs, or Latin unit mottos as a callback to their heritage, even if there's no direct connection, as they serve under the Holy Roman Empire and the Hapsburgs. So far I've been dealing with magic in a 'Laws of Thermodynamics' kind of way, where energy input = energy output, like Full Metal Alchemist, and also most types are very difficult to learn and use. Casting a spell with more than one step is almost like writing computer code with logic gates and a power supply, but with much more potential danger to the user. Under that system, enchanted legion standards (or something of similar purpose) would actually be somewhat viable. Though, I think I'd pick something else, so that they can be handed out to smaller units as needed. Especially in dense forests or mountains where it was hard for a whole century to move and fight in open combat. As an aside, one of the things that naturally counters magic in-setting is... Radioactivity. So an 'anti-magic sword' might be a sword that had traces of uranium ore in it when it was forged, and the makers have no idea why it works; it just does, and so do other random objects they make with ore from that one specific mine people get sick in after a while. Oh the fun to be had with a few interacting systems...
It really does depend on the settings rules. I'm working on one, for fun, and there magic is all based on largely invisible blesses and curses, for the magically weak/common at least. Kinda hard to hide fuckin' dragon fire. But yeah, when a priest/wizard blesses the troops before a battle, it's kinda hard to tell the difference between a nice thing to say that hypes up the men, and it literally being magic that empowered them. The same with curses, am I getting cursed or am I just more observant of bad things happening to me. Of course the exceptions to this do make it clear that magic is actually real to the sceptics, but those are few and far in-between. Magic in mine is not a science, and is often unreliable to even use assuming you even notice that it wasn't actually working. But when that crazy smelly hedge wizard curses a dragon to freeze in the air like time has stopped, you'll be fucking sure that is magic. Of course the bloke might fall asleep afterwards, but hey, at least he stopped you getting roasted for the next 30 seconds!
Steven Erikson's Malazan series does a great job of integrating magic into the military setting. It's all about limitations and using that scarce resource to its fullest advantage. And, of course, the enemy also uses magic.
No it's not. Malazan magic is overpowered to all hell. The "Source" or "Well" of all magic in the Malazan world is formless, the Warrens of elements and powers basically exist as pure molds of power, Tattersail used fire magic so well because the Warren of Fire, Telas, attuned to her so well, and it's why her fire magic was so powerful and could wipe out entire regiments. It also doesn't do the best job with meshing the two, Mages are distrusted until the heat of battle happens and boom, they're loved again, Magic users also blow themselves up regularly (Siege of Pale). Magic in Malazan is all about being born under the correct stars to get the most out of your life, you get lucky or you just don't. . .Whiskyjack showed luck can run out.
I don't strictly disagree, but I think it is important to remember that this is just one STYLE of worldbuilding. Unfortunately there seems to be a tendency amongst worldbuilding UA-camrs to present this kind of problem-based worldbuilding as the only legitimate way to do it, and that unless you've thought about the precise chemical formula for the rock your castles are made of then you're some sort of hack. Personally I prefer emergent world-building, where you come up with ideas and draw links organically as you go, but that's just me, and depending on the project I might use different styles. There are dozens of different styles of worldbuilding out there and I think we do ourselves a disservice if we suggest one is the "right" way to worldbuild.
Speaking of styles in worldbuilding, the trend these days is to have "magic as physics". That is, there are strict rules to how magic works, and the guy who manipulates them in the cleverest way wins. But... what if magic is more miraculous? That is, a blatant violation of its own world's rules. You just *want* something hard enough, and it happens, if you're strong enough. (A good example of this is Eddings' Belgariad series.)
@@hoi-polloi1863 hard vs soft magic systems. LOTR did soft magic and it was great, but LOTR was super Christian and the wizards are basically apostles and it all had as much regard for physics as the Bible did.
It might not be the only way but it is the best in terms of avoiding the pitfalls of lore and consistency most stories fall into. For me, emergent means whatever you came up with on the spot in the context of your story. This can work but it also requires a lot of work constantly to not plothole yourself. Problem hunting at the start though can give you a stable platform to build up upon. Case in point: the whole eagle anti-magic thing would allow you to then think of enemies that dont rely on magic, enemies that rely too much on magic, hell even enemies that stole eagles to use against the legion etc.
@@chrisyotas5854 I don't agree that it is the best way to avoid plot holes, partly because plot holes are determined by your attention to detail, not your worldbuilding style. That said, one advantage is that it encourages you to think through these kinds of problems that might come up, which can increase the resilience of your worldbuilding and/or believability. It actually isn't that hard to avoid plot holes in emergent worldbuilding so long as you're keeping track of everything you've created. It has the advantage of allowing for interesting and unique connections to emerge organically in the story, and particularly in an RPG context allows your players to take an active role in the worldbuilding. More importantly for me, it reduces initial cognitive overload and by extension blank page syndrome, which allows you to get straight into it. This isn't to suggest that emergent worldbuilding is better, different people and different projects will lend themselves more to different styles. But for me I rarely have an issue with plot holes while doing emergent worldbuilding, simply because there is an assumption that everything "just works" somewhere in the background and you don't need to tackle it until it comes up in the narrative.
@@kapitankapital6580 Ah, i see the difference, when i talk about worldbuilding, i always mean large-scale, because for small scale stuff, just like you said, you can just explain as needed. I just never really considered that as world-building because you are giving the illusion of a larger world but are only building such a small amount of the actual world. You are very much correct that it depends on detail, i just naturally gravitate to high detail, because a lot of times, low detail worlds have complete BS spring out of nowhere to advance the story after they built themselves into a hole.
With the elves and dwarves, there's one other cavalry job you're overlooking, and it is one that would have let the movie makers keep the elves jumping over the shield wall bit. And that role is running down troops once they break. Consider this sequence of events: The dwarves hold the line. The orcs break on the dwarven line, start to retreat. And then the elves hit this retreating force when they're at their weakest, causing them to break and run. And then, since the movie makers don't want the battle to end at that point, just have them run into fresh, unbroken orc formations, or have a particular orc leader manage to rally and re-establish the orc line.
Your Conquest of Fantasy Gaul campaign sounds super interesting, would you consider making a more comprehensive video on your world-building for that if you haven't already?
@@BenDeHart That would be greatly appreciated! I'm in the process of creating a fantasy setting inspired by the period a few centuries later, taking heavy inspiration from the fall of Rome and the centuries after, and I'm curious to see if we have similar ideas about fantasy Rome. I might even be interested in sharing ideas more actively.
7:30 legions should form smaller units with a platoon size unit as the basic formation, instead of a century, and a possible functional squad unit too. With magic, you generally cannot form dense battle formations and might have to rely on maneuvers to gain advantage. The scope of field battles may be much wider and would be fighting similar to gunpowder era battles. This means you have to delegate more to your officers rather than command on your own. Cavalry will be much more preferable and infantry lines doesn't need to be that dense. But they will still function the same regardless due to the existence of supernatural guys embedded in the army. I think normal soldiers will just act as "momentum indicator".
Honestly with how most dragons are depicted, more like an attack helicopter that functionally had no ammo limitations, and could also engage in land combat.
You should take a look at the book series the secret of askir. It's written by a German and he has so much control over his world building. everything feels grounded in the world.
The best tactics I've seen in a fantasy setting are the ones in Warhammer. Be it the TTRPG, the books or the total war games, they make great use of manpower, technology and magic in their armies.
Warhammer fantasy, especially the Total War franchise, does a fantastic job of implementing magic in battle. They have a distinct battle magic that behaves like artillery, either AOE or high single target damage. Heavily resilient and tanky champions along with flying units. There are several ways to counter magic casters. One of the more effective is sending highly mobile and resilient cav or air cav after the magic user. Staggering the line of battle to prevent clean line spells from wiping your front line, sniping the caster with an assassin or high single target magic artillery or elite ranged unit. You could also advance in a loose formation and then coalesce into a tight formation as you approached the enemy. This dynamic happened a lot in Napoleonic Warfare, where line formation granted greater firepower (partially vulnerable to cav and arty), column granted speed and assault power (vulnerable to arty), square formation for protection against cav (no attack and vulnerable to arty), and the skirmish line which was great for wasting enemy ranged attacks and to harass the enemy (vulnerable cav and determined line infantry). The battle tactics really depend on how plentiful magic is in the world. Plentiful mages could look like the pike and shot armies of Imperial Spain and Holy Roman Empire. High magic items can look like Napoleonic Era or the Knights and Magic anime. Monsterous beasts make it appear more like Lord of the Rings/Warhammer. It also depends on if mages are rulers, part of noble retinues, mercenaries, or feared outlaws. The possibilities are endless.
I was just scrolling through recommended videos without looking for anything particular, and this video caught my attention. It actually proves super useful for me, cause the campaign I'm running has fantasy Legions in it, and this helps close up some holes in their defenses!
There is a strategy game called Dominions 6 which has simulated fantasy battles. Learning to play that game is a good way to experience highly realisitic large scale fantasy battles. Also the world building in the game is so good you will become a better DM just from reading the unit descriptions.
Mass produced anti magic flag? Dam. Those are expensive. Ow what ever will i do. Posion your food? Send armies of animals to raid your supply lines, create ents or summon devils. Anti magic is quiet high level. Mass producing it reeks of plot convinces.
He didn't say it was mass produced, it might be that only a few are made every year, thus meaning that it's worth more than the legion it belongs to. Also, 'high level' is not set in stone, might just be that the knowledge is easy to apply but it's kept hidden.
IMO anti magic would be mostly ward based not item enchantment based, with layered wards placed on important locations to prevent certain types of magic. for example, no city ever would allow unrestricted casting within its walls.
I feel like it is an example of the different fighting tactics of the two races. Dwarves are stout, strong, steadfast, they are short, so they have a lower center of gravity, and they live in the mountains, in strong stone fortresses, so it would make sense for them to adopt the tactic of creating a strong defense like a shieldwall. Their strength and low center of gravity means they can basically create a wall that is hard to move or break through, essentially a road block against charging enemies. They create that defense and then don't move unless it is necessary. The elves on the other hand are light, nimble, and quick, they spend their entire lives in the woods, running and leaping to evade and to chase their enemies. They use natural defenses to their advantage, hiding up in the trees and shooting at their enemies from above, they move around to avoid being cornered, and they use numbers, moving around constantly, to overwhelm their enemies (the scene where they rescue Thorin and Company from the spiders, and chasing them down the river while fighting the orcs). They clearly have stationary defenses, like walls, gates, etc., but when they go to war, they rely more on their long-range weapons to take out as many enemies as they can before the enemy charge has reached them, before engaging with what is left. If the dwarves hadn't been there, I think they would have formed a line of swordsmen that would cleave away at the orcs once they were close enough as we saw in the Battle of the Last Alliance scene in the prologue of the Fellowship of the Ring, but as we also saw in that battle, they shot hundreds of arrows while the orcs were charging. Once the two lines engaged, they broke into individual fighting, moving around so as to not be surrounded, using their natural quickness and agility to their advantage. I did like how the elves in the Hobbit used the tactic of fighting in threes, with two swordsmen defending one archer, constantly moving around the archer as he shot at approaching enemies. It also shows how, having been rivals for so many centuries, elves and dwarves have not fought alongside one another, so they have abandoned the tactics they had once had long ago, forgetting how to work together, using the dwarves' strength and strong defenses, and the elves' range and nimbleness in a cohesive and effective strategy, or..., they just never really learned how to work well together in battle, which might have been another thing that added to the animosity they have had towards one another.
Robert Jordan's The Wheel of Time saga had some really epic battle scenes, was really good at depicting wars outside of battles too (like the ever growing problem the refugees meant over three years of war, and the logistics of different sizes of armies and warbands marching through huge distances). Jordan himself was a veteran of the Vietnam War, where served two tours as a helicopter gunner, giving him first hand experience of fighting. One of my favorite things about the setting was its constant change - as soon as the fightings started, people started to innovate on tactics and weapons to gain the upper hand. The rules of the world originally denied the use of magic on battlefield - when that rule was eventually broken, the battlefields became a new kind of horror, that left a lasting mark on both people who saw it, and those affected by wars in a broader sense.
Having the standard nagating magic seems a bit too obvious and singles the barer out. Especially if the galls used hit and run tactics and ambushes against the larger more uniformed romans. That can create chaos and confusion thay can lead to the standard barer getting killed even by accident. Might be smarter if the thing keeping magic at bay was more hidden so it would be harder to pick off and/or spread across multiple people so the soldier wouldn't be left to dry if the enemy gets a lucky shot.
My reason for magic not being included in most conflicts aside from healing is mutual destruction/it is a low magic setting, so not many mages are even around.
The first Chronicles of Narnia film had pretty decent military strategy for a kids film. Using the rocky outcrop as shelter/height advantage and dividing the witches army in half at the beginning was nicely done
older editions of dnd actually adressed things like this because they did expect people to eventually get to the level where they are commanding armed forces and leading dominions. they were called “companion rules”. A d the Mystara setting back in the 80’s specifically had a lot of stuff like this with more and less magical empires and kingdoms at war and politicing with each other. Like thyatis, a somewhat byzantine empire, which had some magic, but is primarily known for its mundane milirary might abd effeciency vs Alphasia, which was a highly magical empire with a lot of magic, but less reliable mundane troops and somewhat unreliable, if numerous, wizards.
I have to say you earned my follow, this is a field I adore, fantasy tactics. I think warhammer total war really opened my eyes to flying rear charges, aoe spells destroying battle lines etc. It really forces you to re imagine infantry
great Hannibal shout. I've used that tactic in many many video game battles and it works SO well. Truly revolutionary for his time, and still applicable today
6:20 If one ship can wipe out an enemy fleet in star wars using hyperdrive, then it would have been done to death and counters would have been developed. The galaxy in question is long settled, space warfare is very stagnant until the Death Star, everything being static is repeated and emphasised. So that's the equivalent - it's a shot that looks cool, but the more you think about it, the more it breaks everything else ever done in any other movie, comic book, video game, tv show .... I expect the excuse is the director did not care about "the star wars" and just wanted to do something else.
The whole tactical point of the battle of five armies was that they were so out n7mbered they were basically on the back foot the whole time, they basically got pushed back to any hill 9r high ground 8n small groups all races mixed
About the treatment of wizards on the battlefield, I like the way Robert Jordan handled it in the Wheel of Time series. He introduces a few elements so that the use of magic doesn't open major plotholes: 1. The Aes Sedai (could be compared to wizards), or any user of the Source (magic) for that matters, have to use energy to cast "spells" (similar to mana systems found in a lot of classic magical settings). The more powerfull the spell is, the more energy it will consume + the less people can use it (some people aren't powerfull enough to even cast these spells without dying). 2. The numbers of people capable of using magic is limited and their use extends beyond simple combat: maintaining supply chains, communication between different battlefields and armies, treatment to the wounded... By extending the role of wizards beyond simple weapons, you "nerf" them because they can't simply be weapons of mass destruction (provided you introduce a system of energy/ mana management like mentionned above). 3. Introduce diversity in the use of wizards, some use them as destruction weapons meant to deal a direct blow to the enemy force before immediately retreating behind the main army when they become vulnerable, some use them to create portals,enabling huge troops movements at once being used to change the tide of a battle or rapidly retreat... 4. By mixing magic use in classical fantasy combat, you automatically restrain the power and abilities of the wizards, provided the chain of command didn't judge the total destruction of the ennemy to be above the potential friendly casualties that could ensue from blindly hitting the melee. If this isn't the case, then once the main melee starts magic becomes way less usefull since the only usefull combat spells would be the one hitting a specific target and not group damage (just like archers are less effective once the melee starts in classical fantasy settings). In addition to that, the wizards, if they are placed behind the main army force, become vulnerable targets for archers or troops operating flanking or incerclement tactics since they would be exausted (again, provided you introduced a mana system).
I think good example of fighting fantasy armies were described in Eragon Saga (mainly 2, 3 and 4 part) . Magic was limited by your life energy and could kill you if you tried to for example break a wall with sheer force. More powerful mages could drain this life force from plants or animals. Instead of casting fireballs, you could destroy vital brain arteries of every soldier in unit. Every unit had a mage that was protecting them from other mages. Lot of really cool concepts and I can recommend those books.
What's really crazy is that even though military technology is vastly more advanced than it was in medieval times, digging a ditch is still a really important tactic for defending your base and militaries still do it for many of the same reasons too.
Another question, would druids really participate in wars that destroy the natural world? Do kingdoms avoid destructive tactics to employ druids? So many questions!
As elves are immortal, they would be more risk adverse than other races since they have so much to live for. Where as a human fighting in battle risks loosing 20-30 years of life, an elf risks loosing an infinite number of years (or at least thousands of years before scumming to an accident.) The cliche of the sergeant yelling for his men to charge with the adage, "What are you waiting for do you expect to live forever?" would be met by elf soldiers saying. "Well...... actually yes." Given their life span, elves would not only have time to amass wealth, they would develop the wisdom to use mercenaries to fight for them.
I think the ditch addition in fantasy films and the like could be really helpful to both the attackers and defenders as it shows the defenders to be competent, and the attackers would then have to overcome such a challenge. Say at the start of a film you want to show off a hostile force of “bad guys” invading the “good guys” kingdom. Instead of just having the invaders slaughter a camp/outpost of guards, instead have the leader of the camp/outpost dig a ditch in preparation for the coming attack, and his inexperienced son could question the leader leading to an explanation of the ditch’s utility, etc: this provides characterisation for the defenders even though they mean nothing in the grand scheme of things, and it builds suspense and intrigue for the coming battle. Then you have some “bad guy” scouts, having seen the ditch being dug, inform their own leader of the development. The invaders cut down part of a forest to fashion makeshift bridges to cross the ditch at several points, and when the attack begins the invaders could rain arrows down on the defenders before sending in several testudo-like formations that carry several bridges to cross the ditch. This’d be followed by the ditch being cross at multiple points, and the camp being wiped out. This sequence could happen in a short amount of time, and provides so much more to the characters involved then a simple slash and burn mission as it makes the villain, in this case the attack, seem smart and a strategic genius instead of just a simple minded force of death and destruction.
Someone should make a historical accurate navel battle. 6 hrs of people sitting at the ready watching the boat get closer
Read destroyermen by Taylor Anderson.
And 30 seconds into the battle the smoke is so thick the frame is just white.
@@normalusername5223it would depend on how windy it is and whether the battle was stationary or a running engagement but yeah, ever realistic video games can't portray authentic amount of smoke from blackpowder or players would control clouds instead of ships and regiments.
"Navel" battle, eh? Now there's an image. :D
Master and Commander.
"How would a fantasy army ACTUALLY fight?"
*_Glances over at Warhammer Fantasy_*
Yeah
I agree, look at empire or dwarfs for example, missle and ranged units are god damn menace
The setting is just called Warhammer. The fantasy title was dropped after the first edition and post Warhammer 40.000 in 1987!
@@RealCodreX That's true, Yet setting is IN a fantasy world seted in, and here is the thing is about it
@@lieutenantcolonel3877 missile
The eagles bring used as anti magic is a great idea. It fits so well with actual roman history with how important the standards were to legions. There are countless stories of legionaries laying down thier lives for the eagle and the retrieval of a lost eagle was regarded as important as the conquest of entire kingdoms . Now more so because it was actually needed to rebuild a lost legion
you get me!
@@BenDeHarti aktually had q simular idear. Tho mine waa mor physicaly like basily a Metall/ copper wird tree od Sone sort, so the magic spherea hit them and Explored in Front. Simular to care armour on Tanks.
One could also look at the Palladium from Rome's Aeneid, which might have a similar effect, just for an entire city (and thus would of course remain in Rome at all times). Maybe, where the legionnaires themselves carry the eagle standards for magical protection, the artillery support or field camps get smaller copies of the Palladium, wooden figurines of Minerva, to protect them from the magic of the Gauls?
And maybe, a legion falling out of favour with Minvera for a certain deed or lack of piety and veneration could lose said protection...
@@BenDeHart Indeed. I`m currently running a campaign loosely based on the Roman Legions/WW2. Only with the military training giving the Archery Fighting Style, Sharp Shooter Feat, and the Crossbow Expert Feat, along with all Military issue crossbows having the Artificer Repeating Shot Infusion. I really like the idea of the Eagle having an Anti-Magic Field in order to protect the legions... I am stealing this, thank you!
@@giftzwerg7345 Do you even English bro?
These Elves in the Battle of the Five Armies are not the Elves led by Elrond of Rivendell, they are Sylvan Elves of Mirkwood. They're seen as less cultured, and in the War of the Last Alliance charged their lightly armored infantry against Sauron's Orc lines, getting their King killed in the process. I know the movies didn't cover that, but the lore is there.
I always chalked it up to the dwarves have very highly developed tactics and the elves having better individual martial skills, and that scene demonstrated the two different martial doctrines attempting to cooperate. Basically, the elves seem more skilled in combat as individuals, but lack large scale tactics and teamwork. The dwarves make up for their lack of individual combat prowess with excellent teamwork and good tactics and war machines. That shield wall was immaculate.
@@GusCraft460 That is a fair interpretation, but in Lore the Elves from Mirkwood are much more adept at asymetrical warfare, as their home and their normal battleground is the great forest of Mirkwood. The Noldor elves (who by the end of the 3rd age are very few, and are the ones we see at the start of the fellowship) have always performed way better in what is essentially symetrical warfare, but unfortunatly those days have long passed. There are no more Noldor to perform a great host as those of the 1st age, and no great battles against the darkness to fight in the way they fight.
Oropher's death was like three thousand years before the movie timeline. The silliness of the shot really doesn't make lore from outside the movie cover its mistakes, just gives them flimsy excuses to make all the elves act like fools.
I liked the dwarves in battle of the 5 army's they handled the elves very well and the same with the orks. that Falinks would have been good if the stupid elves didn't jump it right as the lines were colliding.
Except this battle also happened in the books and these elves didn't do that.
Since the author of the books knew a thing or two about military operations.
Ditches will also damage the land, and movies are often borrowing land to shoot on and some places will restrict the types of landscaping that may be done. Especially if it is public land.
TV-wise, you solve that issue the “fix it in post” way by placing down a tarp on the ground (long series of tarps) and you tell the attacking side to treat it as a ditch, and then CGI it as a ditch later.
Counter point
Some film set went to an authentic made village, heart and soul put fourth to make it authentic and just as magnificent as back then
The set showed up and throught medieval people had to be dirtier bc of stereotype and decided to trash the place, lamps nailed everywhere outside, building covered in mud and straw, windows removed or hidden
The film set were the unhygienic ones
They then decide to cover mud dripping leather everywhere
They trash a good site with the trashing making it less authentic
@@theprancingprussian I heard about this shit a few months ago.
You have a budget for a movie or an episode, battle scenes take only a tiny portion of screen time, but also eat a large portion of the budget. Imagine if you add ditches, tactics, and other unnecessary things, the battle would take entire screen time, probably multiplying the expenses. Not only you would not be able to make a profit, but your career in the industry would end. Fantasy, adventures, and actions are all about characters, and actors. Documentaries about wars, battles, and ditches.
That's what CGI is for.
Remember kids in the battle of the five armies movie, the DWARVES totally tried to play it tactically, quickly setting up a phalanx position against their lighter armored charging foes. We do not hate on the Dwarves, we hate on the Elves. Who let their pride demand them to leap over a defended position to out glory the enemy. Even when forced to charge the Dwarves still maintained formation in a double-piked battleline.
Smartest elf vs most casual dwarf!
its even mor dump bc an elven live would be mutch more precious, and you would think that having so mtuch expirience, people arnt stupid
My favorite part of that fight was that strategically and tactically best faction were orcs. They used banners and horns to symbol different tactics and they attacked from multiple different routes.
Heck, orcs should have won that war by any means. If elves, dwarves and humans wouldn't have had plot armor and if legolas wouldn't have skill to defy gravity then better side would have won.
Honestly I reckon the elves could've been used as either a set of flank guards or just go back to their bloody bows, which you know, is the most unifying stereotypical elf thing there is. Could've have even provided cover the humans running back to Dale, BUT NO, THEY HAD BE ALL 'AH WATCH MEH PROOF MY COOLNESS, AH'
(sorry, for using caps, I cant figure out the way to make the letters thin and slanted slightly)
@@focusofthefuture8689 Definitely bows, I mean heck, we are speaking of Mirkwood elves aka best archers ever.
Not to mention that ranged weapons have been most devastating in battlefields starting from first bows and javelins (I think that it's unnecessary to say ending point ;)
Then again I guess using working and realistical actions in movies like these wouldn't look as "cool".
As usual, almost everyone ignores the most important, but most boring part of warfare. Logistics. And here big changes will happen.
Flying units can monitor the terrain. It means no assaults and ambushes, troops sneaking away/by.
Magic can change accessibility, rivers, swamps, rocks need not be an obstacle, at least not for smaller units.
Magic can make food and water more readily available, by purifying bad water and making grass/leaves edible. Starvation can therefore be ruled out in certain situations. Which means that an army can sit longer behind the walls. Or the army can make its way on otherwise impossible paths, such as the desert and vast wastelands.
All this only applies to humans in fantasy worlds. Other creatures provide even more possibilities.
The wars will look very different depending on the type of creatures that face each other.
Quite funny since skirmishes are the Battle scenes that are best to Showcase because you can Showcase your Heroes more and have more loose fighting,hell the typical Fantasy free for all melee IS perfect for skirmishes
This is relevant but not nearly as much as you think. Logistics are a major issue for real world armies because they rely on massive sizes. In reality, in a D&D world, the strongest thing a powerful kingdom could field would be a party of a few high levels.
Ahh, logistics. Honestly became my favourite part of battles/wars when I first learned about it.
And something I stupidly never considered until a UA-cam video talked about it years ago (forgot which one it was). Just something so simple yet an important backbone that is often overlooked for flashier and cooler things (which is understandable), but is always present no matter if it was never mentioned. Fuck yeah, logistics. It's great!
Ambushes are still a thing in modern warfare where we have drones and satellites XD
Honestly, the best way to imagine fantasy battles is just to look at how modern warfare is done.
@@eadgyth5009 Partly true. Because it depends on the size of the forces. Small forces can hide and ambush. But real armies can't hide if you have air surveillance.
The big difference to modern warfare is that in modern times everyone has ranged weapons and movement is so much faster.
But probably movement can be faster when air surveillance can prevent assault. Because then the army does not need to get into marching formation. In the past, 20 km per day was the normal movement for an army, in good terrain. In the past, you had to fight in tight formations to avoid being cut down by the cavalry. Which makes it much more difficult to hide and fast movements.
i think with magic and giant creatures? ranged attacks would be constant. why risk putting any of your giant creatures in melee? yeah sure, we all love the look of a giant swinging a club and clearing 20 dudes with a single swing. But realistically, giant creatures are huge targets. They'd be focused and targeted into oblivion without proper protection. Most generals would be using their giants to throw boulders right next to the mages, throwing fireballs or putting up shields to block other incoming boulders.
we all like to imagine fantasy battles as being even more melee centric, but i think in reality, they'd be the exact opposite.
Surely that's really dependant on how magic works in your fantasy setting? For example, Narnia, LoTR and GoT all don't have the D&D style Ranged Magic. And even in a D&D style world, Anti-Magic Fields often exist. Having a counterspell wizard or Anti-Magic Field generating magical item carried by your unit of giants might well mean they should be upfront with some sort of Pole or Flail to take an incredible amount of ground. Magical Superiority as a concern in addition to Air is a definite topic though.
Yupp long range would be king like in the time of tribal warfare in europe were war was dominated by raider-archers that ocasionally go to meele.
Depends on setting tho.
If sour magic is way better at ehancing physical attributes like strenght and durability than throwing fire around, then barely anyone is gonna bother.
@@hulmhochberg8129
UA-cam did the spam.
You have to consider that martial technology doesn't advance in only one direction.
Usually the weapons get better so the defense has to get better so the weapons have to get better so the defense has to get better.
In terms of magic you would probably see schools dedicated to defensive and offensive arts developing counters to each other.
In my D&D setting the more powerful mages are like artillery engaging in long range duels of spell and counter spell. Sometimes one side's mages win and call down something like a meteor swarm on the enemy successfully, other times the battle line pushes into the mage's camp and wipes them out, most often a strike team (adventuring party) gets behind the enemy lines and disrupts their defenses so their own side can land a meteor swarm.
Your standard bearers are not dissimilar to how Christopher Paolini utilized mages in warfare in his Inheritance series
Whoa good callout! Those mages are even more essential in those books since magic in Inheritance is super OP
@@BenDeHartPaolini did so much research and put so much time into his magic system to not break anything and make it flow. I'm in the middle of reading his sci-fi book now, and it does the same thing. It's really amazing
The inheritance series had the most realistic use of mages in it. Instead of being blasters, they were there to prevent other mages from obliterating their unit.
I loved that detail.
Even if these books are mixed in my opinion Paolinis take on magic and usa of magic in warfare was really nice.
@@joedoe7572it did? I kinda remeber it as insanly broken.
Like why would you even bother with soldiers?
The "ditch" argument is the reason I quite like the military stuff in the Stormlight Archive. The Parshendi are a race who live on a bunch of raised plateaus with huge cracks in the earth separating them. They're so damn hard to fight because they literally live in a place made up of thousands of naturally-formed ditches. And a huge part of the first few books is spent exploring the various ways how their enemies (the protagonists) even get to them.
Slaves carrying flat bridges with no cover or armor never made much sense to me, though. Then when the protagonist eventually figures out they can carry the bridges differently to give themselves a little cover, the book portrays this as a bad thing, because... they're also supposed to be bait for the enemy to focus on, and that only works if they have no cover. I guess?
It's no way to fight a war. Build a covered bridge on wheels, and push it to the cracks. Drop the bridge, slide in a new one and push the contraption on to the next crack. The covered bridge would also cover your invading forces hiding just behind it, so win-win. Or at the very least put some shields on the bridge to protect the bridge crews.
@@berserkasaurusrex4233 Dalinars bridges offered protection to the people carrying them, the reason Saadia(god I hope im remembering these names properly) uses bridges which dont is because they're faster, which lets him get to the very valuable and important gem-hearts quicker.
(spoilers for Way of Kings below, ye be warned)
Yee, building from what lonecustodes said, in the first book of Stormlight the Alethi are very much *not* fighting a war, and that's the whole problem. The Parshendi are, while the Alethi are competing in the Gem Heart olympics. The unarmoured slave runs are very dumb indeed, unless all you care about is getting to the plateaus fastest. Which they do.
You have Dalinar, who has sensible, slow, unwieldy bridge towers that are dragged by oxen and beasts to get into position, very safe, very secure, very very slow. Then you have Sadeas who basically wrote the manual for them on how to use disposable chaff (bridgemen) to maintain speed at the cost of lives you never cared for in the first place. If they were fighting conventional war objectives or trying to win the battle that'd be one thing, but they haven't been trying that since the opening year or so of the conflict. All they care about is getting to the Gem Hearts and securing that bag, no matter how many slaves have to die to do so. They can always get more slaves.
Hell, the entire first book is Dalinar desperately trying to wrangle a bag of feral Alethi high prince cats, all of whom only care about themselves and making their own bread, into one cohesive force that actually wants to end the war instead of prolong it and lose ever more lives for money. The book itself, i don't think tries to portray Kaladin being smart and using his bridge as a barricade as a bad thing. Or more, it does, because that's the prevailing feeling amongst the camp he's a slave at. How dare he not consider himself disposable, everyone else does. That's just Sadeas' camp though, and sure there's a couple other princes who copied the methodology, but the other primary character in the Alethi conflict (Dalinar) spends the book reinforcing the fact that the high princes have lost sight of the righteous casus belli they once had in favour of loot and will throw away countless 'lesser' lives to gain said loot. A viewpoint he vehemently disagrees with and will ultimately sacrifice a priceless artifact for.
'what is the cost of a life?'
If anything, i think the book goes out of its way to showcase the stupidity of sacrificing lives for gain like that instead of doing the smart thing and focusing on tangible, war ending objectives like Dalinar would try to do (and gets betrayed doing). Especially when the value of those lives when given the chance to excel without fear of punishment or sufferance under a slavemaster increases exponentially through the series.
TL;DR: Ultimately, the books agree with berserk. It *is* dumb to do what they did with the bridgemen in order to win a war. They weren't trying to win a war in the first place, and thats the major plot thread of book one.
@@generalpumpkingaming To be fair to myself, it's been ages since I read the book and I'm struggling to remember much of anything apart from the bridges and the magic armor.
I vaguely remember something about glass beads with magic battery powers, and the little sprite things that come out of everything (can't remember what they call them in the book), and how the planet's ecology is like some sort of bizarre alien dry sealife due to the unique weather. That's about it. The actual plot is mostly a miss.
I've got the sequels, but I'd have to reread the first to get back into it, and that's a choir I'm not up for anymore, lol. I've still got like seven Malazan books to get through first.
@@berserkasaurusrex4233 MBotF is a beautiful series and i hope you enjoy it, it's my #1 fantasy series pick so far and i re-read it at least once a year for the feels. My comment wasn't meant to be criticism nor indictment tbf, you were 100% correct and the WoK agrees with you. The bridgemen is a dumb, sacrificial system that wastes lives for the pursuit of resource gain.
P.S: The sprites are called Spren. Windspren, Honorspren, Gloryspren etc etc
People like to jump to cool offensive things in combat, but it's rare to see people think about defense properly. Castles had all kinds of crazy layered defenses. Some of my favorite battles as a dm came from sitting down and thinking about common magical attacks and how my baddies would defend against them. This is especially true of dragon lairs. You have a hyper intelligent magic creature with centuries to think about how they will protect their precious hoard. They aren't gonna let you stroll up and challenge them for it. Unless if your bard has some good taunts perhaps. Anyhow, you've earned a subscriber.
Which is weird... Cause like, if you _are_ focusing on offence... Then like... You still need to know what the defenders are doing... How you assault a castle is just as important as how you defend it... cause it can't be defended, then _why are you even taking it?_
@@GoldenArbiter01 agreed. Though in most shows they aren't trying to take the castle for strategic reasons but are going after the people inside it.
People ignores logistic part of warfare as well.
@@danieladamczyk4024which is extra sad because well over half of warfare is logistics.
Knowing bards, taunting is the last thing on their mind when they come to dragon lair.
The books in Morrowind are nice about that.
Abuses of waterbreathing, army-wide buffs/debufss, levitation, invisibility, summoning...
And of course, there's the game Dominions, THE fantasy armies battle simulator on the logistical, strategic and tactical side.
Oh Lawd, Dominions! Where you could focus your mage corps on blastomancy or mass buffs of solid troops. ....And then curse yourself for poor order of operations and/or bizarre luck that is normal in the game. It will forever be a classic.
When your army's far better warriors than the clumsy cyclopes you're facing except their subterranian Olm horrors are psychically attacking your minds so your astrologer casts an Astral ward to protect you but their deep seer casts the Curse of Stones upon the entire battlefield so you can't catch your breath in your armor but it's okay because your living God and master (A horrible thing from the underworld) just summoned a throng of demons to fight in your stead except the enemy prophet just banished them all so he conjures an unnatural winter and the enemy slows down but another deep seer extinguishes the fucking sun it's the middle of the day how and now the frontline is just a mass of skeletons fighting eachother and then you feel your bones beginning to crack oh god oh fuck-
I just played Dom5 yesterday after a long brake and abused the hell out of simplest tactic in the game; strong line of Abysian infantry across the battlefield backed up by fire drakes. Fire immune heavy infantry and fire breathing lizards are too OP combo, pls nerf. 90+% of my casualties were single drakes that managed to get in front of the infantry.
@@IamOutOfNamesI’m late but that only works early. Even as ulm I’d be able to challenge that turn 10-15. Though that wouldn’t work if you rushed me so I guess it has its place
Tolkien simply clips Bilbo the narrator on the head with a rock after describing how they all line up. Then a dwarf recounts the battle in broad terms as Bilbo jogs to Thorins deathbed.
Fudges writing ex machina
Before the copout, there was the rockout as a form of writers getting out of writing scenes they'd rather not.
8:57 The reason why the Romans disliked bows initially was probably related to Europe having a pretty wet climate in general, and their enemies mostly relying on shields instead of armored breastplates. So instead of practicing archery for a decade, which is necessary to become an effective battlefield archer, they preferred to arm their skirmishers (so, younger soldiers) with javelins, which are much easier to learn and are more effective against shields, and hire professional archers as mercenaries instead whenever that made sense. However, in the Eastern Roman Empire composite bows quickly gained popularity thanks to their compact size, the overall drier climate of that area, and the Romans being introduced to the concept of horse archers by the Parthians.
The best use of magic in fantasy army warfare I've seen was from the Sword of Truth series by Terry Goodkind. The primary role of Wizards in warfare was to be the "magic against magic" so that the regular soldiers would be the "steel against steel". That is, wizards would create magic to give their side an edge, and the wizards on the other side would then counter that magic, then try to give their own side an edge, which would be countered. So a battle ended up looking like and functioning as if there were no magic being used at all.
There is a scene where the seasoned wizard is lecturing the other wizards and sorceresses who were enthusiastically intent to just consume the other army with fire, about how its such a basic bitch strategy that the enemy will already have a counter in place that would end up sending the fire back to the caster.
How good is the Legend of the Seeker series of television? My father just absolutely thinks the name: Zeddicus Zu'l Zorander, is the coolest thing ever.
This is the kind of question that keeps Alrodel up at night. Great stuff Ben! Your local elf sends his regards!
Just shows how great "frieren: beyond journeys end " is.
"Modern attack magic" evolved as a counter to a shield spell that in turn evolved to an attack spell that could pierce any defence that existed before, while also beeing super fast and mana efficient.
Right! The whole reason people don't use the most efficient spell is cause it's not as good against physical things and a wide variety of magic is used cause when spells become too common they become researched and easily countered. It makes perfect sense as to why niche spells would be seen simply to avoid your magic being known
that's how actually real life is , for example drone is become popular tool to destroy a tank cheaply , but by the time going anti drone technology also developed to counter it but because the anti drone is still expensive it's not used very often so the drone is still relevan
@@chocho6766 You can say that to guns too. At first, guns can only shoot one bullet at a time, and now guns can goes pew-pew as long as their ammoes allows.
@@chocho6766I'm gonna assume english isnt your first language
“What is this?!” -demon warlock
“Basic attack magic” -Fern
In the Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian, they made a ditch to stop the enemy cavalry from finishing their charge.
Their momentum was broken, they were still enough for archers to do a ton of damage, they were charged from the front, and from 2 angles in the rear.
This is what every total war player wants to see in a movie. It is our wet dream.
That is one thing I like about the Narnia movies. While obviously far from perfect they do show some interesting strategies in battle. Bombing runs, using a firewall to cover allies retreat, and as you say collapsing the ground to prevent a cavalry charge
Regarding the question you poised of formation fighting and things such as magic or aerial beasts - Warhammer: Total War may answer part of it. In historical Total War games a lot of players would tend to group their units pretty tightly as artillery units - while powerful - would still likely only hit 1-2 units at a time unless you had a very packed formation.
In WH:TW with magic existing and some spells being quite wide-spanning both for debuffs and offensive spells a lot of players have shifted to having a more spaced out 'checkerboard' style of formation so that those same spells will only devastate/debuff one unit, while still mitigating wider damage.
Similarly, defending archers and artillery from cavalry was generally easier in the historical games as long as you could block their route or have your own cavalry to contest their charge before they could flank you. With WH:TW you will have to keep melee units in reserve next to your archers to jump in and help their fight, and you'd want to spread your archers out so a single aerial unit can't as easily tie down all of your ranged units. Flying units could also harass anti-large units (IE: Spearmen) and bring them out of a braced formation and make them vulnerable to cavalry charges
"In WH:TW with magic existing and some spells being quite-wide wide-spanning both for debuffs and offensive spells a lot of players have shifted to having a more spaced out 'checkerboard' style of formation so that those same spells will only devastate/debuff one unit, while still mitigating wider damage."
Are you referring to Total War: Warhammer? If so, I don't think it's a perfect example for this because realistically, cavalry could just charge the mages down. Since there are no defensive lines in the scenario you described, they can easily slip past. Magic also takes fairly long to cast, so it's easy enough to avoid for fast units and once the cavalry has reached the mage, the latter would just die. Unless the latter is a monster that is very resilient, of course, but even then that monster should be bogged down by the cavalry and unable to cast any major or long range magic. I honestly don't know why this isn't a proper game mechanic and instead even human mages who don't wear armor can tank a charge of an entire cavalry battalion while throwing out a bunch of devastating spells in succession.
On top of that, a lot of magic there feels less like the magic should work and more like it is built around providing a fun and at least mostly balanced gameplay mechanic.
Of course you could also argue that the mages are protected by infantry, but a single infantry unit won't be able to hold out long while heavy cavalry charges into them, especially if it's multiples units of heavy cavalry. Fast monsters could also do the job, especially something like a Jet Lions with their innate magic resistance. Or how about another unit from Grand Cathay: the Celestial Lions. With their missile resistance, they could just disregard enemy archers and such while flying straight at the mages. Once there, they'd cause enough terror the send the infantry to rout before mauling the mage, then taking off again before any other troops can bog them down in melee, something that could easily happen against an enemy using standard formations.
@@firekeeper1870 Net of amyntok exists and now your heavy cavalry cant move while getting shot and gunpowder weapons also exist so your stone statues are going to crumble. If fast monsters or cavalry could've done the trick mankind would've already fell in the setting.
@@kkcyd Net of Amyntok is a single target spell. That doesn't help you if multiple units of cavalry charge your mage.
@@firekeeper1870 i mean but then the named "mage" ist an undying vam Carstein on a Zombie Dragon. Charge that with you'r few Knights...
But i mean sniping the wnamy mage to reduce loss IS a normal strategy in These Game Just need some Thing strong enoth that gets the Job done before He decemated you'r half you'r army. So defending you'r mage will need to be part of you'r Battle plan.
@@firekeeper1870 If your mage is on a eagle or a mutant rat ogre or a dragon or a basically a trex or giant zombie crabs good luck charging them with Calvary
I ran a game that was set in the D&D universe if magic had replaced technology and pushed the timeline up to World War 1.
Quickly figured out that communication and information was *far* more important than a fireball. If one fireball was the equivalent of an artillery shell, then having a caster that can only cast that two or three times is not all that useful. But, get that same wizard to cast find familiar and invisibility on them to have them scout and report back with impunity? That's way more useful.
It also ended up playing well into the adventuring party dynamic, as now the party were far more like a special ops team with heavy firepower used strategically, because large formations of troops were still too juicy a target for precision AoE attacks.
This is actually something that happens in Saga of Tanya the Evil. Mages have artillery spells like Fireball, and can fly, but they obviously have counter-mages, and trenches that have enemies in them whom are hard to see. They therefore use scouting mages to find enemy mages and important people in trenches. The scouting mages call in strikes from the artillery mages, or for backup against enemy mages in a dogfight. There are a bunch of other magics in the series too, such as illusion magic, and shields. Very interesting stuff.
@@ThugHunterfromIsrael Yeah, Saga of Tanya the Evil is one of my favorite anime and I definitely used it as an inspiration for my campaign. One of the lessons I took from the show was the idea that mages are great for taking territory, but they are trash at holding it.
Such a good show.
@@legomacinnisinc if you liked it, and you like deeper insights into strategy, psychology, etc, you should definitely read the novels. It's longer, more in depth, and goes very deep on the lore, worldbuiling, real life parallels, and Tanya's own character.
@@ThugHunterfromIsrael I have the first five valumes of the Manga but I've kinda bounced off of them. Are the LN a little more in depth?
@@legomacinnisinc Very.
0:34 Of course he's "a ditch guy", it's literally in his name
Dijks and ditches are about as opposite of each other as anything can be.
When it comes to Monsters, I think Warhammer handles it pretty well, Monsters while common enough are pretty rare in military and most have handlers that actively accompany the monster into combat, or example Skaven Packmasters handle practically all of the warbeasts Clan Moulder makes even while on the battlefield,
and it's especially important with Rat Ogres because without Packmasters driving them into the enemy, they will generally run amok and be as much of a danger to the Skaven army as they are to the enemy.
The Lizardmen aren't shy about bringing the various beasts of Lustria into battle either, from Cold Ones either just sent onto the Battlefield or used as mounts, or bringing to bear a Dread Saurian one of if not the largest single largest Land Predator in the Old World, they even mount magical artillery on the backs of some of the beasts they bring into battle.
And in every Warhammer Fantasy Stratagy Game a monster colliding with your lines usually becomes a "kill it now", or you risk a breach being made, the Empire's standard answer for Giants for example is to just roll up Cannons to deal with it since they don't actually have many (tameable) monsters within their lands, the best they got are Demi-Gryphs and Pegasus and maybe the occasional Griffon because Griffons are picky with their riders, and aside from Deathclaw the Griffon Karl Franz rides they don't get particularly massive and even then Deathclaw is far from the largest creature out there.
But monsterous creatures would likely excel as linebreakers, since sure you may be protected from Magic and your Frontlines are solidy built but I doubt the people goading a Hydra to run in your direction are going to care overly much for either of those things.
The tactic of sending a few specialty troops armed with large, 2h weapons into an enemy formation to cause chaos, confusion and generally help to break the enemy formation up, slow/stop their momentum/charge and be an overall huge threat that had to be dealt with before [the goblin charge] hit the shield-wall/pike-formation/whatever is not a new thing. I believe the Dacian Falx was a particularly good example of such a strategy designed to work against Roman troops' tactics (much like the Dwarves').
I'm not saying the elves leaping over the 2-shields-high-wall and into the massive hoard of charging goblins was a particularly good idea, and it certainly was not written anywhere by Tolkien afaik, however it does seem like a semi-plausible strategy given the goblins and [vampire] bat swarms greatly outnumbered the "good guys", so a sacrifice of a few dozen elves to slow down the initial giant tidal wave of goblins might have been worth it, so that the battle wouldn't have basically ended as soon as it began.
Just my 2c playing Devil's Advocate.
A good story starts with practicality. Build your world rules… Then FOLLOW them! These are natural laws to your characters. They know success is learning how those laws operate, and intelligent characters plan accordingly (unintelligent characters are fun too, but make sure your audience knows that’s the case if it is). It is always better to break a flimsy scene with hard laws of the universe it exists in, then to let your audience do it. That way you have a chance to build a better scene to replace it.
I think D&D inherently models skirmishing based combat and you can't directly Port that over to battles. When the creators made Fireball they thought of it hitting 10 people, not 80. So one would think that the power would be dispersed over a larger group of people. However more importantly, bows if directly ported over mechanically would dominate combat. A short bow from a distance is just as dangerous as a short sword in melee. Heavy knight Lance charges do barely more damage than a barrage of arrows. Not to mention, war bows in D&D don't even require strength unlike real life. So training a bunch of archers would be a lot faster. The world be absolutely and unquestionably dominated by horse archers.
So it would be like real life?
Like...horse archers are famously not an easy thing for medieval/ancient armies to deal with, except from behind elaborate defenses or castle walls.
It's weird because D&D was actually originally a mod for the large-scale medieval simulation wargame Chainmail (which is why health is called hit points), but as the editions go on it goes from simulation to what is essentially an MMORPG but on a table that emphasizes just staying in one spot spamming abilities and actively discourages using real tactics, especially for melee. Afaik tho it's kinda impossible to design a system that accounts for both individual and mass scale engagements without either massively simplifying one or bogging them both down in the minutae of complex rules, and even then it's very easy to break the game with unbalanced rules. Even Pathfinder 2E starts breaking when it comes to mass scale despite otherwise being almost perfectly balanced.
@@Syndie77-gk4xk In D&D ranged weapons can just mow people down. Like if you put 2 groups of 10 archers 100 feet away from each other. The fight would end in a minute. But if you were to scale it up it would be horrifying. Battles historically lasted hours.
The thing about D&D combat is that in D&D it's commonplace for people to survive a half dozen hits or more with no significant impairment, which is going to have a significant impact on the tactical calculus.
I recall reading a splatbook that specifically delved into how things like magic would operate in large-scale warfare. And this is from the 3rd edition era, where magic was much more powerful.
The most useful spells for a wizard on the battlefield (and, incidentally, the best way to bypass anti-magic standards) are those that do not actually target the enemy. Sure, you might blow away a couple of dozen men with a fireball, but grease or soften earth and stone directed to the right point of the battlefield at the right time can completely neutralise an entire enemy unit. Or, you can use illusion magic to conceal one of your units until it is time to ambush or convince the enemy they have been outmaneuvered.
One of the uses of magic in warfare that has always stuck with me is actually from the Elder Scrolls, where a commander had alteration mages cast water breathing on their heavily armoured shock troops, who then simply walked across the bed of a lake to attack from an unexpected direction.
Here in Brazil we have D&D "adjacent" rpg named "Tormenta RPG", in there they have a minotaur empire that heavilly uses roman inspiration, they even have magic classes that work together as a formation
Tormenta é uma m****, ao mesmo tempo que tem umas sacadas dessas, tem reinos com nome de chocolate e menininhas mágicas de anime e um paladino transformista. É um cenário que nunca soube o que queria ser, com muito potencial perdido.
@@MedievalFantasyTV Tormenta tem seus momentos, como um amigo diz... tormenta é igual Skyrim... é legal mas bem melhor com mods
Absolutely spot on. This video is more than worthy of a subscribe.
Three things i believe any story needs:
-Weight. Any interaction, from smallest to the most grand, needs to have impact, and the more emphasis you put into making it believable, the more youll get out of it.
-Natural believability. Just showing things as they are, natural and normal, without fanfare or dramatization, is another quality in it of itself.
-Continuity. Sticking to your guns and making sure the lore/the universe you created stays true to what its intended to be will be worth many times more than that single "cool moment". (this is like the LOTR battle argument)
Awesome video. Cheers.
1:00 brb buying a ditch
1:15 I found this more funny than it probably actually was
2:15 ahh yes of course (I've never seen the Hobbit movies)
2:57 fucking elves
3:38 photoshop battlemap ftw (brother bear you HAVE Warhammer Total War)
5:23 nah that's nerd shit
Good gravy Napoleon broadsiding the Pyramids is so lame
6:48 nah
7:06 because the Forgotten Realms is ass!
7:09 ....oh
9:00 I too have played Rome Total War
Smashing video Benny Boy
Literally I tried using total war first but it wouldn’t let me control two armies of different factions bc they sunset laboratory mode
I think the roman army would be full of artificers - entire core of them in fact - that would have a lots of spells, tricks and items to support the Roman Legion.
For example, when dealing with flying unit, not only will they hire flying aarakocra auxiliary, they would probably have a few expert units equiped with boot of flying to deal with that threat.
thats ceative, the thing is tho, that if flying beast are like cavallry, then they would absolutly dominate warfare, even more thant catafracts in our timeline, unless somthing somthing magic.
Airpower with only medival tech as counter mesures is just unstoppible.
even with counter messure, why woulnt an massive empire just focus on air power and counter messures against the counter messures itselve?
Whats the point of infatrie if you can bomb enemy formations into oblivian?
What defence has a decenterlised government against a proffesional airforce except for its onw flying nobility?
What defence does a fleet have against flying beast except for its own?
What advantage does an infatrie based army have against a flying one?
A Hundret flying beast that are unapposed could defeat an army of 10000. Air power especialy in the form of flying beasts is mutch more felixble and manuverible than infatrie ever will be.
What use will the heavy infatrie be when the enemy revuses to come down and instead just drops rocks on your dense formation?
What use will the heavy infanrtie be when the enemy burns your crops villages and unprotected towns while your army is on campain?
Rome was lucky that they didnt encounter that mutch heavy cav, especialy in the wars against alexanders succeors.
Still in the end the romas addopted a cavallry aproach.
In high magic settings with a lot of destructive magic armies would need to emphasize discipline. Soldiers in the 17th - 19th century were expected to stay in formation and take it when under artillery fire. If the magical firepower is even more intense than that small unit tactics make more sense.
i think guerilla tactics and more chaotic fights overall would be far more common in a magical fantasy world because of the shear variety of different types of troops. Imagine, an army sets up a proper defensive fortress with shield walls. All it really takes to counter that is one experienced wizard on a fast mount with any kind of large scale area attack spell, like a meteor shower or just a bunch of mustard gas. Although, now saying that, I see your point about how there's so many interesting ways things could be countered; all it takes to counter that one wizard is some other wizard archer who has homing arrows or something. Overall though, I still imagine battles would quickly devolve into chaos when there's so many spells and counter-spells that could theoretically exist for every situation.
There would not be chaos; you would need to think it through carefully. If a wizard could destroy a castle in 15 minutes, no one would even bother to build one.
@@ThePawcios I don't understand your point. If there are no castles to defend, would that not mean battles would be less organised, since there are no proper defensive positions to hold and no defenses to defend them? and would that not make it more chaotic?
@@cooiecub Nope, what castles have to the organization on batles? Please check more how histrorically battles were carried out, there are plenty of examples. I will give you one. In XVII century eastern eaurope battlefield was dominated by cavalry while in the west they used pikemens. Pikemens and early guns forced to construction of star fortreces while in eastern Europe mobile cavalry lead to open battles where star fortresses are useless. Therfore in eastern Europe you wont find many star fortraces :P When one side started behaving chaotic and was looking. Most of the people died not in the engagement of two battle formations but in the moment when one side was mentally broken and started to run.
If magic is the dominant form of combat, and can trash mundane fighters that easily, why on Earth would anyone train in mundane combat? If you want to fight, you study combat magic. And if you want an army, you invest in wizards. Unless magic has some very stringent limits, there is nothing stopping it from just becoming the dominant military system, everywhere.
And there is no reason such a system would be chaotic. Far from it. Because... well, you haven't defined any bounds on what these hypothetical wizards can do. Who's to say a castle couldn't be defended by the wizards inside, maintaining a defensive shield or ward? Or if castles are danger-magnets, what about defensive structures that are shorter but deeper, like those built during the Early Modern period? Fortifications designed to withstand bullets and cannonry.
Even if all static defences are non-viable, you might still see formations of wizards on a battlefield. Groups of casters operating as cohesive units under fire, drilled and disciplined to fight with combined magic of all kinds. Again, just like early firearm infantry in the Early Modern period. And if long-range communication magic is a thing, then warfare might even slide straight into WW2. With dispersed military divisions fighting along country-spanning frontlines, and independent tactical units as small as platoons, squads, or even fireteams.
You really cannot come to any conclusions about how much magic would influence a battlefield, unless you define some very clear rules about what the magic can actually do.
@@tbotalpha8133Just look at how bunkers can withstand huge amount off firepower. I think the amount of tunnel warfare that we would see would be crazy. With of course the dwarfs being highly sought after for it's construction. (1 of the reasons we don't see it as much in our world is because how slow and how many resources it takes to dig these tunnels, but in a magic world we might even see in a field battle. I believe the Warhammer fantasy Skaven have a mechanic that proof my point. Since being able to outflank the enemies troops is of huge tactical and strategic value. You can't think of warfare in only 2 dimensions anymore. Going through the sky is great and all, but you can easily be seen, tunnelling on the other hand.)
So not only would there be magic to counter all/most of the magic that would be used against them. Requiring you to be sneaky and making infiltration the name of the game. Detecting infiltrators would also be key to not getting nuked into oblivion if 1 does manage to sneak past. I think it all really depends on how you build the fortifications. Making important to turn it into sections, so that 1 section falling doesn't mean the whole thing is lost. Installing blast doors, choke points, maze like structures, that only the defenders know exactly where and how to go anywhere since magic you could have the lair change itself constantly along pre-established patterns that the defending troops have to know.
The biggest question is: how rare is magic, because the more common it is, the more units you will have that can counter it.
Other questions may involve it's potency and scale and how hard is it to learn the defensive magic, counter spell and anti-magic. Because if the anti-measures are relatively easy to learn, than defending against magic also becomes a lot easier.
Good example: pretty much all of "The Way of Kings" by Brandon Sanderson
I love that book.
also the two battlemage books are awesome
Your idea of having Roman eagle standards be magical forcefield projectors is so simple but so cool, I’d love to learn more about your Roman-DnD world
Watching the gryphons dive to drop rocks on a semi massed group of enemies exposing themselves to arrow fire rather than flying high and dropping the rocks while out of range.
The tactic makes sense, though the scene portrays it badly. When dropped as the gryphon pulls out of a dive the rock would fly at a low angle, crushing through multiple ranks of soldiers and potentially even skipping off the ground to continue flying, essentially turning the gryphons into cannons firing solid shot with pinpoint accuracy. Sure, dropping from altitude would be safer; but when they only have one shot before melee is joined, it's best to maximize the damage and disruption it does.
But how are you making sure the rock is hitting your target? During WW2 bombers had to drop hundreds of bombs in one raid and even still most of them at best hit the same general region. And those are fin stabilised bombs that fall mostly straight down - a big rock has way worse aerodynamics by comparison. This is why to use such strategy your flying units would have to dive down, although it's better if they at least threw something that explodes than just rocks.
@@kindlingking WWII bombers are flying way higher, at a far faster speed. If they are trying to hit something they have a correct widow to score a hit measured in the total size of the object divided by the ground speed of the bomber, at 450km/hr that's 125m/s or a target 125m long they have 1s to drop a bomb and hit it. At bombing altitude 7400m which is as high as they can fly and still have enough lift to carry their bomb load you have a 39s fall time at which your bomb will be blown around by any cross wind as it falls 7.4km. If they are US bombers they are using a bombsight made by a conman that didn't work and was objectively worse than just guessing.
A gryphon flying at a few hundred meters of altitude at 20m/s dropping rocks on a target hundreds of meters square is going to have much more success at being effective, or at least hitting someone directly.
In both cases a dive bomber style will have much better accuracy, with WWII pilots being able to hit single tanks, at the risk of much more ground fire. For the gryphon they have no chance of doing more than marginal harm given their weapon and lack of numbers so they may as well fly high enough to not be subject to any ground fire and just take more runs at the army.
Couple of notes, the elves loosing arrows from behind the dwarves would also be unhistorical. Same with the orc army, they would not have their archers in the rear, not if intended to use them. That style of fighting is another product of Hollywood. Also, just the shooting in mass was not really done except with the English and Janissaries and it may well be that Edward got the idea from the Janissaries as it came after a Crusade. The Mongols sometimes used a variation of it.
in Malazan they more or less have "whoever still has the most soldiers left after the wizards expend their capabilities" as a thing, with casualties upwards of 50% from fire and lightning and giant balls of acid and shit (also the "Heavy infantry" they use are loose, maniple like formations of soldiers with big unwieldy shields and crossbows with small swords if melee is joined, because massing for infantry battle with fireball spells without having some kind of cover to hide behind is utter suicide)
A thing I like, this kind of formation: pavis style shields you dig into the ground, heavy crossbows, secondary small shields and short swords, light lance cavalry in the wings, these are great for fighting when armies have magic, because soldiers aren't too concentrated but can still concentrate fire pretty well, but it's also good if you're fighting ogres or giants or minotaurs or whatever because the tall beast will be getting absolutely rocked by your siege weaponry behind you and all of your soldiers laying into them with crossbows, and can only reach 2 or 3 soldiers at a time even with their big oversized monster weapons
Bro, if your army suffers more than 20% casualties, your army would likely just flee, unless your soldiers are brainwashed automatons
I think the fundamental flaw with all of this logic, which is echoed through this comment section, is assuming armies would even exist lmao.
He's a question for you - why does everybody obsess over armies? A level 20 fighter is more or less immune to damage, on a battlefield they would be the equivalent of a god given life. Having a horde of chaff is more or less a useless endeavor
@@iain-duncan
Not all fantasy heroes are demigod dnd 5e level 20 tier, bro. I think most characters like this would not exist in many fantasy settings, and in many others they would be extremely rare. One man armies suck at one of the primary role of all armies : holding the land.
So your assumption woud only make sense in a world where demigod supersoldiers are common enough. In that case tho, you’d probably still create armies made out of these superhumans.
A fantasy setting can, if it wants it, be more grounded in reality. In GoT the peak of a warrior’s performance would be someone like Jaime Lannister or Barristan Selmy. They are the lvl 20 fighters of their world (even if in absolute terms they aren’t). Yet put Jaime infront of a spear line and he will die.
@@iain-duncan Likely because game mechanics won't translate 1-to-1 to a movie, book, or show. It'd be actual ass.
you would want horse archers as light calavly, but heavy calvaly for lance. bc against a loose formation these would be insane.
Mages would take the role of canons basicly. so you could also get some kind of pike block warfare, potencially.
I absolutely loved this video. You said you could spend hours talking about Roman to Dnd analogues and I would probably listen along the whole time. Your ideas of how you have combined those two worlds was wonderful and inspired my own thoughts too, thanks so much for creating this video!
Was thinking about this a few years back and came up with:
"magic has to have an exponential range function", it's really hard to push out the range of your spell effect but up close is pretty easy; and:
"while mages are fairly common, powerful mages are very rare", to cut down on their systemic use in society and warfare.
Eragon book series was really nice with its explanation of combat and how mages are incorporated into full size battles.
As a former soldier, mold earth is my favorite spell in dnd. Anyone who has spent any time on a Shovel or e-tool will understand. 5 cubic feet in 6 seconds!?!?! My God yes!!! If the defenders have it and the attackers don't, then my money is on the defender. If the attackers have it and the defenders don't, then no non magical fortification will last very long. Sieges of months become days. If both have it... wowza! Better have some good communications and QRF ready to fill gaps in the lines and secondary fronts.
Wow, there's a whole campaign seed there about a seige squad called the Ditch Diggers who have to
4:53 Peter Jackson and his crew were not lazy and the battle of the five armies was targeted towards J.R.R Tolkiens story and NOT what Peter Jackson wanted. In fact, his whole team was set to understand that the story of LOTR was based to feel like it is historical fiction.
Cheers from Legio XXI Rapax, I'm happy to see our footage in your video essay!
Thanks so much!
You’ve answered questions and affirmed ideas that I have for my dnd campaign. Funnily enough the fantasy napoleon trope is part of my campaign and so are the griffon-riders you mentioned.
Have my sub, man. Glad I found this channel. 👍
That’s why Sapkowskii’s and Martin’s book worlds make sense and are accurate within their fantasy worlds
It's a shame that the disastrous GoT final seasons have soured people's opinions of GRR's worldbuilding - almost all of the heinous mistakes made weren't made by him
@@iain-duncan Fortunately, I think most people realize it wasn't him but the showmakers.
The trick is not having magic widely available. Still, the Witcher is more of a tale in toned down setting, tale that tries to avoid worldbuilding in general. And Martin still unfairly nerfs dragons because even just that is too op to handle.
What strikes me as I think about it is that both setting deal with loss of magic, Witcher in general and asoiaf historically.
@@theinquisitor8112 Anyone who has read the books, definitely.
@theinquisitor8112 absolutely true thankfully, I just know a lot of people aren't going to read the books so the show will be their only exposure
the problem with the mentioned (D&D, his example not mine) boundless scenarios IS that there are no limitations in power-scaling/world-building:
if there are limitless possibilities that all seem to be unstoppable except for nonsense that is "even crazier" ("oh yeah? you cast meteors on my city?! Well I have the infinity uno-reverse-spell for that!") then it is hard to really invest your time and thought process into it since it there is no point in searching for the "best" strategy. Because there is none.
The end-result of it: no body cares about it and it feels somewhat loose, or unreal when fantasy is all about making it feel real.
Ya, these types of mental exercises only work in settings where magic has useful restrictions. If wizards can phase entire armies out of existence, an epic battle should always devolve into skirmish between lvl 20 demigods.
It comes down to physics, basically. Matter and energy can't be created or destroyed, which is why resources are limited, which is what causes conflict. If all of a sudden you can create water out of thin air in infinite quantities and make it disappear with zero effort, there's nothing to really fight over. You've solved the problem. Need to move up a tower? Just tie it to a balloon and have a mage flood the area to float it to the top, then remove the water. Need to cool an area down, such as a desert? Flood it. Thirsty? Flood.
I find myself liking super hero fantasy less and less because of this. If there's some motherfucker out there who can make infinite fire, _you have the ability to make infinite energy._
Thats what makes finding the capability of a fantasy army difficult, as typically, there must be a limit on how powerful the magic is. Which is why many times people just lowball the fantasy army in a medieval army.
Because if magic is powerful enough armies are worthless.
Take godclad for example, the only reason armies exist is to confuse the enemy about your intentions and to get thaums and ghosts(resources required for the magic system of godcad which can only be obtained by people dying. Death is a pretty big thing in this novel and pretty much all progression depends on death). But in the end, wars are decided by the highest ranking godclads fighting against each other and whichever.
This also applies to Tensura to certain extent. While armies exist the war is always decided by whichever faction has their high ranking mages left
A powerful magic system typically leaves armies as useless
If create water is a common cantrip, starving out fortresses via hitting supply lines is going to be take so much longer... Or just not be a thing 🤔
Na water was usually not the problem food was. Any respekting fortress would have water supplie
@@giftzwerg7345 I see.
Flight alone makes conventional sieges questionable. When you start adding teleportation, they become laughable.
@@giftzwerg7345 goodberry. and 'create food and water'.
A single cast of third level creates food for 15 people for a whole day.
Goodberry is even more efficient, with a first level spell to feed 10 people for a whole day.
@@giftzwerg7345
True. But GoodBerry is a 1st Level Spell. A single casting feeds multiple people and prevents the need to eat for a day. A small group of druids will prevent starvation in a seized local so long as they don't run out of Mistletoe.
Lol that reminds me of some of the ship to ship battles in the expanse. "They're 100 km away!" "Prepare the rail gun for CQB!!"
Everyone that played total war knows these "tactics_
You should no more jump over a phalanx formation than you should charge head on with horses into one and yes, I'm looking at that scene in The Two Towers when the Rohirrim led by Gandalf charges into the Uruk-Hai who have their pikes set ready to face the charge. Normally that would be suicide for a cavalry unit but since Gandalf uses his "magic" the problem just goes away. That is perhaps my biggest gripe with the Battle of Helms Deep.
“She thinks shes is walter white “ 💀
Excellent video. Definitely some really good ideas at some point I'm going to write down my own novel ideas and develop them a little further.
i think the best fantasy combined arms (infantry, magic, cavalry) infantry army combat ive read was in A Practical Guide to Evil.
also, we can kinda tell your reading a script when you move your eyes left and right. try making your lines narrower so you dont have to move your eyes so much. and maybe try to line up your camera to where you are in the text so it appears you are looking at the camera, or vis versa
Speaking of The Battle of Winterfell, you know what'd be really cool? Showing the wall to keep them out actually being sieged and not just blown up by a dragon instantly.
not easy to get into, but god damn is the Malazar cycle great in this aspect.
Many years ago, in a campaign of D&D that was coming to its close, our party had just reached level 20 after multiple years and after a long winter campaign leading an army into orc lands on a crusade to kill an ancient primordial dragon that functioned as their god, we had made camp not far from the mountain stronghold that served as their capital, and the Sorcerer had just learned Meteor Swarm as his capstone spell. In character he revealed he had finished work on a new and terrible spell, devoted entirely to the swift end to this bitter war, a spell so unthinkable that it should never be cast, but in these unthinkable times, should only be cast once. Just before dawn, my paladin took the sorcerer to the sky on his griffon steed and rode out over the enemy capital, along the edges of their outer defenses under the cover of night, to avoid their wyvern patrols, and he cast Meteor Swarm so as to carve a line of destruction through their rings of walls and up to their city gates. The resulting firestorm made for an early dawn, and as we arrived back in our warcamp as the troops were making ready for the day's siege there was a grim mood about the troops, and the sorcerer. Our own troops felt unsure what to think of a man who could unleash such devastation, while the sorcerer himself, despite his noble goals, could not help but feel a shame for having used his arcane gift, his life's passion, to bring such pain and devastation into the world. He only hoped it would prove to be worth it, and never spoke of the spell again, burning all notes he used to develop it, for fear of anyone ever using it again.
These Elves are a very particular breed of Elf in LOTR. They were not Rivendell elves, cultured and magnificient and above it all. No they are Sylvans, seen as less cultured, less wise even, by other elves. And INCREDIBLY fucking prideful. They are also known for being relatively lightly armored and seeking to send their warriors into melee, counting on their speed and skill to win engagements if they don't have the pace and time to destroy an enemy with arrows.
So, what happens when orcs charge them and the Dwarves they were JUST FIGHTING who made a fool of their archers with a neat spinny toy immediately drop the battle to brace against the Orcs?
Prideful Elves leap over them, because FUCK those dwarves, to show off in a battle while also keeping their old oaths. The dwarves, just as stubborn and prideful, and now slighted, charge in as well for the SAME REASONS.
Is it the WISEST decision? No. But a part of HONESTLY viewing and critiquing fantasy battles is the characters and peoples involved. And this is something often forgotten in this vein of cinematic critique.
Then portray it as a bad decision instead of some cool flashy action stunt 😂
It wasn’t framed properly because the people making The Hobbit didn’t care. The studio was abusing Jackson like the orcs abuse those Trolls who operate the Black Gates.
i mean yea, its is at least a explonation, but like ist still stupid. erspecialy, bc the dwarfes could have just kept the pike wall and killed two foes with one pike/ spear so to speak. The elves going for the lthe flanks, or even the kinng would make a lot more sense, also from the pride factor. bc then they could claim that it was them who gave the killing blow. For the same reasons, the glory seeking knights argued about who would take the right flank.
Heck even if they wanted to do a frontal charge, then they should atleast have formed a wedge.
Thank god these weren’t warhammer dwarves, even if you’re helping them fight orcs, the act of jumping over a dwarf let alone a phalanx would be a very serious grudge
@@pacocheung1864 Oh GODS could you imagine? Lmao.
@@giftzwerg7345 They were fighting in a dip in the ground, with rougher terrain to either side, which is WHY the Elven and Dwarf armies fought where they did. Further, the time it would take to mobilise everyone into units, divert to the flank, and make the manuever would mean that a line of maybe three dwarves deep have to content with the ENTIRE ORC HOST on their own, unaided, for at least a few minutes.
It also means elves would have to allow the DWARVEN army to decide the place of combat, and the mode, and they would have to SUPPORT them. A prideful, more aggressive race like this would never do that.
Finally, there are a TON of Orcs, with more emerging from the holes every moment, and a flanking maneuever would leave them similarly cut off. THIS aspect is why they complain. Because people associate a phalanx with the height of military tactics. People would still complan in that direction, because they'd demand that the elves stay back and shoot.
This manuever is in character for how the Sylvans fight, how they think, how they move, and how they feel. Is it entirely perfect? No. But it's in character and that is what should ACTUALLY be asked here.
As an aside, almost no Elves even fall in this manuever. They start to fall LATER, when they move to defend the city after the manuever being criticized WORKED and the Orcs largely broke in the first engagement
3:35 I don't know of any battles where archers (especially in archer heavy armies like the English) were used from behind friendly lines. Nobody wants to risk getting shot in the back.
The Persian Achaemenid battleline was built with melee troops in front with a thick line of archers behind, which was a standard formation for the time
@@BenDeHart Hm I can't find anything on it so I have no choice but to believe you right now, but I find the idea of shooting into a melee from behind questionable. Maybe the Persiian archer's main job was just skirmishing? That era isn't particularly well known for its empathis on ranged combat.
Always hate it, when writers just abuse magic as a way to lazily write whatever they want.
Yes, magic is magic and the most boring way to use it is when it's treated very scientific and for example the Harry Potter way with fix spells and a wand you need, so it's overall just as technical as any tool.
It was for example a great moment when in "The Last Unicorn" the young wizard, who had his problem to remember and use any kind of spell just preached to the "magic": "Do as you will", making it that mysterious force even better magicians likely can't really control for real, able to maybe do anything, but just as much out of control to really use that.
This way you keep magic as it should be, a fantastic, mysterious thing in your world, what pushes it beyond the reality we know, likely forever unknown land, human can at best take a glimps in.
And when it comes to the parts which are under control, then they still must make sense. While it is fantasy, this fantasy setting got its own reality and rules which should stay that way with all the consequences.
Hmm.. that is exactly like hearing the voice of your lover, seeing her or him only thru a muslin paravan and not touching one another but only briefly once or twice in ones life. That is how I interpret how you see the proper use of magic in a setting but for me seeing it as a science shows and gives more fascination then the other variant. Is it corect?
Now days it's not just magic, look at the Star wars movies, in the second movies the rebels are down to a single ship, next movie they are somehow a massive army. In game of thrones the Dorthraki army is sacrificed, only to respawn when needed later. Stuff like that really bugs me, it makes thinking during watching a movie piss you off.
My magic system is like programming so there are always new ways to do things in a smarter way or more efficiently as well as tools always evolving. Also there are many sources of magic with different rules and capabilities that can't be easily discovered without reverse engineering/hacking/trial and error.
It's funny that you say that magic is boring when it has rules, but that it is lazy when writers can use it to do whatever they want. Personally, I think if magic can do big things, it needs to be defined, to have costs and limits. Otherwise, well, why wouldn't people do it? And there are different ways to do it. Some define a truly hard system. But you can have a soft system, yet still limit it.
For instance, the Coldfire Trilogy, where the magic isn't really defined, has the underlying concept of sacrifice (and said sacrifice's value is determined by how much you value it... not the "sacrifice a stranger" type) to do sorcery, meaning the answer as to why people don't do stuff is provided: the cost of the sacrifice is too high, and it also pushes the more powerful spells into the ritual range, rather than fast casting. Added to that, belief shapes the world as well, so there's a second version of the same "magic" counterbalancing the first a bit. Alternately, you have LotR, where we are told Gandalf and Saruman are great and powerful, but we see them do jack all. Nothing worthy of their reputation, pretty much. So again, it stops it from unbalancing the world, because by never showing them doing anything of note, we don't ask, "Why didn't they do X here?" Them doing nothing is the norm, and so we don't expect them to do anything. Even what Gandalf did, fighting the balrog, well, he fought a balrog... but no specifics. So again, we really have no clue what he can do, beyond that he's powerful enough to fight a balrog. Other setting allow more freedom, but still limit mages, by having their magic manifest in different ways, so magic can do anything, but any given mage is very limited in the grand scope of things. Again, this avoids magic just being a boring Deus Ex Machina or an immersion breaker. Magic is limitless, but any given mage isn't and has hard limit/rules.
Short of it, magic needs rules or to be limited in power, if only in the reader's mind.
A side story in one of the series I've been working on follows a Germanic orc who enlists as an auxiliary with the Romans to secure their tribe against other larger tribes. They also provide an excellent fish-out-of-water character to show the process of Roman construction for bridges and forts, logistics, and the scale of operations needed to maintain a legion, as well as the internal structure of training and promotion as they learn to read and eventually rise in the ranks and train other orcish auxiliaries.
Then, in the same series, over a thousand years later in the series, Prussian and Austrian grenadiers, artillery crews, and light infantry still include orcish formations, where their physical strength serves them well on long marches and handling "ogre guns" to fell larger beasts, though they cannot move as quickly and need more food than humans and many other races.
These units often still have eagle motifs, or Latin unit mottos as a callback to their heritage, even if there's no direct connection, as they serve under the Holy Roman Empire and the Hapsburgs.
So far I've been dealing with magic in a 'Laws of Thermodynamics' kind of way, where energy input = energy output, like Full Metal Alchemist, and also most types are very difficult to learn and use. Casting a spell with more than one step is almost like writing computer code with logic gates and a power supply, but with much more potential danger to the user. Under that system, enchanted legion standards (or something of similar purpose) would actually be somewhat viable. Though, I think I'd pick something else, so that they can be handed out to smaller units as needed. Especially in dense forests or mountains where it was hard for a whole century to move and fight in open combat.
As an aside, one of the things that naturally counters magic in-setting is... Radioactivity. So an 'anti-magic sword' might be a sword that had traces of uranium ore in it when it was forged, and the makers have no idea why it works; it just does, and so do other random objects they make with ore from that one specific mine people get sick in after a while.
Oh the fun to be had with a few interacting systems...
It really does depend on the settings rules. I'm working on one, for fun, and there magic is all based on largely invisible blesses and curses, for the magically weak/common at least. Kinda hard to hide fuckin' dragon fire.
But yeah, when a priest/wizard blesses the troops before a battle, it's kinda hard to tell the difference between a nice thing to say that hypes up the men, and it literally being magic that empowered them. The same with curses, am I getting cursed or am I just more observant of bad things happening to me.
Of course the exceptions to this do make it clear that magic is actually real to the sceptics, but those are few and far in-between. Magic in mine is not a science, and is often unreliable to even use assuming you even notice that it wasn't actually working. But when that crazy smelly hedge wizard curses a dragon to freeze in the air like time has stopped, you'll be fucking sure that is magic. Of course the bloke might fall asleep afterwards, but hey, at least he stopped you getting roasted for the next 30 seconds!
A random Wabbajack sorcery-roulette would be funny for a mothy python-type comedy. I cast lightning but they polymorph in to tenor spider-pumpkins.
3:57 and you're already speaking my ideas on the subject. Liked. Very much liked. Thank you for the map diagram.
Battle of Winterfell has a Ditch... but the idiots placed their men in front of it. LOLS
Steven Erikson's Malazan series does a great job of integrating magic into the military setting. It's all about limitations and using that scarce resource to its fullest advantage. And, of course, the enemy also uses magic.
No it's not. Malazan magic is overpowered to all hell. The "Source" or "Well" of all magic in the Malazan world is formless, the Warrens of elements and powers basically exist as pure molds of power, Tattersail used fire magic so well because the Warren of Fire, Telas, attuned to her so well, and it's why her fire magic was so powerful and could wipe out entire regiments. It also doesn't do the best job with meshing the two, Mages are distrusted until the heat of battle happens and boom, they're loved again, Magic users also blow themselves up regularly (Siege of Pale). Magic in Malazan is all about being born under the correct stars to get the most out of your life, you get lucky or you just don't. . .Whiskyjack showed luck can run out.
I don't strictly disagree, but I think it is important to remember that this is just one STYLE of worldbuilding. Unfortunately there seems to be a tendency amongst worldbuilding UA-camrs to present this kind of problem-based worldbuilding as the only legitimate way to do it, and that unless you've thought about the precise chemical formula for the rock your castles are made of then you're some sort of hack. Personally I prefer emergent world-building, where you come up with ideas and draw links organically as you go, but that's just me, and depending on the project I might use different styles. There are dozens of different styles of worldbuilding out there and I think we do ourselves a disservice if we suggest one is the "right" way to worldbuild.
Speaking of styles in worldbuilding, the trend these days is to have "magic as physics". That is, there are strict rules to how magic works, and the guy who manipulates them in the cleverest way wins. But... what if magic is more miraculous? That is, a blatant violation of its own world's rules. You just *want* something hard enough, and it happens, if you're strong enough. (A good example of this is Eddings' Belgariad series.)
@@hoi-polloi1863 hard vs soft magic systems. LOTR did soft magic and it was great, but LOTR was super Christian and the wizards are basically apostles and it all had as much regard for physics as the Bible did.
It might not be the only way but it is the best in terms of avoiding the pitfalls of lore and consistency most stories fall into. For me, emergent means whatever you came up with on the spot in the context of your story. This can work but it also requires a lot of work constantly to not plothole yourself. Problem hunting at the start though can give you a stable platform to build up upon.
Case in point: the whole eagle anti-magic thing would allow you to then think of enemies that dont rely on magic, enemies that rely too much on magic, hell even enemies that stole eagles to use against the legion etc.
@@chrisyotas5854 I don't agree that it is the best way to avoid plot holes, partly because plot holes are determined by your attention to detail, not your worldbuilding style. That said, one advantage is that it encourages you to think through these kinds of problems that might come up, which can increase the resilience of your worldbuilding and/or believability.
It actually isn't that hard to avoid plot holes in emergent worldbuilding so long as you're keeping track of everything you've created. It has the advantage of allowing for interesting and unique connections to emerge organically in the story, and particularly in an RPG context allows your players to take an active role in the worldbuilding. More importantly for me, it reduces initial cognitive overload and by extension blank page syndrome, which allows you to get straight into it.
This isn't to suggest that emergent worldbuilding is better, different people and different projects will lend themselves more to different styles. But for me I rarely have an issue with plot holes while doing emergent worldbuilding, simply because there is an assumption that everything "just works" somewhere in the background and you don't need to tackle it until it comes up in the narrative.
@@kapitankapital6580 Ah, i see the difference, when i talk about worldbuilding, i always mean large-scale, because for small scale stuff, just like you said, you can just explain as needed. I just never really considered that as world-building because you are giving the illusion of a larger world but are only building such a small amount of the actual world. You are very much correct that it depends on detail, i just naturally gravitate to high detail, because a lot of times, low detail worlds have complete BS spring out of nowhere to advance the story after they built themselves into a hole.
With the elves and dwarves, there's one other cavalry job you're overlooking, and it is one that would have let the movie makers keep the elves jumping over the shield wall bit. And that role is running down troops once they break. Consider this sequence of events: The dwarves hold the line. The orcs break on the dwarven line, start to retreat. And then the elves hit this retreating force when they're at their weakest, causing them to break and run.
And then, since the movie makers don't want the battle to end at that point, just have them run into fresh, unbroken orc formations, or have a particular orc leader manage to rally and re-establish the orc line.
Your Conquest of Fantasy Gaul campaign sounds super interesting, would you consider making a more comprehensive video on your world-building for that if you haven't already?
I’ve got a few videos touching on it, but not a detailed breakdown. Maybe I’ll make one!
@@BenDeHart That would be greatly appreciated! I'm in the process of creating a fantasy setting inspired by the period a few centuries later, taking heavy inspiration from the fall of Rome and the centuries after, and I'm curious to see if we have similar ideas about fantasy Rome. I might even be interested in sharing ideas more actively.
7:30 legions should form smaller units with a platoon size unit as the basic formation, instead of a century, and a possible functional squad unit too. With magic, you generally cannot form dense battle formations and might have to rely on maneuvers to gain advantage. The scope of field battles may be much wider and would be fighting similar to gunpowder era battles. This means you have to delegate more to your officers rather than command on your own. Cavalry will be much more preferable and infantry lines doesn't need to be that dense. But they will still function the same regardless due to the existence of supernatural guys embedded in the army. I think normal soldiers will just act as "momentum indicator".
Having a dragon would be like having a WW1 fighter plane in the middle ages. Having one would make you a global superpower lol
More like a modern jet.
Good luck bringhing a dragon down with arrows
Honestly with how most dragons are depicted, more like an attack helicopter that functionally had no ammo limitations, and could also engage in land combat.
You should take a look at the book series the secret of askir. It's written by a German and he has so much control over his world building. everything feels grounded in the world.
My pet peeve : a legion would never have an horizontal plummet or a metal armor in walking legion (as not a garnison) -____-".
I love the way the Inheritance Cycle deals with combat and magic, and how those two things intertwine
The best tactics I've seen in a fantasy setting are the ones in Warhammer. Be it the TTRPG, the books or the total war games, they make great use of manpower, technology and magic in their armies.
Warhammer fantasy, especially the Total War franchise, does a fantastic job of implementing magic in battle. They have a distinct battle magic that behaves like artillery, either AOE or high single target damage. Heavily resilient and tanky champions along with flying units. There are several ways to counter magic casters. One of the more effective is sending highly mobile and resilient cav or air cav after the magic user. Staggering the line of battle to prevent clean line spells from wiping your front line, sniping the caster with an assassin or high single target magic artillery or elite ranged unit. You could also advance in a loose formation and then coalesce into a tight formation as you approached the enemy. This dynamic happened a lot in Napoleonic Warfare, where line formation granted greater firepower (partially vulnerable to cav and arty), column granted speed and assault power (vulnerable to arty), square formation for protection against cav (no attack and vulnerable to arty), and the skirmish line which was great for wasting enemy ranged attacks and to harass the enemy (vulnerable cav and determined line infantry). The battle tactics really depend on how plentiful magic is in the world. Plentiful mages could look like the pike and shot armies of Imperial Spain and Holy Roman Empire. High magic items can look like Napoleonic Era or the Knights and Magic anime. Monsterous beasts make it appear more like Lord of the Rings/Warhammer. It also depends on if mages are rulers, part of noble retinues, mercenaries, or feared outlaws. The possibilities are endless.
2:09 the worst battle tactic is the battle of winter fell.
Dont know if "the Battle of Bastards" is second Place but its certainly in the top 10 if not 5
I was just scrolling through recommended videos without looking for anything particular, and this video caught my attention.
It actually proves super useful for me, cause the campaign I'm running has fantasy Legions in it, and this helps close up some holes in their defenses!
Play dominions 6 to know how 😂😂😂
Legions are but the ablative armour of extremely pissed off mega wizards who cast testicular torsion like it's going out of style.
@@igncom1Or just have hellblessed sacreds win the day
There is a strategy game called Dominions 6 which has simulated fantasy battles. Learning to play that game is a good way to experience highly realisitic large scale fantasy battles. Also the world building in the game is so good you will become a better DM just from reading the unit descriptions.
Mass produced anti magic flag?
Dam. Those are expensive.
Ow what ever will i do.
Posion your food? Send armies of animals to raid your supply lines, create ents or summon devils.
Anti magic is quiet high level.
Mass producing it reeks of plot convinces.
He didn't say it was mass produced, it might be that only a few are made every year, thus meaning that it's worth more than the legion it belongs to. Also, 'high level' is not set in stone, might just be that the knowledge is easy to apply but it's kept hidden.
IMO anti magic would be mostly ward based not item enchantment based, with layered wards placed on important locations to prevent certain types of magic. for example, no city ever would allow unrestricted casting within its walls.
When "antimagic" fields and wards in the world placed on every corner, why have magic at all?
“The elves ruin it.” Yes they did. When I first saw it, I couldn’t believe how stupid jumping over the spear wall was.
2:12 I cant even discribe how mad i am at these scene
I feel like it is an example of the different fighting tactics of the two races. Dwarves are stout, strong, steadfast, they are short, so they have a lower center of gravity, and they live in the mountains, in strong stone fortresses, so it would make sense for them to adopt the tactic of creating a strong defense like a shieldwall. Their strength and low center of gravity means they can basically create a wall that is hard to move or break through, essentially a road block against charging enemies. They create that defense and then don't move unless it is necessary.
The elves on the other hand are light, nimble, and quick, they spend their entire lives in the woods, running and leaping to evade and to chase their enemies. They use natural defenses to their advantage, hiding up in the trees and shooting at their enemies from above, they move around to avoid being cornered, and they use numbers, moving around constantly, to overwhelm their enemies (the scene where they rescue Thorin and Company from the spiders, and chasing them down the river while fighting the orcs). They clearly have stationary defenses, like walls, gates, etc., but when they go to war, they rely more on their long-range weapons to take out as many enemies as they can before the enemy charge has reached them, before engaging with what is left. If the dwarves hadn't been there, I think they would have formed a line of swordsmen that would cleave away at the orcs once they were close enough as we saw in the Battle of the Last Alliance scene in the prologue of the Fellowship of the Ring, but as we also saw in that battle, they shot hundreds of arrows while the orcs were charging. Once the two lines engaged, they broke into individual fighting, moving around so as to not be surrounded, using their natural quickness and agility to their advantage. I did like how the elves in the Hobbit used the tactic of fighting in threes, with two swordsmen defending one archer, constantly moving around the archer as he shot at approaching enemies.
It also shows how, having been rivals for so many centuries, elves and dwarves have not fought alongside one another, so they have abandoned the tactics they had once had long ago, forgetting how to work together, using the dwarves' strength and strong defenses, and the elves' range and nimbleness in a cohesive and effective strategy, or..., they just never really learned how to work well together in battle, which might have been another thing that added to the animosity they have had towards one another.
I absolutely love to geek out with scenarios like this. Bravo, very well done!
Robert Jordan's The Wheel of Time saga had some really epic battle scenes, was really good at depicting wars outside of battles too (like the ever growing problem the refugees meant over three years of war, and the logistics of different sizes of armies and warbands marching through huge distances). Jordan himself was a veteran of the Vietnam War, where served two tours as a helicopter gunner, giving him first hand experience of fighting. One of my favorite things about the setting was its constant change - as soon as the fightings started, people started to innovate on tactics and weapons to gain the upper hand.
The rules of the world originally denied the use of magic on battlefield - when that rule was eventually broken, the battlefields became a new kind of horror, that left a lasting mark on both people who saw it, and those affected by wars in a broader sense.
Also, you should check out malazan book of the fallen series. Incredible battles, immense scope. Truly the most epic fantasy of all times
SECOND THIS!
Having the standard nagating magic seems a bit too obvious and singles the barer out. Especially if the galls used hit and run tactics and ambushes against the larger more uniformed romans. That can create chaos and confusion thay can lead to the standard barer getting killed even by accident.
Might be smarter if the thing keeping magic at bay was more hidden so it would be harder to pick off and/or spread across multiple people so the soldier wouldn't be left to dry if the enemy gets a lucky shot.
My reason for magic not being included in most conflicts aside from healing is mutual destruction/it is a low magic setting, so not many mages are even around.
The first Chronicles of Narnia film had pretty decent military strategy for a kids film. Using the rocky outcrop as shelter/height advantage and dividing the witches army in half at the beginning was nicely done
older editions of dnd actually adressed things like this because they did expect people to eventually get to the level where they are commanding armed forces and leading dominions.
they were called “companion rules”. A d the Mystara setting back in the 80’s specifically had a lot of stuff like this with more and less magical empires and kingdoms at war and politicing with each other. Like thyatis, a somewhat byzantine empire, which had some magic, but is primarily known for its mundane milirary might abd effeciency vs Alphasia, which was a highly magical empire with a lot of magic, but less reliable mundane troops and somewhat unreliable, if numerous, wizards.
"Elves, are actually trolls" -- yep. The oldest fantasy tradition, "knife-ears just troll everyone."
I have to say you earned my follow, this is a field I adore, fantasy tactics. I think warhammer total war really opened my eyes to flying rear charges, aoe spells destroying battle lines etc. It really forces you to re imagine infantry
great Hannibal shout. I've used that tactic in many many video game battles and it works SO well. Truly revolutionary for his time, and still applicable today
6:20 If one ship can wipe out an enemy fleet in star wars using hyperdrive, then it would have been done to death and counters would have been developed. The galaxy in question is long settled, space warfare is very stagnant until the Death Star, everything being static is repeated and emphasised.
So that's the equivalent - it's a shot that looks cool, but the more you think about it, the more it breaks everything else ever done in any other movie, comic book, video game, tv show ....
I expect the excuse is the director did not care about "the star wars" and just wanted to do something else.
The whole tactical point of the battle of five armies was that they were so out n7mbered they were basically on the back foot the whole time, they basically got pushed back to any hill 9r high ground 8n small groups all races mixed
About the treatment of wizards on the battlefield, I like the way Robert Jordan handled it in the Wheel of Time series. He introduces a few elements so that the use of magic doesn't open major plotholes:
1. The Aes Sedai (could be compared to wizards), or any user of the Source (magic) for that matters, have to use energy to cast "spells" (similar to mana systems found in a lot of classic magical settings). The more powerfull the spell is, the more energy it will consume + the less people can use it (some people aren't powerfull enough to even cast these spells without dying).
2. The numbers of people capable of using magic is limited and their use extends beyond simple combat: maintaining supply chains, communication between different battlefields and armies, treatment to the wounded... By extending the role of wizards beyond simple weapons, you "nerf" them because they can't simply be weapons of mass destruction (provided you introduce a system of energy/ mana management like mentionned above).
3. Introduce diversity in the use of wizards, some use them as destruction weapons meant to deal a direct blow to the enemy force before immediately retreating behind the main army when they become vulnerable, some use them to create portals,enabling huge troops movements at once being used to change the tide of a battle or rapidly retreat...
4. By mixing magic use in classical fantasy combat, you automatically restrain the power and abilities of the wizards, provided the chain of command didn't judge the total destruction of the ennemy to be above the potential friendly casualties that could ensue from blindly hitting the melee. If this isn't the case, then once the main melee starts magic becomes way less usefull since the only usefull combat spells would be the one hitting a specific target and not group damage (just like archers are less effective once the melee starts in classical fantasy settings). In addition to that, the wizards, if they are placed behind the main army force, become vulnerable targets for archers or troops operating flanking or incerclement tactics since they would be exausted (again, provided you introduced a mana system).
I think good example of fighting fantasy armies were described in Eragon Saga (mainly 2, 3 and 4 part) .
Magic was limited by your life energy and could kill you if you tried to for example break a wall with sheer force. More powerful mages could drain this life force from plants or animals. Instead of casting fireballs, you could destroy vital brain arteries of every soldier in unit. Every unit had a mage that was protecting them from other mages.
Lot of really cool concepts and I can recommend those books.
What's really crazy is that even though military technology is vastly more advanced than it was in medieval times, digging a ditch is still a really important tactic for defending your base and militaries still do it for many of the same reasons too.
Another question, would druids really participate in wars that destroy the natural world? Do kingdoms avoid destructive tactics to employ druids? So many questions!
how many druids would turn into Poison Ivy if the Kingdoms kept coming for the nature?
As elves are immortal, they would be more risk adverse than other races since they have so much to live for. Where as a human fighting in battle risks loosing 20-30 years of life, an elf risks loosing an infinite number of years (or at least thousands of years before scumming to an accident.) The cliche of the sergeant yelling for his men to charge with the adage, "What are you waiting for do you expect to live forever?" would be met by elf soldiers saying. "Well...... actually yes." Given their life span, elves would not only have time to amass wealth, they would develop the wisdom to use mercenaries to fight for them.
That's the most confident usage of "verisimilitude" I've ever heard
I think the ditch addition in fantasy films and the like could be really helpful to both the attackers and defenders as it shows the defenders to be competent, and the attackers would then have to overcome such a challenge.
Say at the start of a film you want to show off a hostile force of “bad guys” invading the “good guys” kingdom. Instead of just having the invaders slaughter a camp/outpost of guards, instead have the leader of the camp/outpost dig a ditch in preparation for the coming attack, and his inexperienced son could question the leader leading to an explanation of the ditch’s utility, etc: this provides characterisation for the defenders even though they mean nothing in the grand scheme of things, and it builds suspense and intrigue for the coming battle.
Then you have some “bad guy” scouts, having seen the ditch being dug, inform their own leader of the development. The invaders cut down part of a forest to fashion makeshift bridges to cross the ditch at several points, and when the attack begins the invaders could rain arrows down on the defenders before sending in several testudo-like formations that carry several bridges to cross the ditch. This’d be followed by the ditch being cross at multiple points, and the camp being wiped out.
This sequence could happen in a short amount of time, and provides so much more to the characters involved then a simple slash and burn mission as it makes the villain, in this case the attack, seem smart and a strategic genius instead of just a simple minded force of death and destruction.